Scientific discovery of Spiritual Laws given in Rational
Scientific Revelations
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Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg:
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Spiritual SunGood and Truth
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IMMEDIATE INFLUXOF GOOD(unconscious) |
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MEDIATE INFLUXOF TRUTH(conscious) |
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celestial will |
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celestial understanding |
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infernal sensuous will |
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infernal corporeal will |
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Influx originates in the Divine Human Person who is in the midst of the spiritual Sun. The two infinite substances streaming out of the spiritual Sun are called good and truth. The heat of the stream is good, and the light of the stream is truth. These two infinite substances are one in God, but as they emerge from the spiritual Sun and enter the human sphere, they separate into the unconscious immediate influx of good and the conscious mediate influx of truth. The immediate influx of good is received unconsciously by the organ of the will in the mind, while the mediate influx of truth is received consciously by the organ of the understanding in the mind. Note that influx enters the highest portion of the mind called celestial, then descends into the next lower discrete portion called the spiritual mind, and then into the lowest portion called the natural mind. Prior to regeneration, we are conscious of only the natural mind, so that the mediate influx into the celestial and spiritual mind, is not yet conscious, but it has the potential of becoming conscious with advancing regeneration. The opening of the spiritual and celestial mind is by means of revelation which contains celestial truths, spiritual truths, and natural truths.
The activity of the celestial and spiritual mind becomes conscious in the natural mind by correspondences. To accomplish this, God creates an interior portion of the natural mind. This interior organ is spiritual so that it can reflect by correspondence the ongoing activity in the spiritual and celestial mind. When we pass into the afterlife, we gain full conscious awareness of the spiritual and celestial mind that had been gradually opened by means of regeneration.
Note also that the influx continues into the lowest portion of the natural mind but goes through a receptor filter that inverts the influx into its opposites – good into evil, and truth into falsity. The natural mind has its opposite in the infernal natural mind. The spiritual mind has its opposite in the infernal spiritual mind. The celestial mind has its opposite in the infernal celestial mind. This is because every heavenly good and truth is turned into its opposites, and since there are three discrete degrees of heaven there must be three discrete degrees of hell.
It is the spiritual organ of the understanding that gives us the power of experiencing living consciousness. What is consciousness? Few people even have an opinion, let alone any knowledge of what it is. I’ve been in the field of Psychology for 40 years and though there are books and articles on the subject of consciousness, there is no knowledge of it. People write about theories and speculative, imaginative, and abstract accounts of what consciousness might be. But now True Science gives us a full scientific revelation from God the Creator and Manager of every individual’s consciousness.
So we now know, as just explained, two fundamental things about consciousness. First, we know that it is a spiritual substance originating in the infinite spiritual Sun and streaming out into the created universe, both the spiritual world and the natural world, both into humans and into animals, plants, and physical objects and energies. Second, we also know that the quality of this Divine influx exists in two discretely different modalities, called mediate and immediate influx. Only the mediate influx creates the phenomenon of consciousness and it is operative only in a particular created organ of reception called the human understanding.
True Science gives us many more details of this fundamental process of creation and existence. Creation is out of the substance of consciousness streaming forth from the spiritual Sun as spiritual light or Divine Truth itself. Divine Truth is the substance that makes up the inner framework of every created object or quality. What a tremendous scientific revelation! It is scientific because it is about the mechanism by which physical objects are created. Every physical object or quality is brought into existence by a successive sequence of steps called its “successive order.” This causative chain of being remains in “simultaneous order.” If you take any object or quality and analyze its constituent structure of discrete degrees, you are identifying its simultaneous order. This simultaneous order is an exact replica of the object’s successive order. Hence we can say that all successive order in creation is replicated in all simultaneous order after creation. An analogy might be the rings we can notice on a slice of a tree trunk. Counting the rings gives an accurate estimate of the tree’s age. The tree’s successive order of growth produced each ring with advancing age, and this successive order is replicated in the slice of the trunk that shows us the rings.
This scientific revelation to the human race globally, will facilitate new theories in physics in which consciousness becomes the basis of all matter. True Science as we know it today from the Writings is much more advanced any current notions in physics which is still weighed down by materialistic compunctions. One can expect that the early proposals of this new paradigm in physics will not be dualist and will redefine consciousness in abstract natural terms, rather than spiritual, as in True Science, where it is recognized that the consciousness is not abstracted matter but concretized spirit. Consciousness is a substance which is far superior to matter in that matter is temporary while substance is permanent or eternal. Matter exists in finited space-time limits while substance exists in infinite and uncreate states. Substance is the underlying framework of matter. Every physical object, from sub-atomic particle-wave to galaxy, has an underlying substantive framework that gives it body. The outward object is natural while the inward substantive framework is spiritual. This dual character of all objects is a tremendously useful scientific revelation. Now we know that the source of all substances is the spiritual Sun.
Consider the fact that every tree, stone, water molecule, or protein cell is made of a piece of the sun. Earth is a piece of the sun and so everything on this earth must be a piece of the sun. You can say therefore that the sun is the underlying physical framework of every object on the planet. Now we can another step. Consider the fact that the natural sun also has to have an underlying framework. Logic tells us that the underlying framework can’t be the same as the thing itself, or else it is not an underlying framework. So if the sun is the underlying framework of every thing on the planet, what is the underlying framework of the sun? Fair question, but the answer is not known unless we turn to scientific revelations. True Science describes the spiritual Sun as the underlying framework of the natural sun. Skipping for now all the details, we can nevertheless rationally conclude that the spiritual Sun is therefore the underlying framework of every physical object on the planet.
And what is this underlying framework from the spiritual Sun? It consists of the spiritual light and spiritual heat that is carried inside the light. Spiritual light from the spiritual Sun streams out into creation and begins it as the first step in a successive order by which this spiritual substance proceeds from the spiritual Sun and creates by successive steps of layering itself with more and more limits, until it reaches an outer layer called natural limits. Every object of this outer natural layer will therefore contain, like the rings of a tree, a replica in simultaneous order of its steps of creation. Therefore the initiating substance from the spiritual Sun will be in the inmost or central ring of the object. And what is this inmost constitutive substance of every physical object or quality? It is spiritual light within which is spiritual heat. And spiritual light is called Divine Truth and spiritual heat is called Divine Love. This proves then that every thing in its inmost is Divine Truth and Love. And Divine Truth is nothing else then Consciousness Itself, the source of all human consciousness in the mind. We now have a scientific explanation of why it can be accurately said that this is fundamentally a Human Universe made of Truth and Love at its core.
The diagram and chart above depict some of these details. Note that the Divine Human Person, who can be seen by angels in the midst of the spiritual Sun, is the origin of influx. Whatever is streaming out of the spiritual Sun is the Divine Truth and the Divine Love of the Divine Human Person. This is because that’s what the Divine Human Person is in Constitution or Essence. In His essence or inmost being, He is infinite Divine Love, and in His outward existence, He is the infinite Divine Truth. These are the two substances -- celestial and spiritual -- streaming out of Him into the created universe. Love is a celestial substance while truth is a spiritual substance. Both come in infinite and inexhaustible varieties. These two infinite substances are uncreate and have the capability of transforming themselves into created things by a process of exteriorization, or self-limitation. The light of the stream of influx is nothing else than actual Divine Truth, and the heat within this light stream is nothing else than actual Divine Love.
Substance contrasts with matter. All things in the natural world are constructed out of material elements and compounds. But all things in the spiritual world are constructed out of the two substances, celestial (=love) and spiritual (=truth). Substances are not in time and space, while matter is. For example, a house in the natural world is constructed of materials like stone and wood, while a house in your dream is constructed out of substances (thoughts and images). Feelings and thoughts are constructed out of celestial and spiritual substances (love and truth) streaming into the mind. A house in heaven is constructed out of celestial and spiritual substances from the spiritual Sun. Clearly, the house in your dream is more like the house in your heaven than your house on earth. In the spiritual world a house is maintained in existence as long as your feelings and thoughts are conscious and connected to it. There is no time limit or spatial restrictions to your house in heaven, as there is to your house on earth. In the spiritual world, whatever thoughts and feelings you have exteriorize by correspondence to create the specific appearances of the sensory environment. On earth this is not so. Your house remains fixed as is, no matter what your thoughts and feelings are. Material houses are partially independent of your mind, but substantive houses are completely dependent on your mind. Those who are in hell have thoughts and feelings that exteriorize as dark caverns and huts rather than magnificent houses or palaces.
It takes a high level of abstraction to be able to comprehend the idea that truth and love are substances. The mental effort it takes to understand how truth and love can be substances, produces a more abstract and rational intelligence or wisdom. Our consciousness operates from influx at three discrete levels, and the resultant conscious awareness and perception is different at each level, so different, that a lower level can never comprehend a higher level no matter how much it improves at its own level. It is like a staircase having three steps separated from each other by several hundred feet. How are you going to get to the top? No matter how much you walk and shuffle at one step, you will never get to the next step. The only way is to find a way of being transported up by some entirely new method that is radically different from walking and shuffling. Similarly with consciousness, which is like walking and being transported.
The three discrete levels of the organic physiological mind are called natural or natural-rational (lowest), spiritual or spiritual-rational (intermediate), and celestial or celestial-rational (uppermost). Consequently we experience the phenomenon of consciousness at these three steps or discrete levels of operation. The thoughts and feelings we have when the natural consciousness alone is operative, are at the level of animals, though at a more advanced stage. In other words the physiology of the natural mind is more advanced with humans than it is with animals. This is the reason that humans use a natural language for communicating at a distance and for abstract thinking, while animals have only crude signaling systems in comparison. But in addition to having a more advanced natural mind, humans also have two additional organs of a higher construction which animals do not possess and can never possess from creation. These two higher organs are called the spiritual mind and the celestial mind.
The state of a person's mind in the natural world determines its state in the spiritual world. (Swedenborg, TCR 816)
When we are born, our physical body is born in the physical world and our spirit-body is born in the world of spirits. The two are connected by the laws of synchronous correspondences. When the physical body is disconnected by its death, the spirit-body continues its immortal life in heaven or hell. This spirit-body is what houses the natural mind, the spiritual mind, and the celestial mind. Therefore when we appear to ourselves to “awaken” in the world of spirits, our consciousness of self and our memories are all present because they were located all along in the natural mind, which was born in the spirit-body and remains there forever. The natural mind is formed by the information we obtain from sensory input through the physical body. The physical body and the natural world are therefore necessary to form the natural mind, but this formation is not in the physical world but in the world of spirits where the spirit-body is.
As the natural mind develops and grows, so does our natural consciousness. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us influx is reaching the natural mind by correspondence with the operations that go on in the spiritual and celestial mind. These operations of influx in our higher mind are unconscious. We become conscious of them only when they reach the natural mind. What reaches the natural mind is not the influx itself, which is spiritual, but the action of synchronous correspondence of the spiritual upon the natural. Our natural consciousness is therefore the result of the activity of the natural mind. This activity is nothing but a correspondential effect of the activity in the higher mind (spiritual and celestial). Of course the natural mind cannot see or be aware of the higher mind and when we read in scientific revelation of the existence of the higher mind, we do not comprehend it except in a natural way. Natural level consciousness consists of thoughts and feelings that reflect the order of the natural world. Everything in this order is different from the order of the spiritual world. The lower cannot comprehend the higher consciousness.
Clearly then, the natural mind is capable of replicating representatively and consciously, the activity of the spiritual mind, which is unconscious while we are earthlings. The natural mind has therefore the capacity to grow into more advanced phases that can represent the higher stages in a conscious mode. This is accomplished physiologically by the growth of a new organ in the interior of the natural mind. This new interior portion of the natural mind is called the interior-natural mind or the natural-spiritual mind. This interior-natural mind is a discrete degree within the natural mind proper, which is why it has the capacity to represent consciously the spiritual and celestial operations of the higher mind. The opening and growth of the interior-natural mind is effected by God in proportion to our willingness to be regenerated, that is, our willingness to undergo spiritual and celestial temptations.
The diagram above shows the proceeding of influx as it descends into human consciousness. Note the line of descent or exteriorization from the Divine. First reception is heaven. After going through the three discrete layers of heaven, in sequential order, the influx of Divine Truth has been changed by the minds of the people in the three heavens. By the time Divine influx has filtered through the lowest heaven, it is discretely different from what it was on its descent, because a lower heaven cannot recognize anything directly from an upper heaven, but only indirectly by means of correspondential reaction. Finally, when the mediate influx exits the lowest heaven, it enters the world of spirits. This is where are located the spirit-bodies of all the humanity alive on the many earths in the natural world. They are all on their way to eternal life in the same spiritual world. Now the course of mediate influx as it enters each sprit-body, replicates the course of influx across the heavens because the structure of the human mind is the same as the structure of the spiritual world, and in fact, overlaps with it completely since there is no extension or spatial location in the spiritual world.
The influx from the highest or celestial heaven enters the highest or celestial portion of the mind in the spirit-body. Of course we have no consciousness of this operation or action. Next, influx enters the middle heaven below (called the spiritual heaven) at the same time that it enters the mid-level mind called the spiritual mind. Next, mediate influx from the Divine enters the lowest heaven (called the natural heaven) at the same time that it enters into the lowest mind, called the natural mind. At this point the influx becomes conscious by means of the correspondences to it in our natural mind. These correspondences are the conscious thoughts and feelings in our natural mind.
Note from the diagram above that the beginnings of Divine mediate influx with humans are in the heavens, and this is called human higher consciousness. The content of this influx is truth and good, which are the substances of the spiritual Sun. These substances make up the stream of influx that is received by the organs of the mind. Influx therefore is a physiological process of the mental organs which are created as organs of reception for spiritual and celestial influx. The organ of the understanding receives the light of the stream, which is actually nothing else than Divine Truth, and the organ of the will receives the heat of the stream, which is actually nothing else than Divine Love. The reception of this stream creates the phenomenon of consciousness, or conscious experience, in every individual. The content of this consciousness is therefore fixed, embedded, and recorded by physiological synapses that are made of spiritual fibers in the spirit-body. Since spiritual fibers or substances are uncreate and immortal, the form and character of the mind is permanent and immortal, indestructible. Whatever we once felt or thought, remains part of us to eternity.
As portrayed in the diagram above, the good and truth substances stream into the world of spirits from the lowest heavens. From this the influx enters the lowest or natural mind. Since the Fall of the human race on this earth, the natural mind automatically filters the influx of good and truth and converts it into evil and falsity, as portrayed in the diagram above. The content of evils and falsities are opposite to the content of goods and truths, hence the consciousness of evils and falsities is called lower consciousness. The lowest form of consciousness is the content of thoughts and feelings in the corporeal mind when separated from all upper portions of the mind above it. That is called the hells.
You can see from these True Science revelations that spiritual development is no less physiological than physical development. Also, that consciousness raising is the process of receiving truths and loves from influx without distorting them or changing them into the opposites. By changing inflowing Divine truths and loves into their opposites, we keep our consciousness at the animal level, trapped in the natural mind of understanding and willing. When, at the death of the physical body, we make the consciousness transition into the spirit-body, our quality of experience and life is determined by how high our mind is operative. If we arrive with the celestial mind operative, we experience the life of eternal heaven, but if we arrive with only the natural mind operative, we experience the life of eternal hell. What determines how high our mind becomes operative, is the process of regeneration. This refers to the lifelong struggle to change our inherited character into a new one arranged in the order of heaven by means of revelations which we study, take to heart, and use to guide our daily thinking and willing.
In the spiritual world there is perfect correlation between beauty and wisdom, between good and truth. Those whose interior self is filled with good loves and true ideas appear beautiful as angels. But those whose interior self is filled with evil loves and false ideas appear ugly and monstrous as devils. Angels and devils cannot be together in the same sphere because the good and truth in the angels obliterates and destroys the evil and falsity in the devils. As a result, the spiritual world is divided into heaven and hell, where people have their permanent abode, and there is an impassable barrier between these two.
Swedenborg discovered that many who believed themselves to be devout believers with a strong faith, found themselves with an interior self that was the opposite of what they believed on the outside of their conscious awareness. They now laughed at their former faith and believed nothing. They saw their own evil loves, their own hatreds, their own arrogance, their own cruelty, their own hatred of monogamy and charity, their own disdain for the very idea of Lord and God—when they saw all this in themselves, they did not judge it and condemn it. Instead, they defended these things and they associated with others who were like minded, who loved gossip and slander, who were amused by the misfortune of others, who were openly envious, scortatory, adulterous, blasphemous. These things are the things they loved in their interior self.
The Writings are the revealed Divine Truth that the Lord has given humanity in His Second Coming. He wants to open the eyes of humanity, to raise our consciousness and loves to the heavenly state of bliss. He has provided this new revelation to open our eyes of understanding so that we are able to understand in a rational and scientific way, what it takes to get to heaven. Not the sacrifice of someone else, not even God, can change the interior self, and its loves and ideas. If God were to change our interior self without our awareness, what would happen? Our annihilation as human beings forever. This is too much of a fate to endure or to impose. Even life in hell is better than annihilation. If we are annihilated, we can no longer be human, but if we are devils, we still can become angels, the moment we want to. All it takes is the willingness to abandon evil loves and to acquire good loves. That’s all it takes to change a devil into an angel. It is not an act of God that can do this, for this would result in annihilation. Clearly then, we must change our character voluntarily here on earth, or else we cannot be saved for eternal happiness in heaven.
The Writings use the expression “doing good works” to refer to the work of uses in life. This means that we must live our life for the sake of others at least as much as for the sake of self. In other words, all the daily choices we make could be either for self or for others as well as for self. For example, we can let the television or music blare from our room, or we can think of the room mates and neighbors. We can drive dangerously and think of ourselves, or we can drive carefully and think of other drivers and pedestrians. We can let ourselves go and be overweight, or we can reign in the appetite and increase our physical workout. Etc. There is no mystery here, no great complication. Everyone can understand this. Everyone knows what is good or bad, decent or selfish, and we all have ideas about God from culture and education. God gives us all a conscience as well. You can see therefore that every human being, regardless of background, can work at becoming a good person according to the truth one possesses. That’s all it takes to develop an interior self that is filled with good loves and true ideas. And with these, we can enter heaven and grow in intelligence and love endlessly, in company with others, but especially with one’s soul mate or spouse.
Note this very important fact: only those people who tried to be good on account of God or the afterlife, had a good interior self, one that is capable of heavenly life. All those who tried to be good on account of some other reason, did not have a good interior self, but an evil one. What were these other reasons? Some put on a good personality for reputation and honor, others for gain or influence. Others did it out of fear or shyness. But with these motives only the external behavior and personality are good, that is, appear to be good, but the interior self is not changed. It is filled with contempt for others and religion. The interior self can be totally insane spiritually, but show none of this externally, while maintaining an appearance of sanity and normalcy. External motives cannot change interior loves and ideas, but interior loves can change external ones. The motive to be good on account of God, the afterlife, heaven and hell, is an interior motive, and in fact, it is the highest motive in the human mind, as explained in the Writings. This motive has the power to change the interior self, to transform it from loves that concern only the self, with which we are born, for loves that concern others, thus mutual love for the sake of unity with God.
The idea that we are saved by faith alone rather than by character change for the sake of faith, has therefore become a major stumbling block in the mind that opposes the new truths revealed by the Lord in His Second Coming. Nevertheless, every individual can see from reason that blind faith without character change is not a realistic or true idea of religion, but a distortion and misunderstanding of Scripture. And every individual has a reason by which to be able to inspect these new truths that the Lord has now revealed through the Writings of Swedenborg. Since they are completely rational revelations, everyone can judge for themselves. There is no persuasion involved. No mystery. No data that we do not have access to ourselves.
The truth I discuss is not my truth but God's truth. God's truth is beamed into every mind from within, yet few can see it or understand it. This is because few listen to it and value it. The only truth there is, is God's truth. No truth exists that is not God's truth, which is the truth given to us by God. When you begin to see God's truth, or simply, truth, you will experience an extraordinary desire, even compulsion, to tell others of this truth. This compelling feeling of sharing truth is built into the truth we receive. The reason is that genuine truth can only be received within good. In other words, when we strive to be good by doing the right thing, truth is implanted by God in this striving to be good. The effort we exert is called a motive, purpose, love, or affection. When we act right from the desire to be good, God then strengthens and extends this desire for good within our character. The desire to be good has tremendous power in it. And one of its powers is to receive truth from God as the earth receives a gestating seed. There is no other way of receiving spiritual truth from God but in the effort of being good or acting right.
Good and truth do not exist separately but act only in unison, just like the lungs and the heart act together for the body’s survival and well being. When we discuss truth, we do not yet possess actual truth. The truth is then only in our memory, which is external to our actual self of feeling and existing. The actual self is our life of love and feeling, while thinking and knowing truth is merely a reflection of our love and feeling. But acting or behaving according to the truth in our understanding, is our life, for it is love that acts by means of truth. Truth therefore is not within us until it is in our will to act right. Once truth is implanted by God as a seed in our understanding, it begins to multiply astronomically as we continue to strive to be good and to act according to the truth we understand. Good is the origin of all love, and truth is the origin for all wisdom. Love and wisdom are inseparable since good and truth are inseparable. Truth is the outside form of love. Love appears in the world by means of truth. Love does not act by itself but my means of truth. Truth does not act from itself but from love. Love is the Divine Essence and truth is the Divine Existere. In the Divine Human Person, love and truth are united as one. Love is His Divine Essence while truth is His Human Essence. These verities sound abstract before we fully comprehend them. The better we comprehend them, the higher our consciousness is elevated. When we operate from a higher consciousness of truth, our thinking and feeling about everything is raised to a new operational level.
God also gives us the power to transform or distort good into evil, and at the same time, to change truth into falsity. Similarly, we can transform love into hatred and other infernal lusts, and at the same time, we can distort wisdom and intelligence into insanity and foolishness. The same good and truth, or love and wisdom, flows in from God into every person, and it is the individual who then has the spiritual freedom to filter and transform them into either something that is compatible with love and wisdom, or into something that is contrary to them. If we change truth to its opposite we become spiritually insane and forfeit the capability of heavenly life.
The desire to share the truth is not present when we seek truth as part of our strategy to get ahead of others or to compete with them. Spiritual truth can be seen only by those who desire to see it for the purpose of becoming a better person, because as we improve our character we grow closer to God from whom we can then receive love and wisdom, or what is the same, genuine good and genuine truth. To be a good person and to act right according to truth, is not possible from ourselves but only from God. From our own self we can only remain an evil person filled with falsities that we believe to be truths. This is how we are born, namely, spiritually inverted and morally perverted, so that when Divine good and truth flow into us from within through the soul, we disperse them and transfix them into their opposite. If we do not love God but ignore or deny Him, we cannot be genuinely good, because good is from God only, along with genuine truth. We may act as if we are good, but this is only an outward put on. We may even believe that we are good, but this is only a convenient persuasion or self-serving fantasy. Neither is truth from any person, but from God alone. Both truth and good are from God alone and an individual can have truth and good only from God, that is, when we acknowledge God and affirm our love for Him out of free choice. Therefore, to receive good and truth, we must first acknowledge God.
Every individual who possesses genuine truth, possesses God's truth received from Him. Truth is received by the mind in accordance with one's ability to understand rational ideas. There are simple truths that are rationally simple, and they can be understood by all, even the uneducated. These simple truths are enough in themselves to allow one to love God and to live a life of conscience that prepares the mind for heaven, to the extent that one uses the truth to shun inherited evils. There are also more complex truths that demand a mind trained in rational thinking. This training can be intellectual, artistic, or scientific. Truth in itself, as it flows down from God, is absolute and Divine, but it is received with variation depending on each individual's mental state and preparation. The more we shun our known evils as sins against God, the further we are regenerated by God from within, as a result of which we also grow in understanding and enlightenment.
One day I had been meditating on the creation of the universe. This was noticed by the angels above me to the right, where there were some who had several times meditated and reasoned about the same matter; so one of them came down and invited me to join them. I passed into the spirit and accompanied him; on my arrival I was brought to the prince, in whose hall I saw as many as a hundred assembled with the prince in their midst. . (Swedenborg, TCR 76).
2. Swedenborg’s Dual Consciousness
The name I use for the approach in this book is “True Science,” and also “theistic science” and “ scientific dualism” (see the articles available from this directory: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss.html
I have included only rational concepts and scientific or empirical methods.
By "scientific" I mean any rational explanatory account that is tied to empirical facts verifiable through observation by anyone under the appropriate test conditions.
It is known that rational is universal, and is a property of the human mind with which we are born and which we can exercise as part of our racial evolution. Societal activities are governed by the rational to the extent that they are effective. We have lawyers, accountants, legislators, and judges to see to it that rational methods of evidence presentation and conclusion are followed. We have engineers and economists who plan our environment and are required to write rational reports and justifications for their planning. In science, every method and approach, every school of thought and specialization, is governed by rational steps of operation and evaluation. Architecture and art are based on rational principles of harmony and interrelationships. Survival is a function of adaptation, and in humans, adaptation is the outcome of rational principles.
I have been trained as a practicing scientist for several decades to learn what is rational reasoning and how to operate within its scope to give meaning to facts, data, evidence, logic, inner consistency, outer harmony, specificity, and unitary coherence. This is possible for me only because Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1771) was a superb and honest scientist and the Writings he left us are thoroughly and consistently rational, empirical and scientific. He is the only writer in all of human history that has been able to retain this high quality of scientific standards on this topic of "What is real? Where am I going?", and includes scientific explanations of the afterlife, the mind, Sacred Scripture, heaven, hell, and God.
Quoting Swedenborg at the beginning of the book titled Heaven and Hell:
The arcana revealed in the following pages relate to heaven and hell, and also to the life of man after death. The man of the church at this date knows scarcely anything about heaven and hell or about his life after death, although all these matters are set forth and described in the Word; and yet many of those born within the church refuse to believe in them, saying in their hearts, "Who has come from that world and told us?" Lest, therefore, such a spirit of denial, which especially prevails with those who have much worldly wisdom, should also infect and corrupt the simple in heart and the simple in faith, it has been granted me to associate with angels and to talk with them as man with man, also to see what is in the heavens and what is in the hells, and this for thirteen years; so now from what I have seen and heard it has been granted me to describe these, in the hope that ignorance may thus be enlightened and unbelief dissipated. Such immediate revelation is granted at this day because this is what is meant by the Coming of the Lord. (HH 1)
The principal reason why Swedenborg is absolutely unique is that he was given access to the spiritual world in full wakefulness for 27 years. His Writings are empirical in that they are based on this daily experience, which included various experiments he was allowed to conduct to investigate various phenomena and properties of the spiritual world. His contemporaries were well aware of Swedenborg's intellectual commitment to science in all matters of human understanding, including the understanding of the spiritual. He wrote only as a scientist about phenomena and observations no other individual in human history has had access to. Though Swedenborg was well known to many key writers of the 18th and 19th centuries, he has been systematically kept out of the history of science literature in the 20th century. This is why he is not known among scientists today. And the fact is that most scientists today would still vote to keep his writings out of the scientific literature. No one in science today is allowed to talk to Aristotle or Newton in the spiritual world, and to angels and devils, and call it part of science. No one in science today is allowed to cite Swedenborg’s Writings and call them science, as I have done. I am therefore defying science as it is today, attempting to stimulate change towards what will be called the True Science.
Sometimes as scientists we are troubled when we must evaluate an experiment for which we have inadequate equipment to verify the observations that have been reported to prove the hypothesis. We rely in that case on reputation of the researcher and the publication venue, which is often a scientific journal containing only articles that have been peer reviewed and approved as meeting the usual standards of scientific method. In the case of Swedenborg’s observations of the spiritual world, the verifiability issue becomes even more difficult since no one has the equipment he possessed, namely dual consciousness, or the ability to observe the phenomena of the spiritual world.
Nevertheless, this is not an absolute caveat since there is the certainty that everyone will possess this equipment when passing from this world to the spiritual world. Swedenborg only did what everyone can do, except in a special order, not given to anyone else. He was given sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world while he was still a man in a physical body on earth. But what he reports is verifiable by anyone who reaches that world. The experimental conditions to be met to verify Swedenborg’s observations are available to anyone who attains that condition. An analogy might be to consider the special insight that mature people have compared to their earlier years. Younger people cannot verify the insights of the mature people, yet they will be able to verify those observations when they meet the conditions of maturity. What Swedenborg reports is not secret or subjective, but public and objective. More people can verify Swedenborg’s observations than people who cannot, because more people live in the spiritual world than on this earth.
Furthermore, copies of Swedenborg’s Writings exist in heaven, are read by angels as Divine Truth. They do not associate the Writings with Swedenborg, whom they have no knowledge of. When they read it they are not conscious of the literal meanings and descriptions in the sentences. They are conscious only of the inner spiritual sense of the Threefold Word, which deals with celestial ideas only, ideas incomprehensible to us while still on earth.
(See this article on Overcoming Objections to Swedenborg's Writings Through the Development of Scientific Dualism.
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/np98.html )
Note that my presentation of “true science” (which is theistic) is not a response to a wish to unify science and religion, as this has been attempted many times from many fields of scholarship and persuasion. Instead, I ask rational questions about the mind, God, heaven, and hell, as a scientist or lawyer might ask when investigating an event or claim: Is the mind something real? If yes, then it is part of science and rational inquiry. Is God real? If yes, then it is part of science and rational inquiry. Is the afterlife real? Then it too is part of what science wants to investigate. Science, through rationality and empiricism, investigates whatever has reality. Just because we want to investigate the reality of God or heaven doesn't mean that we are into religion--we are still in science, investigating something real. No one has ever convinced me that science has any limitations in the rational and empirical investigation of real things. Nevertheless, given that science has been distinctly atheistic and monistic for a couple of centuries, it may be less confusing for now to use the expression "theistic science" by which I mean the scientific and rational inquiry of God's reality and relationship to humans, including afterlife, heaven, hell, and Sacred Scripture or Divine revelations.
There are two ways of approaching God as a scientific issue, one negative, the other affirmative. Both involve making a premise that cannot be independently proven. The negative approach allows scientists to remain materialistic, monistic, and atheistic by saying: “We start with the premise of atheism and monism. We will give up this premise if there is proof of God’s reality. The proof must be by means of materialistic methods.” You can see that this position insures the retention of the atheistic premise, which itself is not provable. On the other hand, the affirmative approach allows scientists to abandon the unproven and unprovable atheistic premise. This is what I did. First, I had to realize that the atheistic premise of science is not provable. This reduced its persuasive hold on my mind. Second, I had to find out from Divine revelation, or Sacred Scripture, the rational explanation of why God does not appear in the physical world and put an end to the mistaken premise of atheistic science. This question can only be considered or investigated from the affirmative approach. One must first grant that God exists and manages the universe by means of rational principles. Then one is in a position to investigate these rational laws or principles of reality.
The Writings of Swedenborg are a Divine revelation about reality, about God, the human mind, heaven, and hell. The Writings present a full and coherent rational explanation of the interaction between the natural and spiritual world, and the laws by means of which phenomena in both worlds can be understood and interrelated. It is revealed that God has created the human mind to consist of several levels or layers of functioning, the lowest being called hell, and the highest being called heaven. In the lower regions we function at the corporeal and sensuous level of operation. This level is similar to that of animals. At the next higher level in our mind, we function at the natural-rational level, which marks the progress of civilized life on earth. At the next higher level, we function at the spiritual-rational level, and at the highest level possible, we function at the celestial-rational level of operation, consciousness, and understanding. We are born at the lowest level with the capacity to reach the highest level.
The journey for becoming human, then angelic, is the journey of our loves and their quality. Our animal loves are corporeal and pre-civilized, not yet rational and human. Next, our natural-rational loves take us to feelings of community and thoughts of science and art. Next, our spiritual-rational loves take us to feelings of mutual love, love of God, and understanding of Divine Truth. Finally, our celestial-rational loves take us to feelings of unity and oneness with God and with each other, and the interior perception of Divine Truth. Note that this journey of elevation and evolution of the human mind is achieved by means of the rational—at first in a natural version, next in a spiritual version, and at last in a celestial version.
The celestial-rational is the highest and inmost of the mind where the true human begins. Not until then do we have truly human feelings and perceptions. When we are separated from the corpse, we awaken in our spirit-body in the world of spirits. Our fate to eternity is then determined by this spirit-body, that is, the feelings and thoughts it contains. Remember that feelings and thoughts are immortal organic substances that gradually build up our spirit body as we live our life in the physical body. Such as are the loves we bring with us, such is our fate in eternity. If we arrive with feelings and thoughts below the rational level, we sink down into the corporeal level of the mind, and life there is called hell. But if we arrive with rational feelings and thoughts, we rise to the spiritual and celestial levels of the mind, and life there is called heaven.
God cannot appear in the physical world today to settle the matter of His existence for science. Why not? Because, as the Writings reveal, such an event would destroy science, and society, and will result in preventing anyone from acquiring spiritual-rational and celestial-rational loves. This would condemn the entire future human race to hell. This terrible result would obtain because God’s appearance in the physical world violates and tears apart the fabric of the natural world as it is conjoined to the spiritual world. The details of this explanation are rationally and fully justified in the Writings. It makes complete sense to me, and would to anyone who is motivated to read it with rational understanding and consistency. The human mind as two modalities or organic venues for consciousness: sensuous and rational. Understanding this difference is the key to understanding why God cannot physically appear to science to settle the matter of His existence.
God has appeared twice to the consciousness of the human race on earth. The first, at the Incarnation, when God appeared as a Divine Child in a physical body, and grew to adulthood, then exited the natural world to dwell in the spiritual world where He can be seen by the inhabitants of heaven. While God was on earth, He had a dual role, called Father and Son. The Father role did not change and continued to manage the details of the universe. But the Son role was new in human evolution. It was a new creation of God in relation to humanity. Whereas before God in the Father role was invisible in His infinity, now in His newly created Son role, He was visible to all humanity, both on earth and in heaven. This new visibility allowed the human race to evolve much further and higher in the human mind since God’s visibility enhances contact, communication, and conjunction. God in the Son role can therefore bestow on every individual the celestial-rational loves that make us truly human, truly like God, because more from God. God’s appearance again in the physical world would reverse this evolution, so that from rational consciousness the human race would slip back into sensuous consciousness of an earlier and lower phase or level of operation.
The way science can progress now is not by obtaining physical proof of God’s existence, but by strengthening the rational consciousness of God through theistic science. Science can now accept God by rational understanding, not by sensuous demonstrations. God’s infinity and omnipresence cannot be understood sensually, but only rationally. From the sensual perspective, omnipresence is impossible, but from the rational perspective, it is clear and comprehensible. The Writings are a Divine revelation given for the building up the rational consciousness of humanity. Hence it is that God made a Second Appearance on earth to the rational mind within the pages of the Writings of Swedenborg. Now the human race can have a clear view of God, and science can become the True Science, theistic and rational, through and through. Now science can lay hold on true and genuine reality, on benign control of the environment, on human happiness, knowledge, and mutual love, on the present and the future. This is the new age of the Second Coming which marks the evolutionary completion of the human race, the human mind, human consciousness. No mystery has been left about God, the universe, life, and the afterlife. The final and last revelation has been given. Within the literal meaning of the Writings there is hidden an infinite amount of new knowledge for humanity. The Writings give us the methods we are to apply to extract this vast knowledge for all time to come. Though this is not yet known generally, a few people already know it, and I am one of them. You can be too. Quoting from Swedenborg:
Once, when the interior heaven was opened to me, and I was conversing with the angels there, I was permitted to observe the following phenomena. Be it known that although I was in heaven, I was nevertheless not out of myself, but in the body, for heaven is within man, wherever he may be, so that when it pleases the Lord, a man may be in heaven and yet not be withdrawn from the body. In this way it was given me to perceive the general workings of heaven as plainly as an object is perceived by any of the senses. (AC 3884)
True Science based on the scientific revelations in the Writings is not divisive, sectarian, or limited by history or culture. God as a subject of discussion is divisive only in the outward form of religion and politics, since religion has an animated externalized life at the edge of culture and nationalism. Divisive sectarian religion is based on corporeal and sensuous feelings and thoughts. These are in the lowest portion of the mind’s operation. Sectarianism is not yet fully human because it is based on exclusion and division, while the genuine human is based on acceptance and unity. Within all external natural religious behaviors and beliefs, there lives an internal. This internal is the rational mind, and it operates at the three levels mentioned above: natural-rational feelings and thoughts, spiritual-rational feelings and thoughts, and ultimately, celestial-rational feelings and thoughts, which is the genuine human that leads to mutual and unity.
When you bypass external forms of religious behavior, and go to what is within it, you find the levels of the rational mind. This is the same mind that studies universal laws of reality, thus science. Science is a universal explanation of all events, including religious behavior. Science is at a higher rationality in the human mind than external religions. If external religion looks at science, it sees nothing except something below itself. But if science looks at religion, it sees religion and politics below itself as cultural phenomena. What is below cannot look at what is above, for it sees nothing, but what is above in the mind can look at what is below, and see everything in detail. Religion cannot explain science, but science can explain religion. Note well: atheistic science such as we have today cannot explain religion because religion is above it in the mind. Religion is the understanding of rational concepts like God and mutual love, while atheistic science is so low in rationality that it cannot give a meaning for rational concepts like God and the spiritual world. But True Science is based on Divine revelations, therefore it is in the highest portions of the human mind called spiritual-rational and celestial-rational. Knowledge of God based on True Science is higher in the mind than knowledge of God based on religion. The religious knowledge one possesses may be entirely true, yet this truth is at a lower level than the truth of True Science.
3. Character Reformation By Means of the Threefold Word of God
Understanding the ideas in True Science, as based in the Divine revelations of the Writings, gives us a closer position from which to view God and our relationship to Him. This greater closeness is due to the more interior rational understanding that is provided by Divine revelation. God is the highest rational from whom all other rational comes from and is embedded in. God has two infinite substances within Himself that is His very life, namely, love and wisdom. From this Divine Love and Wisdom God creates a universal aura called the Spiritual Sun. Infinite amounts of spiritual heat and spiritual light emanate from this Sun. This Divine emanation goes forth from the Spiritual Sun, and as it does, it creates distance between God and the emanations. These distances are fixed by means of atmospheres or levels of division and separation in the emanations. Each fixed atmosphere has particular properties and creates specific phenomena according to these properties. As the atmospheres multiply and create more and more distance from the Spiritual Sun, the properties, events, and phenomena become less and less rational, more and more physicalized or materialized. At last, in the ultimate of atmospheres emanating from the Spiritual Sun, is the physical universe or the natural world.
Human beings are born with dual existence. Their mind is in the rational atmospheres called the spiritual world, while their physical body is in the lowest atmosphere called earth or planet. Our mind, which is in the spiritual world, is still asleep to the spiritual environment and is not receptive to incoming spiritual phenomena. In this first phase, the mind is conscious only of what comes from the sensory information streaming in from the physical body. The mind is unconscious of the spiritual world that surrounds it as long as it is tied to a physical body. When this body becomes a corpse and can no longer transmit sensations, the mind is separated and suddenly becomes receptive to the spiritual environment where it had been all along. Subjectively this feels like an awakening. Hence it is said that novitiate spirits, or new arrivals in the afterlife, appear to themselves to be awakened from a sleep.
Since the fabric of the universe is made of the emanations and atmospheres of the Spiritual Sun, and since the Spiritual Sun is Divine Love and Divine Truth, therefore everything in the universe has a rational basis. Truth is the rational substance out of which the emanations from the Spiritual Sun are created. At the ultimate atmosphere furthest removed from the Spiritual Sun, is the material world of atoms, electrons, protein, and minerals. An atom is therefore a piece of truth. A physical law or number is therefore a piece of truth. A rose, a rock, a river, a planet, the mind of a human being, heaven and hell, all are pieces of truth. Nothing else exists except pieces of truth from the Spiritual Sun. You can see from this the supreme importance of the rational at its various levels. In fact the human mind is an exact map of the spiritual world, so that all the layers of the universe created by the emanations are exactly reproduced and imaged in the human mind. Hence we can say that the journey from birth on earth to eternity in heaven is a journey from the lower portions of the mind to its highest portion. This journey is made by truth, within which is love, for truth is nothing but the outside form of love. Love and truth are the constituent blocks of reality.
Religion is the first step for opening the human mind and starting the journey upward, back to God where our soul is. As you read on, you will come across diagrams and tables that will help you to visualize the patterned observations I make about our religious life. Religious life has an external cultural aspect that might feel threatened by my presentation. But if you're willing to go deeper into the foundations of your religion, you will find mutual agreement between all of us. This is the value of theistic science. It leaves the surface culture-based disagreements behind, and constructs a scientific platform of agreement and pan-human understanding. You will not have to leave your religion behind, only enrich it with inner meaning in your own life and future.
To say that atheistic science can validate or enhance religion is not true since atheistic science is below the rational while religion has rational ideas from revelations. But it is accurate to say that theistic science, or True Science, validates and enhances religion because both are based on revelations. True Science is the most specific and advanced of the Divine revelations ever given to humanity. The Writings of Swedenborg are this Divine revelation called the Second Coming, which opens the new evolutionary age of celestial-rational understanding and consciousness, the final frontier in human creation that leaves behind ignorance and mystery.
True theistic science can also be called “scientific dualism,” an expression that contrasts with “scientific monism.” Atheism and monism are central elements of nonduality, which is the philosophical perspective that all dualities or categorical contrasts are illusions of the human mind. Nonduality sees a unity between material and spiritual substance, between human and Divine, between evil and good.
(See Volume 3 of A Man of the Field: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v1ch1-nonduality.html )
Nonduality is based on the negative principle and the denial of every duality. Atheistic science denies that there is a spiritual world, denies that there is a God who creates and manages the details of the universe, denies that the building blocks of the world are spiritual and celestial—namely, love and truth. In contrast, theistic science is a scientific dualism because it bases itself on the Divine revelations given in the Writings, and every concept so given is a duality, never a nonduality. Divine rational truth is presented in the form of dualities, and therefore also, every detail of the universe. Scientific dualism is rational while monism is pre-rational. Every human mind develops by an orderly process and monism is the first phase of self-intelligence by which we develop our rational mind, first the lower external rational, but later, the upper internal rational that is of spiritual and celestial origin, hence from God’s Intelligence and not from self. The Writings declare that scientific dualism is spiritually sane while monism is spiritually insane. We begin our young adulthood in a state of mind that is spiritually insane because we rely on self-intelligence or on the intelligence of other human beings more than on God’s Intelligence given to us in revelations. Atheistic science, being based on monism and nonduality, is a phase of pre-rational thinking that is replaced later in development, by rational thinking based on dualism found in the Divine scientific revelations of the Writings.
In the dualism of True Science, God is real, and both the natural and the spiritual worlds are real. The external natural mind gets its data from the natural world, while the internal rational or spiritual mind gets its data from the spiritual world. We are thus born dual citizens--our natural mind connected to the physical body in the natural world, and our spiritual mind within a spirit-body in the spiritual world. The natural mind and the spiritual mind are interconnected and operate together though we are only aware of things within our natural mind. The physical body and its natural mind are connected to the spirit-body and its spiritual mind by the laws of correspondence. At the death of the physical body, the spirit-body along with its rational mind becomes conscious of itself, and we awaken in full conscious life in the spiritual world. This process of awakening, or resuscitation, has been described in detail by Swedenborg who was able to observe the process hundreds of times (see especially his work titled Arcana Coelestia, Volume 1).
There is an additional puzzle that must be cleared up before going along with the ideas I’m presenting. One may wonder how atheistic science could be responsible for modern civilization, which would not be possible without the advances of science and engineering over the centuries of evolving knowledge and industry. If atheistic science is based on a false premise about the universe, so that its explanations are spiritually insane, how could scientists continue to cumulate scientific discoveries and theories able to bring about and maintain the modern world we live in? The answer from the perspective of theistic science is that modern civilization is brought about by God, not by the scientists. While we operate within the premises of atheistic science, we are immersed in spiritual insanity in our lower mind—the natural-rational level of operation. The upper portions of the mind are not spiritually insane. This spiritual rationality is unconscious and protected by God from being influenced by the lower natural mind built on self-intelligence. The rationality of scientific operations and experiments is to be attributed to the unconscious spiritual-rational mind and not to the conscious natural-rational mind. The conscious portion is spiritually insane, because from self-intelligence, but the unconscious portion is spiritually sane, because from the spiritual world and God. With True Science, the conscious natural-rational mind and the unconscious spiritual-rational mind are realigned in harmony with each other.
You can see from many facts in our society that there is an obvious discrepancy between the general rationality of civilization and science, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the irrationality that is rampant with individuals. Crime and abuse are rampant and the divorce rate is over fifty percent. Current surveys indicate the majority of people are depressed at least once a day, that their daily round of activities is full of negativity and unpleasant emotions, that they are overweight, constipated, addicted to pain killers and sex performance drugs, and beset with anxieties, hostilities, resentment, and unfulfilled lives. Surely this is not the syndrome that goes with rational people and rational communities. Most evidently, people are not yet at the human rational level of operation where the peace of heaven is sensed, where rational loves arrange things in harmonious order, and where Divine Truth is understood and loved. The conclusion therefore must be that the apparent rational progression of civilized societies and science, is to be attributed entirely to God’s rationality at work within the unconscious portions of the human mind, and nothing of it can be attributed to the rationality of humans.
One important question must be answered here, if the discussion is to satisfy the rational mind that reads this and reflects on it: “If God can exert his omnipotence to keep civilization progressing in a rational direction, as just said, what keeps Him from exerting that same power to keep individuals rational and positive in their daily lives, instead of the opposite?”
Consider this quote from the Writings:
CONCERNING PROVIDENCE AND FATE.
I spoke with spirits concerning Providence, and some also were present who believed somewhat in fate; and it was shown them how the case stood. They supposed that all things were accomplished out of absolute necessity; and, thus, that the whole life was the unavoidable force of circumstance; consequently, that the Lord was bound by necessity; therefore, that there was nothing except this to keep things in existence; and that this is the Divine. But they were shown that they have entire freedom; and if freedom, then there is not necessity, because there are so many contingencies which bear man, in freedom, to opposites. This was exhibited by means of pebbles, which were so placed as to form a certain figure: then, if necessity required that one pebble should be placed in order after another, and thus that man [should arrange them] from necessity, nothing further would follow; but [it was shown] that the case is this: that the pebbles are put, now here, now there, so as to appear dispersedly; and this according to freedom; and the Lord foresees the form, namely, that in which man, from freedom, wills [to arrange his life]; but He determines for him, from other considerations, and so foresees the form, and permits him to go hither and thither, so that the moments of his life appear like scattered pebbles. But the Lord then sees whether he fills up that space between them; He sees what is lacking and where; and, then, continually, what is next in order, after a hundred or a thousand years; and so forth.) (SEM 4692)
The answer, found in the Writings, is that God does all things necessary and loving, and withholds Himself from doing certain other things that humans can imagine could be done. God avoids doing things which are detrimental to our preparation for heaven. This goal is the highest in God’s Mind. He creates each individual soul on some earth in the physical universe, and this soul has the capacity to live in conjugial bliss increasing daily to eternity. Conjugial bliss is what a husband and a wife feel in heaven as they live in such perfect unity that it is unimaginable. This is the marvelous goal, almost beyond belief, that God has with each individual. It is now revealed to humanity that God created the physical universe to fill it with planets, and to increase their number at an explosive rate to endless time. Each planet is created to be the birthplace of immortal spirits, temporarily clothed in a mortal physical body. After a few decades of preparation, the individual’s mind is ready to abandon the physical body, to assume the spirit-body and to continue heavenly life to eternity. God’s Divine loving purpose is therefore to increase the population of the vast heavens from numberless planets with spirits and angels who are capable of receiving God’s love and truth in purity and innocence. What an amazing revelation! It is full of warmth and love, wisdom and power. How reassuring it is to find out that God is so close and so involved in the minutest detail of our day, of our thinking and reasoning, and of our loves and attractions. Moment by moment God not only knows about these micro-details of every human being, but participates in a determinative way, interferes with its course and progress, keeping things from being remembered while bringing other things to the fore, and so on. God is more intimate with each of us than any two beings can be, even soul mates in heaven.
It is therefore puzzling to rational reflection why God doesn’t intervene to get rid of the plagues of evil and falsity that has gotten hold of the fallen human psyche. Generation after generation these evils and falsities are transmitted by heredity and by culture. The Writings explain that God ceaselessly strives to bend the thinking of the human race, to guide people’s involvements with good things, and to withhold them from much worse evil than they already are in. God already does everything that is Divinely possible. So there is only rational conclusion: human beings have been given by God the capacity to resist Him. Humans have zero power, and whatever they do is powered entirely by a cooperating God who knows what the individual is attempting to do and supplies the power in the background. This is a necessary conclusion if you want to remain rational. The assertion “God is omnipotent” has this necessary meaning. “Omni” means all, and “omnipotent” means all power. Logic tells you therefore that we have zero power, or that nature has zero power, etc. All power is God’s power and ceases instantly when God ceases to apply that power, whether it is the power of a whirling electron in an atom, the power of a heartbeat, or the power of the mind to have a rational thought or to remember some information. God also gives us the power to resist Him, to oppose Him, to turn His truth into its opposite falsity, and to adulterate His good into its opposite evil.
The Writings explain that God gives us the power to deny and reject Him in order to give us the power to acknowledge Him and to love Him.
This is a rational idea that needs to be thought through carefully and studied for full understanding. But you can already see no doubt that these two things must go together. If we are given the power to acknowledge God we must also have the power to deny God. To acknowledge God means that we do so voluntarily, as of self and in complete freedom. Freedom means that we can choose either way, or else it is not freedom. The nature of love is such that it only exists in freedom. Not so hatred, which exists in slavishness or spiritual slavery, also called in the Writings “infernal freedom,” such as devils have in hell. But good spirits and angels have freedom to love God and acknowledge Him, His Divine Truth, His omnipotence in their lives. Swedenborg talked to many angels in their heavens and they declared to him that their greatest experience of freedom is when they recall that they have zero power and the Lord has all power in their willing, thinking, and doing moment by moment. And so the inhabitants of heaven have no worries or negative emotions of any kind ever, because they live in “the peace of truth,” in the “current of Divine Providence,” in which moment by moment their thoughts and feelings are formed by the Lord’s Proprium or Persona, whom they love with the greatest intensity.
Since the heavens are formed by love and truth from the Lord, the hells are formed by people who destroy the love that flows in from God and falsify the truth that also flows in. Therefore every heaven has a counterpart hell in which the same loves and truths that forms that particular, are adulterated and falsified to form that particular hell. While we are on earth our mind is an image of heaven and hell, containing both, so that we have the freedom of choice at every moment to follow heaven or to follow hell. There is no other choice that God allows. It is obvious that today in our society people choose hell over heaven the majority of time. God cannot prevent this and still maintain spiritual freedom in every person. Therefore God creates for every individual all sorts of opportunities to reverse the trend in oneself, to reject hellish things and to choose heavenly things. This is called regeneration or character reformation. The Threefold Word has been given by God to insure than humans have the Divine Truth to choose in their lives. This Divine Truth has been revealed in infinite plenitude in the Threefold Word, hidden in its exterior meanings but available for extraction by means of the methods prescribed in the Writings.
Correspondences have all force, so that what is done on earth according to correspondences has power in heaven; for correspondences are from the Divine. Those who are in the good of love and of faith are in correspondences, and the Divine effects all things with them... All miracles in the Word were effected through correspondences. The Word is so written that every minute thing therein corresponds to the things in heaven; hence the Word has Divine force, and conjoins heaven and earth. (AC 8615)
Therefore in order to remove all doubt as to such being the character of the Word, the Lord has revealed to me the Word's internal sense. In its essence this sense is spiritual, and in relation to the external sense, which is natural, is as soul is to body. This sense is the spirit which gives life to the letter; it can therefore bear witness to the divinity and holiness of the Word, and convince even the natural man, if he is willing to be convinced. (SS 4)
My presentation relies on three sets of scientific revelations: the Old Testament (Hebrew Word), the New Testament (Greek Word), and the Third Testament (Latin Word), which refers to the Writings of Swedenborg. Together, the Three Testaments are called the Threefold Word, and constitute a direct open line of communication between God and the individual who is reading the Word with the acknowledgement and belief that it is the Word of God given by means of human minds as intermediaries. Such were the prophets of Israel, the Gospel writers, and Swedenborg. The Hebrew Word was a revelation for the natural-corporeal mind and is written at that level of reception, relying on physical demonstrations of God’s presence. The Greek Word was a revelation for the natural-sensuous mind, relying on the sensuous existence of the Incarnation. The Latin Word is a revelation for the natural-rational mind, relying on the modern scientific level of thinking. What is most unexpected and almost incredible to the natural mind, is what the Writings reveal about the Old and New Testaments.
This is the revelation that the literal sentences of the Old and New Testaments are written in a secret code not known to the writers themselves who had their attention focused the historical and descriptive account they were giving, which was interpreted by commentators as visionary and poetic language, by no means always clear, and containing strange metaphors and seeming repetitions and exaggerations, especially in the Old Testament. What is marvelous is that Swedenborg goes through a verse by verse and word by word analysis of the Books of Genesis, Exodus, and Revelations, along with thousands of passages from the rest of the Bible. This word by word and phrase by phrase analysis proves beyond the shadow of any doubt, that the Threefold Word is written in a Divine language that no other human writings compare to. The literal meaning of the Threefold Word can be decoded by applying the knowledge of correspondences. This translation changes the message from the literal-historical to the spiritual-rational. The spiritual-rational meaning contained within the literal meaning can be understood only at the spiritual-rational level of thinking (zone 6 and above). Examples will be given in what follows. If you read Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia, you will have a full knowledge of these correspondences and of the spiritual topics that the Word addresses and teaches in its “internal sense” (or “spiritual sense”).
Section 19.8 below presents several passages from the Writings relevant to correspondences.
Note: The Writings are available online along with collateral books at this Web address:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/abbrev.html
When these facts become known to scientists and scholars generally, it is bound to be seen as a proof of God’s direct intervention in the smallest details of individuals and nations. The historical events, names, places, objects, and numbers discussed in the Word were written independently by dozens of authors over hundreds of years who had no idea of the fact that they were writing in a code. Every historical event and detail described in the Bible is accurate, according to the Writings, and yet it is not the reason the details have been recorded. Only those details are recorded that add up to a coherent sequence of the spiritual-rational things being discussed in the underlying or inner sense of every verse and chapter. For instance, when details of the journeyings of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are decoded through the knowledge of correspondences, what emerges is a scientific treatise on the human mind, how it must go through stages of development from the corporeal-sensuous level, to the natural-rational level, and at last to the spiritual-rational and celestial-rational levels. The details of the adventures of the patriarchs and other characters mentioned, add up to an internal spiritual series that is rational and descriptive of the human mind, of our relation to God, of heaven and hell, of angels and devils, of love and wisdom, good and truth. These are the topics of the Word when the literal is decoded.
Anyone who does not know that the Word has an internal sense which is not visible in the letter will be utterly astonished by the idea that spiritual realities too are meant by the numbers used in the Word. The specific reason for his astonishment is his inability to use numbers to give shape to any spiritual idea, when yet the spiritual ideas known to angels present themselves as numbers, see AC 5265. The identity of those ideas or spiritual realities to which numbers correspond can, it is true, be known; but the origin of such correspondence remains hidden, such as the origin of the correspondence of 'twelve' to all aspects of faith, the correspondence of 'seven' to things that are holy, as well as that of 'ten' and also 'five' to forms of good and truth stored up by the Lord within the interior man, and so on. Even so, it is enough if people know simply that such a correspondence does exist and that by virtue of that correspondence each number used in the Word denotes something present in the spiritual world, consequently that what is Divine has been inspired into them and so lies concealed within them. (AC 5291)
And equally amazing is one more detail. The correspondences between the literal meaning of the Word and its coded inner spiritual meaning, are not arbitrary like some human code but generic to reality. Correspondences reflect the universal laws that cause spiritual and natural events to occur in synchronous relation to each other. Every natural event or quality exists by means of a corresponding spiritual event or quality. Neither can exist alone. For instance, a horse in the Word is a coded term for intelligence. Different types of horses are mentioned, as well as donkeys, assess, camels, and other animals that carry riders. Each type of horse refers to some aspect of human intelligence and the level of thinking operations in the human mind. Further, Swedenborg observed this thousands of times, that whenever he was discussing human intelligence with someone in the spiritual world, horses of various types appeared in the environment. Similarly with other correspondences that decode the Word. When he was talking to evil spirits, the environment turned into deserts or swamps, and noxious animals could be seen like snakes, dragons, and scorpions, while foul smells reached his nose. In other words, there is close connection between the secret code of the Word and the external phenomena that are routinely observed in the spiritual world. Quoting Swedenborg:
In hell every lust of evil when visually represented appears like a noxious creature, as a dragon, or a cockatrice, or a viper, or a bird of night, or an owl, and so on; and similarly do the lusts of evil appear in a wicked man when he is viewed by angels.
All these forms of lusts must be changed one by one; and the man himself, who with respect to his spirit appears as a human monster or devil, must be changed to become like a beautiful angel; and every lust of evil must be changed to appear like a lamb, or a sheep, or a pigeon, or a turtle dove, as the affections of good in the angels appear in heaven when visually represented; and to change a dragon into a lamb, a cockatrice into a sheep, and an owl into a dove can only be effected step by step, by rooting out evil from its very seed and implanting good seed in its stead. (DP 296)
The natural meaning of the Word and its corresponding spiritual meaning show exactly the same relation as there is between the spiritual world and the natural. There is therefore objective evidence that the knowledge of correspondences unveiled in the Writings are actual laws of interconnection between the spiritual and the natural. Quoting Swedenborg:
A knowledge of degrees is like a key for opening the causes of things, and for entering into them. Without that knowledge, scarcely anything of cause can be known. For without it, the objects and subjects of both worlds appear so simple as though there were nothing in them beyond that which meets the eye, when yet the things that appear are as one to thousands, indeed, to myriads, compared with the things which lie hidden within. The interiors which do not lie open can by no means be disclosed except by a knowledge of degrees. (DLW 184)
Miracles have not been done from causes sought out from nature ... Miracles related in the Word were done by means of influx from that prior world into this posterior one, ... by means of bringing such things as are in the spiritual world, into corresponding things in the natural world, so that the things which come forth actually in the spiritual world are actually brought into such things in the natural world as correspond. (Invitation 60)
Correspondences have all power ... what is done on earth according to correspondence, avails in heaven, because they are from the Divine. All miracles recorded in the Word were done by means of correspondences. (AC 8615.3)
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. (AC 5131)
From all this, once you spend the effort of studying it, you gain a complete rational understanding of reality, the connection between the spiritual and the natural, the Laws of Divine Providence by which the universe is managed, and the regeneration and evolution of the mind, the spirit-body, and eternity.
If you are still thinking, “But where is the proof?” you need to continue reading this book and it will become clear to you that no other explanation can be given for the facts presented, namely, that the code of correspondences in which the Threefold Word was written is the same code by which natural phenomena on the planet are effects produced by spiritual causes. The cause-effect relation in the universe follows the same code as that which relates the natural meaning of the Threefold Word to its spiritual meaning. And finally, that Swedenborg visually observed the natural appearances as effects produced by spiritual loves as causes (e.g., evil and hostile intentions of a spirit in the world of spirits, produce or project an environmental appearance of caves, deserts, and noxious animals and stenches).
4. The Varieties of Religion Under One Divine Human Person
Rational spirituality tends away from religious sectarianism, prejudice, or irreverence for other religions who have their own form of Sacred Scripture, handed down from their ancestors. The rational approach of True Science insures that sectarianism and fundamentalism are understood in terms of their mental mechanism in relation to spirituality and salvation. Most readers will not be familiar with all Three Testaments of the Threefold Word, and some may not be familiar with any. This is not a necessary stumbling block to acquiring knowledge from True Science. Just translate the ethnic names like Moses, David, Jehovah, Jesus, Adam, Jacob, Jerusalem, and so forth, to your own historical events. These names are local names for global concepts. All people, nations, or races each have their own religious history, and their own prophets and leaders. They all have a name for God. These are external names. Internally, there is one true name that is revealed to all at some point.
The Threefold Word was given for all of humanity and will last endlessly in the natural world. To people in the modern age, the literal of the Old and New Testaments appear sectarian and exclusionary rather than universal and inclusive like the Writings. But this is only an external, historical appearance. When the literal meaning of the Three Testaments is decoded, what is left is the spiritual sense, and this sense is devoid of historical names, places, and nations. These names and events are given not for their own sake but for the sake of their representative meaning in relation to correspondences. The referents that are signified by these representative names and events – what are they?
They are mental states of the human mind being regenerated. Every human being must be regenerated to enter heaven. Therefore the inner spiritual meaning of the Threefold Word has been given by God to assist us in regeneration. Regeneration is a spiritual medical process performed by God on every human being. God’s performance is limited by our willing cooperation expressed as willingness to struggle as-of self in temptations. There is no other way for any human being born on this planet to reach heaven but by this process of regeneration. This is a question of spiritual medics, not theology or religion. True Science has now been given to humankind which details this crucial process of spiritual medics in regeneration. These crucial scientific revelations clearly appear in the Threefold Word when one applies the Laws of Correspondences to the words and concepts in which the Three Testaments are composed. When this process of extraction or “scrutation” is applied, the names of people and places, and the natural events in the narrations, all disappear in consciousness, and what is perceived is the mental state that the representatives designate.
This is how the inhabitants of the heavens perceive the Threefold Word when they read it there. They see nothing of the natural things being mentioned such as names, places, numbers, battles, time, possessions, weddings, garments, floods, animals, harvesting, journeying, eating, sleeping, dying, being born, being sick, getting old, etc. These details about the natural things in the Threefold Word are not seen by spiritual eyes. Instead, they see the “representatives, significatives, and correspondences” that these natural things have within them, in their spiritual plane or degree. This spiritual plane contains only what is Divine since the inmost framework of every physical object is the spiritual Sun, as already discussed.
There exists a crucial difference between the literal meaning of the Threefold Word and its spiritual meaning. The literal meaning appears culture-bound and time-bound rather than universal and all inclusive. This is why the literal meaning of the Threefold Word is claimed by three different incompatible religions – the Old Testament by Judaism, the New Testament by Christianity, and the Writings by the New Church or New Christianity. But the spiritual meaning of the Threefold Word does not have this external appearance tied to cultures and times. The spiritual meaning of the Threefold Word is pan-human, on this earth, on the other earths, and in the heavens of all the humanity from the distant galaxies. The societies of the heavens do not have religion as part of their identity. But the have True Science based on their reading of the Threefold Word in its inner spiritual meaning. The Threefold Word is an instrument of consciousness for all humanity because, in its inner spiritual meaning, it is Divine Truth Itself in infinite and endless variety prepared from creation to be the vehicle of rational spirituality upon which the human mind is carried to endless and eternally increasing joy.
Clearly then, the inner spiritual meaning of the Threefold Word is for all humanity, and when it is acknowledged and recognized as the revelations of True Science, sectarianism of religion will no longer interfere. Then at last the Threefold Word will be for all peoples and cultures. What the literal took away due to human cultural divisions, the spiritual restores to rational humanity, taking the Threefold Word out of its historical and cultural context, and placing into a pan-human scientific application.
And so the divisions of religion disappear when we enter inward into the spiritual-rational. Few are those, today or in the past, who realize that God is rational, that the created universe is rational, that the underlying framework of the physical world is a rational substance called “truth within which is love.” Another way of referring to this is “rational loves.” Few people know that love is nothing without truth and truth is nothing without love. Love must be within truth, driving it, animating it, giving truth life and purpose, goal and intentionality. Many philosophers would argue that the notion of a “rational love” is a contradiction in terms. It is popular to see love as mythical, mystical, ineffable, and experiential, and thus opposed to “logos” which is rational conceptual discourse. But True Science now shows that love is the underlying framework of truth, just like wood is the underlying framework of a particular chair, or heat is the underlying framework of cooked meat. You can’t have one without the other. Love is within, invisible, truth covers it, visible. Clearly then, if we think of the “rational” in our mind, which is truth in our understanding, we must also think of the “love” in our will that is united to that truth as its underlying framework. Hence the phrase “rational loves” is perfectly suitable as a scientific reference for one process. The uniting of love with its truth is called “the Heavenly Marriage.” When this marriage is in our celestial mind, we are in heaven.
We are born in the Fallen civilization of the split-brain race, as discussed above. Instead of the Heavenly Marriage we are born with the “infernal marriage” in us. This refers to selfish loves, which are hatreds, and distorted truths, which are falsities. The union between hatreds in our will and falsities in our understanding, is called the infernal marriage. Regeneration is the medical process of surgically removing this infernal marriage and replacing it with the heavenly marriage. This is done by God in the mind of every human being, but effectiveness is limited by the individual’s willingness to reject evil delights one has come to like. We can use the expression “irrational loves” or “insane loves” to refer to these evil delights prior to regeneration. All human beings are born filled to the max with these spiritually insane loves, regardless of civilization, culture, religion, or intellectual ability. Hence a new revelation, to be acknowledged as True Science, was given to humankind to address that part of the mind that is above religion, culture, and ancestry. These lower things are not removed or hindered in any way. True Science is within these lower things.
The same True Science is hidden within all religious ideas, regardless of cultures and times. This was not known before, so surface differences acted as dividers and separators between religions. These will remain, but only on the surface. All those from each religion who are willing to enter in the spiritual ideas of their religion will find there True Science, the same True Science that is in the Threefold Word. True Science cannot be detected by the Old Testament alone. It cannot be detected by the New Testament along with the Old Testament. True Science can only be detected by putting the Three Testaments together as one unit called the Threefold Word.
Few realize that love and truth are rational substances out of which the universe is constructed. Most people have an idea of truth as something abstract, mental or logical, not substantial like rocks, clouds, and the brain. And yet Swedenborg shows from revelation and empirical observation that truth is the substantial light that streams from the spiritual Sun, establishing atmospheres at further and further distances, until the ultimate external distance is reached in the natural world with its suns of physical matter and energy. So the origin of the natural suns and stars with their associated planets and nebulae is this substantive light of truth streaming from the Spiritual Sun. Truth is not abstract, but a spiritual substance out of which matter and mind are formed.
The manifestation of the Lord, and intromission into the spiritual world, surpass all miracles. This has not been granted to anyone since the creation, as it has been to me. (Swedenborg, INV 52)
Swedenborg's revelation is the mightiest and greatest of all revelations because they come through the rational mind of a modern well-placed and respected Swedish scientist in the 18th century. There is no precedent for it anywhere in human history. There is no equal event in the history of the universe. Swedenborg at age 57, at the height of his renowned and professional career, had an apparition from Jesus Christ, of whom he had thought of as “God Man” since early childhood when he is reported to have talked to angels--his father was the Lutheran Bishop to the royal family. The Lord announced to him that he had been prepared for a special task which He expected Swedenborg to now fulfill. It was a very very touching moment, and he describes it in the Journal of Dreams (JD) he kept in those days (1740 onward). Over the next few months he was given trance like experiences, following which he was able to recall communicating with departed spirits. However, these experiences were completely tied to his reading Bible verses, each verse tying him to a different experience. He noticed that there was a clear relationship between the content of the verse, and the experience he witnessed in the spiritual world through his spiritual mind which had now been rendered conscious to allow him to accomplish his Divinely appointed mission of revelator.
He started an extensive set of notes in which he described the empirical relationship between verse content in the Bible and events in the spiritual world that he became involved in. Soon he discovered a pattern which he called "spiritual-natural correspondences” according to the name the most ancient peoples used for their spiritual perceptions. At that time, the human race on this earth was directly connected to the departed spirits who lived in heaven as angels. Subsequently this direct sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world ceased, so that rational consciousness was henceforth going to be the only means of knowing and perceiving the spiritual. Swedenborg then realizing that the Bible was written in verses that had a double layered meaning, and that he had been given the Divine assignment to expose and describe these empirical relationships.
Is there any way of explaining away this relationship as some coincidence or exaggeration or mistake? There is no other way to explain Swedenborg’s discovery than that it is the work of God that has been revealed to humankind. Think of it, my friend. Historical and biographical events happen to these ancient peoples and individuals. Details get recorded by scribes and prophets over many centuries from about 1300 BC to 100 AD, the period during which the Hebrew and Greek Word were written by dozens of individuals. And yet, as Swedenborg is able to prove, every detail fits perfectly in its position in an overall message of awesome proportions. The writers did not know that the words and verses they are writing down have a universal code encrypted in them, so that an uninterrupted rational series of underlying topics is being treated of in excruciating detail. How could this happen by coincidence? This would be a foolish conclusion.
You can see rationally that this is a Divine Work. God made sure that the dozens of writers over hundreds of years wrote down only those words and sentences which formed an accurate underlying meaning. That underlying meaning, hidden by the code of correspondences, was the real, the actual message the Divine wanted to reveal to humanity. There is no other rational explanation. If you reject it, you reject rationality and condemn yourself to spiritual insanity and foolishness, as well as to evil and ultimately to life in hell in eternity. What a way NOT to go! Therefore think and live. If you accept the rationality of this long hidden message, you accept its Divine authority, and you are beginning to be saved for heavenly life by ordering your mind into a rational system that is capable of receiving heavenly life.
Therefore in order to remove all doubt as to such being the character of the Word, the Lord has revealed to me the Word's internal sense. In its essence this sense is spiritual, and in relation to the external sense, which is natural, is as soul is to body. This sense is the spirit which gives life to the letter; it can therefore bear witness to the divinity and holiness of the Word, and convince even the natural man, if he is willing to be convinced. (Swedenborg, SS 4)
Why did God hide this knowledge for all these centuries, and why is God now revealing it?
The answers are revealed in the Writings. These are God’s answers to humanity. God desired to reveal the spiritual knowledge hidden in His Word because this knowledge elevates the human mind to heaven. Therefore God was preparing the human race for this revelation. The Threefold Word took 31 centuries to write out—from the fourteenth century BC to the seventeenth century AD. And there were prior versions of God’s Word that were revealed to the ancient peoples prior to known historical age. The human mind is constructed in such a way that it acquires rational and spiritual consciousness by means of knowledge of Divine truths. Natural consciousness is acquired first, from self-intelligence and the physical environment. This is the animal level of life, and for us, it is the pre-human or quasi-human level of life. It appears on the outside that we are rational human beings capable of evolving a civilization that is rational and viable. But the fact is that it is God who is managing things so that they turn out viable and rational. If it were actually left to human self-intelligence, everything would quickly collapse into chaos and insanity, thus not capable of survival and evolution.
We are so constructed that we have the capacity to operate at a human level, thus far above the animal level as supervised by God. We take the journey upward by developing our rational capacities to think and understand rational concepts that are removed from the sensory observations and organization. The sensory organization is a lower form of operation for the human mind. We develop a higher organization in the regions of the mind above the corporeal and sensual. The natural mind thus evolves in layers as we grow—corporeal layer of thinking and feeling, sensuous layer of thinking and feeling, natural-rational layer of thinking and feeling, spiritual-rational layer of thinking and feeling, and at last, celestial-rational layer of thinking and feeling. These are the gradations of human consciousness by creation. Only in the upper regions of operation, that is, the spiritual-rational and celestial rational levels, do we enter the genuine human life. This life is called heaven, and it awaits every individual immediately upon resuscitation from death, approximately 30 hours after we are separated from the corpse. But only the individual whose mind can be opened to that degree. The others sink down into the lower regions of their mind where they eek out a sad and hellish existence to eternity, full of willfulness and insane fantasies they are unwilling to give up.
Should any one of them decide to give them up, they would be instantly taken up to their heavenly sites in their mind. But when they experience what it is like, they feel that none of their affections or loves can have an life there. They thus fall into a swoon or unconsciousness or feel the searing burning touch of truth and love, which they cannot support because it is against what they desire. They therefore throw themselves back into hell, into the bottom regions of their minds, where they feel somewhat revived, capable of expressing their insane and cruel fantasies, and cruel practices on each other, taking turns in torture, living for the moment it is their turn to torture someone else, even as they are tortured. Such is their insanity and willfulness.
Rational consciousness is the only method provided by creation to open the heavenly regions of the human mind. This consciousness is acquired from acknowledging and understanding Divine revelation given to the human race over the course of its history. In the Judaeo-Christian history, God’s spiritual-rational ideas are hidden in the Letter of the Threefold Word – the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings. Knowing and understanding the ideas and principles given in the Threefold Word, arranges the mind in a heavenly form so that one can feel and think in a way that is heavenly. This then becomes our life to eternity. The power to elevate consciousness and open the spiritual levels of the mind resides in the spiritual-rational ideas that are contained in the spiritual messages of the Threefold Word. One can read the Threefold Word without acknowledging that there is a hidden message to be extracted by applying the code of correspondences.
But those who are willing to acknowledge such a possibility can discover it for themselves by studying the code of correspondences given in the Writings, and applying it to each sentence in the Threefold Word. The moment one starts doing this, one is enlightened from within. Such is the power of the spiritual-rational correspondences. These are actually forms of higher truth that descend from heaven and enter the mind from within. There they meet up with the Letter of the verse, or its literal meaning. The instant these two meet up in our conscious mind, we experience enlightenment. This occurs because the spiritual-rational truth hidden within the literal meaning, is now perceived within the natural-rational truth of the literal meaning. To consciously see the spiritual meaning within the natural meaning, is called enlightenment.
Enlightenment is the resultant effect in consciousness of the Lord’s Co-presence. God is present within the spiritual meaning because this is from Him, and what is from God, remains Divine in our consciousness. The Co-presence of God in our conscious awareness, moment by moment, and hour by hour, all day long, is called the angelic life. God’s Co-presence causes us to be lifted up to Him. This lifting up process of consciousness takes place by an opening of the uppermost portions of the human mind. The mind at birth contains all the levels and portions it is capable of from creation. But only the lowest part, called the corporeal and sensual mind, are opened with the developing child and young adult. In mature adulthood, the next level of the mind can be opened or made operational. This occurs when we acquire intelligence by study, education, practice, and experience.
Once the natural-rational mind is opened, which is the middle layer, the adult can begin reformation of character, which is called regeneration. The self-modification efforts are empowered and made to succeed when we appeal to God for help, knowing that God wants to give it, is ready to give it, and gives it. Our appeal to God brings us closer to Him, especially if we are sincere. This means that we teach ourselves to love Him, to respect Him in our mind, to strive to know His revelations, and to follow them as guide. We thus incorporate the Divine truth from without, from the literal meaning of His revelations. We apply this truth to our life, to our moment by moment choices, emotions, and intentions. This application is done in the Co-presence of God. It is accompanied with shame, remorse, fear, and repentance. We compel ourselves to shun the evil thought or delight, to judge it in the light of truth, to condemn it, to banish it, to withhold ourselves from doing it. We do this over and over again until God puts an end to it by removing that evil tendency in us. We are born with innumerable such evil tendencies that must be removed by this process of regeneration.
To the extent that we do this, and at the rate that we do it, we become more and more enlightened, which means that our conscious awareness is raised to the uppermost portion of our mind called heaven. This is where God resides in our mind. God cannot descend below this level in our mind. Instead, at the lower levels, God exists only in appearances of truth called correspondences. The lowest portion of the mind called corporeal-sensual is filled with sensuous correspondences such as order, pattern, beauty, variety, harmony, contrast, reciprocity, and many others. These can be turned by the mind into opposites such as disorder, randomness, ugliness, sameness, disharmony, confusion, isolation, and many others. You can see that natural-rational correspondences in our mind are based on sensory input. Therefore, natural-rational correspondences cannot open the higher portions of the mind, which require a different input, not from the natural world through the physical senses, but from the spiritual world through the rational senses called the inner sense, or the inner eye, or spiritual understanding. This spiritual understanding requires the opening of the middle level of the mind, which is called the rational level of thinking and feeling. This level of consciousness is above the natural order of things. It is a closer level to God and His Co-presence in our mind at that level is holier, closer, and more loving. That is, we can accept or receive more intense loving from Him.
This more intense loving is made possible by the presence of spiritual-rational correspondences. These appearances of Divine Truth are more genuine, less distorted by the natural mind. Hence our consciousness rises to a new level of inner spirituality, though not yet to the celestial level. With the conscious awareness and perception of spiritual-rational correspondences we are empowered to a higher degree so that God can reveal to us our deeper faults and weaknesses, those that oppose and resist the development of our celestial mind, or heaven. Now we begin a new higher phase of our regeneration through this higher enlightenment. Now we attack these new more subtle evils in our tendencies, over and over again, until God can remove them. As they are removed, He can also open and operationalize the heaven within us. We have now at last begun our new state of life as a genuine human being, as intended and crated by God. This now begins an endless of progression of further development to eternity.
You can see from these considerations that God could not reveal the spiritual-rational truths to the minds of the generations that were not yet prepared for it. Had He revealed it to them, they would have rejected it, and profaned it, that is, used for evil or selfish purposes. This would have destroyed their capacity to be rational, hence to be human and exist in their heavenly state. Clearly God could not do this. Therefore the spiritual-rational ideas were hidden in a code, to be revealed later, when the generations can understand it and accept it. This age has now come—since the 18th century when the books of the Writings were written and published by Swedenborg. Since then, the Writings are gradually spreading around the world, having been translated in many languages, a work that continues today by the few who have found and recognized this priceless human treasure. So it happened with me, when I came across the Writings in 1981 while browsing the shelves in our university library. My mind had been adequately prepared by science and an interest in spirituality. I was able to understand the Writings and from then on my mind has been rearranged and reformed in harmony with this knowledge. This rearrangement was produced not merely by my understanding the Writings, but by applying this understanding to my life – thinking, willing, intending, and feeling. Any human being, regardless of cultural background, can now read the Writings and rearrange the mind into a heavenly form. By this means we guarantee our eternal happiness. Nothing in this world can be more important than that task.
But what about the vast majority of people who do not find the Writings, do not read it, or even, having read it, do not care for it?
The Writings explain that every individual awakens in the world of spirits at the death of the physical body. This occurs of “resuscitation” takes approximately 36 hours. Upon conscious awakening in the spirit-body we assume a new life of immortality that will never end. We have freedom to explore what that life is going to be. But in the course of time, no more than a few months, speaking subjectively, the individual undergoes an inevitable physiological change whose result is that the interior loves and motives come to the fore of the character so that they are now in the open and striving to fulfill themselves. This is a moment of great enjoyment as people suddenly feel freed from inhibition and suppression. At last they can act overtly how they really feel. At last they can pursue their passions, whatever they are. Swedenborg witnessed these things happening as he was in their company for 27 years. The Writings explain that those who arrive in the world of spirits with an unregenerated character often surprise themselves that they hold these emotions and desires hidden within. This is especially true of those who had a religious life that was only outward rather than inward, as will be explained in what follows. But there are many who arrive with a strong conscience, having spent a lifetime on earth compelling themselves to follow inner standards of right and wrong, of good and bad. Since they have this inner capacity through a life of conscience, they are able to accept new instruction about God and heaven. Even if they had no prior religion or regardless of their prior religion, they are now capable of accepting new truths they did not know before. This instruction in new truths is arranged for them by God through appropriate others from the heavenly region who love nothing more than to open the rational-spiritual consciousness of newcomers so that they may be admitted to heaven where they are.
Your fate in heaven or in hell depends therefore not on your religion, sin, atheism, or belief system. It depends only on your inner character, whether it is regenerate or not. I predict that as the decades and centuries progress, more an more people will be exposed to spiritual-rational correspondences through the spread of True Science in public education and the popular culture, until at last it has become universal. Thus the human race will be lifted to its next phase of evolution.
The dawning age of True Science has now been initiated. God is the only True Scientist and His rational ideas are the only genuine truths by which the human race can become angelic. These new scientific revelations are given through natural language and historical events, by necessity, since the natural mind will not accept the rational version of it in the form of theistic science. But after the mind is developed through sectarian religion and materialist science, the rational or spiritual mind can be opened and scientific revelation accessed and described.
The presentation that follows is not that science and religion are compatible, but that they are each part of a necessary progression of the human mind. The surprising thing is that True Science, or rational faith, ends up on top, while mystical faith and ritual faith end up at the bottom. To figure this out, please read on. To those who are Christians, I can say, Fear not, your faith will be vindicated, not contradicted. To those who are Jews, I can say, be not offended by the appearances, God is the God of all people. To the Muslims I can say, it is permitted to search for scientific truth, even in heaven. To the Buddhist I say, the right posture is always the one that points to good. To the Baaha'i I can say that unity is achieved through perfection in diversity, not homogeneity. To the Hindu I can point to the marvels of heavenly places that are mentioned in their religious texts. Their mythical stories embody the idea of spiritual geography, which is the idea that places and names are states of mind in every individual. To the atheist and secular humanist I can say, Behold, this is the supremacy of science over religion, but not the atheist kind, the theistic kind.
If you asked me up front, what is the most important conclusion of this presentation for your own benefit, I would say "character building for your eternal life." In other words, this presentation gives you the scientific rationale for the need to take charge of your character building as preparation for your afterlife, which starts a few hours after your physical body is dead, as observed many times by Swedenborg. The character we inherit is born attached to harmful tendencies which if allowed to proceed, necessarily corrupts the entire character, and you end up an evil, selfish person who believes to be a good person. And that's spiritual death. In other words, that fixes you with a permanently sick character that is passed on to your spiritual body at death. The final result is that you cannot tolerate any other life from then on but a life in the hellish parts of your mind, in company with others who are also in similar low lying places of the mind, or of the spiritual world. Together you form a society of torturers, taking turns in inflicting horror on others who then get their turn against you, and this to forever. Nothing can be more scary and discouraging than to contemplate that fate. Would you not want to take step to avoid it? That’s what I told myself.
You will find rational proof, and empirical proof, that your inherited evils can be healed by a process provided by God, called the Reformation and Regeneration of your character. That's what this presentation is really about. If you are deep into your religion, this study will only strengthen your worship and loyalty to the truths that are contained in your religion. If your religion contains falsities put there by people's errors of selfishness, then this presentation will allow you to see them, isolate them, set them aside, without hurting the rest of your religion. If you don't have a religion, you can jump directly to True Science by studying the Writings of Swedenborg. The result will be the same, namely, the regeneration of your character and the adequate preparation of your mind for heavenly life which can start immediately after death.
Are you ready? One approach that helps me stay focused on sequences of rational paragraphs such as these, is to read the sentences out loud, as if to someone present, or, as if you're recording on tape. With a little practice, you can achieve this effect by reading the sentences “out loud to yourself” as it were, which is easier since it doesn’t involve the speaking musculature except in vestigial form, hence it is not as tiring. I believe this helps our understanding because it slows down the semantic input. It helps if you read it with meaning. It helps tremendously if you're willing to re-read a sentence more than once, before going on, unless it's crystal clear. It's not easy rapid reading with half of your mind solving some other issue in your mind. Since the mind doesn’t stay completely focused, we can compensate by repeating sentences and paragraphs before going on.
Treat yourself well, and avoid assuming that you're dumb or lack something, if an idea or explanation seems obscure or unclear. Treat me well in your mind, and avoid assuming I'm being ridiculous or arrogant, if an idea strikes you as unacceptable or offensive. If you have that sense, keep trying to understand it by going over it again. Neither blame yourself, nor me, nor the idea. Instead, re-read it again and exert your will upon it, forcing your rational mind to consider it. Remember this: you are not doing this alone. God supervises every detail of your understanding or lack of it. And He does this by means of connecting your spirit to others in the spiritual world. As you read one sentence you might be connected to this spiritual society, and as you move on to another sentence, you might be connected to another society, and so on. God is in charge of your mental progression, of every single detail of it in your mind. All you need to do is to put up the effort as if from yourself. Do not sit there meditating, waiting for influx of truth from God to hit you or enter you. This cannot work in that way. Influx of truth from God is solely and only through rational understanding of His Word, the Letter of it first, then the inner coded meaning, and at last, the spiritual enlightenment of understanding spiritual-rational ideas and concepts. Once you are enlightened, you can continue more easily and rapidly in your progress in True Science.
To be enlightened means that you can operate in the spiritual-rational region of your mind. You are then conscious of spiritual-rational ideas, meanings, or truths. These are dualist, and far above the sight of natural-rational ideas and concepts we have from self-intelligence and other humans.
All of this is possible only if you're going to assume that what I say here is possibly the truth. I call this the positive bias, and it is the only approach I know of that lets you open your rational mind when your natural mind opposes it, as it naturally does.
The Writings of Swedenborg present an integrated and comprehensive developmental theory of the psychology of regeneration. Three successive phases of individual growth correspond to three historical phases in religion. This is a situation where cultural history recapitulates individual biography . In other words, knowing the history of religions allows us to draw parallel developmental changes in individuals of every generation. For instance, in the history of Christianity, the three evolutionary phases of religion are evidenced by the content of Sacred Scripture, namely the Old Testament (in Hebrew), the New Testament (in Greek), and the Third Testament (in Latin). These three Testaments represent the characteristics of the three phases of religious behavior which we may call, respectively, the Moses phase, the Paul phase, and the Swedenborg phase. In other words, every individual who undergoes regeneration or character change for the sake of the afterlife, goes through these three phases of spiritual development. How deeply and significantly we move within each phase depends on our own willingness, as shall be explained.
5. Phase 1 – Ritual Faith or the Moses-Phase (Sectarianism, Fundamentalism)
The Moses-phase of religion is least internal, or relatively external, in the sense that the laws of conduct are not rationally justified to the believer but given as Divine Commandment to obey. Whatever is done from understanding is higher spiritually than that which is done from obedience, authority, persuasion, or blind faith. Following a Divine Commandment from understanding is a higher spiritual understanding that following the same Commandment out of obedience, respect, or fear. In the Moses phase of spirituality we follow prescribed rituals dictated by tradition and denominational membership. Verses of Scripture are applied to life in a literal sense without concern for its more interior or spiritual sense. The spiritual sense of all Divine Commandments give us a rational understanding of God and how He regenerates our character by means of daily temptations.
The diagram below shows the sequence involved in regeneration of our character. First, it is the Lord who regenerates since human beings have zero power of their own to do anything. Second, the Lord arranges circumstances around us and prepares our mind within us, so that we may go through a temptation on some particular occasion. Third, our reaction must be an as-of self struggle in which we compel ourselves to oppose the impulse that attracts us to evil delights and to obey our conscience. The Lord infuses power into this self-compulsion. Without the struggle and pain of self-compulsion it is not possible for the Lord to regenerate us – or else He would do so with every person from birth onward. But an angel cannot be created out of us except in spiritual freedom of choice and self-compulsion according to conscience and doctrine. Fourth, our self-denial allows the Lord to cut off our association with the spiritual societies from whom comes this particular evil delight. As the old association is cut, the Lord can connect us with new spiritual societies from whom we receive good loves and delights.
We can see rationally that giving us Commandments to follow is the process God uses to gradually modify our inborn evil character. Those who are taught the Divine Commandments in childhood have both a conscience and religious doctrine to rely on in the fierce struggle against daily temptations. Those who did not receive a religious education, nevertheless have the doctrine of morality embedded in their cultural and intellectual socialization process. They also have a doctrine and a conscience, but since this doctrine is natural, not spiritual, the Lord can only bring natural temptations, which they can overcome by means of their rules of morality. The Lord gives them the power to overcome in their moral struggles, and thereby the Lord establishes protected and hidden “remains” in their character, which can in the afterlife, be used to receive genuine spiritual and theistic ideas, wherewith they can enjoy a heavenly existence. We can see the outcome of failing to follow a commandment of religion, conscience, or moral dictate, namely, that we get stuck with much evil which prevents us from being regenerated, which is the healing of our inherited evil character. Without being regenerated we cannot be saved for heavenly life. What an awesome and terrible tragedy!
We need to understand the resistance we experience to spiritual development in phase 1 thinking and feeling. In this fundamentalist phase of religious behavior we tend to be orthodox, literalist, dogmatic, and intolerant, and there is a lack of clear separation between cultural and religious loyalty. I call it the Moses-phase because the Five Books of Moses (or Pentateuch or Torah) represent the spiritual mentality of the Old Testament civilizations that spanned for many centuries in history. This is a pre-spiritual religious orientation, in which external rituals, prescriptions, and proscriptions are strict and unforgiving, exacting harsh punishment and retribution upon the unfaithful and disloyal. Compliance is from external fear and superstitious or magical beliefs, and is attendant with the hope of reward or merit. In this phase 1 consciousness, spiritual status differences are based on one's degree of compliance and earned merit through strict literalistic adherence to ritual. This idea of the spiritual is not actually a spiritual idea but a natural idea of a spiritual topic. There is no bogus spiritual only bogus natural regarding the spiritual. Everything that is actually spiritual comes to us from God through the vertical community of influx. Religious superstitions and magical beliefs in prayer and ritual, are not spiritual beliefs or perceptions, but natural beliefs regarding spiritual topics. Only by crossing into phase 2 consciousness can we receive and understand spiritual ideas regarding spiritual things and regarding natural things.
Ritualizing is a form of literalism. For instance, while growing up in an Orthodox Jewish sub-culture, I was raised to perform prayer rituals on several required occasions during any ordinary week day, and many more rituals added on the Sabbath and other holy days that were to be observed. The reading of prescribed daily prayers were required in the morning, late afternoon, and late evening. Blessings were required before a meal, after the meal, when drinking or eating anything at any time, when witnessing a natural disaster, when seeing certain things on the street (e.g., a funeral, a Christian priest, a police officer, a physically challenged or handicapped person, a deformed face or body, a corpse, and many other such things). Each occasion had its own prayer written by the sages and rabbis over the centuries. Each enclave, tribe, ghetto, or orthodox grouping kept track of their own rituals and they overlapped with each other to the extent they shared a common history or were in physical contact. In the broad sense, all these rituals had to harmonize with what was in the Old Testament and the cumulative historical writings and cited opinions of the Rabbis that are recorded in the Talmud, Toiswes, and Rabbinical Commentaries and books of Jewish law and jurisprudence based on the Old Testament.
Now here is a totally remarkable fact: I did not understand these prayers in the Hebrew language, yet this did not reduce their power or necessity in the minds of my family and tribe. I was drilled to read ancient Hebrew phonetically and required to memorize large chunks that were needed for these daily prayer rituals. As far as I can remember, there was never an emphasis on understanding the recited text. This was not considered important or essential, only the memorizing and the reciting at specified times. Among my cousins and uncles, the understanding of Hebrew was mostly limited to reading the prayers phonetically without being able to translate them into the vernacular language, which was Yiddish or the European language of the region. The result, as I could ascertain later as an adult, was that the majority of Orthodox Jews who performed these prayer rituals every day, did not understand the meanings that went with them except for a few words here and there. This fact alone proves my point: that the fundamentalist phase of religion is based on literalism, which involves the idea that the words and the act of saying them have a magical power to move Heaven or God. The strength of the magical power varies with the holiness or merit of the person saying it. More than once that I can recall, I accompanied my mother to visit the reigning local Rabbi of the tribe or group, or else a visiting Rabbi who had a reputation for extra holiness. The purpose was to have the holy man intercede on behalf of someone, either my mother or some relative, involving an issue of sickness, pregnancy, or financial undertaking. After the intercessionary prayers, money was expected for the service.
This pattern of reliance on the superstitious power of external rituals and holy objects, is evident in other religious groups that are in this fundamentalist phase of development. History tells us that most Catholics up to the middle of the twentieth century, were required to hear and recite prayers in Latin, a language they did not understand. When the Bible was first translated into a common language by an Englishman in the 16th century, he was arrested and decapitated for it. Of course, shortly thereafter, the King James translation was commissioned under a royal edict. Not long after that, the Protestant Revolution started with its new reliance on one's personal study and understanding of the Bible as a requirement of faith.
In general, there are so many rituals that evolve over time that less and less members of that religion understand all the particulars. In the course of time, most members no longer understand most of the rituals. At this point the spiritual value of the rituals declines, and sometimes becomes anti-religious or cultist, harming all its adherents. Ritual turns into magic, which is used for selfish and evil purposes and corrupts the practitioner. Subconsciously they get more and more involved with evil spirits who lead them towards themselves in hell, and their spiritual development is arrested totally and forever. When they pass on, the spirits they had been with await them and take them to their abodes in hell from which there is no inner desire to return, ever.
Evils are as it were heavy, and fall of themselves into hell; and so also falsities that are from evil (HD 170)
All religions that are in the fundamentalist phase evolve similar behaviors involving the personal use of holiness and merit that may be attached to some physical object or person. Holy shrines and miracles performed by holy men exist in all major religions on our earth when they pass through their own Moses phase. Intercessionary prayer, either for expected voluntary offerings, or for charged services, are offered in many Christian churches today, and is a mainstay feature of radio and television evangelism.
Besides the magic or power of ritual and holiness, sectarianism leads to an anti-scientific attitude and orientation that is harmful for intellectual and rational development. An example is the doctrine of Creationism, which is the rejection of scientific knowledge and rational thinking whenever these appear to be contradicted by a literal and unenlightened reading of the Old Testament.
The Moses phase is based on the emotion of external fear, which is external or below the spiritual level. Phase 1 is only an entrance place for regeneration, but not quite, unless it is followed by phase 2. The motive to move on to phase 2 is the motive of religious universalism and personalism, which allows a relationship to a Divine Human God that is entirely independent of one’s culture or ethnic background. This new higher mode of consciousness removes the evils of sectarianism which befall those who stay at the phase 1 level of thinking and feeling. Sectarianism prevents regeneration of our inherited evil character. In my own case history, I was in my early forties before I moved into the Paul-Phase of Christianity. It happened when I decided to read the New Testament for the first time! One week I was in the Moses phase and in the next week I was in the Paul phase. The transition was accompanied by strong emotions of fervor and joy. Some of these changes I experienced are described in these articles:
The Story of Our Conversion: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/conversion.html
The Coming Swedenborgian Revolution: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s98/shintani/logos.html
6. Phase 2 – Mystical Faith or the Paul-Phase (Personalism, Universalism)
What is beyond religious ritual? Why is religious ritual by itself, without rational meaning or understanding, harmful to one's intellect and spirit? In what way is religious ritual by itself similar to superstition, cult, or black magic?
These issues must be rationally resolved in our mind if we are to enter the second phase of spiritual consciousness. Ritual is a physical, corporeal, and natural activity and involvement. There is nothing holy in the natural part of the ritual itself, nor in its performative execution. There is nothing holy in the ink on paper of the verses of Sacred Scripture. My childhood years were obsessed with ritualistic fears that are natural consequences of fundamentalist rituals: What I must do if I forget to say the appropriate prayer before I took my first swallow of water in the morning, or what to do if I started evening prayer before I could see three stars, or if I wore my new shoes without having said the new shoes prayer before putting it on. I heard adults around me curse someone with such and such plagues for doing something or not doing something. There definitely was the implication that the curse had power. Superstition was mixed with holiness and sacredness, so that it was not easy for anyone to tease them part by rational reflection, even if they had the rare motivation to do so.
The natural history of sectarianism, when it's not transcended into the next phase, is to engender a series of degrading personality traits that harm self and society:
sectarianism
superstition
prejudice
fanaticism
racial hatred
xenophobia
closed mindedness
anti-intellectualism
cultism
resistance to assimilation.
These mental attitudes and values operate at the Moses phase of spiritual consciousness. It is not yet rational, not yet good, not yet true. It is a corporeal spirituality rather than a sensuous or rational one. The Writings reveal that those who arrive into the afterlife with their mentality or spirituality developed no further, consistently make choices that involve them deeper and deeper into evil and insanity, so that their fate is to end up in hellish habitations and regions in the spiritual world. They end up in those regions in the afterlife because their mind is an image of hellish things, having been formed in this life by negativity, selfishness, stupidity, and the inward hatred for God, heaven, innocence, chastity. They have evolved a mind set that is against good things and true things. While in this world, they could be this way and still appear normal citizens, even successful people. But as soon as they transition into the spirit-body, their interior character comes to the fore, no longer inhibited by fear or gain. As a result, they sink into the hells where their life is exciting at the beginning, but gradually turns into misery and suffering that cannot be described. The Writings give us many details of the unenviable lot of these people – it is scary and nearly incredible.
Clearly, then, it is most important to not get stuck in this first phase of spiritual consciousness. There is only one condition that must occur in order for anyone in any religion to move from the sectarian phase of their spirituality (phase 1) to the personalist phase (phase 2). It’s this: the understanding, and acceptance, of the idea of scientific dualism, that is, the idea that we are simultaneously citizens of two worlds, one natural, the other spiritual.
Note carefully the word “simultaneously.” Even in our first phase of spiritual consciousness we can accept the idea of successive dualism, which refers to the belief that the natural world is going to be destroyed and a new spiritual world will be established. This does not allow the idea of a simultaneous dualism. Phase 1 spiritual thinking rejects the idea that we are in both worlds right now. This does not make sense and does not appear logical in that mode of thinking. But when we take a rational step upward in our mental operation we become enlightened, which means, that it is obvious to us that we are dual citizens right now. We reflect for instance on the nature of thoughts and feelings in our mind, and we ask, ”Where are they?” and “What are they made of?” Our rational understanding informs us that thoughts and feelings cannot be weighed and measured because they are not material or physical entities. They are mental entities, and we are sure that mental means spiritual because we are told in the Word of God that love and wisdom are spiritual. And so we realize that mind is the same as spirit, and that the mental world is the same as the spiritual world. Perhaps we do not yet understand the details fully, as we will in our phase 3, but we understand the general rationality of it.
This second phase in our race’s spiritual history was initiated by Jesus of Nazareth whose many sayings depend on this one saying He said to His disciples who wanted to know where is God's Kingdom: Heaven is within you. With this one brief saying, a new spiritual paradigm was ushered in – phase 2 in the spiritual evolution of the race.
6.2 New Testament Sayings of Jesus and their Spiritual Meaning
Study the following table. Note especially how the Word of the New Testament introduces a whole new set of ideas about the existence of spirits, demons, evil angels, devils. In the Word of the Old Testament not much is revealed about these entities. In the New Testament we are given new scientific facts about the nature of these demons and how they communicate with the people on earth. Obviously, the evil spirits are in the spiritual world and so is our spirit. They can therefore interact. There are also consequences to our physical body on earth because our spirit and our physical body are tied to each other by the Divine laws of correspondences, as these have been revealed in the Word of the Third Testament, or the Writings. You will note that in the following Sayings of Jesus many scientific details about the spiritual world are revealed.
Our spiritual consciousness is elevated to phase 2 when we acknowledge these facts as scientific and rational.
This may be a stumbling block to you, dear reader. You may feel threatened in your faith, or else in your secular beliefs. How can the sayings of Jesus in the New Testament 2000 years ago be considered scientific today by a modern person?
You can understand this puzzle if you’re willing to hear the answer. This means to lay aside your opposition to the idea that the New Testament contains scientific revelations. You would not oppose the idea if it could be shown that the idea of scientific revelations being given in the Threefold Word does not in any way detract from the idea that the Threefold Word is the Word of the Lord and is the unchanging everlasting absolute Divine Truth from beginning to end. The two ideas can be taken separately and independently, as well as reinforcing each other. This can be demonstrated by rational consideration.
First, the Threefold Word, being a Divine document, contains an infinite amount of knowledge and wisdom. Second, this source of endless knowledge can be mined by all the generations of humankind that are still to come, and who will receive the Threefold Word as the Divine Truth from the Lord. Third, the knowledge that can be extracted from the Threefold Word concerns reality, the universe, creation, regeneration, heaven, hell, Divine Providence and its laws of operation, the method of creation and maintenance of the universe, the anatomy of the human mind, the forces of evil that oppose morality, the life after death, the relationship between our behavior and our fate in eternity, and many other things. Clearly, this information is scientific information. God is the one and only True Scientist whose Divine Rational Mind has planned and created this universe, and now manages it with absolute rational rules and laws by means of Divine truth in infinite variety. If this is not science, then what is?
Science is the systematic investigation and explanation of reality. If you assume that God exists and that the Threefold Word is His Divine Truth, then you can grant that the knowledge and understanding we have from this Divine Truth is science. Truth is science and Divine Truth is Divine Science. “Science” is a Latin word meaning knowledge (from the verb “scire” to know). All knowledge is science, as long as the knowledge is rationally constructed and evaluated. The essence of science is rationality, and the highest rationality is spiritual rationality. The Threefold Word contains the highest truth and is the source of all rational spirituality. Without the scientific revelations contained in the Threefold Word, science is condemned to materialism, monism, and spiritual insanity. In this life spiritual insanity does not break forth to the outside visible and conscious world, but remains locked into the unconscious spiritual mind. When we make the transition to the afterlife, barely 36 hours after the death of the body, we awaken in our spirit-body and feel fine, for a few days. But inexorably the outward personality and social put-ons and scripts that we brought with us in the mind, fall away, discarded like old clothes, and the inner loves come to the fore. Then spiritual insanity shows itself, and there is no other place to go but downward in hell, where we share a very sad fate with others who are also spiritually insane. All this can be avoided by action now.
Let your rational spirituality develop and grow. Let your faith be stronger as a result of learning the facts of True Science. These are the scientific revelations in the Threefold Word. We need to take them into our mind, to form our ideas from them, to eliminate all ideas in our mind that are contrary to them, and to perform our daily tasks in accordance with them. This is the purpose God has given us the Threefold Word. It is called regeneration and involves the struggles of character reformation. We can perform this task more effectively by using scientific methods and facts revealed by God. I call it True Science because it is science, and because it is true. All other science is not science and not true. Only God’s Science is True Science. And we can take up True Science into our mind, into our understanding, into our acceptance and love, and then God can elevate us to the celestial human state called heaven in eternity.
If you are more ready to accept the idea that the New Testament is a collection of scientific revelations, we can proceed with an analysis of some of the Sayings of Jesus, to show what scientific revelations are contained in them. The following selections give many details concerning how we are to move from phase 1 thinking and feeling to phase 2. You will note that the scientific information is not in the literal meaning but in a deeper spiritual meaning. Take for instance the first mentioned item in the Table, which talks about Jesus driving out demons and about the Kingdom of God having arrived. Where is the science in this?
There is much science evident in this if you are joining scientific dualism by accepting the idea that there is a spiritual world and a natural world, each with its own laws and phenomena. Since we have no sensory perception into the spiritual world it is obvious that for us to know anything about it, God must reveal it to us. Hence the necessity of scientific revelations in the Threefold Word. We can pick up scientific facts in every sentence of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings. Here, looking at what the Lord says to us in Matthew 12:28, we can see that demons exist – which is a scientific fact we must be aware of, and that demons prevent us from entering heaven (“the kingdom of God”). Getting rid of demons must therefore be the prime task we each set for ourselves in this life. It is more important even than getting rid of a deadly virus that attacks our physical body. The Lord also reveals in this sentence what medical methods we must use to get rid of the demons, and that is given in the words “I drive out demons.” Only the Lord can drive out our demons, and therefore we must turn to Him and His medical advice for how to get rid of the demons.
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New Testament |
Phase 2 Interpretation |
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Matthew 12:28 |
The Kingdom of God is the spiritual realm, and it includes, heaven, hell, and our mind or spirit, with which demons or spirits interact.
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Matthew 19:24 |
A “rich man” designates all those who are in phase 1 or the Moses Old Testament state. The “kingdom of God” is the spiritual realm in our mind, that is, phase 2 understanding. One cannot enter phase 2 without abandoning phase 1. To get into the Paul phase, one must give up the Moses phase (“rich man”). To get into personalism (New Testament perspective), one must abandon sectarianism (Old Testament perspective).
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Matthew 21:31 |
“Tax collectors and prostitutes” designate that part of our external natural life, or religious ritualism, which is harmful to others (like dishonest tax collectors referred to here) and insincere in their show of love (like prostitutes are known to be). External rituals by themselves are corrupt and spiritually useless. We can become spiritual, that is, “enter the kingdom of God,” when we abandon our external corrupted and self-serving ritualisms, for the sake of internal purification of the mind.
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Matthew 21:43 Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.
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“Taken away from you" indicates that the phase 1 external sectarianism cannot become a spiritual entry point to the inner realm of heaven within you. Rather, you must adopt a system of worship that produces its fruit, that is, becomes internal, which is the true worship or "fruit" of religion. Internal worship regards our intentions, not merely our outward deeds separate from our intentions. “Fruit” refers to successful character reformation by which we become sincere and have good will towards the neighbor.
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Mark 1:15 |
"The time has come" refers to the crossing from phase 1 to phase 2 religious behavior. This was not possible before. "Repent" means to acknowledge that one's phase 1 worship is not yet spiritual or heavenly, thus, it is self-centered and based on false doctrine (e.g., meritoriousness, personal holiness, predestination or "being chosen"). "The Good News" marks the beginning of a new human evolution in which internal worship (New Testament state) becomes possible. Only external worship was possible before (Old Testament state).
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Mark 4:11 |
"The secret" refers to the existence and availability of the inner church (inner worship), that is, the opening of phase 2 religious behavior. "To you" refers to those who hear and accept this revelation, and have made the decision to abandon their external ritual worship in the form of fundamentalist sectarianism, trading this in for an internal worship of personalism. "To those on the outside" refers to our refusal to hear and accept this revelation of the existence of an inner worship. "Everything is said in parables" means that for them, the statements about inner worship make no sense, that is, they see nothing in the “good news" even as they continue to cling to the former external worship and idea they had of God. To them, their external worship seems internal, and they do not acknowledge another worship that is internal.
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Mark 9:1 |
“Tasting death" means rejecting the "good news" of new internal worship now available, the result of which is spiritual death, or eternal life in the hellish parts of the human mind. Those who "are standing here" are our thoughts and feelings when in a state of inner worship. These phase 2 thoughts and feelings are entirely different from our thoughts and feelings in phase 1 external worship. Instead of leading to hell, this inner worship leads to Heaven, which is "to see the kingdom of God coming with power,” that is, with the reality of truth. These are those who “do not taste death.”
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Mark 9:47 |
"To be thrown into hell" is to stay in external worship which leads to corruption of character or "sin" (e.g., sectarianism, hatred, literalism, intolerance, pride, meritoriousness). This process delivers the person to hell after the death of the body. The "eye to be plucked out" refers to our self-intelligence which is inside all our religious concepts in the state of external worship, and is attached to a virulent virus called "meritoriousness" or egotism. "Two eyes" means unreformed sectarianism, stuck in external worship which is merely natural and egotistical.
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Mark 10:14 |
"Little children" refers to a mental state of reception to truth, that is, a lack of resistance to truth. Resistance to truth is something we acquire as we leave off being children, part of which involves a motive on self-reliance. When, as adults, we hear the "good news" of internal worship and dualism, we have a resistance to it. To overcome this resistance, we must revert to a state of innocent acceptance of inner worship revealed to us in the Word ("kingdom of God"). This "belongs to children" means that inner worship is available only after we reject our former Moses-phase of fundamentalist sectarianism, which is based on salvation by performing external rituals, not on internal recognition and adoration of God as one’s personal Savior (phase 2 “Personalism”). “Little children” represent this inner worship on account of their innocence and absence of egotism and self-reliance.
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Mark 10:23 |
"The disciples of Jesus" refers to our acceptance of the new revelation of inner worship (phase 2 Personalism). "The rich" refers to the intellectually rich, those who rely on secular humanism and materialistic science, and have gathered much knowledge that arouses resistance to dualism and the inner state of eternal heaven. The Moses-phase is called "the rich" because it attributes to self what belongs to God (merit and holiness gained by performing prescribed rituals). This reliance on self is spiritually deadly because it opposes inner worship, hence leads only to life in hell forever.
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Luke 6:20 |
“Disciples” of Jesus refers to His followers, those who accept the “good news” of inner worship. They are called "poor" because they give up the external worship that keeps self at the center, and God on the side (or outside). The "poor," that is, those who give up self-reliance and merit, are "blessed" which means that they are undergoing the mental or spiritual process of rebirth, reformation, and regeneration, the result of which is eternal life in Heaven.
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Luke 7:28 |
"Those born of women" are the thoughts of our external worship, which is merely a natural birth, not spiritual, because it relies on literalism of revelation rather than a spiritual interpretation of it. The literalism leads to natural sectarian thoughts rather than rational universal thoughts. "John the Baptist" represents our Old Testament worship based on literalism and ritualism. John being "the greatest" designates the highest possible form of phase 1 worship. The "least in the kingdom" refers to the initial beginnings of phase 2 worship, and this is "greater than John" because it is in a new paradigm and cannot be reached by going further and further with the old paradigm of worship.
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Luke 9:62 |
"Fit for service" refers to continued development in our New Testament Paul- phase of inner worship. It is not the ultimate phase. Continuing the process of development in this inner worship is necessary, for it is not the final purpose of our journey. To "look back" means to resist the inward journey after beginning it. It means to fall back on the Moses phase of external worship. To "put our hand to the plow" is our inward journey to the celestial mind that is within us. This inward journey is like tilling the ground of our mind. This represents our daily effort at improving our character. In this inward journey, we must rely exclusively on spiritual ideas, and if we fall back or "look back" to our former natural ideas, we cannot complete our journey to heaven.
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Luke 10:9 |
"The sick" refers to our external worship that prevents our rebirth and regeneration in preparation for Heaven. "To heal" means to begin the process of rebirth, that is, reformation and regeneration, and this is accomplished when we accept the good news that the state of inner worship we are seeking, is "near you," that is, it is no farther than our thoughts and feelings. We must abandon our current thoughts and values, which are grounded in self and the material world, and begin daily life with new thoughts and feelings, those that are "near you" or inside of you. Our mind has an outside (which is called the natural mind), and an inside, which is called the rational or spiritual mind.
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Luke 13:28 |
"Gnashing of teeth" refers to false beliefs. Swedenborg witnessed the sound of grating teeth coming from those in the spiritual world he conversed with about their false beliefs, which they took as truths, e.g., "Gnashing of teeth in the other life comes from those who believe that nature is everything and the Divine nothing (AC 5568)." Abraham" and the patriarchs and prophets, designate our external imagination of Heaven in the Moses phase. In this external belief system, we will see ourselves falling into our old idea of hell as some corporeal prison camp where we are held against our will ('thrown out").
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Luke 13:29 |
People from all compass directions indicate all the religions of earth. "The feast" refers to their admission into the inner spiritual realms of the mind ("kingdom of God"). The former sectarianism of history and race will be replaced by the personalism of humankind, where we can see all people as children of the One God. The Word of the Third Testament (or Writings of Swedenborg) reveals that the perfection of Heaven is increased by its multi-religious composition, each Heavenly religion uniquely and most appropriately suited to each "mental genius" dispersed through the Earths in the Universe.
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Luke 17:20-21 |
"Pharisees" refers to our Moses phase of external worship. Our religious idea in that state, of what is spiritual ("the kingdom of God"), is so external and materialistic, that it requires Heaven to be a natural phenomenon, in physical time and space, for us to see it, and hence to believe that it's something real. But the inner world of spirit, or Heaven and hell, cannot be perceived with the physical senses ("with your careful observation"), because it is a mental state ("within you"). The mind is the spiritual world. When the mind, or spirit, is extirpated at the death of the body, it is resuscitated within 36 hours, and awakes in a spiritual body in the spiritual world.
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John 3:3 |
"To be born again" means to abandon our exclusive reliance on thoughts and feelings based in the natural mind (Moses-phase). We cross the threshold into the personalist New Testament Paul-phase, when we reject the idea that our Heavenly place is assigned to us in accordance with our merit, or personal effort at performing strict rituals of religion. We are reborn when our thoughts of ourselves begin to accept the new idea that all humans are God's children and that God does not show preference to a racial or religious group. Inner worship is personal, because spiritual, while outer worship is sectarian, because only natural. |
Innumerable scientific revelations are contained in just these few verses of the New Testament. Let’s mention a few:
(1) There are demons and they can keep us from heaven.
(2) There is hell and we have to take care not to end up there.
(3) Only the Lord can defeat the demons, and therefore we must turn to Him to do it in us.
(4) To have an enlightened consciousness, we need to abandon sectarian thinking and feeling.
(5) To prepare ourselves for a life in heaven we must focus on reforming or elevating the inner life of thinking and feeling.
(6) There is external worship of ritual and tradition, which we get first, but then we must replace it with internal worship which looks to the reformation of our intentions and delights, that these may become purified for heavenly life.
(7) God gives us the choice of choosing spiritual death, which is life in hell, or life in heaven.
(8) Preparation for heavenly life is a gradual process of daily struggles to shun evil thoughts and feelings.
(9) Heavenly life is for the entire human race, regardless of religious denomination.
(10) Heaven and hell are in the mind, which overlaps with the spiritual world. They are not “places” or “locations” but states of mind.
(11). The only condition that makes heavenly life possible is the reformation and regeneration of our character, that is, our thoughts and feelings.
As we mature in our intellectual potentials, and to the extent that we cultivate discipline of character and conscience, we enter the Paul-phase of religion or spiritual consciousness. Now our religious behavior extends inward to our thoughts as well as our external conduct. We become intent in keeping our mind from being polluted or corrupted by selfish tendencies that are harmful or, are inconsiderate of others. Consider this earth-shattering, evolution-splitting statement by the Lord in the New Testament:
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matt. 5:28
The mind of the Pharisees, that is, our mind in the external phase 1 worship, cannot fathom this Divine statement. How can we equate a sexy daydream with actual adultery in the act. What are the limits of this amazing statement? Does that mean that if I enjoy sexy movies, novels, or magazines and feel aroused, I'm committing adultery and will go to hell unless I change my mind about it? Yes, that's what it means. This is one of those "hard sayings" the Lord's audience was complaining about. Indeed, Swedenborg once accompanied a group of newcomers in the spiritual world for a visit to one of the Heavenly cities. After the men talked to some celestial husbands who greeted them, they were introduced to some young women, still not married. The men silently admired their grace and beauty. But the women quickly withdrew themselves. Later, one of the angel husbands explained that the young women ran away when the men started having lustful thoughts. To which they replied: How is it possible to see and appreciate such beauty of the female sex and not feel aroused? Indeed, one cannot--unless you have trained yourself to do it, while still in the physical body in this world before you pass on.
Such training of oneself is crucial because it confronts our Moses-phase thinking, and challenges it to a death duel. This kind of inner battle is called a spiritual temptation. In the Moses phase we have only natural temptations. The Old Testament gives us a number of episodes called temptations, as in these:
Joseph resisting the seductive advances by Potiphar's wife
David giving in to his unlawful union with Uriel's wife Bathsheba
Abraham binding Isaac to sacrifice him according to God's
directive
Samson giving in to Dahlia's entreaties and revealing to her the
secret of his hair
Our natural mind, bound to the literal meaning of these events, sees each of them as a trial by God to test the people’s loyalty to the ritual command of God. Keep yourself holy means keep yourself separate. The Jewish soldiers were commanded to avoid any intimate contact with women prior to battles in order to keep their body pure and unsoiled by corporeal desires and contact. Uriah touched the Holy Ark that was on a chariot being transported back to the City of David. He was trying to stop it from tumbling to the ground. He died for it, because it is not the intention that is regarded in this Moses phase, but the deed itself. It is an external view that fails to make internal distinctions, and thus gives a false view, an imagined view that fits with one's prejudices, and delights us in them.
Similarly, in the Moses phase we are not capable of understanding the personalist, universal, and symbolic idea that "neighbor" means "any human being" and therefore one is not allowed to mistreat strangers and enemies. In the external natural Moses phase, "Love thy neighbor" means love your family, friends, and all those that we like or share a fate with. To the extent that we accept the New Testament re-definition of "neighbor" as universalist and personal, namely, excluding no one, to that extent we have crossed into the inner worship, the spiritual worship of the New Testament.
The circle of application for being considerate to others now greatly expands. In the Moses-phase we define "neighbor" as those who are of the same ethnic or denominational group ("tribe", “blood relation”). In the Paul-phase we turn more inward towards the race's common humanity and feel compelled to give the status of "neighbor" to all human beings, irrespective of ethnic-denominational identification. As we be begin to think more interiorly we focus less and less on the external features of culture and religious ritual or regulation. The sentences of Scripture are understood in a more spiritual and personal sense, and one is affected more by the spirit than the letter. Compliance to faith becomes more personal and individual rather than congregational or public. In the Moses-phase "holiness" of a person corresponds to consciensciousness of obeying all regulations with religious fervor. In the Paul-phase holiness is detached from "religious works," that is, from merit or reward, and instead is seen as something imparted to all the faithful through membership status (e.g., those who are baptized). In the Swedenborg-phase (to be discussed later), holiness is no longer seen as a quality of the individual and one's membership, but of God's conscious rational presence within the individual when engaged in striving for good and truth for the sake of character reformation and regeneration.
Quoting from the Writings:
When the disciples could not heal the lunatic, Jesus said unto them, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?" And Jesus healed him. And he told the disciples, that they could not heal him by reason of their unbelief (Matt. xxvii. 14, and following verses).
Jesus came into his own country, and they were there "offended in him, he said, A prophet is not without honor save in his own country, and in his own house. And he did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief" (Matt. xiii. 57, 58).
The reason why the Lord called, the disciples men of little faith when they could not perform miracles in His name, and why He could not perform miracles in His own country on account of their unbelief was, that the disciples did indeed believe the Lord to be the Messiah or Christ, the Son of God, and the prophet of whom it was written in the Word. They did not yet, however, believe in Him as God Omnipotent, and that Jehovah the Father was in Him; and so far as they believed Him to be a man, and not at the same time God, His Divine, to which Omnipotence belonged, could not be present with the disciples by faith. For faith causes the Lord to be present, as said above; but faith in Him, as a man only, does not cause His Divine Omnipotence to be present. This also is the reason why those cannot be saved, who, at this day in the world, look to His Human only and not at the same time to His Divine; as is the case with Socinians and Arians.
[8] It was for a similar reason that the Lord could not perform miracles in His own country, for they there saw Him from infancy, as any other man; and therefore they could not attach to this the idea of His Divinity; and if this idea is not present, the Lord is indeed present in a man, but not with Divine Omnipotence; for it is faith that causes the presence of the Lord in man according to the nature of the perception concerning Him. Other things a man does not acknowledge, and so he rejects them. For, in order that the Lord may accomplish any thing in man by faith, His Divine must be present in man, and not out of Him.
In John:
"Many of the people believed on" Jesus; "and said, When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done?" (vii. 31).
In Mark:
"These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. They went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following" (xvi. 17-20).
[9] That it is a miraculous and not a saving faith which is there meant is evident also from this fact, that the Jewish nation believed in Jehovah only on account of His miracles. For they were external men; and these are moved to Divine worship only by external things, such as miracles, and these strike their minds. A miraculous faith was also the primary faith with those among whom a new church was to be established; and it is also the primary faith with all in the Christian world at this day, therefore the miracles performed by the Lord were described, and are also preached. For the primary faith with all is a historical faith, which afterwards becomes saving when a man by his life becomes spiritual. For it is first of all to be believed, that the Lord is the God of heaven and earth, and that He is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, infinite, and one with the Father. It is necessary that these things should be known; and so far as they are mere knowledge, they are historical; and historical faith causes the Lord to be present, because it is an intuition of the Lord from the nature of His Divinity. But still that faith does not save, until a man lives the life of faith, which is charity; for he then wills and does what he believes. And to will and to do pertains to the love; and Him whom faith causes to be present love conjoins. What those miracles which the disciples were to do signified, and those which were done by them in the beginning of the church, as the casting out of demons, speaking with new tongues, and others, may be seen above (AE 915)
God gives faith to everyone, but those only receive it who practice that love (Swedenborg, Letters 17)
Historically, Paul of Tarsus was a tremendously well suited person to be the Divinely chosen architect of the Christian New Testament Doctrine that has stood now for 20 centuries. Today’s evangelical work is still almost exclusively centered in Pauline doctrine. His education and training prepared him for the ability to construct an intellectual edifice for justifying the Christian Messiah, using the precise language and thought of Old Testament sectarianism as rendered by Moses. Paul was in the Moses-phase of religion when he was persecuting his fellow Jews who had become the new Christian converts. He then stepped into the Paul-phase of religious behavior after his vision of the Lord and heavenly things, and he was instantly converted thereby, as is recounted in the Book of Acts in the New Testament. From a Jew, He became a Christian. Overnight, his spiritual consciousness rose from phase 1 to phase 2. This is not the normal case of course, since people are not taken up to heaven in spirit, as he was. His conscious vision of the spiritual world turned him into a scientific dualist. This was the reality he had seen. It was not a dream or a theory. Heaven was a real thing. There are two worlds. In his Moses phase of consciousness, Paul did not know this. There was nothing in his Jewish faith to indicate to him that the spiritual world and the natural world are synchronous, existing now, together. Beliefs based on the Old Testament expect the afterlife to be at the end of the world, at the resurrection of the dead, who in the meantime are sleeping souls somewhere.
There was no consciousness of the idea that when people die, they undergo resuscitation within a few hours, and begin their new life as a spirit. The Lord revealed this to His disciples, but since it went contrary to their tradition, they were unable to receive it, as explained in this passage from the Writings:
People after death - who are then called spirits or, if they have led good lives, angels - are utterly amazed at what the member of the Church believes about himself. For he believes that he will not see eternal life until the last day when the world is destroyed, and that at that time he will be reclothed with the dust that has been cast away; when yet one who belongs to the Church knows that he rises again after death. For who does not say, when someone dies, that his soul or spirit is in heaven, or in hell? Who does not say about his young children who have died that they are in heaven? Who does not comfort a person who is [incurably] sick or one who is condemned to death by saying that shortly he will enter the next life? And one who is in the throes of death and has been prepared for it does not believe anything different. Indeed such a conviction about a person's rising again after he has died is what leads many to claim that they have the power to release others from places of condemnation and to admit them into heaven, and to say masses for their souls. Is anyone unacquainted with what the Lord said to the robber, 'Today you will be with Me in paradise', Luke 23:43, or with what the Lord said about the rich man and Lazarus, that the former was carried off into hell, whereas the latter was taken by the angels into heaven, Luke 16:22, 23? Or is anyone unacquainted with what the Lord taught about the resurrection when He said that God is not the God of the dead but of the living, Luke 20:38? (AC 5078)
But now Paul was granted a supernatural experience of direct sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world. He instantly became a dualist, knowing from empirical observation that there are two synchronous worlds, natural and spiritual, and that we move from one to the other. We do not need to wait for a general resurrection of the dead in order to enter heaven. Every individual enters the spiritual world upon death. Paul now had the science that there exists a spiritual world and that that’s the place of the afterlife. Paul saw the Lord who had recently gone through the death experience, and the Lord was now in His own Kingdom ministering to all the departed souls. Ah, so this was the Lord’s magnificent mansions He promised His followers. It is right here and now, in heaven. It is not in the future, when the natural world should end and all the dead rise together to take up their new life.
Ah, so this is what the Lord meant when He said to the man on the cross who was next to Him, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) The Lord said “Today” -- not in the future when all the dead should rise. And, Ah, this is what the Lord meant when He explained that God “is not the God of the dead but of the living (Matthew 22:33). And, yes, this is what people mean when their child dies and they say that it is now with the angels in heaven. People don’t think that their child is asleep in limbo somewhere, but now, right now, the child is in heaven with God. People are given some perception of reality in relation to their departed child. For now they become synchronous dualists and forget about the general resurrection of the dead in some future era.
And so everyone can become a scientific dualist and move up in consciousness, like Paul, from phase 1 to phase 2. But not like Paul in method, for direct sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world today would interfere with the development of our rational consciousness of God called the Holy Spirit. Today God protects us from witnessing miracles, supernatural apparitions, spirit possessions, or otherworldly visions as in the days of old. The Writings explain why God has to protect us from these sensuous demonstrations of His existence and power. God wants us to know Him with our rationally spirituality so that He can elevate us to His Heaven, and He can do this only after He implants and develops our rational ideas and understanding of Him. This is why He has now revealed Himself in His Divine Rational. The Writings as True Science bring to humans the ideas about the Divine Human Person and how He creates and administers the universe. In it is in these ideas that He can come to us in His Divine Rational Presence or Holy Spirit. When we acquire this rational consciousness of Him we begin to live with His constant daily co-Presence in everything we think and will. It is in this rational consciousness of His constant co-Presence in which He can insert the heavenly life.
You can see therefore why God protects us from direct sensuous consciousness of Him while we are on earth and still developing and maturing our rational consciousness. Once we make the transition, our spirit-body is ready for heavenly life. At that instant we receive direct sensuous consciousness of heavenly life and we can perceive the miracles of His influx and the instantaneous creation of the environment by correspondences. Then we have an angelic life, having developed our rational consciousness here on earth, and receiving the new sensuous consciousness of heaven in the afterlife. It cannot be done in the reverse order. Hence it is that miracles, spirit communication, and otherworldly visions are not allowed today. Instead, rational consciousness gives the apperception that every event in our life and environment is a miracle, and we can see God from the Back Parts, as Moses did, in hindsight, understanding His Divine Providence but not being able to predict it in advance or to control it.
By not demanding predictable miracles, we strengthen our reliance on rational revelations in Sacred Scripture. Through this reliance on Divine Truth in the Word, one gains in rationality since one is closer to the Divine Truth than before. Reliance on the revealed Divine Truth brings us closer to that truth, hence to God who is the source of that truth, consequently closer to Him. It is Divine Truth in our understanding that enlightens and raises our spiritual consciousness, but the amount of the rise is proportional to our rational understanding of it and our rational love for it. To love Divine Truth means to have it in the will, that is, to think it and not to think contrary to it, and to do it and not to act contrary to it. Divine Truth understood rationally raises spiritual consciousness, and this to the extent of the interiorness of the rationality – whether natural, spiritual, or celestial. This depth depends on our will, or the extent of our love for the Divine Truth that we receive in our understanding. This love for the truth is proportional to the extent that we live according to our understanding of it. We can know the truth but it shall not make us free until we put it in our will, and live it.
The central idea of the Mosaic religion, in which Paul had been extensively trained, was that we become impure and unsavory to God when we commit sins, unless we follow God's precise laws about ritual purification from sin. And this meant animal sacrifices, an ancient practice that was widespread in the middle east at around the time when the Hebrews, having left behind their slavery in Egypt, were to conquer the Land of Canaan (or Holy Land). The Book of Leviticus (Old Testament) is replete with very precise instructions about when to sacrifice, what animals to sacrifice, how to prepare them for the kill, what to do with the blood, how to dispose of the carcass, which parts to eat and which to burn, and many other details of timing and accompanying mandatory ritual procedures. To depart from the prescribed ritual sometimes meant instant death. To the external worship of the natural mind, this concrete physical act of killing animals ritually, was required as evidential proof before one could feel really forgiven and pure once more. This level of relationship with God is external. It is not yet spiritual because not yet rational. God is a rational spirit, the only True Human in whose image we are created. Therefore to actually relate to Him, we must be at the rational level of thinking and loving. Prior to this step in spiritual development, God has to relate to people by means of physical rituals, especially involving blood and sacrifice.
At the time of the Lord on earth, and the few years following during which Paul wrote the Epistles to the Churches, sacrifices were still being practiced on a daily basis at the Temple in Jerusalem. Some of today's Orthodox Jews in Israel have declared that they support a return to animal sacrifices. These are actually still being practiced in parts of Islam today, as we can witness on CNN television (e.g., in Iran and Afghanistan). The external fundamentalist thinking gets immersed in this corporeal level of worship unless the corporeal involvement is transcended, and one enters the new mode of thinking that is the New Testament mode. It occurs in every religion whose doctrine is literalist or fundamentalist. I am not suggesting that people who belong to Islam or Judaism must convert to Christianity. I am discussing here universal or pan-human spiritual evolution of the human race. Every religion is an adequate venue for providing its adherents all three phases of spirituality—fundamentalism (phase 1), universalism (phase 2), and True Science (phase 3). The Writings reveal that all religions have their heavens for the adherents who have undergone character reformation through their faith. Swedenborg visited the heavens of Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
As well, those who live contrary to the dictates of their religion, whatever it may be, are in the hells. Whether we end up in the heavens or in the hells is not determined by our religion. It is determined by the level of our spirituality, which refers to the extent to which we love good and have made good a habit in our character. The Writings reveal that God makes sure that every person knows what is good and therefore can love it or turn away from it. If they love the good that God reveals to them, they are forming a character in their spirit-body which can live in heaven. If they do not love the good that God reveals to them, they then love the good that they seem to themselves to have, and this is not good but evil. Therefore they love evil and call it good. But when they arrive in the afterlife, they are forced to call it what it is, evil in themselves they are unwilling to let go. Thus they sink of their own accord into a life of hell and insanity forever.
A case in point is my own history. I was born an orthodox Jew in Rumania in 1938. By the time I studied in college (at McGill University in Montreal, Canada) I counted myself as an agnostic-atheist kind of thing. At age 40 I felt drawn again to the Old Testament and to my childhood prayers and chants. However, I was not drawn to establish my membership in any Jewish church. This was strictly a private and personal development. Three years later I read the New Testament for the first time. I became a dualist overnight. What the Old Testament couldn’t do for me, the New Testament did instantly. For the first time I understood what faith meant. It was not something distant, traditional, and tribal, but something close by and personal. That suited me well. I saw that there is a natural and a spiritual. I started living in the hope and certitude of resurrection and everlasting life. I could understand that we are immortal spirits and that my future in eternity depended on how I lived my life here. Religion became an actual thing, a scientific thing, a rational thing. Sin was not a theoretical something designated by God who won’t forgive unless you placate Him. Sin was my thinking and intending, when it was contrary to the Lord. I was thus able to move out of the Moses phase and into the Paul phase of consciousness and understanding. I was saved. Thank you Lord. Now I knew what to live for, and how. Cynicism and dread vanished, replaced by reality and optimism.
In my mind I did not have to change my religion in order to make this ascension in my own consciousness. I now called myself a Christian Jew (or Messianic Jew) and I still saw myself in the afterlife as a Jew. I did not “convert” from Judaism to Christianity. Rather, I deepened my spiritual consciousness, raising it to a more rational and scientific level. I say rational and scientific because what else can you call it and accurately reflect the actuality? I had gained new knowledge about reality, vital knowledge I needed to know in order to act appropriately and avoid the dread and horror of hell. This was not a ritual but a character change, the learning of new skills of self-science and the science of the spiritual world. As a scientist I became a dualist. It would have been inconceivable to me to keep this new knowledge isolated for my religion and not let it affect my scientific work. My science expanded in scope to meet my expanded notion of reality.
One year later I found the Writings and began to read it as the new Word of God, the Divine Truth of the Second Coming. Within a few weeks the new knowledge elevated my spiritual consciousness to phase 3. It is from this new perspective that this presentation is given. My point therefore is that, as the Lord took me through the three phases of religion, I was not required that I change my childhood religion. In phase 3 spiritual consciousness, religion itself is no longer a practice in the sense that it was in earlier phases. Look at the names for the three phases: Ritual Faith, Mystical Faith, and Rational Faith (True Science). In the last phase the Threefold Word of God becomes a science text because it is the source of endless knowledge about scientific dualism – the structure of the mind, the mapping of the spiritual world, the relationship between the two, the inner invisible construction of objects in the natural world in terms of substances from the spiritual Sun, information about life in the heavens and the hells, the rational laws by which God manages the universe, and many other things.
Now, since it has been granted me to be in the spiritual world and in the natural world at the same time, and thus to see each world and each sun, I am obliged by my conscience to communicate these things. For of what use is knowledge unless it be communicated? (Swedenborg, ISB 18)
This new knowledge revealed by God is True Science. Swedenborg reports that the angels in heaven do not have a religion, but they know True Science from the Threefold Word of God, and they can confirm every detail by observation and experience. My entrance into phase 3 consciousness took place when I began to see that the Threefold Word of God is a comprehensive and complete scientific revelation, a supreme gift to humanity from the only True Scientist, the Creator Himself who has revealed Himself to humanity as the Divine Human Person in His Divine Rational Mind, whereby we are saved and made immortal in heaven. Rational spirituality is to acknowledge, understand, and love this Divine Human Rational. While the Lord was on earth, growing up as Child, He created mental pathways for all human beings to traverse from inherited hell to attained heaven. Now these pathways are in place and every individual anywhere can traverse the path that leads to eternal life in the Divine Human Person.
You can call it Rational Faith or True Science, for are these two not the same? When I first read in the Writings that faith is truth and truth is faith, I was amazed. Until then my culturally received idea had been that the word faith means belief rather than fact or truth. What kind of faith is equal to truth? That kind of faith which is rational and scientific. Those who are of the New Church and acknowledge the Writings as the Word of the Second Coming, may be taken aback at this notion that rational faith is True Science. I believe this is a reaction from tradition and is understandable. There is also a certain fear that if the Writings are presented to the world as scientific revelations, the world would reject the Writings and discredit what appears on the surface to be outdated science from the 18th century. Wishing to avoid the Writings from being rejected as outdated science, the New Church mind wants to deny that the Writings are a scientific revelation, but wish to assert instead that the Writings are a religious or theological revelation.
It is my position that the Writings are both. Which is why I define True Science as the scientific revelations of the Threefold Word. In other words, I’m making the same claim about the Old and New Testament as well. Each of the three Testaments of the Threefold Word constitute scientific revelations at their own level of thinking. The Old Testament introduces rational spirituality by establishing the duality between God and creation, including human beings of course. The acceptance of this duality makes the mind more rational because it is the truth and reality. Prior to this concept of omnipotent monotheism there were all sorts of irrational beliefs regarding multiple gods, animism, or the belief that everything is alive, and nonduality, or the belief that human beings are gods or are God. The Old Testament also reveals that God is a Person who feels love towards every human being, and sometimes anger, so we ought to fear God and obey His Commandments. This God-human interaction enlarges the rationality of the mind and keeps it closer to truth and reality. It prepares the human mind for science still to come, which requires abstract thinking developed by education and training.
The second step in spiritual rationality is created in the human mind by the ideas of the New Testament, which enlarges the scope of scientific revelations beyond what they were in the Old Testament. The scientific revelations in the New Testament are more precise and a discrete degree higher in rationality. The New Testament reveals God as a Visible Human Person motivated solely by love. Scientific details of the afterlife abound in the New Testament while they are almost completely absent in the Old Testament. This establishes the new spiritual rationality of the New Testament to be a discrete degree above that of the Old Testament. Now the human race on earth expands its rationality to include the dual existence – flesh and spirit. This duality prepares the mind for the abstractions of modern science. If you can think of “spirit” as a reality that is not part of the natural world, you are greatly expanding your capacity to think of modern concepts like energy, quantum, space-field, relativity, natural law – all of whom depend on the mind’s ability to think with absolute or categorical dualities (mass vs. energy, particle vs. wave, vacuum vs. field, absolute speed vs. relative speed, universal application vs. local application).
Take for example the idea of the Holy Spirit, revealed in the New Testament. This is the name for the Divine Truth that is given to the human race by the Visible Divine Human Person (Jesus). When we reflect in a scientific way on the concept of the Holy Spirit, we are led to a great expansion of our rational understanding of the universe and we prepare our mind for further great scientific discoveries. The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth, and it is asserted that it is the Spirit of Jesus. In other words the Holy Spirit is Jesus, the Visible Divine Human Person born on earth, in whom there is the invisible infinite Divine Father Creator. This is what the New Testament renders repeatedly, e.g., “The Father and I are one” and “If you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father” and in other ways. As you continue to analyze this scientifically you are led to all sorts of rational issues that need to be worked out. Mentioning just one here, I would point to the difficulty of the idea that a Visible Divine Human Person called Jesus, born on this earth, could now be in the mind of every human being as the Holy Spirit. This is of course the result of Divine omnipresence, which in itself is a rational idea that expands the mind still further. It’s different with the Old Testament where we think of the Father Creator as infinite and invisible. This lesser picture of God is less realistic, less scientifically accurate. The New Testament brings the rational process a discrete degree further by creating an order in the mind of the human race that encapsulates this invisible Father Creator in the Visible Body of Jesus. God is infinite in both within Himself and outside of Himself.
The New Testament also rationalizes the afterlife and brings it into the open. It reveals that heaven and hell are states of the human mind and that they already exist there. They are not places where you go in this world but states of mind in which you live in the afterlife. This tremendously enlarges our rationality for until then it was believed that heaven is a natural place in the natural world after it is destroyed and recreated as a suitable environment for the Kingdom of God. But now the New Testament reveals otherwise. Heaven is already here in your mind. You are already immortal. You determine your fate by how you live. How you live within your mind matters more than how you live outside with your body, for the mind is immortal, but not the body. These scientific details in the New Testament prepare the human race for the Age of Reason in the 18th century. It is significant to note that the Renaissance, which prepared the way for the Age of Reason, was stimulated in a central way by the New Testament rationality – Virgin birth, Divine Child, Holy Spirit, Last Supper, Resurrection, Ascension.
The Age of Reason created a rational environment that allowed the introduction and survival of an entirely new ascended rationality called the Second Coming of the Lord to the human race. The scientific revelations of the Writings created and established True Science. This is the third and final step of the race’s ascendancy to full fledged spiritual rationality. This is the true essence and destiny of the human race, for each individual to ascend to the top of their human mind, and there to encounter an eternal heaven with all others. This is the final frontier, the Crown of Churches, the ultimate of scientific revelation. All the puzzles that mystify us in the New Testament rationality are now laid out in the open, explained, connected from first to last. We now know the inside structure of every object. We now know that chain of mechanisms that run the universe by laws of correspondences across discrete degrees. We now know the secrets of the human psyche, its ties to the hells, and to the heavens in a vertical community that encompasses all of humanity. Endless series of scientific ideas are enfolded in the sacred scriptural style of the Threefold Word, to be extracted by endless numbers of future generations.
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. (Swedenborg, CORONIS 0)
Much of the resistance to the idea that the Threefold Word is science, comes from all sorts of false ideas about science that we acquire along the way from many sources in our culture. I’ve been a professional career scientist and professor for more than four decades now. One thing I know well is science, scientists, scientific method, scientific reports, history of science, philosophy of science, statistics, research methods, scientific analysis, scientific assessment, and much more. Therefore I use the expression “True Science” in that careful way that scientists analyze their subject matter. The subject matter is God and how God creates and manages every scientific phenomenon and property. If you tell a scientist in a lab that the building is being subjected to abnormal gravitational pull that affects the experiment being run, would not the scientist say, “What makes you think so?” and would not the scientist consider the information offered about the building’s special condition? Scientists are influenced and convinced by rational arguments involving observational data and theoretical meaning built up by a prior history of research on the topic. Here the topic is how God influences and determines the phenomena that scientists study and attempt to control.
Scientific revelations have now been given by God to humanity in the form of the Writings of Swedenborg. These revelations meet all the criteria of scientific assessment -- theoretical, observational, and rational. Therefore an unprejudiced scientist would lay aside current traditions not rationally justified, and investigate the scientific revelations in the Writings. I have done this now for over two decades of intensive research. I have critically examined the scientific revelations in the Writings – about 30 volumes -- which I was competent to assess from the perspective of the science of psychology and human behavior. And my conclusion is that these scientific revelations meet all the requirements of science in incorporating its data and explanations into science.
While I was doing this critical analysis of the Writings, my scientific work has become dualist and theistic. This refers to the fact that my scientific thinking now takes into account God’s role in the phenomena that psychology studies. The exact nature of this role has been revealed in the True Science of the Threefold Word, so that I can make rational use of this information in constructing psychological explanations for human behavior. I started my scientific career drilled in the fundamentalist sectarian phase of thinking. Anything that consisted in any way of dualist category must not be addressed or acknowledged in science. The idea of God as a co-participant in determining events was not allowed in any scientific research or writing. If God was so mentioned, it was automatically excluded and ridiculed. As a career conscious individual I learned to stay the course of atheistic science.
Scientists who go to church, synagogue, or mosque and engage in ritual prayer offered to God, are splitting their intellectual self into two – weekend and weekday, or daytime and evening. During the week they do their work within the atheistic framework. During the weekend they behave as believers and worshippers. Thus, their science is not fully genuine. It is not true science that considers things rationally, not politically or traditionally. In the future this scientific schizophrenia will surely disappear and scientists will speak with a single tongue and a dualist perspective. You can see that true science concerns itself with what’s truly real, not what’s imagined. The monist science of today deals with an imaginary universe, in utter ignorance or darkness as to what’s real. What’s real has been revealed by God, the only One who can reveal it, for God is the only reality. Exclusion of God from the study of reality and its phenomena does not make rational sense. The universe has reality only because it is God who is upholding its framework and managing its evolution. True Science is therefore theistic since this the true reality.
But true science can only be reached through stages. It is the third phase of spiritual development in the individual. Every individual starts life in phase 1 consciousness (zones 1, 2, 3), which is corporeal and sensuous in zones 1 and 2. The level of thinking and feeling in that state is pre-rational, therefore pre-spiritual and pre-human. We appear human as we grow up, become socialized, and begin life as an adult in our own right. We begin a career, we get married, we parent children. Surely all this is the work of humans, is it not? I imagined so myself, never doubting it, until I started reading the Writings. There it is revealed that we only appear to be human in this natural state of mind. Outwardly we perform complex physical and intellectual activities, to an extent that no animal can even begin to match us. But this only proves that we are by far the most intelligent of the animals on this planet – as science books in public education generally teach today.
In the early states of phase 1 level of operation we are no more than clever animals. We do not have true rationality, which only begins with phase 2 level of thinking and willing. What does it take for the individual to move up from phase 1 to phase 2 thinking and perspective? The answer is dualism. When we make our religion and our science one thing, reconciling science with the Word of God, then we enter phase 2 consciousness and understanding of Divine Truth. It is understanding Divine Truth that raises consciousness, and the more interiorly we understand it, the higher our consciousness is raised, and consequently, our level of loving, thinking, and living. The Writings reveal that it is impossible for human beings to discover anything whatsoever about Divine Truth. The only method God has provided for humanity to know Divine Truth is by revelation in His Word or Sacred Scripture. The Threefold Word is Sacred Scripture. It is God’s revelation of Divine Truth to the human race. God allows us to appropriate Divine Truth to ourselves when we acknowledge the Threefold Word as Divine Truth, strive to understand it rationally, and love it enough to apply it to our daily willing and thinking. As we appropriate more and more of Divine Truth, which is infinite and endless, we grow in consciousness, and from animal we become human, and from human we become angelic. It is in this heavenly state that we are truly human. This heavenly state begins with phase 3 and goes on endlessly to eternity.
While we are in phase 1 mode of living and being, our external mind appears sane and logical even as our internal mind is insane. The Writings reveal this amazing fact about human beings. We are insane on the inside; sane on the outside. The sanity of the outside is not caused by the insanity of the inside, for this would be impossible and is not rational. Rather, the sanity of the outside is maintained by God despite the insanity on the inside. If God did not do this, no one born on earth could be regenerated for heaven. Instead, every individual born on earth would quickly end up in hell. There would hardly be any human life left. People would live like animals, produce offspring and after a few short years, wake up in hell. This would not be a human universe, or a universe for humans. It is for this rational motive that God maintains our sanity on the outside, despite the insanity on the inside. God cannot remove the insanity on the inside, as already explained, because freedom of choice would be lost, and without this, we cannot become human.
God therefore works to maintain a sense of freedom in our internal self so that we can think as we please and love as we wish. At the same time, God ceaselessly urges and unconsciously prods every individual to remove the spiritual insanity. God gives the individual the power to remove the insanity. More accurately, God Himself removes the insanity to the extent that the individual gives free consent to it. Such is the great insanity of our generation that few people are willing to give consent. Thence it is that, as Swedenborg witnessed, many who arrive in the world of spirits quickly sink into hell, and only few rise to heaven. Phase 1 thinking leads to hell so it must be left behind, transcended as soon as possible in one’s biography.
To leave the old paradigm of phase 1, we must adopt a new thinking about Sacred Scripture that takes its departure from the idea that the Word of God is written in spiritual symbolism or correspondence. The New Testament repeatedly refers to Old Testament concepts and gives them a new spin, a universalist application, away from the old sectarian mind. The New Testament refers to the Moses-phase as "hard hearted" which means the desire to follow the strict literal expression of a Scriptural verse or commandment, rather than its interior spirit or intent. The mind in this external form of reasoning does not think rationally, and wants to excuse one's selfishness and dishonesty by hair-splitting, that is, by making arbitrary distinctions that are convenient for one's side, allowing one to justify not having to change or reform. The Lord in the New Testament accuses humanity of such self-serving bias when He refers to how we ignore the substance, spirit, and intent of religious Law, while busily performing its letter, and thereby claiming righteousness for ourselves. The Lord warns us to amend this outlook by "washing the inside of the platter" and not just the outside.
The outside of the cup or platter is the fundamentalist phase of thinking that wants to be justified by external ritual only. By this means we desire to retain our corrupted thinking inside, along with our pet beliefs and evil loves. The Lord advises us to "sell everything" and follow Him, which means that we must not try to understand spiritual things by means of natural ideas. Natural ideas are the ideas we produce from our self-intelligence and experience. These must be abandoned or “sold.” Spiritual ideas are the ideas we receive from the Word of God. To “follow Him” means to obey His Word, to acknowledge that is Divine Truth revealed to humanity. And then, once the Word is acknowledged, we must order our life accordingly, our outward life of doing and behaving, and our inward life of thinking and willing. Both of these must be reformed by means of the power of Divine Truth in our understanding. This power must be received in our understanding first, then in our willing. If it remains only in our understanding, it is lost.
Paul was brought to face his own sectarianism which he obtained from his education and culture. He was unable to face this in himself throughout the years of the Lord's preachings and miracles. He was hostile to the Lord and furiously persecuted the Lord’s followers. He was in an insane state of mind as shown by the fact that he denied the Lord, who is the Divine Truth itself. At last, he was evidently forced into reality through a supernatural experience in which his internal spiritual mind was opened by the Lord and Paul could see with his own eyes and understanding, the reality of the spiritual realm and of Christ's reign there. No other known person was allowed this experience after Paul, until Swedenborg, seventeen centuries later. In the Writings of Swedenborg we find the answer why this was not allowed. The seventeen centuries between Paul and Swedenborg was a period of evolutionary preparation for the opening of the rational mind of humanity.
At the time of Paul and the Apostles, the only method available for spiritual perception was by prophetic vision, which was the elevation of the natural mind into an abnormal state of inward perception. Of course the natural mind had no way of understanding these spiritual perceptions, since only the rational mind can understand them. The prophets of old did not understand the meaning of their own spiritual visions. Their rational mind had not been opened. They could only perceive the sensuous experience of the vision, but they could not rationally understand it, therefore not spiritually but only naturally. Swedenborg on the other hand was a modern scientist. His mind had been prepared so that his rational was opened by the Lord so he could experience the spiritual world rationally as well as sensually. Swedenborg was the first man in human evolution to have both rational consciousness and sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world. In most ancient times there was a sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world, but not yet a rational one.
In the Writings it is revealed that we have two minds, one external or natural, the other internal and spiritual. Further, this spiritual mind is purely rational by construction. And still further, since Heaven is constructed of purely rational substances called Divine Truths, you can see why the external mind has a natural interpretation of Heaven while the internal spiritual mind has a rational understanding and view of Heaven. The Moses-phase worship is pre-rational or sensual, while the Paul-phase worship is rational. However, you will see that the rational also has an external and an internal. The Paul-phase Christianity is an external rational view, while the Swedenborg-phase Christianity is an internal rational view. Only the latter is fully and purely rational, hence genuine and celestial from God.
Since the early Christians were still in sensual or pre-rational consciousness, all the prophetic visions experienced by the Early Apostolic Church were in the subconscious mind, not the conscious. When Paul was taken up to Heaven, he was like John, "in the spirit" but in a trance. They had to be awakened from their vision, and in this waking conscious state, they were able to report the sights and sounds they could remember, but not the meanings, very much like a vivid dream we describe later. But this is not what happened to Swedenborg. Although he spent a few months in trance like visions at the beginning of his spiritual experiences, at age 57, he quickly learned to be consciously present in both worlds simultaneously, and this for 27 years uninterruptedly, on a daily basis. See this entry quoting him on how this happened:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/newchurch.html
Here is an important question to consider: What happened in the intervening 17 centuries between Paul and Swedenborg to allow conscious presence of the spiritual, so that Swedenborg was able to be consciously present in the spiritual world while all prior prophets were only in a trance state?
The answer is: Rationality through modern science.
Is that a surprise? The Apostolic mind was pre-scientific and pre-rational, yet science education and perspective is necessary to open the rational mind. Without opening the rational mind, we cannot accept as real anything that is not physical, because the natural mind, which is outside or below the rational mind, is made of natural or physical sensory information exclusively. All abstract ideas based on physical sensory input, remain sensual in meaning despite their abstracted nature. The idea we have of God and Heaven may be abstractly defined but they remain pre-rational or sensual in consciousness. The ideas and concepts of the natural mind are time-bound, space-bound, and identity-bound. Even abstract concepts like "nationalism" and "value" are inherently bound to place or local content. The universal injunction of altruism and the love of the neighbor, is interpreted in a natural sense when we operate at the sensuous or pre-rational level of thinking. God and heaven and hell are interpreted in a natural way, including what is sin and forgiveness.
And when Peter asked Him how many times he should forgive one who sinned against him, whether it should be as many as seven times, He replied:
Not up to seven times, I tell you, but up to seventy times seven times. Matt. 18:21, 22.
I have been told from heaven that the Lord forgives everyone his sins, and never punishes him for them, or even imputes them to him, because He is love itself and good itself. Nevertheless the sins are not wiped away by this, for it is only by repentance that they can be wiped away. For if he told Peter to forgive up to seventy times seven times, is there anything that the Lord Himself would not do? (TCR 409)
All spiritual topics are understood naturally in the pre-rational phase of operation. The Threefold Word is understood naturally. No idea in the natural mind can be spiritual because all spiritual ideas are purely rational and can be formed only in the inner or spiritual mind where spiritual-rational thinking and feeling are operative. For instance, the idea of God in the Moses phase is a natural idea as shown by the fact that we separate self from God. God is a force outside of us. He may be distant or absent, even as natural phenomena play themselves out. In this phase 1 level of religious operation, we want to close this distance to God by doing things that bring God closer, like ritual, prayer and sacrifice. The fact that we have an idea like "God is watching us" or "God knows what I think" indicates that our idea of God is still natural and external. This distinction will become more evident as we continue the discussion. You won't have a distinctly clear view of the Paul-phase until you look back on it from the Swedenborg-phase.
You may experience resistance to the idea that your relationship to your God is not rational and spiritual. But this idea is taught by God in the Threefold Word. God is a spirit and all spiritual operations begin in the spiritual mind, not the natural. But since we have no consciousness except that which we have in the natural mind, we resist the idea that there is another unconscious mind where the spiritual really begins. This appears to us to put God out of our reach and it appears to threaten the relationship we’ve already developed to God and Sacred Scripture. But yet you have the option and capability of considering what is said here in a rational manner, keeping earlier attitudes and definitions apart for awhile, resting in the assurance that what is being said here is enhancing and strengthening your relationship to your God and Sacred Scripture, and in no way threatening or hostile to it, to the Church, to your religion and belief system.
The distinction between sensuous and rational consciousness is taught in the Writings. The natural mind develops from sensory input of the physical environment. This is phase level of thinking because the thinking is ordered and specified by the order and arrangement of the physical world. All the mind does in sensuous consciousness is to create more abstract representations of sensuous information. For instance, in monist science today, a trend has gained momentum in the past century, to consider human consciousness, and the mind generally, as an “emergent phenomenon” produced by the activity of the brain. Note well: this idea of consciousness “emerging” from the brain, is that all the phenomena of the mind, such as thinking, reasoning, perceiving, interpreting, feeling, willing, intending, remembering, etc., come into existence as productions of brain activity. Since brain activity is physical, involving cells, synapses, and electrons, whatever is produced by these physical operations remain physical. This is a logical necessity. Therefore the concept of “emergent” conscious phenomena are nothing but abstractions of the physical operations. These abstractions are natural, in the natural order, because they are produced by natural operations. In this way, scientists have found a convenient way of discussing the mind without haven’t to depart from monism and materialism. This is phase 1 level thinking and reasoning.
But phase 2 level of operation is radically different. Here we acknowledge dualism, that is, that natural is from the natural world, and spiritual is from the spiritual world. Therefore the mind must be dual: the natural mind constructed out of sensory input and its abstractions; the spiritual mind constructed out of the input of rational-spiritual concepts from revelation in Sacred Scripture. The meaning of concepts like mind, consciousness, God, heaven and hell, are now dualist, while this was not possible before in level 1 operation. Phase 2 operation is called “enlightened” because it recognizes a spiritual world within the natural, or, a spiritual world above the natural. Similarly, a spiritual mind within the natural mind, or above it. The spiritual and the natural always act together, tied synchronously to each other by Divine Laws of Correspondence.
Phase 1 level thinking is called pre-rational because the rational begins only within the spiritual. Unless you understand this point clearly, you will continue to experience resistance to what is being said here about the three phases or levels of operation in thinking and feeling. The Writings reveal the many details of the mind’s anatomy. Consider these points from a neutral and logical perspective. The natural mind is a miniature version of the natural world. Scientists, lawyers, and managers in industry and business, use natural logic to make decisions. This kind of thinking can be called natural-rational to distinguish it from spiritual-rational. The natural-rational is also called the external natural because the natural mind is outside of the self, while the spiritual mind is inside. The outside—inside distinction is dualist, which means that they are related in discrete degrees by correspondences. “Discrete degrees” refers to the arrangement of the universe in terms of three levels: natural, spiritual, and celestial. These three levels operate synchronously, or simultaneously, but their interaction is never direct or continuous, but discontinuous. This means that no mater how much you improve in your natural thinking, you cannot enter spiritual thinking. The movement from phase to phase 2 cannot proceed gradually or continuously. At some point in phase 1, one must ”jump” to phase 2 by beginning an entirely new way of operating, unrelated in any way whatsoever to the earlier phase of operation.
This jump in consciousness from phase 1 to phase 2 is achieved by the introduction of rational consciousness, which was not operating in phase 1, or sensuous consciousness. There is a discrete jump between sensuous and rational consciousness. No matter how much you improve in your sensuous consciousness, you cannot enter into rational consciousness. Instead, rational consciousness can be entered by beginning an entirely new type of operation, not possible in the natural mind, but possible in the spiritual mind. The only issue remaining to be understood is by what mechanism or method do we all of a sudden begin this new type of phase 2 operation in the mind.
The answer is that it is God who opens the spiritual mind, unconscious to us, when we fulfill a certain condition or requirement in our phase 1 thinking. That requirement is the acquisition of spiritual-rational concepts from the Threefold Word. The Writings are written in a natural language at a rational or scientific level. To develop rational-spiritual consciousness (phase 2) we must apply the literal meanings of the Threefold Word to our own biography, our own mental states. The Threefold Word is written on the surface in a natural style though its topics are spiritual. Merely understanding the literal meaning of the Threefold Word does not open our spiritual mind. But the moment we apply any of its truths to our own biography, the Lord opens a portion of our spiritual mind. This is the condition or requirement for moving from phase to phase 2 operation. In other words, the “jump” is accomplished by means of an unseen miracle—God operating behind the scenes, activating the spiritual mind which we have by creation or birth. This mind remains closed until we are ready to make the jump. That is, until we are ready to apply Divine Truth from the Word to our willing and thinking every day, every hour. The Lord enlightens us at that point, opening a new level of conscious operation, which was either unconscious before, or totally closed, not yet activated.
Once we are enlightened, we become consciously aware of our new phase 2 consciousness. We are now conscious of the operation of our spiritual mind, to some extent, since this opening is gradual. And remember that there is another jump awaiting us as we move into phase 3, the real human phase where our angelic nature begins. But when we are still in phase 2 operation we become consciously aware of a new type of understanding called “rational consciousness.” We are familiar with “sensuous consciousness” but not with rational consciousness. Note that there are two kinds of sensuous consciousness, one natural, the other spiritual, and both of these are different from rational consciousness, or spiritual-rational consciousness. For instance, when you awaken in the afterlife in your spirit-body, you see yourself on the outside having a body just like before, and seeing other spirits in their spirit-body. The external appearance of the spirit-body to the eyes of the spirit, or new arrival in the world of spirits, is similar to the external appearance of the natural world. This is sensuous consciousness. While on earth attached to the physical body, we have sensuous consciousness of the physical world. While in the world of spirits, we have sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world. Spirits, devils, and angels all have sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world and can see with their eyes around them.
But those who live in the hells have only sensuous consciousness without any rational consciousness. But those who live in the havens have sensuous consciousness as well as rational consciousness.
Sensuous consciousness is automatic from the spirit-body, while rational consciousness is voluntary, depending on our willingness to acknowledge Divine Truth and love it. The devils are not willing to do this. In the spiritual world, rational consciousness determines where we live, that is, in what mental state of thinking and feeling. In fact, the Writings reveal that there are three discrete levels of rational consciousness above the hells. We can be in a spiritual-natural state of thinking and willing, in which case we live in the region of the spiritual world called the “natural heaven” (also, the “First Heaven”). The inhabitants at that level of operation are called “good spirits.” One discrete level of thinking above this is called the “spiritual heaven” (also, the “Second Heaven”), and its inhabitants are called “angelic spirits.” Finally, at the highest level of rational consciousness, the thinking and feeling is called “celestial-rational” and the inhabitants in that mental state are called “angels” (also, the “Third Heaven”). These details are revealed in the Writings.
You can see therefore that in order to achieve heavenly life of any sort you must develop you rational consciousness before you pass on so that your spirit-body has the capacity to rise instead of sinking in the spiritual world. And the only way that God has provided for the development of rational consciousness is by means of revelations in Sacred Scripture. As we begin studying the Word from a natural perspective, we acquire a concept of God, and of heaven and hell, that are dualist. This opens our mind to be dualist, which means that both our natural mind and our spiritual mind are being opened and made operational by God. However, this occurs only to the extent that we love and live the truths we learn from the Word. The Lord waits until we begin to reform our life according to His Word, and once we do, He opens our rational consciousness of Him and our journey towards Him. As we continue our reformation and regeneration, that is, our character reformation according to the Word of God, our level of thinking is raised to the spiritual level more an more, and eventually to the celestial level. Then for the first time we become truly human, truly rational, truly spiritual.
When our mind becomes educated and we learn to think abstractly with natural concepts, we prepare ourselves for the opening of the rational mind, which alone can perceive spiritual things given that spiritual things are purely rational. Paul was an educated man, knowing Aristotle, Plato, Socrates. And yet, neither the Ancient Greek scholars nor Paul were able to think rationally, but only naturally. Aristotle's God was an abstraction of the natural--it was pre-rational. Plato's realm of the ideal and the divine were abstracted natural ideas, no different from science fiction stories about advanced civilizations and psychic powers of time travel or simultaneous alternate realities. There is nothing spiritual in them, because nothing rational, only something abstract derived form the natural. This assertion cannot be understood unless you allow for the physiology of the mind revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg. The external mind is purely natural, the internal mind is purely spiritual. As well, the spiritual consists of substances in the spiritual world streaming from the Spiritual Sun. This Sun is the Lord's Proceeding and He can be seen visually in the midst of this Sun by the inhabitants of the Heavens. Swedenborg has actually seen this many times and has discussed the phenomenon with the celestial inhabitants. The light streaming out of this Sun is Divine Truth in substance and the heat streaming out within it is Divine Love in substance.
These two Divine substances are purely rational and create the atmosphere and life of Heaven. Only those can live in this atmosphere whose internal rational mind has been opened and matured through religion and science while still living on earth. Without these revelations about the inner mind and the character of Heaven no one could form purely rational ideas of the spiritual realities and thus be prepared for life in Heaven. When we arrive in the other world (a few hours after the death of the body), we either rise to Heaven with our rational mind, or sink into hell with our natural mind. Sensuous consciousness of the spirit-body is granted all spirits, but those who have a rational consciousness within the sensuous, can rise to heavenly life. Those who have resisted and rejected the rational-spiritual ideas of the Word, arrive without an internal rational consciousness, so they cannot avid sinking down in the corporeal regions of the mind, which constitute the hells in the spiritual world.
It should be mentioned here that the rational mind in heaven is encased in a corresponding spiritual body that provides every sensual experience that the physical body had, but far more perfectly and intensely. No rational mind can exist except as tied to a sensual body . The rational exists within the sensual, and the two make up heavenly happiness, bliss, and pleasure. Those who arrive with their rational mind unopened remain in their natural mind. The spiritual body they then have corresponds to their natural mind within which there is no rational mind opened or functioning. Hence the experiences they have are purely sensual as projected by this spiritual body. While the environment of the heavenly inhabitants is bright, warm, beautiful, varied, and artistic, the environment of the hellish inhabitants is dark, cold, horrendous, homogenous, and utterly lacking in aesthetic interest. They see around them what their corporeal minds project in fantasy and delusion. Their nightmarish lot is unenviable, especially since it gets worse and worse for them as they continue to mature forever inside delusions and irrationalities.
I will discuss the true rational when we get to the third inner Swedenborg-phase or the phase of True Science. For now, we are still dealing with Paul within the context of his natural mind, and what he had to accomplish intellectually to justify the Christian faith to Jewish men. Paul was led by the Lord to engineer a rational justification for dualism in the Lord that was plainly taught in the New Testament Gospels. Note that what caused Paul’s conversion from the Moses phase to phase 2, was a miraculous non-ordinary experience of direct sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world. He was taken up to the “third heaven” and he witnessed by means of his spirit-body senses what was there. This sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world is not given to others because it interferes with the development of rational consciousness. Paul had a special mission to accomplish, like Moses and Swedenborg, which was to justify intellectually for others, who God was. They were all three taken up to heaven, that is, they received sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world as well as the natural world. But others are not give to do this, and are discouraged from even striving to do it. The Writings explain why miracles are not allowed by the Lord in today’s modern world. The reason is that miracles are sensuous demonstrations of spiritual power, and this is harmful to the development of rational consciousness. Instead, the Lord has given the Holy Spirit, which is a rational concept, not physical or natural. It is by means of this rational concept that we acquire spiritual consciousness. It is the Holy Spirit acting within us when we acknowledge it. This is the rational method of knowing God. This is the method the angels use to know God. The Holy Spirit cannot be seen with the sensuous eyes but only with the rational perception of rational consciousness.
In the Moses phase the expression :”Spirit of God” is used instead of “Holy Spirit” as you can determine by comparing the Old and New Testament expressions. The expression “Spirit of God” belongs to phase 1 and is a natural idea, whereas the expression “Holy Spirit” belongs to phase 2 and is a spiritual idea.
When Paul’s sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world was opened, he was no longer able to hold on to his cherished Moses-phase idea that the afterlife comes in the future, on this earth, when the Messiah's trumpet wake up the bones and skeletons of all the dead, and miraculously covers them with the flesh that belonged to them before their death. This natural idea of the afterlife is received from the Old Testament when it is read literally and naturally (e.g., as in Ezekiel who had a sensuous vision of the bones being raised and covered with flesh again). Paul could no longer hold on to the literal interpretation of the Old Testament Prophets because he witnessed the existence of the spiritual world and its population of people who have departed from this life and had left their bodies behind to rot and disappear in the ground or in the ocean. He then understood that there is not going to be an end of the natural world, to be succeeded by the beginning of the spiritual world. He entered the dualist reality, thus phase 2 thinking. He now understood that those passages in the Prophets about “going to sleep” at death and then resurrecting with the bones, is not to be taken literally and naturally, but rationally and spiritually. The resurrection of the bones in the graves refers actually to the resuscitation of the individual in the spirit-body. It is the spirit-body that is called the flesh, for this is alive, while the copse and the bones, are not alive and are long gone forever, disintegrated back into the physical universe.
But Paul could not use his new sensuous dualism as a justification for Jews to switch from the sectarian and natural Moses phase to the New Testament spiritual phase of personalism with the Lord. Paul could not convert people on the basis of his sensuous consciousness and witnessing of the spiritual world. This was not the central thesis by which he forged a justification for the Christian religion. Rather, he was led by the Lord to formulate an intellectual justification for it, that was able to build up the rational consciousness of the believers, at least up to one higher level, namely the First and Second Heavens, which rely on rational consciousness of a relative less internal level than full celestial-rational consciousness (Third Heaven).
Paul’s Divinely appointed mission was to create a rational doctrine that seemingly took its departure point from the ritual sacrifices that formed the basis of the religion of his contemporaries, but taking it one step higher in rationality by arguing that these sacrifices were only symbolic and pointing to the real sacrifice, that of Jesus on the cross. This new rational and symbolic insight was made Providentially easy for Paul because the Old Testament in several key places anticipates the Paul-phase of religion and talks in a veiled way about the future coming of Christ, that is, of the opening of humanity’s rational consciousness, which is the beginning of true spirituality. Paul and all the subsequent Christian doctrinal writers have focused and explored the symbolic foreshadowing of Christ's Coming. One such figure is Melchizedek, another is the spiritual Son of David, another the Child that is born unto us whose name shall be God, Mighty Counselor, and another the woman's seed that shall bruise the head of the serpent. The Lord Himself discussed the symbol of John the Baptist as Elijah the prophet, whom the Jews by ancient tradition considered the Messiah's forerunner.
Most importantly, Paul strengthened the connection between the ancient Mosaic sacrifices and the crucifixion of Christ. Without this explicit connection, would the people in an external worship be capable of accepting the new internal faith? Many were not. Centuries later, contemporary Jews are still unwilling to accept this connection. The pre-rational Jews converted by Paul insisted on the identification of Christ's crucifixion and shedding of His Blood with the atonement of their inherited sins. The language of symbolism in the New Testament allows for this connection, as in the Holy Supper ritual that Christ initiated and commanded. He broke bread and said, This is My Body. He poured wine and said, This is My Blood. To eat his Body spiritually symbolized to acknowledge and live by His commandments. To drink His Blood spiritually symbolized to do this through spiritual truths as revealed by the Lord Himself outwardly while He was still on earth, and then inwardly, in the mind, by the Holy Spirit, after His Resurrection and Ascension. This inward revelation was the new rational consciousness of the Paul-phase of religious behavior. Henceforth the proof of God's presence was not the external miracle seen by physical eyes but the internal voice of the Holy Spirit seen only by the rational mind.
The early Christians were in a transition phase between the natural mind and its external worship and the rational mind and its internal worship. All internal worship exists only within some external worship. The difference is that the Moses-phase worship is natural worship within which there is no internal worship, while the Paul-phase worship is external worship within which is spiritual worship. The Lord's closest followers appear to have been alternately in both minds on different occasions. They were capable, like Peter and Thomas, to be elevated in their conscious understanding that it was God who was standing before them, yet they could not hold on to this level of consciousness, because their minds were still pre-scientific and not rational. In response, they did the only thing possible in that intermediary state of mind. They divided God into two: the Father and the Son.
This intellectual subterfuge succeeded for awhile and allowed them to slowly extirpate themselves from the purely natural mind. It was a neat and logical solution, though not quite rational: God the Father was the invisible universal presence and force, creator of everything. God the Son was the visible God, and the two together made one Godhead. Later a third God was added, namely the Holy Spirit. The Trinity thus became Three Persons in One Godhead--an idea of God that is natural and corporeal, not spiritual or rational. This natural idea of the Trinity prevented subsequent generations from evolving a rational mind within religion. As a result, many more centuries had to pass until the development of the rational mind through another means, not directly from religion, but indirectly from science. This new paradigm was initiated by Swedenborg's Writings, which is called the Second Coming of God.
Each of the three Divine Persons had his own area of functioning. God the Father was the Creator. God the Son was the Redeemer. God the Holy Spirit was the Sanctifier or Regenerator, involved in our thoughts and feelings, preparing us for life in Heaven. This Trinity of Three Divine Persons was not rational, since rationally only One God is possible and thus only one Divine Person. To substitute one “Godhead of Three Persons” for “one God,” is thus to take a point of view that resists the further opening of the rational mind. The Writings reveal and confirm by data that the idea of Three Divine Persons necessarily dissolves into the idea of Three Gods, and this idea destroys the further opening of the rational. The Church Fathers saw this issue to some extent since they added to the creed the statement that though our lips say Three Persons we must not think Three Gods but One God. But this is not possible since the logic of the mind falls back on three Gods if there are three Divine Persons. The Church doctrinal philosophers over the centuries called this a mystery that the human mind cannot understand. But it is not a mystery, just an irrational concept.
Paul's edifice was built on more than one Divine Person, and this allowed him to develop the Doctrine of Justification by Faith, and not by Works. The fundamentalist external worship based on ritual, which the Lord calls Pharisaic, requires an external event as proof of forgiveness. Paul retained this natural idea, but elevated it to a symbolic form that could receive a spiritual-rational meaning. Christ is the one time Divine sacrifice that was foreshadowed in the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament. Now that Christ has been sacrificed on the Cross, and shed His Divine Blood, God the Father's anger and revulsion at our sinful nature, is propitiated. God the Father no longer sees our sins or our depraved nature and our love of evil and delight in it. The Blood of His innocent and spotless Son, poured out on the Cross, is an acceptable sacrifice that takes care henceforth of all sins, past, present, and future, in all the generations. No more animal sacrifices will be needed. No more Mosaic rituals to follow and earn one's merit, as in the past. Instead, now what's needed is faith, a kind of blind faith, without the rituals of sacrifice.
This inner faith is now saving, not some outer "works" of religion, by which Paul meant the ritual prescriptions and prohibitions enjoined in Mosaic Law. The Paul-phase notion of faith without works is in contrast to the Moses-phase notion of the works of religious rituals to be strictly performed. These religious works no longer had the power to wash sins away and to make one right again with God. Since Christ died on the Cross these same works are no longer efficacious, but faith is. This faith is faith in the Risen Christ as Divine.
Paul outlined the entire Old Testament history and re-cast it into this new view. He thus elevated the literal meaning of the Old Testament to a more spiritual level by focusing on their rational and symbolic meaning, like the "foreshadowing" of Melchizedek as the "Christ figure." Abraham owed his salvation and favor with God on account of Abraham's faith in Him, not on account of any sacrifices and rituals he performed. God was able to forgive Abraham's sins on account of his inner faith in Jehovah as the Divine Person who showed Himself to him through an Angel and adopted him as a spiritual son. Christians can have their sins forgiven, not by sacrifices, not by merit in carrying out the works of the Mosaic Law, but by the intensity of their faith in the inner presence of God as the Holy Spirit. This new mentality required a rational component. The Moses-phase concepts we cherish early in our religious consciousness are exclusively sensual because our consciousness is a sensual consciousness located in the natural mind. We can be educated and talk intelligently and solve technical problems, but these accomplishments are based on knowledge rather than understanding. Understanding is rational and requires the spiritual mind, which is the inner mind, to be opened or activated.
Some Christians today still hanker back to a former sensuous consciousness of the Divine. This trend is a reversal of spiritual progress away from sensuous consciousness and towards rational consciousness. Christians who demand a miracle, or confirm in their mind the miracles performed on stage by preachers, or by means of holy relics and shrines, hurt their rational consciousness which can only be developed through rational faith or belief, that is, belief in God as Spirit, or belief in the Holy Spirit as present rationally, not externally and sensuously. There are no miracles allowed by God today, according to the Writings, and therefore whatever miracles they witness is a self-deception that hurts their rational consciousness or rational faith. The Threefold Word warns that it is a wicked generation that seeks miracles and proof of the spirit, and that what needs to be done is to rely on the Word, that is, on Divine Truth, which is rational, not natural. There is plenty of rational proof of God and spirit that we are given in the Threefold Word.
All genuine spiritual ideas are purely rational, from God through His Word, which is the Rational Itself, also known as Divine Truth. When Christians accept the idea that the Risen Christ is Divine, they form in their mind the purely rational idea of God as the Divine Human with whom you can have a personal relationship like a Father to His children. To sensual consciousness this idea makes no sense whatsoever. How can one person, even if Divine, be present to every individual simultaneously? How can a human, born of a woman, stand before you as the infinite Divine Itself? How can a person you see in front of you take care of the whole universe while he is standing there? At this natural level of thinking, it makes more sense to think of God as a force that is everywhere all the time. Such sensual objections occur to us in the Moses-phase mentality. When we read in the Old Testament that God appeared to someone, the scene is described as an angel, a burning bush, a voice from heaven, a very bright light, but not a visible human. The Divine Risen Christ is a rational idea that stands in contrast with the sensual idea of God as the invisible infinite power and intelligence of the universe. The latter is purely sensual even though it is abstracted from the sensual. The abstraction still remains a sensual idea--God is “force” not a “Person.” To turn God into a visible Person or Divine Man, you need to think of rationally, not sensuously. Rationally we can conceive that a visible Divine Man can be present to any number of individuals simultaneously, but not naturally or physically.
By Divine Providence, the era of religious sacrifices gradually but inevitably ceased and disappeared, and Paul's doctrine of justification by faith not by works of the Law, turned more and more inward, thus opening the rational mind of the ensuing generations. The Lord's Coming succeeded in establishing the Christian Church in the minds of millions. The idea of God as the Holy Spirit in our mind, giving us comfort and power, was a new phenomenon in the world. It marks the turning point in human evolution, when the rational mind was opened through belief or faith in an internal Divine presence and operation. Internal worship without sensuous consciousness began for the first time in the history of our race. The opening of the rational mind paved the way for the advent of modern science which will be needed eventually, to move from the New Testament state to the Third Testament state, that is, to move from thinking based on personal blind faith to thinking based on spiritual-rational faith, or theistic (dualist) science. The difference between rational faith (phase 3) and mystical faith (phase 2) is the difference between the celestial-rational (which is internal), and the spiritual-rational, which is relatively external.
(Note: these distinctions are established, with diagrams, in another article:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing4.htm )
The opening of the rational mind of the human race was accomplished by the Lord at His First Coming, which was a Coming in Person in a physical form in the natural world. He then revealed that He will come again when the time is ripe. This Second Coming was necessary in order to complete the salvation process of the human race that was begun by the opening of the rational mind. The opening of the rational mind was necessary in order to have a faith in the Lord that is based purely and solely on rational consciousness, untainted by sensual consciousness. The time of ripening was the time it took for the generations to solidify a culture and practice of religion that was internal, not merely external. The opening of the rational made possible the development and growth of modern science and education in all societies. With every succeeding generation sensual explanations for events such as magic or supernatural characters, were abandoned in favor of science and rationality. At last, the time of the ripening of the external rational mind arrived and the birth of the new internal rational mind was at hand. Hence the Second Coming of God was not to be a Coming in Person, like the First, but a Coming in the rational of the human mind. This was accomplished through the Writings of Swedenborg.
The First Coming had to be a sensually visible and touchable appearance because the external rational mind of humans was not yet opened or operational. It was the sensuous consciousness of the disciples that had to be convinced of Jesus as the Divine Christ. Their mind required the proof of miracles in order to be able to believe in the Divine's presence. This remains true for every generation. We require such visible proof in our childhood and adolescence when our idea of God is still sensual. We kiss icons and press them against our chest or hold them tight in our fist. We see holy men and women around us as living proof of what is sacred and supernatural. We cast our lot with the congregation praying together the Prayers of the People, hoping that this will make the requests more likely to be heard and answered by God. These are sensual ideas of God and prayer. But with Christians there is a constant pressure to abstract these ideas into a more rational form. When attending the Holy Mass or Communion we watch the priest elevate the wafer and say This is My Body, Eat. Then we watch him elevate the cup of wine and say This is My Blood. Drink. This participation forces the opening of the rational. The mind flees with horror from the sensual meaning of these things. What, drink blood?? and finds refuge in a symbolic rational meaning of “Body” and “Blood” as Divine Good and Truth, and of “eating” and “drinking” as adopting (‘eating” or “assimilating”) this good and this truth so that they become part of our character and moral fabric.
This is then what makes us immortal and capable of eternal life--it is the making of a new person out of the “ingested” pieces of the Divine Human's spiritual character (“Body” and “Blood”). As long as we identify with this Divine Human character and live the life from the Divine Good by means of the Divine Truth, we are in the Divine and the Divine is in us. This makes us immortal and eternal, and without this we remain in mere sensuous consciousness. When we pass into the other world at the death of the physical body, we awaken to a spiritual world in which the sensual consciousness sinks down, while the rational consciousness rises up.
The path from the opening of the external rational mind (First Coming of God) to the opening of the internal rational mind (Second Coming) was a downward path in religion even as it was an upward path for science. The Second Coming could not occur in the sensual presence or appearance of the Divine Human to people on earth (“in the clouds” or the” rapture”). Such a physical appearance would have shut the rational down and humanity would have reverted to barbarism. By necessity, the Second Coming had to be accomplished in a rational form so that the internal rational could be opened and rendered operational. This the Lord accomplished by opening the rational mind of Emanuel Swedenborg (1668-1772), preparing him first for an illustrious scientific career, then at age 57, opening his interior rational mind so that Swedenborg could become personally present in full consciousness to the departed from this world who were inhabitants of the spiritual world in heaven and in hell. For 27 years Swedenborg lived this life of dual citizenship and wrote more than two dozen volumes re-casting the Old and New Testaments from the Paul-phase mentality of blind faith to the Swedenborg-phase mentality of spiritual-rational thinking, which is an enlightened rational faith, not a blind faith.
The ripening of the First Christian Church, and its eventual consummation, occurred historically through various degradations of the new internal worship instituted by Christ and His Apostles, foreshadowing the states we all have to go through today as we move from the Old, to the New, to the Third Testament state. That is, as we stop relying on physical ritual, then, as we stop relying on blind faith, and start relying on rational, scientific, and crystal clear concepts of God and our relation to God. The degradations in internal worship were numerous. One line of heresy involved the idea that Jesus had two natures, one Divine the other natural and merely human (Arianism). Another line of heresy was called the Doctrine of Predestination which claimed that God the Father creates some people for Heaven and others for hell and those predestined for heaven get there no matter how they live and likewise for those predestined for hell.
Another heresy, common today, is that the return of Christ is to take place in the natural world and He shall then bring on the Rapture in the physical world where people will be caught up in the air with Him and all the dead will then be resurrected from their graves. Another natural idea of external worship common today is that we can influence God by praying in groups or masses of people coordinating their prayers. Another natural idea in Christian worship today is the notion that objects such as the Shroud of Christ, or bread and wine that have been blessed by the priest, acquire supernatural powers of healing which are transferred to those who physically touch it or eat it. All sorts of superstitious ideas besides these could further be mentioned.
The most important source of degradation in internal worship in the Paul phase comes from the notion of Faith Alone as developed by Luther, the architect of the Protestant Reform movement within Christianity. Swedenborg was given the opportunity of discussing this with Luther himself in the spiritual world. Luther confessed that an angel had spoken to him in his mind at the time he was writing the Faith Alone Doctrine for the Reformed Church, warning Luther that this was a false doctrine and will lead to the spiritual downfall of the Christian Church. But Luther said he felt compelled to do it anyway because he was persuaded of the idea that in order for the new Reform movement to successfully secede from the Catholic Church, it was necessary for people to believe that works of charity are not required for salvation, but faith only in the Lord's sacrifice on the Cross.
Luther buttressed his Faith Alone Doctrine with Paul's statements about being justified by faith and not by the works of the Mosaic Law. This was a dishonest subterfuge on the part of Luther, though his motives may have been apparently good. Paul never used the idea of "faith alone" and never referred to "works of charity" but works of the Mosaic Law which had been rendered void by the new Christian dispensation. Paul clearly preaches in many places that a life of charity and love is necessary if faith is going to count. But Luther transformed Paul's idea into the idea of “faith alone without charity saves.” But the Writings reveal that when charity is removed from faith, it is the end of religion because it then slips back into the sensual phase and the rational remains closed. Without a rational, those who arrive in the spiritual world upon the death of the physical body, sink down into hell unable to grasp and hold on to the spiritual truths they are given by the angels. Without spiritual-rational truths our mind or spirit cannot support the atmosphere and eternal life of heaven.
The Catholic Church at the time, and still today, continued to insist that works of charity are necessary for salvation. Luther thought that by braking this doctrine, the people will no longer be dependent on a corrupt priesthood for their salvation. For it is their priests who decide what works of charity count for salvation. Along with the Faith Alone doctrine was the giving of the Bible to the people, so that there would be no intermediary priesthood necessary for working out one's inner faith through the aid of the Holy Spirit. This was Luther's intention.
The Faith Alone doctrine is a heresy because regeneration cannot take place without a life according to one's faith. This life in accordance with one's faith is called works of charity, but not in the same sense as Protestants today refer to "works." A life of faith without its works is nothing but a natural-sensual idea of religion and loses all the spirituality that was originally contained in Paul's idea of faith. Paul used the idea of "works" in the sense understood by his contemporaries, namely the works of the Mosaic laws by which propitiation or forgiveness of sins is earned through performing external ritual behaviors prescribed by worship. This was indeed the battle Paul had to win over those who rejected Christianity or wanted to keep it Jewish. They were a group of Jews who claimed to accept the Christ, while at the same time held on to the prescribed ritual works of the Mosaic laws, including a desire to retain the practice of animal sacrifices. Paul wrote passionately to oppose them, and he tried to convince them that the old type of ritual "works" by which the ancients were forgiven of their sins, was no longer operative in the new dispensation.
The power of Mosaic works (sacrifices and rituals of festivals and the harvest, etc.) were gone forever. Now we must rely on faith in Christ and a life according to that faith. Paul repeats this idea many times, namely, faith and a life in accordance with that faith. However, Luther succeeded in destroying that connection in the mind of Protestants. And now the personal faith that the Lord had instituted while in the world became a mystical faith, a blind faith, no longer rational and spiritual. As a result a new creation became necessary and the Lord had to return in a new dispensation called the Second Coming, to complete the work of the new creation He had started at His First Coming into the world. This Second Coming, which was to be a historical event, but not a Coming in Person, actually took place in the spiritual world between 1757 and 1771. It was a Coming or Appearance in the Rational of the human mind, not a Coming again in the natural mind through the physical mode.
See this article for further details:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/newchurch.html
Personalism in a state of mystical faith or "blind faith" is consummated, dies, and progresses to phase 3, or retrogresses to phase 1 where it becomes unrecognized meritoriousness--a deathly spiritual illness. Even though we strongly believe that we have a "personal relationship with Christ," the fact is that in the Paul phase we are stuck in both lack of charity and no actual relationship with the Divine Human. One illustration of this is that we pray to the invisible Father in the Name of the visible Son. As children, we are taught to pray to Jesus, to sing to Jesus, to love Jesus. This is true personal worship. But when we get older, we tend to stop having this personal relationship to Jesus, and move our loyalty over to the Father, Jesus becoming a mere symbolism in name, to be appended at the end of worship to the Father because it is a required ritual. We then pray to the Father, and we ask it in the Name of Jesus. Thus the primary relationship we have is with the Father. This degraded notion is not rational and prevents any further spiritual development of the rational mind. It is not rational to think that God forgives us because we pray in the Name of Jesus. What kind of a God is this? Why would He not forgive us outright since He can? And why would He be swayed by us praying in the Name of Jesus? This sounds like a natural person or earthly king, not the Divine Person.
The Paul phase presents us with two Divine Persons to love: the Father to whom we pray, and the Son whom we must not forget, and in whose Name we are to pray. However this is a divided love that cannot stand. Only the Second Coming of God in our mind and belief, can make it possible for us to move into phase 3, which presents us with only one Divine Person to love, namely Jesus Christ the Incarnate God-Man, who is at once Father-Son-Holy Spirit. This is the Trinity of His Aspects (or Functions), namely, Creation--Redemption--Regeneration. At this point the mind can be unified again, as it was in childhood for Christians, when Jesus is the only Divine that one recognizes. The mind of children with respect to God is more rational than the mind of adults who pray to the Father in the Name of the Son. This is the innocence the Lord pointed to when He said that unless we are like children we cannot inherit the Kingdom.
To progress in the Paul phase one must develop a personal relationship with the Lord. The Lord is God and there is one God. The Lord at His Incarnation revealed Himself as “one with the Father.” Those who take this affirmation seriously and innocently, go to the Lord – not the Holy Spirit for the Lord said the Holy Spirit is His Own Spirit and speaks only what he speaks. To go to the Holy Spirit is to depersonalize the Lord, whose Spirit it is! Therefore we must go the Lord. To have a personal relationship with the Lord is to acknowledge that He is God, and there is only one God. Does it make rational sense to address the Father in the Name of the Lord? Clearly, to personalize our relationship to the Lord fully we must address Him when we pray, and not some other Lord or God that is somehow “co-equal” with Him. This does not make rational sense since there can be only one God. Clearly then the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. That means that Jehovah and Jesus are the same God. Bingo! You’re on the verge of making the jump again, from phase 2 thinking to phase 3 thinking.
At this point we leave religion behind and we start a new life, a new level of consciousness that takes its origins in us from the Third Heaven, which is the highest heaven possible human beings can attain. The angels of this highest heaven do not have a religion. I was truly amazed at this when I first read it in the Writings. The angelic spirits of the Second Heaven do have a religion, and so do the good spirits of the First heaven – but not the angels of the Third Heaven. Instead, they have true science. The Threefold Word which they read in a spiritual script and language, serves for them as the source of all Divine Truth, the source of all knowledge they wish to know. It is their science encyclopedia, except that it is the Word, which means that it hides within its script an inner meaning that is endlessly rich, endlessly the source of infinite knowledge, as they study it daily to eternity. Such is the character of the Word, or Divine Truth.
When we arrive at the Third Heaven in our mind, we begin the journey of a true human. We not only have a personal relationship with the Lord, as in phase 2, but we see how the Lord is integrated in our thinking and willing, how He participates and creates our thinking and willing. Swedenborg spoke to some of the angels in the Third Heaven who told Him that their greatest and deepest joy is to actually sense the Lord’s influx into their mind from their inmost, and as it descends into their conscious awareness, recognize the Lord’s Proprium acting through them, while their own proprium is completely asleep. Proprium is a Latin word meaning “what is one’s own.”
Phase 3 consciousness therefore begins when we abandon our own proprium or self-intelligence, and adopt the Lord’s Proprium as-of self. The Lord then grants every angel to feel His Proprium as the angel’s own. An angel is actually a conjugial couple made of an angel husband and angel wife united in the mind as to be one. The Lord then flows into that couple’s conjoint self, or unified mind, with His Own Proprium. The thoughts and feelings they each have then originate from the Lord and not from themselves. This is the truly human state. This is when we can attain the highest point in terms of knowledge, understanding, loving, feeling, living. Religion does not exist at this level of thinking, only true knowledge of reality, or True Science. The Lord’s Proprium reveals the only true science there is. He appears to the angels face to face, and amazingly, we are told that no matter which way they walk or turn, they have the Spiritual Sun in front of them, and they see the Lord in the midst of that Sun. No religion is necessary, only the Threefold Word. This is the source of all their wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge.
A more detailed study of consciousness may be found in this article available on the Web:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing4.htm
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/man/religious.html
Instructions: For each question, select the answer that is closest to your current thinking.
You may have already taken this test once, if you followed the note at the beginning of the book called “Before You start: Test Your Rational Spirituality.” This is a section comprising items 1 to 25 of the Test. Whether you take it for the first time or the second time, your score, now that you’ve read up till now, may be around 40 percent correct (10 out of 25 items). More importantly you will be able to make up your own answers. You can practice after you obtain your score for this Part (1).
If you like, you can page through to the Appendix at the end where the 100 questions are located.
This test does not measure your rational spirituality but only your understanding of rational spirituality. If you are familiar with the Writings and understand it rationally, you would probably select the correct answer for most of the questions. This test is not a knowledge test. It does not measure your knowledge of the Writings and does not cover all the subjects the Writings cover. It is a test of understanding of how well you can reason about spiritual topics from the perspective of the Writings.
It works out well when you use an ANSWER SHEET on a piece of paper that looks like this, and then you can also easily and accurately score your choices from the ANSWER KEY given below (following the questions).
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QUESTIONS
1. Every human being is immortal.
a. True.
b. False.
c. It depends.
2. The mind of a human being does not exist anywhere in the natural universe like the physical body, but exists in the spiritual world only.
a. True.
b. No one can know this for sure.
c. This is not a scientific issue.
3. When we die, it is only temporary until some future time when things are ripe on earth, and all who died will awaken and begin again a new life, repopulating the earth under better conditions than before.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
4. What determines your fate in the afterlife?
a. Your accomplishments.
b. Your faith.
c. Your character.
5. In heaven we do not have a sensuous body capable of eating or sexual activity.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
6. 5. In hell we do not have a sensuous body capable of eating or sexual activity.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
7. Angels are people from earth who made it to heaven.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
8. Devils are people from earth who ended up in hell.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
9. There are many heavens, at least one for each religion.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
10. What is most crucial to our salvation?
a. The right faith.
b. The right character.
c. The right deeds.
11. Consciousness raising and spiritual progress is accomplished by:
a. Practice of the right physical and mental disciplines.
b. Experiencing union with God.
c. Genuine truths in the understanding and goods in the will.
12. Heaven and hell are both in every person’s mind.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
13. There is a natural world and a spiritual world.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
14. When we die we eventually return to earth for another life, until it is no longer necessary for us to do so.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
15. God is Human, not just Divine.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
16. God is in every human being, hence the God in me can greet the God in you.
a. True.
b. False.
c. The answer is not knowable now.
17. The relation between God and human beings:
a. God inflows into every human being.
b. God is part of every human being.
c. God resides in every human being.
18. What’s the difference between natural matter and spiritual substance?
a. Matter is more fixed; substance is more fluid.
b. Matter is in space-time; substance is not.
c. There is no essential difference, though there may be surface differences.
19. Which assertion about planets is the most correct?
a. Most planets do not support human life, but some do.
b. Only this planet earth supports human life.
c. An endless number of planets are constantly being created to support a human population.
20. What are the parts of a human being?
a. Body, self, and spirit.
b. Body and brain.
c. Body; mind; and soul.
21. What are the parts of the human mind?
a. Mind, consciousness, and love.
b. Natural mind, spiritual mind, and celestial mind.
c. Cortex, cerebellum, and brain stem.
22. Which is a correct universal assertion?
a. What is within is also above or higher.
b. What is external determines what is within.
c. What is within is less developed than what is outside.
23. What produces consciousness in the mind?
a. Emergent evolutionary capacity.
b. Miraculous gift of life and love.
c. Rational understanding of Divine Truth.
24. What is the meaning of the assertion: “Heaven is within you.”
a. Heaven is an imaginary place.
b. Heaven is a state of mind.
c. Heaven is a poetic reference.
25. What is the meaning of the assertion: “Hell is within you.”
a. Hell is a state of mind.
b. Hell is an imaginary place.
c. Hell is a poetic reference.
ANSWER KEY
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1. __a__ |
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2. __a__ |
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3. __b__ |
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4. __c__ |
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5. __b__ |
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6. __b__ |
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7. __a__ |
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8. __a__ |
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9. __a__ |
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10. __b__ |
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11. __c__ |
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12. __a__ |
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13. __a__ |
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14. __b__ |
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15. __a__ |
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16. __b__ |
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17. __a__ |
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18. __b__ |
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19. __c__ |
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20. __c__ |
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21. __b__ |
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22. __a__ |
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23. __c__ |
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24. __b__ |
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25. __a__ |
Now that you know your score, you can go a step further in assessing your understanding of rational spirituality. Look at the questions you answered correctly. Select one of them and write a sentence of justification for your answer. Then compare your answer with the sentence for that item given in the Test. How do they differ? Did you mention all the basic elements needed to justify the answer? Did you mention them in a logical order? Now see if you can improve it without making it much longer.
Repeat this with other items.
See if you can add more alternatives to each item.
See if you can create 10 new items covering the reading you have done thus far.
7. Phase 3 – Rational Faith or the Swedenborg-Phase (Particularism, Actualism)
Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:
AC 2589. THE STATE AND CONDITION IN THE NEXT LIFE OF NATIONS AND PEOPLES BORN OUTSIDE THE CHURCH
It is commonly supposed that those born outside the Church, who are called heathens and gentiles, cannot be saved for the reason that they do not possess the Word and so do not know the Lord, without whom there is no salvation. But that gentiles too are saved may be known from the single consideration that the Lord's mercy is universal - that is, it reaches out to every individual human being. For gentiles are born human beings the same as those within the Church, who are a relative minority; and they are not to blame because they do not know the Lord. Consequently the nature of their state and condition in the next life has in the Lord's Divine mercy been shown to me. (AC 2589)
In the Swedenborg-phase we reach the inmost or highest state of consciousness. This is the highest level or region of the human mind, called celestial or angelic, and it is capable of being perfected endlessly to eternity. A characteristic of this angelic state is altruism. Our desire to help others becomes stronger than our religious views about faith and sanctity. The dictates and laws in Scripture are stripped of their literal-historical references in favor of their symbolic intent, which is always spiritual and celestial, never natural. We are given to perceive an inner spiritual sense that shines through the literal meaning of the verses of the Threefold Word. This new sense is an actual revelation from the Lord (or “Holy Spirit”), who is constantly present through influx from within the soul, and thence into the mind or spirit. This new state of consciousness is called "illustration" or "enlightenment" and proceeds according to the degree of an individual’s progress in regeneration.
Phase 3, which is the highest level in the human mind, is marked by a particular and actual interaction with the Lord, moment by moment. An analogy might be the idea of being “online” in connection with the Lord. It goes immeasurably beyond phase 2 when we maintained a “personal relationship with the Lord.” This relationship was based on our idea of the Lord’s Divine role and our acknowledgement and love of that role. There was no particular and actual interaction, only a general relationship status relative to each other, as exemplified by the terms that describe this relationship --.He is our Master and we are His servant, or He is our Father and we are His children, or He is our Savior and we are His redeemed, and so on. These role relationships define a general status between us and the Lord, rather than a particular interaction.
The particular and actual interaction we have with the Lord in this earlier phase (2) is limited to prayer and reading the Word. The rest of the day we go about our business and act within the general guidelines of our faith or doctrine. But now, in this entirely new phase (3), we interact with the Lord on a moment by moment basis, involving Him explicitly and consciously in the sequence of our behaviors, hour after hour, all day long, every day. The angels never break conscious contact with the Lord, as indicated by the amazing fact that no matter which way they walk or turn, they face the spiritual Sun in the midst of which they see the Lord. While we are on earth, and in phase 3, we strive to remain conscious of the Lord’s participatory actions within and behind our actions and choices, though we do not succeed all the time, as our focus gets drawn into the task we are doing or the problem we are solving. Nevertheless, we learn day by day, and year by year, to stay consciously with the Lord more and more in the course the day. This is the effort and experience that builds up in us a genuine human mind that is capable of living in heaven.
The literal language of Scripture and doctrine appeals to our state of mind called fundamentalism based on sectarianism (phase 1 thinking). The mind in that state works out a type of reasoning that is called dogmatism, which leads to intolerance, which leads to strife and to condemnation of others -- thus away from true particularism and towards its opposite, sectarianism. This downward movement is spiritual destruction. In phase 3 we pursue the good through our desire to please the Lord whom we begin to know from within our thoughts and choices, moment by moment. You can see why I call this interactional consciousness of the Lord, “True Science” rather than religion. Religion is based on ritual faith (phase 1) or on personal faith (phase 2). Once the moment by moment co-participatory interaction with the Lord is reached (phase 3) we leave religion behind. Religion is not purified of culture and identity. This is why the Lord tolerates many religions in heaven, each however segregated from the others. Those who arrive in the world of spirits in phase 1 or 2 thinking and willing, arrive with some leftover culture or identity. Their eternal relationship with the Lord is then mediated through these natural “filters” as it were.
Those who grew up together in the same country, ethnic group, or religion then congregate together in habitations and cities with their own kind. But those who arrive in phase 3 thinking and willing, have left culture, identity, and religion behind. These natural ideas no longer form part of their loves and affections, so they do not hold on to them. They have particularized their interaction with the Lord, act by act, choice by choice, love by love. There is no “personal” relationship left that is based on identity or culture or religion, these things being relatively external to the inmost celestial life. The Lord is still Jesus Christ whom they acknowledge historically, but more than this, it is the Divine Human they acknowledge and see in the present. Their co-participation with the Divine Human fills their consciousness, while all identity and history, culture and religion, is laid to the side of their focus, rather than remaining in the center, as in earlier phases.
New trues take the place of older truths in earlier phases. In the Paul-phase of religion (phase 2) we pursue the true, but the good does not follow automatically, so that, eventually, that true turns out to be not so true, true only as an appearance, and whatever good there appears to go with it, turns out to be not genuinely good. In the Moses-phase of religion (phase 1), holiness and rituals are viewed externally, in terms of deeds and merit. The saintly person is endowed with miraculous powers. One tends to relate to an orderly hierarchy of predestined positions that get allocated to each individual, and one's spiritual status is measured by how much one is endowed by saintly merit, how intensely one is able to feel pious love for God. As we move inward from this phase 1 orientation, we enter the Paul-phase of religious behavior. This is a more internal state, more nearly spiritual because more nearly rational. The Paul phase religion is filled with personal faith rather than ritual faith. Saintliness is neither by endowment nor merit; it is gratuitous by Divine Grace, freely given to anyone who wants it, anyone who wants to worship it and adore it. Personal faith (phase 2) is defined in terms of merely adoring and worshipping from the 'depth' of the heart, in a personal way, inviting the Lord into one’ s heart, acknowledging Him as our Lord and Master.
Personal faith need not have turned into “faith alone,” as it historically did among Christians. The Christian faith that the Lord instituted could have progressed genuinely into a rational faith and true science by an internal way from the Holy Spirit, and this would have resulted in enlightenment and salvation. But the Christian faith took a turn towards mystery and mystification, away from rationality. The Writings say that the promulgation of the dogma of a Trinity of Three Divine Persons by the Bishops of the Nicene Council (325 AD), destroyed the inherent rationality of the Paul-phase thinking, and proceeded downward to mystery and spiritual darkness. According to the doctrine of the Reformed fabricated by Luther, everyone who believes out of blind faith is saved whereas anyone who makes salvation depend on character reformation (called “good works”), is condemned to fall into meritoriousness, which is spiritual death or hell. Hence people are warned not to think that their salvation depends on anything else but blind faith.
The architect of the Protestant schism used Paul's words to engraft into the new Protestant religion the notion that faith alone saves. According to Swedenborg's conversation with Luther in the spiritual world (SD 5103), Luther consciously knew that Paul did not mean faith alone saves. Luther knew that Paul was referring to the old Mosaic rituals and sacrifices which were given to the Jewish nation as a method of cleansing of sins. This method of dispensation was gone forever with the birth of the Lord. Paul was speaking to the Jews of his day who needed to hear that a new faith has begun. Sins would remain even if sacrifices are offered! This was big news indeed. But Luther, according to Swedenborg, deliberately misused Paul's admonition in order to insure a total doctrinal break with Roman Catholicism which insisted that charity or good works must be done in order to have a saving faith. "Works" of charity among Catholics refers to activities motivated by religion and specified by the priesthood such as giving alms, going to Church, being obedient to the Bishops, volunteering for social assistance, and so on. Protestants value and promote works but they insist, still today, that these are not saving, but faith alone is. As a result, people have come to believe that they are saved even if they do not undergo character reformation by living according to the Word.
The doctrine shared by all the Reformed Churches relies on the idea that there is a difference to be made between salvation and sanctification. We are saved by faith alone, and we are sanctified more and more by a saintly life inspired by the Holy Spirit. However, this distinction is not rational but persuasive or mystical. In phase 3 we leave religion and faith behind and begin to see in a true scientific way that what’s at issue is not religion and sin in itself, but the preparation of our mind for heaven. This is a physiological or medical issue, not merely a religious one. The primary necessity is character reformation, and this is accomplished by the Lord to the extent that we make ourselves cooperate on a daily basis by examining our thinking and willing, judging our every choice or rejection, our every feeling and love, monitoring them as they occur, shunning them if they are evil, compelling ourselves not to will evil, not to love it, and not to think falsity, but to think what the Lord says in His Threefold Word. This is salvation, and nothing else. To see this, is to be in phase 3.
I mention these historical details about the Reformation because the history of religion recapitulates the phases of religious behavior of every individual, both having the same spiritual cause. In our external phase of religion we behave as if we were Moses people. For example, in later childhood, after the initial innocence, we believe and fear the omnipresent Eyes of God. We believe that we can offend God by our actions and that He gets angry with us and wants to punish us for it, and indeed this is the appearance given in the Old Testament when read as to its literal meaning rather symbolically in terms of it spiritual intent. We believe that we need to appease God by performing certain requisite rituals like washings and penitence. Sin is an external blemish that can be removed by the Grace of God. We believe in meriting a place in heaven through loyalty and steadfastness to ritual, icon, and prayer. Our feelings of charity or hatred do not count in an essential way, since we become acceptable to God as we are, as long as we are forgiven on account of the ritual or the blind faith. And yet the truth is that faith without the desire to be good, just, and sincere, is not saving faith but mere external ritual performance, and thus it is useless for our inner spiritual growth and life.
Then at one point we come to the realization that the religion of rituals no longer satisfies us. We no longer believe the superstition. We acquire a distaste for sectarianism and we see the prejudice and dogma of fundamentalism and literalism. So we move on to the next phase which is more internal, more rational, and more personal. Now we need to be clever like Paul and construct a new doctrine for our understanding, one that is compatible with our values for universality and egalitarianism. We become seekers of truth. We declare ourselves spiritual iconoclasts and look for a new prophet, a new God. People find this new, more internal religion in all sorts of cultural packages offered by numerous brotherhoods, sectarian movements, groups and organizations. Spiritual discipline, meditation, study, servility, power play -- whatever the "method" may be becomes the central all important focus for the truth seeker. Indeed, the method becomes the message, and the goal.
When all the variety of religious methods and practices eventually fail, we are given the occasion to enter the true spiritual state -- internal, rational, good, and true! I call it the Swedenborg-phase because he has described most clearly the nature of this phase. This inmost or most advanced form of spiritual behavior is less focused on ritual or discipline, seeing these external behaviors more as cultural forms of religion rather than spiritual per se. The inmost or highest expression of spirituality does not measure itself externally. Holiness is not associated with prescribed behaviors but with God’s co-participation in our thinking and willing moment by moment. Only God is holy, good, and true. These qualities cannot rub off on us. Our responsibility is to love God by renouncing all things of self and world, which means to be good. This love of God is not our love or our power, but is the power to love Him given to us by the Lord, so that we may actually love Him, and in this love, receive eternal bliss and endless progress. Nothing is from us but the choice to receive that love, and the sincerity with which we attribute all good and true we have to Him, and nothing to ourselves. The acknowledgment must be given one hundred percent to Him, and zero percent to ourselves.
The spiritual-rational that the Swedenborg-phase provides is an internal rational science, while the previous Paul-phase was an external blind faith full of mystery. This internal rational is purely spiritual and is called spiritual-rational to distinguish it from natural-rational. The spiritual-rational does not come from the natural world or from self or others, but from the spiritual world or heaven. It requires that we look upon the self and the world as fallen and on the way to hell or spiritual death. Every single thing about the self is fallen, i.e., not good. Love of self is not genuine love, to which it is opposed like devil opposes angel. Selfishness or love of self, is not a love but a perverted love, or lust and cupidity. Genuine love is to desire to give to another what belongs to self. Love or charity is the desire to learn useful knowledge so that we may benefit others. In a more external phase of religiousness, love is seen as loyalty to one's creed (phase 1), and later, love is seen as compassion towards all people (phase 2). In the inmost phase (3), love is the neutralization or suppression of one's own fallen self, and the reception and adoration of God's Self (or Character--in Latin: "Proprium"). God's Self is pure love and truth, hence our reception of God's Self in us leads us to the desire of making others happy from ourselves. In this state of living, the other person is looked after equally with oneself, or more than oneself. This is called the angelic state. All individuals are born for the use they can contribute to others. To act like it is the self that really counts while others count less, is to reject love from God and to act from lust or perverted love, which is from hell and leads to hell.
What makes a person abandon the external forms of religious behavior? What conditions are needed for the suppression of the fallen self for the sake of receiving God's Self? This is one of the most crucial themes in Swedenborg's Writings. The process of self-elimination or self-suppression is called regeneration and can be considered a kind of “Divine Psychotherapy” (see this article:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/regen.html )
Regeneration is a gradual lifelong process of Divine interaction with each individual in the universe. God arranges for temptations at all levels of our emotional life: natural, spiritual, and celestial. Temptations are combats against our evil loves, lusts, and cupidities. When we are placed under temptation, we experience doubt in our certainties and the resolutions of our conscience. We weaken in our support for our principles and conscience. We are tortured by opposing impulses, selfish vs. loving. We are actively resisting God's Proprium, instead of desiring it.
The Divine psychotherapy is an expression of God's individual and particular love and care for each of us in the sequence of our living moment by moment to eternity. In temptation we are given an occasion to freely reject self for the sake of God. God sees to it that no one is tempted beyond one's capacity to resist. Each temptation brings a victory, by which God is able to remove our attachment to self. It takes innumerable such particular occasions, or interactions, to remove all the many varieties of selfishness that each individual carries from birth and habit. When the person can no longer grow spiritually through further temptations, death of the physical body is brought on and life then continues in the spiritual world through our spiritual body.
These three phases of spiritual development are universal. Individuals of all religions go through phase 1, then through phase 2, and finally phase 3, which continues to the endless future of our immortality. What follows deals with additional details about the three phases of spiritual development.
(See this article for more discussion on the three phases:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/man/religious.html
Quoting from Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia:
AC 8078.[3] Merely natural faith is faith that is instilled along the outward but not the inward path. One type of it is faith that depends entirely on the senses, which exists when a person believes something to be so because he has seen it with his eye or touched it with his hand. The Lord referred to this kind of faith when He said to Thomas,
Because you have seen, Thomas, you have believed; blessed are those who do not see yet believe. John 20:29
Another type is faith induced by miracles, which exists when a person believes something to be so solely as a result of miracles; regarding this kind of faith see 7290. And another type is authoritarian faith, which exists when a person believes something to be so because another in whom he trusts has declared it.
[4] But spiritual faith is that which is instilled along the inward path at the same time as the outward one. The instilling along the inward path gives rise to belief, and what is instilled at the same time along the outward path serves to corroborate it. The spiritual element of faith is charitable affection, and consequently an affection for truth for the sake of true service and for life's sake. These cause faith to be spiritual. Faith is instilled along the inward path when a person reads the Word and at the same time receives enlightenment from the Lord. This enlightenment is given to him in accordance with his affection, that is, in accordance with the reason he has for wishing to know the truth.
[5] These considerations now show what merely natural faith is, and that because such faith is not spiritual it cannot be ascribed to the Lord, that is, there can be no acknowledgment or belief that comes from the Lord. For the Lord flows in through the affection for truth and good; and faith is an inward affection, see 8034. The truth of innocence which can be present within that merely natural faith and can be accredited to the Lord is anything that a person believes in innocence to be true. From all this one may now see how to understand the explanation that merely natural faith must not be ascribed to the Lord, but the truth of innocence present within it. (AC 8078)
There is a paradox in the attempt to understand the full range of human development when one is still stuck in earlier phases of that development. How can the lower mind comprehend the higher mind? This paradox can be transcended by giving the lower mind maps to follow or mental symptoms to recognize, and if there is then willingness on the part of the lower mind to follow, the higher mind can illuminate the lower mind through the discourse of representations and correspondences. The lower mind then comes into the perceptions of the higher mind, and though these visions do not belong to the lower mind, yet we can derive growth benefits and experiential contentment and pleasure. These experiences are valuable because they provide transition mechanisms by which we grow into the higher mind waiting for us and striving to become one with our self.
How can we understand phase 2 of our mind into which we are to grow, when we are in phase 1? Our sectarianism in that state is based on a literal reading of Scripture from which we derive a doctrine of fear and punishment, alternating with the warmth of consolation and the delusional glow of meritoriousness. Those who are unfamiliar with the Old Testament but live in a Western culture obtain this sectarianism from indirect sources in society and literature, all of which ultimately are based on the Old Testament and the New Testament. Those who are from a non-Western culture or religion, draw their sectarianism from their own religious books and popular teachings. If for instance a native of Bangladesh were to understand the Moses phase in themselves, they need to be told what "Moses" is, and perhaps they need to find a Moses of their own who has done for them what Moses the Hebrew has done for Western culture and religion. The atheists in the Western world have all been socialized and educated similarly to the Jew and the Christian, and therefore their mind's stage of sectarianism plays itself out with similar character themes: i.e., “What is right or wrong? What is good or bad? What is true or false?”
Sectarianism is a mental state that has evolved as a coping mechanism to the harshness of tribal warfare. Science today, as I have personally known it from 1950 to now, has many symptoms of the fundamentalist state of mind. My graduate school was a training in loyalty to specific "schools of thought" within an area of research or scholarship that included:
how to refute those in the other camp
how to associate with the right camp
which conferences to attend
which journals to publish in
what departments to avoid for jobs
what explanations to stay away from in your published papers
what topics to ignore in your discussions
what books or authors not to read or refer to in your
Bibliography
what textbooks not to use for your courses
This is sectarianism in science based on a literal interpretation of materialistic philosophy known as "positivism" though that's a misnomer, in my opinion--it should have been called "negativism." It operates through fear of disapproval and the desire for recognition and merit. Religious and scientific sectarianism operate from the same level of mind, the very bottom of it, though within this state there are gradations from extremely low to not as low. A vivid description of this mental state is given in the Old and New Testaments: In the Old Testament:
Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock; and he said to them, Hear now, you rebels; must we bring water for you out of this rock? And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Nonetheless much water came out Then Jehovah said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not believe in Me and honor Me as holy in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you will not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. (Num. 20:10-12)
When the LORD heard what you said, he was angry and solemnly swore: "Not a man of this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your forefathers (Deut. 32:35)
But the LORD said to me, "Tell them, `Do not go up and fight, because I will not be with you. You will be defeated by your enemies.'" So I told you, but you would not listen. You rebelled against the LORD's command and in your arrogance you marched up into the hill country. The Amorites who lived in those hills came out against you; they chased you like a swarm of bees and beat you down from Seir all the way to Hormah. You came back and wept before the LORD, but he paid no attention to your weeping and turned a deaf ear to you. (Deut. 43-45)
And in the New Testament:
On account of your hardness of heart Moses wrote you this commandment, but from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. For this reason man (homo) will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two will be as one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together man (homo) must not put asunder. Mark 10:5-9.
"Hardness of heart" and "circumcise your heart" both refer to the pre-spiritual state of sectarianism when the sense of merit or holiness infects the mind with the delusion that "I myself am the source of power for my accomplishments"--and this idea is spiritual death because it contains the denial of God. It quickly leads to all sorts of cruelty and hatred, which yet are perceived delusionally as kindness and justice.
Swedenborg describes this first phase as follows:
That the tables which were the work of God were broken by Moses when he saw the calf and the dances, and that by command of Jehovah other tables were hewn out by Moses, and on these were afterward written the same words, and thus that the tables were no longer the work of God, but the work of Moses, whereas the writing was still the writing of God, involves a secret as yet unknown. The secret is that the sense of the letter of the Word would have been different if the Word had been written among a different people, or if that people had not been such as it was.
For the sense of the letter of the Word treats of that people, because the Word was written among them, as is plain from both the historic and the prophetic parts of the Word, and that people was in evil, because at heart it was idolatrous; and yet in order that the internal and the external sense might agree together, that people had to be lauded, and to be called the people of God, a holy nation, a peculiar possession; consequently the simple, who were to be instructed by the external sense of the Word, had to believe that that nation was such as it is called; as also that nation itself believes, and as also believe very many of the Christian world at this day. Moreover, also many things are present in the external sense of the Word, and make it, that were permitted them on account of the hardness of their hearts, such as those mentioned in Matthew 19:8, and other things also which are here passed by.
[4] As therefore the sense of the letter of the Word was made such for the sake of that people, therefore those tables which were the work of God were broken, and at the command of Jehovah others were hewn out by Moses. But whereas the same Divine holiness was still within, therefore the same words which had been written upon the former tables were written by Jehovah on the latter, as is plain from these words in Moses:
Jehovah said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, that I may write upon the tables the words that were on the first tables, which thou broke. And Jehovah wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten words (Exod. 34:1, 4, 28).
(...)
[5] That Jehovah did not acknowledge that people as His own people (although it was so said for the sake of the agreement of the internal sense with the external), but as the people of Moses, is evident in these passages:
(...)
Jehovah spoke unto Moses, Go up, thou and the people which thou hast made to come up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land of which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And I will send an angel before thee; for I will not go up in the midst of thee, for thou art a stiff-necked people (Exod. 33:1-3).
(From Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia: AC 10453)
It is important to remember that the historical details the Bible gives can be taken in two ways: literally only, and literally in combination with spiritually. If the Bible, or any other Sacred Scripture, is read literally only, one becomes entrapped in sectarian politics. Enslaving emotions are aroused leading to discrimination, thefts, and murders of those who are not like us. But we can peer through the literal to experience the spiritual within it. To do this, simply substitute "phase 1 mental state" wherever the Jewish people are discussed. Whatever is said about any of the Bible characters is said about phase 1 mental state of any individual, personally. The Old Testament and the New Testament are descriptions of personal pan-human states of spiritual growth or mental development. Swedenborg's Writings prove this point in meticulous ways with thousands of Bible verses.
The Lord is present with every person, urging and pressing the individual to receive Him. And when a person receives Him, which happens when we acknowledge Him as our God, the Creator, Redeemer and Savior, this is His first coming, and is called twilight. From this time the person begins to have the understanding enlightened as regards spiritual matters, and to advance to more and more inward wisdom. As we receive this wisdom from the Lord, so we advance through morning into day; and we continue in our daylight up to old age and until we die. After death we come into heaven to the Lord Himself, and there, for all that we died an old person, we are brought back to the morning of our life, and continue for ever to develop the wisdom which was implanted in us in the natural world. (TCR 766)
The historical event known as the Incarnation corresponds to the First Coming of God to the individual's mind. The idea of God Incarnate as a human is rejected as offensive in the Old Testament state. I recall vividly as a child in Rumania in the 1930s being slapped by a Rabbi in my school for asking the question: Does God look like a man? This vivid instructional exchange illustrates the ethnic-cultural prohibition in all fundamentalist societies, of picturing God in human form. It took three decades for me to overcome this prohibition and give myself permission to read the New Testament. Though I was instantly converted by the Lord, I had a double vision of Him for awhile. I saw Christ as a Messiah in Jewish terms. He was "one of us," I thought gleefully, elevated by God to near-divine status, or as-if divine status. Of all the human beings he it was, Jesus of Nazareth, that God chose to be the Messiah. Well it had to be somebody, and it wasn't me. So I owe this Chosen of the Chosen my full respect. Etc. These are ideas from the Old Testament state applied to the New Testament state.
I did not actually enter the New Testament state until I received the second idea about Christ, which was a mind blower for me: Christ is Divine, equal with God, God with God, from eternity. That's the period when I was baptized into the Episcopal Church, took communion, recited the Nicene Creed, sang in the choir, and taught Sunday School. To the Christian congregation I was a rare social phenomenon and they seemed proud to have a Jew among them. I was confused. Was I a Jewish Christian then? But to me it felt more like a Christian Jew. I told my poor Jewish mother whom I persuaded to visit Church one Sunday, “You'll see it's the same God they pray to.” And I didn't mean Jesus!
There is thus a transition period from phase 1 to phase 2 similar to what existed during the early Apostolic Church when Paul, the orthodox Pharisee, went around preaching and converting Jews to the new Christianity, and creating the doctrine for the New Jewish Church, that is, the Christian Church. This doctrine serves to transition us from the Moses phase to the Paul phase of our religious development. In relation to the Old Testament mentality in our mind, which I called Sectarianism based on Fundamentalism, the new mentality forged by Paul can be called Personalism based on Symbolism. Christ taught this symbolism in His instructions for the new rituals to be performed: “Take, This is My Body. And, “This is My Blood.” To the Moses mentality, these are pretty scary rituals! Eat somebody's body? Drink somebody's blood? How horrible! And yet this is the foundation stone of the Christian religion that held it together and active for two thousand years. The Eucharist or Holy Communion, together with the symbolic purification of Baptism, are the replacement of all the rituals for the old Jewish Church that relied on animal sacrifices and the pouring of the blood on the sacred altar.
Consider this historical and external transition of being saved through the purification of animal sacrifices (phase 1), to being saved through the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross (phase 2). The animal sacrifice is physical and is required at the stage of a sectarian fundamentalism based on literalism. Without this physicalistic "proof" of our forgiveness, we, in that corporeal state of mind, cannot believe the actuality of the Divine forgiveness, doubting the efficacy of a procedure that involves no visible step. But, by compelling ourselves to accept and be satisfied with a more internal or symbolic certainty of the Divine, we move upward in our mind to the second phase of religious behavior, it being a state of consciousness that is less corporeal-sensual and more rational-spiritual. Symbolic rituals are more rational than physical rituals because they are less sensual. When consciousness becomes less sensual, it becomes more rational. A God with whom we have an inner symbolic relationship is a more rational God, and hence more genuine because all rationality is from God and is like God. This follows because rationality has its source from truths, and all truths are from God. A great paradigm shift took place in the evolution of human consciousness when the New Testament announced the new principle of the Holy Spirit:
I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. (Matthew 3:11)
Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit. (Mark 13:11)
For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say. (Luke 12:12)
And with that he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20:22)
Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: (John 16:6-8).
The Counselor is the Holy Spirit. When the Lord breathed on His disciples and said "Receive the Holy Spirit" the human race was changed forever. It was an act of Divine creation and a new human consciousness came into being--rational consciousness. This was the greatest single leap in the history of the human race. From that moment all human beings became capable of having rational consciousness. Until then all humans were only capable of functioning at the Moses level of religious behavior. This only requires a sensual consciousness with a sensual worship consisting of blood sacrifices for the atonement of sins. It is a corporeal mental level that exacts a harsh life, an eye for an eye mentality that is brutish, sectarian, and xenophobic. But now a new internal worship was made possible for human beings. This took a Divine act of re-creating the human mind, spirit, and brain, along with its corollary changes. The human brain had to change to reflect and make possible an operational vehicle of the new mind functioning within it. This new mind had a new spiritual organ attached to it which had not been functioning before. This organ was the new will. The act of opening the new will is called in the New Testament "being reborn." This new will was not available to humankind before that momentous historical instant when God Incarnate breathed on His disciples and said--Receive the Holy Spirit. The Divine act of a new physiological creation was to attach a new will to everyone, and then to actually activate it when the individual is reborn, meaning that one declares the Divine Human as one's Lord.
This new will has a purely rational structure and is capable of operating exclusively with rational truths only. These rational truths are the spiritual truths revealed in Sacred Scripture that shine through the literal sense when we are receptive. These spiritual-rational truths in the internal sense of Scripture are completely and fundamentally different from the natural-rational truths that appear in the literal sense. Now, with the new will, we are able to have a new understanding that is activated and seeded by the Holy Spirit as we read Sacred Scripture while acknowledging it as Divine Truth. The Holy Spirit issues and proceeds from the Lord and is the same as the Lord. In other words, God has made a new will for humans in which He can dwell, and this means that His rational truths can operate as our own consciousness. Since God is purely rational, only a purely rational mind could become conscious of His true character. The Moses-phase consciousness is sensual or pre-rational, and requires God to appear in the physical world before we can believe and follow. The sensual consciousness of the Divine demands physicalistic evidence of Divine existence in some form such as a miracle, a supernatural event, a prayer answered, a vision, a mystery, a holy shrine. Without these physical manifestations in some witnessable time and place, the sensual mind reverts to doubts about the Divine's presence, and finally to its denial and ridiculing. None of these sensual proofs is needed by the rational mind, for it is so constructed that it operates with rational truths, and these are directly from the Holy Spirit operating into it when the individual's state of mind is receptive, but not when the mind is resistive.
Today, those who declare themselves for "Christ as Lord in my life" are called "reborn Christians" and through this new affirmation they intend to live according to their new mental state as inward-dependent rather than outward. Their inner life is henceforth in the presence of the Holy Spirit and the declaration marks an end to privacy in one's thinking and feeling. No longer can they think of "God out there looking at me" for now God is inside being with the individual, participating in the persons’ reasoning and judgment. To the extent that we backslide into the sensual Moses phase, to that extent we lower our mind's level of thinking and feeling from the spiritual-rational to the natural-rational or natural-sensual . Christian practices and movements, historical and current, that focus on miracles and miracle makers, illustrate the ways in which one can slide back into a former state even without changing any aspect of one’s external worship and identification. This is extremely injurious to one's spiritual life and future. As seen through the third or Swedenborg-phase of religious development, miracles are harmful because they compel your mind or persuade you to believe because of a physical event. The consciousness is thus lowered to the sensual level. This is the old Moses phase, and leads to spiritual disaster, that is, to a weakening of one's true faith. Genuine true faith is rational and can exist only in rational minds. The old will is sensual; the new will is rational. This evolutionary step is represented by the Holy Spirit.
So the essence of Paul's historical work in his Epistles to the Church is to give people the intellectual tools and justifications for making themselves to look upward to inner rational proof, and to shun external physical proof for the essential things of one's faith--forgiveness, deliverance, regeneration, and salvation. The Holy Spirit is henceforth the new rational mechanism of union, not physical proof such as a sacrifice or a miracle. We must not ask for miracles. We must not expect miracles. We must not rely on miracles for our belief or relationship to God. We must resist the temptation to want a miracle for proof of Divine presence and love. Instead, we must rely on inward things, symbolic things that represent our union with God at an inward spiritual or rational level. The more we teach ourselves this doctrine of internalization, and the more we force ourselves to live by it, the more we grow in our second phase, and prepare ourselves for the final third phase.
I use the term "personalism" to contrast with "sectarianism" to reflect the mental battles we must survive as we move from the Old Testament Moses Phase to the New Testament Paul Phase of our spiritual, mental, and human development or growth. Historically, the Hebrews or Jews were always extremely sectarian, reflecting the civilization around them. Even at its highest universal and human expression, such as the early Sage Hillel, who was on the curriculum in my religious school, the sectarianism of the first or external phase, shows itself clearly. Hillel's moral expression "Love your neighbor as yourself" is a universe apart from Jesus who used similar language. The difference is in the meaning of "neighbor." To the mind still in the sensual phase of sectarianism, "neighbor" means one's family, friend, and co-religionists, in contrast to the rest of the universe. Those who don't fall in your own group, you don't need to love and you're not responsible for their fate. In fact, you're allowed to hate them. This is our Old Testament Moses phase of thinking, reasoning and feeling.
So Jesus laid out the problem to the Pharisees: Neighbor means human being, not family, friend, cousin, and supporter. Neighbor is symbolic for particularism. All people are therefore God's children, and our neighbor. If you do it to them, you do it to Me, said Jesus. If you hate them, you hate Me. Those of any religion who are unwilling to receive the rational message of particularism, remain stuck in the state of personalism and its sensual symptoms and ailments. We use the term rational for both the Paul-phase consciousness and the Swedenborg-phase consciousness. Yet they are fundamentally different since the rational mind has an external and an internal stage of development. The external rational is opened first, and then the internal rational. For a description of this mechanism with explicit diagrams, see this article on Spiritual Geography:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing4.htm
The reason that personalistic symbolism is a new growth state, is that it requires the active involvement of rational ideas. The vivification and use of symbolic universal ideas of love, truth, and internal unity opens the rational mind more and more, to the degree that one applies these rational ideas to everyday living issues in our mind. There are many illustrations I can give. Remember this: you don't need to change your religion of birth in order to move from phase 1 to phase 2. Your own Moses phase is your external mind, dependent on physical and outward manifestations of all your beliefs. You can move into the second phase by personalizing your ideas within your faith, whatever religion it may be. Look for the sectarianism in your faith, and transform it into personalism. You will thereby move into the second phase. A modern day descendent of Hillel, such as myself, can re-define the received sectarian idea of "neighbor" to the new rational idea of "all human beings" and can reject the Rambam's prohibition against visualizing a human God, a prohibition enjoined on all Jewish orthodox children today. This is actually quite easy if you're willing, since the Old Testament God speaks of Himself in terms of human traits and emotions, so one can readily imagine Him as a Divine Man, as He is portrayed by the classic European painters. God as a Divine Man is rational, while God as an invisible force is sensual. In our sensual consciousness God is a force in the physical world; in our rational consciousness, God is a Divine Human Person with whom we can have a personal relationship. This concept is impossible to the sensual mind because it resists and rejects the idea that a man or a human can be infinite. The rational sees that the infinite power of the invisible God is something that belongs to the Divine Human, so that it is the Divine Human as a Person Who is omniscient and Who exercises infinite power. The external rational phase of Christianity, or Paul-phase, cannot perceive this internal rational idea and so it divides God into two Divine Persons: one being the invisible infinite omniscient God, called the Father, and the other is the visible human Son of God. But in the next Swedenborg-phase, our consciousness reaches the internal level, which is capable of understanding purely rational or spiritual truths. Then we can see that God must be one Divine Person, Whose interior Divine aspects are called "the Father" and these are invisible, incomprehensible, or unreachable. But the outward Divine aspects are called the Divine Human, and this is visible to the rational or spiritual mind.
9.1 New Testament Parables– Doorway to Rational Spirituality
After the completion of this book, the Lord called together His twelve disciples, who had followed Him in the world; and a day later He sent them all forth throughout the spiritual world to preach the Gospel, that the Lord God Jesus Christ is king, and His kingdom shall be for ever and ever, as foretold by Daniel (7:13, 14) and in Revelation (11:15):
Blessed are they who come to the wedding supper of the Lamb Rev. 19:9.
This happened on the nineteenth of June in the year 1770. This was meant by the Lord's saying:
He will send his angels, and they will gather together His chosen people from the bounds of the heavens on one side as far as the bounds of the heavens on the other. Matt. 24:31.
(TCR 791)
Why did it take the Lord nearly three thousand years to author the Threefold Word?
9.1a Rebirth -- Reformation of the Understanding and Regeneration of the Will
That it took God this long to create the Threefold Word indicates that it wasn’t solely up to Him and that the Word is an interactive document, produced by the Lord in adaptation to the human mind’s ability to receive, understand and love it. Human beings cannot love the Word unless they can understand it. Therefore the content of the Word had to be adapted to fit the intelligence and genius of the people for who it was given. The Word is given not only to one generation but to a sequence of generations making up a civilization or era called a “church dispensation.” Eventually however the advancing intelligence and modernism of the new generations outgrow the Word of old. They are then ready to receive a New Word, one that is more elevated than before, adapted to the new level of thinking and feeling attained by the current civilization. This sequence repeats itself again and again. In the most recent history of our own civilization, the Writings were given in the 18th century as the Word of the Second Coming. Prior to this the New Testament was given, and prior to that, the Old Testament.
These three collections or portions make up the Threefold Word of rational spirituality. The Three Testaments, though written centuries apart from each other, are written in the same code of correspondences that the Word of God is always given to humanity since the beginning of creation. The Word is the only method that has been provided by God for transmitting Divine Truth to the conscious human mind. It is this truth alone that is able to raise human consciousness above the animal level and to the spiritual and celestial level. This truth in the consciousness is the only method provided for attaining eternal life in heaven. This truth is the only method provided for regeneration and salvation. This truth is what makes us rational and human.
The Lord created the human mind in a specific form, with organs and levels, as discussed throughout this book. Further, the Lord is operating these organs, moment by moment, from birth to eternity. Our organs of the thinking and willing have no life or power of their own or in themselves. They are created mechanisms like a car or radio – the car to receive fuel and burn it at the rate desired, and the radio to receive signals that its loudspeaker can turn into audible sound. Turn off the radio and it has nothing to give for it receives nothing. Remove the fuel from the car and it cannot move off its spot for it cannot manufacture its own energy. Similarly with the power of our organs in the mind to give us thinking and willing. The organ of the understanding receives an inflow of spiritual light which is the substance of truth. Truth substance in our understanding creates the phenomenon of our consciousness and its rational grammar. The organ of the will receives an inflow of spiritual heat which is the substance of love. Love substance in our will creates the phenomenon of our as-of self freedom by which we are motivated to pursue our happiness.
The pathway to the Lord is a journey of our consciousness. Conscious awareness must be developed by the maturing of the natural mind through growth, maturation, experience, education, and community social life. Once we are a competent adult, our natural-rational mind is sufficiently prepared to undergo reformation. This involves going to the Threefold Word, acknowledging it as the only source of Divine Truth, struggling to understand it rationally, extracting Doctrine of Life from it and holding it in memory and awareness. Once this has been done, reformation can begin. Now we monitor what we are thinking and willing in the many tasks and routines that we accomplish daily. We monitor what we read and the ideas we take in. We monitor our entertainment pattern and content, what we enjoy doing and witnessing. In every case we apply the Doctrine of Life in our understanding to establish the category of some thought, idea, concept, belief, assumption, hypothesis, account. There are only two choices – every thought or idea or explanation comes either from heaven or from hell. Our understanding of the Doctrine we have extracted from the Threefold Word, gives us the capacity to judge every act of thinking and memory.
This process of judging everything, and consequently rearranging everything, in our thinking every day, is the process of reformation. It is a period of passionate involvement with the Threefold Word. To others who are not undergoing reformation, we might appear zealous, even obsessed. It is wonderful process of cleaning mental house, enjoyable and exciting, very useful for spotting inconsistencies and contradictions that lurk in the background of our habitual way of thinking and accepting the thinking of others.
At the end of reformation, which might take months or years depending on our zeal or persistence, we end up with a New Church mind. I have written a book about Forming the New Church Mind in Today’s World and is available here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
Once reformation is completed, our mind is prepared for beginning regeneration. This is the real work of deliverance and salvation. No other way exists to eternal life in heaven. The Lord’s central focus in the New Testament component of the Threefold Word, is regeneration (“You must be reborn”). To be reborn refers to regeneration. Without regeneration there is no salvation, no entry to heaven. Clearly then, regeneration is the central focus of the Threefold Word. The process of regenerating the human race is the same process of regenerating each individual. Since the Fall we are born with a defective spiritual organ of the will. It used to be attached to heavenly societies before the Fall, but after the Fall the human will born on earth was attached to hellish societies. This is the medical reason why regeneration became necessary for salvation.
Regeneration refers to the character. It is our character that is to be regenerated. The old character must die and a new character must be acquired and nourished so that it survives in our mind and we become healed, prepared for heavenly life. Only a heavenly character can live in heaven. It is the preparation of the heavenly character in the fallen human race that takes so long. Why did it take the Lord more than twenty centuries to deliver the Threefold Word to the human race? It’s because the human mind had to be prepared for receiving sections thereof in accordance with their genius or civilization. First, the human mind was prepared for spiritual rationality by means of the Old Testament centuries. What makes the process so slow, from our historical and cultural perspective, is heredity. By creation, new human beings come into existence through heredity. The father passes on the spiritual mind and the mother passes on the natural mind. The qualities of the natural mind are malleable but those of the spiritual mind are fixed.
As a result, once a generation falls spiritually, the next generation will be born fallen, with all the spiritual and natural qualities being passed on by parental heredity. This is what makes regeneration necessary for redemption and salvation. Redemption means to keep from falling into the hells in our mind, while salvation means to prepare the mind for heavenly life by means of regeneration. The reason regeneration of the race took so many centuries historically is the same reason that every individual takes a lifetime to regenerate. Our time of death is related to regeneration so that the moment an individual can no longer be regenerated further, death is brought on, followed by resuscitation in the spirit-body in the world of spirits, where we begin eternal life in heaven or in hell. Clearly, the purpose for which we are alive on this earth is to continue undergoing regeneration of character.
Character is the will. The will is an organ of affective reception. It receives the inflow of spiritual heat from the spiritual Sun, starting in the will of the spiritual mind, which is unconscious, then descending by corresponding discrete degrees, into the natural mind, where it produces the operations of the natural will. These include everything that has to do with a motive, intention, desire, attraction, repulsion, preference, affection, delight, love. We have these phenomenal and behavioral capacities because of the operation of the organ of the will. Keep in mind that since the Fall, the will of the split-brain race is separated from the understanding, whereas it was united before. This means that we must first reform the understanding before we can regenerate. Once the understanding is reformed, it is enlightened from receiving the light of the spiritual sun through the study of the Threefold Word. The enlightened understanding can then lead the will to shun whatever is sin or evil.
The Lord manages the process of regeneration in every detail. He brings temptations for us to face on a daily basis. He gives us the power to see the evil in our choice or habit or love. He then gives us the power to shun it. He then gives us the power to detest it. Then finally, we are free of that evil. This process must go in repeatedly, daily. We must cooperate because the Lord cannot advance us without our cooperation. This means as-of self struggle against our temptations, feeling the agony of rejecting what we still love that is evil. As we come to detest all our evils, one by one, the Lord implants a new will that is not fallen and operates properly through its ties to heaven. When we undergo this process on earth, we enter heaven soon after our resuscitation. Then we continue our regeneration as angels to eternity, but in a new way, since no evils or falsities can exist in the sphere of heaven.
No one can know anything about God or the spiritual world except from the Threefold Word. The details I review above, and throughout this book, are the specifications you’ll find in the Writings. Clearly, I would not allow myself to add any factual details that I make up myself because I keep them away. I have undergone reformation and it has taught me how to keep what is from me and from others, away from what is from the Writings in my mind. The Threefold Word must be the exclusive source of all truth, of all faith, and of all science. This means that whatever we take from science must not be opposite to True Science in the Threefold Word. And clearly most of science that is useful and beneficial to society is not opposed to True Science. It would not take much to alter the course of science to be theistic and be compatible with True Science. I predict that this is going to happen in the course of time.
Now consider these puzzles about the Word of the New Testament:
Why was Mary instructed to name the Messiah “Jesus”
rather than “Jehovah”?
Was it not Jehovah Himself who was incarnated as the Messiah?
Did not Jehovah declare throughout the Old Testament that He is
the only Savior and Redeemer and that He gives His Name to no one?
How can then Jesus be called the Savior and Redeemer?
Why did Jesus say that He and the Father are one, and that if
you’ve seen Him then you’ve seen the Father, but He never said that
He was the Father. Since His “internal man” or soul was Jehovah,
why did He not say, “I am Jehovah.” He only said “I
am.”
Why did Jesus speak in parables, of which He only explained some,
leaving others unexplained?
Why is there almost nothing revealed about the life of Jesus
prior to His public ministry?
What did Jesus mean when He said that the Old Testament Word is
all about Him? In fact, He is not even mentioned except by a couple of subtle
allusions where His Coming is foreshadowed.
Clearly there must be a deep secret here that the rational and scientific mind wants to explain logically. And the rational explanation is given in the Word of the Writings. The explanation relates to the parables in the New Testament – why Jesus taught by parables and, except for some, He did not directly explain their spiritual meaning. Why not? The answer is revealed in the Writings.
9.1b Why Jesus Spoke Only in Parables
It is quite clear that all the details, every single one, mentioned by the Lord in His parables are representative of and mean the spiritual and celestial attributes of His kingdom, and in the highest sense Divine attributes in Himself. Consequently anyone who does not know this cannot make anything else out of the Lord's parables than ordinary comparisons which hold nothing deeper within them, as with this particular parable concerning the ten virgins. He makes nothing more out of it if he does not know what 'virgins' means in the internal sense, and also what ten, five, lamps, vessels, oil, those who sell, a wedding feast, and every other detail mean. And the same is true with all other parables. As has been stated, the details mentioned by the Lord in them look, in the outward form they take, like ordinary comparisons, but in their internal form their nature is such that they fill the whole of heaven. This is because the internal sense is contained within every detail, and that sense is such that its spiritual and celestial content spreads like light and flame throughout the heavens in all directions. That sense is utterly superior to the sense of the letter, flowing from every phrase and every word, indeed from every tiny letter. But what is embodied in the internal sense of this particular parable may be seen from what follows below. (AC 4637)
The Lord's parables of the laborers in the vineyards in like manner signified spiritual churches (Matt. 20:1-16; 21:33-44; Mark 12:1-12; Luke 20:9-16). Since the "vine" signifies the spiritual church, and the primary thing of the spiritual church is charity, in which the Lord is present, and by means of which He conjoins Himself with man, and Himself alone works every good, therefore the Lord compares Himself to a vine (AC 1069).
Then if anyone says to you, Behold, here is the Christ! or There! do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise, and they will show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. [Matthew 24:23-24).
What these words embody no one can know except from the teaching of the internal sense - such as the prediction that false Christs will arise who will show great signs and wonders; the command that they should not go out if they were told that Christ was in the wilderness, and that they should not believe it if they were told that He was in the inner rooms; the declaration that the coming of the Son of Man will be like lightning which comes from the east and is seen as far as the west; and also the comment that where the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together. These various statements - like those that come before and those that follow them in this chapter - do not seem, in the sense of the letter, to have any connection with one another. But in the internal sense there is a most wonderful flow of ideas, and this starts to be seen when one understands what is meant by 'false Christs', by 'greet signs and wonders', by 'the wilderness' and 'the inner rooms', also by 'the coming of the Son of Man', and lastly by 'the carcass' and 'the eagles'.
[2] The Lord's reason for speaking in this manner was that people should not understand the Word in case they profaned it; for once the Church had been destroyed, as it had been at that time among the Jews, people would have profaned the Word if they had understood it. This was also why the Lord spoke in parables, as He himself teaches in Matthew 13:13-15; Mark 4:11, 12; Luke 8:10. For the Word cannot be profaned by those who have no knowledge of its mysteries, only by those who do, see [Arcana Coelestia Numbers] 301-303, 593, 1008, 1010, 1059, 1327, 1328, 2051, 3398, 3402; and more so by those who consider themselves learned than by those who consider themselves unlearned.
[3] But the reason why the interior contents of the Word are being disclosed at the present time is that the Church today has been so much vastated, that is, is so devoid of faith and love, that although people know and understand they still do not acknowledge, let alone believe, see 3398, 3399 - with the exception of a few who lead a good life and are called the elect. Among these few who are now able to be taught the new Church is to be established. But where those few are the Lord alone knows. Few of these will be inside the Church. In the past it has been the gentiles among whom new Churches have been established, see 2986. (AC 3898).
These are some sample passages out of very many in the Writings that discuss how the Threefold Word is written in a natural language whose details correspond exactly to the code of correspondences. Sometimes people react to this idea by feeling a threat to the integrity of the Bible they love. But what’s being said here in no way detracts from the Divinity of the Bible but adds immeasurably to it. This is most important to understand. When people read the Bible it is easy to classify it as ancient literature or ancient history. People can grant that the Bible is historically and culturally important, even though they do not grant its Divinity since it was written mere humans, no matter how inspired they were. Indeed, you must admit that when one reads the Bible it is hard to see its Divinity!
Yes, the Bible is about Divinity, about God, about heaven and hell, about sin and salvation. But anyone could write such a book. Why is it Divine? In fact some Christian religions or sects claim to have a supplemental Old Testament book they claim was also given as the Word of God to later prophets. I have read two of these so-called supplemental Bibles and I could not see anything Divine in them. They looked to me like someone wrote it who was able to imitate the style of the Bible. I think it would be impossible to show that the Old and New Testaments are Divine if one were restricted solely to their literal meaning.
The Divinity of the Old and New Testaments can however be demonstrated by considering the inner spiritual meaning of every verse, phrase, and word. This analysis can be done only with the knowledge of the code in which the Threefold Word is written. This code has been revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg. By revealing the code of correspondences God has given human kind a new scientific proof of the Divinity of the Word. Now any scientist or scholar can follow the proof and find new examples of it in the Threefold Word. The more we understand and master the code of correspondences, the more we can extract new hidden scientific revelations from the Threefold Word. This process of extraction of True Science will go on forever, enriching the civilizations on earth and in heaven. Such are the infinite things that the Divine Word contains within itself.
9.1c To Prevent Profanation, Revelation is Individual and Progressive
The passage from the Writings quoted immediately above, explains the reason why the Threefold Word was written in a natural style in which spiritual truths are represented symbolically by means of the code of correspondences. The code was used to protect both the prophets and the readers from “profaning” them. In other passages the Writings explain that profanation is the conscious denial or disrespect for holy things. This danger is referred to in the New Testament when Jesus expresses thankfulness that the eyes of sinners remains shut so they cannot see the truth, and also, that it is the sin against the Holy spirit that cannot forgiven. Quoting from the Writings:
Since by profanation of what is holy is meant profanation by those who have a knowledge of the truths of faith and the goods of charity from the Word, and who, moreover, in some measure acknowledge them, and not by those who are ignorant of them, nor by those who impiously reject them utterly, therefore what follows is not said of the latter but of the former. There are many kinds of profanation by the former class of profaners, some lighter and some more grievous; but they may be referred to the following seven.
First, the kind of profanation committed by those who make jests from the Word and about the Word, or from the Divine things of the Church and about them. This is done by some from a bad habit, by taking names or forms of expression from the Word and mingling them with remarks that are unseemly and sometimes filthy. (...)
[2] Second, the kind of profanation committed by those who understand and acknowledge Divine truths, and yet live contrary to them. Those who only understand profane more lightly, while those who also acknowledge profane more grievously. (...) Thus if one acknowledges that revenge and hatred, adultery and fornication, fraud and deceit, blasphemy and lying, are sins against God, and yet commits them, he is in the more grievous form of this kind of profanation; for the Lord says,
The servant which knew his lord's will ... and did not according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. Luke xii. 48 (A.V. 47);
and elsewhere,
If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. John ix. 41.
(...)
[3] Third, the kind of profanation committed by those who apply the sense of the Letter of the Word to confirm evil loves and false principles. This is because the confirmation of falsity is a denial of truth, and the confirmation of evil is a rejection of good. The Word in its inmost is nothing but Divine Truth and Divine Good; and this in the ultimate sense which is the sense of the Letter is not expressed in genuine truths, except where it teaches concerning the Lord and the essential way of salvation, but in truths veiled, which are called appearances of truth. (...)
[4] Fourth, the kind of profanation committed by those who speak with the lips pious and holy things, and who also by their tone of voice and gesture counterfeit the affections of the love of such things, and yet in their heart do not believe and love them. Most of these are hypocrites and Pharisees from whom after death are taken away all truth and good; and they are then sent into outer darkness. (...)
[5] Fifth, the kind of profanation committed by those who attribute to themselves what is Divine. Such are meant by Lucifer in Isaiah xiv. Lucifer there means Babylon, as may be evident from the fourth and twenty-second verses of that chapter, where, too, the lot of such is described. The same are meant and described also in Revelation xvii by the harlot sitting on the scarlet beast. Babylon and Chaldea are mentioned in many places in the Word, where by Babylon is meant the profanation of good, and by Chaldea the profanation of truth. In both cases the profanation is committed by those who attribute to themselves what is Divine.
[6] Sixth, the kind of profanation committed by those who acknowledge the Lord and yet deny the Divinity of the Lord. In the world these are called Socinians, and some Arians. The condition of all such is that they call upon the Father, and not upon the Lord, and continually pray to the Father, some indeed for the sake of the Son, to be admitted into heaven, but in vain, even till they become without hope of salvation. They are then sent down to hell among those who deny God. Such are meant by those
Who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, who will not be forgiven either in this world or in the world to come. Matt. xii. 32.
This is because God is one in Person and in Essence, in whom is the Trinity, and this God is the Lord; and since the Lord is heaven, and consequently those who are in heaven are in the Lord, therefore those who deny the Divinity of the Lord cannot be admitted into heaven and be in the Lord. It has been shown above that the Lord is heaven, and consequently that those who are in heaven are in the Lord.
[7] Seventh, the kind of profanation committed by those who first acknowledge Divine truths and live according to them, but afterwards depart from them and deny them. This is the worst kind of profanation because such persons mingle things holy and profane to such a degree that they cannot be separated; and yet these things must be separated in order that men may find their place either in heaven or in hell. As this cannot be effected, however, in the case of such persons, all that is human, both intellectual and voluntary, is rooted out and, as was said before, they come to be no longer men. (...)
[8] The profane of this kind are meant by the lukewarm, of whom it is thus written in the Revelation:
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Rev. iii. 14, 15 (A.V. 15, 16).
This kind of profanation is thus described by the Lord in Matthew:
When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.
Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.
Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Matt. xii. 43-45.
The conversion of a man is here described by the unclean spirit's going out of him; and his turning back to his former evils, after things good and true have been cast out, is described by the return of the unclean spirit with seven others worse than himself into the house garnished for him; and the profanation of what is holy by what is profane is described by the last state of that man being worse than the first. The same is meant by this passage in John:
Jesus said to the man who had been healed at the pool of Bethesda: Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. John v. 14.
[9] The Lord provides that a man should not interiorly acknowledge truths and afterwards depart from them and become profane. This is meant by these words:
He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. John xii. 4 (A.V. 40).
Lest they should be converted and I should heal them, signifies lest they should acknowledge truths and then depart from them, and thus become profane. For the same reason the Lord spoke in parables, as He Himself says, Matt. xiii. 13. (DP 231)
Now that you know what is profanation you can understand that the Lord doesn’t just reveal spiritual truths by means of natural language that is available to any one regardless of their spiritual intentions or development. This is why the Threefold Word had to be written in a secret code that was to be revealed by the Lord only to those who would not profane them.
The separation of profane and holy ideas when thus conjoined cannot be effected except by means of such infernal torment that if a man were aware of it he would as carefully avoid profanation as he would avoid hell itself. (AC 301)
You might wonder therefore about the Writings revealing the code of correspondences. Would not this increase the dangers of profanation for many people? And especially is this the case with True Science which in the future will be taught in schools as atheistic science is being taught today. What about the dangers of profanation then?
The answer is that there is discrete difference between “knowing” correspondences from memory and “understanding” what they mean. For example, one may know that the number “7” in the Threefold Word always means “holy things,” or that “40” means temptations, or that “rain” means natural truths, or that Egypt means the sciences, etc. Mere memory knowledge of these correspondences cannot be profaned. One of the books on my shelf is called Dictionary of Correspondences (xx). It was compiled from the Writings. No one is in danger of profaning Divine truths by using this dictionary for interpreting dreams or the symbolism of poetry. The danger of profanation occurs when you understand that these correspondences are holy things from the Word of God. If you do not understand what is holy, or do not believe that the Threefold Word is holy, you are in no danger of profaning the knowledge of correspondences you acquire.
Furthermore, there is a gradual entering into holy things, not an immediate access. For instance, we may believe and understand that Communion or the Holy Supper is holy, but we may only dimly comprehend what is holy in it. Some people think it is the actual bread and wine that become holy once they are blessed for worship. Others think it’s a deep mystery and miracle by which the Lord is present with those who receive Communion. These ideas do not lead to profanation. As a next step, the Lord reveals the meaning of “blood,” “bread,” “wine,” and “eating or drinking.” Blood and wine in the Holy Supper represent Divine Truth, bread represents Divine Good, and eating or drinking represent appropriation to oneself. In other words, the Holy Supper represents the appropriation of Divine Good and Divine Truth by means of worship of the Lord. But what is Divine Good and Divine Truth that is being appropriated? This is not revealed along with the code of correspondences. You may know that bread and wine represent good and truth, but you may not know what is good and truth. Again, this is to be revealed only to those who will not profane it, and the Lord foresees who will profane it and therefore cannot be enlightened as to what it refers to spiritually. At first the Lord reveals something about what is good and truth, then more and more interior things about them, which are spiritual and celestial. And finally, the Lord reveals what good and truth are in one’s own states, when appropriated.
There is therefore an orderly sequence of revelations to be made. First, there is the public revelation that all can get hold of by memory and reading. This carries minimal dangers of profanation. Then this is followed by a series of progressive individual revelations. In other words, every individual reading the Threefold Word, or being instructed of in the topics of True Science, only gradually gains a comprehension of the spiritual meanings hidden in the literal meanings. The degree of interiorness of the revelation to each individual is proportional to the individual’s progress in regeneration. The more we advance in regeneration, the deeper the revelation we are given in our enlightenment. This gradual stepwise revelation process insures that no one backtracks once they’ve gone ahead, while those who would backtrack, are prevented by the Lord from deeper comprehension of the spiritual topics.
Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:
In order that the Lord might be constantly present He has revealed to me the spiritual sense of His Word, in which is Divine Truth in its own light; and in this light He is continually present. For the Lord’s presence in the Word is only by means of the spiritual sense, through the light of which He passes into the shade in which is the sense of the Letter; and then it is as when the sun’s light in daytime passes through an intervening cloud. It has been shown above that the sense of the Letter of the Word is like a cloud, while the spiritual sense is the glory; and that the Lord Himself is the Sun from which the light proceeds, and, therefore, that the Lord is the Word. (TCR 780)
Therefore in order to remove all doubt as to such being the character of the Word, the Lord has revealed to me the Word's internal sense. In its essence this sense is spiritual, and in relation to the external sense, which is natural, is as soul is to body. This sense is the spirit which gives life to the letter; it can therefore bear witness to the divinity and holiness of the Word, and convince even the natural man, if he is willing to be convinced. (SS 4)
9.1d Can There Be a Scientific Proof that the Threefold Word is Divine
Quoting from Swedenborg where he discusses the inner meaning of numbers in the Old and New Testament:
[7] As these passages are historic it can hardly be believed that the numbers in them are significant as the number "five thousand" of the men, and also the number "five" of the loaves, and "two" of the fishes, as also the number "one hundred," and the number "fifty," of the companies that sat down, and lastly "twelve" which was the number of the baskets containing the fragments; when yet there is a secret in each number. For every detail happened of providence, in order that Divine things might be represented. (AC 5291)
In other words, numbers in the Threefold Word have a double meaning, one literal, the other coded by means of correspondences. Unless this code is known, one cannot figure out what each number refers to regarding spiritual things or meanings. A careful observer may discover the inner meaning of some numbers when juxtaposing the passages in the Testaments where that number is used, and then inferring what its spiritual referent may be. An example is the number 40, which is mentioned in connection with temptations – have you noticed that? You may also have noticed the use of the number 12 to refer to a complete set of truths, and perhaps the number 10 as referring to remnants of truths. At any rate, this approach would yield only a few results while the majority of numbers would remain obscure as to their spiritual referents. Then consider all the words – names, places, objects, actions, etc., and you can see that one would not be able to figure out by this means the spiritual referents for most of the words in the Threefold Word.
Therefore it is such a wonderful development for the human race now that the Lord has seen fit to reveal the code of correspondences through the Writings. Now we can apply these correspondences to the Threefold Word and begin to uncover, or extract, the endless database of knowledge it contains. This knowledge is True Science, revealed by God to humanity. It is endless because each word contains an endless series of ordered truths, so that endless numbers of generations to eternity can continue to extract scientific revelations in the Threefold Word. Such is the awesome significance of the human race being in possession of the Writings. You can see that to a few people to whom this is known and understood, it is hard to contain one’s enthusiasm in telling others about it. Even harder is it to see people’s reactions of disinterest or derision. Yet to you, dear reader, if you compel yourself to continue with this book till the end, it will be given to you to know and understand this great open secret. Then it will be your turn to feel amazed when you tell others, and they turn aside. But eventually, over some number of generations, the Writings will become the norm in society, like the dictionary and the encyclopedia. Then this present book will be read as a curiosity of the past where the future was anticipated.
In the quote above (AC 5291) note especially the last sentence: “For every detail happened of providence, in order that Divine things might be represented.” This sentence alone, when understood, is amazingly inspiring and empowering. It is like taking an elevator to the penthouse of a tall apartment building. When you look out the window, either day or night, you see an uplifting picture of the city from a lofty perspective that only the rich can afford in the bedroom. The “rich” in the Threefold word is a code word for those who have spiritual truths, for it is truths that enrich the individual to eternity, while material riches are temporary. When the Threefold Word mentions the activity of ascending to the top of a mountain it is a coded reference to elevating the consciousness by means of spiritual truths from the Word. This sentence functions like a spiritual elevator, raising our understanding of reality. The sentence reveals that God managed to have certain specific events in history to occur so that when these are recorded by the prophets, the words and sentences in their inner secret code, will form just the correct series for representing spiritual truths needed for our regeneration.
This in itself, if you understand it, is sufficient scientific proof that the Threefold Word is Divine and that God orchestrates every single detail of an event – the time, the place, the people, the weather, the accidental events, the sequence of the events, the thoughts and feelings of the participants, and all the rest.
9.1e The Secret Code of Correspondences
Prior to this, it was known generally that God manages all details of the universe. This is the Trinitarian concept of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. But now we can know this in particular detail, hence, scientifically. We can study it as a scientific object. The Three Testaments span three millennia in their writing, and the code of correspondences has been frozen in time to eternity, so that we may study its endless tracks through what has been revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg. This is why the Third Testament, or the 27 volumes of the Writings, is called The Crown of Churches by the Lord. “The Crown of Churches” is a code reference for the uppermost anatomy of the human mind. The Writings are called that because those who study it as Divine Truth, are taken up in their consciousness to the top of their mind, which is called heaven.
Now consider the next passage which will demonstrate that the code of correspondences in the Three Testaments is not an arbitrary linguistic device or convention. This is what one thinks when thinking about a code in a natural way. Computers are very fast in being able to break such codes. But the code of correspondences is not a linguistic code but a reality code, if I may call it that. Correspondences are laws of creation and existence. This idea is related to what the New Testament reveals about how the universe was created, namely, by Divine Truth:
That God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent through the wisdom of His love is meant by the words in John:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the world was made by Him. And the Word was made flesh (John 1:1, 3-4, 10, 14);
"the Word" here meaning the Divine truth, or, what amounts to the same thing, the Divine wisdom; and for this reason it is called "life" and "light," "life" and "light" being nothing else than wisdom. (TCR 50)
[2] In heaven Divine Truth has all power, and apart from it there 1a11 is no power whatever. From the Divine Truth all angels are called powers, and are powers to the extent that they are receptions or receptacles of it. By means of it, they prevail over the hells and over all that oppose them. A thousand enemies there cannot endure a single ray of the light of heaven which is Divine Truth. Since angels are angels from their reception of Divine Truth, it follows that the entire heaven is from no other source, for heaven consists of angels.
[3] That there is such power latent in Divine Truth is incredible to those who have no other idea of truth than that it is thought or speech, which have no power in themselves except as others do them from obedience. But Divine Truth has power in itself, and such power that, by means of it, heaven was created and the world with all things therein. That there is such power latent in Divine Truth may be illustrated by two comparisons, namely, by the power of truth and good in man, and by the power of light and heat from the sun in the world. (HH 137)
One of the most impressive scientific revelations in the Writings, at least to me, is the fact that truth is a substance streaming out of the spiritual Sun, and corresponding to it, is the sunlight streaming out of every sun in a galaxy. Light and heat from the natural sun are material in the form of physical particles and wave energies. This corresponds exactly to light and heat streaming out of the spiritual Sun, and these are not material in form but substantive. They are substances. Light from the spiritual Sun is a spiritual substance while the heat that is within it, is a celestial substance. The spiritual substance activates our understanding where it is experienced as truths we are conscious of. When we talk about truths in a natural way, we think about the logical condition of statements, and surely these are not like matter or substance.
But thinking more rationally, and scientifically, we can know that truth is a substance that produces logic and rationality as phenomena. It is like electricity that streams into the thin wires of a light bulb and sets them aglow with light from the heat inside. It is the electricity streaming into the wire that makes it white hot. The light streaming out is therefore an effect or phenomenon produced by the electricity being absorbed into the material of the tungsten wires. The absorption of energy in the form of electricity, causes the atomic particles of the wires to move faster, which causes particles and waves of energy to flow from the wires across the glass bulb into the surrounding air, and these then carry the light to the eye.
A similar corresponding sequence of tiny events take place when spiritual light is absorbed into the receptor organ called the understanding, so that the end result of the process is the phenomenon of understanding or conscious awareness. Truth substance activates the cognitive organs of the mind so that it produces thinking operations governed by a rational syntax. So the action of correspondences is what creates effects in the natural world by means of causes in the spiritual world. This is not an arbitrary code but the genetic code of reality itself. This is the code of the Threefold Word is written in, and no other human work has this unique Divine and infinite property. This is why it is said that the universe was created by means of the Word. This is Divine Truth within which is Divine Love that activates it.
Now consider the demonstrable power of correspondences. Quoting from the Writings:
Third Memorable Relation
The next day an angel came to me from another society and said, "We have heard in our society that on account of your meditations about the creation of the universe you were summoned to a society near ours, and there told things about creation which the society then assented to, and have since remembered with pleasure. I will now show you how all kinds of animals and vegetables were produced by God."
He led me away to a broad green field and said, "Look around." And I looked around, and saw birds of most beautiful colors, some flying, some perched upon the trees, and some scattered over the field plucking little leaves from roses. Among the birds were doves and swans. After these had disappeared from my sight I saw not far from me flocks of sheep with lambs, and of kids and she-goats; and round about these flocks I saw herds of cattle, young and old, also of camels and mules, and in a kind of grove, deer with high horns, and also unicorns.
When I had beheld these things the angel said, "Turn your face towards the east." And I saw a garden containing fruit trees, as orange trees, lemon trees, olive trees, vines, fig-trees, pomegranates, and also shrubs bearing berries.
The angel then said, "Look now towards the south." And I saw fields of various kinds of grain, as wheat, millet, barley, and beans, and round about them flower beds containing roses of beautifully varied colors; but toward the north I saw thick groves of chestnut trees, palms, lindens, plane trees, and other trees with rich foliage.
[2] When I had seen these things the angel said, "All these things that you have seen are correspondences of affections of the love of the angels who are near." And he told me to what affection each particular thing corresponded; and moreover, that not these only, but also all other things that presented themselves to their sight were correspondences, as houses, the articles of furniture in them, the tables and food, the clothing, and even the gold and silver coins, as also the diamonds and other precious stones with which wives and virgins in the heavens are adorned. "From all these things," he said, "the character of every person in respect to love and wisdom is perceived by us. The things in our houses that are of use remain there permanently; while to the sight of those who wander from one society to another these things change as their associations change.
[3] These things have been shown to enable you to see, in a special example, the entire creation. For God is love itself and wisdom itself; the affections of His love are infinite, and the perceptions of His wisdom are infinite; and of these each thing and all things that appear on earth are correspondences. This is the origin of birds and beasts, forest trees, fruit trees, crops and harvests, herbs and grasses. For God is not extended, and yet He is present throughout all extension, thus throughout the universe from its firsts to its lasts; and He being thus omnipresent, there are these correspondences of the affections of His love and wisdom in the whole natural world; while in our world, which is called the spiritual world, there are like correspondences with those who are receiving affections and perceptions from God.
The difference is that in our world such things are created by God from moment to moment in accordance with the affections of the angels. In your world they were created in like manner in the beginning; but it was provided that they should be renewed unceasingly by the propagation of one from another, and creation be thus continued.
[4] In our world creation is from moment to moment, and in yours continued by propagation, because the atmospheres and earths of our world are spiritual, and the atmospheres and earths of your world natural; and natural things were created to clothe spiritual things as skin clothes the bodies of men and animals, as outer and inner barks clothe the trunks and branches of trees, the several membranes clothe the brain, tunics the nerves, and the inner coats their fibers, and so on. This is why all things in your world are constant, and are renewed constantly from year to year."
To this the angel added, "Go and tell the inhabitants of your world what you have seen and heard, for hitherto they have been in complete ignorance about the spiritual world; and without some knowledge about it no one can know, nor even guess, that in our world creation is a continuous process, and that it was the same in yours while the universe was being created by God."
[5] After this we talked about various matters; and at length about hell, that no such things are seen there as are seen in heaven, but only their opposites; since the affections of the love of those there, which are lusts of evil, are opposites of the affections of love in which angels of heaven are. Thus with those in hell, and in general in their deserts, there are seen birds of night, such as bats and owls; also wolves, panthers, tigers, and rats and mice; also venomous serpents of every kind, dragons and crocodiles; and (where there is any herbage) brambles, nettles, thorns, and thistles, and some poisonous plants grow: and at times these disappear, and then nothing is seen but heaps of stones, and bogs in which frogs croak. All of these things are correspondences; but as has been said, they are correspondences of the affections of the love of those in hell, which affections are lusts of evil. Notwithstanding these things are not created there by God; nor were they created by Him in the natural world, where like things exist. For all things that God has created and does create were and are good; while such things on the earth sprang up along with hell, and hell originated in men, who by turning away from God became after death satans and devils. But as these terrible things began to be painful to our ears, we turned our thoughts from them and recalled to mind what we had seen in heaven. (TCR 78)
This remarkable report by Swedenborg gives us a number of illuminating facts from True Science. The angels are the people who inhabit the highest portion of their mind, which as often discussed above, is called “heaven” by the Lord in the Threefold Word. When we have attained that level of thinking and feeling, our consciousness and understanding are filled with nothing but knowledge of True Science. This information is instantaneously present in their conscious understanding whenever it is desired or needed. They do not have to read, study and memorize, thus do not make mistakes of perception or reporting. What Swedenborg records in the quote above about what the angels said, may be taken as having been said from the Lord because angels only think and speak from affections that inflow from the Lord’s Own Proprium and are adapted uniquely to each angel. Hence it is that angels talk as we do, not knowing in advance what another will say, so that social occasions are maintained in their integrity in all heavenly societies.
Further, what has been written in the Writings must follow and complete the sequence of coded meanings started in the Old Testament, continued in the New Testament, and completed in the Writings. The threefold Word has an unbroken inner sense in its coded sequence, word by word, phrase by phrase, verse by verse, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter, book by book, and so on, since the Threefold Word in its entirety makes one complete perfect representation of the in finite variations of Divine Truth. Every human being – soul, mind, body -- may be taken as a unique variation of Divine Truth, and human beings can be produced endlessly since the variations of Divine Truth are endless or infinite. This indeed is the Lord’s purpose for creation – an endless production of immortal human beings whose consciousness and life can rise to the top of their mind called heaven, where they live in conjugial happiness that increases daily to eternity. This purpose is what Divine Love is.
Let us summarize some of the main points in the passage quoted above:
(1) Swedenborg participated in an experiment in the spiritual world. He was the subject-observer or witness, and an angel was the experimenter. The demonstration consisted of showing the power and mechanism of correspondences so that Swedenborg could report them from experience (“These things have been shown to enable you to see, in a special example, the entire creation ...”).
(2) The angel produced different effects in different directions around Swedenborg. Around him he saw a green field, flowers, colorful birds, and useful domestic animals. Told to look towards the east, he saw a garden with fruit trees. Looking to the south, he saw various kinds of grain, thick groves of trees with rich foliage.
(3) These effects were produced at will by means of correspondences, well known to angels. General effects are produced by the general disposition or “the character of every person in respect to love and wisdom.” Particular effects are produced by each particular affection of an angel who is near, as for instance the detailed architectural structure of a house or adornment jewelry.
(4) Visitors in a heavenly society see similar things to the inhabitants if they are in similar disposition. Houses, cities, etc. remain in permanent place to the extent that the inhabitants there retain the same general disposition of character. Daily changes, or increases, in their love and wisdom, are marked by corresponding changes in the details of the things already in permanence, so that a wall may change its appearance, a new jewelry piece may appear on the earlobe of an angel wife, or a new type of fruit tree may appear outside the window. Heaven is a state of mind in which we are given the power to produce these natural-spiritual appearances by means of our affections and cognitions.
[ A side note: Is this not truly amazing – and I for one, am looking forward to such a state. I’ve got to make sure I stay on course with my rational spirituality! My wife is the essential component in my not getting lost! Even if I possess the enlightenment of heaven, I cannot stay the course without her – so I found out.]
(5) The origin of all correspondences is God’s love and wisdom (“the affections of His love are infinite, and the perceptions of His wisdom are infinite; and of these each thing and all things that appear on earth are correspondences”. Obviously, this is the reason that the Threefold Word is written in correspondences since the Word is God Himself speaking to humanity. Everything that God says in speaking to us is in correspondences. Why? Because when we read His Word in a printed book, what is it but a natural object in which is contained holy spiritual things. A Bible verse rendered in some natural language like Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, is a natural object and all natural objects are created by correspondences. But a sentence in the Threefold Word contains encoded heavenly secrets, while other objects do not. Such is the unique character of the Threefold Word. It would not be able to serve its function were it not Divine. This function is to keep open the life-line connection between God and the human race.
(6) Correspondences produce effects by discrete degrees and all created things are created into three discrete degrees of structure. This principle is called “from firsts to lasts,” which indicates that God operates the universe by a successive sequence of mechanisms operating together in simultaneous order, which is some particular object and function in existence.
(7) The same mechanism of correspondences that produces natural effects from spiritual causes, operates with spirits, angels, and devils, in producing environmental appearances. The world we are in, when cut off from the physical world, is a mental world called the spiritual world. The memories and knowledges we bring with us from earth fills the lower portion of our mind. As we lose the physical body, our consciousness in the eternal spirit-body must either ascent to the higher spiritual-rational portion of our mind, or else descend to the lower natural portion. Which we do depends on the affections and cognitions we brought with us in the natural mind. These affections or mental states draw us near others with similar mental states and together we make a spiritual society which consists of cities and lands instantiated in accordance with the affections and cognitions of those present with each other.
(8) What’s important therefore for consciousness raising to heaven, is not the knowledge of correspondences but the acquisition of affections and cognitions that project a heavenly sphere or existence. The projection, production, or instantiation of our external environment in the spiritual world – whether heaven or hell – is achieved not by our knowledge of correspondences but by the very laws of correspondences, whether we know them or not.
(9) Whatever first comes into existence in the natural world is by means of correspondences from the love and wisdom of the Lord, but afterwards, it is reproduced by means of new mechanisms such as geological formations or reproduction of species by new births. These new mechanisms are produced by different spiritual affections and cognitions which the angels have.
(10) The angel knew about our ignorance of correspondences and tells Swedenborg to make the facts known (“Go and tell the inhabitants of your world what you have seen and heard”).
With this introduction, consider a set of facts about correspondences and the Threefold Word:
(a) The Threefold Word, composed of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings, was written by dozens of authors over nearly three millennia or thirty centuries.
(b) Each author wrote as-of self a record of what they saw and heard. Unbeknownst to them however, every sentence they wrote down has a double meaning, one literal, the other inner and spiritual.
(c) The inner spiritual meaning of every sentence of the Threefold Word can be extracted from the literal meaning by applying a special translation code to it. This code is called the code of correspondences and is described fully in the Writings.
(d) Swedenborg learned the code from his special observations of the spiritual world through dual consciousness from age 57 to his passing on at 84 (1688-1772). He observed repeatedly that the thoughts and feelings of those who are there, are projected outward by the laws of correspondences. For instance, evil loves and false ideas project an outward appearance of darkness, caves, marshy lakes, noxious animals and stenches. Good loves and true ideas project light, gardens, palaces, friendly animals, and wonderful fragrances. Hence it is that people with good love who pass on are able to find and live in a heavenly environment, while people with evil loves find a hellish place to dwell in. The same correspondences that exist between the mind and the environment in the spiritual world, also govern the relation between the literal meaning of the Threefold Word and its inner spiritual meaning. Correspondences are therefore universal, governing all things between the natural and the spiritual worlds.
(e) Even though the Threefold Word is written in a code, every historical or descriptive detail mentioned is accurate. In other words the Threefold Word is not poetic symbolism but accurate history and science. Despite this, it has a hidden code and an entirely new meaning through that code. This inner meaning was not known to the writers. Correspondences are not symbolic interpretations. Correspondences are scientific principles of creation that govern all natural phenomena by means of spiritual phenomena. They are objective, not subjective or interpretive. They give knowledge of the causes of natural phenomena.
So now the logical question arises: How can you explain that the Threefold Word is written entirely in a hidden code of correspondences when none of the authors of the Old and New Testaments knew anything about correspondences?
If this is not proof, what is? What can be more certain to the rational mind? If this doesn’t impress you it’s because you are thinking only about sensuous consciousness of God, when yet it is rational consciousness of the Lord that elevates our consciousness all the way to heaven.
Furthermore, Swedenborg who knew about correspondences, illustrated their use with the Old and New Testaments. He was not conscious of the fact that he was also writing in correspondences. He was just writing down his analyses of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the travels and interviews he conducted in the spiritual world. And yet, because the Writings are the Word, the sentences Swedenborg wrote down are also in a code of correspondences, even if he did not himself try to write in a code. To what extent he was aware that what he wrote spontaneously came out in a code, I do not know, but it’s not possible for me to think that Swedenborg did not know that the Word of the Second Coming had an internal sense just as the first Two Testaments. The fact that he never mentions it indicates that this is something the Lord reveals to each individual (see the discussion on profanation in the previous section). There are many places in the Writings where Swedenborg announces that he’s going to reveal something later in the text, “by the Lord’s mercy.” But sometimes he writes that he is not allowed to reveal more things about some particular subject. Why wouldn’t he? The reason is undoubtedly as explained in relation to profanation.
And furthermore, there is the teaching in several places of the text that the degree of interiorness of truth understood in the Writings, is proportional to one’s progress in regeneration. This too indicates that the Lord is in immediate charge of the degree of truth that we can derive from the literal of the Threefold Word. In the 12-volume Arcana Coelestia, we are given a phrase by phrase and verse by verse analysis of all of Genesis and Exodus. The purpose is to show the existence of an underlying spiritual meaning that can be accessed by knowledge of correspondences. Just a few of the thousands of instances may be cited:
And there was given unto them power as the scorpions of the earth have power, signifies their ability to persuade, and its effect and might. This is evident from the signification of a "scorpion," as being an infatuating and suffocating persuasiveness (of which presently); and from the signification of "power," as being might and effect, here the might of the sensual man from his persuasiveness, and the effect which is infatuating and suffocating. (AC 544)
The "blood" because it signified charity, signified what is holy; and the "flesh" because it signified man's will, signified what is profane. And because these things are separate, being contrary, they were forbidden to eat blood; for by eating flesh with the blood was then represented in heaven profanation, or the mingling of what is sacred with what is profane; and this representation in heaven could not then but strike the angels with horror; for at that time all things existing with the man of the church were turned, among the angels, into corresponding spiritual representations, in accordance with the signification of the things in the internal sense. (AC 1001)
That the "mountains of Ararat" signify light [lumen] is evident from the signification of a "mountain" as being the good of love and charity (n. 795); and from the signification of "Ararat" as being light, and indeed the light of the regenerate. (AC 854)
In the exposition of the inner coded meaning of the Old and New Testaments, the Writings frequently employ a basic rational formula that can be rendered;
“A” signifies B,
where A=a word or phrase in the original text of the Old and New Testaments that refers to natural things
and B=a word or phrase describing the inner spiritual meaning of A, derived by applying the code of correspondences.
Thus, in the quoted passages above, we have:
"scorpion" = an infatuating and suffocating persuasiveness
“power” = the might of the sensual man from his persuasiveness
“blood” = charity and what is holy
“flesh” = the will
“eating flesh with blood” = mingling of what is sacred with what is profane
"mountain" = the good of love and charity
"mountains of Ararat" = light [lumen]
From this repeatedly used formulaic pattern, readers of the Writings first form the impression that they are learning to decipher the Divine code of correspondences. And of course this is true – but only at the natural level of thinking. Readers of the Writings can memorize and apply correspondences to art, poetry, linguistics, medicine, education, etc., but this is as far as it goes. The understanding of correspondences remains natural and formulaic, and has not yet matured to the level of operation that is both rational and spiritual. The Writings say that unless the existence of this natural-rational is fully appreciated, all further progress in rational spirituality is arrested. The stalling of one’s spiritual development occurs because we take the literal meaning of correspondences to be the same as the spiritual meaning. This is a natural error and tendency that is discussed in the Writings, along with antidotes and methods of overcoming it. The Lord Himself as a Child underwent this tendency and believed that his natural-rational understanding of the Old Testament was “it,” until He received the inner call from His “internal Man” called Jehovah, whereby He informed Himself that the spiritual-rational meaning of the Old Testament words are to be revealed to His Mind from within. Since that moment, all of humanity must take the same course of internal and progressive revelation from within regarding the spiritual meaning of the Threefold Word.
Hence, after we memorize and comprehend the code of correspondences in a literal way, we must then apply this knowledge to our own states of mind – our moment to moment stream of thinking and feeling all day long. The contrast here is between a theoretical knowledge of correspondences and an applied understanding. Now the formula can be represented as follows:
“A” = B = C
C is the new factor in the equation when it matures. “A” is some text from the Threefold Word. B is the memorized database of correspondences extracted from the Threefold Word (theoretical knowledge of the Writings). C is the perception of the spiritual sense of “A.”
You will note that the spiritual meaning is a living perception available only when our understanding is ‘online’ or “tuned in” to the spiritual world and its “influx “of spiritual information. This perception of the spiritual influx is called “enlightenment” and is discussed in the Writings in many places. Without this enlightenment from the Lord, the spiritual meaning of the Threefold Word (“A”) cannot be understood. Even if we write down our perception of the spiritual sense (C), the spiritual meaning of that sentence cannot be recovered by reading it, which only yields the literal and natural description of the spiritual sense, but not the spiritual sense itself.
Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:
DE VERBO 21. No one can see the spiritual sense except from the doctrine of genuine truth; from this doctrine the spiritual sense can be seen, when there is some knowledge of correspondences. He who is in false doctrine cannot see anything of the spiritual sense. He draws out and applies the correspondences which he sees to the falsities of his doctrine; and thus he can still more falsify the Word. Wherefore the true spiritual sense of the Word is from the Lord alone. This is the reason why it is not permitted anyone in the natural world, nor in the spiritual world, to investigate the spiritual sense of the Word from the sense of its letter, unless he is wholly in the doctrine of Divine truth and in enlightenment from the Lord, wherefore from the doctrine of Divine truth confirmed from the sense of the letter of the Word, the spiritual sense can be seen, but doctrine can never first be seen from the spiritual sense. He thinks falsely who says with himself, I know many correspondences, I can know the true doctrine of the Divine Word, the spiritual sense will teach it to me. This cannot be done. But, as has been said, let him say with himself, I know the doctrine of Divine truth, now I can see the spiritual sense, provided I know correspondences. But still this must be in enlightenment from the Lord, because the spiritual sense is Divine truth itself in its light, and is meant by glory, and the sense of the letter by a cloud in passages in the Word where these are mentioned. (DE VERBO 21)
This passage asserts that the spiritual sense of the Threefold Word can be seen when four conditions are met simultaneously.
(1) First, reading the Writings and extracting genuine Doctrine from it, which is rationally understood and remembered. Genuine Doctrine must be confirmed again by the letter to prevent inventing one’s own heretical doctrines.
(2) Second, decoding the literal sense of some text in the Threefold Word by means of the laws of correspondences described in the Writings.
(3) Third, giving the decoded passage a context from a knowledge of Doctrine from the Writings, and applying the resultant understanding to one’s own mental states – the stream of our thinking and feeling operations all day long.
(4) Receiving enlightenment from the Lord which gives a direct and immediate perception of the spiritual sense.
Note the segment: “He thinks falsely who says with himself, I know many correspondences, I can know the true doctrine of the Divine Word, the spiritual sense will teach it to me. This cannot be done.” This informs us that it is not possible to perceive the spiritual meaning of a passage from a knowledge of correspondences and explanations of doctrine. I’ve seen some attempts by writers considered to be experts on Swedenborg, to discover the spiritual sense of passages from Earths in the Universe (EU), and the results I saw could not be taken seriously as they were wild speculations and led to false ideas and doctrines. This is why all the elements of Doctrine in our understanding must be confirmed by the literal sense when compared to various passages from the writings. This prevents the contrary direction of procedure whereby we try to discover the spiritual sense by reasoning with correspondences and false assumptions or doctrines.
Furthermore, once genuine Doctrine is in the understanding and memory, it is still powerless to give us a perception of the spiritual sense of a passage. We may read the precise descriptions in the Arcana Coelestia of “A” = B, as explained above, and use these descriptions of correspondences to try to get to the spiritual sense. But we are told that this is in vain. The spiritual sense is given neither in “A”, nor in B, but in C, which is the actual living ‘online’ perception in time of the spiritual influx that is its sense or meaning. This perception is given by the Lord only in connection with one’s regeneration struggles.
The person who receives enlightenment is one who refrains from evils because they are sins, and because they are against the Lord and are endeavors opposed to His Divine laws. In such a one and in no other the spiritual mind opens, and in the measure that it opens, in the same measure the light of heaven enters (all enlightenment in the Word being from the light of heaven). The reason is that the person then has a will for good. When this will is directed to that useful end [namely, to reading the Word], it produces in the intellect first an affection for truth, then a perception of truth, afterward with the help of rational sight, thought of truth, consequently a determination and conclusion; and as soon as this enters from the intellect into the memory, it enters also into the life and so remains.
This is the way all enlightenment in the Word proceeds, and likewise a person's reformation and regeneration. But first there must be in the memory concepts of both spiritual and natural things; for these concepts are the receptacles into which the Lord operates through the light of heaven. The fuller they are and the freer of falsities that have been affirmed, the more enlightened the perception and the surer the conclusion. (DE VERBO 12)
It’s important to realize that enlightenment is specific not general. One normally assumes that enlightenment is general and reflects a person’s spiritual status, achievement, and perception. But in the Writings, enlightenment is not of the person but of the particular perception. It is the “will for good” that produces enlightenment through “perception of truth,” by which is meant perception of spiritual truth, which is enlightenment. The will for good is always applied, not theoretical. When doctrine and correspondences are applied to a particular act of the will for good, then only is perception of spiritual truth given as enlightenment. Merely reading a literal description of Doctrine, correspondences, and the explication of the spiritual sense, do not give perception or enlightenment.
The method of lifelong progressive regeneration by temptations is often discussed in the Writings. As this regeneration progresses, the Lord enlightens the individual mind with higher and higher light, and from a natural understanding of correspondences we receive perception of the spiritual meaning of correspondences, and from a natural understanding of the Heavenly Doctrine we acquire a spiritual understanding of the Doctrine of the Church, the Doctrine of Life, the Doctrine of Charity, the Doctrine of Conjugial Love.
To see the main point again, consider the correspondences that are explicated in a passage quoted above:
And there was given unto them power as the scorpions of the earth have power, signifies their ability to persuade, and its effect and might. This is evident from the signification of a "scorpion," as being an infatuating and suffocating persuasiveness (of which presently); and from the signification of "power," as being might and effect, here the might of the sensual man from his persuasiveness, and the effect which is infatuating and suffocating. (AC 544)
You will notice that the “A” terms are physical things -- like “scorpion” and “power,” -- while the B terms are mental things -- like “suffocating persuasiveness” and “the might of the sensual man from his persuasiveness.” This shows that the Writings explicate the literal sense in terms of mental states. These mental states are referred to by means of words and phrases in a natural language. Clearly, these terms for mental states come from the dictionary of natural usage in a particular culture. Hence we have the B terms given here for scorpion – “suffocating persuasiveness” which is the language of psychology apart from the language of the Threefold Word. In other words, the Writings make use of the ordinary register of psychology to refer to mental states. This makes sense. Anyone familiar with culture and everyday psychological thinking can read the explication of the Word given in the Writings, and understand them. This is true regardless of their state of reformation and regeneration. This is why you can read about a summary of the Heavenly Doctrine and about correspondences in an encyclopedia article on Swedenborg.
It is common to point to the literal text of the Writings (“A”) and to say: “This is the Heavenly Doctrine. It is the spiritual sense of the Word.” This is natural because the Writings themselves introduce themselves as such at the very start of Arcana Coelestia:
1. [AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTORY NOTE] The Heavenly Arcana -- the matters in Sacred Scripture or the Word of the Lord that have been disclosed -- stand in explanatory sections entitled THE INTERNAL SENSE Of the Word.
A common formulaic sequence it follows is:
First Section: THE CHAPTER (text of the Old Testament)
Second Section: THE CONTENTS (an outline of the spiritual meaning to be given)
Third Section: THE INTERNAL SENSE” (explanations in detail based on the formula “A” = B)
Fourth Section: Experiences and Doctrinal materials (appended to each chapter)
The “A” = B formula is rendered in Arcana Coelestia as "expression A" in the literal sentence signifies "expression B” in the spiritual sense. Also: “A represents B” and “A corresponds to B.”
From these structural and literal indications it is normal to conclude that what we are reading in the “B” category is in fact the spiritual sense of the Old Testament passage. As for example, “scorpion” in the spiritual sense means “infatuating and suffocating persuasiveness.” We imagine that when we read “scorpion” in the Word, the angels with us get a perception of “infatuating and suffocating persuasiveness.” But upon further reflection we can see that this is not accurate. The expression “infatuating and suffocating persuasiveness” is a natural idea of a natural mental state. It is not a spiritual idea of either “scorpion” or of “persuasiveness.” It would be impossible for us to have any idea that is like an angel’s idea, but only a correspondences of an angel’s idea. This is repeated in many places in the Writings. And so when we read “scorpion” the angels do not perceive “persuasiveness” in the natural sense we know it, but they think of “persuasiveness” in the spiritual sense. And to this sense of “persuasiveness” we have access only by immediate enlightenment from the Lord. When we perceive the sense of “persuasiveness” in this spiritual sense, then we understand what the angels perceive, thus the spiritual sense.
When reading the Writings we must therefore relate to both the literal and the spiritual, but in different ways. We relate to the literal of the Writings when we struggle to understand it rationally. We are thereby building “vessels” in our mind that are suitable to receive later the perception of enlightenment. Having built up these vessels, we want to arrange them in a hierarchical and consistent series of linked principles. This is called taking up Doctrine in the understanding. This is a theoretical Doctrine or theoretical knowledge of the Heavenly Doctrine. With this theoretical Doctrine in our conscious understanding and memory, we can undergo reformation, which is the conscious and active rearrangement of our concepts and attitudes to fit the order of the theoretical Doctrine in our mind. When reformation is more or less completed, we begin our regeneration. Now for the first time we are going to be in a position of being enlightened by the Lord, to the extent that we follow the appropriate procedures specified in the Writings.
When the theoretical Doctrine is established in our mind, we can read the Writings with a new motivation called “the will for good.” This time we go to the next step, B = C, which was discussed above. The natural understanding of the mental state (B) that is contained in the physical object (“A”) (e.g., persuasiveness contained within “scorpion”), can now be turned into a spiritual understanding. In other words, to understand “persuasiveness” in a spiritual way, we must be given perception of it (C) by enlightenment.
Now you can see that the spiritual sense of the Old Testament that has been disclosed in Arcana Coelestia, has only been disclosed at the natural operational level, by necessity, since it has been disclosed in writing in a natural language. And if you can see this about the Old Testament, you can extend this to cover the Threefold Word. The Writings must also necessarily contain a spiritual sense that is visible only by perception given from enlightenment. Perception of the spiritual sense is the only way to see the spiritual sense, which cannot be given in the nomenclature of a natural language. This can only give natural meaning perceptions.
At first, it appears that Swedenborg is proposing that we read the Bible in a symbolic way so that we become aware of the spiritual message and how it applies to self. But this attitude we already possessed in phase 2 thinking and worshiping the Lord. Many intelligent readers and scholars of the Bible were able to write commentaries that presented new insights to other readers. Not all commentaries were truly insightful, but some were, because they were focusing on how to apply the spiritual message to one’s own living and behavior. But no matter how advanced we get in this deepening of the meaning and message in the verses (phase 2), we do not get to the beginning of the next phase (3). The idea of correspondences at level 3 thinking is scientific and particularistic, which means that they are seen as a mechanism by which the Lord produces natural phenomena and events. Consider the history and evolution of a planet – the Lord must be using determinative mechanisms to produce these very complex sequences, to compel the physical matter to organize itself in specific ways at specific times under specific conditions, which themselves are also similarly produced. Every natural event, object, or quality is an effect produced by the Lord by means of a spiritual-rational mechanism. This mechanism, along with many other Divine mechanisms, have been revealed as True Science in the Writings.
It’s important to realize that the notion of correspondences is different from “Platonic idealism” which was the idea that every form on earth was an imperfect rendition or model of the perfect thin in heaven. Thus, all roses on earth are imperfect copies of the perfect rose which exists in ideal reality. The idea of correspondences is very different. A rose is not produced as a model of a rose in heaven. A rose is produced by the quality of the affections of angels in heaven. A rose, a tree, an animal, a mountain, a planet – these physical objects exist as effects of spiritual causes in the spiritual world such as the mental states of angels. The laws of correspondences, from creation, are such that mental states produce physical objects. You can understand this better when you consider dreaming, and how this consists of producing images and apparently physical environments in the dream. These objects in the dream that you take for real, are produced by your mental states while dreaming. Similarly, the Lord produced the physical world by means of the rational laws of correspondences in His Mind. Similarly, the naturally looking environment of angels in heaven and devils in hell, is produced by the mental states of the inhabitants there.
“Correspondences” is a mechanism the Lord uses to create the dual universe and to maintain it in its created order. It is the genetic code of creation and maintenance of the universe. In other words, the Lord created a spiritual-rational genetic code that determines the laws of correspondence between spiritual and natural phenomena, qualities, objects, or events. A rose is a rose because its body and scent correspond to conjugial love in heaven, as testified by these observations Swedenborg made:
Then one of the seven wove a garland of roses, sprinkled it with spring water, and placed it on the boy's hat around the crown, saying, 'Receive the delights of intelligence. You should know that a hat stands for intelligence, and a garland from this garden for its delights.' The boy went off with this adornment, and was seen again at a distance looking like a dove in flight, but this time with a crest on his head. (CL 293)
Eliminate conjugial love from heaven and you eliminate roses from existence on earth. As the race on earth regenerates more and more in the ensuing centuries, people will see a corresponding change in the appearance of planet earth. The geographic environment in each location will reflect the virtues and qualities of the people living there, so that the forests, plains, and deserts will be transformed into paradises with harmonious vegetation, rock formation, and animal population. Future research in True Science will no doubt show what the specific correspondences are as they measure and correlate the race’s mental and geological changes.
Further, once you start deciphering the code of correspondences, you begin to notice that the code is presented in a rational series or developmental hierarchy. Pieces of text in the Old and New Testaments fit together chronologically, making up an inner series of ideas held together step by step by what comes next. These hierarchical series of meanings are for the mind what genetic code or DNA is for the physical body, hence they can be called the “genes of consciousness” (see this article:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing3.htm
You can see how astonishing this entire picture is when you consider that the pieces of the series in the inner sense are supplied by successive authors or prophets over many centuries merely by describing historical events and private visions they experienced.
There is no other scientific explanation possible except that the Threefold Word is Divine and has actually been written by God for humanity.
True Science has been evolving since the beginning under God’s careful tutelage. After the Fall which marked the end of the old celestial race and the beginning of the new spiritual split-brain race, science was the new method God provided for the human race to acquire rational spirituality, hence it had to be guided in its growth in the history of civilization. Prior to the Fall, the celestial people on earth were prepared for heaven by means of sensuous consciousness – direct perception into the spiritual world and direct communication with those there. But after the Fall preparation for heaven was by means of rational consciousness produced by means of reading and understanding the Threefold Word. The first growth of science was the development of taxonomic nomenclature by which the things in the natural environment were identified and classified. Then came the development of scientific theory which required a method of its own. The theories became materialistic so that God’s presence in natural phenomena was only acknowledged in the Preface, but God was not mentioned as part of the explanatory chain of causes. As a result, science went through several centuries in the materialist modality.
In the 18th century Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) began a new paradigm of science that may be called “scientific dualism.” He broke with tradition and put God back into the body of the book, not just in the Preface. No reputable scientist before him or since, has done what Swedenborg has done, namely, to include scientific revelations in his theory of how the universe was created and how it is being maintained in existence. It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of this new scientific paradigm, the paradigm of the future.
In my case, I have been a career scientist for the past 42 years and a professor of psychology at some of the top psychology departments in the world (e.g., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, McGill University Montreal, Laval University Quebec, University of Wisconsin Madison, and University of Hawaii Manoa). I maintain an official record of my publications, some of which were in the top ranked scientific journals in my field (see list here: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonpublish.html ). I mention these things here to show that other legitimate scientists have adopted a way of thinking that is within the paradigm of scientific dualism that Swedenborg started (see my article on religious behaviorism):
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/relbehaviorism.html
The scientific method is universally taught today throughout the planet. The version of this method practiced today is explicitly biased against absolute truth. This is ironic given that science ideally searches for truth. The version of scientific method practiced today is actually against truth for it denies that there is absolute truth. This phase 1 level of thinking can clearly be seen as incorrect when viewed from phase 2 and 3. At phase 2 we are sufficiently rational to understand and accept dualism. Dualism is from the Threefold Word, and all religions are based on the dualism between God and creation, God being absolute, while created things are temporary. In phase 2 thinking we can also see from the Word that truth is from God and therefore it is absolute. In phase 3 thinking we can see that truth is part of science, and therefore science is part of God. The science of God is the knowledge that God has revealed to humanity. God created the universe by science, and runs it by science through rational laws of discrete correspondences. God is therefore the True Scientist and the Threefold Word is therefore True Science containing the scientific revelations God has made about Himself, creation, existence, correspondences, discrete degrees, resuscitation, operation of the laws of Divine Providence and Permissions, immortality, life in the afterlife, the anatomy of the mind, the history and development of the human race, and other scientific matters of deep concern to our future and our control of the social and physical environment.
Hence it is that the version of the scientific method practiced today is holding back the development of the rational human mind. The highest form of the natural-rational mind operates by means of dualist concepts and abstract explanations of the world. These are the higher-order natural cognitions that can be compatible with spiritual truths. These spiritual truths inflow from within, from heaven into the spiritual mind, and thence into the conscious natural mind. The elevation of the human mind into rational spirituality depends on a version of the scientific method that is compatible with spiritual-rational truths from revelation. This is why a new scientific method has been emerging through those who are able to see the Writings as a Divine scientific revelation of dualism.
The current atheistic and monist version of the scientific method is inherently biased against absolute truth such as is implied in the use of the phrase “True Science” and “Divine scientific revelation.” I was trained in the scientific method as a graduate student at McGill University by Donald Hebb, a man consistently voted in the top ranking 10 psychologists of the century. He was particularly well known for his attempt to describe the operations of the mind through neurophysiological operations of the brain. He often told us that we must strive to create good theories in psychology. A good theory in science lasts about ten years, and is replaced by a better one. In this way the march of science continues to evolve through better and better theories, endlessly carried on. Good scientific theories must therefore contain the capacity to be disproved by new data. While they last, they spurn on experimentation and data gathering in particular directions. The theory is useful in generating research.
The idea of “Divine scientific revelations of absolute truth” would not be considered a good theory because it leads to no data or research – so goes the politically correct argument. But as I pointed out above, the existence of the dual world, of the spiritual Sun, of the afterlife, of resuscitation, of heaven and hell, of correspondences, of the Divinity of the Threefold Word – these scientific revelations are verifiable by every scientist who passes on, and even by non-scientists. If there were a conference of scientists in a hotel at night in some city, and they were divided in opinion as to the existence of sunrise, the debate can only last a few hours, for soon each one of them, regardless of opinion, can verify that there is sunrise at dawn. And they continue to repeat their observations as long as they find it of interest. Swedenborg was an eyewitness reporter of observations that every individual gets to verify. In some cases the verification process must await a few decades, and in other cases, much less time than that.
The fact that the verification process must be postponed is no valid argument against the integrity of the process of verification. All experiments depend on replication of appropriate and significant conditions in order to obtain the scientific verification desired. To replicate these conditions takes some time. The majority of conditions can be replicated with technical expertise in a matter of days, weeks, or months. Some take years of preparation and observation before the right conditions are attained. In the case of verification of resuscitation after the death of the physical body, the preparation period may be long or short, depending on the time of death. Verification of geological and astronomical calculations and predictions may take decades and even centuries.
One of the trigger points of resistance to dualism in science is the general persuasion of traditionally trained scientists that it is against the ethics of science to introduce concepts and explanations that are not sensory bound. Abstraction that is removed from the sensory is allowed in science, but it must be shown how it is emergent from the sensory, usually by means of some predicted measurement under specified enabling conditions – or else it is labeled as “pseudo-science” which means “fake.” Nevertheless, an idea that is abstracted from the sensory order remains in the sensory order no matter how complex the abstraction is made to be. In the Writings of Swedenborg this is discussed as the discrete separation between the natural and the spiritual order. A very important contrast is made in True Science between the sensory order of the rational called the “natural-rational” order on the one hand, and on the other, the spiritual order of the rational called the “spiritual-rational.”
These two orders are in correspondence of discrete degrees, which means that nothing of one element can penetrate the other element. They are created separate forever. But also, they are created tied to each other forever. And the laws of interaction between them is a one-to-one, point-by-point mapping of phenomena in the two orders. The natural order imposes itself upon all existing things that are constructed of material elements in time and space. The spiritual order imposes itself upon all existing things that are constructed of substances from the spiritual Sun, and thus are not part of the fabric of physical time and space. One is called the natural world and the other, the spiritual world. The universe is therefore made of dual worlds, natural and spiritual, tied to each other by the laws of correspondences of discrete degrees.
Swedenborg’s new paradigm of science introduces scientific theories that explain how natural phenomena are effects produced by spiritual phenomena. The spiritual phenomena are not part of the physical sensory order and therefore the spiritual order must be accessed some other way. The source of all information about spiritual phenomena, the spiritual order, or the spiritual world, is scientific revelation from the Threefold Word. As a scientist I can state without violating ethics or truth, that the universe was created by God who has revealed Himself to the human race in many ways. The people of the earlier generations and civilizations had a sensuous consciousness of God, the spiritual world, and its phenomena. They were citizens of a dual world, one temporary, the other eternal, and they passed on from one to the other without anxiety or fear, or death, but with full consciousness. The subsequent generations evolved into a new form that cut off sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world.
The new human race was born in complete darkness as to sensory perception of anything but the physical world. Now a new method had to be evolved by God in order to prepare earthlings for heavenly life. Sensuous consciousness was no longer possible. Every individual of the new race had to acquire a rational consciousness of the spiritual world and of God. This was done by means of scientific revelations that elevated the human mind on this earth from a sensuous intellect to a rational intellect. God created a new heaven which would fit this new human mentality. It may be called rational spirituality and its systematized knowledge may be called True Science. The scientific revelations God has given for the development of rational spirituality were given in collections of writings called The Threefold Word. Its major groupings are known as the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Third Testament (the Writings of Swedenborg).
It has not been widely acknowledged that the Threefold Word contain scientific revelations. Resistance comes from the concern that if the Writings are identified as a science book, it will be discarded now or later, just as any science book is, in the course of science’s march to the future. But this concern falls to the wayside once it is seen that True Science and science are constitutional parts of each other. Materialist science was a monism based on the physical sensory order. This science was guided by God into rational abstractions that were capable of reflecting or representing the spiritual order. This type of rational order or mental operation, is called in the Writings the “natural-rational” order or mind. The natural-rational concepts and the syntax of reasoning with them, belongs to the natural mind and is set in a natural order. Nevertheless, it is capable of representing spiritual concepts and syntax of reasoning. This belongs to the spiritual mind and is set in the order of the spiritual world. These higher-order discrete concepts are called “spiritual-rational.”
Here then lies the basis of scientific dualism, namely the correspondential interaction between natural-rational concepts and reasoning, on the other hand, and on the other, spiritual-rational concepts and reasoning. The Threefold Word is a source of information about the relation between these two orders. As a scientist I can say that I have available to me a database of information about spiritual phenomena that I can relate to the database of information about natural phenomena. Knowledge of the details of this interaction allows me and others to produce new scientific theories that are dualist.
A new age in science is now at hand. True Science connected to science is now a new paradigm that actually exists and has already began to develop and evolve. True Science is actually within science, though this was not know until the Writings revealed the structure. Until now, science appeared on the surface to be materialistic and monistic and atheistic. But this is an outward appearance, and illusion of the actuality. True Science was always within science because that’s the only life science has. There is no rationality apart from True Science, and whatever rationality science achieved, it was due to the direct and immediate cause of True Science within. God guided and developed science to where it is now through True Science concepts hidden within every genuine science idea. Swedenborg lauded those scientists whose goal was the accurate capture of true facts in the biological and physical sciences, who did not put their pet theories ahead of the facts. This is the kind of genuine science that was guided within by True Science.
The hidden presence of True Science in the minds of scientists since Aristotle and before, suddenly bursts open in the conscious awareness of Emanuel Swedenborg. He had a rational consciousness that allowed him to work within the dualist paradigm. He loved the Bible and knew it thoroughly from his own studies and reflections. He considered the Bible the Word of God, the Divine Truth. He saw that it was Divine Truth adapted to the human intellect that was responsible for human rationality, and therefore science. He therefore took the information in the Bible as scientific information about God, heaven, hell, the spiritual world, the Divine Human Person, revelation, creation, regeneration, resuscitation, eternal life, and so on. He realized that it was worse than useless for people to speculate on their own as to what the spiritual was, or to rely on their sensations or feelings. He took the Bible seriously as a source of scientific revelation. He took whatever information he could decipher from the Bible and incorporated them in his scientific theories in physics, astronomy, anatomy, and psychology.
The future ahead is bright because the Writings have now explicitly unveiled the content of spiritual-rational concepts of True Science. From now on both science will be the external framework while True Science will be the inner framework. Science is the sensuous and natural-rational component, while True Science is the spiritual-rational component. True Science is on top and governs science at the bottom. The spiritual-rational order we know from scientific revelations, is to be hooked up to the natural-rational order we know from sensory observation and abstraction. Everything in science that is not compatible with True Science is therefore to be discarded. This filtering process will take some time no doubt but the process has been created and is now evolving.
A person's internal resides in heaven, thus where the Lord is (Swedenborg, AC 10505)
10. Particularism: The Third Testament State (Latin Word)
The third phase of human mental growth is the actual goal of it all. The previous two phases are only means of getting to the highest level of thinking and feeling, which is called the inmost "church" in our mind, the Crown of human consciousness, the highest phase of mental development. This third floor in the house of the mind is built upon True Science in our mind. This refers to the scientific revelations of the Second Coming, an historical event that ended in June 1770, when the Third Testament was completed by Swedenborg. He records the event as follows:
TCR 851. I foresee that many readers of the accounts of experiences which come at the end of the chapters will think that they are fictions of the imagination. But I declare in truth that they are no fictions, but things I have truly seen and heard; and not things seen and heard in some state of mental somnolence, but in full wakefulness. For it has pleased the Lord to show Himself to me, and to send me to teach the doctrines of His new church, which is meant by the New Jerusalem in Revelation. For this purpose He opened the interiors of my mind or spirit, thus allowing me to be with angels in the spiritual world and at the same time with people in the natural world; and this has continued now for twenty-seven years.
Would anyone in the Christian world have known anything about heaven and hell if it had not been the Lord's pleasure to open the sight of someone's spirit, and show and teach him? (TCR 851)
TCR 291. NOTE: After the completion of this book, the Lord called together His twelve disciples, who had followed Him in the world; and a day later He sent them all forth throughout the spiritual world to preach the Gospel, that the Lord God Jesus Christ is king, and His kingdom shall be for ever and ever, as foretold by Daniel (7:13, 14) and in Revelation (11:15):
Blessed are they who come to the wedding supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9).
This happened on the nineteenth of June in the year 1770. This was meant by the Lord's saying:
He will send his angels, and they will gather together His chosen people from the bounds of the heavens on one side as far as the bounds of the heavens on the other. (Matt. 24:31)
(TCR 791)
Clearly then, the evolutionary event called “The Second Coming” is not a Coming in Person, as in the First Coming or Incarnation, but a Coming of the Divine Rational in a published work that all can read, and from which they can fill their mind with Divine Truth. The Writings of Swedenborg constitute the Third Testament of the Threefold Word that was given to humanity so that all people may know the Divine Rational Mind and how God creates and manages the universe. Think of it: How else can this knowledge come to us? All knowledge about God must come from God. How is God going to transmit that knowledge to us? There are two methods that God created for this purpose: sensuous and rational. Sensuous consciousness of God is a direct opening of the eyes and senses to be in contact and in communication with God.
This sensuous appearance or Epiphany took place in two ways. Prior to the Incarnation, God appeared to people through an angel whose mind and body was temporarily taken over by God’s Spirit or Mind, so that the angel speaking and appearing thought of himself as God. But as soon as the apparition ended, the angel was back in his own mind. But after the Incarnation, God could appear in His Own Divine Natural Body that He acquired on this earth through the body of a virgin woman, and then glorified by making the human one with the Divine. A new creation of God then came into being. He was now to be called the Divine Human, and in His Divine Natural, God could appear to people’s mind. Today for instance, we have a historical view on God as the Divine Human, having been born on this earth about two thousand years ago. We can picture Him in this Divine Body and we can address Him, acknowledge Him, know what He actually looks like. Our sensuous consciousness of God is grounded therefore in this historical and scientific event.
We cannot see God in this Divine Natural with our physical eyes. But we can see Him with our spiritual eyes, that is, our rational understanding. For this reason it is not possible for God to appear once more in the natural universe for this would be going contrary to the trend which He is evolving. This trend is brought about by rational consciousness of Him. The angels can see God amidst the Spiritual Sun in His Divine Natural and so will we be able to see Him when we become angels, that is, when our consciousness reaches the highest portion of our created mind. Swedenborg, whose heavenly mind was opened by the Lord, was able to see God amidst the Spiritual Sun. But no one could see God prior to His Incarnation.
But sensuous consciousness of God on this earth ceased with the Ascension of the Lord to Heaven, followed by the giving of the Holy Spirit. This refers to the Lord’s Spirit for the Lord alone is Holy. The giving of the Holy Spirit was the beginning of the development of rational consciousness of God. This did not exist before. Rational consciousness is an ability that is much higher than sensuous consciousness. One is external and more distant, the other is internal and up close. God’s essence is Divine Truth within which is Divine Love. These two together define God’s Human Essence. God was always a Human, and in fact, the only genuine and true Human in whose image all human beings are created. Prior to Incarnation, God’s Human was called the Human Divine, but after Incarnation, it was called the Divine Human.
God’s First Coming to the human race was to give us a visible concept of Himself as a Divine Human. We can love what is visible to our mind, but we cannot love something infinite and invisible. It was necessary therefore for God to become visible to humanity for without this we cannot receive His love, and without this we cannot evolve. But visibility is only the first and external requirement for receiving God’s love in a full sense. The rest is the internal requirement, and this is that the Divine Rational can appear to us. This cannot occur in our natural mind but must occur in our spiritual mind. At the time of the Incarnation, God was able to appear to the external natural consciousness of humanity only. He could not appear at the same time to the internal or spiritual consciousness of humanity, for this required the opening of the spiritual mind. This opening could not occur except as-of self, which means that we had to have the sense that it is our own rational from which we can see God’s Divine Rational. It could not be forced upon us, like His physical Presence was forced upon the sensuous consciousness of His followers and detractors. The Divine Rational must be received by the self freely since it concerns our own ideas and affections, not something we can see outside in our environment. Such is the character of the Divine Rational.
When the time was ripe, and the human race had developed a rational consciousness from modern science, God could for the first time Appear to humanity in our rational mind. This was now the complete God, the complete revelation of Himself, since it was the Divine Rational within what we already knew to be the Divine Natural. God was now complete in the mind of the human race. For a human is not a human from the exterior body parts, but from the rational mind that lives within the external body parts. And so God was not complete in our mind when we knew Him from sensuous consciousness of His Divine Natural Body. But now we know Him as the Divine Rational that is within the Divine Natural. Now we can know Him full, and love Him fully, from which love we can progress in consciousness to eternity.
Now you can see that the Appearance of the Divine Rational had to be an appearance in the Writings of a man whose mind had been appropriately prepared by the Lord for this task. This was Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), son of a Swedish Lutheran Bishop, renowned scientist and engineer in service of the Swedish King, cosmopolitan traveler known in many European countries, and recognized by all as a genius of unparalleled quality, well versed and educated in all the sciences, philosophy, an history, and having an integrity, honesty, and sincerity capable of being raised to heaven, where he could describe as a scientist what he saw there. The Writings he authored and published constitute the Second Coming, the Appearance of the Divine Rational to the human race. Henceforth this Second Coming will occur in the mind of anyone who goes to the Writings, studies it as Divine Revelation and True Science, and loves it enough to make it the basis and guideline of one’s life.
This Second Coming cannot take place in Person since that would be offering a sensual proof of God's presence with us and this would be spiritually hurtful to the development of our rational or spiritual mind. It is the opening of the interior rational mind that constitutes the new evolutionary step accomplished by this Second Coming in the human rational mind. The Writings of Swedenborg are thus a creation independent of the personal mind of Swedenborg since these Writings were arranged by the Lord Who prepared Swedenborg's mind for it since his childhood, as was revealed to him later in adult life when at age 57, he assumed his period of performing his job as conscious revelator of the Second Coming through spiritual visions and experiences arranged and supervised by the Lord in their minutest details. The Writings of Swedenborg were seen by Swedenborg himself in the heavens where they are known as the Word rather than as Swedenborg's Writings. In heaven one is not know for one’s name or accomplishments on earth, not even Swedenborg or the prophets of old.
Swedenborg himself now in heaven, would not know that he was the author of the Word that he studies and loves in heaven. The copies of the Threefold Word in the heavens are in a celestial script and language so that nothing of the literal meaning we have on earth is visible there. Angels would not see names like “Abraham” or “Jerusalem,” nor words like dragon, tree, river, forty, ten, and so on. Instead they see what these earthly things symbolize in their spiritual sense according to the laws of correspondences. Neither would angels be able to see the name “Swedenborg” or “London” and words like ship or continent. And so there would be no clues to Swedenborg as an angel that the Third Testament was written by him. But while he was still in his dual state, prior to his passing on in 1772, Swedenborg was able to see the books he had written and recognize them as his own:
TCR 461. I was once carried away in spirit to the southern quarter of the spiritual world, and into a certain paradise there; and I saw that this paradise excelled all that I had before surveyed.
(...)
I replied, "You comprehend that I have spoken rightly from the general perception that man has from the influx of light from heaven when he hears any truth; but your failure to comprehend is from the self-perception that man has from the influx of light from the world. In wise men these two kinds of perception, internal and external, or spiritual and natural, make one. You also can make them one if you look to the Lord and put away evils."
Because they understood this, I plucked some twigs from a vine and handed them to them, saying, "Do you believe that this is of me, or of the Lord?"
They said that it was from me, but of the Lord. And lo, the twigs put forth grapes in their hands.
But as I withdrew I saw under a green olive tree around which a vine had entwined itself, a cedar table on which there was a book. I looked and lo, it was a book written by me, entitled Arcana Coelestia and I said that it was fully shown in that book that man is not life but an organ receptive of life; also that life cannot be created and when so created be in man, any more than light in the eye. (TCR 461)
The Threefold Word in the spiritual world shines with a very bright light and fills with wisdom all those who are given to see it. But not all can see it! Only those people can see it whose internal rational mind has been opened before passing into the spiritual world. Some people have this part of their mind opened unconsciously by the Lord. For example those who live a moral life according to their religious conscience, whatever it may be in culture, but are not instructed through the Writings, have their rational mind opened by the Lord unconsciously. They will not become aware of this internal change until they pass into the spiritual world. At that point they are consciously instructed in rational truths about the Lord and heaven, and they then enter into the same high rational level of consciousness as enjoyed by those whose rational was opened consciously as a result of being familiar with the Writings and living according to the rational truths in the Writings while in this world.
This demonstrates that there is no sectarianism (phase 1) or personalism (phase 2) possible in heaven (phase 3) since these earlier phases become dormant and are made non-functional. Heaven does not respect religion or person. These earthly things drop away as you mount in human consciousness. Only that matters in heaven which is part of the core individual, the inmost rational of every individual. This inmost rational is unique for each person and is made of our interactions of love and truth with the Lord. Those elements of love and truth constitute our core, not our past, our religion, our social and cultural identity, these being external personality traits and habits. In heaven our personality is laid to sleep and what lives, loves, and moves around there is our character, that is, our love and wisdom.
People in the future will acknowledge June 19, 1770 as the most significant date in the history of the human race. Incidentally, you might like to google
"June 19" Swedenborg
to see what people are saying about it today.
This date ushers the final phase of our creation. Since we are immortal, all people were ever born on one of the many earths in the universe, are now congregated in the spiritual world, and the human race continues to expand at an incredible rate. It has been revealed that new earths are being created by the Lord at an unfathomable rate, and that this increase will continue endlessly. Imagine how numerous the human race will be a few trillions millennia from now! The more numerous we are, the more perfect we grow. Unity out of diversity reaches to a higher perfection than unity out of limited numbers and homogeneity. Therefore the human race will continue not only to expand in numbers, but also in endless diversity, which makes the heavens more and more perfect as these diverse human beings pass into the spiritual world. Since the human race is united into one in the Lord’s Mind, He regards every individual who arrives in the spiritual world, and is capable of being elevated to heaven, and places them in a specific particular place within heaven, which is called the Grand Human (or Grand Man). Swedenborg was given the awesome sight of this Grand Human by being placed in a special temporary state by the Lord so that he may witness it and write about it.
Endless numbers of societies and cities are arranged geographically to make up this Grand Human Body map. It is like an infinite puzzle board of a human being assembled by God. Each region of this Grand Human spiritual geography is populated by societies assembled there due to their similarity in character that also reflect the properties of the human body in that region or part. Swedenborg would often describe his journeys in terms of which region of the Grand Human he was, e.g., the region of the heart, the region above the eyes in front, the region below the foot, etc. All the heavenly societies are arranged in the Grand Human and all the hells are outside the Grand Human. The hells are arranged in a form called the Grand Monster. These two spiritual geographic regions contain all of humanity that was born on some earth and passed into the spiritual world at the death of the physical body. And the accumulation continues, and will continue endlessly. This has now been revealed by the Lord in the True Science revelations of the Second Coming.
With the third phase of thinking and willing, our mental development on earth is completed and there is not an ensuing state, but a beginning in eternity as we are translated by the death event into that eternal state. Swedenborg's book Heaven and Hell gives amazing details of what he witnessed there in the spiritual journeyings he was given to experience by the Lord so that he might be able to author the Third Testament. Because the Second Coming is the opening of the interior spiritual-rational mind of the human race, the revelations that are given as the Writings of Swedenborg had to be suitably fashioned, as-of-self, in the mind of Swedenborg. The literal “Neo” Latin sentences he wrote were in a scientific style using the content and reasoning power of the external rational mind – not the interior spiritual mind. This literal meaning serves as the transition point between the Paul-phase consciousness and the Swedenborg-phase consciousness. When we begin to read the Writings we do so from the Paul-phase level of perspective, and therefore we need an external rational justification and explanation of the new Second Coming truths. The external rational arguments and doctrines in the literal of the Writings can be understood from the perspective of the Paul-phase mentality, and in this way, a conversion can take place from Paul to Swedenborg, from personalism to particularism. But afterwards we need to enter into the interior rational meaning of the Writings which do not appear in its external rational language called the literal meaning or plain sense.
We are to operationalize and actualize the interior rational mentality of particularism. It is this interior level of consciousness that is properly the celestial mentality possessed by all inhabitants of heaven. This is the level of thinking and willing that we must have in order to enter there and be able to thrive to eternity. The interior rational of the human mind is the location where the Lord implants the interior truths through which we are enabled to have unique, particular, and genuine interactions with God. The more these truths externalize to the lower functions of the mind, the less we are able to be present with the Lord. The sensual truths of the Old Testament and the external rational truths of the New Testament are merely the intermediate steps we take in our journey to the Lord. The final step of closing the distance and achieving conjunction with the Lord is entirely dependent on the interior rational truths contained in the Third Testament.
For an explanation on the methods for extracting the interior meaning of the Writings, see this article on De Hemelsche Leer,
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dhl.html
And Volume 2 of A Man of the Field available here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
The interior rational state of mind and its type of reasoning and evaluating is the truly human mind. The other two levels below itself are potentially human, but not fully so when considered on their own. Sectarianism is not rational at all and is plagued by the illusions and delusions of appearances found in the language of literalism and historicism. Sectarianism, which is always based on fundamentalist dogmas justified by the literal of Sacred Scripture, darkens the rational mind, closing it. The second and third floors remain shut. There is no salvation possible. Eternal life on the first floor of the human mind is called hell. Eternal life on the third floor of the mind, is called heaven. Heaven and hell are not geographic locations but states of the human mind. Every human mind contains both heaven and hell, and when one is operational the other is shut tight. Those who inhabit the hells appear as monsters, and are hardly human inasmuch as their heavenly traits are shut down. Instead of intelligence and rationality, they have foolishness and insanities. Instead of love and freedom, they are entirely the slaves of their own hatreds and insanities. Instead of happiness, they have misery. Such is the difference between the first floor and the third floor of the human mind when we no longer have the physical body to absorb and hide these differences. While we are still attached to the physical body, our heavenly traits and our hellish traits are both operational in different layers of the mind. People around us are mixed, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and wise, sometimes foolish and irrational. But this mixture is no longer possible in the spiritual body when it is freed from its attachment to the physical body.
This obligatory separation between our good traits and our evil traits is called the Last Judgment in our mind. This process takes awhile to take its course but, as observed by Swedenborg, few individuals need more than a few weeks or months from the time they arrive in the spiritual world to the time they enter either heaven or hell. In the interval they are given suitable experiences in the spiritual world among the inhabitants there, and with each experience they become more informed of who and what they really are on the inside, as most people are not aware of their interiors. At last they are ready to voluntarily choose the lifestyle they are most fit to enjoy and live. Those who choose heaven lose all the evil traits still lingering in certain levels of their persona. Those who choose hell lose all the good traits they were able to acquire on the way. As a result, the heavenly inhabitants are always wise, beautiful in form, artistic, creative, and happily married with a soul mate living in palatial residences where all wants are immediately supplied by the Lord. The hellish inhabitants are always insane, monstrous, lacking in all creativity, and totally sexless living in dark caverns or deserts full of scorpions and poisonous dragons. Swedenborg has visited these various places of the human mind and found these things there to his utmost astonishment.
These animal and environmental appearances are natural correspondences to their mental states. It is a law of the spiritual world that the external environmental appearances reflect precisely the character of their mental states. Therefore heaven is a benign and beautiful place in outward appearance, while hell is ugly and scary. These same laws of correspondences govern the environment in the natural world, though not in an instantaneous manner as in the spiritual world, but in a longitudinal and evolutionary sense. For instance, noxious animals and plants on earth are the consequence of evil loves and insanities on the part of the peoples and civilizations that have lived on that earth. The Word of God also exhibits the same laws of correspondences between the literal sense and the spiritual sense.
Small wonder then that Swedenborg earnestly warns readers to take heed and fear the terrible fate of hell that befalls us when we remain arrogant and reject the commandments of God. The purpose god gives us commandments is to give humans a way of avoiding this terrible fate. It is not God's wrath we have to fear, not His punishment, not tortures in fire due to the sins we committed, but our own choices that lead us to compulsive and inescapable self-destruction, self-mutilation, self-punishment, self-imprisonment in our own insanities, perversities, and hatreds. Those in hell are deluded and live in sub-human fantasies and insanities, as witnessed by Swedenborg who interviewed their inhabitants over nearly a thirty-year period.
And so to enter the third phase of true rationality, we need to elevate the Writings to the position of the Third Testament, authored by the Lord in His Second Coming, through Swedenborg's Divinely prepared rational mind. I believe that science will be dualist or theistic in the future and this means totally rational in accordance with the Writings of Swedenborg. These scientific revelations can bring rationality to everyone in future generations. We cannot expect religion to be able to accomplish this universality. The historical New Church has adopted the Writings as the Word of God, and they have made it the basis of their doctrines and worship rituals. They will continue evangelization and growth, no doubt, and how wonderful that is. But because they are an official religion, the other religions will reject them and protect themselves from the new knowledge. Therefore only true science, that is, dualist science, can bring rationality to the peoples of the world--in their schools, books, novels, legends, rituals, and myths.
See the following article for additional discussion on this point:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/np98.html
Religious particularism is compatible with scientific dualism but the two differ in the way science differs from religion. They are compatible because they are the same rational mind acting out in different societal arenas. The reason I call it particularism is because of the as-if paradox that is revealed for the first time in the Writings of Swedenborg. One way to state this is to say that we are not truly living independent selves but containants of life that is not our own but God's alone who is life Itself. A helpful analogy might be to think of your television set or radio. As long as the signal is broadcast over the airwaves and received by the set, there will be a picture or sound. Imagine a radio that could become self-aware and imagine that it is the source of all the talk and music we can hear through its speaker. This would be the radio’s delusion and insanity. Similarly with us when we imagine that life is our own, as opposed to being receptors of life that continuously must flow in from God who is the only life. This perspective relates to the rational idea of Divine Omnipotence: Since God controls everything, how can we have free will so that we're responsible for the evil we choose? Another way this paradox comes out is to say: “If God is omnipotent and all good, then how can evil exist?” Both questions and puzzles are solved rationally with the concept of the as-of-self.
This idea is discussed in correspondences in the Old Testament in the story of Eve's creation out of Adam's ribs, as fully explained in the Writings. Angels acknowledge that they have only an as-of self and actually sense the influx of life from within. It is the influx from God that gives us a sense of as-of self which gives us the appearance that we decide things on our own. A sense of freedom is necessary for our happiness and motivation to function and act as-of self. We must feel free to love and be happy. Therefore God completely hides the influx by which we have the sense of freedom as-of self. While we still are in phase 1or phase 2 thinking, we hate and reject the idea that we have no life and power of our own, and that we only have an as-of self as kind of illusion. We cannot be happy and accept this idea until we enter phase 3, at which point, the very same idea is the source of our happiness and sense of freedom.
Besides the idea of as-of self, a second rational building block we need in order to understand our particular relationship to the Divine is the distinction between things created and things uncreate. Can you enumerate the difference? It's not part of the knowledge of the Old Testament or the New Testament states. Uncreate things are: life, light, truth, love, heat, eternity, infinity, spiritual substances, and the derivative powers from these, that is, the various inborn capacities of our mind: rationality, knowledge, wisdom, freedom, liberty, conscience, sociality, organicity, and so on. So none of our capacities are our own; they only live in us as borrowed goods. This is particularism in worship, the highest form possible for humans, the most authentic and rewarding. The Lord sees each individual as unique, the uniqueness or particularity being determined by what the Lord gives us at birth: He calls them “talents” and wants us to invest them, that is, to use them for building our character. Particular talents are given uniquely to individuals and to a group of people. We call these the "genius" of the mind or of a people, referring to the particular and unique intellectual characteristics. These talents are borrowed from the Lord and they remain the Lord's. Life is not our own, but the Lord's life within us. We are the containers, the "vessels." Even our thoughts and emotions are not our own, but arise from momentary inter-connections with spiritual societies as effected by the Lord.
The above two paragraphs may make you unhappy or angry. We don't like to hear the message that life is not our own, that nothing is our own. It feels denigrating. It diminishes our independent status of existence and selfhood. We want to respond by throwing in the towel. Oh, yeah, I don't have my own self, my own thoughts, my own emotions? Who wants to live that way? It's nonsense. Etc. The sensual, less than rational, mind rebels against the truly rational mind. By birth and unguided growth we are set against the rational. In the first phase, we react with fundamental rejection to these notions. They seem a threat. They seem a delusion. They seem false and distasteful. They make us turn away from it. Yet, the Lord manages to turn people back, gradually, by small degrees, almost imperceptibly, like a ship being pulled unnoticeably by a favorable ocean current to safer waters and land. We see the new land in a wonderful vision on the horizon that we are given by making daily choices that build up and open up our interior spiritual mind.
11. Spiritual Development is Cyclical and Recursive
11.1a Comparison of Religious Ideas in the Three Phases
|
Judaeo-Christian Religious Ideas in the Three Phases of Spiritual Development |
|||
|
Characteristic |
Phase 1 |
Phase 2 |
Phase 3 |
|
Focus |
Ritual piety |
Mystified or Blind Faith |
Rational Faith, Dualist, Theistic, or True Science |
|
Scriptural Basis |
Old Testament
|
New Testament
|
Third Testament (the Writings) |
|
Orientation |
sectarianism |
personalism |
particularism |
|
Mind Physiology |
External |
Intermediate |
Inmost |
|
Realm |
Natural (natural- rational) |
Spiritual (spiritual-rational) |
Celestial (celestial-rational) |
|
Order |
Material (mass & space) |
Substantive (spiritual) (truths) |
Substantive (celestial) (goods) |
|
Faith |
Orthodoxy and strict adherence to rituals brings purification, holiness, merit, power, and rewards. Emphasis on literalism. Contains superstition. Tribal basis of worship and salvation. Exclusionary and does not seek converts. Disdain for other religions. Restricts God to own tribe or sect. Heaven will be on earth and is reserved for the people of one’s sect. Ritual is more important than understanding doctrine from the Word. |
Blind faith in the saving power of the Blood of Christ earns one's entrance into Heaven. Faith alone saves, not good works, which contribute nothing to salvation. Reliance on miracles. Combines literalism and symbolism. Contains mysticism. Seeks converts. Sometimes believes in eternal hell, sometimes in temporary hell, sometimes in no hell. Strength of blind faith is more important than understanding doctrine from the Word. |
Rational faith, True Science, absence of all mysticism. All go to heaven regardless of religious background, who respect their innate conscience and shun evils of life as character traits that prevent entry into heavenly life. Ability to shun one’s evils depends on appealing to God to give the power. Cannot be done without this conscious daily reliance on God. This process of regeneration goes on all of life on earth, then continues to eternity in heaven. Without this process people sink into the insanities of hell and are stubbornly unwilling to come out of it, even though it is made possible for them to do so. Only the rational understanding of doctrine from the Word can make the faith to be genuine. |
|
God |
Invisible and incomprehensible, sometimes punishing and unforgiving. Created universe by voice out of nothing. Uses the devil to rule over earth. Has a special relationship to one’s sect. |
Trinity of Divine Persons in One Godhead, which is a mystery of blind faith. Need to pray to the Father God in the Name of the Son God. God’s nature of Justice condemns people to hell, but His nature of Mercy saves them for Heaven. |
Trinity of Aspects belonging to One Visible Divine Human Person – at once Creator, Savior, and Regenerator. No other power exists in the universe except His. He intervenes and manages every singular detail of the universe and of our mind. He maintains every individual in spiritual freedom of choice from birth to eternity, in heaven, in hell, and on the many earths in the universe. |
|
The Future (On earth and afterlife) |
Destruction of current world and recreation of a new world. Resurrection of the dead into new physical bodies on earth. End of all evil on earth. Jews are to rule all other nations. Sacrifices will be reinstituted as part of worship. God will retain a special relationship to the Chosen people. |
Destruction of the natural world, leading to universal resurrection of the dead for eternal life in Heaven without a sensual body. No one knows what this heavenly life is. All those go to hell who refuse to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Savior. |
Earths in the universe continue to be multiplied endlessly. Upon death, every person undergoes immediate resuscitation for eternal life in Heaven as a married couple with a sensual spirit-body and a rational mind that continues to develop daily forever. Those refusing to regenerate will insanely insist on keeping themselves in hell forever. |
|
Repentance and Regeneration |
Performing cycles of rituals is repentance, and thereby attaining collective atonement with one's tribe. Regeneration of character is not a concept for this phase since salvation is achieved by tribal membership in good standing. |
Examining oneself regularly and giving up behaviors contrary to faith because they are sins against God and lead to hell. However, this is tempered by the Faith Alone doctrine which makes salvation not dependent on character change. |
Regeneration is a physiological process of the mind requiring daily conscious effort, not unlike muscle building, and must be motivated by our desire for good and truth to be received from the Lord and to be applied to daily living. All thoughts and feelings that are contrary to good and truth must be shunned and stopped for regeneration to proceed. |
|
Temptations and Consciousness Raising |
Able to overcome natural temptations based on shame and fear of punishment or loss of health, money, affiliation, and status. Morality is based on external deeds. |
In addition, able to overcome spiritual temptations based on anxiety and guilt about loss of connection with God. Morality is based on thoughts as well as on external deeds. |
In addition, able to overcome celestial temptations based on doubt or obscurity of comprehension, as well as the tendency to revert to former, more external states (phases 2 and 1). Morality is based on feelings, intentions, and thoughts, as much as on external deeds. |
|
Charity |
Charity is giving to the poor and fulfilling religious rituals consistently and literally. Some charity (e.g., Church and widows) earns more merit than others (e.g., giving to strangers). Meaning of charity restricted to overt acts. |
Charity is giving one’s ten percent (or equivalent) to the Church and the poor, and praying for one’s enemies as well as for family and friends. Being tolerant and compassionate to all people. Charity ranks lower than faith. |
Charity is being motivated to be useful to others and society. There is no spiritual merit or reward in giving. But care must be exercised not to give indiscriminately (e.g., people dangerous to the community). Human dignity is owed to all human beings regardless of anything else. Charity ranks higher than faith. |
|
Conjugial Love |
External marriage relationship with allowable divorce. Marriage is to last this life only. Faith ranks higher than marriage in God’s eyes. Men rank higher than women in all things. Women are expected to be sub-servient. Men exclude women from many activities, privileges, and rights. |
External marriage on earth, with divorce not allowed. No marriage in heaven and no sensual body there. Unclear what you do in heaven. Faith ranks higher than marriage in God’s eyes. Women have their place in the Church affairs, men have theirs. Women are expected to let men lead. |
Internal marriage formed on earth, to continue in a spiritual body in the afterlife with the same person when both pass on. Divorce allowed under certain conditions of incompatibility. Marriage love ranks higher than faith in the Lord’s eyes. Sometimes women are expected to let the men lead in Church affairs, sometimes they are considered equal. In regeneration, husbands are encouraged to accept the wife’s leading in his own character change because the wife receives from the Lord a special perception of their husband’s mental states, which husbands do not have about their own states. |
11.1b The Nine Zones of the Ennead Matrix
Quoting from the Writings:
The situation with the people who make up the church en masse or taken collectively is much the same as with the person by himself or taken individually. People en masse or taken collectively are a church of many members; and the person by himself or taken individually is the church in each of those many members. It is in accordance with Divine order that there should be general and particular levels, co-existing in any thing you like to mention, and the particular levels could not otherwise come into or continue in existence. In this way there could not be any particular part within the human body unless there were general layers surrounding it. Particular parts in the human body are the viscera and each part of them; the general layers are the coverings which envelop not only the whole body, but also each of the viscera and each part of them. It is much the same in every animal, bird and worm, as well as in every tree, shrub and seed. Nor can strings or wind instruments produce any sound, unless there were a very general level, from which the individual notes derive the general sound which allows them to be produced. It is also similar with all the bodily senses, such as sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch; and with all the inward senses which exist in the mind.
[2] These illustrations have been given to make it known that in the church too there are general and particular levels, as well as the very general ones. It is also intended to show that this is why the four churches have succeeded in order. This succession gave rise to the most general level of the churches as a whole, and one after another the general and particular level of each. In the human body too there are two very general levels which give rise to the existence of all the other general and particular levels. The two most general items in the body are the heart and the lungs, those in the spirit, the will and the understanding. On these two sets of items depend all the details of a person's life generally and particularly; without them these would fall apart and die off. It would be much the same with the whole heaven of angels and with the whole human race, in fact, with the whole created world, if everything in general, and the details in particular, were not dependent upon God, His love and His wisdom. (TCR 775)
The passage above, and others dealing with this same topic, reveal one of the most amazing concepts of scientific dualism, or True Science. I searched for a word in the dictionary that might be allied to this concept and found the word “synecdoche” which is defined as “the rhetorical or metaphorical substitution of a part for the whole, or vice versa.” The general is what belongs to the whole, while the particular belongs to the part. The general, or what belongs to the whole, must also belong to the particular, or what belongs to the part – and vice versa. Note that the concept of synecdoche is considered by the dictionary a “rhetorical” or “metaphorical” device, which means that it is not to be taken literally or physically. This shows that there is not yet a conscious awareness of phase 3 thinking, as in the Writings, where it is revealed that that general-particular, or whole-part, relationship is also actual and real, being a spiritual law governing all objects in both the natural and spiritual worlds.
This spiritual law can be stated in several interlocking rational ideas that only come into our understanding in phase 3 thinking – see how many you already thought of, and how many you can agree with:
the end is contained in the beginning part, and in every
following part
the smallest part of a whole, contains the whole
the highest is contained within the lowest
the internal is contained within the external
uncreate non-material substances form the foundation structure
for material things -- mass, motion, space, time
natural history recapitulates spiritual history because the two
are synchronously tied by creation
individual biography recapitulates spiritual history because from
the same source
the infinite is within the finite, not the other way round
This does not exhaust the series. For now, you can see that smaller cycles of development would recapitulate larger cycles. In the case of religious behavior, the three phases of the entire developmental scale, namely, Moses-Paul-Swedenborg, repeat themselves within each phase, cyclically. Further cyclical patterns no doubt occur, and will be discovered by future researchers in True Science. Here is a matrix that shows the recursive property of phases within phases. Since there are 3 phases, laying them against each other creates a ennead or matrix of nine cells. These type of matrices place levels or developmental steps on the vertical dimension, starting with the bottom level first, then ascending in steps to the top. The horizontal dimension is laid out from left to right and indicate three steps of internalization (initial, intermediate, mature). I have numbered the cells accordingly.
ENNEAD MATRIXOF RATIONAL SPIRITUALITY (9 zones of development) |
Old Testament |
New Testament |
Third Testament |
|
Swedenborg Phase 3 (celestial mind) |
7 |
8 |
9 |
|
Paul Phase 2 (spiritual mind) |
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
Moses Phase 1 (natural mind) |
1 |
2 |
3 |
I have discovered in three decades of research that this type of ennead matrix appears over and over again when you try to describe organic mental structures. For additional explanations with diagrams, consult the articles listed just below. When I first started reading the Writings two decades ago I immediately noticed the ennead matrix is a universal spiritual structure, so I called it the “genes of consciousness.” I tried to put many of these ennead structures together and it seemed to me that our talk and discourse is organized on this fundamental spiritual structure. Future research in True Science will reveal the many amazing properties of this structure. I noticed that some of these appear in the literal meaning of the Writings, but many are underlying or hidden, and need to be extracted scientifically through the method of correspondences as outlined in the Writings which gives detail rules on how to extract knowledge from the Letter of the Threefold Word. The laws of spiritual-natural correspondences can be discovered from the Writings, and confirmed from the Bible, from children stories and fables, from our everyday linguistic expressions, and from inventive creations which we are inspired to do, notice, or perform.
But applying the correspondences mechanically does not yield spiritual meaning – try it and you’ll be convinced. We also need to be enlightened by the Lord synchronously to applying the knowledge of correspondences. This protects every individual and researcher from profaning holy things and thereby suffer irreparable damage to their spirit. Therefore no one can understand or perceive anything spiritual unless at the same time enlightened by the Lord. The Lord enlightens all who seek truth for the sake of being good, and further, acknowledge that all good is from God. Illustration is another word used for enlightenment. The laws of illustration are empirical and experiential. They relate to the level of access to spiritual perception or understanding. Every spiritual idea that is part of a greater idea, contains the entire idea within itself. This law insures that we can begin anywhere and arrive at the truth as long as we locomote inward, which is upward. The Laws of Divine Providence operate the level of height, or inwardness, of the illustration we are given at any moment.
As you look at the above ennead matrix you can see its horizontal and vertical orientations. The ennead structure is composed of parts that contain its entirety. Each zone or zone contains all nine cells, and each of those contain them, and so on, recursively as it cycles from part to whole, from within to without. Another was of saying this is that all developmental steps are contained in each step. This means that the past and the future and contained in the present. Note carefully that the ennead relationship of developmental laws are functional relationships, not substantive identities. In other words, every level and state is isolated from every other level and state by discrete degrees of creation. Every object is created into three discrete degrees simultaneously. This is why all of the future, which is called “the end” (or ultimate goal), is contained within the present, but this containing is of discrete degrees, not continuous contact. It is impossible to reach the next higher level of mental state by keeping on improving at the prior level or state of mind. It’s not like a physical destination where you keep on getting closer to it and at last, you’re there. You can see this if you’re on an island and your destination is the mainland. No matter how long you keep on walking you can never get to the mainland. You need a different level of transportation, like a boat or air carrier. In spiritual development it is the same law operating. No matter how much you improve in one direction or at one level of thinking and feeling, you cannot break into the next level. Instead, a discrete jump is necessary.
How do you jump from phase 1 thinking to phase 2 thinking? If you’ve been socialized into the culture of sectarianism, fundamentalism, and literalism, you oppose, resist, and despise the ideas of personalism and universalism, which is phase 2 thinking and feeling. An explanation for this still needs to be presented here, I admit, and I will. It will help if you continue noting some additional properties of the ennead matrix. Note in the matrix that phase 1 (“Moses” phase) has three states to be matured – cells 1, 2, and 3. These three states are discretely separate from each other, so it will require a jump to go from one to the next. Note also that zone or zone 1 is Phase 1 based on the Old Testament portion of the Threefold Word. Similarly, zone 2 is Phase 1 based on the New Testament portion of the Threefold Word. Finally, zone 3 is Phase 1 based on the Third Testament portion of the Threefold Word. It is evident from this that phase 1 thinking undergoes three discrete steps of change or spiritual ascension. Again, phase 2 thinking undergoes the same prior three discrete states, but this time at a higher level of the Threefold Word. Remember that the Threefold Word contains all discrete levels, but at different depths of availability. Finally, when we reach phase three thinking (cells 7, 8, 9), we still need to undergo the three developmental states based on the Threefold Word. When we reach zone 9, we are ready to depart from this earth since zone 9 is the mental state we need to exist in heaven. Once ready, there is no need for us to stay around here, and the Lord performs the transfer called resuscitation. Isn’t it wonderful that True Science has now given us a spiritual map of our regeneration so that we may consciously follow the road to heaven, which is the Lord’s goal or end for every soul. Once we’ve been brought into the state of zone 9, our creation is complete and the Lord can then keep us continually in youthful maturity, wisdom, and love forever and ever. Now that we have the map, all we need is to compel ourselves to follow it. The Lord supplies the power for our every choice and sub-goal along the way.
Here is another way of diagramming the ennead structure (also shown above):
I base this diagram directly on the explanations of “discrete degrees,” including the contrast “simultaneous” vs. “discrete” degrees. The vertical dimension, like the ennead matrix, represents developmental steps, which are called “successive degrees” because level 2 succeeds level 1 in development. What’s especially notable is that developmental steps are from creation, from necessity, and they represent or replicate the steps of creation. Every galaxy, planet, rock, tree, animal’s organ, house, computer chip, or jacket, etc., is created, or comes into existence, by successive discrete steps called “degrees.” The steps proceed from the Spiritual Sun which descends and externalizes along each successive step in order. First, the highest, which is the inmost, which is the closest to the Spiritual Sun amidst of which the Lord appears to the angels. Second, the middle or intermediate level, which is the level of thinking and feeling of the angelic spirits in our mind. And third, the lowest most externalized or outermost, which is the level of good spirits in our mind. This is the natural level of the mind and of all things in the natural world. Once the ultimate is reached, the goal is reached, and creation is complete. Now for the object or state to persist, to continue existing or subsisting, the successive process now ended is replaced by the simultaneous process which refers to the maintenance in existence of each level. The Lord does this for every object or state. Creation doesn’t just begin and end, after which things run on their own (phase 1 and 2 thinking). Rather, creation continues ceaselessly, because existence is perpetual subsistence. In other words, to keep on existing, an object or state must be re-created by the Lord continuously, or else it falls apart and disintegrates out of existence. Look at the diagram above and see if this important idea can gain a foothold in your mind!
See the following related articles:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/ennead.html (ennead matrix)
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing3.htm (genes of culture
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/correspondences.html (spiritual-natural correspondences)
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dhl.html (De Hemelsche Leer article)
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/marriage/table1.html (Mental Health and Personality)
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/man/citizenship.html (dual citizenship)
I would be delighted to know your reactions. Please e-mail me at: leon@hawaii.edu
12. The Moses Mind: Three States of Sectarianism
Our mind in zone 1 is ruled by the law of Talon which is known generally from the Old Testament revelations: Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, massacre for massacre. It is the ideology of racism and ethnic cleansing, of inquisition, repression, and religious warfare--all this in the name of religion. When we are in this pre-civilized and pre-human phase of thinking and feeling, the Lord from the behind scenes in our mind, continually softens and bends our stiff-necked character, stubbornness, and arrogance. God leads us through the more universalist and accepting concepts that are also to be found in the Old Testament (or other Sacred Scripture from your religion). These concepts include the idea of equal justice to all citizens, the idea of compassion for the downtrodden, the idea of love and unity as God’s children, the idea of a better world to come, and so on. Though we may be in the state of sectarianism, fundamentalism, and literalism (phase 1), we may move from zone 1 to zone 2, from the Old Testament state to the New Testament state. We receive a foretaste of phase 2 in those areas of the Old Testament where these universalist concepts are revealed and promoted. While we are in zone 2 through these universalist ideas of phase 1, we are in effect in the New Testament state of phase 1 (zone 2).
Here is the ennead matrix again:
ENNEAD MATRIXOF RATIONAL SPIRITUALITY (9 zones of development) |
Old Testament |
New Testament |
Third Testament |
|
Swedenborg Phase 3 (celestial mind) |
7 |
8 |
9 |
|
Paul Phase 2 (spiritual mind) |
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
Moses Phase 1 (natural mind) |
1 |
2 |
3 |
Note well: In His Second Coming God has revealed True Science to humanity and therefore to all religions. The Lord now provides every religion with these same states though they may go by a different name. If you like, you can copy this document, open it in your word processor, give the Search and Replace Command, and automatically replace the word “Moses” with the appropriate name in your religion, then do the same for “Paul” and then “Swedenborg.” Everything else can remain pretty much the way it is. Now reread it. Does it make sense? E-mail me if you can: leon@hawaii.edu
To move from zone 2 to zone 3, we need to search for and focus on those elements of our phase 1 religion that allow for a personal relationship with God. Every religion allows for this though it may not be emphasized or promoted for various political reasons rather than spiritual. Search your religion and find the universal and personal in it. This will lead you to a greater understanding of God and will allow you to enter zone 3 when you can finally see that the purpose of religion is not ritual behavior and prayer, but communication and connection with God. Once you are in this zone (3), you are getting ready for the big jump, the great leap from zone 3 to zone 4, from phase 1 thinking and feeling to phase 2. This rise in consciousness is so significant and visible that it is often accompanied by enthusiasm and elation. Our happiness has suddenly grown and our vision has expanded. From zone 4 we can look down on zones 1, 2, and 3, and see what we could not see before while we were at that level.
Each of the Testaments are written and organized in discrete levels of semantic series. They are called the outward literal meaning, the inner spiritual meaning, and the inmost celestial meaning. Each of these levels of perception gives us a new perception and understanding of deeper spiritual concepts. Divine Truth is the origin of all genuine spiritual concepts or ideas. As we are ascending in consciousness, ever closer to the Divine, we perceive deeper and deeper spiritual ideas that open our eyes to our true relationship to God and the universe. The more we have this understanding, the more we can receive Divine Love, for love must have an understanding into which it can inflow from the Divine. This then is the importance of understanding. Our intellectual understanding puts a limit on the depth of the spiritual idea we can receive from God. Each spiritual idea contains love within it. Therefore the deeper our spiritual understanding, the more we are enlightened, and the more love we can receive from the Divine. Love is our very life from which flows all else. The depth of our understanding determines the quality of our love, and the quality of our love determines everything about our living – happiness, bliss, conjugial union, wisdom, love of neighbor, and endless progress in knowledge and understanding to eternity.
Historically, the Threefold Word was written in successive order of discrete degrees. The Old Testament was given first. Only its literal meaning was known. This literal meaning was cast in phase 1 thinking and feeling appropriate for the people to whom the Word was entrusted for protection and worship. If it had been cast in a higher phase of thinking and feeling, it would have been rejected. Nevertheless, hidden within this phase 1 thinking, within the literal meanings and expressions, there lived the spiritual truths that flow from Divine Truth to humanity. This hidden meaning was revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg. No one had suspected anything of its existence through all these centuries of worship, study, and analysis by many adherents, scholars and scientists. Now we can read the Old Testament through this revealed code called “spiritual-natural correspondences.”
Centuries and many generations after the Old Testament had been worshiped and protected, a New Testament was given to humanity, raising the level of thinking and feeling of the human race to phase 2. The New Testament reveals to a limited extent, that the Old Testament has a hidden spiritual meaning whose topic is the Lord. Scholars have identified many of these cross-references or allusions, and the Lord Himself declared that the Old Testament Word is about Him. How so? In the internal spiritual sense, not in the external literal sense. One of the best known internal spiritual concept in the Old Testament is the verse in Genesis announcing that the woman’s heel shall bruise the head of the serpent:
xx
You can see therefore that the Old Testament contains the New Testament in its internal spiritual sense, hidden in its code of correspondences, now revealed. In other words, phase 1 thinking already contains phase 2 thinking in its internal level. This makes sense if you think about what has been said just above regarding successive and simultaneous degrees. A subsequent degree in creation is contained within a prior degree in simultaneous degree. Here is the diagram again:
The Old Testament (lowest layer, marked C) is the outermost and came first historically, or in successive order. Then the New Testament was given (middle layer, marked B), and at last the Third Testament was given (inmost layer, marked A). Once the Threefold Word is complete, its successive order of creation ends, and there begins its simultaneous order of maintenance in existence. You can see that the Third Testament or the Writings of Swedenborg, are contained within the New Testament, and the two together are contained within the Old Testament. As you move from phase 1 of your religion to phase 2, you will notice that it is already contained within phase 1, but at a level not available in phase 1. The point is that you do not need to change your religion because your religion contains all the religions and you can make all the progress you need to heaven without changing religion. When you operate with phase 3 thinking and feeling you will be able to see your religion as True Science. In this phase 3 consciousness all religions reveal and promulgate the same spiritual and celestial truths. This is because all genuine spiritual truths are from the One God, and therefore all religions and cultures are from this same God. There cannot be two religions with different Gods! This is something one can see clearly only in phase 3 thinking.
For example, Jews are forbidden to picture the infinite God for this image, it is thought, would reduce God to a mere man, and the image would be a false image. The idea that God is a historical human Person born on this earth, is incomprehensible in phase 1 thinking. One falls into the error of making light of Christians on account of their belief that Jesus is Divine. Similarly, humanistic scholars and scientists view it as naive on the part of aboriginal tribes and Indians who picture their gods in human form. The mind in phase 1, zone 1, refuses to accept the idea of a God in a human body. One objection that comes to one’s mind is this: “If Jesus was God, who took care of the universe while he was being executed on the cross?” This stumbling block in zone 1 can yet be overcome using many verses from the Old Testament that reveal that God is human in form. These passages are swept aside by the mind in zone 1, but if you let yourself be influenced by them, you can cross to phase 1, zone 2 where you begin to see that God is a individual Person who has compassion and love for the human race. This God cares about all people. This God has feelings and thoughts, even changes his mind, urges and begs the people to follow His commandments that they may avoid punishment that automatically and inevitably returns to the wrong doer.
The Old Testament tells you in so many ways that God is Human, and all you have to do is to stop ignoring it. In my early education in an orthodox Jewish school, I was told by the teacher that all these places where the Old Testament speaks of God as having thoughts and feelings and being human, are just figures of speech and poetic expressions, and must not be taken literally. Moses talked to God and heard His voice and saw His finger write in stone. Why would he ask to see God's face unless Moses had the idea of God as a Human? Why did God say to Moses, you cannot see my Face but I'll show you my Back, unless God had these anatomical parts to show him? Why does it say that Jacob wrestled with God, and that Hagar saw God? Why did the prophets see the Son of Man in their spiritual visions? Why does God call himself our Father and us, His children?
Yes, if you want to stay in zone 1 sectarianism and literalism, you can discard these facts and re-interpret them in such a way that you can stay in zone 1. But if you're willing to be influenced by these verses, then you have access to their more internal spiritual message. This message anticipates the Paul Phase of personalism because it tells your mind that God is the Father of all people, and all people deserve our respect and recognition because of that.
Even within phase 1, zone 2, the advance to zone 3 becomes problematic and one resists all the way. We can anticipate the idea of personalism that is fully established in the New Testament, and so we can accept the idea that God is the Father of all people. We can thus put sectarianism and literalism behind us, and we can go with human dignity and good will to all nations. Even secular humanism can do this and function in zone 2. It is possible to see the Old Testament as a great work of the human intellect and claim it as a universal human expression. But to go further than this into phase 1, zone 3 is hard because this would involve the idea of a personal as well as a universal God. This the humanist cannot accept because it reduces the independence of our race and takes away from the pride of evolution of the self and spirit. It rejects the idea given in the Old Testament that God’s omnipotence means that He determines the outcome of every event, personal and societal. To admit this part of phase 1 thinking is to enter zone 3, from where one is in a position of jumping altogether to phase 2, zone 4.
Those who rely on the Old Testament, even to the point of phase 1, zone 2, can accept God as universal, but not as personal. I shall discuss the problem Christians have in moving from zone 4 to 5, even though they are officially committed to a personal relationship to God "through" Jesus. So it is not easy in zone 2 to echo the idea of a personal relationship to God, which would be needed to enter zone 3. There are strong currents working in that direction, pulling the minds of many into a deeper relationship with Jehovah, the name most often used for God in the Old Testament. An example is my attraction to the study of the Kabala when I was in my 20s and moving away from my childhood ritual religion (orthodox Jewish in the 1930s in Eastern Europe). I was attracted to zone 3 even as I was repelled by zone 1. It may have been the mysticism of the Kabala and the ecstatic language of the Cabalists. Mysticism thrives in zone 3 for those who crave for a personal knowledge of the Almighty. Another example is Numerology, which thrived among some orthodox Jews, including my late father, Reb Hersh Magid of Arad. But not Astrology--that was taboo.
13. The Pauline Mind: Three States of Personalism
Where does Jewish mysticism lead to? What is the road that one must take to go from zone 3 to zone 4? For me it was the road of the New Testament. I was kept from reading it by the reluctances I inherited from my family and sectarian culture. I was taught to fear Christians on account of their lust for pogroms and anti-Semitism. When I was 4 in Arad, Transylvania, we lived on a street called Piatza Lupte. It was the last apartment building on the block and right next to it was a gate that led to the spacious grounds of a monastery. When we met a monk or priest, we crossed the street and silently spit and cursed to make sure one wouldn't fall into their hands and be tortured or whatever. These were my childhood preparations that prevented me from entering a Church even on travel as a tourist. Even classic paintings in museums were threats because at any moment you might come to the forbidden and scary picture of Jesus on the Cross, or Jesus being removed from the Cross, with the nail wounds showing. Scary stuff for an orthodox Jew trying to loosen his ties to his tribal fundamentalism. I thought I was very brave indeed, at age 30, when I made myself enter the Sistine Chapel while attending a Rome scientific conference on psycholinguistics.
Years later I was attending yet another conference in some city in North America, and relaxing in my hotel room in the evening, reading the red cover Giddeon Bible I found in the drawer beneath the telephone. For a reason I could not understand, I started reading Giddeon Bibles during my hotel stays in various cities. I even found it convenient to take one home with me, tucked away in my suitcase, wondering if it was illegal. I never felt the curiosity to turn to the New Testament section, and if I had, I probably would not have accepted any of it. And yet, and yet, the night came when my fingers went to the forbidden part of the Holy Book. It had vivid red covers, as usual. You couldn't miss it in a furniture drawer, if you opened it. But I didn't read it. I just flipped the pages, too quickly to read anything. But I stuck it in my suitcase. It took five more years before I took it off my bookcase shelf and turned the pages to the last section of the Holy Book, and started reading the New Testament. Matthew Chapter 1 Verse 1:
|
A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham |
What a mind blower to a Jewish boy raised in Transylvania in the middle of the 20th century. Surprising because I did not know that Jesus Christ was related to King David and our revered patriarch Abraham. And so I continued reading. And that was it for me. My rational phase 2 thinking was immediately opened and I began my personal relationship with the Lord.
It was not hard to keep going. It was fascinating. I could hardly wake up to the fact that I was reading about Jews. What did Jews have to do with the New Testament? Dear reader, isn't this an astounding question to have for a fairly renowned professor of psychology in the United States? I mean, where have I been? How could I stay so sectarian for 41 years of my life?? What was I doing when these topics came up in discussions, movies, books, the news? I wish I had kept notes in those days. But the facts are not in dispute. My Moses mind went through 4 decades of life within the bosom of Christian societies, and failed to pick up the idea that the New Testament is the continuation of the Old Testament. Of course I was familiar with the expression "Judaeo-Christian" and even may have used it myself in some of my writings. But what did it refer to? Well, quite naturally, it referred to the fact that Christians honor the Jewish Bible, which they call the Old Testament.
For example, they honor the Ten Commandments--I knew that. They have the idea of a Messiah, which they took from us. I knew that. They believe that the Jews killed someone they call Jesus the Messiah. I knew that. They hate Jews because of that, except some of them who are really good even if they're Christians. But mostly I thought that it was the uneducated and the prejudiced who are actually Church people and do all those bad things to Jews. That's about as much as I picked up about Christians, after living in Christian lands for 41 years. Truly astonishing!
And this illustrates the difficulty we have, in any religion or ideology, to move up from zone 3 to zone 4. Here look at the ennead matrix again:
ENNEAD MATRIXOF RATIONAL SPIRITUALITY (9 zones of development) |
Old Testament |
New Testament |
Third Testament |
|
Swedenborg Phase 3 (celestial mind) |
7 |
8 |
9 |
|
Paul Phase 2 (spiritual mind) |
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
Moses Phase 1 (natural mind) |
1 |
2 |
3 |
It's a loooong stretch from zone 3 to 4!
This is the stretch that the Lord had to perform in the minds of His disciples. That's what the Four Gospels are about, namely, to engineer the transfer of zone 3 consciousness and love to zone 4. Of course we need to remember that the outward historical events and personalities described in the New Testament are ethnic, local, and of no intrinsic significance other than to point the way to a spiritual message. This spiritual message, if accepted, opens up zone 4 of the mind, which is the beginning of the second level of rational spirituality. So it's important to investigate beyond the literal, into the spiritual, when considering the historical events and personalities mentioned in Sacred Scripture.
This movement from zone 3 to zone 4, the movement that opens the second level of the mind, is called the First Coming of God in the mind. Zone 4 is the Coming of God in outward form as the “Son of God.” There is an uneasy division in our mind about this concept, because even though the Son of God is Divine, He is not God. But as we move through zone 5 to zone 6, we are prepared to make the next jump to phase 3 (zone 7).Now for the first time we are willing to receive the celestial idea that it is God Himself who incarnated, not someone else called the Son, and that there cannot be more then One Divine Person. God Himself came into the natural world as a historical figure, and He came in the form and shape of a Human Child born by means of a virgin. God as Himself while growing up as a Divine Child, appeared like a divided Person, infinite Father and finite Son, but once He achieved Glorification, Resurrection, and Ascension, the infinite Father--finite Son Divine roles merged into one united Divine Human Person, Jehovah/Jesus Himself, the only Redeemer of Old.
This reasoning seems meaningless in phase 2 thinking, as shown by this type of objection: “Why then does Jesus, the Son of God, pray to the Father, and tells us to pray to the Father?” This is a stumbling block of phase 2 thinking and is maintained there by God for the protection of those who will not go beyond phase 2 thinking. But those who can, or rather, are willing to accept the rational idea that there can be only One Divine Omnipotent and Omnipresent Person, will jump up to the celestial state of human beings (phase 3). Once you accept the rational idea of Only One Divine Person, your consciousness and behavior immediately changes. You now feel that you must address this One Person while you pray. You can no longer address One Divine Person in the name of another Divine Person. There is only One Divine Person in your mind. Now you have to look at your religion and at Sacred Scripture and see the text in a new light by perceiving new celestial truths in the beloved familiar verses. When you can see this organic unity between Father and Son, like the organic unity between soul and body, you can accept and understand rational explanations for those New Testament verses where Jesus refers to His Father.
This rational explanation is nowhere to be found except in the Writings of Swedenborg. In these Writings, the Lord has now revealed Himself in His Divine Rational. Nothing is now held back in revealed scientific knowledge of the spiritual world and the rational laws by which God creates, maintains, and manages the dual universe in every single detail. All has been revealed in the Threefold Word, first as to God’s infinite invisible universality and omnipotence (Old Testament phase 1 thinking), then in His Divine Natural (New Testament state 2 thinking), then in His Divine Rational (Third Testament state 3 thinking). For instance, in phase 3 thinking we can understand and accept the explanation given in the Writings, namely, that the purpose of the Incarnation was for God to obtain a Natural Body which He could then “Glorify” or make Divine. Once made Divine, He would ascend in this Natural Body, and in this visible form He could henceforth be present to the minds of angels and people on earth. By having this knowledge of God in His visible Human Form, the human race has been empowered to a higher rational consciousness, namely the spiritual and celestial states. Hearing of this Divine goal, phase 2 thinking asks this question: “Why did not God create for Himself a Natural Body with which He could show Himself on earth to all as a permanent presence to every generation?” Phase 3 thinking gives the following answer from the Writings.
God could not do that. There are rational explanations given why He could not do that and why He had to do exactly what He did. The most important reason He incarnated into a frail and ignorant human body is that He wanted to prepare a way for all human beings to make the jump from phase 1 thinking to phase 2 thinking. There was no other way God could overcome the resistance and hatred of the human race for such an idea – without letting the race die out. But God loves the human race and leads it to salvation. Hence God could do nothing else than to rescue the human race on earth from its hereditary ties with the hells. These ties had to be broken in order to liberate or redeem the human race on earth. But God could not break those ties forcefully, or He would have done it, you may be sure. To forcefully break our ties with the hells would have destroyed the hells and the human race on earth, and as a result, the human race in the heavens could not have survived. The entire human race stood at its certain destruction when the Lord came into the natural world in an ordinary human body which He aimed to shape into a mental development that would establish the mental road people can take from zone 3 to zone 4.
In order to do this you can see that He had to come in an infirm body that contained hereditary evil from the virgin Israelite woman. As a result, God was in this amazing peculiar position of having that part of Himself that was the natural mind of young Jesus, be restricted in understanding and knowledge, while His inner spiritual mind was omniscient. How does the omniscient infinite rational mind of God relate to the finite natural mind of young Jesus? Obviously this took a lot of mental struggle and anguish on the part of Jesus to go through alternating mental states, called in the Writings, exinanition and glorification. The New Testament documents these alternating states between the temptations of suffering Jesus underwent and the states of Glorification during which He was One with the Father, and was the Father, in which He said to Philip who had asked Him to show them the Father. “You’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.” (xx). While He was in a state of Glorification, Jesus performed miracles and had omniscience, being equal or the same as God. There can be only one God, one Divine Person, so it is clear that Jesus and Jehovah are one and the same Divine Person. While Jesus was in the emanation states, He was able to deal with the hells. He fought them, subdued them, separated them from the good in the world of spirits whom they terrorized and dominated.
This dominion of the hells over the people who arrived into the afterlife prevented anyone from entering heaven. Their dominion and power came from the victims themselves whom they were dominating. For the hells have no power of their own, only the power allowed them by God. And God allows them only that kind of power that maintains an individual in spiritual freedom between heaven and hell, good and evil. Falsities that people believe, even those who desire to be good, puts people under the influence and power of the hells. In order to liberate these people from the powers of hell and introduce them into heaven, the Lord had to create new ideas and create new truths for the human race. This He accomplished by means of the new truths made available in the New Testament. This portion of the Threefold Word reveals the new truths Jesus had to create to redeem humanity and save everyone for heavenly life – everyone who is willing to receive these new truths and live by them.
This method of redemption continued until people began distorting these truths for selfish and political reasons, thus breaking the power of New Testament truths to keep people from falling once more into falsities, and thereby into evils. Only in such obedience was Jesus able to save anyone. His ability to save people declined gradually as all sorts of false ideas of religion emerged, such as the Trinity of Divine Persons, or the dogma of salvation without works or character reformation. As a result, God had to make a Second Coming to the human race – this time in the Divine Rational, not again in the Divine Natural. Now with this new Word, the uppermost portion of the human mind can be opened (phase 3 thinking). But in the early days it was Paul’s intellect that fashioned the truths of the new Christian religion.
Paul’s Epistles are the intellectual edifice that can take us into true inner worship, though at the beginning it is only the external form of inner worship (zone 4), and only later does it grow into the true internal worship (zones 5 and 6). The Epistles are explanations or justifications of the Gospels, and it is the Gospels that constitute the Word of God, as the Epistles duly recognize. But the Gospels would not be comprehensible in and of themselves, without the Epistles to create doctrine by which the Gospels can be understood in a deeper, rational or spiritual sense. For it is not sufficient to read the Gospels merely in their literal meaning. Both the Old and the New Testament verses can be used by an un-Godly person to justify all sorts of evils and perversities. The literal surface sentences of the Gospels are written in an ethnic-historical and natural form of language and thought, and they largely appear ethnic-bound and period-bound rather than universally applicable. But when doctrine is created to interpret the surface meaning of the literal sentences, there shines through the deeper underlying meaning which is purely spiritual and rational, untainted by ethnic and historical applications or references.
Many worshippers of the Bible have used Scriptural verses to justify their sectarian evils of injustice, discrimination, intolerance, lack of compassion, cruelty, theft, adultery, false witness, and many more such perversities and falsities. So the letter of the Threefold Word can be turned in any suitable direction by an ingenious and biased mind. It is only doctrine, rationally understood, that tells you which directions are correct, and which are fantasies that justify one's evils and heresies. Of course, beware of false doctrine and dogma, for these two bar entry to heaven since they create a spiritually insane mind that is unwilling to receive goods and trues from heaven, calling them evils and falsities, but yet are willing to receive evils and falsities from hell, calling them goods and trues. It is this spiritual insanity that keeps them in hell, not any punishment by God. And God provides kind angels from heaven who minister to the hells, supervising their environment, striving to keep the inhabitants from getting worse than what they already are, separating those that are weaker from the stronger to protect them, and many such kindness that they do for the inhabitants of hell. And yet do they oppose the angels with ferocity, always striving to cast themselves into deeper and deeper insanities, cruelties, and perversities they can inflict upon one another. Such is the devastating consequence on the human mind for being unwilling to be regenerated in this life. Friend, take care that this sad fate does not befall you, since right now, you are headed there unless you are determined to regenerate.
The difficulty of moving from zone 4 (Old Testament state of phase 2) to zone 5 (New Testament state of phase 2) is illustrated by the great difficulty experienced by the disciples of Jesus in relation to his Divine identity. This difficulty is represented by the two expressions used in the New Testament to refer to Jesus: at times, the “Son of Man,” while at other times, the “Son of God.” Jesus as Son of Man is a relatively external worship (zone 4), while Jesus as Son of God (zone 5), is a more internal worship. Both are at level 2, the Paul level. Everyone’s relationship to the Lord Jesus depends on the percent of Divinity one attributes to Him in our mind. In my own case history, I first read the New Testament in my early forties, having been familiar with the Old Testament all my life until then. I brought with me the idea of the Messiah from the Jewish religion into which I was born, namely that the Messiah was some man chosen by God for unexplained reasons to save the Jews from exile and to bring them back into the Holy Land and to be their King. He was a “holy prophet” but holier than the others. That’s it. There was no knowledge transmitted about salvation or repentance, nor of a heavenly afterlife. Instead, the Messiah would cause the dead to rise again and to gather them around Him in the Holy Land from which the Jews will rule the universe.
So now, with these background concepts of the Messiah, I finally get the urge to read the New Testament at age 41 and I find out that the Messiah has come and His Name is Jesus. I read how He came to the Jews and that He was born a Jew and was circumcised and had His Bar Mitzvah at age thirteen. I was totally amazed, as you can imagine. Suddenly I realized that the Christian religion, which I had come to fear as something strange and nefarious, is just the Jewish religion in its continuation. I read the Four Gospels and I read the Book of Acts, and Paul’s Epistles, and the others. I did not know what to make of the last book called Revelations. I had no background in Christian doctrine or philosophy. I did not know about Faith Alone, about the Nicene Creed, about the Trinity of Divine Persons. I was a Jew who stumbled into zone 4, the Old Testament state of the Paul phase. My idea of Jesus as the Messiah was that He was the Chosen by Jehovah, and on this account Jesus was called the Son of God. My mind did not form the idea that Jesus was Divine.
I entered zone 5 as I became more familiar with the New Testament and especially with the doctrines that I learned when I joined the Episcopal Church that happened to be near our home. Now I was in the New Testament state of the Paul phase (zone 5) because my worship entered a more inward phase. The Church taught that Jesus was Divine, that He was God, “one with the Father.” I then started attributing more Divinity to Jesus, all the way up to 99 percent Divine in zone 7, but not yet 100 percent Divine. I was caught by the practices of the Church to pray to the Father in the Name of the Son. I shared with the other in the Church the idea that even though Jesus was Divine and God, He was the Son God, not like the Father God, and everyone has in the back of the mind the idea that the Father comes before the Son. This is reinforced by the literal verses in the New Testament that tell us that Jesus went back to His Father in Heaven and sat at the right hand of the throne – not on the throne by Himself!
Two years later I was led by Divine Providence to the Writings while browsing the shelves of our university library. Now at last I was able to enter phase 3 thinking about God (zone 7). Now I was able to understand that the Father and the Son are not merely “one” but one and the same! It is the Father who incarnated as the Son – same Divine Human Person who is Jehovah—Jesus, unified into one Person as soul is united to the body making a one. Now at last I was able to attribute 100 percent to the Divinity of Jesus (phase 3 thinking). Now my worship had reached the inmost phase. It wasn’t just a personal relationship any more, between God and me. It was a partnership in living, thinking, loving, and being.
Another illustration of relatively more external vs. relatively more internal worship in the New Testament, is the fact that Jesus made distinctions among His disciples in terms of their closeness to Him. Peter, James, and John formed the inner circle, so they had access to Jesus at a higher level, such as being able to witness the Transfiguration Scene where the Lord appeared in His spiritual Glory or Body along with Moses and Elijah. The witnessing of this momentous scene represents another of several proofs in the New Testament regarding the existence of the spiritual world. Zone 5 thinking does not quite see this and is not quite ready to accept this. Instead, it sees the event as a vision and doesn’t explore the rational consequences. But upon entering zone 6, we are able to understand the proof of immortality there given. The religion of the disciples did not reveal to them the existence of a spiritual world. They believed that when people die they go to sleep until the general resurrection after the destruction of the old natural world and the recreation of a new. The disciples themselves, having witnessed this Transfiguration scene, could not afterwards fully understand its scientific significance.
Within the inner circle, John was closest to the Lord’s heart. This was said directly by the Lord, and later, John was the one who was able to witness the heavenly visions of the Apocalypse. The mind in zone 5 can consider these facts in the New Testament and in reaction to them, either sink back to zone 4, or catapult forward to zone 6. How does this happen? What are the physiological mechanisms that bring us back, closing the rational mind, or bring us forward, opening the rational mind as far as it can go in phase 2?
The idea that Jesus loved some of His disciples more than others may make us feel uncomfortable, at first, because it appears to be an attack on personalism. Why should Christ not love someone as much as another? Surely not because of discrimination! We have no ready answer, and so we take it in, but we let it slide off, and out. We don't deal with it. But if we can bring ourselves to deal with it, we have a mental mechanism for moving from zone 5 to zone 6, and fully mature in our Paul phase. Unless we get to phase 6 and its maturity of inner worship, we cannot cross over to zone 7, which at level 3 is the beginning of inmost worship and highest spiritual consciousness.
To resolve this issue in zone 6, we need to foreshadow the Third Testament doctrine we will encounter in zone 7. Look at the ennead matrix once again:
ENNEAD MATRIXOF RATIONAL SPIRITUALITY (9 zones of development) |
Old Testament |
New Testament |
Third Testament |
|
Swedenborg Phase 3 (celestial mind) |
7 |
8 |
9 |
|
Paul Phase 2 (spiritual mind) |
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
Moses Phase 1 (natural mind) |
1 |
2 |
3 |
It's a loooong way from 6 to 7! How does one make the crossing?
The Third Testament reveals what the New Testament contains in its underlying spiritual meaning. From the Writings we know that there are three Heavens or zones of the celestial mind. The lower heaven is lower because the mind at that level is occupied with science, art, government, sports, conferences, and other external societal operations, all of which are spiritual in their underlying function and structure. It may be odd to think of heaven in these terms, namely that its inhabitants occupy themselves with sports or government. And yet there is no doubt about and Swedenborg has witnessed it on his many visits there. These societal activities focus on uses, that is, on how one can perform one's job or duties better for the sake of being of service to others. In their genuine form they are not preoccupations with self, and they are not competitive. They are celestial and harmonious with Divine Order. Nevertheless, in practice they begin as preoccupations of a relatively outward nature (zone 7). You can see that there must be regions in the celestial mind (level 3) that are more interior than this type of societal focus.
And so the middle heaven (zone 8), which is closer to the Lord, and affords a more interior worship of Him, involves a preoccupation with the Lord's Truth which we study through His Threefold Word. It's not that we have a lesser desire to be useful to our heavenly companions, but the way we see that use is more through the Lord's Word and Truth and Wisdom, than through government, sports, crafts, education, and so on. And finally, zone 9 which is the inmost worship, the Crown of Worship, involves an equal desire for uses and service, but seeing this best accomplished through love unto the Lord from the Lord. These distinctions will be further explained soon, when we get to the next section on Phase 3. For now, we wanted to foreshadow the third phase so that we might better see the second phase in its context.
In zone 6, while we are still in the Paul phase of worship (phase 2), we are able, if we want to, to revisit New Testament issues such as sanctification, the Holy Spirit, intercessionary prayers, charity, and the ubiquitous prayer ritual "in the Name of Jesus." These issues can be resolved in an external way, in which case we backslide to earlier zones and levels of worship. But if we resolve these issues in a more internal way, we can be translated into the upper room. For example:
How do you resolve the fact that Jesus loved one disciple more than another? Some backsliding answers would be that He had favorites; or that He knew their hearts and what they deserved, or that they were predestined to occupy a higher place. A more inward answer is that Jesus loved them equally and it's only an appearance that he made distinctions, and that the distinctions Jesus made were not based on merit but on reciprocal love. Since Jesus did know their hearts, and since John reciprocated his love toward Jesus more intensely than the others, John was closer to Jesus. The Lord marked these distinctions to reveal that closeness to Him depends on the intensity of your freely given love to Him. The Lord loved all disciples equally, but those who loved Him back more than others, were able to receive more from Him. And this is true for everyone, and for us now.
That Jesus loved some more than others is now seen as an appearance of truth and not strictly truth. This appearance of truth has a higher truth hidden within it, a truth that is genuine, namely, that some people love the Lord more than others, and these people are as a result closer to the Lord, and hence appear to be loved by the Lord more than others. In heaven Swedenborg saw people being appointed by Divine Command to special office like Governor or Prince of a heavenly society, to which honor were attached many visible things such as decision-making responsibilities, more magnificent residences and more splendid clothes These are they whom the Lord in the Gospels calls "greater servants" than the others. Anyone can attain to this status of closeness to the Lord who is willing to love the Lord more than anything else.
Another illustration to help us move into more interior phase 2 worship, is the level at which we think about prayer, especially intercessionary prayer. At the external level, we rely more on literalism, and so we are still imbued with the remnants of external worship. This type of worship (phase 1) is focused and based on external ritual, which is natural, not spiritual. Prayer beads and prayer repetitions and prayer requests and prayer recitations of specific types at specific times and for specific occasions -- these involvements are external, not internal. The inner rational mind realizes that God already knows our requests, and all Three Testaments assure us that God cannot but answer and give in to all our entreaties before we ask. Why would He hold back when He can give it? Why? It doesn't make sense to the interior rational mind. The Lord commands us to pray, and we must. But how are we to interpret this commandment? When teaching His disciples how to pray, the Lord said:
But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:6-8).
God wants us to pray, that's clear from all Three Testaments. But why? At the ritualistic level of worship (phase 1), praying has somewhat of a magical and superstitious aspect. "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." Pagans in the inner spiritual sense refers to anyone in the Moses phase 1 worship. In that state of mind we believe in the power of prayer as if praying had its sacred force capable of influencing God. It's almost as if we can control God through prayer, thus making our prayer ritual a greater force than God. But when we go inward towards a more rational or spiritual meaning, we can see that God wants us to pray for our sake, not for His Glory or for influencing Him. In the Paul phase we define prayer as "talking to God." And talking to God is for our benefit.
Going still deeper, we can find passages in all Three Testaments that explain that prayer is a mechanism used by God to bring us closer to Him through illustration and revelations in our mind while praying or meditating on holy things. This is the "inner chamber" which we enter, that is, the higher regions of our rational mind where we can witness and take in higher and higher forms of reasoning and loving from the Lord -- "go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen." Later we understand that the Lord is this Father, and that there is no one else. The Lord could not say to His disciples that they should pray to Him because they would have rejected this. He did say that He is the One who will grant them what they want, yet they did not fully comprehend this. Later people focused exclusively on Jesus saying that they should pray to the Father in the name of Jesus.
Who is the Father to whom we are to pray? In the Old Testament state of the Paul-phase (zone 4) we see the Father as Jehovah God of the Old Testament. Jesus uses the phrase in that sense throughout the New Testament. Our mind is thus riveted to this bottom literal reference, and we are held in an external worship for our own protection that we may not distort some inner truth and injure our spiritual future. But when we are ready and willing to progress further and accept more inner truths from the Lord, we begin to pay more attention to other passages in the New Testament where Jesus refers to the Father as His Own Internal, that is, as Himself. When we read the Third Testament revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg we are given an explicit explanation of this mystery, and our mind is prepared for zone 7 and beyond (phase 3 thinking or True Science).
Here is a conversation Swedenborg overheard between some Christians in the spiritual world who are discussing one of the books Swedenborg had recently published in the natural world from which they had recently arrived. This took place sometime during the second half of the 18th century.
TCR 112. The third experience.
I [Swedenborg] once woke up around dawn and went out into the garden in front of my house. I watched the sun rising in its splendor, and around it I saw a halo, first of all narrow and later projecting further, shining as if made of gold, and under its lower edge a cloud coming up, which glittered with the sun's fire like a ruby. This then led me to think about how the earliest people had legends which described the Dawn as having wings made of silver feathers and carrying gold in her mouth.
While my mind was taking pleasure in these thoughts, I passed into the spirit, and heard some people talking to one another. 'I wish,' they were saying, 'we could talk with that original thinker who has thrown the apple of Strife among the leaders of the church; many laymen have run after it, picked it up and held it before our eyes.' They meant by that apple my little book entitled: A BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE NEW CHURCH. 'It is a new doctrine never before thought up, designed to divide the church,' they said. I heard one of them cry out: 'Divisive indeed, it is heretical!' But some of the bystanders answered: 'Be quiet, hold your tongue; it is not heretical. It quotes a large number of sayings from the Word which those who live with us - we mean laymen - pay attention to and support.'
[2] On hearing this, since I was in the spirit, I went up to them and said: Here I am. What is the trouble?'
At once one of them, a German as I learned later, a native of Saxony, said in an authoritative tone of voice: 'How have you the nerve to upset the mode of worship established for so many centuries throughout the Christian world, namely, the invocation of God the Father as the Creator of the universe, and of His Son as Mediator, and of the Holy Spirit as Worker? You are banishing the first and the last God from our Trinity of Persons, although the Lord Himself says: "When you pray, pray like this: Our Father, who art in the heavens, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come." Is this not an instruction to us to invoke God the Father?'
This speech produced silence, and all his supporters took up their stand like the brave fighters on warships when the enemy fleet comes into view, ready to shout: 'Now let us fight, victory is surely ours.'
[3] So I began my speech by saying: 'You all know that God came down from heaven and became man, because we read: "The Word was with God and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh." You know all of you,' and here I looked hard at the Evangelical party, to which the spokesman who had addressed me belonged, 'that in Christ who was born of the Virgin Mary God is man, and man is God.' There was an uproar from the assembly at this, so I said: 'Do you not know this? It is in accordance with the doctrine of your sect called the Formula of Concord; it states this and adds many proofs in support of it.'
Then the spokesman turned to the assembly and asked whether they knew this. They replied: 'We paid too little attention to what that book says about the Person of Christ; but we worked hard at the section on justification by faith alone. Still, if that is what it says, we are content.' Then one who could remember it said: 'Yes, it does say that; and it adds further that Christ's human nature was raised to Divine majesty and all its attributes, and also that Christ is seated in Divine majesty at the right hand of His Father.'
[4] When they heard this, they fell silent. So having got them to agree to this, I said: 'If this is so, is not the Father then the Son, and the Son also the Father?' But since this again offended their ears, I went on: 'Listen to the Lord's actual words, and if you paid no heed to them before, do so now. He said: "The Father and I are one; the Father is in me and I in the Father; Father, all things of mine are yours, and all of yours are mine; He who sees me sees the Father." How can you understand these sayings, except as meaning that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, and that they are one like soul and body in man, so they are one Person? You will find that this is part of your faith too, if you believe the Athanasian Creed, which says something very much like this. But take from what I have quoted just this one utterance of the Lord: "Father, all things of mine are yours, and all of yours are mine." What does this mean, if not that the Father's Divine belongs to the Son's Human, and the Son's Human to the Father's Divine? Consequently in Christ God is man and man is God, and thus they make one as soul and body make one.
[5] Everyone can say the same things about his soul and body. Each person can say: all things of yours are mine, and all of mine are yours; you are in me and I in you; he who sees me sees you, we are one in person and have one life. The reason is that the soul pervades the whole and every part of the person, for the life of the soul is the life of the body, and is possessed by them in common. It is plain from this that the Father's Divine is the Son's soul, and the Son's Human is the Father's body. Where can a son's soul come from, if not from his father, and where can his body come from, if not from his mother? When we say the Father's Divine we mean the Father Himself, since He and His Divine are the same; this is also one and indivisible. The truth of this is established by the words with which the angel Gabriel addressed Mary: "The power of the Most High will overshadow you, and the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the holy thing that shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God." Shortly before He is called "the Son of the Most High," and elsewhere "the only-begotten Son." You, however, who call Him only the Son of Mary, destroy the idea of His divinity; but the only ones who do this are some of the learned clergy and well-educated laymen, who, when they lift their thoughts above the level of the bodily senses, have in view the enhancement of their reputations. This not only casts a shadow, but actually puts out the light, through which the glory of God comes in.
[6] 'But let us go back to the Lord's Prayer, which says: "Our Father, who art in the heavens, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come." Those of you who are present here understand by these words the Father in His Divine alone; but I understand Him in His Human, and this too is the Father's name. For the Lord said: "Father, glorify your name," that is, your Human. When this happens, the kingdom of God comes. The instruction to use this prayer has been given us for the present time, that is, so that God the Father may be approached through His Human. The Lord also said: "No one comes to the Father except through Me," and the prophet said: "A child is born for us, a Son is given to us, whose name is God, Hero, the everlasting Father"; and elsewhere: "You, Jehovah, are our Father, your name is our Redeemer from of old." There are thousands of other passages where the Lord our Savior is called Jehovah. This is the true explanation of those words in the Lord's Prayer.'
[7] On finishing this speech I looked at them and noticed that their faces had changed in accordance with the change in their mental state. Some of them supported me and were watching me; some did not, and they turned their faces away. Then I saw on the right a pearly-colored cloud, and on the left a murky cloud, from both of which rain was falling. The rain from the dark cloud was like a shower in late autumn, that from the other like dew in early springtime. Then suddenly I passed from the spirit into the body, and so returned from the spiritual world into the natural one. (TCR 112).
This story describes an actual historical event that took place in the spiritual world sometime in the second half of the 18th century, by reference to earth calendar. The details of this story communicate two types of messages, one natural, the other spiritual. Such is the character of the Threefold Word everywhere, namely, that its words and sentences are created by the Lord to contain two types of meanings, one natural or historical, the other symbolic or spiritual. This story contains two meanings. The surface historical meaning shows Swedenborg arguing with Christians who had arrived in the afterlife, and proving to them from the Word, that Jesus and Jehovah are the same one and only God the Redeemer. The underlying spiritual meaning teaches the method by which human beings can jump from phase 2 thinking to phase 3 thinking. Phase 2 thinking in zones 4 and 5 wants God to know our identity and to relate to us as person to Person. This is symbolized by the idea of God as a “Trinity of Divine Persons.” But when we enter zone 6 of phase 2 we begin to experience a rational tension in the idea of “three Divine Persons.”
This advance takes place when we are willing to focus on the revealed scientific truth that the Divine cannot be divided since what is omnipotent and omnipresent cannot be divided (or else it wouldn’t be omnipresent to begin with). It follows logically that Got the Father and God the Son, both being Divine and omnipresent, must be one and the same Divine Person or God. Hence Jesus=Jehovah. When we understand and accept this equation, we are transferred by the Lord into phase 3 thinking. This is the spiritual meaning of the above passage. And of course, other spiritual meanings can further be extracted from it, endlessly.
This passage also exemplifies the kind of exchanges Swedenborg had in the spiritual world while he was living on earth with dual consciousness from age 57 to 84. For 27 years Swedenborg recorded his spiritual experiences and published them “by command of the Lord” who had commissioned him to be the revelator of the Second Coming. The Writings form the greatest collection of scientific revelations ever assembled in the history of humankind. But even more importantly for the human race, what Swedenborg wrote out as of-self, from his own effort as a writer, scientist, and theologian, constitutes the third portion of the Threefold Word, a sacred enterprise that the Lord took several thousand years to create and manage through the mind of dozens of writers, starting with Moses and the prophets, and continuing with the Gospel writers. The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings of Swedenborg, together complete the creation of the Threefold Word. This is why the Writings are also called the Third Testament, and sometimes, the Last Testament.
Because the Writings are the Word of the Second Coming, the sentences Swedenborg wrote as-of self had to be managed by the Lord who was working in the unconscious spiritual background of Swedenborg’s mind. Swedenborg knew that the Lord was managing the sentences he authored and openly declared that it is the Lord who commanded him to write, what to write, and to take nothing from angels but everything solely from the Lord. Swedenborg sometimes stopped in the middle of an explanation he was writing, adding, that he is not allowed to go further. Sometimes he wrote that he is not allowed to mention anything at all about some subject. He also described the character of the Word, which is such that every word, even syllable, is holy in it, and contains hidden spiritual truths of endless proportions. He was also given to reveal how we can extract scientific knowledge from these hidden spiritual truths, and there is no doubt in my mind, that True Science is now being created by the Lord. True Science is the knowledge about reality that we can extract from every sentence Swedenborg wrote in the Writings. Furthermore, the amount of knowledge that can be extracted from a single sentence of the Threefold Word is infinite, so that humanity can never exhaust this source of knowledge for itself.
That True Science is now being created is evident from my work (see Notes at the end), including this book, and also from the work of a few others (see for example Dr. Ian Thompson’s Web site on Theistic Science at www.TheisticScience.org and Oliver Odhner’s Web site on the Human Organic at www.humanorganic.org/HO/index.shtml
14. The Swedenborg Mind: Three Phases of Particularism
The inmost form of worship, phase 3 thinking and feeling, is called the Swedenborg phase because his mind had to be elevated into this inmost level of rational spirituality in order to be able to write the Third Testament. The Writings contain all the rational concepts that are needed for elevating human consciousness to the highest possible level called the celestial. Here is the ennead matrix again:
ENNEAD MATRIXOF RATIONAL SPIRITUALITY (9 zones of development) |
Old Testament |
New Testament |
Third Testament |
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Swedenborg Phase 3 (celestial mind) |
7 |
8 |
9 |
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Paul Phase 2 (spiritual mind) |
4 |
5 |
6 |
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Moses Phase 1 (natural mind) |
1 |
2 |
3 |
The initial opening of the celestial mind (zone 7) occurs when we are willing to give up the ideas of personalism for the sake of particularism. This notion may be a stumbling block to our mind at level 2 thinking. One illustration is the historical trend of evangelization throughout the 20th century and beyond. At the beginning of the new century and millennium, Billy Graham, and now his son, still pack thousands of people into large tents and auditoriums, urging them to be reborn by confessing Christ as their Lord and Savior. Reborn Christians have become a powerful political and economic force in the United States in this generation. Other popular Christian initiatives of this sort cater to specialized groups -- young men, married men, married women, young blacks, Hispanics, college students, and so on, indicating the fervor of evangelical Christian society to grow into more interior forms of worship.
The basis of all this activity is the affirmation "Jesus is my personal Lord." A personal relationship with Jesus, is the very purpose for this evangelism. It is true that Christians are experiencing this fervor for a closer relationship with God. God has provided for this closer relationship through more interior forms of worship. We pine and long for this close relationship, but we cannot attain it fully in phase 2 thinking. The Lord has therefore provided a way for entering the third discrete level of our mind, and it is this gateway that will insure that we can have an actual particularistic relationship with Him (phase 3). But there are resistances. By looking at the content of the resistive forces we can gain a better understanding of what particularism is in our connectivity to God. Remember that the word “Christians” has a dual meaning, one natural and historical, the other spiritual and symbolic. In its symbolic meaning, “Christians” refers to all those from any religion who see themselves as having a personal relationship with the God of their religion. People will put up a resistance to letting go of this personal relationship with God that is based on their personal identity.
An illustration of this resistance is my experience with members of the Episcopal Church I attended for years after my conversion, and while our two children were growing up in our house. After I found the Writings in 1981, I was eager to bring the Good News of the Third Testament revelations to my fellow Episcopalians. Only one such attempt shall be mentioned here. It was a telephone conversation with an elderly woman who had been active in the Church for decades. I said, to her at one point, “Do you believe that Jesus is God?” “Of course,” she said, Jesus is God.” I said, “What about the Father?” She said, “the Father is God, of course.” And I said, “Jesus is the Father. Did He not say to Thomas, ‘Why do you ask me to show you the Father. If you see Me, you’ve seen the Father.” And she became very upset and would not talk to me again about the topic, because I had said that Jesus is the Father. Her reaction illustrates the aversion we experience when we are exposed to phase 3 thinking.
I've seen the "Swedenborgian Church" being included in some “Born Again” Christian publications that list and warn against cults. Besides Swedenborg's claim to have talked to spirits, he is seen as “denying the Trinity,” which automatically relegates his system of theology to the status of a cult. The revelation in the Writings that it is not rational to think of three Divine Persons as making up “one Godhead” is seen by the Paul-phase mentality as a denial of the Trinity. In this phase of religious consciousness one cannot see the rational solution as true, namely, that there is only one God, that this God is the Incarnate Jehovah, which is named Jesus, and that He is the Divine Human in whom there is a Trinity of Divine Aspects called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- referring to the operations of Creation, Redemption, and Regeneration. The step from zone 6 to 7 (phase 2 to phase 3) is possible when we are willing to lay aside the irrational belief of two Gods--God the Father and God the Son. Seeing the Father and the Son as one Divine Person or God, elevates the mind to the celestial-rational level, where we are able to contemplate and see the most rational idea of all--God as the Divine Human Person in whom dwells a Trinity of operations or Aspects.
There is a resistance to accepting Jesus as the One God of Heaven and earth. This is a clue that we are in the personalist phase of Christianity (Paul phase 2). That is an external rational phase which opposes the idea of identifying Jesus as God because it appears in that phase that by declaring Jesus as the one and only God, you are denying the Father that Jesus Himself is talking about in many places in the New Testament. And this is seen as sacrilege. There may be deeper stumbling blocks. For instance, if we divide God into two, we can play one against the other, so to speak, in our mind and attitude.
For instance, we can dictate to God by forcing His hand through the magic formula “I ask it in the name of your Son.” Also, we can give Jesus less of a power on our mind, since we are addressing the Father directly, bypassing Jesus. We are more in control if the major God is infinite and invisible, while the one who is visible is a lesser God in our mind. With an invisible God we can continue doing what we want, be who we already are, and not have to undergo the difficult task of character reformation. This is the inherited resistance we have to becoming spiritual, that is, to raising our consciousness from phase 2 to phase 3. It is a psychological barrier against exerting self-control over our inherited delights. We just don’t want to give them up even if they are evil, and therefore we have to pretend that they are not evil, or that even if they are evil we don’t have to give them up. They are human. They are understandable. They are not major. They are outweighed by the good we have and do.
All sorts of justifications like these suggest themselves to allow us to keep the evil delights. Dividing God into more than one Divine Human Person has the psychological result of weakening the power and influence that we allow God to have in our mind. If we remain in this attitude of life, we become permanently attached to those evil delights. In the afterlife we are given the opportunity to discard them and enter heaven with all the good delights we have. But Swedenborg observed that no one who has made it to hell is willing to give up their evil delights since they hold those evil delights in far greater esteem and attractiveness than their good delights which seem as nothing in comparison. Hence they remain in hell forever where they suffer dire experiences when the people there take turn torturing each other, this being their greatest delight. But woe to them when it’s their turn to be tortured by the others!
The external rational, by itself, leads to hell, but the internal rational leads to heaven. This is because the external rational is part of the natural mind and is based on the order of the natural world. But the external rational mind has the capacity to receive an internal within itself. This occurs when we read the Writings as Divinely revealed True Science and are able to comprehend it rationally. When we rationally understand the spiritual order of True Science, our consciousness is enlightened and elevated. It is Divine Truth that elevates the consciousness and enlightens it. We receive Divine Truth only by understanding it. Understanding it is receiving it. Understanding Divine Truth rationally is rational spirituality that elevates the consciousness all the way to the top of the mind called heaven.
You can see why this cannot be done by the external rational alone since it has no information whatsoever about the order of the spiritual world. Whatever the natural rational mind theorizes about the spiritual world is automatically and inherently false. This is also true when the external rational mind reads the Threefold Word and interprets it or explains it by means of its own knowledge and comprehension. This is imposing a natural order over the spiritual, which destroys the spiritual so that nothing of Divine Truth remains in the mind despite the use of verses from Sacred Scripture used to justify some theory. Those who use True Science in this way see nothing in it but natural things and interprets all spiritual topics in a natural way, not spiritual. As pointed out, dividing the “Godhead” into three Divine Persons, “each of whom is God,” is a natural way of understanding God’s oneness, omnipotence, and omnipresence. That it is natural is evident since it is illogical to think that there can exist more than one omnipresent and omnipotent Divine Person each of Whom is God. That it is illogical is recognized in the Reformed Churches by the words in the Creed they recite every Sunday at worship services. Quoting from the Writings:
There are three summaries of doctrine of the Christian Church concerning the Divine Trinity and at the same time Unity, which are called the Apostolic, the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creeds. The Apostles' Creed was written by men who are called the Apostolic Fathers; the Nicene Creed, by an assembly of bishops and priests who were called together by the emperor Constantine in the city of Nice, with a view to dissipate the scandals of Arius concerning his denial of the Divinity of the Son of God; and the Athanasian Creed, by a certain person or persons after that council. These three Creeds were acknowledged and received by the Christian Church as ecumenical and catholic, that is, as the universals of doctrine respecting the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
(...)
The Athanasian Creed teaches thus:-
"The Catholic Faith is this: We venerate one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. . . . There is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. . . . The Father is uncreate, immense, eternal, omnipotent, God and Lord; in like manner the Son, and in like manner the Holy Spirit; and yet there are not three uncreate, immense, eternal, omnipotent Gods and Lords, but One. . . . The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. In this Trinity none is before or after, and none is greater or less, but all the three Persons are co-eternal and co-equal. But as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, so we are forbidden by the Catholic religion to say there be three Gods and Lords." (Canons 43)
If we accept that the visible Jesus is the only God, within whom there is infinity and omnipotence, then we have nowhere else to go but to Him, and this requires complete humility, which we may not yet love and be ready for. A major backsliding that resists the opening of the celestial mind (zone 7) is the notion that faith alone saves, and works are not to be made part of one's salvation (zones 4 and 5). This notion prevents entry into zone 6, which is the departing point for reaching particularism (zone 7 and beyond). Much of the doctrinal energy of the Writings is directed towards proving that Jesus is the One God, as exemplified in the passage quoted just above (TCR 112).
Once you cross that hurdle and you arrive in zone 7, you are then at the beginning of your celestial career--the Old Testament state of phase 3. Thousands of people around the world are members of the New Church, a new Christian denomination which is based on the revelations of the Writings. They see the Writings as the Word of God and their Sunday lessons include readings from all Three Testaments. And yet there is considerable disagreement among these New Christians in ritual worship and doctrine. This is because there are external forms of worship in phase 3 (zone 7) and more interior forms (zones 8 and 9). One disagreement concerns the equality between the Three Testaments. Only in zone 9 can we acknowledge and perceive that not only are they equal but that the Third Testament is the only one that can provide for the salvation of the race from now on. One type of resistance is to consider the Writings as the “Heavenly Doctrine” that reveals and explicates by correspondences, the “spiritual meaning” of the Old and New Testaments. In other words, in their mind, the Writings are not the Word in the same sense as the Old and New Testaments, which are called “Sacred Scripture.” Instead, the Heavenly Doctrines (the Writings) are a rational revelation about the Old and New Testaments.
Resistance to seeing the Writings as Sacred Scripture, equal with the Old and New Testaments, prevents the mind from considering the spiritual or symbolic meanings in the Writings that can be extracted by applying their correspondences to oneself, one’s own thinking and willing acts all day. This application to life is called regeneration. As we apply the truths of the Writings to our daily thinking and willing, we begin to perceive a spiritual meaning that is discretely more interior (zone 9). Remaining in the literal meaning of the Writings prevents further movement and progress in phase 3. In zones 7 and 8, it still appears that the Writings are rational revelations given in the literal language and that they do not contain underlying and unseen spiritual and celestial revelations. In addition, in zone 7 it is denied that the Writings are a scientific revelation, and one prefers to think of the “Heavenly Doctrine” as theology, not science. You enter zone 9 – the highest level of consciousness there is – when you can accept in a rational way that the Writings are True Science. Once you achieve this realization and rational understanding, you continue life as an angel on earth, soon to be an angel in heaven. Progression in zone 9 is endless and it continues in angels to eternity.
The conflict that arises between zone 8 and 9 is illustrated by a historical schism in the 1930s that took place between two factions of a Swedenborgian Church known as the General Church of the New Jerusalem. The Dutch faction was excommunicated by the main American faction based in Philadelphia, because the Dutch faction started proving that the Writings of Swedenborg are equal to the Old and New Testaments, containing three levels of meaning to be extracted for the purpose of developing one's inner worship. The Dutch Doctrine is known as “De Hemelsche Leer,” and is fully discussed in separate articles:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v2ch1-nonduality.html
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dhl.html
Incidentally, I recently visited Bryn Athyn, the suburb of Philadelphia where is located the General Church of the New Jerusalem. My wife Diane and I wrote a report on that visit:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/brynathyn.htm
14.1 God, Salvation, Sin, Hell, and Devil in Phase 2 vs. Phase 3
The comparative table below identifies the main doctrinal issues between personalism (phase 2) and particularism (phase 3) by examining their differences in defining God, Salvation, and Sin. This analysis applies specifically to Christian concepts from the Threefold Word. The analysis needs to be modified appropriately when considering other religions and how their adherents go from phase 2 to phase 3. All religions go through the three phases discussed in this book, and they grow closer together as they go up, until at last, in phase 3, they reach agreement and harmony in the understanding of Divine Truth as True Science.
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Phase 2 spiritual-rational mind
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Phase 3 celestial-rational mind |
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God |
God is the invisible and omnipresent Divine Father (Jehovah), Creator of the universe.
He shares the Godhead with a second God called the Son of God who is the Savior, and a third God called the Holy Spirit who is the Regenerator (or Sanctifier).
Though our logic says three Gods, our lips must declare Three Divine Persons in One Godhead.
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The invisible Divine Father (Jehovah) incarnated Himself as Jesus, thereby becoming the visible Divine Human Person in whom there is a Trinity of Aspects -- Creation, Salvation, Regeneration.
Only a visible God, called the Divine Human Person, can be actually loved, with Whom we can be conjoined, and thereby receive the ability to enjoy a blissful eternal life.
The Divine is indivisible and omnipresent, hence there cannot be more than One Divine Person, or God.
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Salvation |
Salvation is instantaneous by God's forgiveness of our sins through propitiation of the Father for the sake of the Son's Blood sacrifice on the cross.
Forgiveness is by faith alone, not by our works or achieved goodness of character.
The Son's perfect merit is ascribed to us and we then reap the rewards in eternal life, but only if we acknowledge that Christ died for our sins. |
Salvation is a gradual process of regeneration involving our own active efforts at character building, but with the recognition that everything is actually from God and nothing from ourselves.
People of all religions are saved to the extent that they are willing to undergo regeneration of character by cooperating with the God of their religion. This is the Lord, no matter which name they have for God, since He is the One God.
Regeneration takes place by fighting our evils, desisting from them, and doing good to others through the power God grants us. |
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Sin
Hell
Devil |
Sin causes spiritual death by the inevitable nature of Divine Judgment; we are convicted by Truth but saved by Grace.
God hates a sinful nature and turns away from us on account of sin.
God no longer sees our sins when we are ascribed the Son's Righteousness and Perfect Merit.
Everyone can live in heaven whose sins are forgiven. |
The Lord is pure Love and incapable of punishing us for our sins, or to turn away from us.
He loves us even when we sin but cannot give us eternal bliss until we repent and regenerate our character by avoiding evils and doing good instead.
Only a regenerate character has the capacity to live in heaven.
Sin leads to hell because the unregenerate character loves evils. Hell is not a punishment for sin but an inevitable consequence of evil loves. |
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Hell is a place of eternal punishment for those who have rejected God. |
Hell is a state of mind in disorder in which the individual turns all good into evil and all truth into falsity. After passing into the spiritual world, all unregenerate persons remain in this state forever. This is by their own choice. |
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Sin is disobedience of Divine commandments, and a turning away from God towards the devil. Sin can be erased by acknowledging that Christ died on the Cross for the forgiveness of our sins, past and future. |
Sin is the physiological disease of the mind's organs and is built up gradually until it leads to the insanities of hell. This disease results from one's rebellious refusal in daily life to acknowledge the higher authority of God in one’s life. By leading ourselves, our character cannot be regenerated by God. |
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The devil is a fallen angel and has power to oppose God's will by misleading people through their weaknesses and vices.
The devil can be resisted by invoking Bible verses. |
“The devil” is a collective reference to the inhabitants of the hells. When we undergo temptations, some of them are allowed by the Lord to play into our intentions so that our conscience could become aware of them and reject them voluntarily through repentance. |
The essence of all religion are these three: God, Salvation, and Sin (which includes Hell and Devil). The purpose of religion is to establish a living, rational, and voluntary relationship with God. Through this relationship we can participate in God's work of Salvation without which we are born on earth, die, and wake up to life in hell to eternity--not a good prospect! What a miserable fate would that be if we had this one life in the body, followed by life in hell forever. Animals are far better off than this, since they do not have a hell to go to after this life but merely dissolve back into the natural universe after a fulfilling, though brutish life, each species according to its capacity. But because we humans are born immortal, we need to be concerned about the vital issue of what's going to happen to us after we depart here. Especially since the time involved in the afterlife, is forever, while our few decades here on earth is as nothing in comparison.
Therefore it's obvious, logical, rational, and sane to want to prepare oneself for this eternal life, especially since we're told by a fully reliable source (Divine revelation), that the quality of our life, our vitality and mental health throughout eternity, will depend entirely on how we prepare ourselves during this near insignificant time on earth.
Friend, this is worth repeating. When I heard this, I was flabbergasted. How can I spend one hour of the day not preparing for eternity? One minute here is immeasurably more valuable or fruitful than a million years over there, because of the physiology of the mind. We can change character traits during our brief stay in the physical body, and we can do so in a fundamental way so that when we exit, we are immeasurably better off than when we were born, given all the evils that we inherited in the mind. But not a single character trait can be changed once you are in your spirit-body and in the spiritual world. You then are the way you came, and to eternity you will increase daily in all the abilities and values you brought with you. If these are genuine spiritual values, they can be multiplied and perfected endlessly to eternity, and you grow as an angel (or inhabitant of heaven) to levels of happiness and understanding that cannot be fathomed in your wildest imagination. But if your traits and values are not genuine spiritual values but superficial rituals of worship, or mystical ideas where the rational does not tread, then my friend, it will not be well with you, or me, if I do end up in that situation, which I don't intend to! But there is no discrimination or favoritism in the eyes of God. In eternity, you are what you came with.
Quoting from the Writings:
|
AE 1217
How the Lord can be present with all who are in heaven and throughout the whole earth, and can know all things, even the most particular things connected with them, both present and future, can be comprehended only by means of the following truths:
(1) In the natural world there are spaces and times, but in the spiritual world these are appearances.
(2) Spaces and times must be removed from the ideas before the Lord's omnipresence with all and with each individual, and His omniscience of things present and things future connected with them, can be comprehended.
(3) All angels of heaven and all men of the earth who constitute the church are as one man, and the Lord is the life of that man.
(4) Consequently as there is life in the particular and most particular things of man and it knows the entire state of these, so the Lord is in the particular and most particular things of the angels of heaven and of the men of the church.
(5) The Lord, by the intellectual faculty that each man has, or by its opposite, is also present with those who are out of heaven and out of the church, that is, those who are in hell or who are to come into hell, and knows their whole state.
(6) From the omnipresence and omniscience of the Lord thus perceived it can be understood how the Lord is the all and is in all things of heaven and the church, and that we are in the Lord and He is in us.
(7) The omnipresence and omniscience of the Lord can be comprehended also from the creation of the universe; for it was so created by Him that He is in things first and in things last, in the center and at the same time in the circumferences, and that the things in which He is are uses.
(8) As the Lord has the Divine love and the Divine wisdom, so from these He has the Divine omnipresence and the Divine omniscience; but omnipresence is chiefly from the Divine love, and omniscience chiefly from the Divine wisdom.
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*** Take the Rational Spirituality Test Part 2 ***
Instructions: For each question, select the answer that is closest to your current thinking.
You may have already taken this test once, if you followed the note at the beginning of the book called “Before You start: Test Your Rational Spirituality.” This is a section comprising items 26 to 50 of the Test. Whether you take it for the first time or the second time, your score, now that you’ve read up till now, may be around 60 percent correct (15 out of 25 items). More importantly you will be able to make up your own answers. You can practice after you obtain your score for this Part (2).
If you like, you can page through to the Appendix at the end where the 100 questions are located.
This test does not measure your rational spirituality but only your understanding of rational spirituality. If you are familiar with the Writings and understand it rationally, you would probably select the correct answer for most of the questions. This test is not a knowledge test. It does not measure your knowledge of the Writings and does not cover all the subjects the Writings cover. It is a test of understanding of how well you can reason about spiritual topics from the perspective of the Writings.
It works out well when you use an ANSWER SHEET on a piece of paper that looks like this, and then you can also easily and accurately score your choices from the ANSWER KEY given below (following the questions).
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QUESTIONS
26. How many layers or levels of heavens are there?
a. Natural Heaven, Spiritual Heaven, and Celestial Heaven.
b. Imaginary heavens in potentially endless layers.
c. One Heaven under One God.
27. Which reasoning is most correct?
a. The idea of higher and lower heavens is discriminatory of some people, which God does not do, and therefore all faithful believers who are sincere and good, are in one Heaven under God.
b. When you consider that some people are saints while others are normal followers, the idea of higher and lower heavens makes sense.
c. Heaven is not a reward or an honor, but a state of mind or character, some that are good but simple minded, others that are good and complex, thus forming separate heavens.
28. The idea of “hell forever” is controversial. Which reasoning is most correct?
a. It is repugnant to suppose that a loving and omnipotent God could keep people in hell forever, no matter what they did before getting there.
b. God allows people in hell to exit by giving up their injurious intentions, but they stubbornly refuse, even to eternity, testifying to the truth of the expression “I rather rot in hell forever.”
c. Hell is a place of purification from evils that we picked up along the way, and when it is done, we emerge from hell.
29. What does spiritual salvation consist of?
a. Salvation is by means of sincere faith in the cleansing power of the blood of Christ.
b. Salvation is by means of progressive character reformation from evil to good.
c. Salvation is by means of religious piety sincerely performed until death.
30. Is doing “good works” and “charity” necessary for salvation?
a. Salvation is a state of mind called heaven, achieved when we reform our character from evil to good, by daily struggles made effective by relying on God.
b. Salvation is by sincerity of faith, not by the merit of good works and charity, since we cannot rid ourselves of a sinful nature.
c. Charity and altruism are effective motivators for counteracting egotism and an uncivilized nature.
31. What is the relationship between truth and love?
a. With a sincere and unselfish person, love and truth are both from the heart.
b. Love is immediate in experience while truth is more abstract.
c. Love is within genuine truth, and therefore truth is the outside form by which love manifests itself.
32. Are there different types of truth?
a. There is natural truth, spiritual truth, and celestial truth.
b. Truth from God is unitary, not varied.
c. Truth is drawing correct conclusions by considering all the facts.
33. What is scientific dualism?
a. An acknowledgement that there are two separate and interacting worlds, natural and spiritual, with God creating and managing both in every detail.
b. A contradiction in terms since dualism refers to God, which is outside the purview of science.
c. The theory that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon from brain evolution.
34. What is theistic science?
a. The attempt to turn science into religion, or to blur the differences.
b. Scientific dualism in which God’s role in every phenomenon is rationally assessed by means of scientific revelations given through Sacred Scripture.
c. An intellectual movement in the history of science that ended with the modern era in science.
35. What is the Threefold Word in which God gave us scientific or rational revelations?
a. There is only a Twofold Word – Old and New Testaments.
b. The Word is about religious revelations, not science.
c. The Hebrew Word, the Greek Word, the Latin Word.
36. What is the relative standing between religion and science?
a. Religion is above science.
b. The two cannot be compared in this way.
c. True Science, which is theistic, is above religion.
37. Can atheistic scientists be rational?
a. Yes -- atheistic science has done well in its own sphere, namely civilization and technology, due to the fundamental rationality of scientists.
b. God does not intervene in the experiments of scientists.
c. No -- the success of atheistic science and engineering was brought about by Divine Providence despite the lack of rationality of atheistic science.
38. What does it mean that Swedenborg had a dual consciousness?
a. That he was capable of trance like states during which he was possessed by spirits.
b. That he was consciously aware of what went on around him in the natural world and in the spiritual world.
c. That he developed the ability to be consciously awake in his dream states.
39. Did Swedenborg’s exploration of the spiritual world include scientific experiments he conducted while there?
a. No.
b. Yes.
c. Can’t say.
40. What kind of information about the spiritual world did Swedenborg report in the Writings?
a. Subjective personal accounts.
b. Objective empirical observations.
c. Interpretive descriptions of spiritual visions.
41. Can God be a legitimate concept in scientific explanations?
a. Yes.
b. No.
c. No opinion.
42. Can the Writings be considered True Science?
a. No, the Writings are a religious revelation.
b. Yes, the Writings contain scientific revelations.
c. The Writings contain some scientific explanations used only for illustration, not for science.
43. Can the Lord appear to people again in the natural world as He did before?
a. Probably.
b. Yes.
c. No.
44. Is it rational to think that there is a Trinity of Three Divine Persons?
a. Yes.
b. No.
c. It’s a mystery that cannot be rationally comprehended.
45. When is the Second Coming of Christ supposed to take place?
a. After this world will goes through the tribulations of the end times.
b. No one knows for sure when it will happen.
c. It has already happened.
46. Is there a sun in the spiritual world?
a. No.
b. That information is not available.
c. Yes.
47. Can other religions possibly adopt the Writings as a science book about God?
a. Yes, all religions can accept the Writings as a book of True Science.
b. No, since to adopt the Writings means to become a New Church Christian.
c. No, since the Writings are a religious revelation, not scientific.
48. Scientific dualism, or theistic science, is rational while materialistic monism is pre-rational. Is this correct?
a. Not correct, since materialistic science is rational.
b. It depends, since some of it is rational but some may not be.
c. Correct, since atheism is not rational.
49. If God is omnipotent, why does He allow evil and hell in His creation?
a. There are forces of evil and fallen angels that God struggles against.
b. Evil is not really evil but a perspective on the world.
c. God allows certain evils, but not others, depending on when He can turn the evil to people’s ultimate benefit.
50. What happens to the Divine power God gives us to be able to plan and execute tasks?
a. The Divine power is given as a gift of Grace to be appropriated for ourselves.
b. The Divine power remains God’s power in us and never becomes ours.
c. The Divine power in us makes that part of us Divine and God-like.
ANSWER KEY
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26. __a__ |
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27. __c__ |
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28. __b__ |
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29. __b__ |
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30. __a__ |
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31. __c__ |
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32. __a__ |
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33. __a__ |
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34. __b__ |
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35. __c__ |
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36. __c__ |
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37. __c__ |
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38. __b__ |
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39. __b__ |
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40. __b__ |
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41. __a__ |
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42. __b__ |
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43. __c__ |
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44. __b__ |
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45. __c__ |
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46. __c__ |
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47. __a__ |
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48. __c__ |
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49. __c__ |
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50. __b__ |
Now that you know your score, you can go a step further in assessing your understanding of rational spirituality. Look at the questions you answered correctly. Select one of them and write a sentence of justification for your answer. Then compare your answer with the sentence for that item given in the Test. How do they differ? Did you mention all the basic elements needed to justify the answer? Did you mention them in a logical order? Now see if you can improve it without making it much longer.
Repeat this with other items.
See if you can add more alternatives to each item.
See if you can create 10 new items covering the reading you have done thus far.
15. The Three Levels in the Mind -- Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial
In a man who is in the Lord's kingdom, or who is the Lord's kingdom, there are celestial things, spiritual things, rational things, memory-knowledges, and things of sense; and these are in subordination to one another.
Celestial and spiritual things hold the first place, and are the Lord's; to these rational things are subordinate, and are subservient; to these again memory-knowledges are subordinate and subservient; and lastly the things of sense are subordinate and subservient to these, that is to memory-knowledges.
The things which are subservient, or which serve, are relatively servants, and in the Word are called "servants." That there is such a subordination, the man who thinks only from sense and memory-knowledge is ignorant; and he who knows anything of them nevertheless has a most obscure idea, because he is still in corporeal things. (AC 2541)
When man is being instructed, there is a progression from memory-knowledges to rational truths; further, to intellectual truths; and finally, to celestial truths, which are here signified by the "wife." If the progression is made from memory knowledges and rational truths to celestial truths without intellectual truths as media, the celestial suffers violence, because there can be no connection of rational truths-which are obtained by means of memory-knowledges-with celestial truths, except by means of intellectual truths, which are the media. (AC 1495)
The following table compares religious focus and behavior within the three phases of spiritual development. Look up and down the Phase 1 column to get a feel for the natural mind in us. Do the same for Phase 2 to get a look at the spiritual mind in us. Then do the same for Phase 3 to get a peek at the celestial mind.
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RELIGIOUS |
Phase1 Natural |
Phase 2 Spiritual |
Phase 3 Celestial |
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Ritual |
Faith |
True Science |
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Moses phase |
Paul phase |
Swedenborg phase |
|
|
Old Testament state |
New Testament state |
Third Testament state |
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Hebrew Word |
Greek Word |
Latin Word |
|
|
Sensual |
External rational |
Interior rational |
|
|
Fundamentalism |
Mysticism |
Rationality |
|
|
Ritualizing |
Personalizing |
Particularizing |
|
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Pre-scientific |
Atheistic science |
Theistic science |
|
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Invisible God |
First Coming of Visible God |
Second Coming of Rational God |
|
|
Aesthetics |
Symbolism |
Correspondence |
|
|
Justice |
Mercy |
Health |
|
|
Sectarianism |
Universalism |
Actualism |
|
|
Racism |
Pan-culturalism |
Unity |
|
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Obedience |
Faith |
Charity |
|
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BEHAVIORAL |
Intolerance Literalism Piety Territoriality Inquisition Tribalism Sacrifices Authoritarianism Sexism Cast system Censorship Cultism Sensualism Xenophobia Rebellion Stubbornness Dogma
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Meritoriousness Evangelism Metaphysics Transcendentalism Repentance Human rights Traditional marriage Universalism Humanism Blind Faith Externalism Human doctrine
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As-of-self Diversity Rationality Inclusion Regeneration Marriage of Good and True Conjugial Love Grand Human perspective Correspondences Rational love Theism True Science Applied inner sense Enlightenment Heavenly Doctrine
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There is a rational progression from ritual to faith (phase 1 to phase 2), and from faith to True Science (phase 2 to phase 3). It is not known that this is an inward progression. Faith is more inward, than Ritual, and True Science is more inward than Faith. This may seem surprising and contrary to fact, and yet it is true. The problem in communication that arises here is that the word "science" can be used in a materialistic sense (atheistic and monist), or else, in a dualist sense (theistic and spiritual). For instance, when you hear science in the news, it is most likely materialist (atheistic) science that is being referred to. But when we talk about the Writings of Swedenborg as science, we mean dualist or theistic science. And theistic science is at the phase 3 level of particularistic worship, as explained in the Writings.
The reason monist (atheistic) science is inferior and invalid is that it denies true reality, which is that God creates and runs the universe for the purpose of bringing into existence immortal human beings born on some earth, and to bring them to heaven where He can make them happy to eternity. This being the reality, to deny this is to deny reality, and therefore to fall into false explanations of phenomena, their origin and control. True Science in the Writings of Swedenborg has revealed the rational system by which God manages the universe, and this tells us that God cannot create human beings that are born in heaven, thus by passing birth in the natural world. The reason is that the laws of existence in the natural and spiritual worlds are necessarily different, complementary, and reciprocal. Neither world could work by itself. The Writings demonstrates this fully in various rational ways we can understand, and illustrate it in many empirical observations.
God allowed atheistic science to become successful and continues to lead its scientists despite their “spiritual insanity.” This leading is unconscious so we cannot attribute the success of science, engineering, and industry to the rationality of scientists, engineers, and managers. The reason God allows this is also revealed. The atheistic bias is a general human trait, found not just in scientists but every individual. The denial of God is a built in guarantee by God. No one can think anything except from God, just like a radio cannot play music or bring you the news without a signal from the broadcaster. Our thoughts appear to be our own free private activity, yet it has been revealed it is not so. In order for humans to think, they have to part of a horizontal community and a vertical community. The horizontal community is the nation or tribe we are born in and is the source of culture, language, and personality. Atheistic science believes that this is it, but True Science reveals that we would not be able to think anything without the vertical community. This refers to our membership in the world of spirits where is located our mind or spirit-body. The whole mind is located in the spiritual world, and no part of the mind is located in the natural world. As well, the physical body is located in the natural world, and no part of the physical body is located in the spiritual world.
When our connection to the physical body is broken, it becomes a lifeless corpse, while the spirit-body continues life immortal. Our thinking is carried by a spiritual organ or brain within the spirit-body.
The laws of the world of spirits are such that distance and communication between people (in their spirit-bodies) appears to the senses of the spirit-body to depend on similarity of thoughts and feelings. Those who have compatible thoughts and feelings communicate with each other and live together in cities throughout the spiritual world. While we are on earth our spirit-body is isolated and protected by God, who selects moment by moment the people that can communicate with our spirit-body. At death this state of protection ends and we seem to ourselves to be awake, free, and pursuing whatever we desire. But while we are still tied to earth, God only allows those communications with other spirit-bodies, who play a role in our mental development. Spirit societies are so homogeneous that everyone shares the same feelings and thoughts, though with endless individual and unique variations. As a result each spiritual society has one ruling love that is the chief of all their loves and determines what the other loves are going to be. For example, a spirit society or city in heaven could specialize in the love of educating young children who arrive from the earths and need to be instructed and raised for heavenly life. Or, another society might specialize in the love for business and profit.
The hellish societies have ruling loves which are infernal, such as adultery, idol worship, avarice, greed, murderous hatred for innocence, dominion and power over others, meritoriousness, self-righteousness, pride, and so on. In other words, virtues and vices are general ruling loves of collections of spirit societies in heaven and hell, that is, in the human mind. God maintains a kind of spiritual telephone switchboard or internet between every spirit-body belonging to an individual on one of the numerous earths in the physical universe. He determines what each communication should be moment by moment. In this way God can induce this or that emotion, this or that thought, at any moment in any situation. This operation is called influx. We think and feel from influx, and should influx cease for one instant, all thinking would stop. The management by God of our thoughts and feelings moment by moment is incredible to those who are in phase 1 and phase 2 thinking. Only True Science (phase 3) can give you this rational understanding. This understanding cannot be obtained from self but only from God. Hence it is called enlightenment.
Atheistic thinking in science and popular philosophy is allowed and brought about by God by means of influx. Scientists and philosopher cannot take credit for their atheism, for all their thoughts are produced by God through influx. This phase 1 thinking is a necessary step for phase 2 thinking.
It is not surprising to learn that one's religious development towards a closer relationship with God is a progression and does not mature all at once. The history of the race clearly shows a progression of consciousness and rationality by means of scientific revelations of the Word. The Writings detail the history of other versions of the Word prior to the Old Testament. The revelations of the Word are necessary as a horizontal or natural counterpart to influx, which is a vertical or spiritual operation. Influx from the spiritual world must work in conjunction with knowledge acquired from the Word, or else influx would not be capable of rendering the individual rational and consequently, spiritual, and ultimately, celestial. We are gradually introduced to more and more internal worship as our rational and intellectual mind matures and acquires cultural and scientific knowledge about the world.
Without this intellectual content and method of reasoning, we would not be capable of understanding and accepting rational concepts that have an inner spiritual meaning or referent, such as a Personal God (phase 2) or a God who powers your mind, moment by moment, and manages it and directs it, without your conscious knowledge (phase 3). To accept this notion one must think about it from the interior rational mind. The natural mind, even the rational part of that mind, rejects this idea. The natural-rational is an external rational created by earthly and corporeal experiences or stimulation, while the spiritual-rational (or interior rational), is created by influx. The two must converge and correspond for either to exist and be operational.
We are introduced into religion and the worship of God when we are children. Christian children are told about Jesus, not about Jehovah the Father. Christian children are taught the rituals of Church and worship: prayer at meal time, prayer at bed time, Church and Sunday school, Bible study, religious songs and festivals, baptisms, confirmation, weddings, and so on. Without the rituals of doing together and reciting together, as well as alone, there would be no religion possible for children, and therefore, not for adults. It is necessary for children to be taught about God and participate in worship rituals in order to be able to progress to inner worship as an adult. Without this progression to inner worship, there is no reformation, no regeneration, consequently, no salvation , no eternal life in heaven, but only misery in hell forever. The Writings reveal that external worship does not affect the inward parts of the mind and is rejected by the individual in the afterlife. Only those who develop inner worship (zones 5 to 9) have a sufficiently developed rational mind to exist in heaven where the all in all is pure celestial rationality, or Divine Truth.
Note carefully: it is not necessary to be of any particular religion in order to develop inner worship states in oneself. This can be done by anyone since everyone is led and managed by the same One God. Nevertheless, recall that God cannot lead an individual to heaven solely from influx, or else He would do so out of His infinite love for every created human being He creates. If He were to do so, we would be angel zombies in heaven, not free human beings who feel happy because they feel free. To achieve this as-of self sense of freedom, we must be born on earth without any knowledge, must acquire knowledge as of self by studying the Word, Sacred Scripture, or lessons written by others who have studied the Word. In this way we acquire natural knowledge about spiritual topics which makes us rational and dualist. Now when this knowledge is made spiritual by influx, then we are enlightened, and our mind can be further prepared for heavenly existence.
External ritual (phase 1 worship) is the method of instruction about our responsibility to God who is the higher authority in our lives. This is where religion and theistic science start -- when we acknowledge a Divine authority higher than ourselves. And children readily do that when taught to ritualize in the form of recitation, song, festival celebration, and socializing. These are community-building forces that strengthen religious behavior and allow us to grow inward towards more personal worship. The act of ritualizing establishes the religious reality to the natural mind. In the Moses phase of sectarian worship (phase 1), ritual is everything. Ritual assumes its own independent sacred power that can be harnessed for our benefit by strict fundamentalist adherence to the prescribed procedures. If you follow the prescribed rituals to the letter, without forgetting anything, you appear to yourself to acquire merit, holiness, and sacred power. It's not a rational truth or an actuality, only an appearance. So eventually, we have to get off that branch, as it were.
Quoting from Swedenborg's Writings:
Worship does not consist in prayers and in external devotion, but in a life of charity; prayers are only its externals, for they proceed from the man through his mouth, consequently men's prayers are such as they themselves are in respect to life. It matters not that a man bears himself humbly, that he kneels and sighs when he prays; for these are externals, and unless externals proceed from internals they are only gestures and sounds without life. In each thing that a man utters there is affection, and every man, spirit, and angel is his own affection, for their affection is their life; it is the affection itself that speaks, and not the man without it; therefore such as the affection is such is the praying.
Spiritual affection is what is called charity towards the neighbor; to be in that affection is true worship; praying is what proceeds. From this it can be seen that the essential of worship is the life of charity, and that its instrumental is gesture and praying; or that the primary of worship is a life of charity, and its secondary is praying. From this it is clear that those who place all Divine worship in oral piety, and not in practical piety, err greatly. (AE 325)
15.1 Spirituality That is Natural, Not Yet Spiritual or Celestial
In natural religions (phase 1), ritual acquires the illusion of personal power. I was very much taken with this notion before I graduated to phase 2 worship. I was in my 30s in the 1960s when Carlos Castaneda. started his intense popularity with the new age intellectuals in academia. His Ph.D. dissertation in anthropology was published under the title, Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. About a dozen popular books followed in the next two decades, though I had enough of Don Juan after his 5th. But until then my natural mind, being grounded in Jewish sectarianism and scientific materialism, was attracted to this philosophy and ideology that said: You can create your own power universe, and fabulous experiences, merely by the power of consensus or assent to power rituals. Those who took this road and practiced it, were called brujos, sorcerers, warriors. But I discovered that there was nothing to it. Only the pretense of an inner reality of corporeal spirituality, a pretense that if pursued, magnifies itself into delusion. And all delusion is by influx from hellish societies who specialize in this type of corporeal love of fantasy and imagination.
Corporeal spirituality (phase 1 thinking) is not real but a figment of the natural mind's imagination. Of course, figments can have powerful effects on those who believe them to be real. These effects are not benign, good, or healthy, but the opposite. After Castaneda., I studied Rudolf Steiner. During the months that I was immersed in his mystical "Christian" theosophy, I was not able to see that his spirituality was corporeal and imaginative, not rational, and that it used ordinary spiritual ideas in a stripped (abstracted) fashion, stripped of their inner rationality, which is to say, of their personalism (phase 1 thinking) and particularism (phase 3 thinking). When Steiner discusses Christ, he is not referring to Jesus Christ. Instead, he uses the expression "Christ impulse" and traces its mystical "work" across the centuries through historical analysis and psychic perceptions which he trained himself to have, in the tradition of theosophists. It is easy to fall into the state of mind where these psychic perceptions are believed to be real and true. When this happens, we are led astray by the spiritual societies who are constantly and to eternity in this state of mind. Our ultimate fate is no other than to join these spiritual societies when we enter the afterlife. When people arrive to the spiritual societies of their habitual influx enjoyed while on earth, they feel themselves to have arrived at home at last, and they enter with joy.
But, as witnessed by Swedenborg, the joy does not last, and soon it turns into misery since people in hellish societies spend their life taking turns making each other miserable. They take turns dominating one another, and subjecting one another to their ruling vice. They live only for the joy of having their turn on theirs, but at other times they are in such misery that it is hard to accept the horrendous scenes Swedenborg witnessed when allowed by the Lord to visit the hells, in company of the protection of angels. The activities going on in all hellish societies are supervised by the inhabitants of heaven who volunteer their work as part of their love and altruism. They do not have to leave heaven but are given powers to see into hell and to administer justice and restraint as they deem necessary – such is the amazing power we have when we are in the heavenly state of our mind called angelic and celestial. We can then rule over everything that’s below in the human mind. The power is proportional the quality of love and truth each person has appropriated by living their genuine faith, their true science, and their doctrine of charity or love.
“Higher angels” have more power than angelic spirits because the quality and intensity of their love for the Lord and neighbor is stronger. Intensity of love is proportional to living and practicing the truth we know and understand. Such are the amazing adventures we have in the life of eternity. Every day endlessly renews itself so that each succeeding day is perceptibly more happy and advanced than the preceding. This eternal progression of daily increase is the basis of our happiness in the heavenly state of consciousness. Such is God’s love for us that He has created this perfect universe for us. His Divine Love is to make each human being happy from Himself, by making the individual capable of receiving Divine feelings and Divine thoughts. Each of these is infinite and brings endless renewal and progress. This is why the universe exists and will continue to exist endlessly, as God reveals in the Writings.
In contrast to the rational spirituality of the Writings (phase 3), Steiner's notion of our salvation, is to develop our minds through ritual and psychic meditations so that we become capable of using inner senses (“astral body”) that can tune into these “subtle” forces that theosophists believe, shape evolution, history, and the individual mind (phase 1 thinking). You can see that there is not yet any personalism here, such as we have upon entering phase 2, zone 4, the beginning of our spiritual life. Phase 1 thinking conceives of God as a force rather than a person. According to this, God is not human, and therefore is a force, and force is a natural, physical, and corporeal idea (phase 1 thinking). We need to move higher into the human rational thinking process whereby we become a dualist and can perceive and understand rationally that God is a Person, therefore Human.
This universe is not an impersonal force but a Human creation by God, that is, from Divine Love and Wisdom. Love and wisdom are dualist concepts. Love and wisdom necessarily implies human and rational. Only humans have love and rationality, and no human exists who lacks these in potential or capacity (if not in actuality). Moving into the region of thinking where we can accept God as Person and Human, is a momentous event that is called, as I indicated before, the First Coming of God in our mind. So the further and further study of Steiner would not have allowed me to begin my real spiritual life (phase 2 and 3 thinking). Like my interest in the Kabala, and in Castaneda., my interest in Steiner did not lead me to what I was craving for -- personalism, or a personal relation with the Divine.
I would not have called it personalism in that state because I did not know that word or concept. And yet if I had let myself think deeply I would have seen that all this thrashing about I was doing of “seeking” truth, was actually not about truth, but about myself, and especially, the aggrandizement of myself. Corporeal mysticism like that of Steiner or Castaneda, and others like "heavy metal" cultism and Satanism, are not spiritual because they are clearly about oneself and one's power rather than one's relationship to God and love of neighbor. Without a primary focus on the Divine Human Person as being morally responsible to us, to taking care of us, to loving us, there is not yet spirituality. And there is not yet peace. The searching continues, but not the finding.
Only reality can be actual truth, and only genuine truth can lead to the source of love and good, without which we are nothing, have nothing, because a material mind is temporary and disintegrates into its scattered cells and atoms. To reach eternal life in heaven in any religion, depends on your efforts in forming for yourself a mental vehicle or character capable of existing in the atmosphere of good and truth, and of love and wisdom. Without developing this celestial character, we sink down from the world of spirits, down, down, into the cities and jail houses of hell. And now the scientific revelations of True Science in the Writings has fully specified the map or the method by which we can reach this celestial character (phase 3 thinking and feeling).
This method is the gradual building up of our rational mind through science, engineering, and industry, on the outside, and through the Threefold Word on the inside. Those who do not know of the Writings have their religious or philosophical doctrines that teach how to be a disciplined and good person for the sake of our afterlife in eternity. When they arrive into the afterlife, their spirit-body is ready for instruction in the rational truths of the Second Coming, which are the Divine Truths of the Divine Rational Mind of God the Divine Human Person. They can accept these truths because they have developed a suitable external rational mind through their life of discipline and religion for the sake of their afterlife. No other motive is able to accomplish this preparation except the motive of God and heaven, for this motive occupies the highest place of all motives in the human mind, as revealed in the Writings (phase 3 thinking and feeling).
Motives are also arranged in three discrete degrees – natural, spiritual, and celestial. Natural motives (phase 1 feeling) strive for natural good and truth such as wealth, power, reputation, knowledge, fear of exclusion, desire for approval, obedience to authority, and the like. Spiritual motives (phase 2 feeling ) strive for spiritual good and truth such as merit, righteousness, holiness, humility, understanding, intelligence, wisdom, and the like. Celestial motives (phase 3 feeling ) strive for celestial good and truth such as charity, love, unity, conjunction, acceptance, inclusion, interior perception, and the like. With celestial motives there always is given wisdom and perception that is incomprehensible to the lower states of mind. The truth given is always limited by the good accepted. God gives maximum good to every person all the time because this is Divine Love, but each individual varies as to how much of it filters out. Some turn it into its opposite, that is, into evil. God allows this and gives the power for reasons already discussed, namely, that there is no other way of maintaining freedom of choice, which is essential for retaining the capacity to become human.
The amount of truth you now have is proportional to the good you’re willing to receive from God by influx. We resist, oppose, and filter out this influx in accordance with the state of our regeneration or character reformation in adult life. In phase 1 feeling, our ruling love is natural and the goals we strive for are natural. As we are reformed and become dualist by acknowledging God’s omnipresence and leading, we strive for spiritual good and we retain these as they inflow from within into our unconscious spiritual mind (phase 2 feeling). At last, as we begin our regeneration or character reformation in the light of doctrine, we struggle to apply the doctrine to our willing and thinking every day. This practice results in enlightenment which grows ever deeper and higher by means of more interior rational truths (phase 3 thinking and feeling). When we can no longer benefit from further practice, we are transferred to the world of spirits, exiting from the world into which we were born, but never returning to it again.
Corporeal spirituality is not spiritual because it is not personal. I watched the Oprah show this week [this was in June 1999] and her guest was one of the authors and proponents of a popular and widespread brand of corporeal spirituality. People who are taken by it, begin using the expression "spirit" in relation to themselves, as for instance: “Affirm the spirit within you.” Or, “Pray to your spirit within you.” Or, “Trust your spirit” -- and other such verbal ritualizings that help establish in your mind the idea that you do not need a personal God for your brand of spirituality (phase 1 thinking). Part of this reasoning is to reject traditional Christian religion with its personal God because it seems to them to be a form of intellectual fundamentalism. They see the personal God of history as an ethnic expression only, and refuse to give it their assent. They will not bow the head. They cannot, as long as the god they worship is spirit, that is, their own spirit, which is no worship. The only spirit that exists is the Spirit of God the Creator, who lends it to us in the mind, in a way that allows us to have it as-of self, but not, actually from self, but actually from God. What is from God remains in God and with God. By appropriating it to ourselves God is within us and we are in God. We are not God, as the nonduality of phase 1 leads some to think. But God is in us if we appropriate good and truth, for these are from God and are God with us. We can never be one with that which is from God in us. We can be conjoined to it, but not made one with it.
Therefore it is vain for people to think that we have a piece of God in us or that what we have of our own can be Divine. It is enough to see and be in the actuality and reality, which is that if we love good and truth in us from God, then God grants that we be conjoined with him and live a celestial life. This is what heaven consists of, to live a conjoint life with God. And what is so wonderful, God grants that this life conjunction with Him be not by a single person but by a conjugial couple. A conjugial couple in heaven has only one soul, a conjoint self. This united couple is called an angel. One angel. And so this one angel is conjoined to the Lord. Thus it is that the Lord can give conjugial unity to that couple, from which they are in their highest heaven, deepest joy, and increasing daily to eternity.
15. 2 True Science Phase 3 Thinking
That which is from God is still in God, therefore God, since the Divine is indivisible and omnipresent.
This idea cannot be understood by the natural mind, for in that state, it seems contradictory to us. Therefore corporeal spirituality, in the many forms I mentioned above, is always about searching for spirit below ourselves, not above ourselves. To the eyes and consciousness of the natural mind, there is no rational mind above itself. The natural mind, being a materialist creation, cannot accept the spiritual things that the rational mind can see by means of the inner eye called the understanding, also intelligence and wisdom. The ability to deny God or the existence of the inner eye, is not from rational thinking but from spiritually insane thinking The Writings reveal that our inner mind can be in a state of spiritual insanity even as our outer mind and behavior appears normal to everyone.
Further, you can confirm this by self-witnessing observations of the stream of thoughts you have in various situations. If you compare the private world of your thoughts and reasoning with your public conduct in speaking and reasoning, you will find marked differences of which you ought to be aware. The outer public speaking and reasoning is managed by most individuals to stay within the bounds of what is considered normalcy by others. We make our sentences fit a common sense logic which we have learned through experience and instruction. We answer questions and draw conclusions that are expected for normal people, and we learn what those are. But the inner private world of thoughts frees itself from social and legal shackles or expectations. We think what we please, that is, in accordance with our loves, and ultimately, with our ruling love. If this ruling love is from hell, out private inner thoughts are insane and full of hatred, violence, and denigration of others to whom we speak normally on the outside. If from heaven, our private thoughts are clean and decent.
Every person on earth alternates between heavenly and hellish thoughts and feelings, depending on the mental state. But in the course of our lifetime here, we incline more and more towards one type rather than the other. If we are regenerating, we incline more and more towards communication by heavenly influx, and those who are not regenerating incline more and more towards hellish sources of influx. The Writings reveal that most people today are of this dual nature – insane on the private world of self, sane in the public social world. Swedenborg has confirmed this with thousands of cases he studied in the world of spirits where people were made available to him by the power and action of angels acting under the Lord’s immediate guidance.
The methods have now been given by which we can heal our interior world of self and make it sane and whole again. This is the method of reformation and regeneration of character by means of the Threefold Word. The spiritual-rational mind that can only be developed through Divine revelations, can see, perceive, and comprehend that God is from above (or Spirit), and that what is below us is not spirit, because not from above. The only thing we can find below us is imagination, fantasy, illusion, delusion -- thus all unreality. We see nothing above us from the perspective of the natural mind. Every organic fiber and synapse of the natural mind has been formed only by an order pertaining to what is below -- sensory input from the physical world. Nothing of it contains spiritual rationality, but only natural sensuality.
Rationality (or spirituality) is actually made of spiritual substances from the spiritual Sun. These organic spiritual substances are not related to time and space like material elements and energy fields. The natural mind has only time-space ideas and methods of operation. These operations in the natural mind cannot represent anything that is eternal, spiritual, or rational, since this is contrary to its order, its structure and form made of coiling spiritual fibers in the mind. Note that the natural mind is the bottom portion of the mind and therefore it is an organ made of spiritual substances. But now we are discussing the fact that the bottom portion of the mind is organized in a different form than the middle, and the top. An analogy might be to think of a computer within a computer within a computer. There are three computers structured in that relational order of command and priority. The inmost computer, or command center, is more complex and can handle tasks the other two cannot. The outmost computer, or data display graphics center, is the largest in bulk but the least capable in central processing.
The above analogy is based on the structure of the mind and its three portions. The external, lowest mind is called the natural mind and it specializes in display characteristics such as seeing around us, hearing, touching, tasting, moving. This natural mind obviously must reflect and conform to the sensory world, which is a representation of the physical world. Though the natural mind is made of spiritual organs, it reflects not the spiritual world, but the natural. The most advanced portion of the natural mind is called the natural-rational mind. Here we are able to manufacture symbolic abstractions of the physical world. These form the basis for our science and philosophy. Even our ideas of religion – spiritual things such as God, heaven, sin – are abstractions of natural ideas. They are not genuine spiritual ideas of God and heaven, which come only from the spiritual world.
Since we cannot see into the spiritual world like we can see into the natural world, we must therefore rely on Divine revelations to know the order of the spiritual world. This knowledge opens up our spiritual mind. When this is made operational, sometime in adult life, we begin to see genuine spiritual things, and to comprehend them, thus to make them the basis of our daily life. Hence is our consciousness elevated. Elevated consciousness prepares our mind for heavenly life. Without this preparation we arrive in the afterlife with an unregenerate character which takes us down to the bottom of our mind from where there is no escaping because we are unwilling to receive higher ideas that may elevate us. This is called hell forever.
You can see therefore that the natural mind presents a natural abstraction of religious ideas and of revelations, rather than a genuine spiritual-rational comprehension and perception. The natural abstraction emerges from the natural, and therefore remains natural. There is no created method available for the natural to become spiritual by advancing more and more into natural excellence and progression. The natural and the spiritual are separated into discrete degrees preventing any possibility of such contact by progression or continuity, so that their only method of interaction is by synchronous correspondences. The Writings build up the concept of correspondences as a key idea in True Science. Without a knowledge of correspondences it is impossible to comprehend spiritual-rational verities. An analogy might be to think of physics and mathematics. It is impossible to comprehend physics without knowing mathematics, and the more complex the mathematics one knows, the more one can comprehend advanced physics. Imagine a sungeon who doesn’t know about bacteria and viruses.
It is analogous with correspondences and genuine spiritual ideas. Correspondences are the Divine Laws by which every physical phenomenon as an effect is related to a specific spiritual phenomenon as its cause. Pressing the gas pedal to obtain acceleration of a car, is an example of a spiritual phenomenon (motive or purpose – here to obtain acceleration), being the cause of a natural phenomenon (acceleration of the car). Note that the mechanical events involved in the combustion engine following gas pedal operation, are not cause-effect sequences, but mechanical or correlation sequences. When one thing happens, another thing happens, and the chain reaction proceeds according to natural laws. These natural laws operate to control the sequence, but not from themselves, but from the spiritual causes within them, kept in place by the Lord in His omnipotence and omnipresence.
The spiritual can “descend” within the natural, but from within, not from without. From without, it would be a descent of something abstracted from the natural (or “emergent”), thus a descent of a more inward natural into a more exterior natural. Sometimes we make the mistake of considering this more inward natural as spiritual, which it is not. It is abstracted from the natural, therefore it remains natural. Thus it is not an actual descent but a concretization. The abstract is above or more inward than the concrete, yet both are still natural. But when the spiritual descends into the natural, it does so from within, that is from the spiritual world into the natural world. This is what’s called influx, discussed before. For example, as you bite into the apple you can reflect that it is a natural object within which is a spiritual intention or goal which produced the apple. Further, as you taste the apple, you can realize that the sensation itself is not of the same matter as the apple, yet they are related by correspondential action which is built into the mind that senses and tastes the apple. The mind could not taste and experience the apple were it not for the spiritual fact that the apple is produced by God for the sensation.
God therefore must create the mind so that it may taste apples, and then must create apples that the mind can taste. The apply is a natural phenomenon, the taste is a spiritual phenomenon. The two are created and maintained for each other, together, by the laws of correspondences that integrate and govern the joint operation of the natural and spiritual worlds. And when we make the transition to the spiritual world, we take the natural mind with us, of course, since it is an immortal spiritual organ. Now the content of the natural mind becomes the source of our living environment. Everything around us is now produced and maintained by the laws of correspondences. If our loves are infernal, we see around us a hellish environment. If our loves are heavenly, we see around us a heavenly environment.
Consider the small pebble you kick underfoot as you walk. Inside that physical object is the spiritual world, just as it is inside the mountain or the planet. The spiritual must be a discrete degree within the natural for otherwise the natural could not come into existence and continue existing or subsisting. Note carefully that the “within” referred to here is a “discrete degree within.” Without fully comprehending this, phase 3 thinking cannot be understood or attained. There is a natural within and a spiritual within. The natural within is in continuous degree, not discrete. This means that you can go from anywhere or anything in the natural to anywhere else in the natural. This is called a natural progression or extension. For example, using the venue or medium of space we can travel to anywhere in the physical universe. Another way of seeing the continuous degree of space, is to say that no place exists in the natural world that is devoid of space. Space is in continuous degree with the whole physical world. Similarly, numbers are continuous degree so that you can go from a number to any other number. The universe of numbers is continuous with itself.
Another way of looking at continuous degree is to think of an object and its constituents. From the outside macro phenomenon of the object’s surface, we can penetrate it by dissection or physical analyses, and find what is below the surface. We can dissect or analyze what is below that, and so on. Theoretically and abstractly, we can see that we can continue to dissect or divide, going further and further into the object’s construction, beyond fibers, molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, waves, and fields. This is a continuous degree of within. This kind of natural progression can go on endlessly but will never escape from the natural world, nor the world of abstraction one can derive from the natural, nor the world of emergence that is sourced in the natural. No exit from the natural by the natural, ever. This is a law of creation well known in True Science.
But now consider the escape which may aptly be called a genuine Deus Ex Machina. This phrase is Latin for God out of the machine. Here is how the phrase is explained by a materialist philosopher today (posted October 30, 1999):
The "god from a machine" was a cheap plot resolution device used in Greek theater. A mechanism above the stage lowered an actor representing a god, who tied up loose ends and finished off the play. It sounds unsatisfying in the extreme --- but we're still doing it to ourselves! How else can one explain our touching faith that problems will be solved by:
government --- new legislation, tough law enforcement, court decisions ....
technology --- telecommunications, computers, biochemistry, or whatever the Next Big Thing turns out to be ....
mass enlightenment --- religion, meditation, consciousness-raising, new social philosophies ....
The focus is always external. Somebody else changes, makes a discovery, provides a service, takes action. How odd ... and how rarely it works. Each of us can directly affect one person. Yet we spend vast amounts of time and money and personal energy on attempts at lobbying, advertising, promoting, haranguing, and indoctrinating. We close our eyes and turn away from our selves.
zhurnal.net/ww/zw?DeusExMachina
To the natural mind, and its natural order of things, appealing to God for guidance and power, is as unreal as the machine god that was lowered on Greek stage (phase 1 thinking). Why do you think this stage setting worked for the audiences in ancient Greece? To me it makes sense to think that they were able to comprehend and relate to a deus ex machina because they saw it as a representative of the real Deus – Jupiter and his divine court ruling things from his abode on Mount Olympus. Their thinking was more realistic than that of the contemporary philosopher I quote above. A dualist perspective is always more advanced than a materialist one, given that the materialist is under the delusion that there is no spiritual world, or if there is, then it doesn’t interact with the here and now. But the reality is that the spiritual world exists, and not only does it interact with the here and now, it causes the here and now. In this sense a child who loves the Lord is far more realistic and rational than the above philosopher. As we move into phase 3 thinking we have the benefit of True Science which explains how the spiritual and natural interact through the laws of correspondences, that is, by discrete degrees.
The natural mind will therefore never be able to discover God, the spiritual world, and consequently, reality. The reason is that the natural mind is in discrete degrees within the spiritual mind. Natural ideas can progress and evolve endlessly and never be able to discover a single spiritual phenomenon or fact. Another way of saying this is that our natural mind thinks by means of natural-rational appearances of reality while our spiritual mind thinks by means of spiritual-rational appearances of truth. The source of natural-rational appearances of truth in the natural mind is the natural world. Similarly, the source of spiritual-rational appearances of truth in the spiritual mind is the spiritual world. Between these two is an insurmountable barrier or gap from creation. The two are nevertheless hitched by the laws of correspondences. The opening or operationalizing of our spiritual mind takes place sometime in adult life, in proportion to our progress in regeneration. As we learn to exercise control over our thinking and feeling every day, in accordance with the revealed truth from the Threefold Word, our spiritual mind is operationalized by means of the enlightened thoughts we receive in the regeneration process.
This new perception and consciousness is carried by means of the spiritual-rational appearances of truth. The meaning and comprehension of spiritual-rational appearances of truth cannot be described in such a way that it be comprehensible to the natural mind. This is because the natural mind operates by means of natural-rational correspondences or appearances of truth, while the spiritual mind operates by means of spiritual-rational correspondences or appearances of truth. These two types of appearances are in correspondence with each other. They are separated by discrete degrees so that one mind and its content can never approach the other remind and its content. The consciousness we have from comprehending the meaning of spiritual-rational appearances of truth, cannot touch the consciousness we have from comprehending the meaning of natural-rational appearances of truth. When for instance, we describe the meaning of spiritual-rational appearances of truth, and this is read by someone in a natural state, the resultant comprehension will the natural correspondence of the spiritual meaning.
For example, consider the truth of why God allows evil to happen to good people. The spiritual answer can be stated by saying that God gives power for the evil event to occur only when He can insure that would be of benefit to the perpetrator, the victim, and society. In other words, evil is used by God to bring about progress in humanity’s higher consciousness, which is God’s loving purpose for creation. What is one to make of this spiritual explanation in each of the nine zones? This would be a good exercise for the reader to complete. For now, let me refer to zones 7, 8, and 9.
Zone 7 is the initial state in phase 3 and is called the Old Testament state. In this state we read the explanation of why the Lord allows evil in the world, namely, for the sake of maintaining people’s spiritual freedom of choice. This is reassuring and takes us way beyond the consciousness of phase 3. It is particularistic, meaning that it explains in a way we can rationally understand, that God is still in charge, despite evil in the world. This reassurance is based on a literalistic interpretation of revelation. It’s good enough for us if this is how the Lord chooses to work. It must be good. Later on, as we progress in our regeneration, we can enter the New Testament state of phase 3 (zone 8) by realizing what would happen if the Lord suppressed evil and did not allow it to exist in the world. Unless you comprehend this, you’re not fully satisfied with the explanation that God allows evil for our sake. Why do we need to have evil in the first place? Why did Got allow evil to come into existence? How can this be good? Etc. these puzzlements are the result of zone 7 thinking and feeling. True Science explains that God created the human race for heavenly life in eternity but that this could not be achieved without allowing every created individual to turn away from spiritual rationality and towards natural rationality. In phase 3 thinking we begin to understand the motive and the method, seeing and understanding that it is good, thus loving it.
From the lofty perspective of zone 9 afforded by the study of True Science, we can survey human evil from its source to its destination, and thus gain a true perspective on it. The source of evil was the turning away of this or that individual in the history of our race. Turning away from God and heaven, and turning toward self and nature. Turning away from spiritual-rational appearances of truth, away from spiritual consciousness from revelation, and toward natural-rational appearances of truth, thus, toward a distorted and false abstraction of reality. Humankind continued to progress and evolve toward the goal of creation, and the population of the heavens kept growing. But also, the population of the hells. Those in the hells could not live, exist, or survive in the heavens, and vice versa for those in the heavens. The difference was the human character each individual brings to the afterlife. God builds the individual’s mind, providing every need for its steady progress.
These needs are complex and involve all the details of one’s biography and experience, too numerous to list, too involved to understand. But the Lord is omniscient and in His mind infinite things are one. He manages the numberless details of every individual’s immortal and endless life. He prevents you from remembering something, or He makes you remember something you had long forgotten you knew. He creates all the mistakes, chance events, and good luck that you have, and He permits the bad ones to happen to you, but only those bad ones that He can turn to your long term spiritual benefit. What an amazing loving thing to do! What an amazing intimacy between us and Him! We can understand why He gives power to the trigger finger of the assassin, why he allows a boulder to fall on your child and kill it, and why He makes the terrorist smart enough to plan a successful hijacking.
All this is to the benefit of the human race, of the victims, and of the perpetrators. We cannot operationalize and develop our celestial mind except by making choices between good and evil. We must have the experience of looking evil in the eye and rejecting it. We need the experience of evil thoughts and impulses so that we can identify them, condemn them, reject them, compel ourselves not to do them or love them, and finally, holding them in aversion, hating evil. When we get to that point, we are free of the evil, for evil cannot attach itself or communicate with others except through inner acceptance of the evil. Evil events that befall us or others reveal to us the existence of evil and what it is specifically that we must hate and reject. When we arrive in the afterlife, and evil no longer clings to us by our loves, we are free and float upwards to the top of our the human mind state – heaven. But the slightest trace of evil, hanging on to some suppressed love within our will, makes it impossible for us to exist in heaven, to live its atmosphere. For the slightest evil love is a connection to the hells, and any connection to the hells is actually with the entire hells, given that the hells are united.
You can see from these considerations that people could not be created full blown angels in heaven. If that had been done, we would not be in heaven out of choice. What we do not choose does not belong to us, does not feel like ours. We cannot love such a thing and be happy with it. We can only love that which we choose in freedom. This is the definition of an angel, of the essence of being human, of having human consciousness, of being capable of enjoying the Divine gifts of love, wisdom, intelligence, happiness, and power. Without our consciousness of evil and our rejection of it, we could not be genuine human beings in heaven. Therefore it is that we must be born on an earth in a psychical body, in which we can develop a natural mind that can learn to think rationally. Only by thinking rationally can our consciousness be raised to the spiritual level, and from there, to the celestial level for eternal life in heaven. The angels are the most rational human beings. They know of evil because they are motivated by altruism to supervise the life of the evil in hell. Without their wise and loving supervision hell would progress to endless depths, and the deeper it progresses, the greater the unimaginable suffering of those who maintain themselves in that state.
True Science shows that the universe created and managed by the Divine Human Person, has a Human purpose and a rational plan and infrastructure. Therefore whatever object, quality, or phenomenon exists in the natural world is for one purpose only – its use to the human race, its use to furthering God’s chief goal – creating earthlings who are to be taken to heaven for eternal life as angels. Therefore no object or physical quality can exist unless it was created for human use, for furthering God’s chief goal for creating the universe. Every detail of the universe therefore must also have this chief human goal in order for the overall goal to succeed. And what God creates and wills always succeeds since before God infinite things are one. Before God the past, present, and future are one, both for the most minute detail and the overall. Hence it is that He can provide everything needed for managing everything forever.
Phase 1 thinking cannot believe that the spiritual is in every object. Phase 2 thinking can believe it but cannot understand it. Phase 3 thinking understands it, therefore it is no longer a matter of belief or faith, but of science and rational understanding.
If you affirm spirit within you, as your own spirit or domain, you're forcing yourself to look downward and in that state, your mind is associated with hellish societies. The Lord knocks from within your rational mind urging you to stop looking down, and instead, to look up, where He is. As soon as we do, the very instant, we are enlightened, and we cross the threshold from natural to spiritual, from phase 1 to phase 2). God has then effected the First Coming in our mind (phase 2, zone 4). He waits for us to let Him in. He cannot force His way for then we would cease to be human and free, thus cease to be able to love and be wise. But He doesn’t merely wait passively, as just discussed. He bends and influences, and brings about thoughts and emotions that point to His co-Presence and mutual participation. It’s great to find out that He’s been there all along, before we acknowledge Him and perceives His presence. How intimate a relationship we’ve had already. All along it was Him who made everything happen, one by one.
How comforting that He never quit, that He could not quit, given His Divine Love, which is that He should make us happy and powerful from Himself. Only our acknowledgment and love for Him can contain the gifts He presents to us. Without this, He will take care of us just the same, but unconsciously. And He cannot give us angelic happiness unconsciously. Only conscious reception of angelic consciousness is possible. Otherwise He could have created us full blown angels, as already discussed. Being created angels full blown means that they receive happiness and power unconsciously – which is an angelic robot, not a an angel human being.
When you cross the spiritual Jordan in front of you, and enter the spiritual Holy Land of Canaan, you immediately see things you could not see but ten seconds before: You see for instance that the spiritual is about your relation to the Divine Human Person above or within, who is responsible for you, out of morality and love. You now feel an extraordinary glow that you've not felt before, a glow that is actually the warmth of love and security which now begins to flow into you from God through your rational mind. This route was closed when you were in the corporeal spirit frame of mind and were looking downward below yourself, instead of upward to God. This glow and feeling of security will henceforth not depart from you. Once you see God as an adult, you give God the power to keep you from ever forgetting again. It is the light that overcomes the darkness. You’ve come home at last. Now you can be a genuine human being, a child of the Divine Human Person. And now you're on your way to spiritual development and all its wonderful marvelous benefits, delights, and blessed joys.
And what is astonishing to me is that we can be inside a Christian Church, for example, and use our membership not as it was meant, but as we find it convenient to shape its religious concepts in such a way as to allow us to continue doing what we're doing, covering it up, keeping it a secret from others, even if it's against God's commandment. In that case we are in ritual worship (phase 1) not actual worship (phase 2). Ritual worship is a precursor to actual worship. Ritual worship by itself is nothing but natural. Whether you ritualize about Christ or about “the spirit of the universe,” or about your “sacred” power within, it is the same. It is ritual worship. It is not yet actual worship, which is called faith – not ritual faith (zones 1, 2, 3) or blind faith (zones 4 and 5), but rational faith (zones 6 to 9). Rational faith can be external (phase 2, zones 4 and 5) or interior (phase 2, zone 6 and all of phase 3).
It doesn't seem to matter whether you're in this religion or that, or in no religion, or secular humanism, or in atheism, or theosophy, or whatever. We're not in a state of faith or actual worship, until we bow the head and declare ourselves that we now believe and accept God as a Divine Human Person who is responsible for us, because it's the moral and loving thing to do to take care of God’s own helpless creation. And this declaration is not real or honest or actual if this responsibility or morality is not reciprocated by us. That is, we must experience moral guilt and shame in the presence of the Divine Human Person when we dishonor or disobey His precise commandments about what to think and not to think, and about what feelings to accept and what to reject in our mind, and in our overt actions.
There is no faith without guilt and shame.
Guilt and shame is inevitable when you actually believe that you're in the presence of a higher Person who sees into you and feels responsible for you. You do not feel this guilt and shame when your belief is placed in your own spirit. It's a misplaced worship of the self, the sensuous mind, which the ancients called the Serpent or Snake. The Serpent feels no shame, no guilt. So let this be a test for you. If you don't feel guilt and shame in the presence of the Spirit you worship, turn, turn your eyes upward, and worship the Divine Human Person who has a personal responsibility to you. The moment you do this, you'll feel the glow of security, but also, the shame and the guilt, on account of your forbidden pleasures and evil delights that you seem unwilling to give up. You and me and others – we are all born equally corrupted because maximally so. We inherit a natural mind into which comes the influx of hell. The Lord maintains this influx else we would have no life in us, and we could not be motivated to change, therefore we would plunge into hell soon after our infancy is over.
But the Lord saves the human race from such a dreadful fate by providing a fully effective method of regeneration or character change. We must reciprocate by fighting against ourselves, our evils and stupidities that we love. The Lord activates our conscience by which we can discern what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. We shun our inherited evils by following our conscience and praying to God to give us the power. For by ourselves we do not have the power to change the smallest thing, let alone the deep seated vices and cupidities. But by imploring God, and fighting against our temptations as-of self, struggling sincerely, then the Lord removes our connection with that evil. This process must go on till the end of life on earth. We then arrive into the afterlife and are in possession of a spirit-body that has been regenerated. We now have a character that can support heavenly life. We are admitted into one of the \innumerable heavens, the one that suits us most and will give us the maximum joy and happiness that we can support.
Be encouraged, Friend. You'll be brought to your crossing point when you're ready to cross. Not like the Moses people who came to the Promised Land without being willing to prepare for it. They were not allowed to enter. The entire generation died out in the desert, as we know from the historical parts of the Old Testament. Only their children, when grown up, were allowed to cross the river Jordan and enter the Promised Land. These children represent everyone's state of faith when one is ready to enter spiritual worship, which is faith (phase 2). When you move into the faith region of the mind, you are for the first time able to perceive rational concepts that are not natural in origin, but spiritual. All natural concepts in the natural mind are natural, not yet genuinely rational, not yet spiritual. Faith becomes possible because faith is a rational concept given in the Word of God and therefore based on Divine Truth, which is the defining point for what is real and rational. We're all familiar with the expression "blind faith." Well what is it, but the unwillingness to see rational things in it? Such was my faith, before I understood it after reading the Writings of Swedenborg. Genuine faith is purely rational and spiritual, while blind faith is mixed with mystical and natural ideas. Mystical is not real, while rational is real.
Faith is the rational ability to see the existence of the Divine Human Person, the basis of all reality. This ability comes to us as part of the commitment we make to a Personal God who is responsible to us and to whom we are henceforth responsible ourselves. The act of making the commitment is a physiological act. It introduces a new fiber, a new connection or access point, just as you use a ticket to gain access to a performance in a restricted venue. We gain access to spiritual perception of reality through the commitment that there is a higher power than us, that this power is a Divine Human Person who is responsible to me and I to that Person. By this, you have now developed dual vision, becoming a dual citizen. With your natural mind you can see and understand the natural things in the world around you. That's your earthly citizenship called horizontal community. At the same time, your mind has awakened to its citizenship in the spiritual world, called vertical community. With your natural mind you see and evaluate natural concepts tied to the world. With your rational mind you see and evaluate spiritual concepts tied to heaven and hell. Ultimately (zone 9 thinking and feeling), you can perceive that the spiritual within the natural and neither can subsist without the other. This enriches and enlivens the natural world to our perception seeing it more realistically, its awesome beauty that can receive the Divinity within it.
As a dual citizen you're conscious of both your horizontal and vertical community. Not however directly, like Swedenborg. Beware of anyone telling you that they're in conscious contact with spirits or can obtain information from spirits. This kind of belief or concept is purely corporeal, therefore, natural, not spiritual. Being truly spiritual does not involve the act of talking to spirits. Spiritual is faith in a Divine Human Person, a rational feeling of responsibility to this Divine Human Person called God. Talking to spirits is opposed to talking to God, because the first is a fantasy while the second is reality. This cannot be seen by those in the state who perceive themselves to be talking to spirits or who want to talk to spirits or, those who want to hear from someone who talks to spirits, etc. These interests are natural states of mind, not spiritual. In such a natural state, the idea one has of spiritual concepts is a natural idea, hence it is not about the spiritual itself, but about natural (abstract) ways of talking and thinking about the spiritual, thus not spiritual at all.
The Writings explain that in pre-scientific days, the mind was capable of talking to spirits, that is, to those in the spiritual world who are in vicinity and association to our own spirit, or mind (vertical community). This process of conscious communication was used by the Lord for their regeneration. However, after the Lord's Resurrection or Glorification of His Human, a new physiological process was initiated that eliminated the need of talking to spirits as a means of regeneration and preparation for the afterlife. This we would not know but for the scientific revelations in the Writings. The new process is more inward, that is, more rational, not sensual. Talking to spirits or witnessing miracles in our day would be injurious to our mind because it would compel the natural mind to accept the sensual event, but which it cannot comprehend, or even believe deeply. That kind of persuasive faith is either forgotten in the afterlife or produces spiritual insanity, as observed by Swedenborg. You can see why the Lord would carefully guard anyone today from actually talking to spirits. However, they are permitted by the Lord to have the delusion that they are communicating with spirits. Such delusion does not hurt them spiritually, except in so far that they continue to enter into it, instead of backing our of it, and into rational faith or true science.
Additional discussion on talking to spirits in relation to Near Death Experiences (NDEs) will be found in this article:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v1ch1-nonduality.html
Why is there a third level in the mind? Why is blind faith not enough? The Lord has created an upper floor in our mind, a celestial heaven, and He desires from Love to betake us there and to keep us there to eternity. And faith, when deepened and made truly personal, wants to go forward to even a closer relationship with the Divine Person (phase 2). For this we need to actualize our life, that is, to make it self-conscious so that we can cooperate more and more in our regeneration, sanctification, perfection. And to cross the point to the other side of faith, beyond it, and above it, we need to particularize every moment of living, willing, and thinking (phase 3). This is the truly human state called “angelic.” The purpose of every event and quality in the entire universe is nothing else but to contribute to this Divine purpose, to bring us into the angelic state and to keep us there forever. Such is the Divine Love for human beings. Angels do not have a religion or culture. They see the Lord in front of their eyes amidst the spiritual Sun. No matter which way they turn they have the Lord in front of their eyes. Such is the angelic state which we have in our celestial mind. All we need to do is to let the Lord elevate our consciousness to the top of our own mind. Heaven is already there, but we are still in a portion of the mind that is lower from which heaven is unattainable – it is just a word we are taught.
To see the heaven at the top of our mind we must be enlightened by the Lord to see it. This enlightenment is by means of our understanding of His Divine Truth given within the Threefold Word. By exerting the mental effort to comprehend the Threefold Word as True Science, our spiritual-rational level of consciousness is opened and operationalized within our conscious natural-rational mind. The spiritual-rational mind is an organ of reception of information from the spiritual world, from the spiritual Sun, which is Divine Truth within which is Divine Love. As we are thinking and reasoning about the content of the Threefold Word Divine Truth from the spiritual sun enters our spiritual-rational mind. The activity in this organ causes correspondential activity in the conscious natural mind. The activity in the spiritual mind is unconscious to us on earth, but we are conscious of the correspondential activity it causes in the natural mind. The spiritual mind and the natural mind are thus connected by correspondences, being in discrete degrees to each other.
The activity in the natural-rational mind is caused the activity in the spiritual mind by means of the laws of correspondences. When we are conscious of this interaction we are enlightened. Note that we are not conscious of the spiritual directly. This would be called sensuous consciousness of the Divine. As discussed, this is not allowed by the Lord because it hurts the development of our rational consciousness. We will be conscious of the spiritual directly when the physical body is detached from us at its death. Then our spirit-body, which is in the world of spirit, becomes its own focus of consciousness. Until then the focus of consciousness was attached to corporeal sensations of the physical body and the respiration of air in the lungs. The spirit-body also appears to respire air but it is not air but a spiritual substance that corresponds to air on earth.
When the spirit-body can avoid hell by discarding all evil loves and all falsities, our consciousness enters the heaven in our mind where we find ourselves in company with others who have also been elevated to the heaven in their mind. This is because the spiritual world where the heavens are, overlaps with the mental world, or the mind. This is why our mind is called the “spirit.” Swedenborg uses the word “spirit” to refer to anyone who is no longer attached to a physical body on some planet. What is amazing is that the spirit-body is the original and real thing, while the physical body is a distant copy of it. Swedenborg reports that when he was conscious in the spirit-body his sensations were keener by multiple orders of magnitude. Spirits or angels enjoy sensations far more intense and pure than we ever can through a physical body. This is great news, don’t you agree?!! We don’t have to be regretful of leading a life of purity and chastity and moderation while we are on earth, because by doing so we put ourselves in a position of experiencing far greater sensations in the near future – no more than a few decades here on earth. And then we stay that way to eternity. A very good deal, if you ask me. As opposed to “taking your chances” with what you can enjoy now, which only leads to a few decades of enjoyment followed by an eternity of unpleasantnesses (to put it mildly).
Even a single moment of life that is not particularized –as the rational consciousness of the Lord’s co-Presence, -- is stolen goods, and throws us back and down, spiritually viewed. How then can we live moment by moment, in such a way that we don't take anything for granted, that we retain a continuous awareness, and appreciation or, thankfulness and gratitude, of the Divine Human Person’s services to us -- to help us move our bodies around, to help us figure out our natural environment and role behaviors, to help us grow morally and spiritually, to help us through temptations, to help us grow a character that can live in those celestial places of the mind.
How do we stay constantly aware of this ceaseless stream of Divine Providence in our mind? The answer you already read about, here and there in this document: True Science or phase 3 thinking and feeling.
There are those in the New Church (Swedenborgian) today who worry that there are so few adherents to the Swedenborgian based Churches, which I would guess to number around 10,000 world wide. How is the new Teaching called the Heavenly Doctrine, going to change the world unless the world starts accepting the new Teaching in greater numbers. This motivation activates their evangelism work. God grant them success. It is my view however that Swedenborg's concepts will spread to the world mainly through dualist or theistic science rather than religion, although once dualist science is the dominant intellectual enterprise, the New Christian Church is bound to grow as well. But dualist or theistic science is going to have to win the war. Why? Because particularistic worship, which is celestial worship, rests on a rational understanding, and True Science, being theistic from the Writings, provides this rational understanding.
Quoting from the Writings:
Sixth Memorable Relation:
One day there appeared to me a magnificent temple, square in form, the roof of which was crown-shaped, arched above and raised round about; its walls were continuous windows of crystal; its door was of a pearly substance. Within, on the south side, towards the west was a pulpit, on the right-hand side of which lay the open Word enveloped in a sphere of light, the splendor of which surrounded and illuminated the whole pulpit. In the center of the temple was a sanctuary, before which there was a veil, at that time raised, and there a golden cherub stood with a sword turning hither and thither in his hand.
[2] While I looked at these things, the significance of each one of them flowed into my meditation: The temple signified the New Church; the door of pearly substance, entrance into it; the windows of crystal, the truths that enlighten it; the pulpit, the priesthood and preaching; the Word lying open upon the pulpit and illuminating the upper part of it, signified the revelation of the internal sense of the Word, which is spiritual; the sanctuary in the center of the temple signified the conjunction of that church with the angelic heaven; the golden cherub therein, the Word in the sense of the letter; the sword waving in his hand signified that this sense can be turned in any direction, provided it is done in adaptation to some truth; the veil before the cherub being raised, signified that the Word is now laid open.
[3] Afterward, when I drew nearer, I saw this inscription above the door, Nunc Licet - It is now permitted - which signified that it is now permitted to enter understandingly into the mysteries of faith. From seeing this inscription it came into my thought that it is exceedingly dangerous to enter with the understanding into dogmas of faith that are concocted out of self-intelligence, and therefore out of falsities, and still more so to confirm them from the Word; by this means the understanding is closed above, and gradually below as well, to such a degree that theology is not only despised but also obliterated from the mind, as writing on paper is by worms, or the wool of a garment by moths. Then the understanding abides only in political matters, which have regard to man's life under the government where he is, and in the civil matters pertaining to his employment, and in the domestic affairs of his own house. And in all these things he constantly kisses nature, and owing to the allurements of her pleasures, loves her as an idolater loves the golden image in his bosom.
[4] Since then, the dogmas of the present Christian churches have not been formed from the Word, but from self-intelligence, and therefore from falsities, and also have been confirmed by certain passages from the Word; by the Lord's Divine Providence the Word among the Roman Catholics has been taken from the laity, and among Protestants has been opened, and yet has been closed by their common declaration that the understanding must be held in obedience to their faith.
[5] But in the New Church the contrary is the case; there it is permitted to enter with the understanding and penetrate into all her secrets, and to confirm them by the Word, because her doctrines are continuous truths laid open by the Lord by means of the Word, and confirmations of these truths by rational means cause the understanding to be opened above more and more, and thus to be raised into the light in which the angels of heaven are. That light in its essence is truth, and in that light acknowledgment of the Lord as the God of heaven and earth shines in its glory. This is what is meant by the inscription Nunc Licet over the door of the temple, and also by the veil of the sanctuary before the cherub being raised. For it is a canon of the New Church, that falsities close the understanding, and that truths open it.
[6] After this I saw above my head something like an infant, holding in his hand a paper. As he drew near to me, he increased to the stature of a medium-sized man. He was an angel from the third heaven, where all at a distance look like infants. When he came to me, he handed me the paper; but as the writing was in rounded letters, such as they have in that heaven, I returned the paper, and asked him to explain to me the meaning of the words there written, in terms adapted to the ideas of my thought.
He replied, "This is what is here written: Enter hereafter into the mysteries of the Word, which has been heretofore shut up; for the particular truths therein are so many mirrors of the Lord." (TCR 508).
The Writings of Swedenborg are the beginning point and basis for this dualist or theistic science. So now, as you cross the Jordan river into the Land of Canaan, your personal God now leads you as your Lord and Master. God's Mission Impossible: To snatch you from the jaws of the monster that have already encompassed you and are about to devour you as a meal, removing all that you have that's good and true, and leaving you a changed character, a caricature of what you were, a disgusting devil, satan, or genii. That's God's Mission Impossible, to save you from that fate to which you feel attracted. It would be so simple, easy, and fast if only we cooperated and made ourselves to step through the surgery process called reformation, and the recovery process called regeneration. To understand how this operates, I present a diagram.
15.3 Elevation of Consciousness of the Human Race
True Science sheds light on the mechanism or procedures that the Lord created for the elevation of consciousness of the human race. Obviously there has to be such a method provided for this evolution. Now we know from the Writings that the method by which the Lord elevates the mind is by means of correspondences or appearances of truth arranged in an orderly rational sequence. This sequence must form the blueprint for historical evolution as well as individual development in spirituality or consciousness. The spiritual history of our civilization is reckoned according to the Threefold Word. The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Third Testament (or the Writings) are the Threefold Word and covers a historical period of approximately 30 centuries, from the 13th century BC to the 17th century AD.
The level of thinking in the language of the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Word, is in terms of natural-corporeal correspondences of Divine Truth. In other words, Divine Truth is adapted to the genius and intelligence level of phase 1 civilizations. The sentences of the Old Testament create a literal meaning that portrays God and Divine Justice in corporeal and sensuous descriptions that is acceptable to the mind in phase 1 level thinking. This level of thinking about God and hell is not yet rational, not yet spiritual, not yet celestial. For instance, God is said to get angry against His people, or else He sees the evils of the people He made and it reviles Him and He declares to them that He repents or is sorry that He had created them. He also demands animal sacrifices and is very concerned about little seemingly inconsequential rituals, rules, procedures about the blood, the parts of the carcass, and many such things. Why would God be concerned with these little details, so much so, that if any of them were broken by the people, He would bring on plagues on their heads and give them over to enemies. This is a horrible portrayal of God, yet it fits perfectly to the mind of those who think of God from phase 1.
Later, when we reach phase 3, we discover from True Science that these disturbing portrayals of God are not to be taken literally by those in phase 3 thinking, and we are given the rational methods we can apply to each phrase and word of the Old Testament by which we can see the spiritual meaning hidden within. No one in all those centuries has ever suspected that the Old Testament has such a hidden spiritual meaning. Now that the secret code of correspondences has been revealed, we are able to derive and even perceive the spiritual within the rational. Thus we can read the Old Testament and figure out the internal spiritual sense. When we do this it becomes clear the internal sense portrays God as a Divine Human whose essence is pure Love and whose Divine Wisdom is perfect. And so it is impossible for such a Divine Human Person of Love and Wisdom to do the things and to think the things that are stated about God in the literal meaning of the Old Testament. And instead, the internal meaning makes clear how it is with the Lord and our relationship to Him.
But between phase 1 and phase 3, there is phase 2 to experience and go through. What does phase 2 thinking do about these puzzling portrayals of God in the Old Testament? A simple answer is that it ignores them. Phase 2 thinking is initiated with the acknowledgment and reception of the New Testament. And in other religions, the idea of God’s Incarnation as a Human can be received even if not specifically associated with the New Testament. And even if some religions do not provide for the idea of Incarnation, they still allow the idea that God is Human or Divine Human. The Old Testament view does not allow this step. I was sternly punished by my rabbi teacher in elementary school when I suggested that God is a Man. We were strictly forbidden to picture God as Human. And when we came across passages in the Old Testament where God is seen by someone, or someone talks to God, or God speaks of Himself as Human, we must disregard this idea and reject it as poetic imagination. For in phase 1 consciousness, how can God create humans when He Himself is Human? Only the Divine can create humans. But in phase 2 consciousness we can receive the idea that God is Human. This is possible only if we ascend in our mind to the rational level of thinking.
At first, this is an external rational which still not yet spiritual (zone 4), but then it becomes spiritual when we establish a personal relationship with the Lord (zone 5). Our rational-spiritual mind is now being developed, and it continues to developed to a higher state (zone 6) when we actualize the relationship by feeling responsible to Him. We therefore are capable of shame and repentance, two key ingredients necessary for reformation and regeneration.
The New Testament is written in natural-sensuous correspondences or appearances of truth (phase 2). The diagram below pictures the three levels of correspondences in the Threefold Word. The Third Testament is written in natural-rational correspondences. These three types of meanings reflect three types of human consciousness.
Natural-rational correspondences in our mind prepares us for reception of spiritual-rational correspondences. This allows the opening of the spiritual mind, which is experienced as enlightenment, or an interior view of spiritual concepts. Once the spiritual mind is opened by means of our comprehension of spiritual-rational correspondences, we can begin our regeneration. As this proceeds, our enlightenment becomes more and more interior. The evolution of our individual consciousness is actually part of the overall evolution of consciousness in the human race. Since the entire human race is networked and connected, progressing in synchronous steps, the completion of the Threefold Word in 1771 on this earth is a significant step for the entire future of the human race, which includes all the earths in the universe and all the heavens and all the hells from now to eternity. Hence it is that the Writings state that Swedenborg’s intromission into the spiritual world for 27 years, was the greatest miracle ever performed by the Lord. From now on phase 3 thinking has been made operational and available to every human being.
15.4 The Two Layers of True Science – Theoretical and Applied
Phase 3 thinking and feeling has three states, as shown in the ennead matrix of nine zones discussed before. The initial state of phase 3 (zone 7) is called the Old Testament state. At this level of consciousness we think at the level of natural-rational correspondences, which is the literal meaning in which the Writings (Latin Word) are composed (see previous sub-Section 15.3). Samples of the Writings are quoted in Section 19. As we continue to study the Writings we accumulate a vast amount of theoretical knowledge about the scientific revelations contained in this knowledge, which I have referred to by the name of True Science. This book was written with the knowledge I have acquired from studying the Writings for years. The Writings describe the process by which our consciousness is elevated through True Science. To the extent that we understand this knowledge rationally, to that extent our consciousness is raised. This process is called “enlightenment” – that is, the elevation of our understanding by means of the knowledge we acquire from the Writings and which we can understand rationally.
But this enlightenment is at first only slight. It has no power to change our life, though it can provide us with much delight and encouragement. It is a theoretical knowledge of the literal meaning of the Writings. One can be an expert and write articles and books about True Science, even teach it to students at various levels of study, all the way to the highest graduate levels. Yet this erudite knowledge of spiritual and natural topics of the utmost importance, has no power to reform our thinking and regenerate our willing. We are like actors in a movie playing the role of geniuses and inventors, reading knowledgeable lines written by another. Off camera we revert to speaking our own lines, which are no longer like those of a genius or inventor. Similarly, while we teach and write about True Science we are in a state of enlightened consciousness due to the rational light that is shed upon the subjects that we paraphrase, summarize, and rephrase. But as soon as our mouth is silent, or our thinking busy with something else, we automatically fall back into our usual state, which could be in any of the nine zones.
The Writings show how this theoretical knowledge of True Science can receive spiritual power from an upper region of our mind, which receives it from heaven and the Lord. This higher state of mind happens to us when the rational understanding from enlightenment is applied to our own particular acts of thinking and willing as we go about our daily tasks. Willing and feeling are closely connected processes since when we are free, we will that which we feel love for. In other words, we orient to what we love, and our choices and preferences depend on that love. Theoretical knowledge of True Science is universal and generalized (Old Testament state of phase 3 – zone 7), while an applied perception of True Science is actual and particular to ourselves (zone 8). Enlightenment is universal and general; perception is specific and particular. For instance, we may have a theoretical understanding of the commandment that we ought to love the good in others, and not love them as to their person:
That it is the love which makes a man to be the neighbor, and that each person is the neighbor according to the quality of his love, is very manifest from those who are in the love of self. These acknowledge as the neighbor those who love them the most; that is, insofar as they are theirs; thus are in themselves. These they embrace, these they kiss, these they benefit, and these they call brethren; nay, because they are evil, they say that these are the neighbor more than others. All the rest they hold to be the neighbor according as these love them, thus according to the quality and the amount of the love. Much derive the origin of the neighbor from themselves, for it is the love that is the determinant. (AC 6710)
We may know this principle and teach it to others, yet fail to apply it to our willing and thinking in our every day behavior. A common example is to continue to love our children in a personal way (phase 2) even as we uphold and promote the view that this kind of personal love is injurious and stems from the love of self, which is infernal from hell. As a result of remaining in the theoretical knowledge of it, our consciousness is stuck at the literal level of the principle, which is universal and general, applying equally to everyone without exception. But we also know from the Writings that we receive Divine Truth in discrete layers or correspondences, called “appearances of truth,” as discussed in the previous section. Theoretical knowledge gives us natural-rational correspondences, thus not yet spiritual. Our consciousness of these important and critical spiritual topics remain natural. We have nothing but a natural understanding of spiritual to0pics. In order to understand these topics spiritually, we must have our mind elevated to the spiritual-rational level, and this can be done by means of spiritual-rational correspondences.
As we apply the natural-rational correspondences to ourselves, we begin to perceive the spiritual-rational correspondences that are located at a deeper layer within the natural-rational meanings. This new perception of spiritual-rational correspondences is the process of jumping from zone 7 (Old Testament state of phase 3) to zone 8 (New Testament state of phase 3). Take for instance the commandment stated in the quote above, that we ought to love our “neighbor,” which literally refers to the people with whom we share living quarters such as buildings and streets. This is the literal meaning in a restricted or sectarian sense (Old Testament state – zone 7). In the New testament state of phase 3 (zone 8), we can understand “neighbor” in a less sectarian sense, hence in a more universal and general sense, so that we can rationally see that we ought to love everyone, since all human beings are children of one God. In the Third Testament state of phase 3 (zone 9), we apply “neighbor” to ourselves, our own states of mind. To do this takes two steps. First we must be enlightened by the theoretical knowledge of correspondences, which tells us that “neighbor” represents our own state when we are in good:
As charity is love toward the neighbor, we will say what the neighbor is. In the natural sense, the neighbor is man both collectively and individually. Collectively, man is the church, our country, and society; individually, he is our fellow-citizen, who in the Word is called "brother" and "companion." But in the spiritual sense the neighbor is good, and as use is good, the neighbor in this sense is use. That use is the spiritual neighbor must be acknowledged by everyone. For who loves a human being merely as a person? We love him for that which he has in him, and which gives him his character; thus from his quality, for this is the man. And this quality that we love is use, and is called good, so that this is the neighbor. And as, in its bosom, the Word is spiritual, therefore in its spiritual sense this is to "love the neighbor." (Faith 20)
The spiritual-rational correspondence of neighbor is the state of good in us. This is therefore what ought to be loved, that is, willed and thought all day. In our thinking and willing every day we are to choose the good and shun the bad. When we compel ourselves to think and will the good, and shun the bad in obedience to this commandment, then we receive perception of the spiritual-rational truth embodied in the deeper layer of the meaning of neighbor. Our enlightenment is then no longer merely theoretical, but is actual and particular, hence most holy. The meaning of True Science becomes most holy in this applied sense. In this sense it carries spiritual power that we can use to change our life and to be regenerated for heaven.
15.5 Elevation of Spiritual Consciousness in Every Day Tasks
In the history of consciousness there have been two paths running parallel to each other. The first one may be called sensuous consciousness, and the second, rational consciousness. These two methods were created by God as a dual approach to the Divine, that is, being in the conscious co-Presence of God. Experiencing God occurs in two different media or organic venues of the mind. Sensuous consciousness is the direct apperception of the Divine Appearance. For instance, Swedenborg witnessed the Lord’s Visual Presence in the spiritual Sun. Every angel in the Third Heaven can likewise see the Lord amidst the spiritual Sun. Furthermore, they have the spiritual Sun in front of them no matter which they turn or walk. Therefore it is literally true that we can see the Divine Appearance when we are in our Third Heaven of the mind. This is the top of the human mind, so created by God that we are in His conscious co-presence ceaselessly whenever we rise in consciousness to the top of the mind. The method for rising has also been created and provided for, and has been discussed under the topic of regeneration.
15.5.a Sensuous and Rational Consciousness of the Divine
Another instance of sensuous consciousness of the Divine occurred after the Resurrection, when the Lord showed Himself to various people. The shepherds who saw the Angels, and Mary who spoke to an Angel, also are instances of sensuous consciousness of the Divine. There are similar visions described in the Old Testament history where numerous individuals had sensuous consciousness of the Divine, as for example Moses on Mount Sinai, the Patriarchs all of whom spoke to the Divine by living voice, Hagar fleeing in the desert to whom the Lord appeared as an Angel, and the daily miracles the Jews were granted after their Divinely managed Exodus from Egypt, such as the splitting of the Red Sea, the Manna falling from heaven, the cloud of fire protecting their encampments, and many more sensuous demonstrations of the Divine presence with them, with the Ark, with the Temple.
Yet there is a universe of difference between these two types of sensuous consciousness described in the Old and New Testament. Sensuous consciousness operates at the level of the mind where the conscious awareness is located or is operational. In the natural mind, marked by phase 1 thinking and feeling, religion is external to one’s actual inner loves, thus not yet spiritual since the spiritual level is an inner operation of the mind, a discrete degree above the natural mind. This external relationship to religion means that one is directed by one’s own loves rather than by one’s relationship to God, who is seen as a distant figure, or even infinite force. Phase 1 religion deals with God from a distance. For example, if religious doctrine contradicts our inner loves, we ignore that religion and look for another, and keep looking until we find something that does not pose a threat to our inner loves. These inner loves are entirely evil, through and through, from inheritance, and can only be gotten rid of through the long term and intensely challenging process of regeneration.
As a result of this cognitive distance, God can only appear to them from a distance. For example, when God’s Presence descended or infilled the region of Mount Sinai, what was His Appearance to the people? A burning bush? An Angel? A Living Voice? Thunder and Lightning? These instances of sensuous consciousness of the Divine’s Presence are geared to phase 1 thinking and feeling. The people were not able to receive the Stone Tablets of Ten Commandments Etched by God’s Finger. They had to be broken by Moses and a new set acquired, one that Moses etched, and this they were able to receive. How did the people feel and act as the Divine Presence came closer to them? The were terrified! They felt they were losing the breath of life. They begged Moses to go on his own and to let them wait it out further away from the Mountain where God had alighted. All of this indicates that phase 1 thinking and feeling provides a natural form of sensuous consciousness of the Divine. This is the closest the natural mind can come to anything spiritual.
Compare this to the sensuous consciousness enjoyed by the Jews who became followers of the Lord during the three years of His Divine co-Presence with them. As the history in the New Testament describes, the Lord made many attempts to open their sensuous consciousness above their inherited culture and faith. For instance, He Himself performed miracles in front of their eyes. The miracles came from Him visibly. This has never occurred before in the history of the race. Now for the first time the Divine Human Person appeared visibly in sensuous consciousness to humankind. He has entered human history and science. He has thus become visible to endless generations merely by the knowledge that God actually, historically, scientifically, appeared to the human race in a visible, tangible, material form. Within this Divine Human Natural Body there was the infinite Divine Love and Wisdom, God Himself, One and the same from the beginning and always. Now this infinite Divine Love and Wisdom has created a new method of appearing to human beings. He created a physical Body by means of earthly laws, developed a natural Mind by means of growing up as a Child, and revealed Divine truths about Himself, creation, heaven, hell, and regeneration. These truths could not be received before in phase consciousness of the Divine. They were denied by most. The Divine appears to them, and they deny it because they cannot see it. The Divine only appears to them from a distance, not up close in the form of a Human, even if a Divine Human.
Note that the Old Testament portrays God as Human. He talks like a Human, loves like a Human, has emotions and concerns, repents of His mistakes, isn’t fully predictable or consistent, gets angry, punishes, threatens, and many such things, along with the Divine traits like omnipotence and omniscience. Phase 1 consciousness of God is mixed good and bad. As a result, there evolves the idea that God is presented in the Old Testament in figurative terms so that humans could understand Him. Therefore, one ought not to think of God as Human, since human is finite, while God is infinite. This idea then becomes a stumbling block to further spiritual development. Why? Because the reality is that God is a Divine Human Person, as phase 2 consciousness begins to see and accept.
It is necessary to think of God in rational terms rather than physical if we’re going to elevate our consciousness from phase 1 to phase 2. Indeed, there is a challenge to the mind to understand the Incarnation. By tackling this challenge, by reflecting on it as reality, our thinking is led to a rational consciousness of God. This transfer of Divine consciousness from sensuous to rational operations of the mind is the most significant evolutionary step the race has undergone since creation. What happened to Abraham and Moses when they arrived in the world of spirits? They arrived with a spirit-body whose mental operation was in phase 1, thus in the natural mind. Their idea of God and heaven was so distant that they could not enter a heaven in their mind where they had to leave behind everything about themselves – their identity, their culture, their religious rituals, their personality, everything they valued as essential to their life. And instead, to adopt the mental life of the Divine Human Person. This is what heaven is, namely, the place in your mind where you experience God’s loves and truths, where there is nothing whatsoever of your own mind except the reception of them.
Only if Abraham and Moses were willing to give up everything of their own that they brought along, could they enter the eternal Promised Land. And the Writings reveal that many people were willing to do so of all generations and civilizations, but many were not willing, and today, many still are unwilling to give up their own infernal or fallen “proprium” (what is one’s own or self), for a heavenly Proprium from the Lord. By refusing to give up their inner loves, and thus refusing to adopt “as one’s own,” the loves and truths of the Divine Human Person, they condemn themselves to a lower consciousness in which existence is miserable and hardly human. In phase 1 thinking we experience the resistance of nonduality in our natural mind. Our natural mind is born unregenerate, filled by inheritance with ties to the hells by means of infernal loves we are unwilling to give up. This unregenerate self is on its way to hell, but it can be saved from that awful fate. God provides the method of salvation. It is called regeneration of our character by struggling with our temptations the Lord brings to us, and victory over them by appealing to the Lord.
Our character refers to our inner loves, the ones that are infernal by birth and by subsequent habit and acquiescence, and eventually full immersion and enjoyment. We are then tied to the source of these evil loves, which are the societies of the hells. Many societies are involved in a single evil love, to provide for its pleasure, its delight, its false justifications and hypocrisies. You can see that these attachments and bonds remain in the afterlife where we feel totally free to engage in them. And while we enter these evil loves by practicing them and justifying them, we sense the infernal delights of cupidities, lusts, cruelties, and hatreds. But in due course every evil love turns against the subject. Soon the infernal delights turn into infernal sufferings as the person gets absorbed into the infernal societies were the inhabitants take turns practicing cruelties on each other. What a fate!
There are angels from heaven who look down on the hells and are given power by the Lord to intervene. They try to moderate the cruelties being practiced so that they stay within permissible limits. They also strive to instruct them about good and truth which can take them out of the hell they’re in and up to the top of their mind to heaven. But they refuse and reject and are unwilling. When their thinking focuses on any truth or good that angels present to them, they are seized with a frenzied fury and run to hide in caverns and under rocks they find to avoid the light of heaven flowing into their environment. This is what happens in the spiritual world when truth is received, namely, light from the spiritual Sun enters and shines all around. This light is Divine Truth in infinite variety, and Divine Love is within this Truth and animates it. When the inhabitants of the hell societies perceive this light entering, they are seized with agony and fear and rage against it. They then turn themselves away from it, which means that their mind goes back to darkness by turning the truth into its opposite. Then they feel that they can live. You can see why the inhabitants of the hells have betaken themselves to the bottom of their mind and cannot be taken up to the top of their mind or heaven.
True Science describes in great detail all that we need to know to fully understand how our rational consciousness of the Divine may be systematically elevated to the Divine. Rational consciousness has been provided for escalating to the third and final step of human evolution. Genuine sensuous consciousness of the Divine on earth has ceased to operate since the Ascension and the “giving of the Holy Spirit.” The Ascension marks to moment in history where God removes His Divine Natural Body from direct sensuous consciousness on earth or in the natural world. But in the spiritual world, direct sensuous consciousness of God continues to eternity. In other words, when we transfer to the spiritual world, and we are able to rise to the heaven in our mind, we will have direct sensuous consciousness of the Divine Human Person, as witnessed many times by Swedenborg. But not here on earth. There will be no sensuous consciousness of the Divine in the former things – visions, miracles, angels, Divine light, holy objects, and the like. The only consciousness of the Divine henceforth is the Holy Spirit, and this refers to the rational consciousness of God.
When I hear of a miracle performed by some preacher or psychic, I put it in the context of True Science, thus, it is not a spiritual phenomenon. Similarly with mystical experiences such as spiritual ecstasy or union with God. Similarly with belief in influencing God by prayer, and thus belief in the miracle of prayers when sufficiently sincere or ardent. These sensuous methods of being conscious of the Divine presence have all been made void and non operational, as explained in the Writings. Further, the reason miracles are not allowed by the Lord is to help us grow in a rational consciousness of Him. Our rational consciousness cannot grow in the presence of a sensuous consciousness of God. Those who arrive in the other life with a sensuous consciousness of God are not capable of sustaining the idea of God there and become nonbelievers and mockers. Such is persuasive faith, namely that it removes our rational free will, and are compelled by physical evidence of God’s presence. But God’s presence does not appear physically in the other life but rationally. This is perhaps the most important knowledge you can take with you from this book.
It becomes crucial therefore to escalate our thinking and feeling to the operational level of rational truths and rational loves. This is where phase 3 consciousness begins. The method by which phase 3 consciousness is appropriated is regeneration of our inner loves or character. Regeneration is accomplished by God on a daily basis, but only to the extent that we cooperate. He cannot regenerate us except through that self-initiated effort of cooperation. This involves knowing one’s thoughts and feelings, evaluating them in the light of one’s doctrine from Divine revelation, and discarding all those that are contrary. This daily and hourly process throughout our life on earth is the method that has been created for our regeneration, hence the quality of our eternal life. Self-witnessing or self-examination needs to be systematic, cumulative, and persistent, for without this, we cannot know the evils and falsities we must give up to become regenerated.
15.5.b Self-Witnessing One’s Thinking and Willing
Self-witnessing or self-examination is a process of self-monitoring. This involves monitoring and note-keeping of our mental life in daily tasks and interactions with others. Each exercise involves keeping track in the three “domains” or organs of the mind: affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor.
Affective Organ (will):
“What feelings do I have in this situation?” Or: “What do I feel like doing right now?”
Cognitive Organ :(understanding):
“What thoughts do I have right now?” Or: “What are the words and sentences I’m thinking right now?”
Sensorimotor Organ (acting out and sensations):
“What sensations am I experiencing right now?” And: “What is my body doing and how does it appear to others—my face, my hands, my position, my rhythm, my voice, my breathing, etc.”
Keeping cumulative notes in a journal or diary is necessary. Dictating notes with a recorder is also useful. Part of the discipline is to review or analyze the data collected over many samples of one’s interactions and behaviors and to evaluate them as indicators of one’s dedication and progress in regeneration.
Regeneration involves freely rejecting our evils even though they delight us tremendously. It is not possible to reject our own evils by the group or collectively, as just discussed. It is only possible to reject them one by one. Therefore if we don’t make lists, how are we going to keep track of them so we may reject them? This is a practical issue. If we run a department store without an inventory, can we succeed? We must identify something before we can sell it or reject it. Therefore we should use the method of making lists and inventories of our evils and falsities just as we make lists of things to do on a busy day.
No one can shun that of which he is ignorant (DP 278)
Spiritual consciousness is determined by the level of our thinking and feeling in every day tasks. Minute by minute all day long a steady stream of thoughts and feelings produce coiled fibers in our understanding and will. True Science shows that the will and the understanding are spiritual organs created by spiritual fibers or substances. The will and the understanding are organs in the mind, while muscles are organs in the body. The muscle is built up by protein material, fiber by fiber, to the extent that the muscle is activated by physical exertion. Every time you flex the muscle, another fiber is built up. It is similar with the brain cells. As we learn some skill the synapses connecting the cells grow into one another, making permanent connections. All day long we make decisions and react with this or that emotion, and then as we are conscious to an emotion or thought, we react to that, and so on endlessly. Each of these acts of thinking and emoting is like the flexing of a muscle or the practicing of a foreign language. Organic fibers are built up from each individual act in the long endless series. Another analogy is to think of a tapestry and how it is built up or created by individual stitches, each different in terms of color and fabric. All the stitches together make up the tapestry, carpet, or garment. A human character is like a tapestry, built up by individual acts of one’s understanding and one’s will.
When we arrive in the afterlife, our mind or spirit-body contains the organs of the will and understanding at three levels of operation. The shape and form of these organs is unique and is determined by the content of the thoughts and feelings that created the character. The character is nothing than the sum total of all the thoughts and feelings we’ve had in our life on earth. You can see why it’s so crucial that we arrive in the afterlife with a regenerated character. If it is not regenerated, it contains an infernal will and insane understanding. How then is regeneration of the character accomplished? Nothing can be more important to us than to know the right answer to this question.
To react to what we observe is to make an evaluation of our willing and thinking. This evaluation is from a rational level, looking down, while the stream of thinking we are observing, is from a sensuous or corporeal level. An analogy might be standing on a bridge and looking down on the flow of a semi-transparent river and inspecting its contents—stones, fish, plants, debris. These things represent the content of our mind—knowledges, truths, and falsifications of truths. The flow of the river is the sequencing of the thoughts, their reasoning and coherence.
Monitor your eyes as you walk on the street or as you read a magazine or watch TV. The eyes respond to our interest, to our affections, to what we find delightful. As your eyes roam they settle on this or that object, body part, detail. The eyes are quick. You have to catch yourself and become conscious of where they settle for how long, and where they keep coming back to. These eye movements will reveal interests and delights that we do not wish to publicize because they are filthy and scortatory, as the passage above describes. As Swedenborg walked in the street, the spirits with him “carried away my eyes to all such things; wherever there was filth, excrement and intestines, thither they directed my eyes, although I was ignorant where were such things in the street, because not observed by me.” Monitoring our eyes will reveal to us what filthy things are of interest to us from heredity. These filthy interests are not our own affections, they are the affections of the filthy spirits. But we are tied to those spirits by heredity and the filth remains with us unless consciously removed.
It is important to realize that what comes into the mind from the evil spirit societies is not damning or a sin. I was able to stop blaming myself by no longer identifying with those awful snatches of thoughts. These were not my ideas, but theirs! I was not the one with affections for blasphemy; it was them! But at the same time I was led to understand that it is my responsibility as to how I react to them. My reaction is what comes out of the mind, and for this I am responsible. Do I just continue being a host to them and letting them use my house, or do I boot them out?
Examine the following chart. It shows the content of our thinking and feeling in the three phases of spiritual development. See if you can recognize these thoughts and feelings in you. See how many more you can add. Read the chart from bottom up.
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THINKING |
FEELING |
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NEGATIVE |
POSITIVE |
NEGATIVE |
POSITIVE |
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Phase 3
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celestial-rational enlightened True Science particularistic actualized objective correspondential wisdom etc.
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altruistic conjunctive compassionate good will conjugial love full confidence etc.
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Phase 2
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mystical psychic subjective etc.
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spiritual-rational abstract symbolic complex encyclopedic universalistic personalistic intelligent educated pacifist etc.
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over permissive rebellious impatient anxious pornographic etc.
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charitable adjunctive tolerant inclusive repentant artistic patient etc.
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Phase 1
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inflexible biased dogmatic sectarian persuasive hypocritical anti-feminine superstitious literalist materialistic simplified logic ignorant etc.
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natural-rational collects knowledges good memory scientific etc.
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egotism selfish angry rageful arrogant depressed cynical cruel stubborn shameless obscene etc. |
industrious empathic pity for others love of parenting curious harmony obedience love of ritual conscience loyal etc.
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I have written extensively on self-witnessing as a tool for regeneration. Please consult volume 3 of A Man of the Field available here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v3ch1-nonduality.html
For now, I will illustrate the results of the method by analyzing the character of some common everyday behaviors. Once you understand this in terms of the three levels of consciousness, you will be able to apply it to your own self-witnessing. See also the Exercises in Section 18.1 below.
As I monitor my thoughts and feelings in the stream of behavior I notice many things that are in place in my habit routines and mental scripts. What are my thoughts as I eat or look around for something to eat? What procedures do I follow to get the food to my mouth? Do I follow diet rules or merely cravings? How do I decide when to start, when to stop? How fast do I put things in my mouth and in what sizes? Do I swallow what’s there before I put more in it? Do I chew adequately? Do I dislike exerting control over how fast I eat and how much? Do I exert a veto power over my cravings? Etc. The monitoring of these sequences is equivalent to a mapping of the spiritual societies we are connected to, which can be called our vertical community. For instance if we stuff and swallow repeatedly we are with different spirits than if we moderate size and rate. If we deny ourselves another portion we are with different spirits than if we give in to our appetite and overeat. Affections for unhealthy foods come from different spiritual societies than affections for healthy food.
Here is a general characterization of eating behavior in the three phases of spiritual development.
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Phase 1 natural-rational |
Phase 2 spiritual-rational |
Phase 3 celestial-rational
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Thinking |
Feeling
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Thinking |
Feeling |
Thinking |
Feeling |
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eating behavior |
we select and eat traditional foods and we model the habits of our parents and family |
we are aversive to unfamiliar foods and we allow ourselves to indulge and binge
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being overweight and under-exercising is not considered a sin against God
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we are permissive toward eating unhealthy foods and overeating, then feeling guilty, then breaking resolutions
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we see each bite as nourishment from God which represents receiving Divine Truth from the Threefold Word |
we feel averse to eating unhealthy or too much, which we see as a sin against the Lord because from evil, tying us to the hells unless the evil love is shunned and reversed
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You can particularize the table above by self-witnessing your eating behavior in the three domains of behavior: (1) Sensorimotor (what you can notice about your motor movements and sensations); (2) Cognitive (your thinking sequence); and (3) Affective (your feelings in terms of intentions, delights, and aversions). Self-witnessing your threefold self supplies the objective data you need on your eating behavior. Now you need to evaluate it or judge it using the principles of doctrine you know and understand. If you’re operating in phase 3 consciousness, your doctrine is from True Science. This level of spiritual knowledge gives you the power to perceive celestial temptations in yourself. In phase 2 consciousness we can perceive spiritual temptations, while in phase we can perceive only natural temptations.
The level of temptations we can perceive in ourselves – natural, spiritual, celestial, determines how thorough our regeneration may be. People differ in the extent of their regeneration when they arrive in the afterlife. Those who were able to perceive celestial temptations (phase 3), and were victorious in them, severed the ties they held to the deepest hells. This allowed their celestial mind to be opened. Filled with thoughts and feelings of a celestial-rational quality, they rise to the top of the human mind, a state of life called the Third Heaven, whose inhabitants are called angels. Swedenborg met those inhabitants and describes their character. Those who were able to perceive spiritual temptations (phase 2), and were victorious in them, severed the ties they held to the intermediate hells. This allowed their spiritual mind to be opened. Filled with thoughts and feelings of a spiritual-rational quality, they rise to the upper middle portion of the human mind, a state of life called the Second Heaven, whose inhabitants are called angelic spirits.. Those who were able to perceive natural temptations (phase 1), and were victorious in them, severed the ties they held to the milder hells. This allowed their natural mind to be implanted with a natural-spiritual mind. Filled with thoughts and feelings of a natural-spiritual quality, they rise to the middle portion of the human mind, a state of life called the First Heaven, whose inhabitants are called good spirits..
You can see from this that it’s up to each of us to cooperate with God in our regeneration. God keeps our consciousness in balance by associating us with good and evil spirits. This gives us the ability to compel ourselves to follow the good spirits even though we are more delighted in following the evil spirits. Ours is the choice, and God manages the event to insure we remain in balance, consequently in spiritual freedom to choose one way or the other. God highlights the choice to our consciousness by creating a temptation in us at a level we can handle – natural temptations, spiritual temptations, or celestial temptations. Here are some illustrations in the eating arena of our life.
Natural temptations (phase 1)
No, I’m not going to have seconds. It’s unhealthy to be overweight. Well, maybe this time I can make an exception. Yes, why don’t I go ahead and have some seconds. But I’m already ten pounds above my limit. I better not. But I’m still not full. I haven’t eaten in three hours. I’ll start my strict diet tomorrow. OK, I’ll have some more of that mashed potatoes. Should I? I don’t know. I could make up for it tomorrow by eating less. Oh I hate this diet. Why can’t I eat what I want. Etc.
Spiritual temptations (phase 2)
I think I’ll have some more of that mashed potatoes. Wait, I better not. I shouldn’t just give in to my lowly cravings. Gluttony is a vice. Maybe I could just have a little extra serving as an exception today. Oh, no, I must not. I must learn to stick to my higher principles. This is a battle between my lower animal self and my higher rational self. The higher shall prevail over the lower. I can’t just go with the shifting wind of impulse, but must rely instead on the steady rock of conscience.
Celestial temptations (phase 3)
I’m eating too fast, stuffing my mouth unconsciously like an animal. I’m not going to reach for another serving of those mashed potatoes. I’m hunched over eating with vigor like a starving beast. I sense the impulse to eat faster and to really get into its taste, enjoying it, delighting in it, getting lost in it. But this is not me, is it. I want to be more refined, like an angel, since I’m preparing myself for an angelic life. Think of how embarrassed I’ll be while eating with angels in heaven and having such bad manners or involvements. Eating represents the appropriation of goods from the Lord. In itself, it is animal, unless I’m involved in it more spiritually.
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Phase 1 natural-rational |
Phase 2 spiritual-rational |
Phase 3 celestial-rational
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Thinking |
Feeling
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Thinking |
Feeling |
Thinking |
Feeling |
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physical exercising
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I better not skip my workout today. It really keeps me in shape. To be successful you’ve got to look attractive. That means being in shape. Besides, you avoid heart attacks.
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I hate this workout stuff. I rather watch TV or surf the net. But I’m making myself do it. I refuse to break my resolution. I’m scared to get sick and end up under a doctor’s care. Besides, it’ll be soon over then I can watch TV. |
I need to learn to like my workout session. It’s the right thing to do. It keeps me from bad habits like laziness and lack of self-control. It’s necessary for a healthy life. |
I’m actually looking forward to my workout. Yes, it takes effort and motivation, but it’s worth it. I feel better, clean, purified, satisfied with myself. |
Exercising the physical body is like exercising the mind with study. Compelling myself to do it as scheduled, develops my mental discipline upon which rests my spiritual development. I must look on the physical exercise as a spiritual discipline. |
I feel that every movement brings me closer to my heavenly character. I sense the physical power in my body to be connected to my will and motive. Since this is from heaven, I feel closer to heaven as I exercise. |
Sexual love is like a spring from which a rivulet of chaste as well as unchaste love can flow (Swedenborg, CL 445)
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Phase 1 natural-rational |
Phase 2 spiritual-rational |
Phase 3 celestial-rational
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Thinking |
Feeling
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Thinking |
Feeling |
Thinking |
Feeling |
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sex
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We think of sex as a natural activity, and of marriage as a legal contract. Cheating on your partner is legitimate under some conditions. We permit sexualizing with strangers involving pornography entertainment, and nudity,
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We feel a roving desire for sex with multiple partners, but we are afraid to hurt or anger our partner. Sometimes we give in and go ahead anyway, We are strongly attracted to pornography, “dirty jokes,” and cybersex. |
We think of sex and marriage as Divinely ordained activities. Adultery is against God’s commandment and destructive of a civilized world. We look upon pornography as adultery. |
We oppose our roving desire for sex as something contrary to God or higher consciousness. We strive to be satisfied with one partner. We value loyalty to each other and are devastated when this is gone. |
Besides being Divinely ordained, sex and marriage are eternal, continuing in heaven as conjugial love. Any roving sexual desire must be eradicated or it will prevent conjugial love in heaven.
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We feel spiritually conjoined with our spouse, knowing we will have one soul in heaven. We feel a mortal threat at accepting any roving thoughts and desires, wanting immediately to get rid of them with the help of the Lord. |
Quoting from the Writings:
The chief love is sexual love; and in the case of those who reach heaven, that is, those who become spiritual on earth, it is conjugial love.
The reason why a person's sexual love remains after death is that a male remains a male and a female remains a female, and the male's masculinity pervades the whole and every part of him, and likewise a female's femininity; and the impulse to be joined is present in every detail down to the smallest. Since that impulse to be joined was implanted from creation and is therefore continually present, it follows that the one desires the other and longs to be joined to the other.
Love taken by itself is nothing but a desire and hence an impulse to be joined; conjugial love is an impulse to be joined into one. For the male and the female of the human species are so created as to be able to become like a single individual, that is, one flesh; and when united, then they are, taken together, the full expression of humanity. If not so joined, they are two, each being as it were a divided person or half a person. Since that impulse to be joined lies deeply hidden in every part of both male and female, and every part has the ability and desire to be joined into one, it follows that people retain mutual and reciprocal sexual love after death. (CL 37)
Scortatory love makes a person less and less human and virile, and conjugial love makes him more and more human and virile. (CL 432)
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Phase 1 natural-rational |
Phase 2 spiritual-rational |
Phase 3 celestial-rational
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Thinking |
Feeling
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Thinking |
Feeling |
Thinking |
Feeling |
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politics
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we follow persuasive leaders who share and support our biases
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we are loyal to sectarian authority and ethnic identity |
we support popular leaders and laws that echo our ideals |
we are loyal to democratic institutions, cultural diversity, and class equality
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we support whomever supports truth and good |
we are aversive to gender bias and all forms of inequality, |
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Phase 1 natural-rational |
Phase 2 spiritual-rational |
Phase 3 celestial-rational
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Thinking |
Feeling
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Thinking |
Feeling |
Thinking |
Feeling |
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war
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War is an instrument for advancing one’s nation or religion. It’s good to hate the enemy. They don’t deserve humane treatment since they want to harm us. Eye for an eye philosophy. |
Hating the enemy with self-righteousness. Wanting to deny humane treatment to the enemy. Feeling justified in using illegal types of weapons and in killing the unarmed innocent. Wanting to inflict maximum damage. Feeling justified in maltreating prisoners of war. Joy in the spoils of war. |
There are just wars and evil wars. Protecting ourselves and coming to the rescue of the subjugated are just wars. The enemy must be treated humanely and not hated. God is on the side of the just. Those who are pacifists think that all wars are evil. They would rather see the enemy continue its cruelties against others. |
Feeling confident in winning and relying on God. Wanting to defeat the enemy without hating them. Hoping that enemy may be amended rather than destroyed. Wanting to minimize damage and ready to help with reconstruction of the country. |
All wars are under the direct auspices of the Lord. All evil is moderated by the Lord to its maximum allowed. Evil itself punishes the enemy. Our job is to neutralize their ability to hurt others and to try to amend them. |
Striving to win by means of as-of self effort powered by the Lord. Striving to avoid hate as self-corrupting. Sense of sadness rather than joy in hurting and killing enemy. Desire to protect enemy by keeping injury and damage to the minimum necessary for gaining control. |
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Phase 1 natural-rational |
Phase 2 spiritual-rational |
Phase 3 celestial-rational
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Thinking |
Feeling |
Thinking |
Feeling |
Thinking |
Feeling |
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casualties
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The loved one is dead, killed by the enemy. We’ve been humiliated to the utmost degree. The enemy deserves the worst possible fate. |
Agony of an unbearable and cruel loss. Rage against enemy and desire for revenge and mayhem. Anger at God. |
The loved one is with the Lord. The enemy must be found and punished to satisfy justice and prevent future repetitions. God will help the just cause. |
Sense of deep personal loss. Sense of sacrifice to protect the good. Sense of closeness to God and certitude of ultimate outcome. |
Dying is not the end but a transition to a more vibrant life. The time of death is chosen by the Lord and occurs as soon as the person can no longer benefit from further regeneration here. We will be reunited when it’s our turn to make the transition. |
Sadness and loss of companionship. Resignation to the event of dying as transitioning. Wondering about the person’s condition and fate. Anticipating being together again. Thankful to the Lord for His love and care in all details. Fully trusting in His Providence to take care of everything. |
An important area of self-witnessing is the entertainment content we enjoy on TV, comics, novels, and music. The mind becomes polluted when we routinely enjoy and tacitly accept vulgarities, profanities and the portrayal of lusts and violence. Monitoring our exposure and involvement with these things allows us to turn away and to turn back, and so regain an innocence that teaches us to feel shocked at these rehearsals and dramatic portrayals of evil. Similarly, we must not allow ourselves to repeat and love lyrics that are profane and glorify disorderly things. On the other hand there are millions of people who enjoy the songs of romance that portray soul mates leading to eternal love and conjugal happiness. What a contrast between these angelic themes and the love-yourself promiscuity held up by popular songsters like a fiery serpent that is idolized by the unregenerate masses.
I observed that I watch TV in two distinct mental states—conscious and unconscious. In general people give high preference ranks in entertainment value for shows, movies, novels, and games that are absorbing. What is being “absorbed” in a dramatic presentation? It consists in losing oneself, so to speak, and living in the excitement of the drama. Obviously this is a spiritual phenomenon having to do with how the spirit or mind is animated.
But the individual does not think of the spiritual aspect but of the corporeal aspect—the excitement, the sensations, the emotions, the fascination, the surprise, the scare, the sensory information or vista, etc. These are corporeal events and bring consciousness down to that level. The rationality drops away because it is considered to be in the way. People enjoy sitting in the dark in a theater or nightclub and becoming absorbed in another world that does not require rationality, salvation, and God. It’s almost as if they declare Time Out from reality that is heavy and disturbing. They want to forget for awhile the worries and the realities. It is felt like a relief. And so on. These are the reasons we learn to give for why we are consumers of entertainment.
I observed that when I get absorbed in a scene on TV, even for a minute or two, the event or dialog later replays itself over and over in my mind, and I get involved in modifying, enriching, expanding, or continuing some scene in various ways. I asked myself what drives these compulsive imagings and memories? It seems that the explanation may have something to do with being “absorbed” a word that means
to take in and make part of an existent whole; to suck up or take up (a sponge absorbs water); to engage or engross wholly (absorbed in thought)
Almost all, if not all, entertainment is filled with portrayals of evil things, regardless whether it also portrays virtuous things. When we are absorbed in a book, movie, or song our mind sucks up the negative content that portrays infernal loves and falsities. Once these are in, they “make part of an existent whole” and this the natural self. The natural self is unregenerate and contains evil things and good things, though in separate layers for the Lord will not allow them to be mixed (DP 16). The evil things and the good things become part of the “existent whole.” Now the evil things with their falsities start having their deleterious effects in the natural mind by stimulating certain thoughts, expectations, and attitudes that multiply quickly into enormous stumbling blocks, so that our spiritual state after the absorption is worse than before. We now have more impediments to beginning our reformation and getting on with our regeneration. It is very common for people to remain in their hereditary evils and to acquire new ones on their own (TCR 469; SE 2424). Absorption in entertainment and physical pleasures make it harder for the New Church mind to be formed in us. There is a better way of watching TV and being a consumer of cultural content.
The more rational way of watching, reading, or being a consumer of entertainment is to be aware of the content as it comes in, and to assess its status in relation to your formulated standards. Processing all incoming information needs to go through an evaluation filter that involves two parallel levels of thinking, one above the other. There is a dual activity going on: one is the self being absorbed in the content, that is, being unconsciously entertained; the other is the self above who acts as the critic or commentator. The self who consumes the content and is delighted by it, is corporeal. The self who filters, identifies, and evaluates the incoming content is rational. The Writings reveal the existence of these two levels of the natural self (AC 1914).
A name for this way of consuming entertainment or cultural content might be “metanoid watching” or “metanoid reading,” and even “metanoid participation” (as in parties and games). The word metanoid is constructed from Greek and means "to stand beside oneself." I saw this word in R. D. Laing (The Politics of Experience. New York: Ballantine Books, 1967), before I found the Writings in 1981. Nevertheless, I think it’s appropriate to use it. It’s not possible that Laing could have thought of it in the same way as the New Church mind, nevertheless we can make use of his concept in the context of the what the New Church mind knows from the Writings. “Metanoid perception” is another way of discussing self-witnessing or self-examination (see Chapter 8; see also Note 20 at end).).
I later saw that my earlier idea of metanoid perception was a reduced version of what the Writings describe as follows:
The interior can perceive what takes place in the exterior, or what is the same, that the higher can see what is in the lower; but not the reverse. Moreover they who have conscience can do this and are accustomed to do it, for when anything contrary to the truth of conscience flows into the thought, or into the endeavor of the will, they not only perceive it, but also find fault with it; and it even grieves them to be of such a character. (AC 1914)
Clearly this type of internal self-monitoring is quite common and is part of the normal repertoire of mental skills people can perform. Since childhood we learn to internalize the authority that comes from the command of others—their orders, exhortations, expectations, orientation, philosophy, ethics, and political attitudes and values. Once these mental systems are internalized, they run themselves off in our mind and constitute our own daily mental life. The things that are called “standards, principles, or rules” have motivational value that we strive to achieve in our actions and conduct. When we talk about conscience, we are referring to these internalized standards or rules. These activities in our mind are higher than those involving corporeal things of pleasure, delight, popularity, power, and consumption.
Our conscience, or the standards and rules we hold, looks down upon the corporeal activities and evaluates them in terms of the standards and rules it has. The usefulness of conscience is its metanoid functioning. It is like light from above that illumines with a rational light. Seeing things from principles and standards is to see them more rationally, more deeply, more realistically. Those who systematically destroy their conscience also destroy their rationality. They still appear rational to others, but only when they are in their external self and socializing or working with others as a team. But inside, they are raving mad (xx). This they hide from others. But when they arrive in the afterlife, they cannot hide it.
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Phase 1 natural-rational |
Phase 2 spiritual-rational |
Phase 3 celestial-rational
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Thinking |
Feeling
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Thinking |
Feeling |
Thinking |
Feeling |
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entertainment
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entertainment and having fun is good for you and is the reward for work. Nothing wrong with watching and enjoying disorderly portrayals since it is just fantasy. That can’t hurt you.
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enjoyment of absorption in drama and fantasy. Enjoyment of violence, nudity, gross language, pornography, practical jokes, or ridiculing others. Idol worship of popular actors and singers.
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entertainment and having fun is acceptable as long as it doesn’t involve pornography and blasphemous language. Having fun is good for you and a normal thing to do in family life but children should be protected from adult shows. |
enjoyment of drama and fantasy, as long as it is not too explicit in nudity and violence. |
all loves remain attached to us forever. Enjoyment of the portrayal of what’s disorderly ties us to the hells and interferes with regeneration. Fantasy can hurt you, if enjoyed.
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striving to be vigilant not to enjoy disorderly things. |
15.6 Chart of Mental Characteristics of Angels and Spirits
The anatomy and physiology of the mind in the spirit-body has been discussed throughout this book. By now you’re familiar with the threefold structure of the mind into a lower natural portion, a middle spiritual-rational portion, and an uppermost celestial-rational portion. Our consciousness is the result of the operations going on within each of the three minds we have. The celestial mind receives Divine Truth and Love as an influx of substances streaming in from the spiritual Sun. The resultant activity in the celestial mind is in itself unconscious while we are earthlings, but its resultant effect in the natural mind is conscious. This resultant effect is caused by the action of the laws of correspondences. These effects in our natural mind are called mental characteristics. The highest mental characteristics we possess in our conscious awareness are caused by the unconscious activity in our celestial mind.
Similarly, we have mental characteristics that are spiritual, rather than celestial. These spiritual mental characteristics in our natural mind are the result of the unconscious activity in our spiritual mind. As well, we have mental characteristics that are natural, rather than spiritual or celestial. These natural mental characteristics in our natural mind are the result of the unconscious activity in our interior-natural mind, which is a natural-spiritual operation within the natural mind. Before the active operation of the celestial and spiritual mind, there is no mediate influx going through the mind but only immediate influx similar to that with animals, plants, and inanimate objects. With progress in regeneration, the spiritual mind is opened or operationalized for mediate influx. At this point the mediate influx can descent by correspondence to the natural mind, where it becomes conscious. This conscious awareness and perception of spiritual truths is called enlightenment.
It makes a radical difference therefore whether our spiritual mind is opened for mediate influx, or not yet. And again, another radical difference on top of that, if our celestial mind is opened for mediate influx. The opening or operationalizing of our higher mind for mediate influx of Divine Truth, is contingent upon the start of our regeneration in adult life. Prior to the spiritual mind being opened, our consciousness in the natural mind is natural, even regarding spiritual topics like God or heave and hell. When we read revelations we comprehend everything naturally. We have a natural consciousness that is similar to that of animals, but more advanced and developed. Similar because the order of ideas and concepts we have is built up by the senses and reflects the laws and order of the physical world. But spiritual consciousness reflects the order of the spiritual world, not the natural. We do not have this perception in natural consciousness. When we are enlightened through regeneration, we become conscious of the mediate influx into the spiritual mind, and as we advance in regeneration, we become conscious of the mediate influx into the celestial mind. The quality of reception of influx determines the quality of consciousness, whose content is made up of the thoughts and feelings we have.
The chart below shows the characteristics we have as angels and spirits in the afterlife. The quality of reception of Divine influx determines the level of consciousness in which we can operate. The details are based on Arcana Coelestia Number 1383 and following Numbers.
RECEPTION OF INFLUX PROPORTIONATE TO DEGREE OF CONSCIOUSNESS |
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DEGREES of consciousness |
MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ANGELS AND SPIRITS AT EACH LEVEL |
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CELESTIAL |
1. we have rational consciousness of the Divine Human Person, existing in His co-Presence 2. we receive rational loves from which we have rational truths and wisdoms 3. we occupy ourselves with teaching, nurturing, overseeing human affections 4. we attend individuals on the earths in their celestial temptations, conceptions, births, regeneration, etc. 5. we recognize all truths immediately by perception or enlightenment 6. we perceive Divine influx and can distinguish it from our own feelings and thoughts 7. we perceive all the interior feelings, thoughts, and memories of others 8. in our present we contain all of our past and all of our future 9. in our sensual externalizing life we perceive unparalleled felicities and blessings 10. we can remove sadnesses and anxieties in others by internal communication 11. our greatest delight is to communicate happinesses to others by correspondence |
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SPIRITUAL |
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NATURAL |
1. we see the spiritual Sun continuously, at some distance 2. we focus on externalizing uses from which we derive wisdom and love 3. we occupy ourselves with business or sports, inspiring humans on the earths 4. we attend individuals on the earths in their natural or moral temptations, instruction, regeneration, etc. 5. we have insights into truths that deal with our preferred activities 6. we do not perceive Divine influx but acknowledge and attribute all power to God 7. we perceive the feelings, thoughts, and memories of others but less interiorly 8. in our present we contain all of our past and all of our future but obscurely 9. in our sensual life our vibrancy dwarfs what can be experienced with the physical body 10. we can remove natural falsities in others by internal communication 11. our greatest delight is to engage in the uses we specialize in |
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SENSUAL |
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CORPOREAL |
1. we are blind to every truth and turn away from all good 2. we consider only corporeal sensations as real and valuable 3. we see nothing rational, even denying that God and heaven exist 4. we hold ourselves in fantasies and delusions, excluding all else 5. we hold on to and are immersed in hatreds towards the entire human race 6. we delight only in evils, lusts, falsities, adulations, and all filth and degradation |
This chart contains the scientific revelations of True Science. It is extremely valuable because it provides a description of the five avenues we have to reach our eternal future. There will be no other possibility for our eternal fate but the five listed above. Which one we end up in is entirely a process of freedom and regeneration. The choices we make in this life determine which of the five destination points we shall attain. It is possible to know the inner character that we live here on earth, whether evil or good. It has been revealed that if we are regenerating, we will be in one of the three heavens – celestial, spiritual, or natural, and we will experience life as depicted in the chart above. If we are not regenerating, we will be in hell and we will have the life depicted in the chart. Everything but everything therefore depends on steady progress in our regeneration. The method by which we can undergo regeneration has also been revealed. First, we study revelation and from doctrine or principles of life from it. Second, we apply this doctrine to our daily willing and thinking.
This second step requires systematic self-witnessing of our thoughts and feelings all day long every day. When we discover an evil delight or a false thought, we compel ourselves to reject them by appealing to God for power, who then gives it. One by one, we identify and shun our inherited and acquired evil loves and false thinking that goes with it. God supervises the process by bringing temptations to us at the right time in the right place so that we can become aware of the evil and exercise the free choice of rejecting it. Then God can remove the evil, replace it with good, and continue the process of elevating our consciousness through more spiritual temptations, and eventually, through celestial temptations.
Additional discussion may be found in a related article called The Genes of Consciousness, available on the Web:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/geography.html
15.7 Diagram Showing the Four Windows of the Mind.
The mind is a spiritual organ created with three separate organic parts, it operates at three levels of consciousness, so that the thinking and feeling that is going on at each level is discretely different. Any layer above is so superior to the layer below that there is no overlap and can never be, no matter how much the lower layer progresses and improves. This is the meaning of discrete degrees, revealed in True Science, and forms the layering of every existing object or quality in the universe. Hence also all the internal things -- the mind, the spiritual world, heaven, an idea, a plan, a mental construction, a drawing, and so on. There is nothing that exists that does not have three discrete layers to itself. Discrete degrees are related to each other by correspondences. In other words God created the Laws of Correspondences that determine how the lower layer is going to react when the upper layer is active.
For example, when a husband says something to his angel wife or a companion, the words he speaks in appear as visible phenomena in the heaven below his heaven. For example if he talks about a new plant he discovered in his garden, the lower heaven changes by correspondence to represent the new thoughts and feelings the angel had who discovered the plant and now talks about. That phenomenon in the middle heaven now arouses a correspondent phenomenon in the lower heaven, which then has an effect on the world of spirits where is located our spirit-body while we are earthlings. In other words, the speech of angels or other events around them, doesn’t just take place by itself in that portion of the spiritual world, but radiates out by resonance in accordance with the laws of correspondences. And when you consider that what the angels say or see is from the Lord, you can see the entire chain of command from Firsts to Lasts in the Lord, and from the Lord. This chain of determination from God to events anywhere is called “influx.”
The mind is an organ that responds correspondentially throughout its three layers or portions. Influx from the lowest heaven into our spiritual mind (which is the spirit-body in the world of spirits), is unconscious while we are earthlings. We become consciously aware of the content of the influx when the chain of correspondences activates our natural mind. First, the influx enters from the spiritual mind in to the interior portion of the natural mind, which is a spiritual organ created and developed during regeneration. Before that, it is not operational and our conscious awareness is limited to the natural order of things and meanings. But once regeneration begins sometime in adult life, the interior organ tied to the natural consciousness begins to be active. This activity of the natural-spiritual mind, as it is called, results in our enlightenment, This means that we are able to be consciously aware of spiritual ideas and meanings.
Until that phase of growth, while the natural mind does not yet have its interiors opened, our consciousness remains natural. Our thinking and feeling is restricted to the natural mode of operation. When we read the Threefold Word, or when we are instructed regarding religion and spiritual ideas, the meaning that we form regarding God, heaven, hell, sin, forgiveness, etc., is a natural meaning. Even if it is complex and highly abstract, as in theology and philosophy, the natural order of the thinking remains. God is seen as “supernatural” rather than spiritual because there is no understanding of duality. When one thinks of heaven, one thinks of it as a physical place, either filled with clouds, or a place on earth that is turned into a paradise. The idea of forgiveness of sins is also understood naturally, for instance, that God requires sacrifice or ritual before He can forgive, whereas the truth is that God forgives even before the sinful act is complete, and what remains to be done is voluntary repentance and change of heart by the sinner.
You can now see that the infinite Divine Truth by which all things are created and held in existence, goes out into the universe from the spiritual Sun, and permeates every object and quality, giving it its function or use by means of the unique form of each object . The unique form of objects and media, reacts in its own specific way to influx, creating all the phenomena and forces of the universe. With humans there is an additional influx that other created things do not have. This additional influx peculiar to humans is called “mediate influx” while the more general influx is called “immediate influx.”
The mediate influx of Divine Truth into the universal human race is by means of Sacred Scripture or Divine revelation. Our consciousness level is formed by the manner in which we receive, react, and adapt to mediate influx from revelation. The Divine Truth streams out of the spiritual Sun into the celestial mind. Only those are consciously aware of this mediate influx whose celestial mind is opened and operational. All others receive this mediate influx into their celestial mind, but they are not conscious of it. The celestial mind is the topmost portion of our mind. The thoughts and feelings at this level of operation are the highest that humanity can have regarding God and spiritual understanding. Swedenborg had the occasion to talk to those who dwelt in the topmost portion of their mind. The are called angels of the Celestial or Third Heaven. Swedenborg testifies that he was able to understand only a small fraction of their sentences and ideas, and this only because it was given him by the Lord to do so for the sake of the Writings. Not a single idea of that heaven can be understood by the angelic spirits who inhabit the middle portion of their mind called the Spiritual or Second Heaven. Similarly, the good spirits of the Natural or First Heaven were incapable of understanding a single idea of the angelic spirits above them. The only relation between the levels of the human mind is that of correspondences, as explained.
Look at the chart below showing the four windows to the human mind.
The two vertical columns refer to our understanding, one type called “natural understanding” and the other “spiritual understanding.” These two relate to each other only by correspondences. The spiritual understanding occurs first in sequence, the its corresponding effect occurs in the natural understanding. The spiritual understanding can observe, reflect, and be conscious of the natural understanding, but not the other way around. When the natural understanding tries to look up or into spiritual understanding, it sees nothing but more natural things.
The horizontal rows refer to topics. Some topics are natural, as for example the subject matter of the sciences we study in school and in books and reports. Other topics are spiritual, as for example talking or thinking about God, the afterlife, heaven, love, truth, hell, sin, falsity, evil, devil, forgiveness, prayer, and so on.
There are therefore four cells of intersection between the two types of topics and the two types of understanding. The bottom left cell refers to the natural-sensuous mind. Notice the intersection that creates this cell – natural understanding of natural topics. Moving one cell up we have the intersection formed by a natural understanding of spiritual topics. This is called the natural-rational mind. Note that both the natural-sensuous mind and the natural-rational mind give us a natural understanding of topics, either natural topics or spiritual topics. Moving over to the other two intersections that give us a spiritual understanding of either natural or spiritual topics. The third cell is the intersection between spiritual understanding and spiritual topics (top right window). This level of consciousness operates in the interior-natural (or natural-spiritual) mind, which as explained before, is the spiritual portion formed by God within the natural mind as we regenerate. Finally the fourth window or cell is the mental operation of spiritual understanding of natural topics. This is called the spiritual-celestial mind. We do not have conscious awareness of the activity in this mind until we pass on and enter the celestial portion of the mind.
There is a relationship between the opening of the mind and revelation. The Threefold Word was given to engineer the elevation of human consciousness from natural, to spiritual, to celestial. The natural-sensuous mind (bottom left window) refers to phase 1 thinking prior to acknowledgement of spiritual topics like God or the afterlife. The level of thinking in this mode of consciousness is by means of concepts and ideas that are called natural-sensuous correspondences. The language and reasoning process we acquire in the study of science and other academic subjects, is at this level of natural-sensuous correspondences. These are the ultimates of influx, that is, when the chain of influx from the spiritual Sun descends until it can no longer descend further. Divine Truth then rests in ultimates, that is, in corporeal-sensuous ideas and qualities.
When we use our natural understanding to reflect on and comprehend spiritual topics our natural consciousness is elevated to the rational level. The content of ideas and concepts at this level are still natural, but more abstract than the natural-sensuous ideas and reasoning. The more abstract natural concepts are capable of representing spiritual concepts or topics (top left window). Mere natural-sensuous ideas (bottom left window) are not capable of representing spiritual ideas. But in order to have a spiritual understanding of spiritual topics we must elevate the mind’s operation to a higher level, one that is capable of thinking with interior-natural correspondences. The conscious awareness of interior-natural correspondences depends on the successful formation of the interior organ within the natural. As already pointed out, this formation occurs during regeneration in adult life, not before. Those who pass into the world of spirits before becoming an adult, nevertheless must do so afterwards, in the world of spirits. Swedenborg reports that one of the favorite occupations angels volunteer for is the raising of spirits who arrive as children. Once they are instructed, their mind becomes adult. They do not have to spend years doing it, as it is done for those who grow up on earth.
The literal language of the Threefold Word is written in natural-rational correspondences since it is intended to give a natural understanding of spiritual topics (top left window). The three Testaments are not however at the same level of abstractness and therefore they each represent a different level of preparation for spiritual understanding (top and bottom right windows). The Old Testament treatment of spiritual topics is at the corporeal level of rationality. The New Testament treatment of spiritual topics is at the sensuous level of rationality. The Third Testament treatment of spiritual topics is at the rational level of rationality. These differences are important because each of the Testaments contain within the literal meaning, a spiritual meaning that is not apparent until the interior-natural (or natural-spiritual) mind is opened with regeneration (top right window). This is called enlightenment. The bottom right window, or spiritual-celestial mind does not become conscious until we enter heaven. This is the consciousness that allows us to perceive the wonderful environment of heaven.
16. Anatomical Diagrams of the Mind in Relation to God and Universe
Consider diagram 1 below. It is a sketch of the relation between the physical body, the mind, and the spiritual world. Note that there are three columns. The left column shows the three levels of the human mind – celestial, spiritual, and natural. Below the natural mind is the natural world. In True Science whatever is lower is also more external relative to God. The celestial mind is within the spiritual mind, which is within the natural mind, which is within the body. This body is physical while we live on the planet, but spiritual when we resuscitate after death of the physical body. When it is spiritual, it is called the spirit-body. The spirit body contains the natural mind, within which is the spiritual mind, within which is the celestial mind. By “within” in True Science, it is always meant “a discrete degree within or higher.” The discrete degrees are represented in the diagram by horizontal dividing lines. It is also helpful to redraw the diagram using concentric circles. IN that case the celestial mind would be in the inmost circle; the spiritual mind would be in the intermediate circle; and the natural mind would be in the external circle. The three levels of the mind form a unit and cannot be separated. They relate to each other by correspondence so that their action is coordinated or synchronized with each other.
Diagram 1
The middle column represents the operational level of thinking and feeling at each discrete level of mind. Thinking and feeling begin in the natural mind (above the physical body). Note that the natural mind has three sub-levels in it – corporeal, sensuous, and external rational. These three sub-levels of the natural mind develop with age and experience of the individual. The external rational of the natural mind is not a genuine rational but appears to be. The genuine rational only begins in the spiritual mind, and is not fully mature until the celestial mind is opened. The external rational operates through natural-rational correspondences. The intermediate rational level of thinking, which is in the spiritual mind, is a discrete degree above the external rational. No matter how much the external rational improves and matures, it can never reach the level of the intermediate rational. This level of thinking cannot occur in the natural mind. The intermediate rational operates through spiritual-rational correspondences. The inmost rational operates through celestial-rational correspondences. These are a discrete degree above the spiritual mind.
The right column in diagram 1 represents the spiritual world which overlaps perfectly with the mind. The celestial mind, with its inmost rational thinking and feeling, overlaps with the Third Heaven, which is the highest and nearest to the Spiritual Sun. This Sun is an emanation from the Lord, and when our consciousness is at the level of the celestial mind, we can see the Lord amidst the Spiritual Sun, as witnessed by Swedenborg. All the angels of the Third Heaven can see the Lord in this way and have the Lord before their face no matter which way they turn or walk. The spiritual world has distinct levels arranged in order of discrete degrees and sub-degrees. These are the Third Heaven, the Second Heaven, the First Heaven, the World of Spirits, and the Hells which correspond in levels to the heavens, but in their opposites. The hells overlap with the natural mind, but especially the corporeal and sensuous sub-levels, and not the external rational sub-level. The spiritual mind overlaps with the world of spirits and the first two heavens. Influx from the Spiritual sun is the origin and source of the uncreate substances that are with God and have always existed. They are called uncreate substances because they form the foundation or core for the created things of the universe, which do have a beginning of existence. They did not exist prior to creation, but the uncreate substances always existed with God.
Uncreate substances are infinite in variety and inexhaustible to eternity. But created things are finite and their continued existence, or subsistence, depends to the constant influx of the uncreate substances. This influx first enters the celestial mind or the Third Heaven, then proceeds downwards, or outwards, until it reaches the outermost, where it rests. A planet therefore, with all its objects, contains all of these degrees within each object separately, regardless of its size. In other words, the inmost core of a rock or tree is the uncreate substance of life, love, and truth. The next level of the rock or tree contains the Third Heaven, or the celestial mind. The next level below this contains the second and first heavens, with the world of spirits, that is the spiritual mind. The next level below this contains the natural mind. The next level below this contains the materials and chemicals of the physical elements. You can see from this that the universe is a human universe since every object or atom contains within it the levels of the human mind.
Consider diagram 2, which attempts to portray this rational system.
Diagram 2:
16.1 The Inmost Region: God, Infinite, Uncreate
Note in the diagram that the created universe is made of uncreate substances in God, pictured in the central core column running down the middle of the universe, and forming its center shaft. These uncreate substances are life, love, good, truth, wisdom, light, and the like. They are uncreate in the sense that they have no beginning. All created things have a beginning in existence, but the uncreate things have always existed with God. It's possible to think of them as being "part of" God or as being "in God" but not as "God" because God is infinite, and the infinite cannot be captured or divided into separate parts. So we need to delineate God Itself as separate from the uncreate, as I have done in the diagram.
Let's start with the uncreate things pictured in the center column. Note that it is the inmost of the universe. This is important to note and remember: There is no created thing that does not have the uncreate things as its own core or center shaft. No object can exist except that which is made out of the uncreate things. This means that every (created) thing that exists has as its core or foundation, the skeleton parts of the uncreate things that have always existed with God. Remove this center core uncreate substance, and all the outside created things vanish into nothing. This is a key feature of phase 3 thinking. It is a scientific description of the concept of “omnipresence.” In phase 2 thinking we already accept the idea that God is omnipresent, but we do not understand how this is. It is a mystery and we are content to live with that mystery as long as we remain in phase 2. By taking the perspective of True Science we come into possession of a rational understanding of God and His omnipresence.
Note that all uncreate things are human things – love, wisdom, good, truth, and even light and life are human because they are in a Human God. Only a Divine Human Person can have Love and Wisdom. These do not exist apart from a Human Subject, by definition and by rationality. Consider the statement “the universe loves you,” voiced by modern TV gurus admired by tens of millions of people. This is an oxymoron or self-contradiction, showing the blind thinking we all do when we are in phase 1 and decide from our own intelligence what is God rather than accept and receive the definition given in Divine revelation. The universe is a physical creation by God and therefore is not human and has no human qualities. One of the fallacies that spring from self-definitions of God is to blind the understanding by the idea that the universe is alive and that’s how the universe can have love. But this is pure fancy and vanity. The fact is that the universe is not alive but is made of chemical materials which are not alive. A protein cell has life in it by reception just like a TV set has a picture on the screen by reception of the signal or the transmission of the signal through a cable.
In the same sense, an animal or human organism on earth is constructed out of chemical parts in a form that is capable of receiving life from God. This life, like the radio or television signal, must be streaming into the organism that acts as a receptor. When the radio signal is interrupted, the sound ceases. When the influx of life stream is interrupted, the organism instantly dies, that is, can no longer function as a receptor of life. What is alive, therefore, is not the organism, but the life it receives as an incoming stream or influx from God. All uncreate things stream into created things, with a variety of reception depending on the form or structure of the organ or organism.
Now you can see more rationally what is omnipresence of God. Consider space. We at first think of space as something out there, all around us (phase 1 thinking). Then we begin to see that space is also within us, and within every object and atom. There is space between the electrons that swirl around the nucleus of an atom. An atom is like an image of the physical universe, with its nucleus being like a sun, and the electrons, like planets. With this understanding we can see that space is unbroken and constitutes one extension of itself, whether around planets or within protein cells. There is only one space surrounding planets and within atoms. In other words, space is omnipresent physically. What gives space physical omnipresence? It’s the fact that it is at the core of all objects. No object – planet or atom – is without space at its core (phase 2 thinking). Now you can extend this rational understanding of physical omnipresence to spiritual omnipresence by considering that the uncreate things – life, love, truth – are at the core all created things (phase 3 thinking). This allows you to also see that all created things have a human purpose, that is rational and spiritual. Rational and spiritual are human, by definition, since these are uncreate (truth and love) and all uncreate things are in God, and God is Human, as is known from Divine revelation. God is omnipresent through love and truth, which are at the core of all created things.
This phase 3 perspective allows you to see more amazing things. For instance, that space, atoms, and planets are constructed out of love and truth! This is quite a surprising statement, is it not? We doubt the reality of this prior to being in phase 3 consciousness. We see it as a metaphor or poetic expression. But it is an actual empirical and literal assertion: Space and chemical materials are constructed, not out of nothing, not out of space and energy waves. Space, energy, chemical elements, sub-atomic particles, are all constructed out of love and truth. Now you can see how this is true, by considering their core, which is love and truth. This could be never be known had it not been revealed to the human race by God in His Threefold Word. You can also see from this how the spiritual world is within the natural world since the uncreate core (good and truth) is spiritual, because from God and God is a Spirit, as we know from revelation. The natural world within which is the spiritual world – this is the central definition of dualist science. God has now revealed in the Writings that the spiritual and the natural interact with each other synchronously by the Laws of Correspondences. The spiritual within the natural is the cause, while the natural is the effect, the two acting together and simultaneously. God controls and manages all things from this within portion of every object. From this within, God is omnipresent.
God is omnipresent within all space but apart from space. God’s presence within space is not in the same dimension as the space. God is spiritual, space is physical. God controls the physical from the spiritual within the physical. This is omnipresence, as understood scientifically in phase 3 thinking.
The diagram shows the physical universe, or natural world, pictured on the outside. It is the outside of creation, which is why I drew it as surrounding all else. The things that are outside in relation to God, are more and more limited and rigid in form and temporary in time, thus, less perfect than the uncreate or permanent things out of which the less perfect temporary physical things are made. Consider what physical objects are made of. We can't say "nothing" because that would not be rational or scientific since nothing cannot be the basic construction element for something. This applies equally to space. Space cannot be nothing or the absence of something. In True Science space is called ether, which is a material substance more perfect that energy and particles, but less perfect that the love and truth out of which it is made from within. If we say that physical things are made of stars, atmospheres, cells, genes, atoms, particles, waves, rays, fields, energy, force, gravity, vacuum, etc., then we have not really offered an answer to what the material universe is made of. We have merely made a list of the parts we can observe or infer in the physical universe through our senses and machines. What are these parts made of?
From a rational perspective one can see that the created material things must be made of something other than material things, or else you fall back to saying that they're made of nothing, which is not rational. The diagram represents a rational answer: The outside natural matter (created physical objects) is made of the interior substance (uncreate love and truth), which is made only of itself because it is uncreate and has no beginning. Anything that has a beginning, is created, and therefore must be made of something uncreate, or else you fall back to saying that they're made of nothing, which is not rational.
Consider the uncreate things again. All religions teach that God is Love and Good. Also, Truth, which is like saying Wisdom. For short, we can talk about Good and Truth, or Love and Wisdom, as the basic uncreate substances out of which all created things are constructed. Good includes Love while Truth includes Wisdom.
Now we arrive at an astonishing and elevating conclusion: All things in the universe are made of good and truth (or, of love and wisdom). This is meant literally, not symbolically or allegorically or metaphorically. Look at your hands: the protein cells and genes and atoms they're made of, what are they made of? You can't say "nothing" and still claim to be rational. People often say, Well there is a limit to human inquiry, and this is one of them. It’s a mystery. But now all mysteries of knowledge and science have been rationally explained and revealed in the Writings. Now we know from True Science that the cells and atoms of your hands are made of good and truth. The physical hand is in the natural world, while the love and truth it is made of from within, is the spiritual world.
The mind is unwilling to make this step very easily. What is your life? Nothing else than your thoughts, feelings, emotions, strivings, desires, satisfactions, pleasures, and the like. What are these made of? Experiences? What are they made of? Electrical firings of brain cells? Hardly. Thoughts and feelings are made of truth and good. Your mind is made of “truth” substances and “good” substances. Look at the diagram and note the middle region between the external universe and the uncreate things that are with God. This middle region composes the mind and the spiritual world.
16.2 The Middle Region: Mind and the Spiritual World
One of the great insights we are given by True Science is that mind is spirit. Whether you say mind or spirit, it is like saying truth or wisdom, and physical or natural, and water or steam, etc. In other words, the spiritual world and mind are of the same substance and form. We can say that the mind is in the spiritual world, which is also correct. One of the most difficult concepts to understand at phase 3 level thinking is the idea that the spiritual world has no space, matter, motion, number, or time, because these things are natural. No natural object can exist in the spiritual world. Similarly with mind: No physical object can be in the mind since the mind is spiritual, and everything spiritual must be from and in the spiritual world. Further, there is no migration or transportation between the two worlds. When we are born, our physical body is in the natural world and our mind is in the spiritual world. The body and mind are interconnected by the determinative action of the laws of correspondences. Our mind therefore has no physical objects. What is in our mind? Or, we can ask, What is in our spirit, for mind=spirit.
True Science describes the anatomy of the mind, its physiology and function. The mind is a replica of the spiritual world. What is in the spiritual world, that is in the mind. Spiritual geography and mental states are therefore in perfect overlap. Both are made of three levels of operational functioning and two types of content or substance. The upper level of functioning in the spiritual world or mind is called heavenly and celestial. The middle level is called spiritual and rational. The lowest level is called natural and corporeal. The types of content in the spiritual world or mind, are called love and truth. The portion of the mind where love resides is called the organ of the will, and the portion of the mind where truth resides is called the organ of the understanding. Love in the will gives rise to all phenomenally sensed experience and consciousness of feelings, emotions, desires, impulses – what is known as the affective domain of behavior. Truth in the understanding gives rise to all phenomenally sensed experience and consciousness of thoughts, images, representations, interpretations, reasonings – what is known as the cognitive domain of behavior.
Let us recapitulate – it also helps to reread this section, beginning with the diagram.
The human mind overlaps perfectly with the spiritual world, as the two are in each other reciprocally. This “overlap” is not physical but substantive and structural. Two things that are made of the same substance and have the similar form occupy the same “space” or location in the universe. For instance, people in the spiritual world who have similar belief systems, that is, similar thoughts, are co-present to each other, can see each other, talk, touch, and do everything that one does when physically together. To make this easier to understand, think of what happens when you dream, say, about running on the beach while holding hands with your soul mate wife or husband. The two of you are running with ease, and you are filled with joy and gladness, and you can also feel the joy and gladness of your beloved spouse. This is only a dream, but yet a dream is a real event. It cannot be nothing. Somewhere in your mind there is an organ that operates to produce these visions and feelings that are the dream. Those visions are real; those feelings are real. But the visions are not in the natural world, they are in the spiritual world, that is, in the mind.
The mind is real, made of real organs, operating in real sequence and state. Therefore all thoughts, visions, and feelings in the mind are real spiritual objects or operations. Your dream can actually be witnessed by those standing next to you, or in communication with you, in the spiritual world. You do not see them because you are still tied to your physical body, but they see the content of your mind, its operations, and therefore its visions and emotions. They can see all that as witnessed by Swedenborg many times.
Now consider these logical questions that must be answered to remain rational and scientific: Where is the beach in your dream? Is that beach on earth? Is there a beach like that in the spiritual world? How long is that beach? Does it have a limit? Can others come to that beach? Can crabs and birds live on that beach?
Now consider the answers from True Science as revealed and demonstrated empirically in the Writings:
The beach in your dream cannot be on earth since it is in your mind. The beach is a real creation called a vision. In the spiritual world everyone has the power to create visions that they can see and others nearby can see. Whatever people in the spiritual see around them are real visions. If you thought of it in analogical terms, you could think of a holodeck in Star Trek movies which has an enclosure you can enter and experience visions and events that feel real, and only when you exit the holodeck apparatus do you realize that it was imagined. Even though we say that it was “imagined” you can see that it was real since your thoughts and feelings. It’s not possible to have thoughts and feelings and not have them. You cannot cancel the existence of your thoughts and feelings in a dream by saying, Oh, it was just a dream. It was, but the thoughts and feelings you had during the dream were real thoughts and feelings, for only real thoughts and feelings can exist in experience.
The space and objects you experience in dreams, daydreams, or thoughts and imaginations, are not physical objects or space but appearances of space, time, quantitative, and material objects. In the natural world objects and space are physical entities within which are spiritual enteritis, as already discussed. But in the spiritual world the objects and space you see around you as a spirit person, are appearances of natural things. They come and go instantaneously, just like in a dream. Everyone around can also see these appearances. You can understand now that people who are in different surrounding appearances cannot possibly see each other or be in communication with each other. It would be like your spouse with whom you’re running on the beach in your dream suddenly became your real spouse who is sleeping next to you in bed. This is an impossibility. But let’s say that your wife sleeping next to you has exactly the same dream as you have, then you would expect that you would both be in each other’s dreams. But the fact is that as long as both of you are still tied to the physical body, you cannot consciously appear to each other in the mind or the dream. But when both of you are spirit persons, you can dream and be in each other’s dream in actuality.
It is therefore a law of the spiritual world that similarity translates into appearances of spatial co-presence, and dissimilarity translates into the appearance of distance and unavailability. People in the spiritual world live in cities, and each city is made of a society that is homogeneous in terms of the thoughts and feelings of the inhabitants. It is not possible for an inhabitant of one city to sleep or live in another city, for the thoughts and feelings of the visitors would clash with that of the inhabitants, preventing their sleep, peace, mental, clarity, and happiness. Swedenborg says that visitors are sometimes allowed under restricted conditions of protection and preparation by the Lord. In fact certain types of “wandering spirits” spend their life journeying from “place to place,” that is, from one mental state to another. Every mental state has a geographic allocation in the spiritual world. You might think of the spiritual world as a mental map of thoughts and feelings that human beings can have. You can see that there is no limit to the variety of the spiritual worlds since there is no limit to the human mental states. This is because mental states are produced by the influx of love and truth, and these two substances are uncreate, and consequently infinite.
It is fascinating to read about Swedenborg’s travels in the spiritual world. The details he has recorded constitute the scientific properties and laws of the spiritual world. For example, if you are in the spiritual world, as you will be at some point, sooner or later, you might be thinking about the next door neighbor you had in your last residence before you passed on. You then experience the desire to talk to him. Behold, he is here next to you, looking at you. You shake hands, you talk. You feel like having a cup of coffee, Behold, the two of you are sitting in a restaurant you liked to visit together, and you’re tasting the aromatic brew, enjoying yourselves. But then the conversation somehow deteriorates, becomes negative, and you are both filled with incompatible thoughts and feelings. Behold, your friend has disappeared.
Now you may be wondering about some logical questions: Where is your friend? Where did he come from? Where is he now? How did he go away?
The answer from True Science is that your friend didn’t have to go anywhere to join you and didn’t go anywhere to separate from you. Remember that there is no actual space in the spiritual world or in the mind. Therefore the space you see around you in the spiritual world are appearances of space, time, number, quantitative, quality. Your desire to talk to your friend, when it happens to be a reciprocal desire by your friend, puts you in communication with each other. Neither of you go anywhere. In fact, once you have your allotted position in the spiritual world, which you get soon after arrival, you never go anywhere, and your position is fixed forever. This may sound like a terrible fate if you think of it in physical terms. In that case it arouses claustrophobia as you are imagining that you are chained to a pole forever – what a horrible hellish fate to imagine. But in the spiritual world your mind overlaps with everybody’s mind since everybody’s mind overlaps with the spiritual world, and there is only one spiritual world. Hence there is a perfect unity between the entire human race, every individual being in the same extension as everyone else. In fact, to God, the entire human race is united in His Mind and perception as one human individual. Swedenborg was given the very special opportunity to glimpse this Grand Human from afar so he could testify that it exists.
And so in the spiritual world, or in mind, you have access to every other human being, and the consciousness of this availability is determined by the mental states you are willing to let yourself go into. You can meet with and interact with anyone from any of the numberless planets who have arrived in the spiritual world. Swedenborg describes his journey to the spirits from a distant galaxy from ours. Normally people from different planet systems do not interact when they get to the spiritual world because they are of different “genius” or mentality. In other words their thoughts and feelings are not compatible, meaning that they are not willing to occupy the same mental states long enough to communicate or interact. They are aversive to each other, hence avoidant. And what you avoid mentally is inaccessible spiritually. But Swedenborg, on account of his mission, was willing and prepared to undergo significant changes in his normal mental states. Consequently, there were some angels present with him who managed this change in mental states so that he can interact with those people from the distant planets. It took several earth days, in Swedenborg’s dual consciousness experience, to accomplish the whole series of mental changes, but at the end he was able to talk and interact with those dissimilar spirits.
Let us get back to the diagram. You might want to look at it again.
Notice that the mind has "height" (sometimes called "depth"). This is not a physical height but an organic structure which has only the appearance of extension, space, or height and depth. So when your eyes go up and down the diagram, you are not going up or down in space but changing to a different mental state. Space on the diagram is an analogy for change of mental state. Change of mental state can only occur by means of different organs operating together and in sequence. Each mental state is made possible by a corresponding action of the mental organs acting together. Look up and down the left hand side first. The lowest region of the mind is called the natural mind. The region above that is called the rational mind. The upper organ in the mind is called the celestial mind. Remember that sequence: natural, rational, celestial. One is within the other by discrete degrees, but on the diagram, I pictured it as one above the other separated by lines. At birth, the mind is ready for use but totally empty of any content. How does it grow? It grows by accumulating and organizing the substances it has access to, namely, truth and good. How does it have access to these substances?
To explain this, consider what we know about the body. The anatomy of the mind is easy to picture because it corresponds perfectly to the body. One is a copy or image of the other, but in different substances. You could not see without eyes, and you could not walk or lift something without muscle fiber. And these organs and fibers would not work if the cells they're composed of could not engage in bio-chemical transfers whereby they are able to strip and organize the available materials and elements into its requirements and needs. Similarly, if the child is going to build up not just a body, but a mind with it, the mind needs to have mental organs of function that can transform the substances of truth and good into thoughts and feelings in accordance with the physical action of the body. The two cannot be separated. The mind cannot exist without the body, and vice versa. When the physical body becomes a disintegrating corpse, the mind is freed from its correspondential attachment, and we awaken in a spirit-body that is suitable to continue life forever. This spirit-body was “within” the natural body, not physically within, but spiritually or by correspondence. Even in the spiritual world we need an external body that houses our organs of the will and understanding. These are the receptors of love and truth in infinite variety.
The mind’s anatomy, as described in the Writings, has two main organs: the affective organ, also called the will, and the cognitive organ, also called the understanding. These two organs of the mind are made of spiritual substances to begin with (good and truth), but each individual mind is created in a unique form or identity by Divine Law, and there are unique individual differences in the way each person builds up the mind through these same available spiritual substances and natural experiences. The natural mind develops and matures first under the stimulation of the body’s sensory organs which are designed to translate the order of the physical world into the order of the natural mind. This is essential because the content of the natural mind determines the content of our life in eternity. Heaven is made of cities of splendor and gardens of beauty, while the hells are made of caverns, spider webs, and stenches. These natural images, or appearances, in heaven and hell, originate from the natural mind and its ability to represent, to recreate as it were, the realities of the natural world. A few decades on this earth is enough to develop the natural mind for most people. This experience is then to last us to eternity, but in an everlasting enrichment of it which we an only dimly fathom now. This is why I say that one minute on this earth is worth more than one million in the spiritual world when you consider the everlasting consequences of each minute of life on earth.
The natural mind develops gradually and matures by means of formal education, science, and practical experience. But there is another influence as well in all cultures, insuring that the individual will not grow up entirely in accordance with the order of the planet, for this order is only the ultimate. The upper portion of the natural mind is called the external rational mind. This mind is capable of thinking at high level of abstraction away from the material order of the physical world. It can entertain science fiction worlds and alternate realities. It can also understand duality concepts learned from religion and tradition. These dualist concepts speak of another world, thus a dual universe, separate and real. The upper portion of the natural mind, due its ability to abstract, is therefore capable of understanding the existence of God, heaven, and hell.
Of course, at this level of thinking, we understand all spiritual or dualist concepts in a natural way. Rational, yes, but an external rational, not a genuine and true rational. It’s like getting hold of a cocoanut on an island when you’re dying of thirst and hunger. Cocoanuts can keep a man alive for months and years – but not the plentiful of cocoanuts that you can find on the beach underneath a cocoanut tree. The external of the cocoanut cannot support life just as the external rational cannot invent or discover the spiritual. Only the internal rational can reflect or represent the spiritual to our understanding and consciousness, just as only the internal of the cocoanut will keep us alive.
But it is crucial that the natural mind be developed all the way to its highest operational level, that is, sufficiently abstracted away from the natural order of things, that it can entertain and accept the idea that there is a world above this natural called spiritual where God is and from where He rules and manages the natural world. We can understand this in an abstract way with our natural mind, therefore we can accept it, support it, love it, be refreshed and enriched by it. Once the natural mind has matured in its external rational, the spiritual mind can be opened. This process of opening is done by God who manages the endless number of details that are involved, as you can imagine. Billions of thoughts sequence themselves, trillions of emotions, and quadrillions of perceptions and impressions, for each individual, in association with other individuals who mutually influence one another by their thoughts and emotions – you can see the complexity of it all, so that only an omniscient omnipotent infinite Divine Human Person would be able to figure it all out, make it all come out right, and all for the sole purpose of making every person as happy as is supportable to eternity. Such is Divine Love and Divine Wisdom of the Divine Human!! He is the genuine True Scientist, the genuine True Manager, the Genuine True Therapist and Father, Creator, Redeemer, Savior, Regenerator.
It is the greatest privilege to know His existence, to feel the real warmth that comes in from Him even as we hold Him in our focus, concentration, and consciousness. And the sensation intensifies greatly when we worship Him in addition to acknowledging Him. Worship Him is to love Him, and since this love is from Him, as all genuine love is, therefore we are conjoined to Him thereby. Then we begin for the first time our life as a True Human, whom the Lord calls His Holy Angels, for then we are nothing but Him more and more purely, never becoming like Him in any other way but in image and likeness, by correspondence and appearance.
The spiritual mind is opened in this way, by a living acknowledgement of dualism, with God at its throne. We are enlightened in this way. Enlightenment is the experience of the operation of the spiritual mind. This portion of the mind is the middle level and is developed by means of spiritual-rational correspondences. These are appearances of truth that are higher or more interior than the rational concepts in the lower natural mind. These are higher or more genuine, that is, less distorted, less filtered out by natural abstractions, and therefore they elevate our consciousness from material order to spiritual order. When our conscious awareness is focused on these spiritual-rational correspondences, the new understanding and perception is called enlightenment.
The Writings of Swedenborg have been given as the Word of the Second Coming, which is the revelation of the Divine Rational to humanity. The literal meaning of the Writings is at the level of natural-rational correspondences. This means that any scientist, scholar, or student of the Writings is able to comprehend it, regardless of their regeneration status. Al that is needed is the ability to decode and understand spiritual topics presented in an abstracted style. Note that the spiritual topics which are dealt with in the literal meaning of the Writings concern God, His Divine Nature, His Incarnation, His mental development as a Divine Child on earth, the history of the Churches on this earth going back all the way to the beginning of the human race on this planet, the Laws by which God governs the universe, the methods of regeneration, the spiritual world, heaven and hell, the levels of the human mind, theistic science, inhabitant planets in the universe, marriage and conjugial love, and many other topics. These topics are spiritual but the way they are described is natural, using external rational abstractions and descriptions. This literal meaning develops our ability to think rationally about spiritual topics. Once we have incorporated and assimilated these natural-rational correspondences, our natural mind is sufficiently prepared to receive spiritual-rational correspondences from the spiritual mind. These spiritual-rational correspondences are perceptions by influx from the spiritual world. They are therefore arranged in a spiritual order, not natural.
In this way, the natural mind continues progressively to be more and more enlightened as the spiritual mind is opened by God and as its concepts descend within the external rational concepts of the literal meaning. Now as we read the Writings we are enlightened, that is, we perceive spiritual-rational correspondences within the literal meaning. This entirely new perception or consciousness is the operation of the spiritual mind. Remember that what is above is within in terms of discrete degrees. The spiritual world, is within the natural world. At first the natural mind is filled with dead reasoning and a dead order from the natural world. It is not yet alive, though it seems so to ourselves since we are able to think through our daily round of activities. But it has been revealed that things appear to work out for us, according to our apparent decisions, only because God is participating in every detail and makes it turn out that way. In other words, God has to save us constantly from destruction by stupidity. But when the spiritual mind is opened, and we start our life as a dual citizen, with a new dual consciousness, then our decisions and motives are more and more rational as we mature.
To continue maturing in the spiritual mind we must apply our understanding to our daily willing and thinking. Otherwise we lose our enlightenment and we revert to the earlier mode of understanding spiritual topics merely naturally. But as we continue to reform our character, fighting with the truths we know, understand, and love, against our inherited evils and falsities, then our celestial mind is gradually opened. This is when we become a genuine human being, for only the celestial portion of the mind is actually human. When we can no longer develop our celestial mind on earth, we pass on, and continue in heaven as a conjugial couple, for in heaven live only married couples or soul mates.
In what sense is heaven nothing else then the upper portion of the human mind, and in what sense is hell nothing else than the lowest portion of the human mind?
The answer from True Science in the Writings is that the spiritual world does not have any space, time, and number in the sense that we know these from the natural world. This is obvious from considering your dreams, as has already been discussed. There is no space or distance in our dreams, yet there is always enough room to include whatever it is we are dreaming about. We could be dreaming about riding up in an elevator, which is a small space; then, as we step out into the foyer there is suddenly more room, and as we look through the window there is more space, and even as we look at the sky there is more space. You never run out of space in your dreams. Space is manufactured instantaneously as needed. This happens in dreams because dreams are spiritual events that can be witnessed by those in the spiritual world who are near our spirit-body within which the dream occurs. There may be a roomful of people at a conference in the spiritual world – Swedenborg attended several of these and they apparently are popular and regular events in some societies. Let more people enter the room and Behold, there is space for everyone. Let many more people enter the room and Behold, there is space for everyone. Such is the law of “apparent space” in the spiritual world, or in the mind, while dreaming, or awake and thinking.
Since there is no physical space in the spiritual world objects overlap. This is logical. In fact, everything in the spiritual world must overlap with everything else since there is no size or measurement. To fully understand and accept this concept of the spiritual world one must be thinking at phase 3 level, as discussed in prior sections. Since there is no physical space, distance, or quantity in spiritual world, we can conclude that it is limitless and endless capable of receiving more and more people from the earths to the endless future. Whatever is said about the spiritual world applies equally to the mind since the two overlap completely. You can see therefore that if we say that there is a heaven in the spiritual world, it is equivalent to saying that this heaven is in the mind.
Similarly with hell. The Word of the New Testament has revealed this two millennia ago when the Lord says that “the Kingdom of God is within you.”. The Kingdom of God is a reference to heaven. Even the Word of the Old Testament reveals that hell is within the human mind, as when Jehovah says that the thoughts of the heart of all people have been corrupted and are evil through and through. But these earlier revelations were not modern, rational, and scientific, so that even if one acknowledged the Word as Divine Truth, one still could only be left with a sense of mystery about all things spiritual. At last, the Word of the Writings give us the full and complete scientific revelations about the spiritual world, its overlap with the mind, and its portions called heaven and hell.
Remember that all of humanity is linked and integrated, though this cannot be perceived or understood from the natural rational mind. It has to be understood from Divine scientific revelations. It follows from this unity of all humanity, that all those who live their consciousness in the bottom of the their mind, that is in their own hell, are united to all those who also live in the bottom of their own mind, or hell. Everyone lives in their own hell, yet they are all united. This is an objective feature of hell. Swedenborg was able to “visit” the hells and describe what he witnessed there. He was able to see the people there, along with all the angels who administer and enforce the rules in each of the numerous societies there. Remember that Swedenborg did not have to locomote or walk to hell, any more than he had to walk to heaven, since there is no physical space and distance. How then was Swedenborg able to witness the people in heaven and hell?
The answer is that one appears to oneself to travel, walk, fly, or ride through places when we are undergoing a change in affective state from what we normally have. In the spiritual world our normal mood and emotional state of mind provides for us the convenient and comfortable lodging and city in which we live. There are our neighbors and friends, and there are the Administrators and familiar city buildings, gardens, voices, and sounds. But the moment we alter our affective state away from this normal state, we appear to ourselves to be displaced, either by locomoting or by instantaneous arrival. Now a different appearance is before our eyes and spirit-body. These new surrounds are correspondent representations of the thoughts and feelings we have in our new mental state. This is one way Swedenborg could “visit” the hells, namely, by undergoing a change in his mental or affective state. To “travel” to hell, Swedenborg had to descend to the bottom of his mind!
Everyone who descends to the bottom of their mind appears to be in a hell surrounding, with other inhabitants who are wicked and hostile to each other, and are filled with delusions and insanities they believe to be true. Swedenborg says that he had to be specially prepared and protected by the Lord to be able to descend to the bottom of his mind, and not be injured, so he could come back to his normal state. He describes that he received angel guides who were experienced in this operation and managed Swedenborg’s mind descent with powers possessed by those who inhabit the heavens in their mind. The angelic guides formed themselves into a tube or column of light that surrounded Swedenborg throughout his journey down to the pit of his mind. Similarly, when Swedenborg visited the heavens he underwent change of mental states towards the top of his mind where the heavens are. There he saw and much admired the inhabitants, all of whom are called Holy Angels.
You can now see, as discussed earlier, that hell is not a punishment for sins and evil deeds, nor is heaven a reward for good deeds. Heaven and hell refer to the top and bottom of our own mind. What is incredible to me is that people would want to keep their consciousness in the bottom of their mind, instead of at the highest places. Can you understand that, friend? My wife has had many occasions to warn me that I have a strong streak of self-destructiveness in me. I couldn’t believe it. I was trained to think that all behavior tends towards survival and self-enhancement, not self-destruction. And yet, it’s obvious when we look around us that people generally act like they keep themselves in the hells of their mind. When we are unregenerate, we all act like we love misery and cruelty, and seem to work hard at keeping ourselves in negative emotional states such as anger, rage, depression, dissatisfaction, resentment, etc. None of these emotions can exist for you when you are higher up in consciousness. Typical emotions when we are in the upper regions of our mind include joy, gladness, enthusiasm, mutual love, delight in being useful, love of innocence, conjugial love, etc. And further, when we are in low moods affectively, our thinking responds by descending and keeping company with the mood. We think with cynicism and bias, illusion and delusion. But when our consciousness is in our heaven, our thinking rises in rationality and wisdom, an dour intelligence and understanding exceeds by far anything we are capable of in lower regions.
Why do people choose to keep themselves in the hells of their mind instead of ascending to the top of their consciousness level? True Science reveals that every one is born with a spirit-body that grows up surrounded by the inhabitants of hell. They influence our mental habits so that we acquire those habits of mind that keep us in hell. This is something they do automatically, by hellish instinct as it were. To be in hell also means to want to draw others into hell with you. And so by the time we are an adult in our natural mind and physical body, our mental habits are dependent on influx from the hells. Experientially it feels like we are pursuing freedom and pleasure. Those from hell who communicate with our spirit-body prevail, so that by the time we are a young adult, we are each of us a little hell in our own mind. Now God supervises and manages all this activity, never allowing the hells to influence us beyond the point necessary to feel free in pursuing our inner desires and outer ideas. In fact, the Lord makes sure that there are always good spirits and angels near our spirit-body. They constitute a counterforce to hell in our consciousness. In other words, our mind is a battle field between heaven and hell. This is called the world of spirits, to distinguish it from heaven and hell. The battles go on not in heaven and not in hell, but in between, in a state of mind called the world of spirits. Therefore it is necessary for the Lord to transport people down from heaven and people up from hell, meeting in between in our mind, surrounding our spirit-body.
We are conscious of these momentous battles going on because the war is waged in terms of our own decision making and evaluation. The angels act into our conscience which is above the hells, while the devils and satans act into our natural mind, as the diagram shows. We experience a push and a pull in this direction, then the opposite. We are in the turmoil and conflict of temptations. Should I or should I not? Can I? No, I mustn’t. I have got to stop this. But I can’t help myself. I hate what I’m doing. Well, too bad, I’m going to do it anyway. I deserve it. It’s their fault, I don’t care. But how can I let myself go like this. I must stop. No, why should I. I feel so guilty, so ashamed. I can’t stand it. Is there a God? Who has come back from the dead to tell us? I want my vengeance. I want more. I want all of it. I don’t care if it’s yours. Now it’s mine. I have a good reason to cheat you. I can even kill you. You deserve it. Etc. Etc.
These are the conscious experiences we have during those battles between the angels and devils around our spirit-body. If we incline towards the devils, we acquire one more tie to them, which will be difficult to give up later. They will hold on to us as long as we hold on to them. If we incline towards the angels, we enter deeper and deeper into their societies, and our consciousness rises higher and higher. At last we are able to overcome in all our temptations and we are regenerated sufficiently to be able to stay in our heaven and exist there forever.
These battles of conscience and temptations end when we enter the spiritual world at the death of the physical body. Once we awaken in the world of spirits, we are unwilling to give up our inner loves and ideas. While we are still tied to life on earth our natural mind is capable of extinguishing old ties and forming new ones. This is why we are born with a physical body on earth rather than being born directly in heaven or the world of spirits. I do not yet fully understand how this works, how the presence of our physical body allows us to change our character, and that we lose this capacity once the physical body is no longer tied to our spirit-body. Future research and scholarship in True Science will give us more understanding of the details and mechanism involved. The only change we are willing to undergo in the spiritual world are changes that deepen the states already familiar and comfortable. Those who enter heaven deepen their mutual love, wisdom, and capacity for happiness. Those who enter hell deepen their mutual hatred, insanity, and capacity to be miserable.
When we are detached from the physical body, we re-awaken about 36 hours later in our spiritual body in the world of spirits, the region in between heaven and hell. This temporary stay in the in-between region is called the state of the first death. Here one undergoes brief but intense experiences that reveal to ourselves what is inside, what are our real loves and preferences. We are forced to face who we really are. And this always means how we've lived in our physical body as indicated by all our choices. When this process of self-recognition is complete a few days, weeks, or months later, we enter the state of the second death, which is our permanent state, during which we abandon anything whatsoever we've brought with us, that is not directly harmonious with our ruling love. If this ruling love is in accordance with good and truth (or love and wisdom), we enter the uppermost regions of our mind, called heaven, and dwell there in celestial cities with companions forever, growing daily in love and wisdom, and therefore, happiness and joy.
If this ruling love is contrary to good and truth (or love and wisdom), it is not called good or truth any more, or love and wisdom, but evil and falsity (or infernal lust and insanity). Our consciousness then sinks to the lowest region of the mind, even at the bottom of the natural mind, into what's called the "corporeal mind." There we enclose ourselves in experiences and affective states known as hellish insanities and infernal fantasies. It is a dark place of the mind where the light of truth and good cannot penetrate, where the inhabitants have lost all appearance of the human.
A reader of an earlier draft of this document wrote the following:
I have ambivalent feelings regarding the emphasis you put on individual moral effort. I do not necessarily like the “…get your act together lest you end up in hell forever…” tone. This is old style hell and brimstone preachin’ . In my dictionary the word “forever” does virtually not exist.
Reality is never static. Reality is changeable and fluid.
I simply cannot believe that a Divine Omniscient Creator would not have known about the Fall beforehand and adjusted our fate accordingly. My view is that the Fall were providentially foreseen, allowed and managed by the Lord so that greater good may eventually come from it.
Phase 1 thinking accepts the idea of hell, but sees it in a natural sense. They think of hell as a physical place where there is fire, prisons, torture chambers, the devil’s mignons, black smoke, owls, dragons, and scorpions. Such are the portrayals in paintings, engravings, books, and movies. At this level we do not see the illogic of souls being tortured by physical fire and held by physical chains. In this view, hell is a place of punishment for past sins and misdeeds. God is angry and hates sin. He turns away from sinners, imprisons them in hell, gives them over to the devil who enjoys torturing them. When the punishment time is up, we can exit from hell and join our family and tribe. This is a child’s perspective, pre-scientific, scary, vague, and mysterious.
As we move into phase 2 thinking, hell is seen as a spiritual place or state of mind. The fires of hell are seen as mental tortures that people can experience when they are tempted, anxious, fearful, depressed, delusional, or consumed by an insatiable passion that knows no bounds and gives no rest or peace. Still, hell is not forever, in this view either, because one likes to think that eventually enough is enough, and that the state of being cut off from God will change so that those people may be back together again with God. The reader above seems to have come to this position: “I simply cannot believe that a Divine Omniscient Creator would not have known about the Fall beforehand and adjusted our fate accordingly.” Another version might be: “I simply cannot believe that a Divine Omniscient and Loving Creator would not have been able to keep these people from eternal hell.”
When you enter phase 3 thinking you begin to look at hell from a scientific point of view, not from the point of view of punishment for sins and misdeeds. The Threefold Word shows this progression when you examine the doctrine of hell. In the Old Testament not much is revealed by hell, heaven, or the spiritual world. On the surface, the plain literal meaning seems to say that there is a devil and a following of dark and fallen angels, who are let loose by God to do mischief on earth whenever the situation calls for it. At the end of this world, a new world will be created, the good resurrected from their scattered dead bones that will grow flesh again, and the devil will no longer be given permission to do misdeeds. This phase 1 theory can be justified by many passages in the Old Testament to those who are in this phase of thinking and feeling. The New Testament’s treatment of hell is one phase above (2). It is more interior, more rational, less mystical, more spiritual, more correct.
The Lord Himself explicitly addresses the existence of hell and warns that we not end there. He has prepared heavenly mansions for us, but in order for Him to be able to take us there, we must prepare our spiritual mind by rebirth and regeneration, that is, by character reformation, that is, by fighting our evil tendencies and vices, and by dosing good to the neighbor. Hell is the consequence of turning away from the Lord. God has already forgiven all sins, yet those who use their spiritual freedom to remain cut off from God, are in hell. They are experiencing the mental torture of vice and delusion. You can see therefore, that there is a progression in the treatment of hell from the Old to the New Testament.
In the Third Testament (phase 3 thinking and feeling) hell is not a place of punishment, nor a place where God is absent and turned away. In phase 3 thinking there is a striving to be rational, logical, and consistent with every concept and explanation. The mind takes the issue all the way, and leaves no stone unturned. Every implication must have a rational justification. Since God is omnipresent, there is obviously no place where He is not present. Therefore God is present with every soul, whether in hell, heaven, or on some earth. But this is only phase 3, zone 7 thinking (Old Testament state of True Science). When you study the Writings in sufficient detail, you move on to zone 8 (New Testament state of True Science). Here we are in possession of more facts about hell. We can understand the mechanism by which God is present with every person’s mind. We know that the thinking and feeling that goes on in hell cannot be a mechanical process that moves itself, like a mythical perpetual motion machine. There is always friction and other forces at play to stop the motion of a thought process in hell, or a feeling state there. What is hell but the bottom of the human mind, that is, of every individual. God must be as active a manager of the thinking and willing of those in hell, as He does of those on earth, and in the vast heavens. There is no place where God takes a hike since He is omnipresent. He cannot therefore “turn away” or “remove Himself” or even distance Himself. The Divine Human Person is omnipresent and keeps every detail going.
For example, what the inhabitants of hell see around them is managed by Divine Human Person to reflect the particular thinking and feeling of those who are there, as also witnessed many times by Swedenborg and the angels who were with him. God has revealed in the Threefold Word what the precise rational mechanism or process He uses for effecting this phenomenon. It is called the method or law of spiritual-natural correspondences. This is built in as part of the creation of the dual universe. It is a natural law as well as a spiritual law because they are tied together one to one by the laws of correspondences. If a devil boils over with hatred towards heavenly things that come to his mind from within, the surrounding place suddenly becomes dark red like a blazing atmosphere darkened by a great fire, and suddenly noxious creatures appear to crawl out from everywhere or to fly around making raucous noises, and putrid smells invade the atmosphere, and hysterical yelling and screeching can be heard. Now when that devilish person calms down and rises somewhat in consciousness, the thinking and feeling changes, and so does the surrounding environment.
Swedenborg describes thousands of such events that illustrate and demonstrate the action and power of correspondences. For instance, Swedenborg describes the intense brilliant light that emanates from the temple or house where the Threefold Word is kept in each of the numerous heavenly societies or cities. The brilliant light is not blinding to those who are ready to receive the truths that are stored there in the sentences, words, and diacritics of their heavenly script in which the Threefold Word appears to their level of thinking.
Swedenborg describes an experiment in which he asked a stranger in the world of spirits who showed up near the temple, to copy a word or phrase from the Threefold Word there, on a piece of paper, and to throw the paper in the air. There resulted a show of lights or fireworks that followed the descending paper. An angelic spirit who was ministering to guarding the temple, warned another stranger not to touch the Sacred Book, but the stranger laughed and disregarded the warning. The moment he touched the platform upon which the Holy Book was placed, he was violently thrown back by an invisible force, all the way to the back wall, where he lay a long time before he revived enough to high tail out of there. These outward powers and phenomena or appearances, are instantaneously produced in the spiritual world by the laws of correspondences between spiritual events in human minds and natural events that everyone recognizes from their life on earth. The cities and inhabitations in the spiritual world are therefore mental projections that are cast in the language or form of correspondences built into creation.
You can see therefore why for instance the cities and gardens in heaven are beautiful, artistic, and alive with dynamic movement and progression at every level of detail. Peace reigns in the atmosphere. Truth is the level and content of thinking. Mutual love is the quality of feeling. All in endless infinite variety. But in the cities and inhabitations of hell there is disorder, insanity, ugliness, stench, and noxious unpleasant animals. Warfare reigns there and hatred is in the atmosphere. Falsity, or the distortion of truth, is the level and content of thinking. Self-love and mutual hatred is the quality of feeling. All in endless variety. Hell is therefore the bottom of the human mind just as heaven is the top, and both are in us, everyone of us.
Yet, even in this scientific understanding of hell, there is more to explain. In phase 3, zone 9 (the Swedenborg phase of True Science) there is the knowledge and rational understanding of additional details to be found in the Writings. For instance, we still need to understand why those people in hell are captured there forever and that their misery does not improve but endlessly deteriorates. We need to understand what keeps those people there. We know it is not a place punishment, why are they then kept there? And the answer is that that they are not kept there, but that they choose to remain there. The Divine Human Person loves every person equally, and what differentiates the level of human thinking and feeling is the reception of that Divine Truth and Divine Love which comes into each person’s soul and celestial mind. From there the Love and the Truth descend into the spiritual mind, and from there into the rational mind, where for the first time we become conscious of it.
For each descent there is a filtering which is necessary in order not be overwhelmed by the influx. We need to retain our sense of as-of self freedom, which means that the Lord manages the filtering process and accommodates the Love and Truth at each particular entrance point. By the time we are conscious of the descending influx, we have the sense that it is not influx but self-generated thinking and feeling, moment by moment. The content of the truths that has descended is altered to fit the content that is already there in the conscious mind of the person. We can feel contradictions and uncertainties, so the Lord has to be very carefully not to intrude into consciousness, for then our sense of as-of self freedom would shattered, and along with that, our happiness and motivation to do anything.
In zone 9 thinking we can see all this, and now we can read and correctly interpret the passages in the Writings that explain why these people in hell keep themselves there forever. We imagine at first that if we were there, we would agree to anything, we would say any prayer, go to Church services once an hour, as long as we can just get the hell out of there. This is what we imagine at first, but then we come to gradually accept the rational phenomenon involved here. First, we are told that the inhabitants of hell are allowed to ascend to higher levels of their mind, even unto and heaven. And in fact, Swedenborg witnessed some of them, who had been religious in the life on earth, and had formed for themselves an idea of heaven based on their religious beliefs, now in hell asked to be taken up to heaven. The attending angels complied with their request. Their minds were prepared for the transition, and Lo, they see themselves at the gates of one of the heavenly cities. With much anticipation they enter, but they see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing. Where are the people and the wonderful mansions promised by God? And the angelic guides told them everything is here all around you but you cannot see it because your thinking and feeling are contrary to what heaven actually is. They went back to their hells greatly disappointed.
At another time, Swedenborg witnessed a man entering heaven under false pretenses by putting on airs of religious piety, so that he was admitted by the guards, surely for the purpose of allowing them to discover their actual feelings. But as soon as they started inhaling the air or atmosphere of heaven they were seized with such torture from within that he threw himself down and was writhing like a snake before a burning fire. He begged to be released back to his hell, and upon arriving there he was revived to his old state. And there are other such demonstrations that show that those who are in hell are allowed to leave that dreary place of the human mind, but when they ascend, they feel torture and disintegration far worse than their sorry hell.
Now you can rationally and scientifically understand why there is a hell, whey people are there, and why they keep themselves there forever.
17. Recapitulation and Study Questions and Exercises
Take each question in turn, and follow these steps:
1) Formulate an answer to the question. Write it out.
2) Find passages in the book that address that subject. You can use the Table of Contents and you can also use the Find Command repeatedly until you locate all the relevant passages. Read them. Go back to your answer and expand it as necessary.
3) Read the answer I formulated for the question. Notice the sequence of logical steps in my answer. The topic has to be built up appropriately and logically.
4) Look at your answer now. Examine its sequence – does it follow a logical pattern? Are all terms defined before using them? Are there important elements or concepts left out? Edit your answer accordingly.
5) Make up several sub-questions to reflect your final answer.
The questions are:
17.1 What does the title mean -- Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg: -- The Three Phases of Spiritual Consciousness
17.2 What is True Science and what is dualism?
17.3 Why do scientists oppose dualism and scientific revelations in the Word of God?
17.4 Why do religious people oppose the idea that the Word of God is a scientific revelation?
17.5 What is the relation between the mind and the spiritual world?
17.6 What is heaven and hell?
17.7a Why do some people oppose the idea that hell is forever?
17.7b If God is omnipotent and pure love, why does he allow evil?
17.8a What are the three phases of consciousness?
17.8b What is the ennead matrix or the nine zones of spiritual development?
17.9a What is spiritual enlightenment?
17.9b What is spiritual regeneration?
17.10a What are the laws of space and time in the spiritual world?
17.10b Are there devils and angels there?
17.11c How does True Science view religious rituals and faith?
17.11d How does thinking and willing change across the three phases?
17.1 What does the title mean -- Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg: --
This book is written from the perspective of the Writings of Swedenborg. From this perspective, God communicates with the human race on earth by means of scientific revelations given in inspired writings called “the Word of the Lord.” Each civilization on this earth has received a version of the Word that is suited for its understanding and designed to elevate the consciousness of its generations. Consciousness is the capacity of human beings to perceive reality rationally by thinking and feeling at the required level of operation.
Human beings are so created as to be able to receive Divine Truth in their understanding, and thereby to receive a spiritual level of consciousness. By reading the Word of God and understanding it, people were able to have their consciousness raised to the spiritual level. This level is necessary for a heavenly life after death in the spiritual world. Without developing a spiritual consciousness in this life, we are condemning ourselves to a life in hell to eternity, for without this consciousness, we are unwilling to believe that there is God and a heaven. What we refuse to believe, remains unattainable to us. Thus people in hell keep themselves there by refusing to believe that heaven exists. Is that not such a horrible irony for the fate of those people! This book shows how you can avoid such a sad fate and how you can form for yourself a mind and consciousness that can live in heaven to eternity.
The Word of God that we know today is referred to here as the Threefold Word because it has taken three civilizations or eras in human history, to deliver the entire Word. The first portion is known as the Word of the Old Testament (also: the Hebrew Word), and was written by God through the willing mind of Moses and the Prophets of the Hebrew and Israelite nations between the 11th and 8th century B.C., approximately. The second portion is known as the Word of the New Testament (also: the Greek Word), and was written by God through the willing mind of the Gospel Writers at the time of the Lord’s First Coming. The third portion is known as the Word of the Second Coming (also: the Latin Word), and was written by God through the willing mind of a scientist in the 18th century A.D., also known as the Writings of Swedenborg. The Threefold Word is now complete and the human race can enter a new civilization that will bring about the spiritual consciousness of heaven, the highest human beings are capable of perceiving.
The title of this book refers to the three historical architects for God who wrote the Threefold Word under His immediate supervision and determination. Moses represents the level of thinking and consciousness that characterizes the human race on earth in the centuries preceding the Incarnation. A rise in spiritual consciousness was experienced by the human race when the New Testament came into being and began to spread in many parts of the world, but especially the Western world. Paul represents this second civilization forged by the New Testament. He was the intellectual architect for the Christian religion which allowed it to become a variety of Churches all based on the theological doctrines Paul constructed as a human edifice for the New Testament. Swedenborg represents that last phase of the race’s spiritual development. The Writings that God authored through Swedenborg completes the Threefold Word.
True Science is dualist and theistic while the science we know today is atheistic and materialistic or monistic. Monism is the philosophy of nonduality, which means that there is only world, one substance, one reality, and this is it – what your senses see around you and what your brain figures out about how it works. All things are material. God is not part of reality that science recognizes because God is not material. What is not material is not real. This monistic premise of science today does not allow the inclusion of the scientific revelations in the Threefold Word. Science denies that scientific revelations exist, along with any revelation that has to do with reality. Reality has to be discovered by materialistic research and abstract thinking.
However, there is an alternative to this negative bias of scientists today, an alternative that is shown in this book to be rational and practical. This alternative is the positive bias which I, as a scientist, have adopted. The positive bias assumes as a departing premise, that dualism is the reality. This means that one accepts the idea that God exists and that the universe, in whole and in every detailed part, is created and managed by God moment by moment. This is called dualism because God is not of the same substance as His creation. Creation furthermore is a dual reality because two interacting worlds were created simultaneously, one spiritual and the other natural.
True Science refers to the scientific revelations given in the Threefold Word of God.
17.3 Why do scientists oppose dualism and
scientific revelations in the Word of God?
Scientists are trained to follow the scientific method and protect the premises upon which the method rests. The premises of science today includes atheism and materialism. There is therefore a prohibition against using explanatory concepts that have no definition within the materialist and atheistic premises. In other words, God cannot be used as a concept for explaining the source, direction, or power of any phenomenon. Neither can angels be used as a concept. Neither can resuscitation of the dead, a phenomenon witnessed by Swedenborg thousands of times. Neither can you relate in your theory to heaven or hell, yet Swedenborg has seen numberless inhabitants of these two spiritual states and their related phenomena. Neither can you talk about dualism or correspondences as an explanatory concept for natural phenomena.
Neither can you talk about revelation or the Word of God by which He communicates with the human race. Neither can you talk about the Laws of Divine Providence and how God directs the outcome of events, physical and historical. Neither can you talk about the vertical community we participate in, that is, spiritual influx from the world of spirits into our mind, without which we could neither think nor sense anything. In fact, as scientists today, we cannot talk about the numerous facts the Word of the Writings reveal regarding life after death, regarding the human mind, society, animals, and much more. Such is the negative bias of materialistic and monist science today. It keeps all scientific revelations out, preventing them from entering.
17.4 Why do religious people oppose the idea
that the Word of God is a scientific revelation?
Most people are socialized into a culture that is characterized by phase 1 and phase 2 level consciousness, as explained in the book. In other words, they see science and religion as separate. For example, scientists practice their theories and explanations during the week, but evenings or weekends, they are among family, Bible study classes, and Church services. They do not feel a tension because they segregate science and religion in their mind. Society does this, so individuals do it as can be expected. Therefore people tend to oppose new ideas that eliminate the segregation between science and religion. To stop segregating them in the mind would pose as serious problems as it would in society. The bloodiest wars in history are said to have been fought when religion got in the way of politics, industry, and science. For the individual, removing the segregation in the mind would cause intellectual havoc and emotional conflict and stress.
The negative consequences of not segregating religion and science in the mind come from phase 1 and phase 2 levels of thinking. In phase 3 thinking no such conflict is produced because one sees the thinking level we do in religion does not allow us to raise our consciousness to the highest level possible. This is because religion is not just about God, but about our relation to God, and this varies from culture to culture, and even among different social groups. But when we see that the Word of God is a scientific revelation, then we move up to phase 3 thinking where we are freed from the filters imposed on us by staying in the framework of our culture and religion.
There is opposition to the idea that science is above religion. This opposition is based on valid grounds because science is materialistic and atheistic. This puts science below religion intellectually and rationally. Religion is much closer to truth and reality than science because religion has the Word of God to rely on for knowledge while science sees nothing whatsoever about God, heaven, and hell. But it’s all together different with True Science, which refers to the scientific revelations in the Threefold Word. Since True Science is based directly on the Threefold Word of God, it can be higher than religion since True Science uses systematic methods of discovery employing the procedures taught by the Word.
17.5 What is the relation between the mind and the spiritual world?
The mind is an organ housed in the spirit-body. The spirit-body is “within” the physical body which houses the physical brain. The meaning of “within” is with reference to discrete degrees. In other words, the physical body in the natural world acts synchronously with the spirit-body in the world of spirits. The two are created together at birth and are tied together by correspondent actions. Every detail in the physical body and brain must be accompanied at the same time by correspondent details in the spirit-body and mind. Our consciousness, or conscious awareness, is produced by the action or operation of the spirit-body and the mental organs it houses. The mind has two types of organs – affective and cognitive, also called “the will” and “the understanding.” These two types of organs correspond to the two types of operation in the physical body – circulatory and respiratory.
The two types of mental organs operate at three different levels of consciousness. The highest level of consciousness in the mind is called heaven. At this level, our thinking and feeling is celestial and gives us the power to experience happiness, love, and wisdom to eternity. The middle level of consciousness in the mind is called the spiritual mind. At this level, our thinking and feeling is spiritual and gives us the power to experience happiness, love, and wisdom to similar to the celestial mind, but not as sublime, rich, and complex. The lowest level of consciousness in the mind is called hell. At this level, our thinking and feeling is infernal and gives us the power to experience misery, hatred, and stupidity to eternity.
It’s easy to accept the idea that the mind is not material, and therefore it has no size, distance, or location. It’s more difficult to see that because it has no size, weight, or location, therefore all minds overlap and are not separated from each other by place or distance, like physical bodies are. Once you can accept this rational conception of a non-material mind, you can begin to understand that the spiritual world doesn’t have place and distance because it too is non-material. What is non-material is called spiritual. Therefore the spiritual world and the mind must logically be the same overlapping phenomenon or creation. The mind of every human being past and present, which must be a big number, was born as a spiritual entity, and therefore is (a) immortal, and (b) overlaps with all other minds. This follows from the fact that there is no physical space or time in anything spiritual, that is the spiritual world or mind.
As a result of this overlap anyone who is awake in the spiritual world has access to anyone else there. While we are tied to the physical body, we are not consciously awake in the spiritual mind, only in the natural mind. But when we resuscitate a few hours after the death of the physical body, we then have conscious awareness in the spirit-body, and thereafter we have access to all other minds who are awake in the spiritual world, that is heaven, hell, and the world of spirits which is in between. Access to others in the spiritual world is by altering our mental state. For example, when we are in a similar mood with others, and think similar thoughts, we see them and we can talk to them or touch them. As soon as our thoughts or feelings clash or differ, we are no longer with them but with others who now match our new mood and thoughts.
The spiritual geography of the world of spirits, of heaven, and of hell, is the map of mental states in which minds can be. The chart below gives the relation between consciousness and the spiritual world. Read chart from bottom up.
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sensuous mind |
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The chart above shows the relation between the degree of development of our rational spirituality and our fate in the afterlife. Those end up in the hells who remain natural in their thinking and feeling, and the severity of the hells varies with one’s moral feelings and thoughts. Those who are more rational and moral – but not yet spiritual or dualist – are in the mild hells compared to the others. A moral person who is not also dualist and spiritual does not regenerate the inner character of inherited evils. As a result, their moral behavior is external and covers up the raging and insane internal loves. In the afterlife, covering up the internal loves is no longer possible in the spirit-body.
Those have a heavenly life who have regenerated their inherited character by means of a life of religion (phase 2) and a life guided by True Science (phase 3). A life of religion, unlike natural morality, confronts the inner loves that are evil and condemned by the doctrine of one’s religion. There are three heavens and everyone enters the heaven that is suitable to the understanding of spiritual truths acquired by the regenerated mind. This varies according to the level of temptations one was willing to undergo –interior-natural, spiritual, or celestial.
The New Testament makes the awesome scientific revelation that heaven and hell are inside the mind of every person. They are not places in the spiritual world where people are kept in gardens or caverns. Hell is not a prison for the damned as punishment of sins. Heaven is not a place of reward where people are admitted for their good deeds. The Writings give a lot more detail about heaven and hell. Hell is the bottom of every human mind, and heaven is the topmost region of the mind called the celestial mind. In between is the natural mind and the spiritual mind. The Threefold Word has been given to the race so that we might study the facts and principles given there and live accordingly. This means to use the facts and principles from scientific revelations to apply to oneself, especially one’s struggle against evil loves and habits with which we acquire in daily life through the choices we make. Our inherited tendencies incline us to bad choices, selfish perspectives, and irrational ways of thinking, including rejecting the Lord’s close partnership in our every thought and feeling.
We are exposed to scientific revelations from many sources as we grow up, including secondary sources from books, movies, lectures, and what others say about God, religion, conscience, morality, heaven and hell. Those who have a tradition of reading and worshipping Sacred Scripture, can use those ideas, truths, principles, doctrines, and spiritual facts, to evaluate the rightness or wrongness of their decisions and feelings. Some go still further and try to modify their thinking and willing so that they can gradually change their character and their nefarious hereditary influences. This slow process of character change through self-modification using truths from revelation, is called in the Threefold Word “regeneration.” The Writings reveal that everyone is born with ties to the hells, and these ties lead us to developing a character that is made mostly of evil loves and false ideas. We are not necessarily aware of this connection, especially if we do not acknowledge the Word of God or Divine Truth by which we are to modify ourselves.
We are therefore born in a state called “unregenerate.” The Writings say that this state automatically leads to an evil character whose consciousness can live only in the bottom of the mind. Hence when we pass on, our spirit-body automatically sinks to the lower regions of the spiritual world called the hells where are also all the other people who keep their consciousness in the bottom of their mind. They are unwilling to remove themselves from the bottom because when they try, and are given the opportunity to explore the higher regions of their mind, they feel like they are losing their life. Therefore they throw themselves back into the bottom of their mind called the hells where they are in company with many others.
But those who persist in their self-modification have the opportunity to be reborn, that is, start a new character that is filled with truths and loves from the Word. This is possible only under the condition where we look to God for help, that He may give power to overcome our inherited and acquired loves, lusts, cupidities, insanities. God always gives this power as He works closely with every person, participating in every thought sequence and every emotion or fantasy. God must continually supply the power for the mind to operate, moment by moment, second by second, or else it would shut down instantly and disintegrate, just like the physical body shuts down and disintegrates when God removes from it the endeavor of life.
Those who undergo rebirth, reformation, and regeneration, arrive in the world of spirits prepared and capable of ascending to the top region of their mind, where they find a heaven in company of many others. Heaven is not a reward because no one deserves good since everyone is evil. Only God is God and deserves merit and righteousness. It is impossible for human beings to acquire or be given God’s merit and righteousness. Instead, we need to think of heaven medically or scientifically. It’s the ability to remain in the highest consciousness of the mind and to exist there. This ability comes from God as He prepared every person for it. But only some cooperate, and therefore they make it to heaven, while the others make it to hell. No other alternative exists.
Clearly therefore, nothing can be more important in this life than to work as hard as we can for our regeneration. When we do this, we are also most useful to others and to society, since we are being regenerated by God and God’s will is that we have mutual love for one another. God cannot regenerate us except by means of our voluntary cooperation, which means reading the Word, understanding it, applying its principles to our willing and thinking all day long. This will get us to shun our evils as sins against the Lord against our ability to live in heaven. After we shun an evil, the Lord gives power to detest it, and we can then live in good. This must be done over and over again, every day with our numberless evils. When we are done with this process, the Lord detaches the physical body and we undergo resuscitation, awakening in our spirit-body. Our fate to eternity then depends on what we came with in terms loves and cognitions.
**** Take the Rational Spirituality Test Part 3 ****
Instructions: For each question, select the answer that is closest to your current thinking.
You may have already taken this test once, if you followed the note at the beginning of the book called “Before You start: Test Your Rational Spirituality.” This is a section comprising items 51 to 75 of the Test. Whether you take it for the first time or the second time, your score, now that you’ve read up till now, may be around 80 percent correct (20 out of 25 items). More importantly you will be able to make up your own answers. You can practice after you obtain your score for this Part (3).
If you like, you can page through to the Appendix at the end where the 100 questions are located.
This test does not measure your rational spirituality but only your understanding of rational spirituality. If you are familiar with the Writings and understand it rationally, you would probably select the correct answer for most of the questions. This test is not a knowledge test. It does not measure your knowledge of the Writings and does not cover all the subjects the Writings cover. It is a test of understanding of how well you can reason about spiritual topics from the perspective of the Writings.
It works out well when you use an ANSWER SHEET on a piece of paper that looks like this, and then you can also easily and accurately score your choices from the ANSWER KEY given below (following the questions).
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QUESTIONS
51. If we are given the power to acknowledge God we must also have the power to deny God. Is this a correct statement?
a. No.
b. Yes.
c. Don’t know.
52. The Threefold Word has a literal sense understood by all, and an inner spiritual sense understood by those who know correspondences and are enlightened by regeneration. Is this correct?
a. Yes, the understanding of the spiritual sense of the Writings is proportional to one’s progress in regeneration.
b. No, the Old and New Testaments have an internal sense, but the Writings are a Divine rational revelation whose literal sense is already spiritual, and hence it doesn’t need an internal sense like the Old and New Testaments.
c. Yes and no, depending on how you define the inner sense of the Writings.
53. Is it possible to prove that the Bible is Divine? How?
a. No, since it requires spiritual faith rather than proof.
b. Yes, by using correspondences to demonstrate the existence of an orderly internal semantic series from Genesis to Revelations, showing that the historical events were brought about by Divine Providence to convey the internal series to our understanding, by which we might be regenerated.
c. It depends on the kind of proof one is referring to.
54. What are demons?
a. Demons are people in hell whose evil loves God brings into our mind to keep us in spiritual freedom, balanced in decision making between them and the people in heaven whose good loves He simultaneously brings into our mind.
b. Demons used to operate into the human race, but this ceased with the arrival of the Holy Spirit after the Resurrection and Ascension of the Lord.
c. Demons are characters in people’s imaginations.
55. What is the difference in the mentality of the Old and New Testaments?
a. They have the same mentality since they are both the Divine Word of God.
b. OT mentality is monotheistic and universal, while NT mentality is Trinitarian and universal.
c. OT mentality is sectarian and literalistic, and prescribes ritual worship, while the NT mentality is inclusive and spiritual, and prescribes inner worship.
56. What role do temptations play in regeneration?
a. By means of temptations the Lord brings our evils to our attention and gives us the power to shun them.
b. Temptations are trials God brings to us in order to test our faith and to strengthen it.
c. Temptations are the result of inherited character weaknesses proving that we cannot merit heaven, but only receive it as a Divine gift of Grace.
57. Miracles are of two kind, covert and overt. Overt miracles of healing or controlling the physical elements were allowed in ancient times but not any more in modern times. Why not?
a. Actually, overt miracles are being witnessed today every day by both individuals and groups. People pray for their child to be healed, or for rain for the crop, and they get it. Without that prayer would the child be healed or the rain fall? Evangelists on TV and in large audiences of thousands perform miracles of healing every week. Miracles prove the presence of the Holy Spirit, so miracles abound with those who have faith, and may even be steadily increasing.
b. All so called miracles are actually natural phenomena and those that cannot be explained have not been established as having taken place. There is a difference between “reporting a miracle” and a miracle “actually happening.” The easiest way for God to resolve all this doubt about His existence is to simply appear before us and demonstrate He is above natural laws and that He controls them at will. Or He could take a group of trusted scientists and transfer them to Heaven, preferably with video cameras. Then they can be returned and tell the world.
c. Overt miracles are not allowed today in modern times. They were allowed in ancient pre-modern times, when people’s sensuous consciousness of the Divine, like witnessing miracles and apparitions, contributed to their spiritual rationality, away from polytheism and magic to monotheism and rational accountability to God. But in modern times, the Lord is evolving our rational consciousness to a celestial level of operation, which is to understand rationally the Scientific Laws by which the Lord manages daily events around us. Our evolution would be hampered by the reliance on miracles, which are sensuous demonstrations of the Divine rather than rational, like comprehending True Science as to how everything in the world is integrated into a hierarchy of interdependent Divine purposes, rank ordered by love and wisdom acting together.
58. What did Paul mean when he declared that works do not save, but faith in the Lord saves?
a. Paul argued that no one can keep from sinning and therefore everyone stands guilty before God’s Justice. It was useless to try to keep every commandment and rely on our success for salvation. Instead we must rely on receiving the merit of Jesus who was sacrificed for the atonement of everybody’s sins. This attribution of the merit of Jesus to all sinners, is what saves. Therefore we are to rely on our faith in the saving power of the blood of Jesus and not on any attempt to keep all the commandments.
b. Faith is the power of the human mind to strengthen and comfort people. Works refers to the works of charity, which indudes altruism and obedience. These are more external rewards compared to the power of faith within. Hence Paul was warning people that faith is more powerful than their struggle to be good.
c. Paul was referring to the Mosaic Laws of ritual sacrifice commanded by Jehovah to the people of Israel for the atonement of their sins. With the Coming of the Lord into the world, these former laws were no longer effective for the atonement of sins. Instead, faith in the Lord is the new way to salvation. Paul was not referring to the Ten Commandments, which were reinforced by Jesus and still apply to all Christians. Therefore unless we obey the Ten Commandments, our faith is not sincere and therefore cannot save us.
59. Why did Jesus pray to His Father since Jesus was God?
a. Jesus was the Son of God stuck in a frail human body and He prayed to His Father Jehovah, the Creator, to receive strength and comfort, which the Father in Heaven gave Him as often as Jesus needed it.
b. Jesus is the Savior and Redeemer while the Father is the Creator. The two together, along with the Holy Spirit, make up the Trinity of Three Divine Persons in One Godhead. They each have their own function or role, hence they have to consult each other.
c. Jehovah God Himself incarnated as Jesus, so that God was acting as if He was temporarily divided between Himself as the infinite invisible Father and Himself as the finite visible Jesus. Jesus then was able to pray to Himself as the Father from within. But after Glorification, Resurrection, and Ascension, the visible Jesus and the invisible Father were united as one, like soul and body are one within one person.
60. What’s the relation between the Epistles in the New Testament and the Gospels?
a. The Gospels and John’s Revelations are the Word of the New Testament, while the Epistles are the doctrinal commentaries that provide a rational understanding of the Gospels in relation to the Old Testament.
b. The Gospels, Book of Acts, the Epistles, and Book of Revelations together make up the Word of the New Testament.
c. The Epistles, especially those of Paul to the Churches, show how the early Church solidified its hold over Christians and is a valuable historical document.
61. How do you resolve the fact that Jesus loved one disciple (John) more than another? Does God have favorites then?
a. John’s personality was more pleasing to Jesus so He could love John more than Peter or James or the rest.
b. Jesus loved the disciples equally and it's only an appearance that he made distinctions. The distinctions Jesus made were not based on merit but on reciprocal love. It is John who loved the Lord more than the others, hence Jesus could give John more love that the other disciples could receive.
c. John’s faith was stronger than the faith of the others. He had less doubts and he stayed close to his Master while the others still had doubts and were more interested in status and influence over the Jews.
62. People in heaven are not distinguished in rank, with one person being a prince or governor, while others being ordinary citizens, or with one city in heaven being higher in rank than another.
a. True.
b. False.
c. No one knows.
63. Communal intercessionary prayer in Church gatherings are more effective than individual prayer for oneself.
a. True.
b. Almost always true.
c. False.
64. The Writings are the inner sense of the Old and New Testaments.
a. True. The Writings are Sacred Scripture or the Word, and therefore they have an inner sense like the Old and New Testaments.
b. False. The Writings are the Heavenly Doctrines that rationally reveal the spiritual sense of the Old and New Testaments. Therefore they do not have an internal sense.
c. Actually, the Writings are a rational revelation therefore the more we study it, the deeper we can understand it.
65. Explain the ennead matrix of rational spirituality.
a. It depicts three phases of development in rational spirituality, each phase with three sequential states, forming nine evolutionary zones or developmental steps.
b. It is a matrix of nine elements depicting a diversity of cultural practices in religious behavior, including secular humanism, but excluding materialistic science.
c. Don’t know what it is.
66. Why does God want us to pray? Does that influence Him?
a. No, God cannot be influenced by prayers. He commands us to pray for our sake, that we may make Him part of our life, which allows Him to elevates us.
b. Yes, God is influenced by our prayers if we ask it sincerely and unselfishly. He wants us to pray for the sake of His Glory, because He is Holy. He can then reward us with what we ask of Him.
c. It is not God who wants us to pray, but we want to pray to Him in order to feel better about what’s happening to us.
67. Can God love an unrepentant sinner?
a. God knows in advance who will end up in heaven and who in hell, and therefore he loves the former but hates the latter.
b. God hates sin therefore when we sin and do not repent He turns away and does not love us.
c. God loves us even when we sin and do not repent but then He cannot make us happy and celestial.
68. Who or what is the devil?
a. The devil is the snake in paradise, a liar who deceived Adam and Eve. He reappears in other places as well.
b. The devil is a fallen angel and has power to oppose God's will by misleading people through their weaknesses and vices.
c. The devil is collective word for all the people who inhabit the hells. They are given the power to influence the minds of people who are still on earth.
69. If there are layers of heaven, what’s the lower heaven like?
a. The lower heaven is for lesser saints while the upper heaven is for greater saints. At certain occasions however, the lower and higher heaven get together to sing and give glory to God.
b. The lower heaven is for people with less developed intelligence who are not capable of understanding God at the same level as the people of the higher heavens. For example, people in the lower heaven are occupied with science, art, government, sports, conferences, and business, while people in the upper heavens do not care for these activities.
c. The lower heaven is for children.
70. Who was Swedenborg?
a. Emanuel Swedenborg was a mystic philosopher and theologian who created the Swedenborgian Church that has a small following even today. He was able to talk to the Holy Spirit and produce miracles of healing. He died in prison in 1782 after being put on heresy trial by the Lutheran Church in Sweden.
b. Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist commissioned by the Lord to write the Third Testament by being introduced into dual consciousness so that he could interview many people who passed on and now live in heaven or in hell. He talked to King David, the Virgin Mary, Aristotle, Newton, and many others including devils and angels. He wrote a lot of it down in the Writings which are the Third Testament that completes the Threefold Word of God, along with the Old and New Testaments.
c. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1782) was a Swedish scientist who became a spiritist at age 57 and acquired psychic powers to predict the future and to communicate with people on other planets. He also claimed to be able to talk to God.
71. What is True Science?
a. True Science is now being created by the Lord. It is the knowledge about reality that we can extract from every sentence Swedenborg wrote in the Writings.
b. True Science is a phrase used by Christian Scientists to refer to their religion.
c. True Science is a phrase used to contrast with “spurious science” or other forms of science that are false or inadequate.
72. What are characteristics of the three phases of rational spirituality? Identify their phase.
a. Actualism (1), Fundamentalism (2), Universalism (3)
b. Sectarianism (1), Personalism (2), Particularism (3)
c. Personal Faith (1), Religious Faith (2), Universal faith (3)
73. Define God.
a. God is the invisible infinite Father Creator who sees all and does all. No one can see God for God is not here or there, but everywhere. God is not a mere person for God creates all persons.
b. God is a visible Person who has once been seen on earth and is seen in heaven every day. In this visible Divine Human Person there exists an infinity of love and wisdom that create, sustain, and manage all finite things.
c. God is the all in the universe. God is this and God is that. Nothing is that is not God. Everything that is, is God, and what is not God, is not anything.
74. What are the consequences of sinning?
a. Sin is defined somewhat differently in every religion. The common idea is that God gives commandments and specifies what punishment goes with breaking them. God also prescribes remedies for sinners, which consist in rituals of purification, sacrifice, and prayer. God is placated by these demonstrations and forgives the sinner.
b. Every sin brings inevitable spiritual death to the sinner. The only deliverance is resurrection to a new life in the Holy Spirit. This new life is received by anyone who sincerely acknowledges that Jesus died for his or her sins, so that the entire human race is now reconciled to the Father forever by the sacrifice of His Son on the Cross.
c. No one is punished for their sins, but every sin has its own built in punishment that remains attached to the sinner. The only deliverance is by death of the old character through our victory in temptations by appealing to the Lord, followed by rebirth to a new character that is received and borrowed from the Lord to eternity.
75. Do animals have immortality and an afterlife?
a. No, because animals are created with only a natural corporeal mind, without a spiritual mind or rational consciousness. Therefore they cannot be conjoined to God which requires reciprocation of love by rational consciousness. All humans are born with a natural and spiritual mind, by which they can develop a rational consciousness of God, and every person who reciprocates by loving God, is conjoined to God, which is the source or condition for immortality in heaven. But if God is not loved, the spiritual mind remains shut and conjunction with God becomes impossible. Without conjunction with God, the state of life sinks to the level called spiritual death or immortality in hell.
b. Yes, because animals have living souls and when they die their souls go to the spiritual world. Animals with a good disposition go to heaven and the others go to hell. In heaven, they are a joy to the inhabitants there, but in hell, they are feared. Animals are close to God even if they are not conscious of that relationship. Animals sense the harmony that God built into His creation. They are part of this harmony. Domesticated animals were created by God to provide assistance and aid to the human race. We are permitted to kill and eat since God provided some animals for this purpose.
c. It depends on whether you think that animals have souls or not. If you think that animals don’t have souls, then they are merely biological organisms of survival and adaptation. If you think that animals have souls, then animals and people share the circle of reincarnated life. All life is animated by the living spirit manifesting itself in many forms like animals, people, plants, elements. And in that case it is contrary to the divine to kill and eat animals since they are living souls.
ANSWER KEY
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51. __b__ |
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60. __a__ |
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62. __b__ |
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63. __c__ |
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64. __a__ |
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69. __b__ |
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72. __b__ |
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74. __c__ |
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75. __a__ |
Now that you know your score, you can go a step further in assessing your understanding of rational spirituality. Look at the questions you answered correctly. Select one of them and write a sentence of justification for your answer. Then compare your answer with the sentence for that item given in the Test. How do they differ? Did you mention all the basic elements needed to justify the answer? Did you mention them in a logical order? Now see if you can improve it without making it much longer.
Repeat this with other items.
See if you can add more alternatives to each item.
See if you can create 10 new items covering the reading you have done thus far.
17.7a Why do some people oppose the idea that hell is forever?
17.7b If God is omnipotent and pure love, why does he allow evil?
One line of objection is that there is something inhuman about the idea of hell forever. Hell implies people suffering miserably and the idea that suffering can go on forever seems too much for humans to live through. It’s just too horrible an idea to be true. Then there is another line of objection, namely that God couldn’t damn some people to eternal suffering no mater how heinous their deeds were on this earth. Then there is the objection that the punishment of hell forever would not be just or fair no matter what the crime or sin was. The human mind needs to think that every crime has its punishment, and every punishment has its limit, after which the person has “served time” or “taken it” and is now over it, and continues to have rights that must be respected. And finally, there is the objection that a person who is repentant and has been punished enough, can be rehabilitated and turned into a useful productive citizen deserving of rights and opportunities. These various objections all assume that hell is a place of punishment, like a prison on earth, and that eventually they have a right to another chance. Some sentences judges hand down carry a term of three lifetimes without the possibility of parole. I’ve heard of some really bad guy who was handed ten life sentences without the possibility of parole. These are ways in which society tries to keep an individual segregated to prevent more harm being done to others and to society. No one has yet returned from the dead to serve their second life sentence after they completed their first!
But True Science has a different answer, one that rationally explains why hell is forever, despite a loving omnipotent God. The Writings reveal that God forgives every evil deed before it’s even completed in the act. God is pure Divine Love and Good in His essence and it would be impossible for God to act or feel against His Own Character of Pure Love and Good. God loves every angel in heaven, every earthling on the planets, every devil in hell. Furthermore, the Writings reveal that no event, no matter how small, could occur without God’s active participation. A murderer could not point the gun unless God gave the power to the finger on the trigger. And God must also guide the bullet to its target. And God must bring about the anatomical destruction by the bullet, and God must participate in the sensation of pain, for without God there is no sensation. And on and on to every single detail there exists. This participation and determination by God of every detail of a phenomenon is called “omnipotence.”
A logical issue must therefore be brought up and must be answered rationally, and understood. Let’s phrase the issue as two propositions: (a) God is pure love; (b) God is omnipotent. How do we logically reconcile these two propositions? Why would God participate giving power to the bandit’s trigger hand, or intelligence to a terrorist plotting to kill innocents? Why doesn’t God withdraw His power to freeze up the trigger-finger, or confusion to foil the terrorist’s plot that kills children and innocent bystanders? And what about the child abuser – Why does God give him the slyness and the cleverness by which he entraps and rapes young children? True Science gives the rational answer without which we fall into error about God, or into suppressed doubts, or even open resentment against God. And the answer is this:
God had a choice to make when creating human beings. The explanation in phase 1 thinking, which I received as a boy from Cheder (Orthodox Jewish school), is that God created human beings on earth and angels in heaven. The angels in heaven were sexless human robots that automatically obeyed God’s will. One of the main things God wanted them to do is to stand around God’s Divine Court and to sing “Glory to God the Most High” in variations and multiplications. God also created a devil and “fallen angels” and gave them the power to bring misery upon earthlings. Sometimes God would feel sorry for the human race being tortured by the devil, and at other times He would bring on hellish plagues and misfortunes to punish people for offending Him or to test their loyalty to Him by making terrible things to happen to them. This level of thinking about God is natural, not yet spiritual, not yet rational.
Phase 2 thinking gives a more humane interpretation of God as a Divine Person who loves everyone and hates no one. This loving God would never damn anyone to hell, even less to eternal hell. But, God has two natures, according to this level of thinking, one good and loving, the other without love. The good side of God is called Mercy, and the other side is called Justice. Mercy is motivated by love and forgiveness of all sins and deeds by anyone no matter what they are. Justice is motivated by truth and the laws of punishment of evil build into creation. Every crime has its built in punishment, for evil returns to the source. Those have turned away from God, lead themselves into evil, and when they pass on, their evil takes them to hell, and since the evil clings to them, they remain in hell. Some phase 2 thinking allows the idea of “hell forever” while others do not. Those who are opposed to the idea of hell forever point back to God’s other side, which is Mercy, and they have the certitude that Mercy eventually wins over Justice, and that those in hell can repent and give up their contact with evil, leave it behind, and ascend to heaven where they can worship God.
Note that much is left out in the phase 2 explanation that one needs to have in order to gain a full logical understanding. Unless we gain a full rational understanding of the idea of hell forever, we will either doubt its reality, or we will experience some conflict regarding God’s Character or God’s Omnipotence. I’ve heard people say that God is not fully totally omnipotent because the created world cannot be perfect as He would want it to be. Others speculate that the devil was given powers at creation, and God cannot undo this, and therefore He has no power over certain situations. But phase 3 thinking from True Science gives a fully satisfactory answer to all these puzzles.
The short answer is this – and few people have ever thought about it in the entire history of literature and the media. Those who are in hell are unwilling to leave.
Would you have thought of it? It’s hard to believe because we put ourselves in that frightening unbearable place and the feeling we have is, “Help, quick, how do I get out of here. God, are you there?” And if God were to remain silent, as if nonexistent, we would indeed have rational grounds for impeachment. But this is just a fantasy. The people in hell are reacting in the same way as we do when we imagine ourselves to be there. The people are in hell only because their consciousness or level of thinking, is at the sub-human level. This is the bottom of the natural mind and is called the corporeal and sensuous mind. Animals on earth are at this level of thinking. And what keeps them at this sub-human level of thinking filled with insanity, irreality, fantasy and instantly translating all true statements they hear into their opposites? The answer is that it is their loves that keep them at the sub-human level of thinking. The Writings go into the many details of why it is that every love has its own companion of thought. This is a necessity by creation, for reasons are fully explained.
And therefore infernal loves must have their own insane thoughts, and when we are in a state of evil lust or cupidity, our mental apparatus becomes a opposite machine, taking every incoming truth and turning into its opposite. Swedenborg reports experiments he performed with inhabitants of hell who were allowed to go up into the world of spirits (but not heaven, which they could not stand). Swedenborg made precise observations of when and how they turned true statements he gave them to explain, into their opposites. As long as they are unwilling to give up their infernal loves they cannot rise in consciousness above the bottom of the human mind. This unwillingness is what keeps them there, unable to receive truth, without which they cannot ascend to a higher consciousness. God works through angel volunteers in hell who constantly try to therapize or instruct them, but it has never yet happened that one would be willing to give up their infernal lusts. They say that when they try, they feel like all life departs from them. In other words, they are unwilling to live the life of rational loves and goodness.
One final puzzle needs to be answered. Why did God not prevent them from getting attached to their evil loves while they were still on earth? After all, God must have participated in their experiences, decisions, acts, and God must have provided for them a physical environment in which they could live and become attached to their infernal loves. Why did God allow this to happen in the first place?
The answer is that God created two worlds, one natural the other spiritual. When we are born we receive a physical body in the natural world and a spirit-body in the spiritual world, the two being tied by the laws of synchronous correspondences. God did not create a heaven and have people born in it, or even create people as adults in heaven. Why not? We must understand this in order not to threaten our complete love and confidence in God’s omnipotence and goodness. Neither does God want us to have blind faith and accept this as a mystery for limited capacity humans, since mystery and blind faith does not provide us with full spiritual comprehension, and therefore, we are barred from God’s full love for us, barred from progressing in our spiritual development which goes on to eternity. God could not create something like that. He could not create full blown adults, or children, in heaven. He created a natural world for the natural mind and a spiritual world for this natural within which is a celestial mind. In other words it’s a question of anatomy. The human mind is made of a natural portion and a spiritual portion.
The natural mind must contain the order and experience of the natural world. Without the natural mind there cannot be a spiritual mind for heaven. We must grow up on some planet, develop our natural mind, become rational, and then we can understand and accept spiritual things from rationality, not blind faith or mystery. Swedenborg reports that those who arrive in the world of spirits with blind faith and mystery, are instructed by the angels in truths and rationality, but they are unwilling to accept anything. Therefore they sink down to their corporeal mind. Only rationality by means of revealed truths can raise our consciousness to higher levels. Refusing to receive rationality is therefore a stumbling block to heavenly life. This is why the Lord has now given the Writings to the modern mind so that all the endless future generations to come will be able to understand Him and His reality in a rational way through education in True Science.
So now you can see the entire picture a little better. God allows evil on the planets and gives power to its consequences and details, out of love and goodness in order to protect and maintain the individual’s capacity to acquire truths and think rationally. The finger on the trigger, the terrorist’s plotting, the injury from carelessness, the rapist’s violence, etc., are the things God enforces and empowers to save the ability of the planet, and society, to remain a place of nursery for the human mind so that we can ascend to the top of our mind, where we can receive the love and truth God intends for us from His creation. The top of our mind, called celestial mind or heaven, is attainable in our consciousness through Divine Truth given in revelations. Receiving these truths must involve our rationality and understanding, or else we do not receive them permanently. At the same time, God must maintain our feeling or sense that we are free to choose either to act from this truth or to act from the opposite of this truth. Rationality allows us to choose one way or the other, to chose as-of self, seemingly independently from God. If we lose this sense of freedom to do as we please according to our own mind, then we lose the capacity to be rational, lose the capacity to be celestial, lose the capacity to operationalize the top of our mind, thus condemning every human being to sub-human le4vel. By not allowing evil when we insist on it, God would eliminate the possibility of anyone going to heaven, or reaching their highest consciousness. Yet it is only in this highest consciousness that we begin to be truly human. Below that, we are not yet genuinely human.
From the Writings:
At this point I shall add the following account of an experience.
After completing my reflections on conjugial love and beginning to think about scortatory love, two angels suddenly came to me and said, 'We perceived and understood your previous reflections, but the things you are now thinking about pass us by, and we do not perceive them. Abandon them, because they are of no value.'
'The love which is the subject of my present reflection,' I replied, 'is not nothing, since it certainly exists.'
'How,' they said, 'can any love exist which is not from creation? Surely conjugial love is from creation, and this is a love between two people who are able to become one. How can there be a love which divides and separates people? Can any young man love a girl unless she loves him in return? Does not the love of the one know and recognize that of the other, and so when these loves meet they join of their own accord? Can anyone love something which is not love? Is not conjugial love the only one which is mutual and reciprocal? If it is not reciprocated, does it not rebound and become nothing?'
[2] On hearing this I asked the two angels what community of heaven they came from. 'We are,' they said, 'from the heaven of innocence. We came as children into this heavenly world and were brought up under the Lord's guidance. When I grew up and my wife, who is with me here, became old enough to get married, we were engaged and betrothed, and joined for the first time** in marriage. Since we know of no other love than the true love of marriage, conjugial love, when the ideas you thought about came across to us about a different kind of love, the exact opposite of ours, we could understand nothing. So we have come down to ask why you are reflecting on things we cannot perceive. Tell us then how a love can exist which is not only not from creation, but is opposed to creation. We regard what is opposed to creation as subjects of no validity.'
[3] When he said this, I was heartily glad to talk with angels so innocent that they were totally ignorant of sexual impropriety. So I opened my mouth to tell them. 'Are you not aware,' I said, 'that good and evil exist, and good is from creation, but evil is not? Yet evil regarded in essence is not nothing, even though it is nothing from the point of view of good. Good exists from creation, and it varies in degree from the highest to the lowest. When its lowest degree reaches zero, evil arises on the other side. So there is no relationship or progress of good to evil, but it relates and progresses to what is more or less good. Evil relates and progresses to what is more or is less evil, because these are opposites in every single detail. Since evil and good are opposites, there must be a mean point distinguished by equilibrium, where evil acts against good; but because it is not stronger, it cannot advance beyond making the effort.
'Everyone is brought up in this state of equilibrium; and since this is between good and evil, or what is the same thing, between heaven and hell, it is a spiritual equilibrium, and this confers freedom on those who enjoy it. As the result of this equilibrium the Lord draws all to Himself; and if a person freely follows Him, He leads him out of evil into good, and so to heaven. It is much the same with love, especially conjugial love and scortatory love. The latter is an evil, the former a good. Everyone who hears the Lord's voice and freely follows is brought by the Lord into conjugial love and into all its joys and happiness. But someone who does not hear and follow brings himself into scortatory love and first into its joys, and then into its unpleasantnesses, and finally into unhappiness.'
[4] When I said this, the two angels asked, 'How could evil come into being, when nothing but good had come into being from creation? For anything to come into being it must have a source; good could not be the source of evil, because evil is a negation of good, since it takes away and destroys good. Still, because evil exists and is felt, it is not nothing, but it is something. Tell us then from what source this comes from nothing into being something.'
I replied to them, 'This secret cannot be revealed without knowing that none is good save God alone, and that there is nothing good that is inherently good unless it comes from God. Anyone therefore who looks to the Lord and wants to be guided by Him is in a state of good. But anyone who turns away from God and wants to be guided by himself is not in a state of good; for the good he does is done either for his own sake or for worldly reasons, so that it is either intended to acquire merit, or pretended, or hypocritical. This makes it plain that man himself is the source of evil, not because man had that fate assigned to him from creation, but because he assigned it to himself by turning away from God. That source of evil was not in Adam and his wife; but when the serpent said:
On the day when you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will be like God. Gen. 3:5.
and then they turned away from God, and turned towards themselves as if they were gods, they produced the source of evil in themselves. "Eating of that tree" means believing that one knows good and evil and is wise of oneself, and not from God.'
[5] But then the two angels asked, 'How could man turn away from God and towards himself, when it is still true that man can will nothing, think nothing and so do nothing except from God? Why did God allow this?'
'Man was created,' I replied, 'so that everything he wills, thinks and does appears to be inside him and so to come from him. Without this appearance he would not be a man, for he could not receive, retain or make as it were his own any trace of good and truth, or of love and wisdom. It follows from this that unless this were exactly the appearance, man could not be linked with God, and so he could not have everlasting life. However, if this appearance induces him to believe that he himself, and not the Lord, is the source of what he wills, thinks and does, however much it looks as if he were the source, he turns good in himself into evil and so produces a source of evil in himself. This was Adam's sin.
[6] 'But I can cast a little more light on this subject. The Lord looks on every person in the forehead, and His gaze passes through to the back of the head. Behind the forehead is the cerebrum, and beneath the rear of the head is the cerebellum. This is devoted to love and the various kinds of good it produces; the cerebrum is devoted to wisdom and the truths which compose it. Anyone therefore who looks face first towards the Lord receives wisdom from Him, and by this means he receives love. But anyone who turns his back and looks away from the Lord receives love but not wisdom, and love without wisdom is the love that comes from man and not from the Lord. Since this love links itself with false beliefs, it does not acknowledge God, but puts itself in God's place, finding silent confirmation of this through the ability to understand and to be wise with which he is endowed from creation, as if it came from himself. This love is therefore the source of evil. I can give you a visual demonstration that this is so, by calling here a wicked spirit who has turned away from God; I shall speak to his back, that is, to the back of his head, and you will see that what he is told turns into its opposite.'
[7] So I called such a spirit, and when he came, spoke to him from behind. 'Do you know,' I said, anything about hell, damnation and the torments of hell?' At once he turned towards me, and I asked him, 'What did you hear me say?'
'This,' he answered, 'is what I heard: "Do you know anything about heaven, salvation and the happiness of heaven?"' Then when he was asked this question behind his back, he said that what he heard was the first question.
Afterwards the following question was put from behind his back. 'Are you not aware that those in hell are made mad by false ideas?' When I asked him what he had heard, he said, 'Are you not aware that those in heaven are made wise by truths?' When this question was repeated to him behind his back, he said that what he heard was, 'Are you not aware that those in hell are made mad by false ideas?' and so on. These facts made it obvious that when a mind turns away from the Lord, it turns towards itself and so perceives the reverse of everything. This is the reason why, as you know, in the spiritual world no one is allowed to stand behind another's back and talk to him. For by doing so love is breathed into him, and because it is pleasant the intelligence approves and obeys it. But since it comes from man and not from God, it is a love of evil or of falsity. (CL 444)
17.8a What are the three phases of consciousness?
17.8b What is the ennead matrix or the nine zones of spiritual development?
Phase 1 thinking is the level of operation that is built up by abstraction from the natural world and the way our senses inform us of this order. Science at this level of operation is materialistic and atheistic, attributing nothing to anything that cannot be based on the physical senses or something abstracted derived from their order. At this level of thinking, all causes of physical phenomena are physical, even those explanations that involve “emergent phenomena” like mind and consciousness. In other words, consciousness and spiritual truth do not have an existence other than what they have drawn or abstracted from the natural world. This level of thinking does not see any contradiction in the idea that something physical can produce itself. And so we have the theory that life was produced by physical elements coming together in the just the right way to produce life. And it sees no contradiction in the theory that the universe produced itself somehow, say a Big Bang from a large mass of matter compressed together. As to where that mass came from, one thinks that it’s always been there. As to how this mass could develop in an organized orderly way, one thinks that it’s just happened by chance, and then it evolved by trying to survive.
Phase 2 thinking is the level of operation that is built from revelation. Phase 1 thinking can progress and improve endlessly, yet it can never turn into phase 2 thinking. The Writings declare that truth cannot be discovered or invented, only received from God as revelation. Phase 2 thinking begins when one receives the truth of revelation in one’s understanding. This truth comes from Sacred Scripture. The Threefold Word is a collection of Divine revelations given over a two thousand year period, ending in 1771 when the last of the books of the Writings were published by Swedenborg. This began the new age of the Second Coming which is the revelation of God in His Divine Rational. Now with these Divine Rational truths, we can elevate our consciousness to phase 3, which is the highest possible for human beings. This is where the genuine human being begins to exist, and lives to eternity, endlessly progressing in phase 3 thinking and feeling. All thinking exists only when the feeling is within it. Thinking without feeling is useless and falls back into phase 2 and phase thinking. Thinking with feeling is called willing. Whatever we intent or will is achieved by means of thinking. The love in the feeling unites with the truth in the thinking, and the two together give us this or that level of thinking and consciousness.
Level 3 feeling is celestial and heavenly, and marries itself to phase 3 thinking. The Writings refer to this union as the Marriage of Good and Truth, or the “celestial marriage.” The offspring of this marriage is celestial consciousness. This is the consciousness we have when we feel and think at level 3. This feeling and thinking is nothing else than our reception of Divine Good and Divine Truth. We have completely left behind our own ego, our own self-intelligence and self-reliance. We have left behind reasoning about truth and have replaced it with perception of truth. As each of us receives the same Divine Love and Divine Truth in a unique way, we each have a different awareness of God. In this celestial state of mind we are unwilling to will, think, and act from ourselves. We are only willing to receive the Lord’s Will, and to marry it to the Lord’s Understanding in our celestial-rational mind, and therefore all our external actions and external life around us, becomes a heaven to eternity.
To understand rationally what is said above, is to think in phase 3 (zones 7, 8, and 9 on the ennead matrix). But at phase 1 and 2, we feel like rejecting it.
The three phases of consciousness each have three sub-phases, and the 3x3 matrix creates an ennead or form of nine. The sub-states have the same names for each of the phases. They are the Old Testament state, the New Testament state, and the Third Testament state. The nine zones of the ennead matrix therefore constitute a map of consciousness showing the path from zone 1, the bottom of the consciousness to zone 9, the top of consciousness.
Here is the ennead matrix of spiritual development explained in this book:
ENNEAD MATRIX |
Old Testament |
New Testament |
Third Testament |
|
Swedenborg Phase 3 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
|
Paul Phase 2 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
Moses Phase 1 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
Zone 1 is an initial state for every human being. It begins when we first hear about God and are able to think about Him. Zone 1 consciousness is the dividing line between animal cognition and human thinking. Since we first hear about God through the socialization process in childhood, our idea of God is sectarian rather than universal. Children associate God with their religion, tradition, and ethnicity. I was socialized into thinking of God as Jewish. Therefore, in my mind, 99.9 percent of human beings did not have God, since they were not Jewish. It is similar with other religions and cultures. This initial phase of total sectarianism is followed by an intermediate phase (zone 2). I call it the New Testament state. It manifests itself as adolescent idealism. We are suddenly imbued by a passionate sense of universalism, internationalism, and pluralism. In religious behavior it shows itself as ecumenism and the desire to reach across denominations and even to other religions. In this state of thinking and feeling humanism becomes as important in the mind as religion. This intermediate state is succeeded by the Third Testament state of sectarianism (phase 1). Although we still recognize divisions and separations, we see them in a new light that minimizes their spiritual fundamental importance. We are freed from the dogma of our religion and sense that there is something higher. Our mind has been prepared to make the great leap from phase 1 thinking (zone 3) to phase 2 thinking and feeling (zone 4).
This new basis of our consciousness is grounded in the idea of a Personal God rather than a universal God. Prior to this (while we operate in zones 1, 2, 3), we see God as the God of our people, of our sect, but now (zone 4) we see God as the God of the individual. This means that for the first time we can have a relationship with God that is not dependent on our religion or ethnic group. We make a further step when we rely less on the literal meaning of what we are taught (zone 4) and more on the spirit of it (zone 5). We must face our own character and examine our thoughts, feelings, tendencies, asking God, “Lord, do I do these bad things you talk about in your Holy Word?” By this greater deepening and internalization (zone 5), we prepare ourselves for the next higher state of consciousness (zone 6). Our relationship to God becomes a reciprocal relationship of mutual responsibility. God is responsible for taking care of me and my life, and He has declared in His Word that He loves us, which means that He feels responsible for us like a shepherd takes care of the sheep to make sure they are fed and safe. At the same time we feel the reciprocal responsibility we have to Him, so that we not sin against Him by ignoring His Commandments. We experience shame and guilt before Him because we know we love sin and daily wallow in it. We get angry at our brother, we rage against our neighbor, and we neglect to properly take care of ourselves.
As a result we feel shame, remorse, and condemnable. Yet we overcome this by dedicating our lives to God, study His Word, and declare Him to others that He may be loved by all.
Zone 6 consciousness is not a fully happy one because it is filled with mystery and contradictions of doctrine. Our understanding of God and spiritual things like sin, heaven, hell, commandment, angel, devil, is so limited that we know nothing about the most important things of our spiritual future except that if we love the Lord and are decent to our neighbor, our spiritual future will be well off somehow, and if we do not, our spiritual future will be bleak. Not knowing the details of our future and how God operates to get us there, leaves us in a state of confusion, doubt, and spiritual anxiety. These problems and difficulties are solved when we make the great leap from zone 6 to zone 7. They are solved to some extent, but not yet completely. The jump to zone 7 is accomplished when we first hear about True Science concepts from reading or instruction, either formal or informal. In this initial state of thinking in phase 3, we are bound to the literal meaning of the Writings (zone 7). This allows us a much higher perspective on spirituality than what we had in earlier phases, states, and zones. But the literal meaning of the Word refers to natural-rational correspondences. This is a scientific view of particular spiritual phenomena but the view is outward, not inward. Our understanding of these spiritual things is natural because we use our own intelligence from the natural mind to fill in the picture, as it were.
But as soon as we accept the idea that True Science is about our own states of development, we begin to see a deeper applied meaning to the concepts and principles. Our theoretical meaning of the concepts of True Science (zone 7) is now advanced to the deeper state (zone 8) in which we can perceive inward spiritual-rational meanings within the outward natural-rational meanings of the literal text. This new perception is called enlightenment (zone 8). One sees a new spiritual light within the natural things all around us and in the Word of God. This spiritual light comes to our awareness when we apply the principles of True Science to our own thinking and feeling. We read the Writings acknowledging it as Divine Truth, and we see the information in it as scientific revelations about our own states of spiritual development. As we progress in our regeneration we are brought to higher states of consciousness and enlightenment. We now can perceive a still more interior light, a more brilliant light by far, and this comes into our conscious awareness by means of celestial-rational correspondences we can perceive in the literal meaning (zone 9). This is at last the beginning of our becoming a genuine human being called an angel. In this final state of thinking and feeling we are given everything that is humanly possible to have – but gradually, increasing daily to eternity.
The Writings use the word “enlightenment” to refer to the perception of spiritual meanings in the literal meaning of the Threefold Word. The Writings explain that the Word of God is written in a special style that is unlike that of any book originating in the self-intelligence of human beings. The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings constitute the Threefold Word that God authored through the minds of Moses and the old prophets, through the minds of the Gospel writers, and through the mind of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). God’s purpose in giving the Threefold Word is to bring Divine Truths to the minds of human beings on this planet. By means of these Divine revelations, anyone can elevate the mind into the celestial sphere where their heaven is. This is how the human mind was created, to be in sync with Divine Truths, and to use these truths in our mind to think and will and higher levels than would be possible without divine Truth in our understanding.
When we rely exclusively on natural truths, and abstract principles based on them, we are locked in the natural mind, in its order that reflects the physical world. This order is an outside existence and reveals nothing about the inner world within itself, which is what keeps it up as the bones of the skeleton keep up the organs of the body. Remove the skeleton and you have a clump of organs, not a capable living body. Remove the spiritual world within the natural, and you have nothing but a heap of materials that soon disintegrate into nothing, for they are not real or permanent. What keeps the physical world up and going is the spiritual world within it. No one can discover or invent this reality when thinking solely from abstractions based in the natural order of things. So this is why the Word is necessary, to bring this knowledge of reality to us, without which we form theories that are unreal fantasies. Only spiritual truths can develop our spiritual and celestial mind and consciousness. And spiritual truths come from nowhere except the revealed Sacred Scripture that God brings to every civilization. A new Word is given at the beginning of each civilization. The Writings detail the history of four prior civilizations to this one, which began on June 19, 1771. This civilization is called the Second Coming and is to endure forever. NO new civilizations can be given since the human race is now completed in its creation, having received the final portion of the Divine Word. This Last Testament, as the Writings are called, is the scientific revelation of the Lord’s Divine Rational Mind, by which He creates and manages the universe.
But understanding Divine Truth is not enough. It does not stay permanently in our mind. It’s like a pot with a hole in it – the water escapes and the pot is empty. In order to plug the hole, as it were, we must love that which we understand. The only way to love some spiritual truth is to apply it to oneself, one’s life, one’s mental development and states. Truth is what jacks consciousness up. Truth is what needs to be appropriated to ourselves by willing that truth. There is no other way to appropriate truth except by willing it. This is a universal law. As we read the Writings, figure it out, understand it rationally, rearrange our mind according to it, we have the Divine Truth with us in our rational understanding. Now as we walk around all day, doing our thinking and willing, choosing and reacting, we have the Divine Truth in our rational understanding. Now all we have to do is use it, apply it, in order to love it and be enlightened by it. Unless we apply it, we are not enlightened, we do not love it.
Enlightenment is the perception of spiritual truths which we perceive when reading the literal meaning of the Word and apply it to our willing and thinking. The degree or intensity or height of our enlightenment is proportional to the degree to which we apply the divine Truth in rational understanding, to the willing and thinking we do all day long every day of our lives here on earth. This is called enlightenment and regeneration, and progresses until the end.
17.10a What are the laws of space and time in the spiritual world?
When we awaken in the world of spirits a few hours after the death of the physical body, we are conscious of ourselves not unlike when we awaken from a deep sleep and gather our wits together – Where am I? What day is this?. We see our spirit-body and it feels like the body we had on the planet. We look around us and we see people similar to the people we last saw on earth. It’s easy to think that you are still on earth, though you can’t figure out where you are and how you got there. But this state of confusion quickly passes and gives way to other emotions and thoughts. Swedenborg witnessed thousands of people being resuscitated in his 27 years of dual citizenship. Everyone is resuscitated in a standard manner by attending angels, who are inhabitants of the heavens who volunteer to come down to the world of spirits and provide that loving service. To every individual regardless of who they are or which planet they come from. All this proceeds through a Divine order by Divine laws and through the participation of many others who are already adapted to life in the spiritual world.
The attending angel-physicians or nurses appear to peel off some thin veil on the face of the resuscitating individual. Upon this the person opens the eyes and becomes conscious. This process takes a little while, and the attending angels have the power and perception to control the thoughts and feelings of the resuscitating person. They keep the mind of the person calm and serene, keeping out all thoughts or emotions that interfere. When the person becomes conscious and begins to function and walk around, other attendants take over, spirits and angels who have the function of guiding the new arrivals so they can have certain specific experiences that brings out their interior loves. This takes some days, weeks, or months, but not more. Eventually, the individual has become completely changed. The former surface personality traits and airs or pretenses are now gone. What now rules the individual are the interior loves that make themselves known. These loves now take over, completely. The chief of these loves arranges all other loves beneath itself, and what isn’t compatible is discarded. Now the person is governed by the chief love with no other consideration capable of standing in its way. And such as this love is, such does the person become.
If it is an infernal or evil love, all good loves are discarded and the person becomes that evil love. The individual then sinks down into the bottom of the mind where the hells are. After this, there is no return, because the infernal love rules. Should this infernal love be brought near truth, it instantly turns it into its opposite. Should this love be brought near good or heaven, it feels like the individual is being suffocated and a terrible dread seizes the person which lasts until the individual is back in hell where they regain their familiar life in sub-human insane consciousness. But if the chief love is a good love, it discards all evil loves that are incompatible with it, and the individual rises in consciousness to the top of the mind where they enter heaven and its consciousness.
When we reach this final phase of resuscitation and preparation, we enter a society which is our home to eternity. There are no mistakes or errors or change of mind. God supervises every step of this process and He makes no mistakes. Our place in the spiritual world, whether heaven or hell, is permanent. And in fact, all inhabitants have an assigned dwelling for themselves, which is given them when they enter the society or city. This place of final destination to eternity is determined by God alone. God brought this individual there, step by step, from the second of birth on the planet, to this particular city and spiritual society, either celestial or infernal. While we are still attached to the physical body on earth, our spirit-body remains in the world of spirits, which is in between heaven and hell. Under the permission of the Lord, people from heaven can come down to the world of spirits, while some people from the hells can come up. This “traveling” back and forth is for two purposes. One is to assist the new arrivals in their resuscitation process and in its completion in identifying the ruling loves. The other is to influence the mind of the individuals on earth by acting into their spirit-body which is in the world of spirits. The Lord assigns two angels and two devils to each individual on earth so that their mind can remain in equilibrium or freedom of choice. Without the angels the evil spirits would corrupt every person and lead them to the hells where they are. This is their greatest delight. The angels’ greatest delight is to take the individual to the heaven where they are.
In the spiritual world the surroundings are instantaneous projections or creations, that come and go, reflecting the individual’s state of feeling and thinking. On earth the surroundings are fixed no matter what mood we’re in, but not so in our dreams, where the surrounds reflect the content of the dream, which reflects the mood or feeling states of the dreamer. In the spiritual world the surrounds are made of spiritual substances, not material as on earth. The mind’s feelings and thoughts are also made of spiritual substances. You can see therefore the great power the mind has there. It has the power to create the surrounding environment. Only those who are in a similar state of feeling and thinking can therefore share the environment. If an individual should arrive in the world of spirits having feelings and thoughts completely different from anyone else, that individual would be all alone with never any company or communication possible with anyone else. What a horrible fate. But everyone arrives into the world of spirits from some planet with some cultural background, and therefore can form a spiritual community with other like minded people. In general, people from different planets do not see each other in the spiritual world because their mentality or genius is so different, especially if the planets are in different galaxies. Swedenborg was able to “travel” to spiritual societies made of people from planets of different galaxy from ours, and this traveling was done by his change of mental state under the supervision of attending angels guided by the Lord.
Walking or locomoting is only a visual appearance since people in the spiritual world have a fixed location relative to everybody else. So when people meet, they appear to have walked or flown to a common place such as a building or garden. But in reality no locomotion has taken place and the people remain in their original fixed position, as determined by their basic mental type. The Writings say that some people develop the skill of appearing in more than one society simultaneously, and those around them are not aware of this. Apparently they use these skills to deceive others, and this is permitted them for the sake of further spiritual growth by those whom they deceive. Deception is by means of persuasive ideas and simulations. There are people who arrive with a good character but with an undeveloped rational intellect. They take longer to be prepared for their final destination, and in the meantime, they may be deceived by some for their learning and eventual benefit. The Writings provide many more details about this subject.
The inhabitants of the hells are called devils, satans, genii, sirens, and other names which reflect their specific types of evils and insanities, of which there are too many to number. The inhabitants of the heavens are called good spirits, angelic spirits, and angels, and they too are too many to be numbered. To God, the entire heavens make up one Angel and the entire hells make up one monster. In other words, the hells and the heavens each act as one, even though they are so vast and getting vaster.
17.11a What’s the difference between sensuous and rational consciousness?
17.11b Is spirituality closer to mysticism or to rationality?
It is easy to confirm by observation what the Writings say about the levels of the natural mind, and more difficult to confirm what’s being said about the spiritual and celestial mind. The latter confirmation comes in due course with regeneration. But at the beginning of our reformation as an adult we can confirm that our natural mind has three levels of operation – corporeal, sensuous, and rational. We can recognize our corporeal thoughts and emotions by observing our sensorimotor habits and pleasures like eating, sleeping, hugging, kissing, stroking, scratching, belching, etc. These are corporeal because our natural mind at the bottom (facing downward and outward), is open directly to the sensory organs of physical sensations. But when we begin to think about these corporeal activities we may feel that we need to exert control over them in accordance with expectations, norms, standards, or principles. This management of our corporeal self, or self-management, requires a level of thinking above the corporeal and is called the sensuous level. It is still identified closely with the senses but more in terms of information and abstraction.
Sensuous thinking and feeling is above the corporeal, which doesn’t think but only senses. The sensuous level of thinking is able to order things into categories and to evaluate and measure them. But there is a level above sensuous thinking in the natural mind and it is called the rational level of thinking and feeling. This is the highest portion of the natural mind and has the peculiar quality of being able to face either downward towards the sensuous, or upward towards the spiritual mind which is a discrete degree above the natural mind.
In the natural mind and conscious awareness we possess therefore two types of consciousness, one belonging to the operation of the corporeal and sensuous mind, the other belonging to the natural-rational mind. The first consciousness is called sensuous and is fully developed in our infancy period of development, long before the rational is developed later in childhood and adolescence. We gain experience and receive instruction so that we are able to develop first our ability to abstract concepts from the sensual, and later, our ability to use rational categories rather than categories abstracted from natural order. Rational order is different from natural order. Rational order cannot be discovered solely from abstractions of the sensual. God organizes the rational in the natural mind to correspond to spiritual order. When this rational looks down to the sensual and corporeal, it sees only the natural, and sometimes a deeper natural, but sees nothing and knows nothing of the spiritual. But when the rational looks up to the spiritual mind, it can see and understand spiritual ideas and rationality. The natural-rational is therefore an intermediary between the natural mind proper and the spiritual mind proper. The rational thus partakes of both the natural and the spiritual. It is a property of the human mind that it can become aware of its own operations of thinking and feeling.
In fact, the spiritual mind is opened by spiritual-rational ideas or truths, and the celestial mind is opened by celestial-rational ideas or truths. There are therefore in existence three levels of the rational in human beings. The lowest level is called the natural-rational level of thinking and feeling. The second level is called the spiritual-rational level of thinking and feeling. The third level is called the celestial-rational level of thinking and feeling. These three levels of thinking and feeling define the levels and phases of the development of consciousness in the human race.
Sensuous consciousness is external while rational consciousness is internal. What is external is natural and what is internal is spiritual. This is a universal law of True Science. Everything that exists has an external and an internal, and without this it cannot be created. This law applies in the largest and in the smallest case. The created universe has an external called the natural world and an internal called the spiritual world. All things natural such as a planet, a tree, a grasshopper, an electron, have an external made of material elements and space, and they each have an internal made of spiritual substances without space. The human mind has an external made of material elements called the natural mind and it has an internal made of spiritual substances called the spiritual mind. The natural and the spiritual are in discrete degrees, which means that there is no possibility of direct contact or communication, but only synchronous interaction governed by the laws of correspondence. In all cases, the external and the internal of anything must act together, simultaneously or synchronously. There is no action or subsistence and existence without this synchronous action by correspondence.
Similarly for consciousness to exist it must have an external and an internal that act together synchronously by the laws of correspondence. The external of consciousness is called sensuous consciousness and its internal is called rational consciousness. While we are developing in infancy, childhood, and adolescence, our natural mind is operational and conscious, and from this we have sensuous consciousness. This gives us conscious awareness of the order of the natural world and builds up our memory databases of information about our planet and its objects and laws of operation. These sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective representations of our experiences will form the basis of our life in eternity, either heaven or hell. In other words, our consciousness in the bottom of our mind as well as at the top, is based in the content of our natural mind. Hence it is that the house, city, and landscape around us in hell and in heaven are like those on the planet, but only in external appearance. These appearances in heaven and hell are not material and stable, but constructed instantaneously by means of correspondences of the thoughts and emotions. Every thought and every feeling or intention has its corresponding natural representative. These correspondences therefore determine what is around us.
On the planet this process is inhibited by materialism (absorbed by matter), but it operates fully in the spiritual world where there is no matter, time, or space. This inhibition effect is necessary on the planets to allow people with different and incompatible thoughts and emotions to live together in society. This condition is necessary for the growth of the natural mind. But in the spiritual world, further growth of the natural mind is no longer possible, and spiritual societies are therefore organized by means of similarity and compatibility of thoughts and emotions. This is necessary to allow societies to exist, for in the spiritual world different states create unavailability or denial of access and co-presence.
While the natural mind is being grown on the planet, the internal of it, which is called the spiritual mind, is operated by God through the vertical community and influx. Spirit societies are brought near or farther from our spirit-body in the world of spirits and this method is used by God to lead us in every moment of our life, awake and asleep. Every thought and every emotion that the natural mind experiences must originate from the vertical community to which God ties us moment by moment. You can see how complicated this system is since the external material world of events around us that provide the content of our thoughts and emotions in the natural mind, must match perfectly the internal spiritual world of events within us that provide the correspondences for our thoughts and emotions. Only God, in His infinite Wisdom, Intelligence, and Rationality could manage this task. And even more astonishing, the complexity of the task increases to infinite levels when you remember that the population of the heavens and the hells is constantly increasing, that the number of inhabited planets is multiplying at the rate of the speed of light, and so also the population of the human race in the created universe – and all this endlessly forever! That all this is under God’s total control is also shown by the fact that of all these numberless planets, this one is the only one that has developed an industrial, mechanical, and technical civilization. This is the only planet that has written revelations from God. This is the planet God chose and prepared for His Incarnation.
The human race on this planet has a genius or quality that inclines towards materialism, abstraction, and rationality more than the races on the other planets. Hence our natural-rational mind is developed by science, industry, and culture to greater extent than those on other planets. This unique quality of our race allows us to evolve a rational consciousness that is more developed and more complex or abstract. The race on the other planets have a more keenly evolved sensuous consciousness. From these two sources of humanity, God builds up the level of consciousness of the entire human race from all the planets. We fulfill an important function for the other races by contributing a more advanced level of rational consciousness to the sum total, and they contribute to our evolution by benefiting us through their more evolved sensuous consciousness. This interactional sharing mutually and reciprocally between all the varieties of human races is part of humanity’s evolution of consciousness. Swedenborg had occasions to discuss God with spirits originating from other planets. Everyone in the spiritual world regardless of their natural origin, speaks a common language that is innate to spirits. We begin to talk in this language spontaneously and unconsciously as soon as we awaken from the resuscitation process.
All consciousness to subsist and evolve in any human being must have an external called sensuous consciousness and an internal called rational consciousness. True Science reveals that if you remove rational consciousness in our mind, we are not capable of sensation, thinking, and feeling. The lowest corporeal sensation, such as looking at an object, or touching it, or smelling it, is completely inhibited and made void unless rational consciousness is also given. This shows itself in our awareness by recognizing the stimulus and perceiving its meaning. Or else, by puzzling over the stimulus if it is not recognized. Either way, recognizing it or puzzling over it, are operations of rational consciousness.
Our rational consciousness evolves through three phases or levels of operation called natural consciousness, spiritual consciousness, and celestial consciousness. Each of these are segregated by discrete degrees and interact by correspondences across the three portions or levels of the mind – natural mind, spiritual mind, and celestial mind. Natural-rational thinking is performed by means of natural-rational correspondences. Spiritual-rational thinking in the spiritual mind is performed by means of spiritual-rational correspondences. Celestial-rational thinking in the celestial mind is performed by means of celestial-rational correspondences. Natural-rational correspondences are acquired externally by means of experience, instruction, and scientific revelations in the Word of God. Spiritual-rational correspondences are acquired internally by enlightenment from God while we apply the natural-rational correspondences of scientific revelations to our own mental states and decision making in daily living situations.
When we study the Threefold Word as True Science we acquire principles of life called doctrine. These tell us about God and other spiritual subjects such as sin, regeneration, and influx. These topics are discussed and presented in a natural human language in the form of natural-rational correspondences. This is called the literal meaning of the Threefold Word. This is a theoretical knowledge that raises our consciousness temporarily, while we are reading and studying. But as soon as we apply this knowledge and understanding to our daily willing and thinking, we become conscious of the spiritual-rational correspondences that are correspondentially within the natural-rational correspondences. This new higher rational consciousness is called enlightenment. The process then continues to the next discrete level when we receive celestial enlightenment, the highest category that humans are capable of. From then on we continue evolving our celestial-rational consciousness to eternity. Along with this continuing evolution of rational consciousness there must of course be a matching evolution in sensuous consciousness. It is from this that the environment of heaven gets more and more wonderful on a daily basis, while the environment of hell gets more and more bleak. In other words, we continue to rise, or we continue to fall, and this with no ending.
17.11c How does True Science view religious rituals and faith?
Rational spirituality is the venue created by God to save us from the Fall. This event refers to an evolutionary changeover in the human race. The early civilizations on earth prior to the Fall consisted of celestial humans. Their will and understanding operated in lockstep. They were united minds. They could not have evil in the will and truth in the understanding. Nor could they have good in the will and falsity in the understanding. Therefore everything they needed to know came into their consciousness from celestial influx. Whatever their affection or curiosity wanted to know, their understanding and intelligence was instantly filled with the information or answer. But in the course of time some of them embarked on a willful course of separating their will from their understanding. They invented fantasy characters and gods, and misused their celestial intelligence by learning how to simulate and deceive. Eventually all the generations of that civilization became tainted with this anti-human tendency. When there were no more united minds left, the human race had Fallen. This means that people lost their enlightenment. They were no longer able to sense the light of the spiritual Sun. The human race on earth was plunged into spiritual darkness.
The physical brain evolved as a result of the ending of the united mind. The subsequent generations had a split-brain, divided down the middle, with a right hemisphere reflecting the independent will, and a left hemisphere reflecting the independent understanding. The split-brain race with a divided mind was able to contain evil in the will and truth in the understanding, and also, good in the will and falsity in the understanding. From a celestial civilization the race had fallen to the level of a spiritual civilization, which is one discrete degree lower. Celestial light is like the warm light of the bright sun on a clear spring day. Spiritual light is like the cold light of the full moon on a clear winter night. From this comparison, you can see how far the race had fallen! Swedenborg witnessed how the inhabitants of the various heavens see the Lord and the spiritual Sun around Him.
The inhabitants of the celestial heavens see the Lord surrounded by the spiritual Sun which is many thousands of times brighter than the noonday summer sun at the tropics on earth. And yet this intense Light does not in any way feel uncomfortable to the inhabitants, but instead is deeply comforting and joyous to them. They have this Sun in front of them no matter which way they turn or walk. Its Light is Divine Truth and the Heat within this Light is Divine Love. As they look upon this Sun their mind is thus filled with love and truth from within, from within their inmost. Thus they are intensely moved by it. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the spiritual heavens see the Lord surrounded by the spiritual Sun which appears to them like the light of the full moon at night. What a tremendous difference! The consciousness of God in our spiritual mind is like the moon at night, whereas the consciousness of God in our celestial mind is like the sun in the middle of the day. Not a single idea which a celestial angel is conscious of in clear light can ever be understood by an angelic spirit in the spiritual heaven. When the inhabitants of the celestial heavens discuss a subject with each other, the inhabitants of the spiritual heaven are affected by the conversation in such a way that they become conscious of the spiritual-rational ideas that correspond to what the angels were talking about. The angels in the celestial heavens operate from their celestial mind whole the angelic spirits in the spiritual heaven operate from their spiritual mind (their celestial mind not being opened).
Such then was the great distance of the Fall that having operated from the celestial mind the race now began to operate from the spiritual mind. The mixed mind of the new split-brain Fallen race now required a method of regeneration. This was a Divine medical procedure whereby the disunited mind could be made united again. It consists of these progressive steps. First, since communication with the celestials was cut off, a different method of instruction became necessary. This was done through Divine scientific revelations given through selected and prepared individuals who were able to write down their visions into a collection called Sacred Scripture. Second, the independent understanding is to be filled with Divine Truths from the study of Sacred Scripture. This was possible now because the understanding was independent of the will. The will was born filled with evils, but the understanding was empty at birth and could be filled with truths. Third, The understanding now filled with Divine Truth, was able to be conjoined with a new will that was a gift from the Lord’s Own Proprium or Personality, that He implants unconsciously into the natural mind, a discrete degree within it. Now the understanding conjoined to the new will makes a new person with new feelings and thoughts. This is called the process of regeneration.
Regeneration is not an easy procedure. It requires conscious voluntary cooperation on our part. There are various methods and styles of cooperation in our regeneration. The psychology of cooperation is a science that is sorely needed today. How do we cooperate with the Lord in our own regeneration? The effectiveness of our regeneration is limited by our cooperation. And this requires struggling with temptations. The will is regenerated by means of temptations. The Lord brings different types of temptations to each person every day. There are natural temptations, spiritual temptations, and celestial temptations in that successive order. The scientific explanation of temptations is that it is a process of cognitive reappraisal under affective pressure. For instance, I know I should stop writing and go interact with the cats. This is the time they expect me to feed them and play with them. So I feel guilty postponing it. It bothers me. It puts me under affective stress. It’s a temptation to postpone it. My conscience and convictions, my love for the cats, is in doubt, hanging in the balance. My sense of self is threatened. What kind of a person am I who neglects his cats? (pause here.) OK. I’m back. I fed the cats and I played with them. Meanwhile while I was doing that I felt like stopping and resuming my writing.
Such are temptations. They are attacks on our loves and on our truths. We struggle, look to the Lord, ask for help, and we conquer. Once we conquer, the Lord is able to snip the umbilical cord that tied us the this or that society of hell. It is their representatives, raised momentarily to the world of spirits, and brought near to our spirit-body, that instigated the temptation. It was their weakness, their evil delights, their insane falsities that I was filled with during the temptation process. It works as long as I have no awareness of their presence or of the source of my experience and attribute the feelings and thoughts to myself.
This is then the method by which the split-brain race is regenerated and by which their divided mind becomes united and whole again.
Consider the Table below regarding how True Science views faith.
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How True Science Views Faith
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RITUAL FAITH |
MYSTICAL FAITH |
RATIONAL FAITH
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Method of Salvation |
Sacrifices
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Sacraments |
Regeneration |
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Level of Doctrine |
Incantation
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Prayer |
True Science |
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Required Charity |
Donations |
Tithing |
Uses
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There are three essentials of faith. First, faith gives a method of salvation. Second, faith gives doctrine for the understanding. Third, faith prescribes forms of charity that we must perform. Faith exists in our natural mind at three representative levels – corporeal level, sensuous level, and rational level. At the corporeal level of thinking and feeling our faith consists of rituals of faith, rather than faith itself. We know that these rituals are about God and faith, but the level of thinking about God and faith is corporeal. This is evident from reading the Old Testament. At the sensuous level of thinking and feeling our faith consists of mystical faith, not yet true faith itself. We know that this faith is about God, but the level of thinking about God is sensuous. This is evident from reading the New Testament. At the rational level of thinking and feeling our faith consists of rational faith, which is true faith itself. We know that spirituality is rational, and the level of thinking about God and faith is rational and scientific. This is evident from reading the Writings.
Consider the method of Salvation provided by God at each level of faith. Every individual steps through the same sequence that characterizes the evolution of consciousness in the race. In the “Old Testament states,” our faith overlaps completely with outward behaviors. As children this is how we become socialized in our family and religious group. We know that there is God, but we think of Him as a Divine Monarch who demands that we follow prescribed rules, like sacrifices and taboos, and punishes us if we fail. When we move up a representative discrete degree in rational spirituality, we enter the “New Testament states.” We think of more inward things that are supernatural rather than natural. Instead of animal sacrifices and prohibitions, we rely on symbolic sacrifices like the Sacraments and on God’s presence with each individual as the Holy Spirit “dwelling” in us. Because this level of faith is mystical, it is seen in obscurity and confusion. To compensate for this lack of clarity of comprehension, one focuses on the strength of one’s “blind faith.” Salvation is granted to anyone whose faith is sufficiently strong. In the “Third Testament states,” our faith is rational and scientific. We can see that the method of salvation cannot be sacrifices or sacraments, but must be something that changes our character from hellish to heavenly. This method is called regeneration and is a lifelong process of struggling with temptations, overcoming them, and desisting from former ways of thinking and feeling. This progressive regeneration of character prepares the mind for heavenly life. This is the only salvation possible.
Consider now the level of doctrine. In ritual faith our doctrine consists of incantations. Every religious denomination begins by instituting ritual incantations that are proper or peculiar to the group – singing, repeating in unison, repeating a certain number of times, using particular intonations accompanied by characteristic gestures and postures, singly or in group. These rituals of faith are considered holy and sacred. Congregations that move beyond the ritual faith, establish a mystical creed that is repeated during prayer worship. These doctrinal things are considered beyond the level of thinking of most adherents, and is left mostly to priests, ministers, and scholars. But they cannot penetrate the mystery but only pose more baffling questions about the mystery. Again, congregations that move to the next step – rational faith – dissolve all the prior mysticism with True Science from the Threefold Word.
Finally, consider the required charity in the three levels of our faith. In ritual faith, we think that donations we give to the poor or those in need, adds to our spiritual merit, and if we accumulate enough merit, we gain higher status and honors relative to others with less merit. As we move up to mystical faith we realize that performing prescribed outward behavior does not contribute to our merit because what we have is from God and what we share others as charity is also His. Nevertheless, even if our salvation does not depend on performing charitable acts, we ought to share at least Ten Percent of our annual income or wealth with those less fortunate than us. This is seen as a matter of individual conscience. At last, as we move into rational faith, we realize that everything we do is our charity towards the neighbor as long as we do something useful to the neighbor or society at large. This is called performing “uses.”
Thinking and willing refer to two basic spiritual operations ongoing in the human mind. The mind’s two organs are the will and the understanding. In modern psychology, the “will” is identified with the affective domain of behavior, and the “understanding” with the cognitive domain of behavior. Affective behavior refers to the operation of the organ of the will. Cognitive behavior refers to the operation of the organ of the understanding. The human mind contains three discrete degrees or levels of organic operation – the natural, the rational, and the spiritual. The rational level of operation serves as an intermediary between the natural and the spiritual. The three levels operate synchronously by the laws of correspondences that regulate the operation of discrete degrees. We are born with a dual existence, one temporary, the other permanent or eternal. Our mind is permanent, immortal, or eternal, while our physical body is temporary and mortal. Our mind is housed in a spirit-body which is functionally and spiritually tied to our physical body. When we are born, we have two bodies, one physical in the natural world, the other spiritual in the world of spirits. Though tied to the physical body, the spirit-body is not in the natural world but in the world of spirits.
When we are born, the spirit-body begins its immortal existence in the world of spirits, while the physical body begins its temporary existence in the natural world. Thus, we are citizens of a dual universe, one part of us natural, the other spiritual. Thinking and willing are operations of the will and understanding, these being the two organs of the mind. You can see therefore that thinking and feeling (or willing) are not operations in the physical brain, but operations in the spiritual organs of the will and understanding. Thoughts and feelings are spiritual objects and substances, and therefore cannot exist in the natural world of material mass and space (brain). Thinking and willing are mental operations -- activity that is carried out by spiritual organs in the spirit-body located in the world of spirits. The activity of the brain is merely a physical representative of the activity in the organs of the understanding and the will.
What is a physical representative? All physical phenomena on this planet are representatives of spiritual phenomena in the spiritual world. The spiritual phenomenon must occur first in successive order, just like the cause must occur before the effect in successive order. If conditions on earth are mature or sufficiently prepared, then the spiritual cause will eventuate in a natural event. The physical phenomenon is called the cause of the natural event. The natural effect of the spiritual cause, is called a “physical representative” or natural representative. The natural event, being the effect, “represents” the spiritual event, which is the cause. This is the successive order by which God manages the dual universe. From Himself through His Divine Rational Mind, the Divine Human Person creates and regulates the dual universe, which would instantly collapse into chaos and vanish from existence, were He to withdraw Himself from any region of the universe, or all of it. This is the rational meaning of omnipotence and omnipresence. The Divine Human Person may be called the only True Scientist from whom all true science originates. He has revealed that He manages the dual universe by means of rational laws that can be scientifically described and understood by human beings. These new scientific revelations given to the human race, are the Writings of Swedenborg. There we find an explanation of the laws of correspondences by which God produces physical events by means of spiritual states or enabling conditions. Correspondences are the enabling conditions of life and power. That knowledge with the ancient civilizations used to be called the Science of Sciences, and also, the Science of Correspondences. Such knowledge was considered sacred. With the Fall, this science was lost.
The Lord in His Second Coming in the Writings of Swedenborg has now revealed once more this Science of Sciences. His Divine Rational Mind uses this True Science to effect phenomena in the universe, which was outwardly created through Divine Truth. Hence it is that spirituality is rational, and that the way to God is by rational faith. The science of God is True Science that He reveals. Clearly, there cannot a be a true science of God that our natural-rational mind manufactures. Whatever we think or feel about Divinity is to be strictly avoided. We must never rely on our own reasoning regarding God or anything spiritual whatsoever. Our own reasoning, which is natural, would impose a natural order on the spiritual idea we are trying to understand. Therefore our understanding must remain natural, and a natural understanding of God or spiritual things, is not spiritual, not truly rational, but just merely natural. Therefore any knowledge about God or spirituality must be obtained from Divine revelation. This is the method God has created for interacting with the conscious human mind. There is no other method of spiritual development or growth of consciousness. The Threefold Word is the source of all scientific knowledge about the Science of Correspondences. No other source is to be used or it will mix the two and the lower will destroy the higher in our mind. We then condemn ourselves to no spiritual growth, and consequently, to an eternity of hell. Such is the medical reality of the Fallen human race.
Rational faith is not something our rational mind manufactures, for that would be a false abomination called the “proprium of man” which, since the Fall, is the insanity of the love of self. One cannot exaggerate the importance to the human race of the revelation once again, of the Science of Correspondences. It is the grammar of True Science. And the future of humanity rests on True Science. All the prior generations are but few to all the future generations. And these endless generations to come will rely on True Science and benefit from it so that a paradise on earth can form the nursery of heaven, rather than a hell, as it is now.
To understand correspondences, consider the synchronous regulation that takes place between the operation in the spiritual organ of understanding and the operation in the physical organ of the brain. Whenever there is activity in the spiritual organ of understanding in the spirit-body, there is a parallel resultant activity in the physical organ of the brain in the physical body. The direction of interaction is always from the spiritual organ to the physical organ, in the same way as it is between cause and effect. It is not possible to have an effect before a cause, and so it is not possible for any operation in the physical brain to occur prior to its enabling condition in the spirit-body to which it is connected by correspondences. These connections are discrete, that is, functional by correspondence. The effect in the lower degree (natural) is only as an indexical representative of the prior operation in the spiritual organ of understanding. The properties or characteristics of the brain activity match exactly in indexical representation, every characteristics of the thinking activity in the organ of the understanding.
It has been revealed that the right brain hemisphere more closely indexes the activity of the will, while the left brain hemisphere indexes the activity of the understanding. Within these general characteristics there are specific and singular characteristics so that the pattern of every brain activity moment by moment is unique because the thinking and willing sequence of life is unique, with never a single thought or feeling repeating itself exactly to the endless eternity. This feature of activity reflects, represents, or indexes God’s infinity.
It’s very important to realize that the indexing or representing of something spiritual by something natural, is not a one to one relationship of equivalence, but many to one. The natural and the spiritual are in discrete degrees relative to each other. This means that there is no continuity or overlap between them, but only representative indexing. An analogy might be to think of the index at the end of a book and the text of the book. The index at the end is short in comparison to the book itself. The index cannot contain the information and knowledge that the book contains. The index is an inferior venue for communicating knowledge. You need to use text to communicate knowledge. So the index only represents or indexes the book, but itself does not contain the knowledge in the book. The activity of thinking in the spiritual organ of the understanding is like the text of the book that contains the knowledge. But the activity of the physical organ of the brain is like an index to the activity in the understanding. Obviously, we could not reconstruct the book from the index! Similarly we could not reconstruct the thinking in the organ of understanding from the activity of the brain as measured by electrical recordings of brain activity during thinking.
For instance, a brain CAT scan is like an index from which one cannot reconstruct the text. The text or understanding organ is spiritual, and spiritual objects are far more complex than natural objects. Thinking is far more complex than the brain so that the brain can reflect our thinking only as an index reflects the rest of the book. The spiritual world is a discrete degree richer and higher than the natural world in terms of information, knowledge, and all its spiritual and celestial phenomena.
While we are attached to the physical body on earth, our conscious awareness is restricted to the natural and rational levels of operation in our spirit-body. The natural mind is capable of representing all the discrete levels of the spiritual mind by establishing sub-levels, one above the other, and these sub-levels mimic or represent the discrete levels of spiritual-rational and celestial-rational. Our consciousness can therefore ascend through spiritual development of our rational understanding while we are here on earth. The higher the spiritual development we attain here on earth, the higher will be our life when we leave this world. The essential purpose of our temporary sojourn here on earth is to prepare our will and understanding for higher consciousness in the afterlife. This preparation is first, by means of reformation of the understanding through the Threefold Word, and second, by regeneration of one’s character through cooperation in our temptations.
Selections from the Writings on correspondences appear below in Section 19.8.
17.11e Can it be shown that genuine spirituality is rational and scientific?
Scientific has relation to science. Rationality is a type of mental operation. “Scientific” and “rationality” are closely connected. Science uses rational mental operations to gather observational facts and to formulate abstract accounts and explanations for those facts. Remove rationality from science and you’ve eliminated the existence of science, just like you’ve eliminated language if you’ve removed grammar. Intelligence and wisdom are closely related terms to rationality and science. The goal of science is to produce rational explanations of reality that lead to understanding the universe and how to control its phenomena. Studying science is a necessary component of education and the acquisition of rationality in adult life.
The uppermost portion of the human mind is called heaven and the lowest portion is called hell. Science and rationality characterize the heavenly operations while the hellish ones are salient through their opposites -- superstitious and irrational mental operations. As we become more and more scientific in our thinking we gradually climb to the top of the mind where heaven is and where our rationality is in its purest form. The heavenly life is a rational life. Angels are the most rational, the most scientific in their thinking about the universe and its phenomena. The purer the form of our rationality the closer it images the Divine Rationality called Divine Wisdom or Divine Truth. The source of this Divine Truth is the spiritual Sun from which streams out “spiritual light,” which is a spiritual substance called Divine Truth within which is a celestial substance called “spiritual heat.” Spiritual heat is a substance called Divine Love or Divine Good.
The universe is a dual universe since it has been created in discrete degrees – spiritual and natural. There is a natural or physical world and a spiritual or substantive world. The underlying framework of this dual universe and its every created object or quality, is the infinite uncreate substance streaming out of the infinite spiritual Sun as a ray, flux, or ceaseless stream. This substance is pure rationality or pure truth within which is pure good or love. Good and love are used interchangeably, and likewise with truth and wisdom (or “rationality”). Both Divine Good or Love, and Divine Truth or Rationality, are infinite substances in God. God as the Divine Human Person, can be seen amidst the spiritual Sun by the inhabitants of the heavens. In other words, when we climb in consciousness to the top of our mind, we can behold the Divine Human Person amidst the spiritual Sun from which streams out the foundation substances of all created things in the dual universe. What a sight that will be! Quick, how do I get there? The short answer is: By being good!
Clearly then, God is the True Scientist. Therefore, genuine rational spirituality is the mental operation by which our consciousness climbs to heaven where we are in the immediate influx of the Divine Human Person, by which we are made immortal and capable of living to eternity in a joyous and blissful conjugial state called being angels. Genuine rationality begins when we acknowledge that there is one infinite omnipotent omnipresent God and that God is the Divine Human Person. Next, we can acknowledge that this Divine Human Person is Rationality itself and the source of all rationality in the human mind.
The method by which we progress in rational spirituality is to study Divine scientific revelations contained in the Threefold Word. By this means we have at hand information about the spiritual world which is inaccessible to our physical senses. Yet this information is essential to form a rational and scientific understanding of reality – the dual universe, God’s scientific and rational laws of managing it, and our immortal journey from physical to rational to spiritual to celestial. Consider what happens without the scientific information about the dual universe that has been revealed to us in the Threefold Word. Without this factual knowledge of the spiritual world and how it interacts with the natural world, scientists are compelled by their method to reject whatever information comes to them about God and the spiritual world. Materialistic science is atheistic because of its inability to count as real the factual data from Divine revelation. Scientists operate by the assumption that only the material world exists and therefore facts that are not measurable by physical means are not facts, not part of science. This attitude and assumption forces atheism on every new scientist who obtains a Ph.D. in the academic world.
As a result of this attitudinal hegemony, the majority of scientists in the Western nations take up a schizoid position regarding the reality of God, heaven, spirit, and the afterlife. On weekends when they attend Church, and evenings when they engage in family religious activities, including Bible reading, the scientists act like believers. They are the same people who practice atheistic science during the rest of the week in their job and profession. In my own case, I lived this kind of schizoid mental life for most of my life and professional career. As a scientist in the academic world of Psychology, I felt challenged to tie in my professional career with my personal interest in spirituality and theology. Our national and influential professional organization called the American Psychological Association (APA), issues guidelines regarding ethical behavior of scientists, and they include warnings against the promotion and use of what it calls “pseudoscientific” methods and concepts. It does not identify God and religious life by name, but the list of what is generally considered pseudoscientific includes magic, superstition, ghosts, visions, inner voices, miracles, supernatural influences, God, Divine revelation, angels, devils, immortality, afterlife, spiritual world, truth, consciousness.
As a young Ph.D. in my twenties, these were the very things I was deeply interested in. I found out that the only legitimate method of investigation that I was allowed regarding these topics was the method of materialistic measurement. Unless it was measurable by a material operation, it was not science and should not be represented to the public as science without incurring ethical violations of professional standards.
This indiscriminate and dictatorial requirement led me, and others, to investigate the usual aspects of psychological dimensions of human behavior in the area of religion. I joined the sanctioned sub-group of the APA called Psychologists for the Study of Religious Behavior -- Division 21. I familiarized myself with the research and theory in that segment of our science of psychology. Read articles and textbooks and attended conferences. But my involvement did not last and my interest did not survive. The research consists in giving people questions to answer about their beliefs and faith, or attitude scales to fill out, or observing how many times they go to Church services and how involved they get in Church related activities, and the like. This is not what I was interested in. Other psychologists were studying the brain activity during meditation, prayer, out of body experiences, hallucinations, or experiences that people classify as supernatural such as miracles, visions, ecstatic union with God, dreams, apparitions, psychic powers, prediction of the future, talking with spirits, etc. Again, this is not what I was fundamentally interested in. These topics only skirted around what I felt I wanted to find out. And so I could not continue to invest my time and effort in these existing research topics in “transpersonal psychology.” They did not bring clarity to my understanding. I did not comprehend the world better.
Not finding what I wanted in the science literature, I cast my line of exploration into the hazy literature of theology, symbolism, mythology, Eastern philosophy, theosophy, and even some science fiction. I was interested in the content of these things, but I was dissatisfied with the method. I remained a scientist at heart. I was unable to give my mind over to the authority of someone else. I remained totally skeptical and floated around outside the circle of followers of these things. I insisted on believing nothing that I did not understand in a rational way. Why should I trust myself to anyone’s intellect? It made no sense to me. My intellect was as good as anyone’s, I felt. And so I kept searching compulsively, hoping to find, having no other choice but to continue looking. Meanwhile I was leading a schizoid life like my colleagues, continuing my activities of research in psychology, research that led to reports that were acceptable for publication in the sanctioned journals. Of course, these publications never mentioned any of the topics that I was investigating from my personal interests. This went on until 1981 when I discovered the Writings of Swedenborg in our university library.
Now things changed in a fundamental way. At last I did find what I had been hoping for. The Writings (about 30 volumes) were written by a Swedish scientist (1688-1772) who rejected the materialism of science of his day, which was the science of Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Newton. Though these authors acknowledged God in their Prefaces (as did Darwin a few years later), the rest of their work did not mention God again, or how the supernatural interacts with natural phenomena, as it is revealed in the Bible they were familiar with. Though they were men of religion by culture, their science was atheistic. In their mind, although God created the universe, He sort of left it to its own devices in the form of Natural Laws. I find this amazing, frankly, since it’s completely illogical to say that God is omnipresent (in the Preface of their books), and in the text to say that God has taken an exit from the natural world and left to run by itself on the natural laws that He created. How can omnipresence be retained in that case?
The only rational position is to say that “God is omnipresent” means that He is at the intimate center, or inmost presence, of everything, of every object, of every quality, of every energy, of every power, force, rationality, or love. God is the very source and cause of these effects. Remove God from the inmost portion of these effects, and what do you have? Nothing. No effects. Zero. Non-existence. That’s what omnipresence means when thought about it rationally. As Swedenborg had done years before he started to have dual consciousness. He published several scientific volumes on natural science – cosmology, chemistry, metallurgy, physics, optics, algebra, anatomy. Swedenborg’s Principia (1734) and Newton’s Principia (1726) make a wonderful contrast between materialistic science (Newton) and dualist science (Swedenborg).
Newton and Einstein allowed their science to mimic atheism even though they were believers, as stated in their own testimony, often the Preface to their theories. Swedenborg’s fierce intellectual integrity and rational intelligence led him to formulate a different science, a theistic science that focused directly and explicitly on the chain of command from the one omnipotent God to the rock formation, or the flowering of a plant. In Swedenborg’s theistic science, the spiritual was connected to the natural by God’s laws of order, and the two acted together as cause and effect. His rationality saw that it is the spiritual world where God is that is the cause of the natural world where we are. Hence one could not scientifically describe a particular natural phenomenon on this earth without showing how it is an effect of a spiritual phenomenon that is its cause. He also saw that the Word contains Divine scientific revelations about the rational laws by which God creates, maintains, and manages the dual universe. His rationality also showed him that there must be a spiritual Sun in the spiritual world which is living from God and from which all things are made of, such as the natural sun which is dead. He discovered some of the laws of correspondence by which the spiritual and natural phenomena interact and depend on one another. He showed how these laws are revealed in the Old and New Testaments.
Remarkably, after these rational discoveries, Swedenborg at age 57 was granted dual consciousness to prepare him to write the volumes of the Writings as the scientific revelations of what is the Divine Rational of the Divine Human Person. This Third and last portion of the Threefold Word unveils all the mysteries of religion that had been unknown to all the prior generations of humankind. Now any individual, regardless of culture and religion, can read these revelations and develop thereby a rational intellect that is spiritually enlightened regarding the means and ends of creation, religion, heaven and hell, regeneration, and salvation. With his new dual consciousness Swedenborg was able to be aware and be active in the spiritual world while he was pursuing his ordinary daily tasks in this world. He kept copious daily notes in the style of a careful, and even meticulous, investigator. Swedenborg the scientist had 27 years of dual consciousness, from age 57 to 84, during which he wrote and published the Writings in Latin between 1745 and 1771.
He conducted systematic interviews with large samples of the inhabitants of heaven and hell, and performed various empirical and experimental investigations, assisted by the inhabitants of the highest heavens who have the ability to perceive the thoughts and affections of those who are below them in spiritual development, and even to temporarily bring them forward or backward in development. They can also block out certain memories or knowledges, or empower their reasoning ability. These changes are temporary so that the people involved always fall back on their former state, which is their chief love. This cannot be altered by anyone to eternity. Nevertheless these temporary changes of spiritual state induced by angels who assisted Swedenborg, served him well in allowing him to experimentally and clinically explore their behavior and reactions. These types of data are most valuable since no scientist on earth has ever had this type of access to the spiritual world as was given Swedenborg for 27 years of daily dual consciousness.
Now you can see why I said above that this is what I had been looking for so compulsively for decades. Now at last I was not confronted with someone’s tedious authority filled with speculative fantasies about God, heaven, hell, sin, prayer, universe, afterlife, growth, Divine laws of operation, scientific revelation, angels, devils, the mind, rationality, spirituality, truth, love. These are the topics that Swedenborg handles rationally and scientifically. Never before in the history of science has this been attempted. The Writings of Swedenborg fully satisfy the scientist in me. For the first time I was able to read and know spiritual truth, explained rationally because God was rational. This really impressed me. I did not know that God was rational. I did not know that God was a Scientist, managing the universe by rational laws, like a Divine Engineer in charge of running everything around. My prior idea of God, from tradition, culture, and imagination, was that He was mystical, not logical. I had thought of God as something fuzzy, indefinable, hidden in fog and distance across the past and future. But Swedenborg the Swedish scientist presents God as a definite particular Person, known in history, and known by the highest angels he talked to, who on occasions have seen Him face-to-Face, and at all times see Him amidst the spiritual Sun. His infinite Divine Love for the human race is so burning and intense that they come out of Him as a celestial Aura or Emanation that becomes visible to the inhabitants of the highest heavens, as the spiritual Sun. You, dear reader, and I can see this spiritual Sun whenever we ascend in rational spirituality to the top of our mind called the highest heaven. He, the Divine Human Person, wills to appear to each mind.
He wills to elevate the upper portion of each mind to Himself. His purpose for willing this, He has revealed in the Writings, for it is He who is the real Author of the Writings, through Swedenborg’s as-of self authorship. You need to know this from your own perception, for other wise it is not believable, just because I assert it, or Swedenborg asserts it, or if anyone you read asserts it. That would only serve you as a child, which is a wonderful age when spiritual truths are learned through a celestial influence. Children need to hear this assertion, that the real Author of the Writings is the Lord. But as we grow in maturity and rationality, we put aside our childhood perspective of God and the world, and we put on an adult’s perspective, one that over the years, more and more reflects our own adult reasoning and preference. Now in this new individualized or personalized perspective we hear of this assertion, or we remember it from childhood, and we end up doubting it, or qualifying it in a way that it loses its pristine purity and absolute value. Hence it perishes in our mind. How sad. How sad.
Hence it is that there is no choice but to undergo reformation of one’s adult perspective and basis for reasoning about everything. Our search for truth then begins. For me it lasted from my early twenties to my early forties. Then I found the Writings in our university library. No detail is managed by anything else than the Lord’s Laws of Providence and Permissions. Thus it was that I was searching in the library for a Bible commentary because I had been feeling an intense desire to love it and understand it more. Accompanied by my conjugial wife, who shared the same passionate desire, we jointly came upon a shelf filled with books that were bound in the same collection. There were about thirty of them, written by one author Emanuel Swedenborg. My first impression was, How can one man write so many books about the Bible? We did not hesitate. I checked out Warren’s Compendium of the Writings, which was on the next shelf, because it would give me selections from the entire collection of books. My wife checked out Volume 1 of the Arcana Coelestia (Heavenly Secrets).
From that day in 1981, nothing could keep me away from daily reading of the Writings. It was the most exciting reading I could find. Nothing whatsoever came near it in competition. Wouldn’t you feel that way too? I mean, assuming you accepted it for what it is with no suspicions or doubts, namely, that it is the Lord God of the universe talking to you in conscious way, no different from Him being present in your room and teaching you something about His universe. And He tells you that you play a unique and important role in the universe, which is why He has created your soul in this particular unique way. I mean what would keep you from that room where He comes to visit you and talk to you? Would you not surely return to that room every day at the same time so that you can be in His Presence and hear Him speak to you? The movies couldn’t keep you away, not even a business deal, and certainly not another book. So this is what I mean that nothing could keep me away from reading the Writings since that first day I met Him.
Hence it is that as an adult, during our reformation, we go to Him and hear Him speak. And we make Doctrine of Life from what He says. In other words, using our academic skills for learning, we strive to understand the rational statements and descriptions in the Writings. With our knowledge of spiritual things accumulating in our understanding we gain the ability to redefine our previous concepts, ideas, and values so that they are congruent with the Doctrine of Life in our understanding. Eventually all of our ideas are cleaned and purified from nondualism and other influences that abound around us and partially form our intellect before we have reached the state of reformation sometime in adulthood. Now we are ready to begin the lifelong process of regeneration. We are spiritually enlightened because we have undergone reformation. We now have a new rational perception of spirituality. We now are consciously aware of the Holy Spirit. We now read the Writings daily with worship, humility, and fear. It is the same Lord as before, but we are closer to Him. He is more impressive in this closer state. Our spirit feels awed and humbled. Yet since He is Pure Love, we cannot be anxious or afraid for long and He grants us Divine familiarity. This is when for the first time True Science is born in our mind.
Now the Lord is Co-present in conscious awareness as we move around in our daily tasks. The more we advance to the wisdom of innocence of old age, the less and less minutes we spend daily in rational unconsciousness of His actual co-Presence. We begin with one hundred percent of daily rational un-consciousness of His actual co-Presence. We end with one hundred percent of daily rational consciousness of His actual co-Presence. At this point we are ready to be transferred to heaven. But until then and in the meantime, we must strive to achieve this goal by all the means of intelligence and ingeniousness that we can muster for the task – the most important task on earth. Thus is the heavenly preparation we undergo through regeneration.
As I began to read the Writings on a daily basis, I for the first time in my professional career, had access to a scientist’s direct observations of the process of dying, the process of resuscitation from death a few hours later, the process of entering heaven or hell, the process of change once there to eternity. For the first time as a psychologist I gained access to the anatomy of the human mind, its organs, its discrete levels, its sequence of development mapped out in minute detail. I read the medical descriptions of the human personality or spirit, laid open from within. For the first time I was able to see the objective difference between evil and good properties of the mind. Good vs. evil was not a religious or philosophical bias but a physiological mechanism or operation of the mind. I learned about the physiology of the spirit and about spiritual geography. The secret of dreams was exposed and explained as a process. Symbolism in art was uncovered and described. Undiscoverable history of the past generations was made known by the people themselves who lived them while they were on earth. I gained inside empirical knowledge of some of the actual motives and reasonings of historical figures like Aristotle, the Virgin Mary, King David, Luther, Newton, as told to Swedenborg by these very people.
Clearly, Swedenborg was not just given dual consciousness and left helpless. Every minute detail of his experiences was managed by Divine Providence to allow him to write the volumes of the Writings in such a way that they will actually be the last complementary portion of the Threefold Word, in which every sentence, phrase, and word is Divinely managed and contains infinite truths to be endlessly extracted by the forever increasing population of the immortal human race.
The Holy Spirit -- Rational Consciousness of God’s Co-Presence
From these considerations you can now see that spirituality is both rational and scientific. The amazing thing to remember is that the highest form of spirituality is heaven, which is also the highest form of human rationality. This is amazing in view of the many things I have read about “mystical union” with God which is represented by some people as opposed to doctrine or intellectual knowledge of God (“Logos”). Now I see that these claims to mystical union and ecstatic religious states belong to the realm of sensuous consciousness of the Divine, and this form of consciousness has ceased upon this earth after the giving of the Holy Spirit, as described in the New Testament. From then on, as revealed in the Writings, the Holy Spirit was to be the sole conscious connectivity possible between God and human beings on earth. This mode of connectivity clearly belongs to rational consciousness, not sensuous consciousness. It is most important to understand this distinction. The New Testament tells us that everything that was made was made through the Word or Logos. The Writings tell us that “the Word or Logos” means Divine Truth. Therefore, all created things are created by means of truth, which as already explained above, is an actual substance streaming forth from the spiritual Sun as spiritual light.
Clearly, “truth” and “rationality” are closely related terms. Further, “truth” and “rationality” are both related to “science” and to “rational explanation of observable phenomena,” that is, to reality. Since all truth is from the spiritual Sun, which is the emanation from the Divine Human Person, it is fully clear that this Divine Human Person, i.e. God, is Divine Rationality Itself, or Divine Wisdom, or Divine Truth. Therefore also, the One True Scientist from whom all True Science issues and descends into the consciousness of humanity. The vehicle for this conscious transmission is the Threefold Word. Hence, the Threefold Word is the source of True Science. No other source exists or is possible, according to the Writings. Rational consciousness of God, or rational spirituality, is achieved by internalizing the Threefold Word as Doctrine of Life. This means that we first rearrange our thinking in accordance with our understanding of the Threefold Word. This is called acquiring Doctrine of Life from the Threefold Word. When this Doctrine is in our conscious understanding, we are spiritually enlightened beings. This is the first step and is called the reformation of the understanding. It is a physiological process in the spiritual organ that operates our understanding.
The first step of reformation and spiritual enlightenment is not yet our salvation, which requires the second step. This second step is called the regeneration of the will. This too is a physiological process in the spiritual organ where the will operates. The reformation of the understanding must reach a completed stage before regeneration of the will can begin. This regeneration is induced and accomplished by God, but His action is restricted and limited by the extent of our voluntary cooperation. This cooperation involves struggling against temptations that God brings us face to face with on a daily basis for many years. The essential purpose for which He grants us those years here on earth, is to regenerate our will, not to contribute to society by accomplishments or inventions. These are uses we should do along the way, but the central purpose is not to contribute those uses but to regenerate the self. Obviously this must be the case since without regeneration all is lost. Ending up in the hells of our mind is called spiritual death. Everyone is immortal in the spirit-body, after casting aside the temporary physical body.
Ending up in hell is the worst nightmare that can befall us. Such is the savagery and rage of our mind at the corporeal level at the bottom of our mind. When our consciousness is habituated to the level of thinking and feeling at the bottom of the human mind, we are far more savage and cruel that wild beasts who live by catching each other, tearing each other apart, limb by limb, and consuming our rage by obliterating everything about the victim. Such is the ferocity and slyness of life in hell, where all people meet face to face, whose thinking and willing operates at the lowest level. Eternal experience in hell has been hinted at by the Lord in the New Testament, and fully described by the Lord in the Writings. Clearly He wants us to have a clear idea and representation of what it would be like to be an inhabitant of the hells in our mind. An accurate knowledge of our hells is necessary for the rational mind to be able to reject that state of life and consciousness. The states of hell in our mind are powerfully attractive and delightful. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of knowing this revealed truth – namely, that the inherited evil we each receive regardless of background, religion, or planet, is hidden, or more accurately said, hides itself from awareness. And still more accurately, or scientifically, we can say that they hide themselves from our awareness!
Wait a second – What do you mean “they hide themselves from our awareness.” Sounds creepy. Who are they?
It has been revealed in the Writings that we are never alone. We are dual citizens and we belong to two different cultures or societies – one natural, with our physical body and legal identity, the other spiritual, with our spirit-body and spiritual identity. You know very well the laws of your external horizontal community or citizenship. It is your country, and for some people, your religion, and for still others, the lifestyle you idolize. This is your horizontal community, and exerts itself through your physical body. You also have a vertical community, which exerts itself through your spirit-body. Swedenborg saw the spirit-body of those who are still connected to a physical body on earth. They are seen by everyone in the world of spirits who are already detached from earth, and you will see the spirit-body of those still on earth after you move on. When observed in this way, the spirit-body of earthlings appears quiescent and non reactive. This is because consciousness of the spirit-body is not permitted while still an earthling. It would be confusing, I imagine, to have the simultaneous sensory input from the spirit-body and from the physical body. At any rate, this would harm the development of rational consciousness, which is the very purpose of regeneration, which is salvation, that is, a consciousness that lives at the top of the mind through thinking and willing heavenly things only. There is also an aura of scent around the spirit-body of earthlings that deters the inhabitants of the world of spirits to approach, thus insuring that no input into the conscious mind may come directly from the world of spirits.
The outward apparent quiescence of the spirit-body of earthlings contrasts with the inner active operations going on in the spirit-body which houses the mind. This activity in the spiritual mind remains completely unconscious. The activity is operated, not by sensory input from outside the spirit-body, but by rational input from within. This rational input originates from the vertical community to which we belong. The Lord has revealed that it is He Himself who operates the universal networking of our vertical community. You can understand this better through an analogy. Consider your telephone. All people around the globe form a network with each other by acquiring and paying for, a telephone account or number. Anyone from anyplace can access anyone else who is on the network. You can call your wife in the car with a cell phone, or someone in India, or any place, even off the planet, and on the moon (though this line is not yet active!). The Lord wills that the entire human race should form one network. This inter-communication of the entire race, past and present, on the planets or in the heavens and the hells, is an amazing new scientific revelation of enormous importance for our societies on earth. I have coined the phrase “vertical community” to designate this mental networking in the human race.
This is what meant when I said that “we are never alone.” Our physical body may appear to be alone, away from our horizontal community, when we are in a prison, or an uninhabited island, or on a boat lost in the middle of the ocean. But wherever and however we are in relation to the horizontal community, we are never far or near from the vertical community, but always fully in it, when we walk, talk, dream, think, reason, desire, enjoy, hate, or fear. The Lord wills that every individual on earth and in the spiritual world, remain connected to others all the time. It has been revealed that if this connection were broken for a moment, the entire race would perish. The Lord’s operation of the vertical networking has been revealed. He operates by bringing into contact an individual somewhere on earth, with a society somewhere in the spiritual world. Note this: our horizontal community is mixed and diverse in many ways due to cultural, religious, and personality differences. If you travel to a new city or country you will see people who differ in many ways, some of whom you may enjoy being with, others whom you would do anything to avoid. But societies in the vertical community are organized differently.
One’s membership in a spiritual society is not determined by geographic location – as in horizontal communities, but by mental state. Those who have very similar mental states belong to one particular society, and no one can live in a spiritual society when they have mental states that clash with the predominant mental states of that society. This is not surprising from our experience with horizontal communities, where we live, work, and spend time with people who have similar mental states to ours, and we avoid as much as we can, coming into contact with people who are in an antagonistic state to ours. When we cannot avoid the contact, we experience unpleasantness, fear, discomfort, need for relief, and even panic and agony. These emotions are familiar to us. We experience them through the action of the Lord bringing this or that spiritual society in communication with our unconscious spiritual mind. The result of the interaction descends by correspondence into our natural mind where we can become conscious of their presence in our mind.
How utterly amazing and even baffling, at first!
For example, the thought occurs that we are then merely robots. Our thoughts and feelings are not ours after all. We are nothing but radios or television sets or computers in a biological form. Etc. But this is vain thinking. If we go back to the True Science of the Writings we can have the real answer – the concept of “as-of self.”
The revelation of the vertical community is pretty important, as we have seen, but equally important and astonishing is the revelation of the as-of self. Our consciousness is elevated when we understand the rational idea that God is omnipotent. The logical consequence of this idea is that no other power exists. In other words, wherever there is power, it is God’s power. For example, our heart is beating. This takes power. Where is this power? Is it in the burning of calories by the action of the cells in the heart muscle? No, because how could the burning of calories generate power? Where does that power come from? The inherent motion of the atoms within the molecules? No, because where would that power come from? Clearly God cannot give His power, or any power, to someone or something else than Himself. If He gave power away, He would no longer be omnipotent.
So there is no logical or rational way of having power belong to anything but to God.
This being the actuality and reality, where is the power that keeps the operation of thinking and willing going in our organ of the mind? This power cannot be from ourselves. We cannot supply the power for the brain or the mind. Now this: Where does the power come from for making decisions, choosing between right and wrong? Choosing is a mental operation, and an operation takes power. The fact is that God is the only one who can supply the power to our mental operations and to our feelings. A feeling is an operation in the organ of the will. This takes power.
So God supplies the moment by moment power it takes to do our willing and thinking. So now the question arises again: If God is behind the power of my choosing between good and evil, how can I be held responsible for that choice?
The answer can only be understood through the concept of the as-of self that the Lord has given humanity for its salvation. It is indeed the actuality that we have no power for anything, including making decisions or being prudent, or being good or evil, but God gives us the appearance that we have power of our own. This is not a genuine reality but an appearance of reality. God allows us to experience that we make our own choices, that we have our own power to think this or that, or to lift the finger or not. But in fact we do not have this power. The inhabitants of the heavens told Swedenborg that their greatest joy is to acknowledge that they have zero power of their own and that all power they exhibit is the Lord’s alone. Yet, even as they know this and think it, the sensation they have is that they are acting from themselves. This is what gives them the sense of heavenly freedom and wisdom. And they said the second they think that they are moving or thinking from themselves, they fall out of their heaven, down into hell. Those who are in hell all believe that they have their own power and are acting from themselves, vehemently denying the idea that they have their power from God.
And so, these are the two explanatory concepts we need to ascend in consciousness: First, knowing that only God has any power or life, and second, knowing that we think by means of the vertical community.
God leads and manages our thinking and willing first, by supplying the power for the operation, and second, by supplying the content of the operation. The content of thinking and feeling, which is their quality, is supplied by the spiritual societies that the Lord brings into contact with our unconscious spiritual mind. If we feel rage it’s because the Lord has connected us to a hellish society that has rage as its chief love. If we feel compassion it’s because the Lord has connected us to a heavenly society that has compassion as its chief love. In this way, moment by moment, day and night, the Lord connects us to particular societies of our vertical community, supplying the content and quality of our experiential life – our thinking and willing.
Now the obvious question arises: Well, if God supplies the power, and the content, and manages all the details, why does He need to connect us to hellish societies, why not only to heavenly societies.?
The revealed explanation is that God manages our as-of self from the background, without showing it to our conscious awareness. Therefore He sets limits on how much He can control it one way rather another. In other words, if He connected us only to heavenly societies, how would we feel? We would feel like we are dying, that we do not want to live in such agony. This actually was demonstrated to Swedenborg numerous times, namely, when inhabitants from the hells were assisted by angels so that they could be elevated to the upper regions of their minds. When they came into contact with the heavenly societies they fell into a swoon and life was ebbing out of them. In terrible agony, they begged to be allowed to return to their former state.
God therefore imposes limits on His management procedures of our mental activities, being careful to supply us with the right amount of this and that, so that we can retain the motivation for living, and consequently for improving and regenerating. And in fact, with the new revelations, we can actually map out the societies with which we are brought into contact. This tells us what our unconscious needs are that the Lord allows us to retain, namely, the need for certain evil delights without which we feel that life is leaving us. The Lord keeps bending and managing our mental operations through the vertical community, with a view to gradually cutting off the communication with evil societies. This indeed is the process of regeneration, which He performs for us, to the extent that we are willing to cooperate.
God has revealed the medical process by which He regenerates every person in the universe. We have discussed the vertical community and the as-of self and the two chief mechanisms of regeneration. The third component we must add to the first two, is the concept of “temptations.” People think of temptations as something private and personal, deep in the heart, hidden from view. One is pulled in two opposite directions, one moment giving in, another moment resisting and going back. People might see the beads of sweat and the shaking of the hands, but that’s all, they cannot see the temptation you experience within. But of course you are never alone, and in your temptations, there is actually a whole crowd of people present, participating. It makes sense in view of what we’ve discussed already. What is a temptation but a syndrome of events in an episode. Step by step we undergo the course of the temptation – seeing something, thinking something, smelling something, imagining something, concocting something, intending something, wishing, fearing, avoiding, feeling irresistibly attracted, feeling obsessed, compelled from within, and so on. It is a very active state of mind with lots of mental operations.
But of course, as discussed, mental operations cannot take place except in a chained connection in the vertical community. Many societies have to be brought into contact with our unconscious spiritual mind in order to accomplish these sequenced mental events in our natural conscious mind. The Lord brings certain societies nearer to us, even for just a moment, then switches the connection to another society, perhaps also just for a moment, and so on, until the sequence of steps of each temptation runs itself through.
There is a way of becoming aware of this sequence of steps in temptations. The Writings command regular self-examination as a method for becoming aware of the evils in our temptations. A form of self-examination that I have practiced for years is the self-witnessing method, described in Volume 3 of A Man of the Field available here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
Why are we required to perform self-witnessing or self-monitoring activities? In order to identify the thoughts and feelings that we habitually have in the course of a day, every day, throughout our adult life. Once identified, the mental operation must be tagged by applying our understanding of Doctrine of Life from the Threefold Word. The bottom line of this application must be the final decision: Is this from heaven or from hell? When I was in training as a psychologist I was given the value that it is unintelligent to think in black and white terms, either or morality, on any subject. Besides “prejudice” another example frequently mentioned is the Church where everything is either good or evil, with nothing in between. This training philosophy attempted to destroy the categorical dualism of good vs. evil, absolute truth vs. relative truth, guilty vs. innocent, right vs. wrong, heaven vs. hell, devil vs. angel. I believe that this has not changed in the academic world and that today the claim that spirituality can be rational and scientific, would be rejected without receiving full examination. To those who already despise absolute dualism as a scientific claim, it is hardly possible to give a full, fair, and impartial, or scientific, examination of the nearly 30 volumes of the Writings, or even of this one book.
The Writings discuss a mechanism of protection called “the Cherubim” which is in place to protect people from being spiritually injured by the Threefold Word. All sorts of people in every generation read portions of the Threefold Word – students, scholars, general readers, professional clergy, scientists, atheists, people from other religions, educated and uneducated, movie directors, poets, cultists, and so on. None of these categories of readers read the Threefold Word for the purpose of regeneration. None of them receive access to the spiritual meaning of the Threefold Word. Without this access, the only meaning they are aware of is the surface literal meaning. This meaning is about spiritual topics, but talks about them in natural meanings. Our comprehension of spiritual topics is therefore not spiritual but merely natural. We learn these terms, but we do not see them rationally or spiritually -- God, heaven, sin, punishment, angel, miracle, sacrifice, prayer, hell, resurrection, forgiveness. Everyone reading the Threefold Word is allowed to have natural ideas about these spiritual topics, but only one category of readers are allowed to have a rational-spiritual perception of the meaning contained or implied in the literal sentences.
This category of people are those who read the Threefold Word as a method to be regenerated. They know that the Lord commands us to regenerate our character, and it is the condition for entering His Kingdom of Heaven. Because they apply what they read to their life, to their thinking and willing all day long, they are enlightened and given perception of the spiritual meaning of the sentences in the Threefold Word. This enlightenment allows us to go further and further in our regeneration by cooperating with the Lord in particular ways, rather than general ways.
The most general way of cooperating with the Lord is to make a confession of all our sins and ask for forgiveness, usually accompanied by some ritual of giving, bathing, or praying. The Lord in the Writings tells us that this is not good enough to allow us to regenerate. When I was young growing up in an orthodox Jewish family in Transylvania in the 1930s, it was strongly impressed upon us children how important it was to prepare adequately for the Day of Atonement (“Yom Kippur Day”). This was once a year according to the lunar calendar, and when Yom Kippur fell on a Saturday or “Shabbos,” the overlapping holiness was so great that it could not be described. One prepared oneself for the fateful day by long prayers, by fastings, by walking without shoes, and by sitting on the floor instead of a chair. These physical acts had to be accompanied by specific prayers. When the Day of Atonement arrives, the whole people (or tribe) gathers in a few worship houses early in the morning, and they stay together until late afternoon when they go home and have a feast. But during the Day of Atonement everybody has to show up in the synagogue, read the confessions of the people together out loud, and silently to yourself. These confessions are written in Hebrew and Aramaic and I never knew what they were as we all recited them by phonetic reading, which we are taught to do since age 3.
Besides the recitations we also had to beat our chest each time we recited an evil deed, though we did not understand the language. Finally, we had to kneel a lot during that day, and also, cry a lot. Crying and sobbing out loud was a specialty of some people, I noticed. They were very loud and convincing. The purpose of public crying, sobbing, and beating of the chest, is to convince God that we are being sincere. When I became an adolescent I flatly refused to go to the synagogue on Saturdays and celebration Holidays. To avoid a fight with my mother, who herself did not go but felt I should, I would go to the movies for a few hours than go back home, pretending I was in the synagogue. I’m not proud of my rebellion. Yet I also feel that I was moved to rebel by the Lord so that I remain free to keep climbing the ladder of rational spirituality. I believe that I was willing to be led by the Lord, even if unconsciously at that time, because of my love for rationality. He secretly led my mind until my early forties, when I started to recognize Him consciously and rationally, as I read the New Testament, and later, the Writings.
God secretly leads every individual’s mind, regardless of background or belief. Those who are willing, are ultimately led by Him to heaven. Swedenborg reports that the heavens are vast and populated with multitudes of people called “angels.” All of them while on earth, were evidently willing to be led there by the Lord. Nothing has helped me stay the course as much as the spiritual discipline of daily self-witnessing. As we do this on a daily basis for many years, our character is gradually being regenerated by the Lord. This is salvation because this is the only way God has provided that we acquire a character that is capable of sustaining life in heaven. In other words, this method of regeneration is the only way by which our consciousness can be raised to the top of our mind and maintained there to eternity.
(Note: I have written a chapter called the Doctrine of the Wife For Regenerating Husbands. It is available here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
To look for God by the vehicle of sensuous consciousness is not a method of regeneration as specified above. We cannot regenerate by meditating or by trance, by experiencing ecstatic union with the Divine, by communicating with “more evolved” beings, by sacrificing, by worshipping, by touching sacred objects, by pious fervor, by ritual, by witnessing or performing “miracles,” and so on. These are all methods of sensuous consciousness that cannot regenerate the Fallen inherited human character of evil. The Holy Spirit was given for regeneration. “Holy Spirit” means Divine Truth or the Threefold Word. The Threefold Word is the Holy Spirit that was given for acquiring rational consciousness of God. By reading and understanding the Threefold Word we are taking in the Holy Spirit to be active in us. This means that the thinking operation in the organ of the understanding is being rearranged, or reformed, so that second by second, our mind is in the stream of truth as we think about this or that, and reason, and make choices. This is rational spirituality.
Today God’s direct co-Presence is within our conscious rational mind, not the sensuous mind as in former civilizations. This is why rational spirituality is the developmental pathway to conscious closeness to God. It is this closeness that defines the quality of love and wisdom in our life of eternity.
Rational consciousness of God was initiated with the Old Testament, then brought to a new high level by the New Testament, and at last completed with the Writings. The Threefold Word was completed in 1771, when the last book of the Writings was published by Swedenborg. The tile was “The True Christian Religion.” Many people since then have acknowledged the Writings as the Word of God, alongside with the Bible. They have formed a small but vigorous and thriving intellectual Christian community called the New Church. In their Church services and sermons, they use selections from the Threefold Word. In my opinion it is good and right that the New Church has been founded based on the Writings. But this is not the whole story.
The Writings have been given to all people regardless of religion and culture. What is going to unify the peoples of this earth? Love and truth. The Writings have been given as a source of truth. When this truth is acknowledged as Divine and we understand it rationally, the result is spiritual enlightenment. This spiritual enlightenment is nothing else than knowledge of True Science. The Writings give us scientific revelations about all the things of religion. The New Church school logo in Bryn Athyn Pennsylvania carries the phrase “Nunc Licet” from the last volume of the Writings. It is Latin for “Now it is permitted,” and is discussed above in Section 15.2 with a quote from the Writings. It refers to the end of mystery in religion. It redefines faith as truth. Rational faith is truth. Blind faith or mystical faith or persuasive faith is not truth.
God now speaks to the human race through the Threefold Word. And what does He talk about? He talks about Himself and about us. He tells us why He created us, how He created us, why He allowed us to Fall into materialism, how He proposes to take us out of it, what awaits us if we cooperate and what awaits us if not. Along the way God tells us about the dual universe at large, the many populated earths, the discrete degrees of all creation, the Divine Laws of Providence and Permissions by which the dual universe is maintained in good order, about the science of correspondences by which natural phenomena are produced, about the levels of the mind, the developmental steps of history, the relation between history, evolution, and personality, about the character and spiritual fate of animals, and much more. What would be an obvious name for these scientific revelations by God? True Science.
And so it is that the last work of the Writings is called True Christian Religion, which it is, but it is also True Science, which many have not yet realized. God has given us True Science as a source of endless scientific knowledge to be extracted by rational rules, correspondences, enlightenment, and regeneration. All four conditions must be present for anyone to see that the Threefold Word is True Science. True Science is the Divine Rational descending upon the human mind. No one can define True Science or discover its methods, except True Science itself. True Science is untainted by human error and limitation. True Science is the Science of God – both from God and about God. A science about God that is not from God cannot be True Science. If anything from the human mind is added to True Science, it is immediately destroyed and is no longer True in our mind. We may think that what we add is True, but it is not.
True Science remains of God from God in our mind when we understand it and take it in for regeneration. When we take it in with this purpose, we would never dare add anything to it, and when we take it in for any other purpose, we are prevented from understanding anything spiritual. It is far better to understand nothing spiritual in the Threefold Word, than to understand something that is then misused or modified to suit oneself. This is called “profanation” and those who are unwilling to turn aside from what is sacred, though they despise it, precipitate themselves into the lowest hells of the human mind, where they suffer more than those in lesser hells above them. The Cherubim have been given to protect people from profanation by hiding from them any spiritual meaning or thought about the things discussed in the Threefold Word.
Any individual today, regardless of background, can read the Writings in the original Latin, or more likely in a translation, like I have, can comply with the four conditions just mentioned, and thereby obtain salvation and everlasting happiness in heaven. This is a guarantee because it is brought about by God through a scientific process that He has revealed to us as True Science in the Threefold Word. Salvation is a Divine medical intervention that includes these four conditions or steps:
(1) rational understanding of the Threefold Word (which requires regular, long-term, and serious study)
(2) thinking by means of the revealed correspondences (as taught and illustrated in the Writings
(3) enlightenment by means of reformation (which is the reordering of everything in the mind to fit the requirements specified by the Writings exclusively with no other influences allowed)
(4) regeneration of character (which is a lifelong progressive struggle with temptations of three kinds – natural, spiritual, and celestial).
These conditions are provided for by God. He is a close partner in this process of regeneration, bringing temptations to us that we can handle, keeping others from us, timing everything in excruciating detail, day by day, minute by minute. Our task is to cooperate by exerting as-of self effort to resist the temptations we face, one by one, and to allow God to bring us to victory over them, one by one, in a progressive sequence of increasing rational spirituality. The temptations are necessary for regeneration. This is because salvation must be something that we freely choose out of love for God. We lay everything aside and elevate this love for God higher than any other love. Without temptations we could not freely choose to leave hell behind and to set our course for heaven. Heaven is not a place to which we are admitted by permission. It is a state of mind which we achieve by freely choosing between our lower and higher self. That is, between heaven at the top of our mind, and hell, at the bottom.
We already have heaven in our mind. We do not need permission to be admitted, or meet certain external conditions. Heaven is already ours, already within us, as God reveals in the New Testament. And so is hell. We have the capacity to go to either state of consciousness, everyone of us who are called human beings. And so God has already done what is possible and perfect. Now He waits. He waits for each one of us separately to cooperate in regeneration, to suffer ourselves to step through the temptations God brings us to face, and to choose good and to reject evil. We must make this choice repeatedly in our thinking and willing all day long every day.
What does it take to bring ourselves to cooperate in the Divine medical process of character regeneration by means of the painful struggle against temptations?
True Science in our mind explains what we must do and what the process is. It explains what stands in the way – the love of self, which has many branches like the love of dominion, the love of possessions, the love of merit, the love of cruelty to all who do not favor us, against whom we are filled with hatreds and murders, the love of hurting and corrupting innocence, the love of hurting the institution of marriage, the love of hurting the Lord and all heavenly things. All this together is called the love of self that opposes our cooperation in regeneration. There are also cultural influences, religious influences, philosophical influences, all of which oppose cooperation in regeneration. Evil loves in our will are married to falsities in our understanding that justify them. Evil loves cannot be married to truths. Truths can only be married to good loves which we are to acquire from regeneration.
The steps of our regeneration have been laid out in the Writings in amazing detail and intimacy. These developmental steps were created by the Lord when He was a Child growing up on earth. God incarnated so that He can unite the Human He acquired by supernatural birth to the Divine He already was from everlasting. By accomplishing this task of unition, God created a new entity that before this was not accessible to the human race, namely, the Visible Divine Human Person. This Visible Divine Human Person has now revealed Himself in His Divine Rational Mind. This is True Science or the revelations of the Second Coming that ushers in the last new age that is to last forever. The Lord has now revealed in the Writings how He accomplished this unification process that produced the Visible Divine Human Person. In a remarkable recent book titled The Path: The Inner Life Jesus Christ (Rochester, MI: Fountain Publishing, 2002), Rev. Geoffrey Childs traces an outline of what the Writings describe about the spiritual meaning of the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph in the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament.
The Threefold Word is written in a special and unique sacred language whereby each phrase contains meanings within meanings that can be extracted endlessly by future generations. These meanings are scientific revelations arranged in rational order that represents the Divine Rational Thinking of the Divine Human Person. This is so important to us because everything around us – the world – and everything within us – thoughts and feelings, march to the beat of order imposed absolutely by the Divine Rational Thinking of the Divine Human Person. This is a scientific fact. It is true reality. We know it from God Himself because it is His Rational Voice that Speaks to our consciousness when we acknowledge, read, and understand the Writings of Swedenborg. No one can believe this on anyone’s authority, and if they do, it is merely a persuasive belief that does not sink down into the permanent immortal character (located in the spirit-body in the world of spirits). One can only hold this view as a conclusion we come to from ourselves, each of us as individuals. God brings this view of Himself to every person on this planet, one way or another – this is discussed in the Writings.
Geoffrey Childs encapsulates and summarizes the sequence of mental development undergone by the Divine Child Jesus. There are almost no details in the New Testament about the Lord’s Childhood days. The revelation of those events could not be revealed prior to the Writings of Swedenborg. It takes a rational understanding, prepared by education and science, to comprehend those Divine events and how they affect the human race. Consider this very idea in itself. It is the idea, first, that crucial types of mental events that punctuated the daily life of Jesus in His childhood, are recorded in the narrative in Genesis regarding Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, as well as their families and the history of events described in those portions of the Old Testament.
It takes a rational mind, trained in science and abstraction, to be able to understand what this means, and further, to be able to see the proof that is presented. But it doesn’t take technical knowledge or expertise, nor a higher than average intelligence to be able to understand the vast majority of the Writings. I would say that today that level can be described as a high school graduate, which in Western countries refer to the majority of people. As education of societies deepen, and science becomes more real, almost everybody in any human population will be able to understand most of the Writings, if not all of it. For regeneration it is enough that the person understand some of the Writings, and continue to persist in its study and application to one’s daily thinking and willing.
Consider again the first fact I’m mentioning here regarding the “inner life of Jesus Christ.” Namely that the developmental steps He underwent in His Childhood are recorded, or specified in detail, in the Genesis narratives of the four patriarchs. How can this be? All sorts of objections arise. Genesis was written by Moses a thousand years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. How could Moses record the mental life of Jesus? It doesn’t make sense. Indeed, it doesn’t make sense to the natural-rational level of thinking. This is because there is nothing in the order of the natural in our mind that can justify or explain such a thing. If we move a level of thinking above this, we can turn it into something mystical rather than rational and scientific. We can say, for example, quoting the Lord, Well, to God all things are possible. Nevertheless, this type of blind faith does not allow penetrate to the inner character, and therefore we cannot use this mystical faith to elevate our consciousness of God all the way to heaven in our mind.
Then we can go to the final step above this, the level of thinking that is scientific and rational, that explains in abstract terms and with demonstrations, how it is that this is possible, and especially, how you can see for yourself that it is so. This is why the Lord calls it Rational Faith or “Nunc Licet” faith. Now “it is permitted” to “enter rationally” into the “mysteries of faith” – so sayeth the Lord in the Writings. The Threefold Word is the connecting point of heaven and earth. Wherever ideas from the Threefold Word are in people’s minds, there it is where the connection is maintained between heaven and earth. Without this connection, earth is lost, and without earth, heaven is lost. The connection between heaven and earth serves to transmit Divine Truth consciously, and Divine Good unconsciously. In other words, we pick Divine Truth from the Threefold Word in our understanding when we acknowledge it as Divine Truth in our mind. Every single such Divine Truth concept that we place in our understanding, is filled by God with Divine Good.
This is an amazing process. The ideas of truth in our mind, when they come from the Threefold Word only, are capable of acting as “cognitive vessels” that hold affective powers. It is up to us to read, understand, and hold the Divine Truth from the Threefold Word. There is no other way in creation to produce these cognitive vessels or receptor organs for good. The goods that we receive in this way are the powers of virtue, the joys of love, and the enlightenment of wisdom. We receive Divine Truth in our conscious understanding and there it operates in our daily thinking and willing. Divine Truth is useless for salvation unless we make to it to operate on our daily thinking and willing. Once Divine Truth is in our mind, and honored there, the Lord can insert into our will numberless and measureless goods that empower us for a higher life.
Note that in this process both the truth and the good in our mind is not ours but His. We act as-of self, as He wills that we not be conscious of His influx of good into our mind. As a result, our sensuous consciousness of our thinking and feeling, experiences the process as our own, despite the fact that our rational consciousness acknowledges and understands how it is actually not our own.
Isn’t this an amazing process? How intimately the Lord’s Mind and our mind are intertwined! How closely we work together to achieve who we are, who He wants us to be, and angel increasing in love and wisdom to eternity.
The Lord in the Writings has revealed that His life on earth was spent in fashioning a developmental sequence for the human mind that will take it from its fallen evil state to heaven. This was the purpose for the Lord’s Incarnation as a Child on this earth. This Child was of course unique and different from human boys and girls, since their soul is a unique offshoot of the father’s soul. But the soul of the Jesus Child, born of a virgin woman, was not an offshoot of a father. The soul of Jesus was Jehovah, the Creator God of the universe known as Father. Jesus was not an offshoot of the Father. He was the Father. It makes a discrete difference whether you think that Jesus, also called the “Son of God,” was an offshoot of the Father, or was the Father Himself. This idea is difficult to accept because difficult to comprehend when thinking naturally about it, that is, materialistically. Then your thinking and reasoning follow a natural order, and from a natural order perspective, the “Son of God” is not the Father, but another Divine Person.
As already discussed in the book, to have more than one Divine Person who is omnipotent God, is not a rational or scientific idea. It is a mystical idea. To remain rational, we must equate Jesus and Jehovah, if we consider both to be God. In that case Jesus is one Name for God, Jehovah is another Name for God. Of course there are great spiritual secrets hidden in this equation, which you can obtain by studying the Writings. For now, it is sufficient to understand that God Himself came to His people as Jesus. Of course, this created a special condition in Jesus, as ably reviewed in the Geoffrey Childs book. When Jesus was born His first days and weeks were not enlightened as to who He was on the inside. His higher self was God, but His lower self did not know it. Then at one point, while He was still an Infant, His Higher Self broke through to His consciousness and He became aware of who He was. With the ensuing years of growth the young Jesus understood His mission and His Inner Self, which He referred to as His “Father.”
Already as a young Child, Jesus burned with the desire to accomplish His mission. The fate of the entire human evolution depended on His full success. He experienced enormous and unbelievable temptations of anxiety and agony during those times when He became unconscious again of His Higher Self. Throughout His life on earth the Lord alternated between periods of consciousness and unconsciousness of who He was. He never forgot who He was or why He came, even in his periods of unconsciousness of the Father. Rather, He lowered His consciousness to the human thinking operation of the natural-rational mind. He entrapped His consciousness in that level of the mind, where He then suffered unbelievable agony. Why did He do this? We must have a rational and scientific explanation or else we hesitate to accept it.
The Lord entrapped His consciousness in the natural-rational mind in order to create natural-rational solutions to the puzzles in life that keeps us in a fallen state. The actuality is that the fallen human race is also entrapped in the natural levels of the mind. This is what the Fall is – being unable to rise to rational consciousness of duality, of the spiritual. Hence the Lord had to fashion a mental way out of our dilemma. It had to be a way that we can understand and accept. And so by His infinite Love and pity for our suffering, He humbled Himself by bending the heavens and coming out into the natural world as a helpless Child, whose physical body and natural mind was like the physical body and natural mind of the rest of us. He assumed this lowered state of thinking and willing so that He could come up with a reasoning process that would satisfy our human understanding. Once we understand it rationally, we can accept it and we can love Him for it, and this reciprocal love He is able to make us increasingly happy to eternity.
In His states of self-entrapment at the human level of thinking and feeling, Jesus was confronted by the entire hells. The hells and the heavens had been advised as to the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior of Humankind. The inhabitants of the heavens were joyful, though concerned about the Lord trapped on earth. The inhabitants of the hells were gleeful, filled with a new sense that their hatred for God could now be vented on the entrapped Jesus. Now Jehovah, as the Higher Self of Jesus, connected the natural mind of Jesus to the hells in the way that He connects each of us today in our vertical community, as already discussed. Jesus thus underwent a series of temptations throughout the days He was on earth. This series was precisely timed and created by God so that in Jesus, it retains a permanent form, which then can be stepped through by anyone, thus saving the human race from hell.
So this is what Jesus was doing while on earth. He was “binding the hells” which means that He was fashioning the rational arguments and ideas that all human beings can understand as a way of resisting our hell and rising above it. Recall that hell is not some place in the spiritual world or purgatory. It is within every human mind, just like heaven is. Hell is the level of thinking and feeling in the corporeal mind when it is separated from the higher rational and spiritual mind. The human race was in hell, and since the Fall ,every person at birth is in hell as to the will. Jesus had to engineer a way out of hell for us, a way out of the bottom of the mind where we were stuck in our thinking and willing. Today we are still in hell at birth and remain there until we reform our understanding and regenerate our will. The inner life of Jesus on earth was the method by which God used to create a pathway for the consciousness out of the corporeal level where it had gotten stuck. But we can step through the steps of rational spirituality that Jesus stepped through in His struggles against the hells while in a state of “exinanition” or entrapment in a lower form of consciousness.
Quoting from The Path:
In the story in Genesis, Isaac did not know that he himself was to be sacrificed: “Behold the fire and the wood; and where is the lamb for a burn-offering?” (Gen. 22:7) These words touch our hearts. In the celestial sense, they go even more deeply. The young Divine rational, in a state of limited truth, asks the Divine itself, “Where are those in the human race who are to ‘be sanctified’ or who are to be saved? (see AC 2805). Where are the good people that I may save? I don’t see any.”
All of the Lord’s temptations focused on human kind – here on the youthful Jesus’ tender love for us. But His rational mind is still in very limited truth – a state in which things are not clear to Him. In His outward confusion, He cannot see how humankind can be rescued. He despairs.
(...)
A picture of this is the boy Isaac, bound upon the altar, with his father, raising a knife to kill him. His [Jesus’] rational level is bound (AC 2813, 2814).
Imagine the love and fear in Isaac. He loved his father. Yet his father was about to sacrifice him! (...) Looking from the appearances in this still limited rational (AC 2814), and with the hells viciously attacking, the youthful Jesus feels helpless. He lies upon the wood of the altar, bound and apparently about to be destroyed. (...) Jesus feels terrible despair. But, instead of yielding in this despair, He endures, and a miracle happens. First, “whatever was from the merely human” rational level dies (AC 2818). What despaired in Him dies. In its place is born a higher rational, a Divine rational, that can clearly see the possibility of salvation for all people. This part of Him becomes “the Son of God,” the Divine Human.
(...)
What takes place of former doubts within Jesus, a new level in the Divine Rational glorified, this can save us. Now from His Divine Human in His glorified rational level, He can see the possible reception within humankind and begin to offer salvation. A true rational replaces one that was bound, Isaac is freed from the altar. (...)The inmost love of the boy Jesus is moved with delight, because those He feared would be lost can now be saved!
(...)
The Lord provided a ram for the sacrifice. The ram represents all those of the spiritual church or genius. To sacrifice the ram here means to sanctify – to save. By the glorification of His Divine rational, the Lord is now able to save all those who are spiritual from the time of this glorification onwards. In addition, this same degree of glorification opens salvation to all the good people in the world who are represented by the families of Nahor in Haran, mentioned at the end of Genesis 22. These are all the good Gentiles on earth.
Jesus liberates the spiritual people and sanctifies them. That is, as the ram was freed from the thicket, so spiritual people are given the means to escape from mental and spiritual entanglement in merely earthly knowledge. The Lord shows them the way to their rebirth, to their reformation and regeneration. This way is first shown in the New Testament, but then is fully unfolded in the Writings of Swedenborg. The “glory in the clouds” is revealed (HH 1), and now the era of true science is gradually dawning. The two foundations of truth (SE 5709), the Word and nature, will meet and support each other. (Geoffrey Childs, The Path, 74-77).
Now how does Rev. Geoffrey Childs know these details? It’s because he is actually merely summarizing and following in an outline form what the Writings present in the 12-volume Arcana Coelestia where the narrative of the four patriarchs as given in the Old Testament, is explicated in their internal sense by means of the code of correspondences in which they are written. In other words, you need to accept and understand the idea that the Threefold Word is written by correspondences. This is another great scientific revelation that will accelerate the progress of science. The Arcana Coelestia go through a word for word and verse by verse analysis of the Books of Genesis and Exodus in the Old Testament. In this analysis the correspondences are revealed. I discussed this topic in prior sections, though not extensively. When you study the correspondences you can begin to see the Divinity of the Threefold Word.
It’s important to realize that the same correspondences apply throughout the Old and New Testaments, even though they were written independently by dozens of writers over many centuries. None of these writers had any inkling that what they were writing down were in the code of correspondences. The prophetic authors were just writing down what they could see in their visions, or the narratives of the historical events they participated in. Unbeknownst to them, God insured two things. First, that those events, names, numbers, and places actually occurred historically and are accurate facts. Second, that only those events and visions were recorded that corresponded to the mental pathway that Jesus was going to fashion in Himself centuries later.
The enormity of this coincidence is not believable. It has to be understood rationally and scientifically as to how Jesus accomplished this amazing event. I quote portions of the text from Arcana Coelestia:
Verse 1 “And Jehovah said to Abram, Go away from your land, and from the place of your nativity and from your father's house, to the land which I will cause you to see.” [Genesis 12]
The events described here and in what follows took place in history as they are recorded, yet the historical events as described are representative, and every word carries a spiritual meaning. This is so in all of the historical parts of the Word, not only in the Books of Moses but also in those of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, all of which books contain nothing else than historical narratives. But although they are historical narratives in the sense of the letter, in the internal sense there are arcana of heaven lying hidden there. These arcana cannot possibly be seen as long as the mind keeps its eye fixed on the historical details, nor are they disclosed until the mind removes itself from the sense of the letter.
(...)
From this one may recognize that the vessels are one thing and the essential elements within the vessels another. The vessels are natural, and the essential elements within the vessels are spiritual and celestial. In the same way the historical narratives of the Word, as with each individual expression in the Word, are general, natural, indeed material vessels that have spiritual and celestial things within them. These things never come into sight except through the internal sense. (AC 1407)
(...)
'Go away from your land' means the bodily and worldly things from which He was to depart. This is clear from the meaning of 'land', which is varied depending on the person or thing to which it refers, as also in Genesis 1 where 'land', or 'earth', likewise meant the external man, and elsewhere, 82, 620, 636, 913. The reason why here it means bodily and worldly things is that these belong to the external man. (AC 1411).
Because the subject here is the Lord these words contain more arcana than anyone can possibly conceive and make known. For here in the internal sense is meant the Lord's first state after He had been born. Because that state is a very deep arcanum any intelligible explanation of it is hardly possible. Let it be said simply that He was like any other human being, except that He was conceived from Jehovah, yet born of a woman who was a virgin, and that by birth from that virgin He took on all the weaknesses that are common to all. These weaknesses are bodily, and are referred to in this verse in that He was to depart from them in order that celestial and spiritual things might be brought into view for Him.(AC 1414)
(...)
Verse 14 “And Jehovah said to Abram after Lot had been separated from him, Lift up your eyes, now, and look from the place where you are, towards the north, and towards the south, and towards the east, and towards the west.”
'Jehovah said to Abram' means that Jehovah so spoke to the Lord. 'After Lot had been separated from him' means when the desires of the External Man had been removed so that they did not obstruct. 'Lift up your eyes, now, and look from the place where you are' means the Lord's state at that time from which He was able to perceive things to come. 'Towards the north, and towards the south, and towards the east, and towards the west' means all men, as many as there are in the entire universe. (AC 1601)
'Towards the north, and towards the south, and towards the east, and towards the west' means all men, as many as there are in the entire universe. This is clear from the meaning of these four directions. In the Word north, south, east, and west each have their own particular meaning. 'North' means people who are outside the Church, that is to say, who are in darkness as regard truths of faith; and it also means the darkness residing with the individual. 'South' however means people who are inside the Church, that is to say, who are in light as regards cognitions; and likewise it means the light itself. 'East' means people who lived in the past; and it also means celestial love, as shown already. 'West' however means people who will live in the future, and likewise people who do not have love. What they mean is clear from the train of thought in the internal sense. But when north, south, east, and west are all mentioned together, as they are here, they mean everybody living throughout the whole world, as well as those who lived in the past and those who will do so in the future. They also mean the states of the human race as regards love and faith. (AC 1605)
'Pharaoh' is the natural in general which has now become inactive, leaving everything to the celestial of the spiritual, which is 'Joseph'. The seven years of the abundance of corn in the land of Egypt are the factual knowledge to which good from the celestial of the spiritual can be attached, while the seven years of famine are subsequent states when no good is present within factual knowledge except that coming from the Divine celestial of the spiritual, which is received from the Lord's Divine Human. A detailed explanation of this is given in what follows below. (AC 5192)
“And bring me out of this house” [Genesis 40] That this signifies deliverance from evils, is evident from the signification of "bringing out," as being deliverance; and from the signification of a "house," as being good (see n. 710, 1708, 2048, 2233, 3128, 3652, 3720, 4982); and therefore in the opposite sense, evil. Hence it is plain that deliverance from evils is signified by the words, "bring me out of this house," and this also follows in its order from the things which precede. When faith is received in the exterior natural (which is here treated of, see n. 5130), correspondence is effected (n. 5131), and charity is received (n. 5132), and thus communication is effected with the interior natural (n. 5133), which is then delivered from the evils whereby the celestial represented by Joseph (n. 5086, 5087, 5106) was alienated; which alienation is signified by his being "carried off by theft," as presently follows. Moreover, when the natural is being regenerated by means of charity and faith, it is delivered from evils; for evils are then separated, and are cast out from the center where they were before, to the circumferences, whither the light of truth from good does not reach. In this way are evils separated in man, and yet are retained, for they cannot be entirely destroyed. But with the Lord, who made the natural in Himself Divine, evils and falsities were utterly cast out and destroyed; for the Divine can have nothing in common with evils and falsities, nor be terminated in them, as is the case with man; for the Divine is the very being of good and of truth, which is infinitely removed from what is evil and false. (AC 5134)
These quotes give you examples of how the Old Testament verses can be analyzed by means of the code correspondences so that their spiritual meaning is brought into the open. This is how we know all the details of the mental developmental steps of Jesus. These are the steps that every human being can now take in order to vanquish the hells within themselves through the development of rational spirituality. The mental struggles of the young Jesus were foreseen by the Lord from the beginning of creation. The Lord then brought about the historical events in the lives of the four patriarchs, and then had these events recorded through the visions of Moses. Then came the Boy Jesus who read the Old Testament in His native Hebrew and Aramaic. Jesus was given to discover from within his spiritual mind that the Old Testament details were representative of His task that lay ahead and for which He Incarnated. This Divine Task was to create a new evolutionary mechanism for the medical regeneration of the Fallen human mind.
The Boy Jesus was far more advanced in intellectual development than any man, young or old, because His spiritual mind became conscious at an early age. These details are unfolded in the coded story of Abram receiving the call from Jehovah. This represents the moment of enlightenment of Jesus who was then still an infant. He became conscious in His spiritual mind, which no human being on earth is able to do. It’s only when we become a spirit in the afterlife that we become conscious in our spirit-body that houses the spiritual mind. Of course this gave the Child Jesus a direct source of information about God, Himself, salvation, and the Word. Every time we read in Genesis that Jehovah spoke to Abram, later Abraham, the coded decipherable message in correspondences is that the external natural mind of the Boy Jesus was in a state of enlightenment so that He could be consciously aware of His spiritual mind. This spiritual mind is called His “internal man” and it is Jehovah.
The Lord Jehovah, Creator and Father, incarnated as the Babe Jesus. This Divine human being had then to discover who He was and why He was separated from Himself. In other words, Jesus throughout His life on earth, went through a series of alternating mental states between being trapped in the natural mind, which was merely human, and being enlightened in His natural mind by the operation of His spiritual mind within it, which was Divine Human. When He was trapped in the merely natural mind, He was in a state of “exinanition” in which He humbled Himself and admitted temptations into Himself by wrestling with the hells so as to gain victory over them. Victory over the hells meant that they were separated and isolated so that the good people destined for entrance into heaven were able to delivered or freed from their dire influence that kept them out of heaven. They are the spiritual people who believe in heaven and hell, and in loving the neighbor, but who are filled with all sorts of false beliefs and persuasions. As long they were holding on to these false persuasions, they could not enter heaven where truth is required. Through these false persuasions of the good people, the evil could hang on and torment them, preventing from heavenly life. The Lord thus freed all these people by admitting temptations into His mere human and ordering the hells. The Lord accomplished these events even as a young Boy growing up in Nazareth, where He let no one know what His real work was until the final events of His days on earth. At that point His work was nearly completed and His disciples were enabled to hear Him.
When I consider my generation I can see that a few of us have been given a special opportunity to be forerunner minds of the future. A minor fraction of one percent of the earth’s population has had to meet two conditions to be in this evolutionary shattering group of forerunner minds. First, to have received sufficient science education to be able to comprehend a high school or college textbook. Second, to come across the Writings and being willing to read the majority of it (about 30 volumes). You can see how few people would fall into this group. But now consider this: Having read most or all of the Writings, how many are left who then can say, This is the Word of God. You can see that there are few of those. They are the enlightened ones. And finally, how many among them are willing to exclude everything in their mind – thoughts and feelings – that are not in accord with the heavenly order described in the Writings? Even more than this, how many of those left are willing to change their inner character to comply with this heavenly order as described in the Writings? Those who are left in this forerunner group have a New Church mind. If you’re interested in the details of how to acquire that lofty consciousness, you may want to consult my book titled A Man of the Field – Forming the New Church Mind in Today’s World available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
What about future generations? It makes sense to think that God, through omnipotence and omniscience, inevitably brings out the goals He has set. In the Writings, God has laid out for humanity both the goal and the means of the future. The future of the human race is endless, and God provides numberless new planets in the vast and explosively expanding galaxies, as nurseries for human beings. Every individual on the numberless planets is created a unique person with a mind in an immortal spirit-body capable of living in heaven to eternity. This is God’s goal in creating the physical universe – to support life for human beings on their way to becoming angels in heaven. God’s method is to prepare the individual on some earth and then transfer the person to heaven with the physical body left behind to disintegrate. Further, God has revealed the reason He wants to get endless numbers of unique persons to heaven. And this reason is Divine Love.
God explains His Love in the Writings. It is defined as the desire to make others happy from self. In other words, He is possessed of an eternal and ceaseless desire to make human beings more and more happy by giving them the Goods that He possesses from infinite eternity. These Goods are called celestial blessings and they operate only in the uppermost portion of the human mind. All we need to do is to elevate our consciousness of God to this uppermost level of our individual mind, and stay there forever. This is heaven. And the only way to get to this wonderful state of our mind and consciousness, is by developmental steps in our rational spirituality (as discussed in this book). This is a central idea of the Writings.
This amazing Divine Love that God has revealed to our rational mind, works things from the background, unseen. Do you know what is the visible front that operates and manages everything that Love intends as a goal? God has revealed it – it is Divine Truth, also called, Divine Wisdom. In other words, God creates and manages everything by means of His infinite omniscient Divine Wisdom or Truth, with His infinite omnipresent Divine Love as the dynamic force and power by which truth works every phenomenon in the dual universe. You can understand this when you remember that you yourself, being an image of God, work things around you by means of your intelligence that is empowered by the motivation to reach certain goals or intentions. You’re motivated by some goal and you carry out a plan that your intelligence fashions for that goal. God’s goal is an increasingly populous heaven for the human race.
Swedenborg was granted to have a sensuous consciousness of the entire heavens. He was put into a spiritual state that appeared to take him into a far view of the heavens, and he visually saw its shape -- like one sees the continent below in an earth satellite. It was the image of a beautiful angel. In other words, the numberless heavenly societies, cities, mountains, and regions of the heavens, were arranged in the perfect and intact human form. While Swedenborg was visiting many of these societies he tells the reader what their location is. For example, “in the region of the right eye” or “in the uterus” or “in the pancreas,” etc. The Writings have a name for this spiritual map of the human mind. It is: the “Grand Human” or the “Grand Man.” It represents the spiritual idea that God is building a Grand Human or Angel, out of the numberless unique individuals, and that to God all of humanity is always going to appear as one, integrated as one. This is because in God, infinite things are a one.
Further, the character of the heavens is such that the happiness of those in that state should be the maximum they can support, without being destroyed. In order to achieve this goal, God finds a way to increase the happiness of everyone in the heavenly state, that is, to increase it progressively every day so that today is always going to be grander than yesterday. One of the scientific methods God uses to bring this remarkable phenomenon about, is to structure the Grand Human into a spiritually networked vertical community. An analogy might be to think of the formation of regional libraries in the United States and elsewhere. A number of university libraries pool their catalogue into one and make it available to all the members of each library by mail loan and online access. This means that anytime a new book is purchased by any of the pooled libraries, all the members of each library are enriched by being able to borrow that book. The treasures and increase of each, is mutually shared by all. This is the method God uses to increase the happiness of each individual in heaven. Every time an individual anywhere climbs to the top of the mind called heaven, all individuals who are also at the top of their mind, will experience in increase in their happiness. Since there are numberless individuals from numberless planets entering that state every day, you can see how large the increase of happiness is in heaven every day. Such is the amazing Love and Wisdom of God!
So now you know a lot about God, what He is doing and why. And you also know your individual fate – that you are immortal and that you will determine whether you climb to the top or fall to the bottom of your mind. Quo Vadis, my friend? Choose now, and live in the grand palaces of the Grand Human. Climb to the top of your consciousness and human potential, and enter that state of immortality and beauty. God wants you there. God is taking you there. Only one thing – you need to want to get there by the method God gives, and no other, whether your own or someone else’s. The spirit wants it, but the flesh hates it. This is our dilemma. Our rational consciousness wants heaven, but our natural consciousness denies heaven. It is the battle of hell – the arrogance of the love of self, vs. heaven – the rational love of wanting to obey the Threefold Word.
This is the Divine plan and method, therefore it will be the end result of the human race. True Science is destined to live in the understanding of all humanity. The Lord in the Writings refers to the new humanity as “New Church,” and calls it the “Crown of Churches.” In other words, the evolution of the human race is now completed. We now have in place an uppermost portion of the mind called the “celestial-rational” level of thinking and willing. When we suffer ourselves to obey the Heavenly Doctrines in the Writings, our consciousness rises to that uppermost portion of our mind, to which the Lord now refers to as the “New Heavens.” When Swedenborg completed the writing and publication in 1771 of the last volume of the Writings called The True Christian Religion, the New Heavens were created by means of the Divine Rational Truth that was revealed in the Writings. Henceforth, anyone regardless of background, can ascend to this New Heaven formed by God in everybody’s mind. All it takes is to follow the medical procedure whereby God regenerates our character, which is the lifelong process of struggling against falsities in our understanding and evils in our character. These evils are attached to us from inheritance since the character of the father’s soul, and its content, is transmitted to the child’s soul, both boy and girl.
Further, these inherited evils are cumulative over the generations since every generation adds its new collection of evils acquired through a life of disobedience to God’s order. Hence you can see how numerous are the evils in you and me, after so many generations since the Fall of the celestial civilization on earth (as discussed above). This cumulative evil is overwhelming, entering in every desire, intention, and motive that we have all day long. This internal evil is not readily apparent since we are required to hide our evils so that we may participate in social life. We may for instance be filled with rage and imagine all sorts of retaliation and torture of our enemies and the people we don’t like. Yet we may keep this to ourselves for fear of punishment or sanctions in one form or another. Similarly with what we think. We may have all sorts of beliefs and justifications that we don’t talk about because we want to avoid disapproval. We learn therefore to simulate and deceive, and to hide with secrets. Thus we appear normal on the outside, but are actually insane on the inside.
This spiritual insanity is also a lack of rationality. People lead mixed lives in that they love something good at one point, and a minute or even second later, they love something evil. I noticed this in myself with amazement. For instance, I’m eating. I want to stop because I love good things like health, self-control, dapper appearance. I swallow and rest for a moment. I feel the desire to eat returning with intensity. It’ feels like a dictatorial voice and power. I eat some more because I love that evil. I try to specify it in my mind. It wants to hide, stay out of conscious awareness. It is an evil delight I have not given up. It rules over me as a result, and it will continue to do so, until I suffer myself to overcome in temptation. Countless such events every day demonstrate that we are inexorably tied to the hell societies that motivate these delights in us. This is how they get their kicks. This is how God connects all of humanity into a vertical community so that each’s is communicated to all, and all to each. The only way I can be saved from those ties is to associate myself with good loves from heaven. Further, the evil in us always corrupts the good we may also have, unless we shun the evil by the power of the truth we have internalized in the understanding.
Another example. We are making a quick stop at the automatic teller machine at my local bank. I stop behind someone’s car who parked while accessing the automatic teller. My wife steps out and stands in line. I’m keeping the car running. I love the cool air of the air conditioner and I can’t keep it on if I turn the engine off. So I give in to my evil delight of doing what pleases me regardless of how it affects the bystanders. With exhaust running, I feel guilty. I think that I should turn off the engine or move to another location. I’m influenced by a good love as I want to take care of others. I see my wife getting up to the machine. I decide to wait. I give in to the love of evil, the love of self.
And so it goes, day in, day out. This is the level of operational work we must perform for regeneration -- self-monitoring of thoughts and feelings, self-assessment in the light of the Threefold Word, putting aside of the evil love and espousing the good love. God does the rest, and we end up being regenerated, ready to climb into our heaven. And remember that your soul mate, the love of your life, your conjugial spouse, will be with you. This is a certainty of Divine revelation.
Note:
If there are other questions you’d like to suggest, please email me: leon@hawaii.edu
Postal address: Dr. Leon James, Psychology, Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822
Exercise 18.1
Characterize the thinking and feeling levels of every day activities
This is the crux of the matter in spiritual development. Regeneration is another term for spiritual development. We begin our regeneration in adult life when we begin to think according to our own cognitive makeup and affective character. Every individual is unique. Though individuals will be born in numerous earths endlessly forever and accumulate in the spiritual world, no two individuals can ever be the same to endless time. Such is the nature of God’s infinity who produces every individual from birth to immortal eternity that He wills that every human being will be unique. What does this uniqueness consist of? In thoughts and feelings. In heaven and in hell the thoughts and feelings of each individual determine by correspondence what the outward environment will consist of. Hence every individual has a unique place allocated in the spiritual world in accordance with the thoughts and feelings that enliven that individual.
Since everything but everything depends on our thoughts and feelings would it not be an excellent idea to monitor them in ourselves?
If we do not know our thoughts and feelings, moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, can we change them? Can we change our character? What is our character except the thoughts and feelings in our mind?
The process of self-witnessing our cognitive and affective life is a necessary focus for regeneration. I discuss the details of this method in Volume 3 of A Man of the Field, available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v3ch1-nonduality.html
For now, let us focus on a few ordinary activities in everyday life such as eating, business, sexuality, entertainment, etc., as shown in the table below. Note that each everyday behavior can be performed in each of the 3 phases of consciousness. We will focus on thinking and feeling (or willing) since these two together determine the overt acts of the behavior to be witnessed.
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Thinking |
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eating |
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health |
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sexuality |
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religion |
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business |
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politics |
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science |
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entertainment |
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See Text in Section 15.4 |
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Select a particular behavior, say eating, and witness your thoughts and feelings in the course of an eating episode. Use whatever techniques you need to obtain a sample of your thoughts and feelings while you are eating, or, anticipating eating, or preparing a meal or snack. You can talk your thoughts out loud while a tape recorder is running, or you can take notes as you go along, minute by minute. You can only obtain fragments and samples of the constant stream of thoughts and feelings, but this is enough. Analyze the fragments you’ve recorded. Characterize the level of thinking and feeling. See the text in Section 15.4 for illustrations.
Exercise 18.2
Explain the level of thinking in each religious tradition sampled below
The following are quotations found on the Web when I looked up “charity” in relation to the major religions, as indicated. Read each description and characterize its level of thinking and feeling in relation to the nine zones of the ennead matrix (discussed in Section 11 above).
Every pious Buddhist more or less carries out the meritorious deeds of dispensing charity, observing morality and practicing meditation. Out of these three, the Buddhists usually perform the charitable deeds daily. At every house of Buddhists, they offer food, water and flowers dedicated to the Triple Gems every morning.
Charity means donation or giving away one's own properties to others. There are three kinds of charity: giving material offerings (Amisa dana), giving sanctuary and protection to animals (Abhaya dana) and giving doctrinal lectures (Dhamma dana).
The Advantages of Charity. Charity is praised by Buddha in many ways. It is:—
- the stairway to celestial realms;
- the packet of provisions in the long cycle of rebirths
- the direct way to good destination;
- the cause of becoming a ruler;
- capable of producing luxuries and wealth;
- capable of enjoying happiness;
- capable of self-protection;
- capable of civilizing the uncivilized;
- capable of bringing success in everything
web.ukonline.co.uk/buddhism/charity.htm
18.2.b Charity and Christianity
“The obligation to perform acts of charity is taught both by revelation and by reason. Under the former head may be cited the words of Christ: "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"; "as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them in like manner"; and particularly the description in St. Mathew (xxv) of the separation of the good from the bad at the Final Judgment. Reason tells us that we ought to love our neighbors, since they are children of God; since they are our brothers, members of the same human family; and since they have the same nature, dignity, destiny, and needs as ourselves. This love, or charity, should be both internal and external. The former wishes the neighbour well, and rejoices in his good fortune; the latter comprises all those actions by which any of the needs are supplied.”
www.newadvent.org/cathen/03592a.htm
“Levels of Tzedakah (Charity): Certain kinds of tzedakah are considered more meritorious than others. How to give charity, from the most meritorious to the least meritorious:
Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant
Giving when neither party knows the other's identity
Giving when you know the recipient's identity, but the recipient doesn't know your identity
Giving when you do not know the recipient's identity, but the recipient knows your identity
Giving before being asked
Giving after being asked
Giving less that you should, but giving it cheerfully
Giving begrudgingly
Where and Who to give charity to, in order of priorities:
Family and close relatives
Local Jewish community
Jewish community in Eretz Israel
Jewish communities worldwide
Local community in general
International assistance to needy people”
www.ahavat-israel.com/ahavat/am/charity.asp
“The following are some of the many benefits mentioned in the Ahaadeeth for the one who gives his Zakaat:
Pleasure of Allah;
Increase in wealth;
Protection from losses;
Forgiveness and blessing from Allah;
Safety from calamities;
Protection from the wrath of Allah and from bad death;
Shelter on the Day of Judgment;
Security from seventy misfortunes;
Shield from the fire of Jahannam;
Safety from grief.”
www.islaam.org/Zakaat/zakaat_10.htm
“The riches of the liberal never waste away, while he who will not give finds none to comfort him.
The man with food in store who, when the needy comes in miserable case begging for bread to eat, Hardens his heart against him-even when of old he did him service-finds not one to comfort him.
Bounteous is he who gives unto the beggar who comes to him in want of food and feeble.
No friend is he who to his friend and comrade who comes imploring food, will offer nothing.
Let the rich satisfy the poor implorer, and bend his eye upon a longer pathway.
Riches come now to one, now to another, and like the wheels of cars are ever rolling.
To receive, even if sinless, is bad; and to give, Even without a heaven, is good.
Hunger, dread, disease, will never touch, One who shares his food.
To eat alone what one has hoarded, Is worse than begging.”
www.geocities.com/hinduismcharity
18.2.f Charity and Secular Humanism
“Volunteering can enhance your life. Research has shown that older adults who participate in volunteer activities have a higher energy level and greater self-esteem and satisfaction with life.”
www.ucihealth.com/seniors/HelpOthers.htm
“Volunteering has many other intangible benefits. It can help you give back to society, break down barriers of misunderstanding or fear, explore personal issues, and even have fun.”
www.collegeboard.com/article/0,3341,2-7-0-7813,00.html?orig=sub
"Volunteering was my way of helping others but I'm a much happier person in myself as a result"
"Living in the country I often felt lonely and a bit isolated, but then I got involved in a community project - I'm never in the house now!"
“I. The "first" of charity is to look to the lord and shun evils as sins.
Ii. The "second" of charity is to do good to the neighbour.
Iii. In a natural sense, the neighbour who is to be loved is a fellow citizen, also a society, small or large, also one's country, also the human race.
Iv. The neighbour is to be loved in accordance with his spiritual good, and his moral, civil, and natural good therefrom; consequently it is good that, in a spiritual sense, is the neighbour to be loved.
V. Everyone loves the neighbour from the good of charity in himself; consequently the quality of anyone's charity is such as the charity he himself is.
Vi. A man is born to the end that he may become a charity; but he cannot become a charity unless he constantly wills and does the good of charity from affection and its delight.*
Vii. Every man, who looks to the lord, and shuns evils as sins, becomes a charity, if he honestly, justly, and faithfully carries out the work of his occupation or employment.
Viii. Signs of charity are all the things that are of worship.
Ix. Benefactions of charity are all the goods that a man who is a charity does, in freedom, outside the scope of his occupation.
X. Obligations of charity are all those things it behooves a man to do in addition to those set forth above.
Xi. There are diversions of charity, which are various enjoyments and pleasures of the bodily senses useful for recreating the mind.
Xii. Where there is no truth of faith, the church does not exist, and where there is no good of charity, religion does not exist.
I The "first" of charity is to look to the lord and shun evils as sins.
It is well known that charity, or love towards the neighbour, is doing good to others. But how one should do good, and to whom, so that the charity may be charity, will be described in what follows. Everyone knows that no one can do good that is in itself good, except from Him who is Good Itself, or Good in Himself, that is, except from God. Moreover, it is possible for everyone to know that, so long as a man is in evil, and thus, through that evil, in company with the devil, he can do no other good than impure good, which outwardly has the appearance of being good, but inwardly is evil; which good is either pharisaical or done for reward. It will be necessary, therefore, to say first what a man should be, so that the good proceeding from him may be in itself good, thus the good of charity. (CHARITY 199)
18.2.a Sample answer for Buddhism
Every pious Buddhist more or less carries out the meritorious deeds of dispensing charity, observing morality and practicing meditation. Out of these three, the Buddhists usually perform the charitable deeds daily. At every house of Buddhists, they offer food, water and flowers dedicated to the Triple Gems every morning.
Charity means donation or giving away one's own properties to others. There are three kinds of charity: giving material offerings (Amisa dana), giving sanctuary and protection to animals (Abhaya dana) and giving doctrinal lectures (Dhamma dana).
The Advantages of Charity. Charity is praised by Buddha in many ways. It is:—
- the stairway to celestial realms;
- the packet of provisions in the long cycle of rebirths
- the direct way to good destination;
- the cause of becoming a ruler;
- capable of producing luxuries and wealth;
- capable of enjoying happiness;
- capable of self-protection;
- capable of civilizing the uncivilized;
- capable of bringing success in everything
web.ukonline.co.uk/buddhism/charity.htm
Charity as a pious act belongs to phase 1 consciousness. It is where we start in our journey to the top of our mind. As children we are taught charity in terms of giving gifts and sharing what one has with selective others. When we give to others in that way, we feel good afterwards, and we experience an increased sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy as a result of what we did for another. This level of involvement with charity is natural and moral, and a prelude to future steps. In this external phase of piety we expect that our charitable deeds will make us more meritorious in the eyes of authority figures and God.
Phase 1 thinking and feeling about charity revolves around external services we can perform for anyone in need of them, but especially, those that support and maintain community life and organization. External charity covers giving “material offerings,” protecting animals, and giving away knowledge about religion or “doctrinal things.” The benefits of this type of charity are said to include “provisions in the long cycle of rebirths,” self-protection, success and happiness. These are things for the natural mind. Even what is mentioned about spiritual things – journey to “celestial realms” and “provisions” while getting there – are viewed in natural terms and natural needs.
When we begin to understand these natural things in a spiritual way, we make a distinction between the performance of charity as a social and moral act, and the motive for which it is done. We do things for natural motives (phase 1), for spiritual motives (phase 2), or for celestial motives (phase 3). Charity done for natural motives does not allow elevating our consciousness to spiritual and celestial levels. Nevertheless, it prepares us for that step. We cannot skip phase 1 thinking and feeling, and thus we begin our spiritual development by exercising charity from a natural or moral motive. Once we are in this phase, we can be prepared for escalating to the next step in consciousness (phase 2).
Charity can be done for natural motives or spiritual. Morality is done for natural motives. Shunning evils as sins is done for spiritual motives. Morality about the outward social personality, while spirituality is about one’s character or inner loves. Hence being a moral person is not regenerating, unless we connect our morality to our spirituality. If we refrain from stealing because it is immoral, the desire to steal remains. But if we refrain from stealing because it is a sin against God, that is, destroys our heavenly life, then we connect spirituality to morality, and we regenerate.
18.2.b Sample Answer for Christianity
“The obligation to perform acts of charity is taught both by revelation and by reason. Under the former head may be cited the words of Christ: "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"; "as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them in like manner"; and particularly the description in St. Mathew (xxv) of the separation of the good from the bad at the Final Judgment. Reason tells us that we ought to love our neighbors, since they are children of God; since they are our brothers, members of the same human family; and since they have the same nature, dignity, destiny, and needs as ourselves. This love, or charity, should be both internal and external. The former wishes the neighbour well, and rejoices in his good fortune; the latter comprises all those actions by which any of the needs are supplied.”
www.newadvent.org/cathen/03592a.htm
Christianity is defined by the New Testament, namely, that it is Divine Truth called The Word of God. In the quote above there is a connection made between revelation (or the Word of God) and reason, which refers to human reasoning, how we justify things and arrive at conclusions. This connection can be seen in phase 2 thinking, but not in phase 1 thinking. The connection between Divine revelation and human reason requires a spiritual understanding. It is not understandable from a natural perspective since the natural perspective defines and makes human reason, and it has no place for Divine revelation. Or, if it admits Divine revelation (zone 1), it has a natural view of God and of the Word (e.g., sectarianism, meritoriousness). By tying together revelation and reason, we create a discrete relationship between the natural and spiritual. At first this relationship is seen in general and universal terms (zone 4, 5, and 6), but later, it is seen in particularistic and actualizing terms (zones 7, 8, and 9).
In the quote above, revelation about love and charity is given from the Lord’s statements in the Gospel of Matthew. In other words, the Lord commands us to love others as much as we love ourselves. This is spiritual charity. We know it is spiritual because the Lord’s commands it and whatever the Lord says is spiritual by definition (phase 2). But it is not enough to realize that God gives us commandments that we must obey (phase 1). We must also realize that what God commands and says is rational, since truth is rational by definition. Note that the justification for altruism does not rely here on human reason, which would be phase 1 thinking. Instead, it relies on revelation which it sees as rational. It then explains why the commandment of altruism is rational.
Note what it is that elevates the consciousness from phase 1 to phase 2. It is not the idea that we must obey commandments (phase 1). It is not the idea that it is rational to be altruistic (phase 1). Rather, it is the idea that revelation is rational. This is what makes a duality of discrete degrees in our mind, namely, reason within which is revelation. In other words, our reasoning process is natural within which is something spiritual, namely, the revelation or Divine commandment. Seeing the spiritual within the natural creates phase 2 understanding and consciousness.
The quote above refers to the internal and the external. The internal is good will to the neighbor, which is spiritual charity, and the external is the service or gift that is needed by the neighbor. The two together create phase 2 consciousness of charity. Giving and helping without the internal good will is not spiritual charity but only natural charity.
Note that the justification or confirmation by human reason for the commandment of charity is also given in the quote above. Human reason tells us that every person deserves to receive human dignity from other people since all people share human needs and belong to each other as a community and as a race. This phase 2 justification of charity focuses on universalism and the community of the race. Later we step up to phase 3 consciousness when realize that spiritual charity can become celestial charity by thinking less of the person and more of the good in the person. This is the difference between Christianity and the New Christianity discussed below (Section 18.2.g).
18.2.c Sample Answer for Judaism
“Levels of Tzedakah (Charity): Certain kinds of tzedakah are considered more meritorious than others. How to give charity, from the most meritorious to the least meritorious:
Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant
Giving when neither party knows the other's identity
Giving when you know the recipient's identity, but the recipient doesn't know your identity
Giving when you do not know the recipient's identity, but the recipient knows your identity
Giving before being asked
Giving after being asked
Giving less that you should, but giving it cheerfully
Giving begrudgingly
Where and Who to give charity to, in order of priorities:
Family and close relatives
Local Jewish community
Jewish community in Eretz Israel
Jewish communities worldwide
Local community in general
International assistance to needy people”
www.ahavat-israel.com/ahavat/am/charity.asp
In Hebrew Charity or Tzedakah has the same root meaning as Tzedek which means Justice. At this level of thinking and feeling, the idea of charity is tied to the idea of justice. The result of this marriage of ideas is the third idea of meritoriousness. These three ideas – charity, justice, and meritoriousness – form a triangle of obscurity that holds the mind in phase 1 consciousness. The listing in the quote above is a rank ordering of meritoriousness achieved by the individual performing an act of charity. For instance, we acquire but little merit for “giving grudgingly,” more merit for “giving before being asked,” and still more merit for giving anonymously. It is evident that this idea of charity is legalistic and performative, that is, ritualistic (phase 1).This is the initial phase of spiritual development. Children show much natural generosity which can be harnessed for rituals of charity during socialization practices. Children want to earn merit points and want others to praise them for their works of charity. And indeed we should.
Note also the ranking of merit regarding to whom we give. We get the most merit for giving charity to our family, less merit for giving to individuals of our religion, and still less credit (or merit) for unknown “needy people.” Sectarian charity or giving is considered more holy than charity towards those of other denominations and religions. This attitude is characteristic of phase 1 thinking.
Then a step upward in thinking and feeling can be taken by learning that God is the power behind the giving hand and the willing mind. We cannot rightly take credit for the gift or the giving. Therefore we ought not be attached to meritoriousness since God must receive all the merit, and us none (phase 2 thinking and feeling). Ultimately a third elevation of the understanding occurs when we realize that charity is nothing else than performing our uses in daily life (phase 2 thinking and feeling). If we pick up a piece of broken glass on the street or in the park, because we don’t want anyone to be injured, we are performing charity. If we expend effort in improving our typing skills, that’s performing charity, if our motive is to learn to do something useful. If we refrain in our mind to think derogatory thoughts about someone, we are performing charity.
This type of phase 3 thinking sees that the motive to be useful is from God and is a heavenly state of mind. It also sees that charity defined as gifting, sharing, and helping is not spiritual when considered as performative acts. What makes these acts spiritual is to the motive to do them as uses. All acts are acts of charity when they are performed as uses. And they are not acts of genuine charity when performed for the sake of ritual, piety, merit, reward, conformity, tradition – which are external natural things, not spiritual. These external things are needed in society even if some people may do it for merit or reward. The benefit to the community and individuals are external and needed whatever the motive of the giver. But for the giver, it is the motive that decides whether the giving is spiritual charity.
18.2.e Sample Answer for Hinduism
“The riches of the liberal never waste away, while he who will not give finds none to comfort him.
The man with food in store who, when the needy comes in miserable case begging for bread to eat, Hardens his heart against him-even when of old he did him service-finds not one to comfort him.
Bounteous is he who gives unto the beggar who comes to him in want of food and feeble.
No friend is he who to his friend and comrade who comes imploring food, will offer nothing.
Let the rich satisfy the poor implorer, and bend his eye upon a longer pathway.
Riches come now to one, now to another, and like the wheels of cars are ever rolling.
To receive, even if sinless, is bad; and to give, Even without a heaven, is good.
Hunger, dread, disease, will never touch, One who shares his food.
To eat alone what one has hoarded, Is worse than begging.”
www.geocities.com/hinduismcharity
Phase 1 thinking justifies obligations by stating external consequences of meeting or not meeting those obligations. We can examine the stated consequences or justifications to see if they are external (phase 1) or internal (phase 2 and 3). Phase 1 justifications appeal to natural consequences. Phase 2 justifications appeal to spiritual consequences. Phase 3 justifications appeal to celestial consequences. The natural, the spiritual, and the celestial are the three levels of the mind, hence of spiritual development. In the above sample quote from Hinduism, the consequences of performing charity are listed – friends to comfort us, bounty and riches as reward, and protection from disease and want.
Note that the seeds of phase 2 thinking is embedded in phase 1 thinking. In the quote above, there is reference to “hardening the heart” and setting the eye upon “a longer pathway.” Both of these are references to inner things while using outer symbols. We know from the Writings that the heart symbolizes the will to do good to someone, which is love, and a pathway symbolizes the understanding of truth and being guided by it. Those in phase 1 thinking who are willing to reflect on these inner relations to charity, namely good and truth, are able to progress to phase 2 thinking and feeling, and eventually to phase 3 by going into the inner meaning of good and truth, which is doing good for the sake of good, and thinking truth for the sake of truth, both being for the sake of uses.
18.2.f Sample Answer for Secular Humanism
“Volunteering can enhance your life. Research has shown that older adults who participate in volunteer activities have a higher energy level and greater self-esteem and satisfaction with life.”
www.ucihealth.com/seniors/HelpOthers.htm
“Volunteering has many other intangible benefits. It can help you give back to society, break down barriers of misunderstanding or fear, explore personal issues, and even have fun.”
www.collegeboard.com/article/0,3341,2-7-0-7813,00.html?orig=sub
"Volunteering was my way of helping others but I'm a much happier person in myself as a result"
"Living in the country I often felt lonely and a bit isolated, but then I got involved in a community project - I'm never in the house now!"
Secular humanism is a philosophy of life that people hold who are opposed to religion and assume that the natural world is the only one that either exists or matters for the human race on the planet. It supports scientific materialism (phase 1) and defines spirituality by means of morality based in the human mind (phase 1). A classic problem to be solved by those who think within secular humanism is how to justify altruistic behavior such as charity or volunteering for unpaid community service.
The above quote makes an appeal for volunteering on the basis of the benefits we derive from such activity. For example, it “enhances your life” or increases “your energy level” and your “self-esteem.” These are wonderful benefits for the natural mind and the physical body. A benefit listed for volunteering is the “breaking down of barriers” in society. Another is that its’ “fun.” The benefits listed appeal to motives that all citizens can strive for, whether they are moral or immoral in their life orientation and practice. This shows that the motive for volunteering in secular humanism is to benefit self by benefiting others and society. As a first step in human consciousness (phase 1), this orientation is valuable and should be taught in schools and at home. But then one should look for the second step which is to bring in God and the spiritual side of the self (phase 2 and 3).
This step cannot be made without leaving behind the premises of secular humanism. Taking a step above this involves religion -- God, heaven, sin, and hell. Note however that the initial portion of the Moses phase religion (zone 1) does not elevate our consciousness above that of secular humanism for it is an external view of God, thus a God that behaves naturally rather than spiritually. Later states of the Moses religion are more internal states, but still within the natural mind (zones 2 and 3). We elevate our consciousness to a new discrete level when we acknowledge God as a Person and begin a relationship with Him (phase 2, zone 4). In this higher state of consciousness and feeling, our understanding of charity is elevated from the moral to the spiritual. The early states of this new spiritual charity is to strive to over everyone equally (phase 2) but at the next discrete step up we realize that it is the good in the neighbor that we are to love (phase 3)..
18.2.g Sample Answer for New Christianity (The Writings)
“I. The "first" of charity is to look to the lord and shun evils as sins.
Ii. The "second" of charity is to do good to the neighbour.
Iii. In a natural sense, the neighbour who is to be loved is a fellow citizen, also a society, small or large, also one's country, also the human race.
Iv. The neighbour is to be loved in accordance with his spiritual good, and his moral, civil, and natural good therefrom; consequently it is good that, in a spiritual sense, is the neighbour to be loved.
V. Everyone loves the neighbour from the good of charity in himself; consequently the quality of anyone's charity is such as the charity he himself is.
Vi. A man is born to the end that he may become a charity; but he cannot become a charity unless he constantly wills and does the good of charity from affection and its delight.*
Vii. Every man, who looks to the lord, and shuns evils as sins, becomes a charity, if he honestly, justly, and faithfully carries out the work of his occupation or employment.
Viii. Signs of charity are all the things that are of worship.
Ix. Benefactions of charity are all the goods that a man who is a charity does, in freedom, outside the scope of his occupation.
X. Obligations of charity are all those things it behooves a man to do in addition to those set forth above.
Xi. There are diversions of charity, which are various enjoyments and pleasures of the bodily senses useful for recreating the mind.
Xii. Where there is no truth of faith, the church does not exist, and where there is no good of charity, religion does not exist.
I The "first" of charity is to look to the lord and shun evils as sins.
It is well known that charity, or love towards the neighbour, is doing good to others. But how one should do good, and to whom, so that the charity may be charity, will be described in what follows. Everyone knows that no one can do good that is in itself good, except from Him who is Good Itself, or Good in Himself, that is, except from God. Moreover, it is possible for everyone to know that, so long as a man is in evil, and thus, through that evil, in company with the devil, he can do no other good than impure good, which outwardly has the appearance of being good, but inwardly is evil; which good is either pharisaical or done for reward. It will be necessary, therefore, to say first what a man should be, so that the good proceeding from him may be in itself good, thus the good of charity. (CHARITY 199)
This is phase 3 level thinking and feeling because it gives a definition of charity in particularistic terms, not universal (phase 2) or meritorious (phase 1).
Charity is defined as love toward the neighbor, and this is defined as the good in the neighbor. In other words, we are not to love the person of the neighbor (phase 1 and 2), for this is idolatry. We are only to love the good that is in the neighbor, and since all good anywhere is from the Lord, and the Lord Himself, therefore loving the good in the neighbor is to love the Lord, and not the person of the neighbor. To love the neighbor as person would not be particularistic and actual (phase 3); rather, it would be personal and relationship bound (phase 2). This is less perfect then loving what is actual and particular in our performance of charity. If perform charity because of the relationship or identity, we are abstracting charity rather than particularizing and actualizing it. For charity does not involve loving the person (phase 2), but loving what is in the person (phase 3). If we love the person, we do so from two natural motives – (a) merit or reward (phase 1) or (b) preserving what is our own (phase 1). In this case charity becomes love for self and what is attached to self.
Another consequence of this definition is that we are not to love people equally (phase 2) but with a difference, in accordance with the good we perceive in each person. It is this good that we are to love. Therefore we are not to perform charity to every person in the same way. The way we decide in each particular case is by considering charity as the performance of uses. For example, a dangerous criminal must be isolated from society to prevent continued harm to others. This is exercising charity toward the community as a whole. We also feed dangerous criminals in their isolation and look after their immediate needs for health, security, and basic human rights recognized by civilized people and the law. This is exercising charity toward the dangerous criminal.
We perform charity in our daily routine of activities when we have regard for others as much as toward self. To have regard for others means to avoid injuring them in all the ordinary ways that I can – by not being offensive, or a nuisance, and by not violating their reasonable expectations such as being left alone or not disturbing their peace. For example, when driving in traffic another driver might behave aggressively and putting us at risk. Charity is to be exercised in this particular situation or interaction by avoiding retaliation, either overt physical, or private mental (e.g., berating the other driver in our thinking – phase 1). To forgive the other driver for the offense on account of resentment being a sin, is to raise our consciousness to phase 2 thinking and feeling. Phase 3 thinking and feeling is to refrain from resentment (phase 1) because it puts us into association with evil spirits, and at the same time, to look after the safety and dignity of the other driver, regardless of the insult or aggressiveness (phase 3). The good in the other driver is visible when we think of the uses he or she performs as a citizen, parent, friend, and employee. This is the good we are to love, and protect by not injuring it, for to injure this good is to hate the Lord, He being the good wherever it is found or active. And to hate the Lord is to turn away from Him to self, which is to sink into hell.
Therefore, to refrain from resentment is to love the good in ourselves, hence the Lord in us, since resentment hurts this good by being opposite to it. And also, we are to look after the safety and dignity of the driver who insulted us or put us in danger from an inconsiderate attitude. This is because we are thereby protecting the good that is in that driver. Hence we love the Lord, which is charity itself from which all other charity must come (phase 3).
Exercise 18.3
Use the ennead matrix to characterize Judaism, Christianity, New Church
The “New Church” refers to the New Christian Church that the Lord is raising in His Second Coming, is foretold in the New Testament, and is actualized in the Writings. There are several New Church denominations in existence today. Recently I visited the General Church of the New Jerusalem in Bryn Athyn Pennsylvania, a thriving and long standing community of people who acknowledge the Threefold Word as the basis of their Christian worship of the Divine Human Person whom, in their worship, they refer to as “Jesus Christ, the One God of Heaven and Earth.” If interested, you can read a report I wrote with my wife, on our Bryn Athyn visit, posted on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/brynathyn.htm
The “ennead matrix” is an ordered chart of the nine steps of development in rational spirituality. The nine zones are created by the matrix when the table’s marginals are defined in terms of two juxtaposed variables that contain three steps each (3X3=9). As described in this book, the three vertical or column divisions are called “phases” or succeeding states in a predetermined sequence. Each phase has three succeeding states called Old Testament State, New Testament State, and Third Testament State. In other words the sequence of developmental steps an individual goes through is the same as the sequence gone through by generations, civilizations, or ages of evolution in the history of the human race on this planet.
One can readily adapt the ennead matrix to the question, as follows:
ENNEAD MATRIXOF RATIONAL SPIRITUALITY |
Ritual Faith |
Mystic Faith |
Rational Faith |
|
New Church |
7 |
8 |
9 |
|
Christianity |
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
Judaism |
1 |
2 |
3 |
The vertical variable shown in the left column represents the three ascending steps of rational spirituality in historical perspective. God introduced rationality to the human race through the Old Testament that was given to the Hebrews and Jews. Hence their land was called the Holy Land. The Old Testament was actually a revelation that continued prior revelations called the Ancient Word. There are two references to this Ancient Word in the Old Testament, and it is revealed in the Writings that Moses copied the Genesis story which opens the Old Testament, from the Ancient Word, fragments of which were still known in Median, where Moses had a life for twenty years prior the call from Jehovah to lead the Children of Jacob out of their captivity in Egypt.
After several centuries of the Old Testament civilizations, the human mind on the planet was then sufficiently prepared to receive the next phase of rational spirituality as a religion. The New Testament revelations were then given. A whole new set of ideas, radically different from before, entered human consciousness. This allowed the humanization of societies and the introduction of freedom as part of daily life in an environment protected by the law and due course or equal justice for.
At last, seventeen centuries later the civilization and the human mind had evolved into the universalization of freedom and rationality throughout a society. Now the principle was acknowledged that every individual can from their own effort, become an independent thinker, scientist, or scholar. This enlightened condition of the human race was never before achieved by any prior generation. The human mind was ready for receiving the third and final phase of rational spirituality. This was achieved through the Writings of Swedenborg in the 18th century, as discussed in this book. Now the human race was competed in its creation. Now any individual regardless of background, can read the Writings and extract the knowledge of True Science from it through the scientific or scholarly skills acquired as part of one’s education and self-advancement efforts. Knowledge of True Science gives the individual effective tools for regeneration of character, an absolutely necessary lifelong process without which one cannot enter heaven, and consequently, one enters hell. Regeneration is therefore the most critical and beneficial concept anyone can acquire from rational spirituality.
The horizontal variable of the matrix has been labeled with the three types of faith discussed in the book. Every religion has these three types of faith as successive steps. This is because individual development recapitulates racial history. First in history is first in developmental steps, here we are discussing the Old Testament civilizations. They have been identified in this book as “ritual faith” because the spiritual element of their worship was focused on the ritual itself. They actually believed that it is the ritual that contains the power. And indeed, for them it did. The objects of their worship, such as the Ark or the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem, was given by God powers that were visible in the physical world, like the power to kill anyone who touched them in any other way than the rituals prescribed in great detail for the high priest, or for a class of people designated by God as holy priests.
But as the Old Testament civilizations grew in rational spirituality, the sensuous consciousness of God’s Presence in the physical world gradually decreased and vanished altogether. The race on earth was now left strictly on its own conscious reasoning. This was now the race’s sole salvation for eternal life in heaven. Everyone who enters heaven must now enter it through the rational mind, not the sensuous mind. This was a major shift in the evolution of the human race. From now on, knowledge of God and acknowledgment of His existence and power, will rest solely on our rational process of reasoning.
At first this process of rational reasoning was weak, distant, or general. This was phase 2 or the New Testament state, which had a mystical or obscure idea of God, the Trinity, the Holy Supper, prayer, forgiveness, salvation, regeneration, temptation, eternal life in the Lord, and so on. But later these concepts became particular and scientific, clear and fully rational for the first time when the scientific revelations of the Writings gave us True Science.
Since these were the three evolutionary steps in historical terms they also constitute the steps of individual biography. Hence they are called “states” or mental states. These refer to the character of consciousness, that is, the level of operation of the organs of the will and understanding. Anyone can now be fully enlightened spiritually and progressively rare, their level of thinking and feeling to the highest level called celestial, were heavenly life is experienced to eternity. Every individual has this heaven within their mind already, from creation and evolution. All we need to do is learn how to climb to the top of our mind. This takes a lifetime of effort, and an effective technique. God has provided the only effective technique for consciousness raising all the way into heaven. It is called regeneration and it requires our active cooperation by means of daily struggles against temptations which are activated by our inherited evils. Only God has the power to overcome the hells to which we are tied, and so we must turn to our rational mind where God is, and address Him as a Divine Human Person who is the power behind every single act of willing and thinking.
The effectiveness of our reception of God’s power to effect regeneration in us, can be low or high. This is why we must acquire skills of cooperation, the chief being self-witnessing or self-monitoring of one’s stream of thinking and willing all day long every day. We need to judge the quality of everything we identify in our self-monitoring. This judgment is a rational process of critical analysis comparing what we think and feel with the Divine Truth in our mind. We acquire Divine Truth in our understanding when we read and study the Threefold Word. This makes us more rational by elevating the level of operation of our thinking and feeling regarding spiritual topics.
Salvation depends on regeneration, regeneration depends on cooperation, and cooperation depends on three steps repeated every day. First, studying the Threefold Word and extracting Doctrine of Life in our understanding. Second, self-monitoring of our thinking and willing as we perform our tasks and interactions with others. Third, judging or critically evaluating our acts of thinking and willing in the light of the Doctrine of Life in our understanding. As we repeat these three steps on a daily basis, the Lord will bring particular temptations we must face, some that appear small (like flossing or not flossing after each meal), while others appear large (like trusting the Lord when we are being severely challenged). All the temptations the Lord helps us to face are critically important for our regeneration.
Anyone who can accept and understand this view of regeneration, God, and eternal life, is enlightened, and is operating in phase 3 of rational spirituality.
People of every religion must undergo the sequence of three states indicated on the horizontal variable – ritual faith, mystic faith, rational faith. The following is a description of the three states for three religions – Judaism, Christianity, and New Church.
Refer to the ennead matrix above, for the zone locations and their intersectional properties given the marginals, as just discussed.
Zone 1: Jewish sectarianism
Believing that the Kingdom of Heaven is to be ruled by the Jews
Believing that one is saved by piety in religious rituals
Assuming that Jews are the Chosen People because they are better
Despising Christianity as a fool’s religion
Believing in and practicing religious racism
Desire to remain separate rather than united to the rest of humanity
Defining God as Jewish for the Jews, but tolerating the others
Jealousy and disdain for Jewish traditions other their own sect
Belief in God not necessary as long as one retains Jewish traditions
Total taboo on intermarriage
Many other taboos and daily ritual requirements and cleansing prescriptions
Zone 2: Jewish mysticism
Love of studying theological symbolism like Kabala
Pursuing Bible numerology
Belief in the power of holy Names
Superstitious beliefs regarding ghosts and magical curses
Belief in the power of healing and intercessionary prayer by holy rabbis
Interest in dream analysis
Mystical movements like Hassidic sects and cults
Zone 3: Jewish ecumenism
Support for secular public education supplemented by private religious schools
Support administrative contacts with Christian clergy
Formation of Jewish splinter movements away from customs of worship and diet
Support for intermarriage
Secularizing Jewishness by wanting to consider it an ethnic group, not a religion
Studying the New Testament and Christian Doctrine
Rejecting sectarianism as a basis for religion
Supports separation of religion and state
Zone 4: Christian sectarianism
Believing that salvation is tied to membership of and baptism into one’s own denomination
Attaching sanctity to ritual procedures and objects
Belief in a hierarchy of spiritual merit, with some people being higher than others
Belief in the utmost importance of formulaic prayers exactly repeated (e.g., “I ask in the name of Jesus. Amen”)
Disdain for the Pope and Catholics
Pity for the Jews
Compassion for the heathens and Gentiles
Attitude of literalism in reading the Bible
Suspiciousness of symbolic readings of Bible passages
Promotes religious schools
Strong tradition of evangelism in distant lands
Bible translation and publication activities
Zone 5: Christian mysticism
Adoption of creeds and doctrinal statements that support and declare the mystery of God and religion
Mystic belief in the spiritual power of the Cross, Baptism, Communion bread and wine
Being healed spiritually by the Blood of Christ’s Sacrifice
Living eternal life in the Lord
Being reborn
Receiving the Holy Spirit
Hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit or God and being told to do things
Striving to sense the mystic union with God through fasting, reflection, and fervent prayer
Believing in the mystical power of group prayer, closing the eyes, holding hands, chanting
Speaking in tongues or handling snakes as part of the worship
TV evangelism and shows about healing miracles
Formation of Christian brotherhoods having distinctive icons or secret creeds
Zone 6: Christian rationalism
Defining Christianity as a science as well as a religion
Bible exegesis and symbolism
Demystifying the Trinity and Faith Alone
Studying the spiritual sense of the parables in the New Testament
Focus on character reformation as essential to faith
Resistance to literal interpretation of the Creation story
Focus on charity and love as the most essential aspect of faith
Tolerant of variations in worship and doctrine
Zone 7: New Church fundamentalism
Formation of splinter movements within the New Church
Evidence of doctrinal animosity among New Church scholars
Support for a strong ecclesiastical administration and hierarchical professional priesthood
Use of excommunication or forced resignation from the New Church denomination
Refusal to administer sacraments for members considered to live in “disorder”
Strong support for literalist reading of the Writings and opposition for spiritual reading that is not readily apparent
Strong involvement in maintaining appropriate ritual procedures for worship.
Strong emphasis on religious New Church schools for all members
Strong interest in expansion and evangelization
Taboo on women priests
Zone 8: New Church mysticism
Interest in Near Death Experiences (NDEs)
Interest in Eastern religions and philosophies
Interest in showing similarity between Swedenborg and other authors
Incorporating correspondences in art, architecture, and symbolism
Using New Testament verses to justify New Church evangelism
Interest in Swedenborg’s non-theological works
Relying on New Church worship and membership for salvation
Resistance to the idea that the Writings contain scientific revelations
Zone 9: New Church particularism
Exclusive focus on the Writings as the only source of spiritual knowledge and understanding
Resistance to drawing comparisons between Swedenborg and other authors
Defining the Doctrine in our understanding as Divine Doctrine
Focus on enlightenment for understanding inner the spiritual sense of the Writings
Focus on as-of self conscious cooperation in regeneration as a condition for salvation
Defining the Writings as scientific revelations (“True Science”)
Tolerance for ritual and doctrinal variations in the New Church
Views it as essential for every individual to become an expert scholar of the Writings
Promotes theistic science for all science subjects in schools
Promotes spiritual disciplines for regeneration
Instructions: For each question, select the answer that is closest to your current thinking.
You may have already taken this test once, if you followed the note at the beginning of the book called “Before You start: Test Your Rational Spirituality.” This is a section comprising items 76 to 100 of the Test. Whether you take it for the first time or the second time, your score, now that you’ve read up till now, may be around 100 percent correct (25 out of 25 items). More importantly you will be able to make up your own answers. You can practice after you obtain your score for this Part (4).
If you like, you can page through to the Appendix at the end where the 100 questions are located.
This test does not measure your rational spirituality but only your understanding of rational spirituality. If you are familiar with the Writings and understand it rationally, you would probably select the correct answer for most of the questions. This test is not a knowledge test. It does not measure your knowledge of the Writings and does not cover all the subjects the Writings cover. It is a test of understanding of how well you can reason about spiritual topics from the perspective of the Writings.
It works out well when you use an ANSWER SHEET on a piece of paper that looks like this, and then you can also easily and accurately score your choices from the ANSWER KEY given below (following the questions).
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QUESTIONS
76. Does it make sense to spend a lot of effort trying to prepare oneself for the unknown afterlife?
a. No, it doesn’t make sense. The important thing is to live a full life while one can and thereby to be prepared for whatever comes next. If you buy into this or that religion or theory about how you are to prepare, and you rearrange you life accordingly, denying yourself this or that, it may be all for nothing if it turns out to be the wrong theory.
b. Actually, it doesn’t take effort, only an inwardly sincere acknowledgement that we cannot save ourselves but are saved by the grace of God. We cannot prepare for eternal life by our own efforts, but if we live within the acknowledgment of our powerlessness, God creates a change in our life, sanctifying our efforts, making them fruitful to eternity.
c. Yes it makes sense. It's rational, and sane to want to prepare oneself for eternal life, especially since we're told by a fully reliable source (Divine revelation), that the quality of our life, our vitality and mental health throughout eternity, will depend entirely on how we prepare ourselves during this near insignificant time on earth
77. Faith is more inward, than Ritual, and True Science is more inward than Faith.
a. True.
b. False.
c. Cannot say.
78. The reason monist (atheistic) science is inferior and invalid is that it denies true reality, which is that God creates and runs the universe for the purpose of bringing into existence immortal human beings born on some earth, and to bring them to heaven where He can make them happy to eternity. Is this correct or not?
a. Not correct. Science is not about God and heaven. It’s about reality on earth!
b. Correct. Atheistic or materialistic science is a distortion of reality and leads to spiritual insanity.
c. Science is a method that can investigate anything, including what people think of God.
79. According to religionists, atheistic science paints a false picture of reality. If this is true, how can you explain the success of industry, engineering, and control over the environment?
a. God allowed atheistic science to become successful and continues to lead its scientists despite their false picture of reality. God inspires the minds of scientists, unconsciously to them, so that their thinking can be kept in external rationality while being in internal insanity. On the other hand, dualist science is theistic, and paints a dual reality containing the natural and the spiritual acting together.
b. God allowed atheistic science to become successful because He gives people freedom to discover and control the natural environment. The natural world belongs to atheistic science while issues of heaven and hell belong to religion.
c. Atheistic science does not paint a false picture of reality. It paints a true picture of natural reality, as evidenced by the successes of inventions and discoveries. Sunday Church topics such as worship, God, love, humility, and heaven are not of this world, hence not part of the picture that science paints of reality.
80. Prove that God is Human.
a. God the Father is Divine and God the Son is Divine and Human. These two Divine Persons form a Holy Trinity called the Godhead, together with a third Divine Person called the Holy Spirit. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are Divine. God the Son is Divine and Human. But if the Holy Spirit comes out of God the Son, then it too is Divine and Human.
b. God has revealed that He is the infinite source of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom operating in the created universe. These two operating together define what is human, and they cannot exist in animals plants, or objects. But they exist in human beings who are willing to receive love and wisdom from God. Even then, that love and wisdom, in their essence, remain with God. Hence only God is the actual and True Human, and we are human only to the extent that we are willing to receive love and wisdom from God.
c. God cannot be considered human since God is supposed to have created humans. God is Divine, not human. God creates humans to be able to feel love and hatred, decency and deceitfulness. To be human is to have all these traits. And even being human is often mixed since we also share traits with animals, and even with plants.
81. Consider these types of traits: wealth, power, reputation, knowledge, fear of exclusion, desire for approval, obedience to authority, and the like. Are they natural, spiritual, or celestial traits?
a. Spiritual.
b. Natural.
c. Celestial.
82. Consider these types of traits: merit, righteousness, holiness, humility, understanding, intelligence, wisdom, and the like.
a. Celestial.
b. Natural.
c. Spiritual.
83. Consider these types of traits: charity, love, unity, conjunction, acceptance, inclusion, interior perception, and the like.
a. Celestial.
b. Spiritual.
c. .Natural
84. Does God favor some people with more good than others, since some people are obviously more gifted than others?
a. God gives maximum good to every person all the time, but each individual filters it out, some turning it into its opposite or evil. God allows this since there is no other way of maintaining freedom of choice, which is essential for retaining the capacity to become human.
b. God’s wants to create a variety of people to make room for all possibilities and experiences. To arrange for this, He gives some people special gifts when He foresees that this individual can turn it into benefits for others. Not every person is suitable or willing to serve God in the highest possible way.
c. God distributes human traits throughout the population so that they form a bell shaped curve – the majority around the middle or “normal,” and a small minority in either extremes, good vs. evil.
85. What is the cause of acceleration of a vehicle when the driver presses the gas pedal?
a. The gas being released into the fuel chamber.
b. The driver’s purpose to accelerate.
c. The laws of physics and chemistry.
86. What is the inmost portion of a pebble upon which its existence depends?
a. Truth within which is good.
b. Sub-atomic particles arranged in a particular dynamic order in space.
c. Elements and compounds originating in the sun.
87. Swedenborg talked to spirits and there are some today who desire this ability. Can they succeed?
a. No, because direct communication with spirits interferes with the maturation of our rational consciousness of God, and therefore God does not allow such communication to take place today in modern times, though this was allowed in ancient times.
b. Yes, and many psychics have proven that they can and do. Such communication is also reported by thousands of people who have had Near Death Experiences (NDEs).
c. All things are possible to God and should He want an angel or devil to communicate with someone, He arranges for it to happen.
88. Is there a common evolution in the human race? Is the human race integrated into one or partially independent?
a. The human race is limited to this earth, as far as is known. Generations succeed one another as one civilization comes, thrives, and then ends, succeeded by yet another. There is a steady evolution from past to future but not a synchronous interdependence, but rather a successive independence.
b. All people alive today are psychically interdependent with each other as well as with those from the past and the future. The souls of all people -- past, present, and future, were created at the same time, though everyone is slated to be born in their own time. All souls are pieces of one large soul called God.
c. Elevation of consciousness is by means of rational truths understood more and more interiorly in proportion to our regeneration. This elevation of our rational consciousness is communicated to the entire human race in the heavens and on the other earths in the universe, since the entire race in the dual universe is united and functionally interdependent.
89. What kind of love are we commanded to have?
a. We are to love the Lord as to His Person, even the Robe He wears and the sandals He walks on. We are to love Him for Who He is, the Son of God from eternity who sacrificed Himself for us. We are to love all children, each one as to their unique person, being tolerant of the weaknesses that are human. We are to love our country and all of God’s children and creatures.
b. We are to love whatever good is in a person or thing, not the person or thing, just as we should strive to love the Lord as to the Divine Good and Truth in Him, and not as to His Person. We are not to love the evil in a person, or find it acceptable or excusable on account of who the person is. Nothing should be loved but what is good and true, knowing that all good and truth is from God and is in God.
c. We are to love our neighbor and show charity where needed. We are to love God. If our neighbor is a sinner, we should still love him or her. Loyalty to person is the highest friendship. Loyalty to country, right or wrong, is required, and we are to accept the bad with the good.
90. What’s the difference between theoretical and applied knowledge in True Science?
a. Theoretical knowledge of True Science is the first level of understanding while applied knowledge of it is at the second level. For example, a student taking a course in True Science might gain a theoretical knowledge of it, but when he or she becomes a graduate student or professor, there develops an applied knowledge of it. It is similar with medical students on campus and hospital interns on an assigned war, or a soldier in training vs. on the battle field.
b. Theoretical knowledge of True Science is called enlightenment, while its applied knowledge is called perception. Enlightenment is in the understanding, perception in the will. First the understanding is reformed, then the will is regenerated. Salvation is therefore not from theoretical knowledge of revelation and consequent enlightenment, but from applied knowledge and perception of our intentions and thoughts, whether from hell or heaven.
c. Theoretical theology differs from applied theology like a business professor differs from a business investor. While a minister is in Divinity School, he acquires a theoretical knowledge of True Science, viewed as True Theology. But once he has a parish he acquires an applied knowledge of True Science, which helps him to look after the souls in his charge.
91. Compare sensuous and rational consciousness of God.
a. Sensuous consciousness is the awareness of sensations, while rational consciousness is the awareness of thoughts. Our sensuous consciousness of God is direct and immediate, wordless, eternal. Our rational consciousness of God is indirect through our thoughts and interpretations. Direct mystical or ecstatic union with God is only possible in sensuous consciousness.
b. Sensuous consciousness is higher than rational consciousness because it is more immediate. Rational consciousness is the attempt to explain in words what the sensuous experience is. As a result, rational consciousness is more remote and subjective. But sensuous consciousness doesn’t mean ecstatic union with God.
c. The Son of God was a public citizen of Nazareth while He grew up into adulthood, but after His Resurrection He only appeared to those whose spiritual eyes were opened by Him to see. The difference is that He was present to everyone’s sensuous consciousness until the Resurrection, but afterwards, only to those whose rational consciousness was advanced enough to receive the Holy Spirit. The Second Coming is not a Coming in the sensuous consciousness but in the rational consciousness of True Science. In the afterlife, we have not only rational consciousness of the Lord, but sensual consciousness, as He appears to us in the midst of the spiritual Sun.
92. Is either heaven and hell forever or can people change their mind at some point?
a. Yes. Heaven is a place the Lord creates for good people and hell is a place for evil people.
b. Sometimes.
c. No. If heaven is in your mind, then hell must be in your mind. Every person has both heaven and hell in the mind, for there is no other heaven or hell except the one in people’s minds. To descend to the bottom of our mind means to enjoy and justify evil loves. To climb to the top of our mind means to enjoy and justify good loves. We descend to the bottom by giving up all good loves, and we climb to the top by giving up all evil loves. Once your are either at the bottom (in your hell) or at the top (in your heaven), you cannot switch because you are unwilling no matter what. To switch would be to acquire again what you have discarded (either good or evil loves). Therefore hell is forever and heaven is to eternity.
93. Explain what is spiritual enlightenment.
a. Spiritual enlightenment is the emergent phenomenon of higher consciousness achieved through acts of discipline and meditation.
b. Enlightenment is a spiritual gift an individual can use to minister to others who are in need and who are ignorant of the Lord or keep the Lord at a distance in their lives.
c. When we study the Threefold Word as True Science, we form rational concepts of Divine Truth. Simultaneously, light from the spiritual Sun enters our spiritual mind unconsciously, and produces conscious correspondences of itself in the natural-rational mind. This higher rational consciousness is called enlightenment.
94. Is there a difference between morality and spirituality? Illustrate in terms of the concept of charity.
a. No. Morality concerns the appropriate treatment of people in our behavior. Morality regulates our behavior towards our neighbor. The Ten Commandments given by God prohibit stealing, lying, murder, and adultery. These are all matters of morality and ethics. God wants us to be moral with one another by keeping the Commandments. Charity is to give to others who are in need of what you have. It is a high point of morality and spirituality.
b. Yes. Charity can be done for natural motives or spiritual. Morality is done for natural motives. Shunning evils as sins is done for spiritual motives. Morality about the outward social personality, while spirituality is about one’s character or inner loves. Hence being a moral person is not regenerating, unless we connect our morality to our spirituality. If we refrain from stealing because it is immoral, the desire to steal remains. But if we refrain from stealing because it is a sin against God, that is, destroys our heavenly life, then we connect spirituality to morality, and we regenerate.
c. The difference is one of emphasis rather than substance. Morality is a measure of how sincere we are in the values we uphold publicly and make up part of our personality structure. Spirituality is a measure of how deeply our values go, whether they are part of our core being or only the surface personality. Charity is an outward manifestation of both morality and spirituality, but more the former than the latter.
95. Briefly explain the differences between corporeal, sensuous, rational, and spiritual, in relation to the mind.
a. Corporeal refers to biochemistry, sensuous to physiology, rational to psychology, and spiritual to theology.
b. Corporeal refers to things in us that are corrupted by sin. Sensuous refers to that part of human nature that can be tempted or seduced. Rational is that which we intellectualize in our mind, interpreting our experience rather than taking it in immediately without the mediation of our intellect. Spiritual is the core of our being or soul and is unique and eternal.
c. The corporeal mind is close to the physical body processes which do not involve thinking. The sensuous mind receives information from the corporeal and differentiates it through words and labels. The rational mind takes information from the sensuous and puts it into abstract categories. The spiritual mind unconsciously receives information from the spiritual world, which is transmitted by correspondence, to the rational mind where it is conscious.
96. Identify the phase to which the following six traits are characteristic:
enlightened; literalist; universalistic, arrogant; conjunctive; inclusive, pacifist.
a. 3, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 2
b. 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 2
c. 3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 3, 1
97. What is the vertical community and how can we be conscious of our communication with spirits? Illustrate with our eating behavior.
a. The “vertical community” refers to our position in the hierarchy of spiritual beings. First are the Holy animals like the Cherubim, then the Angels who minister at the throne of God, then the elders and saints, and finally all the believers. The non-believers are cast out in outer darkness. When we eat we pay tribute to the throne of God by blessing the food and giving thanks. We are then in the company of Angels.
b. We can map out the spiritual societies we are connected to, which can be called our “vertical community.” For instance, when we are eating, if we stuff and swallow repeatedly we are with different spirits than if we moderate size and rate. If we deny ourselves another portion we are with different spirits than if we give in to our appetite and overeat. Affections for unhealthy foods come from different spiritual societies than affections for healthy food.
c. The “vertical community” refers to the social hierarchy in a society. This hierarchy may be considered to be the “spirit” of the underlying organization of that society. Food behavior is among the daily occupations of that society and requires the hierarchical execution of sequenced steps from farmer, to distributor, to local market where the customers gather to shop.
98. The following six sentences are taken from protocols of people’s thinking while doing their workout. Identify each entry as to phase (1, 2, or 3) and modality (thinking or feeling).
** I better not skip my workout today. It really keeps me in shape. To be successful you’ve got to look attractive. That means being in shape. Besides, you avoid heart attacks.
** I’m actually looking forward to my workout. Yes, it takes effort and motivation, but it’s worth it. I feel better, clean, purified, satisfied with myself.
** Exercising the physical body is like exercising the mind with study. Compelling myself to do it as scheduled, develops my mental discipline upon which rests my spiritual development. I must look on the physical exercise as a spiritual discipline.
** I need to learn to like my workout session. It’s the right thing to do. It keeps me from bad habits like laziness and lack of self-control. It’s necessary for a healthy life.
** I feel that every movement brings me closer to my heavenly character. I sense the physical power in my body to be connected to my will and motive. Since this is from heaven, I feel closer to heaven as I exercise.
** I hate this workout stuff. I rather watch TV or surf the net. But I’m making myself do it. I refuse to break my resolution. I’m scared to get sick and end up under a doctor’s care. Besides, it’ll be soon over then I can watch TV.
a. feeling 1, thinking 3, thinking 2, feeling 2, feeling 3, thinking 1
b. thinking 1, feeling 3, thinking 2, feeling 1, thinking 3, feeling 2
c. thinking 1, feeling 2, thinking 3, thinking 2, feeling 3, feeling 1
99. The following six statements characterize various attitudes about wars. For each item, identify the phase (1, 2, or 3) and the modality (thinking or feeling).
All wars are under the direct auspices of the Lord. All evil is moderated by the Lord to its maximum allowed. Evil itself punishes the enemy. Our job is to neutralize their ability to hurt others and to try to amend them.
** There are just wars and evil wars. Protecting ourselves and coming to the rescue of the subjugated are just wars. The enemy must be treated humanely and not hated. God is on the side of the just. Those who are pacifists think that all wars are evil. They would rather see the enemy continue its cruelties against others.
** Feeling confident in winning and relying on God. Wanting to defeat the enemy without hating them. Hoping that enemy may be amended rather than destroyed. Wanting to minimize damage and ready to help with reconstruction of the country.
** War is an instrument for advancing one’s nation or religion. It’s good to hate the enemy. They don’t deserve humane treatment since they want to harm us. Eye for an eye philosophy.
** Striving to win by means of as-of self effort powered by the Lord. Striving to avoid hate as self-corrupting. Sense of sadness rather than joy in hurting and killing enemy. Desire to protect enemy by keeping injury and damage to the minimum necessary for gaining control.
** Hating the enemy with self-righteousness. Wanting to deny humane treatment to the enemy. Feeling justified in using illegal types of weapons and in killing the unarmed innocent. Wanting to inflict maximum damage. Feeling justified in maltreating prisoners of war. Joy in the spoils of war.
a. thinking 3, thinking 2, feeling 2, thinking 1, feeling 3, feeling 1
b. feeling 3, thinking 1, feeling 1, thinking 3, feeling 2, thinking 2
c. thinking 1, feeling 2, feeling 1, thinking 2, thinking 3, feeling 3
100. “Within” and “above” refer to differences of discrete degrees. Characterize the discrete relation between natural and spiritual, and between finite and infinite.
a. The natural world is within the spiritual world. The finite is within the infinite.
b. The spiritual world is within the natural world. The infinite is within the finite.
c. The natural world is finite. The spiritual world is infinite. They are separate, not within or above each other.
ANSWER KEY
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51. __b__ |
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52. __a__ |
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53. __b__ |
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54. __a__ |
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55. __c__ |
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56. __a__ |
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57. __c__ |
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58. __c__ |
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59. __c__ |
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60. __a__ |
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61. __b__ |
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62. __b__ |
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63. __c__ |
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64. __a__ |
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65. __a__ |
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66. __a__ |
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67. __c__ |
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68. __c__ |
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69. __b__ |
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70. __b__ |
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71. __a__ |
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72. __b__ |
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73. __b__ |
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74. __c__ |
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75. __a__ |
Now that you know your score, you can go a step further in assessing your understanding of rational spirituality. Look at the questions you answered correctly. Select one of them and write a sentence of justification for your answer. Then compare your answer with the sentence for that item given in the Test. How do they differ? Did you mention all the basic elements needed to justify the answer? Did you mention them in a logical order? Now see if you can improve it without making it much longer.
Repeat this with other items.
See if you can add more alternatives to each item.
See if you can create 10 new items covering the reading you have done thus far.
19. Selections from the Writings
Note:
The entire theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) in English and original Neo-Latin, with search engine, is available online to the public at this Web address:
Collateral works, articles, and Web links may be found on my Web site at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/swedenborg.html
The abbreviations used for the Writings are explained in the Bibliography Notes at the end.
19.1 On Swedenborg’s Mission as Scientific Revelator of the Second Coming
VIII. THIS SECOND COMING OF THE LORD IS EFFECTED BY MEANS OF A MAN TO WHOM THE LORD HAS MANIFESTED HIMSELF IN PERSON, AND WHOM HE HAS FILLED WITH HIS SPIRIT, THAT HE MAY TEACH THE DOCTRINES OF THE NEW CHURCH FROM THE LORD BY MEANS OF THE WORD.
Since the Lord cannot manifest Himself in Person, as shown just above, and nevertheless has foretold that He was to come and establish a new church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He will do this by means of a man, who is able not only to receive these doctrines in his understanding but also to publish them by the press. That the Lord manifested Himself before me, His servant, and sent me to this office, that He afterward opened the eyes of my spirit and thus introduced me into the spiritual world and granted me to see the heavens and the hells, and to talk with angels and spirits, and this now continuously for several years, I affirm in truth; as also that from the first day of that call I have not received anything whatever pertaining to the doctrines of that church from any angel, but from the Lord alone while I have read the Word. (TCR 779)
The arcana revealed in the following pages relate to heaven and hell, and also to the life of man after death. The man of the church at this date knows scarcely anything about heaven and hell or about his life after death, although all these matters are set forth and described in the Word; and yet many of those born within the church refuse to believe in them, saying in their hearts, "Who has come from that world and told us?" Lest, therefore, such a spirit of denial, which especially prevails with those who have much worldly wisdom, should also infect and corrupt the simple in heart and the simple in faith, it has been granted me to associate with angels and to talk with them as man with man, also to see what is in the heavens and what is in the hells, and this for thirteen years; so now from what I have seen and heard it has been granted me to describe these, in the hope that ignorance may thus be enlightened and unbelief dissipated. Such immediate revelation is granted at this day because this is what is meant by the Coming of the Lord. (HH 1)
The manifestation of the Lord in Person, and the introduction by the Lord into the spiritual world, both as to sight and as to hearing and speech, surpasses all miracles; for we do not read anywhere in history that such interaction with angels and spirits has been granted from the creation of the world. For I am daily with angels there, even as I am in the world with men; and now for twenty-seven years. (INV 43)
I was once asked how, from a philosopher, I became a theologian; and I answered, "In the same manner that fishermen were made disciples and apostles by the Lord: and that I also had from early youth been a spiritual fisherman." (ISB 20)
I will now give you an account of my first youth: From my fourth to my tenth year I was constantly engaged in thought upon God, salvation, and the spiritual affections [passiones spirituales] of men; and several times I revealed things at which my father and mother wondered, saying that angels must be speaking through me. (Letters 17)
From my sixth to my twelfth year I used to delight in conversing with clergymen about faith, saying that the life of faith is love, and that the love which imparts life is love to the neighbor; also that God gives faith to everyone, but that those only receive it who practice that love. I knew of no other faith at that time, than that God is the Creator and Preserver of nature, that He imparts understanding and a good disposition to men, and several other things that follow thence. (Letters 17)
I knew nothing at that time of that learned faith which teaches that God the Father imputes the righteousness of His Son to whomsoever, and at such times, as He chooses even to those who have not repented and have not reformed their lives. And had I heard of such a faith, it would have been then, as it is now, above my comprehension. (Letters 17)
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. (CORONIS 0)
Therefore in order to remove all doubt as to such being the character of the Word, the Lord has revealed to me the Word's internal sense. In its essence this sense is spiritual, and in relation to the external sense, which is natural, is as soul is to body. This sense is the spirit which gives life to the letter; it can therefore bear witness to the divinity and holiness of the Word, and convince even the natural man, if he is willing to be convinced. (SS 4)
Once, when the interior heaven was opened to me, and I was conversing with the angels there, I was permitted to observe the following phenomena. Be it known that although I was in heaven, I was nevertheless not out of myself, but in the body, for heaven is within man, wherever he may be, so that when it pleases the Lord, a man may be in heaven and yet not be withdrawn from the body. In this way it was given me to perceive the general workings of heaven as plainly as an object is perceived by any of the senses. . (AC 3884)
The manifestation of the Lord, and intromission into the spiritual world, surpass all miracles. This has not been granted to anyone since the creation, as it has been to me. (INV 52)
The Lord has revealed the spiritual meaning of the Word at this day because a doctrine of genuine truth has now been revealed. This doctrine is contained in part in The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine, and now in some shorter works which are in process of publication. And because this doctrine and no other agrees with the spiritual meaning of the Word, therefore that meaning has now for the first time been disclosed, along with a knowledge of correspondences. (De Verbo 7:8)
Since therefore I was desirous of knowing whether there were other inhabited worlds, and what they and their inhabitants were like, I was allowed by the Lord to talk and mix with spirits and angels from other worlds. (EU 1)
Add to these most manifest evidences, that the spiritual sense of the Word has been disclosed by the Lord through me, which has never before been revealed since the Word was written among the sons of Israel; and this sense is the very sanctuary of the Word: the Lord Himself is in this sense with His Divine, and in the natural sense with His Human. Not a single iota in this sense can be opened except by the Lord alone. This surpasses all the revelations that have hitherto been made from the creation of the world. (INV 44)
A redemption has also been accomplished by the Lord at this day, because at this day is His Second Coming according to prophecy; by which, having been an eye-witness thereof I have been made certain of the truth of the foregoing arcana. (Coronis 21)
To-day the Second Coming of the Lord is taking place, and a new church is to be established (TCR 115)
At this day the spiritual sense of the Word has been revealed from the Lord, because the doctrine of genuine truth has now been revealed, which doctrine is partly contained in the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, and now in the small works, which are being given to the public; and because that doctrine, and no other, agrees with the spiritual sense of the Word, therefore that sense, together with the science of correspondences, has now for the first time been disclosed. That sense is also signified by the Lord's appearing in the clouds of heaven with glory and power (Matt. 24:30, 31), in which chapter it treats of the consummation of the age, by which is meant the last time of the church. (De Verbo 7)
[2] Now, since it has been granted me to be in the spiritual world and in the natural world at the same time, and thus to see each world and each sun, I am obliged by my conscience to communicate these things. For of what use is knowledge unless it be communicated? (ISB 18)
After the completion of this book, the Lord called together His twelve disciples, who had followed Him in the world; and a day later He sent them all forth throughout the spiritual world to preach the Gospel, that the Lord God Jesus Christ is king, and His kingdom shall be for ever and ever, as foretold by Daniel (7:13, 14) and in Revelation (11:15):
Blessed are they who come to the wedding supper of the Lamb Rev. 19:9.
This happened on the nineteenth of June in the year 1770. This was meant by the Lord's saying:
He will send his angels, and they will gather together His chosen people from the bounds of the heavens on one side as far as the bounds of the heavens on the other. Matt. 24:31. (TCR 791)
The first experience.
One day I had been meditating on the creation of the universe. This was noticed by the angels above me to the right, where there were some who had several times meditated and reasoned about the same matter; so one of them came down and invited me to join them. I passed into the spirit and accompanied him; on my arrival I was brought to the prince, in whose hall I saw as many as a hundred assembled with the prince in their midst.
Then one of them said: 'We noticed here that you have meditated about the creation of the universe, a subject which has several times occupied our thoughts. But we were unable to reach a conclusion because our thinking clung to the idea of chaos being like a great egg, from which everything in the universe in its due order was hatched. Yet now we perceive that such a vast universe could not have been hatched like this. Another idea which stuck in our minds was that everything was created by God from nothing; yet now we perceive that nothing comes from nothing. Our minds have not yet been able to disentangle themselves from these two ideas and shed a little light on how creation happened. For this reason we have summoned you from the place where you were, to expound your thinking on the subject.'
[2] 'I will indeed,' I replied on hearing this. 'I meditated on this,' I said, 'for a long time but to no purpose. But later, when I was admitted by the Lord into your world, I perceived that it was futile to form any conclusions about the creation of the universe, unless it were first known that there were two worlds, one occupied by angels and the other by men; and that men after death pass from their world into the other. Then I also saw that there are two suns, one from which pour forth all spiritual things, and one from which pour forth all natural things; and that the sun from which all spiritual things pour forth is pure love from Jehovah God, who is in its midst, while the sun from which all natural things pour forth is pure fire. When I had grasped these facts, once when I was in a state of enlightenment, I was granted the perception that the universe was created by Jehovah God by means of the sun in the midst of which He is; and because love cannot exist except together with wisdom, that the universe was created by Jehovah God from His love by means of His wisdom. I have been convinced of the truth of this by everything I have seen in the world where you are, and in the world where I am at present in the body.
[3] 'It would be too tedious to explain how creation progressed from its first beginning. But while I was in a state of enlightenment I perceived that by means of the light and heat from the sun of your world, one after another spiritual atmospheres were created, which are in themselves substantial. Because there are three of them, and they therefore have three degrees, three heavens were made, one for angels in the highest degree of love and wisdom, one for angels in the second degree, and a third for angels in the lowest degree. But because this spiritual universe could not come into being without a natural universe, in which the spiritual one might produce its effects and perform its services, at the same time the sun which is the source of all natural things was created; and through this in the same way, by means of light and heat, three atmospheres were created to surround the first three, like a shell round a kernel or bark round wood; and it was finally through these that the globe with its lands and seas was created from the earth consisting of soil, stones and minerals, to be the home of men, animals, fish, trees, shrubs and plants.
[4] 'This is an extremely general outline of how creation took place and progressed. It would take a series of books to explain all the particular details; but all lead to this conclusion, that God did not create the universe from nothing, since, as you said, nothing comes of nothing, but through the sun of the heaven of angels, which is from His Being (Esse) and so is pure love together with wisdom. Every single detail of the universe, by which I mean both the spiritual and natural worlds, bears witness and proclaims that the universe was created from the Divine love by the Divine wisdom. This you can clearly see, if you consider these facts in due order and in their connexions, by the light which illuminates the perceptions of your understanding. But it should be kept in mind that the love and wisdom, which in God make one, are not love and wisdom in the abstract, but are in Him as substance. For God is the very, sole and consequently prime substance and essence, which is and continues in existence in itself.
[5] All things being created from the Divine love and the Divine wisdom is what is meant by this passage in John:
The Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things were made through Him; and the world was made through Him. John 1:1, 3, 10.
God there means the Divine love, and the Word the Divine truth, or the Divine wisdom. That is why the Word is there called the light; light, when referring to God, means the Divine wisdom.'
At the end of this speech when I was saying good-bye, gleams of light from the sun there came gliding down through the heavens of the angels and entered their eyes, and through them the dwellings of their minds. Under this enlightenment they applauded my speech, and then escorted me into the courtyard; and my earlier companion took me to the house where I was living, and from there went back up to his own community. (TCR 76).
CONCERNING THE RESUSCITATION OF MAN FROM THE DEAD, AND HIS ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
Being permitted to describe in connected order how man passes from the life of the body into the life of eternity, in order that the way in which he is resuscitated might be known, this has been shown me, not by hearing, but by actual experience. (AC 168)
I was reduced into a state of insensibility as to the bodily senses, thus almost into the state of dying persons, retaining however my interior life unimpaired, attended with the power of thinking, and with sufficient breathing for life, and finally with a tacit breathing, that I might perceive and remember what happens to those who have died and are being resuscitated. (AC 169)
Celestial angels were present who occupied the region of the heart, so that as to the heart I seemed united with them, and so that at length scarcely anything was left to me except thought, and the consequent perception, and this for some hours. (AC 170)
The angels who sat at my head were perfectly silent, merely communicating their thoughts by the face, so that I could perceive that another face was as it were induced upon me; indeed two, because there were two angels. When the angels perceive that their faces are received, they know that the man is dead. (AC 173)
An aromatic odor was perceived, like that of an embalmed corpse, for when the celestial angels are present, the cadaverous odor is perceived as if it were aromatic, which when perceived by evil spirits prevents their approach. (AC 175)
As soon as the internal parts of the body grow cold, the vital substances are separated from the man, wherever they may be, even if enclosed in a thousand labyrinthine interlacings, for such is the efficacy of the Lord's mercy (which I had previously perceived as a living and mighty attraction), that nothing vital can remain behind. (AC 179)
When the celestial angels are with a resuscitated person, they do not leave him, for they love everyone; but when the soul is of such a character that he can no longer be in the company of the celestial angels, he is eager to depart from them; and when this takes place the spiritual angels arrive, and give him the use of light, for previously he had seen nothing, but had only thought. (AC 182)
Afterwards there seems to be something gently unrolled from the face, and perception is communicated to him, the angels being especially cautious to prevent any idea coming from him but such as is of a soft and tender nature, as of love; and it is now given him to know that he is a spirit. (AC 185)
He then commences his life. This at first is happy and glad, for he seems to himself to have come into eternal life, which is represented by a bright white light that becomes of a beautiful golden tinge, by which is signified his first life, to wit, that it is celestial as well as spiritual. (AC 186)
Finally I talked with the spirits of that world about the belief of the inhabitants of our world concerning their resurrection.
I said they were unable to conceive of people coming into the next life immediately after death, and then looking like people in face, body, arms and feet, having all their outward and inward senses. Even less could they believe that they would then wear clothes and have houses and places to live.
This was entirely due to the fact that most people here base their thinking on bodily sense-impressions, so that they do not believe in the existence of what they cannot see and touch. Few of them can be withdrawn from outward sense-impressions towards inward ones, and so be lifted into the light of heaven in which inward impressions can be received.
It is for this reason that they cannot have any concept of their soul or spirit as being a person, but think of it as wind, air or some formless breath, which yet contains some vitality. This is the reason that they believe they will only be resurrected at the end of the world, which they call the Last Judgment, thinking that their body, though collapsed into dust and scattered to all the winds, must then be brought back and reunited with their soul or spirit.
[2] I added that they are allowed to hold this belief, because there is no other way that those who, as I said, base their thinking on outward sense-impressions, could think of their soul or spirit living as a person in human form, except by re-entering the body they carried around with them in the world. Unless therefore the body were said to be resurrected, they would at heart reject the teaching on resurrection and everlasting life as incomprehensible.
(...)
[4] For they are unaware that each person is inwardly a spirit, and the life of the body and all its parts comes from the spirit, not from the body by itself. They do not know that it is the spirit which is the real person, sharing its form, but invisible to the body's eyes, being visible only to the eyes of spirits. Hence it is too that, when a person's spirit has its sight opened, which is the result of the withdrawal of the body's sight, angels can be seen as people. So it was that angels appeared to the ancients, as related in the Word.
I have had several conversations with spirits whom I knew when they were people living in the world, and asked whether they wanted to be clothed again with their earthly bodies, as they had previously imagined. On hearing this they ran off to a distance at the mere idea of being reunited, in astonishment at having been led in the world to think so by blind faith without any understanding. (EU 165)
Note that the Writings talk about those in hell as being punished by their own evils. This is a self-imposed punishment, not a punishment by an external agency such as is the case with prisons on earth. God doesn’t punish, but evil has a built in consequence of returning to the evil doer when the evil state is fully consummated. Neither are the evil kept in the hells, but they keep themselves there.
The state of a person's mind in the natural world determines its state in the spiritual world. (TCR 816)
Heaven is in the man; and there is a place for him in heaven according to the state of life and of faith in which he is (AC 9305)
Once, when the interior heaven was opened to me, and I was conversing with the angels there, I was permitted to observe the following phenomena. Be it known that although I was in heaven, I was nevertheless not out of myself, but in the body, for heaven is within man, wherever he may be, so that when it pleases the Lord, a man may be in heaven and yet not be withdrawn from the body. In this way it was given me to perceive the general workings of heaven as plainly as an object is perceived by any of the senses. . (AC 3884)
Love of the married partner does not result from the sexual embrace, as with adulterers, but the sexual embrace from the love of the partner; so that the love of the partner does not depend on the fire of that organ, but the reverse. The love of the partner is full of delights, irrespective of sexual intercourse, and is a delightful dwelling together. Between that love apart from the sexual embrace, and the sexual embrace itself, there is a determination, just as there is between that which a man thinks from the will, which is intention, and act, or speech. Between these, intervenes determination, which is as it were the opening of the mind to doing a thing, like the opening of a door. (SE 6110)
[The New Heaven] consists of Christians as well as of Gentiles, but for the most part of the children of all in the whole world, who have departed this life since the Lord's time: for these have all been received by the Lord, educated in heaven, and instructed by the angels, and afterwards preserved, so that together with the rest, they might constitute the New Heaven. (NJHD 3)
Those who are outside the Church, and acknowledge one God, and live according to their religion in some charity towards the neighbour, are in communion with those who are of the Church; for no one who believes in God and leads a good life, is damned. From this it is evident, that the Lord's Church is everywhere throughout the world; although specifically it is, where the Lord is acknowledged, and where the Word exists. (NJHD 244)
The whole Church on earth, before the Lord, is as one man, nos. 7396, 9276; in like manner heaven, because the Church is heaven, that is, the Lord's kingdom on earth, nos. 2853, 2996, 2998, 3624-3629, 3636-3643, 3741-3745, 4625. But the Church, where the Lord is known and where the Word exists, is like the heart and lungs in a man in respect to the rest of the body, which lives therefrom, as from the fountains of its life, nos. 637, 931, 2054, 2853. Hence it is, that unless there were a Church where the Word exists, and where by means of it the Lord is known, the human race would not be saved, nos. 468, 637, 931, 4545, 10452. The Church is the foundation of heaven, no. 4060. (NJHD 246)
THE STATE AND CONDITION IN THE NEXT LIFE OF NATIONS AND PEOPLES BORN OUTSIDE THE CHURCH
It is commonly supposed that those born outside the Church, who are called heathens and gentiles, cannot be saved for the reason that they do not possess the Word and so do not know the Lord, without whom there is no salvation. But that gentiles too are saved may be known from the single consideration that the Lord's mercy is universal - that is, it reaches out to every individual human being. For gentiles are born human beings the same as those within the Church, who are a relative minority; and they are not to blame because they do not know the Lord. Consequently the nature of their state and condition in the next life has in the Lord's Divine mercy been shown to me. (AC 2589)
THE FORM OF HEAVEN WHICH DETERMINES AFFILIATIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS THERE.
What the form of heaven is can be seen in some measure from what has been shown in the preceding chapters; as that heaven is like itself both in its greatest and in its least divisions (n. 72); that consequently each society is a heaven in a lesser form, and each angel in the least form (n. 51-58); that as the entire heaven reflects a single man, so each society of heaven reflects a man in a lesser form, and each angel in the least form (n. 59-77); that the wisest are at the center, and the less wise are round about even to the borders, and the like is true of each society (n. 43); and that those who are in the good of love dwell from the east to the west in heaven, and those who are in truths from good from the south to the north; and the same is true of each society (n. 148, 149). All this is in accord with the form of heaven; consequently it may be concluded from this what this form is in general. (HH 200)
Nearly all people in the natural world can be associated together in respect to their outward affections, but not in respect to their inner affections if these differ and become apparent. The reason is that in the world a person is invested with a material body, and this is filled with urges, which in it are like dregs that settle to the bottom when newly fermented wine is being clarified.
From such elements come the materials of which the bodies of people in the world are composed. As a result, inward affections that belong to the mind do not appear, and in many cases scarcely a trace of them is visible. For either the body swallows them up and immerses them in its dregs, or from a habit of dissembling learned from early childhood, it hides them deep within and conceals them from the sight of others.
This also enables it to enter into the state of some affection which it observes in someone else, and to attract the other's affection to it, so that they form a relationship. They form a relationship, because every affection has its delight, and delights are what join hearts together.
It would be different, however, if inward affections were like outward ones, visible in the expression of the face and gesture and audible in the sound of the speech, or if their delights were noticeable to the nose and smelled, as is the case in the spiritual world. If these affections were then dissimilar to the point of friction and conflict, they would separate their hearts from each other and part, removing themselves to a distance commensurate with their perception of antipathy.
It is apparent from this that nearly all people in the natural world can be associated together in respect to outward affections, but not in respect to their inner affections, if these differ and become apparent.
(CL 272)
The chief love is sexual love; and in the case of those who reach heaven, that is, those who become spiritual on earth, it is conjugial love.
The reason why a person's sexual love remains after death is that a male remains a male and a female remains a female, and the male's masculinity pervades the whole and every part of him, and likewise a female's femininity; and the impulse to be joined is present in every detail down to the smallest. Since that impulse to be joined was implanted from creation and is therefore continually present, it follows that the one desires the other and longs to be joined to the other.
Love taken by itself is nothing but a desire and hence an impulse to be joined; conjugial love is an impulse to be joined into one. For the male and the female of the human species are so created as to be able to become like a single individual, that is, one flesh; and when united, then they are, taken together, the full expression of humanity. If not so joined, they are two, each being as it were a divided person or half a person. Since that impulse to be joined lies deeply hidden in every part of both male and female, and every part has the ability and desire to be joined into one, it follows that people retain mutual and reciprocal sexual love after death. (CL 37)
MARRIAGES IN HEAVEN.
As heaven is from the human race, and angels therefore are of both sexes, and from creation woman is for man and man is for woman, thus the one belongs to the other, and this love is innate in both, it follows that there are marriages in heaven as well as on the earth. But marriages in heaven differ widely from marriages on the earth. Therefore what marriages in heaven are, and how they differ from marriages on the earth and wherein they are like them, shall now be told. (HH 366)
Especially does a love for the opposite sex remain, and in the case of people coming into heaven, namely, people who become spiritual on earth, conjugial love. A love for the opposite sex remains in a person after death for the reason that a male is then still a male, and a female still a female, and masculinity in the male is masculine in the whole and every part of him, likewise femininity in the female, and there is a capacity for conjunction in every detail - indeed, in every least detail - of the two sexes. (CL 37:4)
The angelic spirits replied with a smile, 'Sexual love among the angels, the kind of love there is in heaven, is still full of the most intimate delights. It is an extremely pleasant feeling, as if every part of the mind were expanded. This affects all parts of the chest, and inside it is as if the heart were playing games with the lungs; and this play gives rise to breathing, sound and speech. These make contact between the sexes, that is, between young men and girls, the very model of heavenly sweetness, because it is pure.
Since in heaven the husband is wisdom and the wife is the love of wisdom, both being spiritual, they cannot have any but spiritual children conceived and born there. This is why these delights do not leave angels depressed, as some on earth are, but cheerful; this is due to the constant inflow of fresh strength to replace the former, at once renewing and enlightening it. For all who reach heaven return to the springtime of their youth, recovering the strength of that age, and keeping this for ever.' (CL 44)
A young man becomes or is made a husband, because a husband possesses elements taken from his wife, which increase his ability to receive love and wisdom; these he did not have as a young man. These effects take place in the case of those who enjoy truly conjugial love. (…)
I was convinced of the fact of this from the following experience in the spiritual world:
Some men said that the relationship a man has with a woman before marriage and the relationship he has with his wife after marriage are similar. When they heard this, their wives became very offended and said, "They are not at all alike! The difference is as the difference between fantasy and reality."
To this the men retorted, "Are you not women as before?" To which their wives responded with rising voice, "We are not 'women' but wives! The love you feel is a fantasy love and not a real one; therefore you speak in fantasy terms."
The men then said, "If you are not 'women,' still you are married women." But they replied, "In the early days of marriage we were married women; now, however, we are wives." (CL 199)
(5) All the delights of truly conjugial love, even the end delights, are chaste. This follows from the foregoing considerations explaining that truly conjugial love is the essence of chastity. And delights make the life of this love.
I have indicated earlier how the delights of this love ascend and enter heaven, and on the way permeate the joys of heavenly loves experienced by angels of heaven. I have also recounted how these delights ally themselves with the delights of conjugial love in angels. Moreover, I have heard from angels that they perceive these delights to be heightened in them and to become fuller as they ascend from chaste married partners on earth. And in response to some bystanders, who were unchaste - in reply to their question whether they also experienced the end delights - the angels nodded and quietly said, "What else? Are they not delights of conjugial love in their fullest expression?"
(Regarding the source of the delights of this love and what they are like, see no. 69 above and what is said in the narrative accounts, especially in those that follow.) (CL 144)
Chastity in marriage does not come about through renunciation of licentious relationships unless this is done in accordance with religion. The reason is that a person without religion does not become spiritual, but remains natural. And if a natural person renounces licentious relationships, still his spirit does not renounce them. Consequently, even though it seems to him that by renouncing them he is chaste, nevertheless unchasteness still lies hidden within, like putrefaction in a wound only superficially healed.
As seen above in no. 130, conjugial love depends on the state of the church in a person. More on this subject may be seen in the exposition of point (11) which follows below. (CL 149)
We say that fornication is a product of sexual love because it is not sexual love, but arises from it. Sexual love is like a spring from which both conjugial love and scortatory love can be drawn; and they can be drawn by fornication, or without it. For everyone has sexual love in him, and it either emerges or it does not. If it emerges before marriage in relations with a woman of loose morals, it is called fornication; but if it does not emerge until he has a wife, it is called marriage. If it occurs with another woman after marriage, it is called adultery. Therefore, as stated, sexual love is like a spring from which a rivulet of chaste as well as unchaste love can flow. But it will be revealed in the following pages how much caution and how much prudence is needed for chaste love to develop through fornication, and how much imprudence for unchaste or scortatory love to develop through it. Can anyone draw this conclusion, that a person who has fornicated cannot be more chaste when he is married? (CL 445)
Scortatory love makes a person less and less human and virile, and conjugial love makes him more and more human and virile. (CL 432)
He who thinks against God is rarely punished in the natural world, because there he is always in a state subject to reformation; but he is punished in the spiritual world after death, for then he can no longer be reformed. (DP 249)
Evils are as it were heavy, and fall of themselves into hell; and so also falsities that are from evil (n. 8279, 8298).(HD 170)
When evil spirits are in this second state, as they rush into evils of every kind they are subjected to frequent and grievous punishments. In the world of spirits there are many kinds of punishment (HH 509; see below for the rest of the quote).
When evil spirits are in this second state, as they rush into evils of every kind they are subjected to frequent and grievous punishments. In the world of spirits there are many kinds of punishment; and there is no regard for person, whether one had been in the world a king or a servant. Every evil carries its punishment with it, the two making one; therefore whoever is in evil is also in the punishment of evil. And yet no one in the other world suffers punishment on account of the evils that he had done in this world, but only on account of the evils that he then does; although it amounts to the same and is the same thing whether it be said that men suffer punishment on account of their evils in the world or that they suffer punishment on account of the evils they do in the other life, since everyone after death returns into his own life and thus into like evils; and the man continues the same as he had been in the life of the body (n. 470-484).
Men are punished for the reason that the fear of punishment is the sole means of subduing evils in this state. Exhortation is no longer of any avail, neither is instruction or fear of the law and of the loss of reputation, since everyone then acts from his nature; and that nature can be restrained and broken only by punishments.
But good spirits, although they had done evils in the world, are never punished, because their evils do not return. Moreover, I have learned that the evils they did were of a different kind or nature, not being done purposely in opposition to the truth, or from any other badness of heart than that which they received by inheritance from their parents, and that they were borne into this by a blind delight when they were in externals separate from internals. (HH 505)
The state of the case with the evil in the other life is that they are not punished until their evils have reached their height, and this both in general and in particular. For such is the equilibrium in the other life that evil punishes itself, that is to say those who are evil run into the punishment of their evil, but only when it has reached its height. Every evil has its limit that varies in each individual case, beyond which it is not allowable to pass. When an evil person passes beyond this limit he precipitates himself into the penalty, and this is so in every particular (AC 1857)
There are innumerable things in every evil. In man's sight every evil appears as one single thing. This is the case with hatred and revenge, theft and fraud, adultery and whoredom, arrogance and high-mindedness, and with every other evil; and it is not known that in every evil there are innumerable things, exceeding in number the fibers and vessels in a man's body. For a wicked man is a hell in its least form; and hell consists of myriads of myriads of spirits, and every one there is in form like a man, although a monstrous one, in which all the fibers and vessels are inverted. The spirit himself is an evil which appears to himself as a "one"; but there are innumerable things in it as many as the lusts of that evil, for every man is his own evil, or his own good, from the head to the sole of his foot.
Since then a wicked man is such, it is evident that he is one evil composed of innumerable different evils each of which is a distinct evil, and they are called lusts of evil. Hence it follows that all these in their order must be restored and changed by the Lord in order that the man may be reformed; and this cannot be effected unless by the Divine Providence of the Lord, step by step from the earliest period of man's life to the last. (DP 296)
In hell every lust of evil when visually represented appears like a noxious creature, as a dragon, or a cockatrice, or a viper, or a bird of night, or an owl, and so on; and similarly do the lusts of evil appear in a wicked man when he is viewed by angels.
All these forms of lusts must be changed one by one; and the man himself, who with respect to his spirit appears as a human monster or devil, must be changed to become like a beautiful angel; and every lust of evil must be changed to appear like a lamb, or a sheep, or a pigeon, or a turtle dove, as the affections of good in the angels appear in heaven when visually represented; and to change a dragon into a lamb, a cockatrice into a sheep, and an owl into a dove can only be effected step by step, by rooting out evil from its very seed and implanting good seed in its stead.
This, however, can only be done as is done, for example, in the grafting of trees. When their roots with some of the trunk remain, the engrafted branch draws sap through the old root and turns it into sap that makes good fruit. The branch that is to be engrafted can only be taken from the Lord, who is the Tree of Life. This, moreover, is in accordance with the words of the Lord (John xv. 1-7). (DP 296:[2])
A wicked man from himself continually leads himself more and more deeply into his evils. It is said, from himself, because all evil is from man, for man turns good that originates from the Lord into evil, as was said above. The real reason why the wicked man immerses himself more deeply in evil is that as he wills and commits evil he advances into infernal societies more and more interiorly and also more and more deeply. Hence also the delight of evil increases, and so occupies his thoughts that at last he feels nothing more pleasant. He who has advanced more interiorly and deeply into infernal societies becomes as if he were bound with chains. So long as he lives in the world, however, he does not feel his chains, for they are as if made from soft wool or from fine threads of silk, and he loves them as they give him pleasure; but after death, instead of being soft they become hard, and instead of being pleasant they become galling. (DP 296:[3])
The separation of profane and holy ideas when thus conjoined cannot be effected except by means of such infernal torment that if a man were aware of it he would as carefully avoid profanation as he would avoid hell itself. (AC 301)
The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings together make up the Threefold Word. Whenever the Writings use the expression ”the Word” one can always think “the Threefold Word.” Doing so, reveals to the reader a deeper meaning of what the passage is saying. And if you desire to enter zone 9 state of consciousness, think “True Science” whenever you read “the Word.” This “substitution technique” is discussed with some illustrations, in my book A Man of the Field, Volume 2 Enlightenment, available at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
Anyone who does not know that the Word has an internal sense which is not visible in the letter will be utterly astonished by the idea that spiritual realities too are meant by the numbers used in the Word. The specific reason for his astonishment is his inability to use numbers to give shape to any spiritual idea, when yet the spiritual ideas known to angels present themselves as numbers, see AC 5265. The identity of those ideas or spiritual realities to which numbers correspond can, it is true, be known; but the origin of such correspondence remains hidden, such as the origin of the correspondence of 'twelve' to all aspects of faith, the correspondence of 'seven' to things that are holy, as well as that of 'ten' and also 'five' to forms of good and truth stored up by the Lord within the interior man, and so on. Even so, it is enough if people know simply that such a correspondence does exist and that by virtue of that correspondence each number used in the Word denotes something present in the spiritual world, consequently that what is Divine has been inspired into them and so lies concealed within them.
[4] Examples of this are seen in the following places where 'five' is mentioned, such as the Lord's parable in Matt. 25:14 and following verses about the man who, before going away to a foreign country, placed his resources in the hands of his servants. To the first he gave five talents, to the second two, and to the third one. The servant who received five talents traded with them and earned five talents more. In a similar way the one who received two earned two more; but the servant who received one hid his master's money in the earth. The person whose thought does not extend beyond the literal sense knows no other than this, that the numbers five, two, and one have been adopted merely to make up the story told in the parable and that they entail nothing more, when in fact those actual numbers hold some arcanum within them. The servant who received the five talents means those people who have accepted forms of good and truth from the Lord and so have received remnants. The one who received the two talents means those who at a more advanced stage in life have linked charity to faith, while the servant who received the one means someone who receives faith alone devoid of charity. Regarding this servant it is said that he hid his master's money in the earth - the reason for this description being that the money he is said to have received means in the internal sense truth which is the truth of faith, AC 1551, 2954; but faith that is devoid of charity cannot earn any interest, that is, it cannot be fruitful. These are the kinds of matters that numbers hold within them.
(...)
[7] It is hardly credible that the numbers included in such details, since these belong to a historical narrative, have a spiritual meaning. That is, five thousand, the number of people, has a spiritual meaning; so does five, the number of leaves, as well as two, the number of fishes. A hundred, and likewise fifty, the numbers of people sitting down together, each have a spiritual meaning; and so lastly does twelve, the number of baskets containing broken pieces. Though it may seem incredible, every detail holds some arcanum. Every single thing occurred providentially, to the end that Divine realities might be represented by them. (Arcana Coelestia 5291)
Not a single word, nor even a single iota, in its original language, can be taken from the sense of the letter of the Word, without an interruption in the internal sense (WH 11)
The ultimates of the Word are its props and supports; indeed, each word is a prop and a support to its celestial and spiritual truths. (SS 35)
When the Word is opened the Lord appears (AE 612)
The internal sense is itself the genuine doctrine of the church … They who understand the Word according to the internal sense, know the true doctrine itself of the church, because the internal sense contains it (WH 11)
The Word is not understood, except by those who are enlightened. The human rational faculty cannot comprehend Divine, nor even spiritual things, unless it be enlightened ... Thus they only who are enlightened comprehend the Word … Enlightenment is an actual opening of the interiors of the mind, and also an elevation into the light of heaven (WH 7)
In the internal or spiritual sense of the Word there are innumerable arcana. The Word in the internal sense contains innumerable things which exceed human comprehension ... It also contains things ineffable and inexplicable (n. 1965). Which are manifest only to angels, and are understood by them (WH 11)
The Lord is the Word, and the Word is Divine Truth (DP 256)
When the Word is opened the Lord appears (AE 612)
The Word therefore is written by mere correspondences (EU 119)
Therefore in order to remove all doubt as to such being the character of the Word, the Lord has revealed to me the Word's internal sense. In its essence this sense is spiritual, and in relation to the external sense, which is natural, is as soul is to body. This sense is the spirit which gives life to the letter; it can therefore bear witness to the divinity and holiness of the Word, and convince even the natural man, if he is willing to be convinced. (SS 4)
Being Divine the Word contains within itself things that are infinite which come from its first source, and as a consequence contains things beyond description such as constitute angelic wisdom; but in its lowest form it contains only such things as those that man is able to grasp. … 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 …
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.
(AC 4383)
There is also a conjunction of heaven by means of the Word with those who are outside the Church where there is no Word; for the Lord's Church is universal, and is with all who acknowledge the Divine and live in charity. Moreover, such are taught after death by angels and receive Divine truths (HH 308).
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 (NJHD 51)
Enlightenment is the influx, perception, and instruction people receive from the Lord when they read the Word. (AC 10215)
Thus, also, the angels of heaven are able not only to be perfected from the Word, but also to perceive blessedness and happiness of life: for the Word, read in this earth, passes, by correspondences, even into heaven, as was shown. Thus, also, can the truths of faith be communicated to the angels of other earths. This is the reason that the Lord willed to be born here, and to become, while he was in the world, the Divine truth, that is, the Word, and afterwards the Divine Good, that is, Jehovah.) (SE 4663)
Again:
Fruitful trees and all cedars, the wild animal and every beast, creeping things and flying fowl, let them praise the name of Jehovah (Ps. 148:9-10, 13).
The "fruitful tree" denotes the celestial man; the "cedar" the spiritual man. The "wild animal" and "beast" and "creeping thing" are their goods, as in the history before us; the "flying fowl" is their truths; from all of which they can "praise the name of Jehovah." By no means can the wild animal, the beast, the creeping thing, and the bird do this. In profane writings such things may be said by hyperbolism, but there are no hyperbolisms in the Word of the Lord, but things significative and representative. (AC 776)
The Word is the Divine Truth which is in the Lord and from the Lord … Divine Truth has power in itself, and such power that, by means of it, heaven was created and the world with all things therein. (HH 137).
Without the Lord's coming into the world no one could have been saved. It is the same today; and therefore without the Lord's coming again into the world in Divine truth, which is the Word, no one can be saved. (TCR 3)
The Word is the only doctrine which teaches how a man must live in the world in order to be happy to eternity. (AC 8939)
The existence of writings in the heavens is a provision of the Lord for the sake of the Word; for the Word in its essence is Divine truth, and from it is all heavenly wisdom, both with men and with angels; for the Word was dictated by the Lord, and what is dictated by the Lord passes through all the heavens in order and terminates with man. Thereby it is adapted both to the wisdom of angels and the intelligence of men. Thereby, too, the angels have a Word, and read it the same as men do on the earth, and also draw from it their doctrinals, and preach from it (AC n. 221). It is the same Word; but its natural sense, which is the sense of the letter with us, does not exist in heaven, but only the spiritual sense, which is its internal sense. What this sense is can be seen in the small treatise on The White Horse spoken of in the Apocalypse. (HH 259)
The Word in heaven is written in a spiritual style which is quite different from the natural style. The spiritual style is composed simply of letters, each one of which denotes a particular meaning; and there are dashes, curves and points above, between and within the letters, which heighten the meaning. The letters used by the angels of the spiritual kingdom resemble printed type in our world; the letters used by the angels of the celestial kingdom are in some cases like Arabic letters, in others like ancient Hebrew letters, but with curves above and below, and pointing above, between and inside them. Even a single one of these points conveys a complete meaning. (TCR 241)
The Word is not understood except by those who are enlightened. … The human rational cannot apprehend Divine things, nor even spiritual things, unless it is enlightened by the Lord … Thus only they who are enlightened apprehend the Word … They who are in the good of life, and thereby in the affection of truth, are enlightened (NJHD 256).
The Word is the only doctrine which teaches how a man must live in the world in order to be happy to eternity. (AC 8939)
All truths are from the Word, which is spiritual light and nothing ought to be believed except the truth (INV 7)
A human being is created for everlasting life, and any person can inherit that life, so long as he lives in accordance with the means of salvation prescribed in the Word; every Christian, as well as every non-Christian who possesses a religion and sound reason, assents to this proposition. (TCR 340)
Without the Word there is no rational conception of the Lord, and thus no salvation (SS 111)
As to the formation of faith: it is effected by man's going to the Lord, learning truths from the Word, and living according to them. (TCR 347)
I spoke with those who placed the only means of salvation in reading the Word. They were overhead, and said that they take great care that all in their society are diligent in reading the Word. But I told them, that this does not save, but that they must live according to the Word, and that nobody can live according to the Word except he be in the doctrine of truth from it; otherwise, they do not know how they are to live, for, from the sense of the letter of the Word, they are able to defend everything that belongs to their life, be it what it may, and this to protect falsities. It was shown also what is the nature of the Word in the letter, but that those who are in doctrine from the Word, see the Word and read it, quite differently; they consequently understand it, and are thus able to become rational: otherwise, this cannot take place. It was shown, also, that the reading of the Word is not attended to by the Lord, and therefore does not promote salvation, unless they are in the life of truth; and that they cannot be in the life of truth, except they be in doctrine from the Word (SE 5961).
The Lord cannot enlighten anyone with His light, unless He is approached immediately and acknowledged as the God of heaven. (INV 38)
UNLESS A MAN IS BORN AGAIN, AND, AS IT WERE, CREATED ANEW, HE CANNOT ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
That unless a man is born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of God, is the Lord's doctrine (TCR 572).
The first state is represented in the life of every person by his infancy and childhood, until he becomes a youth, adolescent and young man. This state is marked by humility before his parents, obedience, and being instructed by masters and underlings. The second state is represented by the same person's state when he becomes his own master, can make his own decisions, or follow his own will and his own understanding; at this stage he has control in his own house. (TCR 106)
Such is the order in which those kinds of truths stand in relation to one another in man. Until a person has become adult therefore, and through sensory and factual truths possesses matters of doctrine, he is incapable of being regenerated, for he cannot be confirmed in the truths contained in matters of doctrine except through ideas based on factual and sensory truths - for nothing is ever present in a person's thought, not even the deepest arcanum of faith there, which does not involve some natural or sensory idea, though generally a person is not aware of the essential nature of such ideas. But in the next life the nature of them is revealed before his understanding, if he so desires, and also a visual representation before his sight, if he wants it; for in the next life such things can be presented before one's eyes in a visual form. This seems unbelievable but it is nevertheless what happens there. (AC 3310)
There are two states that man must enter upon and pass through, when from being natural he is becoming spiritual. The first state is called Reformation, and the second Regeneration. In the first man looks from his natural to his spiritual state and longs for that state; in the second state he becomes spiritual-natural. The first state is formed by means of truths, which must be truths of faith, and through these he looks to charity; the second state is formed by means of the goods of charity, and by these he enters into the truths of faith. Or what is the same, the first is a state of thought from the understanding, and the second a state of love from the will.
They who are born where the Word is, and where the Lord is thereby known, are not of the church, but they who are regenerated by the Lord by the truths of the Word, that is, they who live the life of charity … (NJHD 246)
When this latter state begins and is progressing, a change takes place in the mind; the mind undergoes a reversal, the love of the will then flowing into the understanding, acting upon it and leading it to think in accord and agreement with its love; and in consequence so far as the good of love comes to act the first part and the truths of faith the second, man is spiritual and is a new creature; and he then acts from charity and speaks from faith; he feels the good of charity and perceives the truth of faith; and he is then in the Lord, and in peace, and thus regenerate.
The man who while in the world has entered upon the first state, after death can be introduced into the second; but he who has not entered into the first state while in the world, cannot after death be introduced into the second, thus cannot be regenerated.
(TCR 571)
The unregenerate man has no conscience, or if any, it is not a conscience of doing good from charity, and of thinking truth from faith, but is based on some love that regards himself or the world, wherefore it is a spurious or false conscience. (AC 977)
As it is desirable that the origin of perception, internal dictate, and conscience, should be known, and as at the present day it is altogether unknown, I may relate something on the subject. It is a great truth that man is governed by the Lord by means of spirits and angels. When evil spirits begin to rule, the angels labor to avert evils and falsities, and hence arises a combat. It is this combat of which the man is rendered sensible by perception, dictate, and conscience. By these, and also by temptations, a man might clearly see that spirits and angels are with him, were he not so deeply immersed in corporeal things as to believe nothing that is said about spirits and angels. Such persons, even if they were to feel these combats hundreds of times, would still say that they are imaginary, and the effect of a disordered mind. I have been permitted to feel such combats, and to have a vivid sense of them, thousands and thousands of times, and this almost constantly for several years, as well as to know who, what, and where they were that caused them, when they came, and when they departed; and I have conversed with them. (AC 227)
[A person] can from wisdom above view the love that is below, and in this way can view his thoughts, intentions, affections, and therefore the evils and falsities as well as the goods and truths of his life and doctrine; and without a knowledge and acknowledgment of these in himself he cannot be reformed. (DP 16)
Without self-examination, recognition, acknowledgment, confession and rejection of sins, thus without repentance, there is no forgiveness of them, thus no salvation, but eternal condemnation (DP 114)
IV. EVILS IN THE EXTERNAL, MAN CANNOT BE REMOVED BY THE LORD EXCEPT THROUGH MAN'S INSTRUMENTALITY. In all Christian Churches this tenet of doctrine has been accepted, that before a man approaches the Holy Communion he shall examine himself, see and acknowledge his sins, and do the work of repentance by desisting from them and rejecting them because they are from the devil; and that otherwise his sins are not forgiven, and he is condemned. (DP 114)
IV. EVILS IN THE EXTERNAL, MAN CANNOT BE REMOVED BY THE LORD EXCEPT THROUGH MAN'S INSTRUMENTALITY
It is only religion which renews and regenerates a person. Religion is allotted the highest place in the human mind, and sees below it the social matters which concern the world. Religion too climbs up through these as the pure sap rises in a tree to its top, and from that lofty position it has a view of natural matters, just as someone on a tower or a mountain has a view of the plains beneath. (TCR 601)
The will inclines from birth towards evils, even to those which are enormous; hence, unless it were restrained by means of the understanding, a man would rush into acts of wickedness, indeed, from his inherent savage nature, he would destroy and slaughter, for the sake of himself, all who do not favor and indulge him. (ISB 14)
When we are in an unregenerate state our outer self is in its loves within “the dregs” of the body and the corporeal-sensuous mind. Though we declare unconditional love as our operating system, this is nothing but the love of self. Our inner self is in the hatred of all people except a few who favor us and whom we can exploit for our needs. But the moment they stop favoring us or serving our needs, our inner self holds them in hatred. What lies inside unconditional love is therefore unconditional hatred, one in the outer self, the other in the inner self (SEM 4717; SE 409; HH 377; CL 365; AE 624).
During man's regeneration, the light of heaven is instilled into natural light, and at the same time the heat of heaven; these two constitute, as it were, the new soul, through which man is formed by the Lord. This light and heat are instilled through the higher mind, which is called the spiritual mind. By virtue of this instilling, or insertion, man becomes a new creature, and becomes more enlightened and more intelligent in matters of the church, and consequently in the reading of the Word. This also is the new understanding and the new will. Afterwards the man is led by the Lord through the above light and through the above heat, and from natural becomes spiritual. (INV 2)
For it is the case with the life of charity (which is the heavenly life itself) that with those who are being reformed and regenerated it is continually being born and growing up and receiving increments, and this by means of truths; therefore the more of truth there is insinuated, the more is the life of charity perfected …
(…)
In truth, however, there is no life, but in good. Truth is only a recipient of life, that is, of good. Truth is as the clothing or garment of good; therefore also truths are called in the Word "clothing," and also "garments." But when good constitutes the rational, truth disappears and becomes as if it were good.
(AC 2189)
Anyone therefore who looks to the Lord and wants to be guided by Him is in a state of good. But anyone who turns away from God and wants to be guided by himself is not in a state of good (CL 444)
… man when regenerated is as to the intellectual part the Lord's, but as to his will part is his own, these two parts in the spiritual man being opposed.
But though the will part of man is opposed, yet it cannot but be present; for all the obscurity in his intellectual part, or all the density of his cloud, is from it. It continually flows in from it, and in proportion as it flows in, the cloud in his intellectual part is thickened; but in proportion as it is removed, the cloud is made thin.
(…)
[3] This condition of things between the will and the understanding is as if two who were formerly conjoined by a covenant of friendship, as were the will and the understanding in the man of the Most Ancient Church, had their friendship broken, and enmity had arisen-as took place when man wholly corrupted his will part-and then when a covenant is again entered into, the hostile part is set forth as if the covenant were with it, but it is not with it, because it is utterly opposite and contrary, but it is with that which flows in from it-as already said-that is, with the Own of the understanding.
The "token" or "sign" of the covenant is this, that in proportion as there is the presence of the Lord in the Own of the understanding, in the same proportion the Own of the will be removed.
The case herein is exactly as it is with heaven and hell. The intellectual part of the regenerated man, from charity, in which the Lord is present, is heaven; his will part is hell. So far as the Lord is present in this heaven, so far is this hell removed. For of himself man is in hell, and of the Lord is in heaven. And man is being continually uplifted from hell into heaven, and so far as he is uplifted, so far his hell is removed. The "sign" therefore, or indication, that the Lord is present, is that man's will part is being removed. The possibility of its removal is effected by means of temptations, and by many other means of regeneration. (AC 1044)
[3] When a man has been regenerated, then all things in him, both in general and in particular, have also been regenerated, that is, have life, and the life they have bears an exact proportion to the degree in which his own will-which is foul and dead-could be separated from the new will and intellectual that he has received from the Lord. (AC 1040)
When a child is first instructed he is affected with the desire of knowing, not at first for any end that is manifest to himself, but from a certain pleasure and delight that is born with him and is also derived from other sources; but afterwards, as he grows up, he is affected with the desire of knowing for the sake of some end, as that he may excel others, or his rivals; and next for some end in the world; but when he is to be regenerated, he is affected from the delight and pleasantness of truth; and when he is being regenerated, which takes place in adult age, from the love of truth, and afterwards from the love of good; and then the ends which had preceded, together with their delights, are separated little by little, and to them succeeds interior good from the Lord, which manifests itself in his affection. From this it is evident that the former delights, which had appeared in the outward form as good, had served as means. Such successions of means are continual. (AC 3518)
Second: Good and the truth of good can be introduced by the Lord into man's interiors only so far as the evil and the falsity of evil there have been removed. This is a necessary consequence of what has gone before; for as evil and good cannot exist together good cannot be introduced before evil has been removed. The term man's interiors is used, and by these is meant the internal of thought; and in these, which are now being considered, either the Lord or the devil must be present.
The Lord is there after reformation, but the devil is there before it; therefore, so far as man suffers himself to be reformed the devil is cast out; but so far as he does not suffer himself to be reformed the devil remains. Everyone may see that the Lord cannot enter so long as the devil is there; and he is there so long as man keeps the door closed, where man acts together with the Lord. (DP 232:3)
The reason why everyone can be regenerated depending on his state, is that the process is different with the simple and the learned, with those who have different pursuits, and undertake different duties; with those who research into the externals of the Word and those who research into its internals; with those whose parentage has brought them into natural good and those who have been brought into evil; with those who from childhood have plunged into the world's vanities, and those who have sooner or later distanced themselves from them. In short, there is a difference between those who make up the Lord's external church and those who make up the internal one. In this there is infinite variety, just as there is in faces and characters. But still each can be regenerated and saved depending on his state.
[2] The truth of this can be established from the heavens, to which all who are regenerated come, being three, highest, middle and lowest. Those come to the highest who through regeneration have acquired love to the Lord; to the middle one those who have acquired love towards the neighbour; to the lowest those who only exhibit external charity, and at the same time acknowledge the Lord as God the Redeemer and Savior. All of these are saved, but in different ways.
[3] The reason why all can be regenerated and so saved is that the Lord is present with His Divine good and truth with every person. This is the source of his life, and of his ability to understand and will, and of the free will he has in spiritual matters; no one is without these. Moreover the means are given. Christians have the means in the Word, non-Christians in any religion at all, if it teaches the existence of God and commandments about good and evil. From this it follows that everyone can be saved. Consequently, if a person is not saved, it is not the Lord who is to blame but the person; and he is to blame for failing to co-operate. (TCR 580)
Since, then, everyone in every religion knows the evils and falsities from evils that must be shunned, and having shunned them knows the goods that must be done and the truths that must be believed, it is clear that this is provided by the Lord as the universal means of salvation with every nation that has any religion.
[2] With Christians this means exists in all fullness; it also exists, though not in fullness, with Mohammedans and Gentiles. The remaining things, by which they are distinguished, are either ceremonials which are of little consequence, or are goods that may be done or not done, or truths that may be believed or not believed, and yet man be saved. What these things amount to man can see when evils are removed.
A Christian sees this from the Word, a Mohammedan from the Koran, and a Gentile from his religious principle.
A Christian sees from the Word that God is one, that the Lord is the Savior of the world, that all good that is good in itself, and all truth that is true in itself, is from God, and nothing of it from man; that there must be Baptism and the Holy Supper, that there is a heaven and that there is a hell, that there is a life after death, and that he who does good comes into heaven, and he who does evil into hell. These things he believes from truth and does from good when he is not in evil. Other things that are not in accord with these and with the Decalogue he may pass by.
A Mohammedan sees from the Koran that God is one, that the Lord is the Son of God, and that all good is from God, that there is a heaven and that there is a hell, that there is a life after death, and that the evils forbidden in the commandments of the Decalogue must be shunned. If he does these latter things he also believes the former and is saved.
A Gentile sees from his religious principle that there is a God, that He must be regarded as holy and be worshiped, that good is from Him, that there is a heaven and that there is a hell, that there is a life after death, that the evils forbidden in the Decalogue must be shunned. If he does these things and believes them he is saved.
And as many Gentiles perceive God to be Man, and as God-Man is the Lord, so after death when they are instructed by angels they acknowledge the Lord, and afterwards receive truths from the Lord that they had not before known. They are not condemned because of their not having the ordinances of Baptism and the Holy Supper; the Holy Supper and Baptism are for those only who are in possession of the Word, and to whom the Lord is known from the Word; for they are symbols of that church, and are attestations and certifications that those who believe and live according to the Lord's commandments in the Word are saved. (AE 1180)
There are thousands and thousands of arcana, of which scarcely a single one is known to man, whereby a man is led by the Lord out of the life of hell into the life of heaven. (AC 9336)
This tendency and proneness to evils just mentioned, which is transmitted from parents to their children and descendants, can only be broken down by a person being born anew by the Lord's help, a process called regeneration. Without this not only does the tendency remain unbroken, but it is reinforced by a succession of parents, becoming more prone to evils, and eventually to every kind of evil. That is why the Jews are still copies of their ancestor Judah, who married a Canaanite wife, and fathered three lines of descent by adultery with Tamar, his daughter-in-law. This heredity has become so amplified in the course of time that the Jews are unable to embrace the Christian religion and believe it in their hearts. I say they are unable, because the inner will in their minds resists, and it is this will which creates the impossibility. (TCR 521)
A spirit himself also is nothing else than his own quality; on this account everyone in that world drops his baptismal name, and the name of his family, and is named according to his quality. Hence it is that "name" in the Word does not signify name, but quality. (INV 41)
The reason why a man can be in evil and at the same time in truth, and why the Lord cannot prevent this on account of the end, which is salvation, is that man's understanding can be raised up into the light of wisdom and see truths or acknowledge them when he hears them, while his love remains below. Thus he can be in heaven with his understanding but with his love in hell; and this cannot be denied to him, because the two faculties, rationality and liberty, cannot be taken from him; for by virtue of these he is a man, and is distinguished from the beasts; and only by means of these faculties can he be regenerated and consequently saved. (DP 16:2)
IV. EVILS IN THE EXTERNAL, MAN CANNOT BE REMOVED BY THE LORD EXCEPT THROUGH MAN'S INSTRUMENTALITY. In all Christian Churches this tenet of doctrine has been accepted, that before a man approaches the Holy Communion he shall examine himself, see and acknowledge his sins, and do the work of repentance by desisting from them and rejecting them because they are from the devil; and that otherwise his sins are not forgiven, and he is condemned. (DP 114)
And when Peter asked Him how many times he should forgive one who sinned against him, whether it should be as many as seven times, He replied:
Not up to seven times, I tell you, but up to seventy times seven times. Matt. 18:21, 22.
I have been told from heaven that the Lord forgives everyone his sins, and never punishes him for them, or even imputes them to him, because He is love itself and good itself. Nevertheless the sins are not wiped away by this, for it is only by repentance that they can be wiped away. For if he told Peter to forgive up to seventy times seven times, is there anything that the Lord Himself would not do? (TCR 409)
It was granted me to perceive when I was in the proprium, and when not in the proprium. When in the proprium, I was fit for nothing; wherefore, I was led out of it by the Lord, as far as that could be done. Hence is manifest what the love of self, and the love of the world for the sake of self, is. When [any] are led in the proprium and borne away, they appear to be led down through the surrounding places; which is according to the changes of the state of the thoughts. “
At this point something will now be said on how the internal man is reformed and how the external man is reformed -by means of it. The internal man is not reformed merely by knowing, understanding and being wise, and consequently merely by thinking; but by willing what knowledge, understanding and wisdom teach.
When a man knows, understands and has wisdom to see that there is a heaven and a hell, and that all evil is from hell and all good is from heaven; and if he then does not will evil because it is from hell, but wills good because it is from heaven, he is in the first stage of reformation, and is at the threshold out of hell into heaven.
When he progresses further, and wills to desist from evils he is in the second stage of reformation, and is now outside hell but not yet in heaven, which he sees above him. A man must have such an internal in order that he may be reformed; but he is not reformed unless the external as well as the internal is reformed.
The external is reformed by means of the internal when the external desists from the evils which the internal does not will because they are infernal, and still more when the external for this reason shuns them and fights against them. Thus willing is the part of the internal and doing of the external. For unless a man does that which he wills there is within him the failure to will which eventually becomes want of will.
[2] From these few considerations it can be seen how the external man is reformed by means of the internal. This also is what is meant by the Lord's words to Peter:
Jesus said: If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
[Simon] Peter saith unto Him: Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
Jesus saith to him: He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. John xiii. 8, 9, 10.
By washing is meant spiritual washing, which is purification from evils; by washing the head and hands is meant purifying the internal man; and by washing the feet is meant purifying the external man. That the external man must be purified when the internal has been purified is meant by this, "He that is washed, needeth not save to wash his feet." That all purification from evils is from the Lord is meant by this, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." It has been shown in many places in the ARCANA CAELESTIA that washing among the Jews represented purification from evils, and that this is signified in the Word by washing; and that by washing the feet is signified the purification of the natural or external man. (DP 151)
I have spoken with spirits about the changes of state of man's life, that it is inconstant, and that he is borne upward and downward, now toward heaven and now toward hell. But they who suffer themselves to be regenerated are being borne continually upward, and thus always into more interior heavenly societies. Extension of sphere into these societies is given by the Lord to those who are being regenerated, especially to those who are being regenerated by means of temptations, in which resistance is made to evils and falsities; for the Lord then fights through angels against the evils and falsities; and in this way the man is introduced into the societies of these angels, which are more interior societies; and into whatever societies he has once been introduced, he there remains; and from this he also receives a more extended and elevated capacity of perception. (AC 6611)
In order that man may examine himself an understanding has been given him, and this separate from the will, that he may know, understand and acknowledge what is good and what is evil; and also that he may see the quality of his will, or what it is he loves and desires. In order that he may see this his understanding has been furnished with higher and lower thought, or interior and exterior thought, to enable him to see from higher or interior thought what his will is doing in the lower or exterior thought. This he sees as a man sees his face in a mirror; and when he sees it and knows what sin is, he is able, if he implores the help of the Lord, not to will it, but to shun it and afterwards to act against it; if not wholeheartedly, still he can exercise constraint upon it by combat, and at length turn away from it and hate it. (DP 278)
It is the rational in fact that coordinates everything in the natural, and in accordance with that coordination fittingly regards the things that are there. Indeed the rational is like a higher faculty of seeing which, when it looks at facts belonging to the natural man, is like someone looking down on to a plain below him. The light of that faculty of seeing is the light of truth, but the origin of that light rests with the good present in the rational. (AC 3283)
19.6 The Vertical Community and Our association With Spirits
The presence of angels and spirits with human beings and in their affections has been granted me to see a thousand times from their presence and dwelling with me. But angels and spirits do not know with which human beings they are, neither do human beings know with which angels and spirits they live; the Lord alone knows and arranges this. (LJ 9)
Everyone is in his spirit associated with people like himself in the spiritual world, and is so to speak one with them. I have often been allowed to see the spirits of people still alive, some of them in communities of angels there, and others in communities of hell. I have been allowed to talk with them for days, and I was astonished to find that the person, who was still alive in the body, knew nothing at all of it. (TCR 14)
It should be known that every man as to his spirit is in the spiritual world in some society there, a wicked man in an infernal society and a good man in a heavenly society; and sometimes he also appears there when in deep meditation. (DP 296:[6])
It is rarely granted at the present day, however, to talk with spirits, because it is dangerous. For then the spirits know, what otherwise they do not know, that they are with man, and evil spirits are such that they hold man in deadly hatred, and desire nothing more than to destroy him both soul and body, which indeed happens with those who have so indulged themselves in fantasies as to have separated from themselves the enjoyments proper to the natural man. Some also who lead a solitary life sometimes hear spirits talking with them, and without danger; but that the spirits with them may not know that they are with man they are at intervals removed by the Lord; for most spirits are not aware that any other world than that in which they live is possible, and therefore are unaware that there are men anywhere else. This is why man on his part is not permitted to speak with them, for if he did they would know. (HH 249)
Man can speak with spirits and angels, and the ancients on our earth frequently spoke with them (n. 67-69, 784, 1634, 1636, 7802). But at this day it is dangerous to speak with them, unless man is in true faith, and led by the Lord (n. 784, 9438, 10751). (EU 1)
Spirits and demons control a person's reasoning power through feelings. (SE 48)
THAT A MAN'S SPIRIT APPEARS IN THE OTHER LIFE.
Sometimes man appears as to his spirit among others there. They said that they sometimes see them, and nevertheless know that it is not a spirit as yet after decease from the world, from certain signs. But it happens only with those who think inwardly in themselves more deeply than the rest. At the time, with him, his thought is withdrawn from the sensual of the body, and he appears thus. They, however, who think only in their sensual, and do not raise their thoughts above it, never appear. Nor do spirits know anything about man, where he is; inasmuch as the corporeal does not appear before their eyes, as spirits do not appear before men's eyes. (SE 5645)
IV. SO LONG AS MAN LIVES IN THE WORLD, HE IS KEPT MIDWAY BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL, AND IS THERE IN SPIRITUAL EQUILIBRIUM, WHICH IS FREEDOM OF CHOICE.
(…)
Man's mind is his spirit, which lives after death; and his spirit is constantly in company with its like in the spiritual world, and at the same time by means of the material body with which it is enveloped, it is with men in the natural world. Man does not know that in respect to his mind he is in the midst of spirits, for the reason that the spirits with whom he is in company in the spiritual world, think and speak spiritually, while his own spirit thinks and speaks naturally so long as he is in the material body; and the natural man cannot understand or perceive spiritual thought and speech, nor the reverse. (…) (TCR 475)
Every man from infancy even to old age is changing his locality or situation in that world. When an infant he is kept in the eastern quarter towards the northern part; when a child, as he learns the first lessons of religion, he moves gradually from the north towards the south; when a youth, as he begins to exercise his own thoughts, he is borne southward; and afterwards when he judges for himself and becomes his own master, he is borne into the southern quarter towards the east, according to his growth in such things as have regard interiorly to God and love to the neighbor. But if he inclines to evil and imbibes it, he advances towards the west. (TCR 476)
But it must be understood that the Lord does not transfer man to this or that place, but man transfers himself in different ways. If he chooses good, he together with the Lord, or rather the Lord together with him, transfers his spirit towards the east. But if man chooses evil, he together with the devil, or rather the devil together with him, transfers his spirit towards the west. It must be noticed that where the term heaven is here used, the Lord also is meant, because the Lord is the all in all things of heaven; and where the term devil is used, hell also is meant, because all who are there are devils. (TCR 476)
If every thing that a man thinks flows into him from others the fault seems to rest with those from whom it comes. Nevertheless, the fault is in him who receives, because he receives it as his own; and he neither knows nor desires to know otherwise. For everyone desires to be his own, and to be led by himself, and especially to think and to will from himself; this is freedom itself and it appears as his proprium in which every man is. Therefore, if he knew that what he thinks and wills flows in from another he would seem to himself to be bound and captive and no longer master of himself; and thus all the delight of his life, and at length his human itself, would perish.
[3] That this is so I have often seen proved. It was granted to some spirits to perceive and to feel that they were being led by others. Thereupon they were so enraged that they became as it were demented; and they said they would rather be kept bound in hell than not be allowed to think in accordance with their will and to will in accordance with their thought. Not to be allowed to do so they called being bound as to life itself, which was harder and more intolerable than being bound as to their body. Not to be allowed to speak and act in accordance with their thought and will they did not call being bound; because the delight of civil and moral life, which consists in speaking and doing, acts as the restraining influence and, at the same time, mitigates the restraint. (DP 294)
The wicked, while still in the world, the Lord governs in hell. This is because man as to his spirit is in the spiritual world and in some society there, in an infernal society if he is wicked, and in a heavenly society if he is good; for man's mind, which in itself is spiritual, cannot be anywhere but among the spiritual, into whose company he also comes after death. (DP 307)
CONCERNING THE STATE OF HELL.
During a whole night, while I was asleep, I was tormented in hell, in order that I might know the nature of the state [of those] there; for they fell upon me, inasmuch as they were then able to torture the spirit; but, still, I had no consciousness of a dream. It was a continual torture, one [of them] after another. [Persons] are there placed upon tables, and are miserably torn asunder, and their lust of ruling is called forth, and, as long as that cupidity lasts, they are tortured until it abates. [They are treated] thus, by one devil after another, as [they pass] from one part of hell to another, upon the tables. When the lust abates, then a little respite is given, so that they may be able to be in some cupidity of their own. Thus is the head of the serpent trampled under foot. (SE 4698)
CONCERNING DISEASES.
All the infernals induce diseases, but with a difference according to the part to which they are attached, so that they may act from the opposite, to wit, in opposition to those in heaven, to whom the parts of the body correspond - for there are opposites to every society in heaven; for, as angels or angelic societies preserve in connection and soundness all things in man, so infernals, from the opposite [side], divide them. But it is only permitted them to inflow into the cupidities and falsities pertaining to man - not into man's organs. Only when man falls into disease, then they inflow also into those [organs] in man where the disease is; for nothing ever exists with man, save by a cause from the spiritual world.
Man supposes that such things exist in him, and that there is nothing outside him that acts; when, yet, every natural has its cause from a spiritual, otherwise it would be without a cause; but, still, this does not interfere with the fact that they can be, and also ought to be, cured, or made sound, by natural means. The Lord's providence then concurs with such means: and thus, also, man is kept the longer away from faith concerning a providence in the minutest particulars; for, if he should believe this, and afterwards deny it, he would profane a sacred truth, which is itself a most dreadful hell.
(SD 4585)
As it is desirable that the origin of perception, internal dictate, and conscience, should be known, and as at the present day it is altogether unknown, I may relate something on the subject. It is a great truth that man is governed by the Lord by means of spirits and angels. When evil spirits begin to rule, the angels labor to avert evils and falsities, and hence arises a combat. It is this combat of which the man is rendered sensible by perception, dictate, and conscience. By these, and also by temptations, a man might clearly see that spirits and angels are with him, were he not so deeply immersed in corporeal things as to believe nothing that is said about spirits and angels. Such persons, even if they were to feel these combats hundreds of times, would still say that they are imaginary, and the effect of a disordered mind. I have been permitted to feel such combats, and to have a vivid sense of them, thousands and thousands of times, and this almost constantly for several years, as well as to know who, what, and where they were that caused them, when they came, and when they departed; and I have conversed with them. (AC 227)
Everything celestial flows into something spiritual, and everything spiritual into something natural, and it terminates in the last of this, which is physical and material, and there abides. Without such a final abode for intermediates to flow into, there would be no other permanence than that of a house built in the air. The human race is therefore the base and foundation of the heavens. (De Verbo 3, LJ 10)
Man does not know that in respect to his mind he is in the midst of spirits, for the reason that the spirits with whom he is in company in the spiritual world, think and speak spiritually, while his own spirit thinks and speaks naturally so long as he is in the material body; and the natural man cannot understand or perceive spiritual thought and speech, nor the reverse.
This is why spirits cannot be seen. But when the spirit of man is in company with spirits in their world, he is also in spiritual thought and speech with them, because his mind is interiorly spiritual but exteriorly natural; therefore by means of his interiors he communicates with spirits, while by means of his exteriors he communicates with men. By such communication man has a perception of things, and thinks about them analytically. If it were not for such communication, man would have no more thought or other thought than a beast, and if all connection with spirits were taken away from him, he would instantly die. (TCR 475)
(1) They place themselves at the back, below and above, and there they thrust in their thoughts; they turn the thoughts of another spirit, and thus of a man, to himself, to his own power, to his own praise, in a word, to the proprium. Almost all infernals know how to do this.
(2) Others gaze upon various parts of the body and upon the head and, where they see anything black, they know the proprium still rules there - for the proprium is black, because it is of the love of self - and, then, they seek to learn what of self is there, and, when they find out, they infuse their own thoughts there, and lead [their victim] whithersoever they will.
(3) Some look into the forehead; and, if it appears black, they then lead him; likewise, if it is grayish-white like a plastered wall, inasmuch as this indicates simulated external sincerity; but from him in whom they see human flesh they withdraw, and him they do not lead.
(4) Some cast a black veil over his face and also over his breast, and thus they magically take away his thoughts of the neighbor, and oblige and compel him to think of himself; and so they lead him, but not like they do others who are black of themselves: the former return immediately.
(5) Some enshroud another in darkness and convey [him] into the dark, and so compel him to think of self.
(6) From the color around a spirit or man - black, white, flesh-color, or yellow - they conclude something about the man's state as to his proprium, or self-love. Where it is black, there is self-love: such a one is led; and it is according to the intensity of the black.
(7) Some only perceive by means of the thoughts of another - for there is a general law of thoughts - and these insinuate themselves into them and turn them to [the victim's] proprium and love of self, in all ways - by phantasies, by magic; and by the aid of many of the hells; and, so, they drive him to thinking about himself; and, when it comes to that, he is in their power.
(8) Sirens know how to insinuate themselves into the various affections which are the ruling love of a man; and so they take him with them. Also, they know how to reduce the thoughts of another, magically, even to the sensual, which is the extreme external; and, when he is reduced to that, they induce various phantasies and lead him whithersoever they wish. It is the sensual of man where his self-love, or proprium, resides: so far as he can be drawn up, or elevated, out of that, as to the thoughts, towards interiors, so far he can be led away from his proprium. Man's sensual, at this day, is, with most people, wholly corporeal, and has not anything spiritual.
(9) It was granted me to perceive when I was in the proprium, and when not in the proprium. When in the proprium, I was fit for nothing; wherefore, I was led out of it by the Lord, as far as that could be done. Hence is manifest what the love of self, and the love of the world for the sake of self, is. When [any] are led in the proprium and borne away, they appear to be led down through the surrounding places; which is according to the changes of the state of the thoughts. There were some such of the Swedish nation, whose desire it had been thus to reduce the thoughts of other spirits to subjection, and so to lead them whithersoever they would; but they did not know how, save one or two of them. They were in the western quarter. (SE 5464)
The universal heaven is arranged in societies according to [the affections of good and the entire hell according to] the lusts of evil opposite to the affections of good. Every man as to his spirit is in some society - in a heavenly society if he is in the affection of good, but in an infernal society if he is in the lust of evil. Man does not know this while he is living in the world, but nevertheless as to his spirit he is in some society; otherwise he cannot live, and because of it he is governed by the Lord. If he is in an infernal society he can only be led out of it by the Lord according to the laws of His Divine Providence, one of which is that he must see that he is there, must desire to go out and must himself endeavor to do this of himself. This he can do while he is in the world, but not after death; for then he remains to eternity in the society in which he has placed himself while in the world. This is the reason why man is to examine himself, see and acknowledge his sins and repent, and afterwards persevere right on to the end of his life. That this is the case I could establish from much experience even to complete belief; but this is not the place to set forth proofs of my experience. (DP 278)
THAT CRUEL SPIRITS AND ADULTERERS LOVE NOTHING MORE THAN FILTH AND EXCREMENTS.
(((((I have spoken) previously of this [fact] that to such spirits, filth and excrements are very pleasant, so that they prefer the pleasantness of beholding such things to all other pleasantnesses, and not only filth and excrements, but also foul, loathsome, and horrid intestines of animals, to that degree, that when they act through man they snatch away all his interior sense, as also [his] sight, to such things, because they, are delighted therewith.
This also was shown me by manifest experience; when I walked in the street, they carried away my eyes to all such things; wherever there was filth, excrement and intestines, thither they directed my eyes, although I was ignorant where were such things in the street, because not observed by me. Still they saw these, whilst I was wholly unobservant, and thither directed my eyes, either to [my] side, or about [my] feet, or near and farther from thence; and the did not turn my eyes to anything else. (SE 2843)
Since spirits take possession in that way of all that forms a person's thought and will, and angels take possession of what is even more interior, so that he is joined very closely to them, the person cannot avoid the perception and sensation that he himself is the one who thinks and wills. . (AC 6193)
There are with every man at least two evil spirits and two angels. The evil spirits excite his evils, and the angels inspire things that are good and true. (AC 904)
For the nature of all communication in the next life is this: In a community in which people are alike, each thinks that what is another's is his own. When therefore people who are good go into a heavenly community they instantly enter into all the intelligence and wisdom of that community, entering into it so fully that they know no other than that such things exist within themselves. This is also how it is with man and a spirit present with him. The things that flow in from spirits from hell are evil and false, but those which flow in from angels from heaven are good and true; and through these opposite kinds of influx a person is held in the middle, thus in freedom.
(…)
Evil spirits … are angry if they are told that their thoughts and desires do not begin in themselves, because that idea is contrary to what their loves lead them to be delighted with. And they are all the more angry when they are told that life does not exist independently in them but flows into them. (AC 6193).
To give aid to the needy, to widows, to orphans, solely because they are needy, widows and orphans, and to give to beggars solely because they are beggars, are uses of external charity, which charity is called piety; but these are uses of internal charity only so far as they are derived from use and the love of use. For external charity without internal charity is not charity; the internal must be there to make it charity; for external charity from internal charity acts prudently, but external without internal charity acts imprudently, and often unjustly. (D. WIS. 10:5)
Practical piety is to act in every work and in every duty from sincerity and right, and from justice and equity, and this because it is commanded by the Lord in the Word; for thus man in his every work looks to heaven and to the Lord, and thus is conjoined with Him. But to act sincerely and rightly, justly and equitably, solely from fear of the law, of the loss of fame or of honor and gain, and to think nothing of the Divine law, of the commandments of the Word, and of the Lord, and yet to pray devoutly in the churches, is external piety; however holy this may appear, it is not piety, but it is either hypocrisy, or something put on derived from habit, or a kind of persuasion from a false belief that Divine worship consists merely in this; for such a man does not look to heaven and to the Lord with the heart, but only with the eyes; the heart looking to self and to the world, and the mouth speaking from the habit of the body only and its memory; by this man is conjoined to the world and not to heaven, and to self and not to the Lord. (AE 325:4)
It should be known, moreover, that, so long as man is in knowledges only, and not in any life according to them, he is in his proprium and led by self; but, when he is in a life according to them - and to the same extent - he is elevated out of his proprium, and is led by the Lord. This man does not perceive, but still it is so; and so far as man is led by the Lord, so far is there good in him, or good is what he wills and thinks. But it should be thoroughly known, that nobody can live according to the knowledges from the Word, except from them he reflect upon his thoughts, intentions and deeds, that is, examine himself, and abstain from evils and do good as from himself: otherwise, there is no reception by man; and if there is no reception, there is no conjunction with the Lord; therefore, neither can he be led by the Lord. (SE 5945)
The Lord … said that people were to forgive their brother not seven times but seventy times seven, Matt. 18:21, 22. By this He meant that they were to forgive as often as he sinned. Their forgiveness was to know no limits, that is, was to be eternal and timeless, which is holy. (AC 433)
I have heard from heaven that the Lord forgives to everyone his sins, and never takes vengeance nor even imputes sin, because He is love itself and good itself; nevertheless, sins are not thereby washed away, for this can be done only by repentance. For when He told Peter to forgive until seventy times seven, what will not the Lord do? (TCR 409)
In the exercise of charity man should see clearly whether he is acting from justice, and this he sees from judgment. For a man may do evil by deeds of beneficence; and by what appear to be evil deeds he may do good. For example: One who gives to a needy robber the means wherewith to buy a sword, by a beneficent act is doing evil; although the robber in begging the money did not tell what he would do with it. So again, if one rescues a robber from prison and shows him the way to a forest, saying to himself, It is not my fault that he commits robbery; I have given succor to the man.
(…)
[15] On the other hand, a man may do good through what appear to be evil deeds. Take as an example a judge who acquits an evil-doer because he sheds tears, pours out words of piety, and begs the judge to pardon him because he is his neighbor. But in fact a judge performs a work of charity when he decrees the man's punishment according to the law; for he thus guards against the man's doing further evil and being a pest to society, which is the neighbor in a higher degree, and he prevents also the scandal of an unjust judgment. Who does not know also, that it is good for servants to be chastised by their masters, or children by their parents, when they do wrong? The same is true of those in hell, all of whom are in the love of doing evil. They are kept shut up in prisons, and when they do evil are punished, which the Lord permits for the sake of their amendment. (TCR 459)
However, I replied, "Man was so created that everything he wills, thinks and does appears to him as being in him and thus from him. Without this appearance a person would not be a human being, for he would be unable to receive anything of good and truth or of love and wisdom, retain it, and seemingly adopt it as his own. Consequently it follows that without this, as it were, living appearance, man would not have any conjunction with God, and so neither any eternal life. But if as a result of this appearance he persuades himself to the belief that he wills, thinks, and thus does good of himself, and not from the Lord (even though to all appearance as though of himself), he turns good into evil in him, and so creates in him the origin of evil. This was Adam's sin. (CL 444)
Looking to the Lord and attributing all good to Him protects us from falling into Adam’s sin, and this, the more so as we remain conscious of this attribution in all our willing and thinking all day long. A general declaration that all good is the Lord’s is necessary but not sufficient. We must make that declaration to ourselves in our mind many times in a single hour! The angels do so second by second so to speak (AC 1038).
Moral life may be lived either for the sake of the Divine or for the sake of men in the world; and a moral life that is lived for the sake of the Divine is a spiritual life. In outward form the two appear alike, but in inward form they are entirely different; the one saves a man, the other does not. For he who lives a moral life for the sake of the Divine is led by the Divine; while he who leads a moral life for the sake of men in the world is led by himself. (HH 319)
Correspondences have all force, so that what is done on earth according to correspondences has power in heaven; for correspondences are from the Divine. Those who are in the good of love and of faith are in correspondences, and the Divine effects all things with them... All miracles in the Word were effected through correspondences. The Word is so written that every minute thing therein corresponds to the things in heaven; hence the Word has Divine force, and conjoins heaven and earth. (AC 8615:3)
The Most Ancient Church, which was celestial, looked upon all earthly and worldly, and also bodily things, which were in any wise objects of the senses, as being dead things; but as each and all things in the world present some idea of the Lord's kingdom, consequently of things celestial and spiritual, when they saw them or apprehended them by any sense, they thought not of them, but of the celestial and spiritual things; indeed they thought not from the worldly things, but by means of them; and thus with them things that were dead became living. (AC 1409)
[2] The things thus signified were collected from their lips by their posterity and were formed by them into doctrinals, which were the Word of the Ancient Church, after the flood. With the Ancient Church these were significative; for through them they learned internal things, and from them they thought of spiritual and celestial things. But when this knowledge began to perish, so that they did not know that such things were signified, and began to regard the terrestrial and worldly things as holy, and to worship them, with no thought of their signification, the same things were then made representative. Thus arose the Representative Church, which had its beginning in Abram and was afterwards instituted with the posterity of Jacob. (AC 1409)
[7] It is hardly credible that the numbers included in such details, since these belong to a historical narrative, have a spiritual meaning. That is, five thousand, the number of people, has a spiritual meaning; so does five, the number of leaves, as well as two, the number of fishes. A hundred, and likewise fifty, the numbers of people sitting down together, each have a spiritual meaning; and so lastly does twelve, the number of baskets containing broken pieces. Though it may seem incredible, every detail holds some arcanum. Every single thing occurred providentially, to the end that Divine realities might be represented by them. (AC 5291)
Third Memorable Relation
The next day an angel came to me from another society and said, "We have heard in our society that on account of your meditations about the creation of the universe you were summoned to a society near ours, and there told things about creation which the society then assented to, and have since remembered with pleasure. I will now show you how all kinds of animals and vegetables were produced by God."
He led me away to a broad green field and said, "Look around." And I looked around, and saw birds of most beautiful colors, some flying, some perched upon the trees, and some scattered over the field plucking little leaves from roses. Among the birds were doves and swans. After these had disappeared from my sight I saw not far from me flocks of sheep with lambs, and of kids and she-goats; and round about these flocks I saw herds of cattle, young and old, also of camels and mules, and in a kind of grove, deer with high horns, and also unicorns.
When I had beheld these things the angel said, "Turn your face towards the east." And I saw a garden containing fruit trees, as orange trees, lemon trees, olive trees, vines, fig-trees, pomegranates, and also shrubs bearing berries.
The angel then said, "Look now towards the south." And I saw fields of various kinds of grain, as wheat, millet, barley, and beans, and round about them flower beds containing roses of beautifully varied colors; but toward the north I saw thick groves of chestnut trees, palms, lindens, plane trees, and other trees with rich foliage.
[2] When I had seen these things the angel said, "All these things that you have seen are correspondences of affections of the love of the angels who are near." And he told me to what affection each particular thing corresponded; and moreover, that not these only, but also all other things that presented themselves to their sight were correspondences, as houses, the articles of furniture in them, the tables and food, the clothing, and even the gold and silver coins, as also the diamonds and other precious stones with which wives and virgins in the heavens are adorned. "From all these things," he said, "the character of every person in respect to love and wisdom is perceived by us. The things in our houses that are of use remain there permanently; while to the sight of those who wander from one society to another these things change as their associations change.
[3] These things have been shown to enable you to see, in a special example, the entire creation. For God is love itself and wisdom itself; the affections of His love are infinite, and the perceptions of His wisdom are infinite; and of these each thing and all things that appear on earth are correspondences. This is the origin of birds and beasts, forest trees, fruit trees, crops and harvests, herbs and grasses. For God is not extended, and yet He is present throughout all extension, thus throughout the universe from its firsts to its lasts; and He being thus omnipresent, there are these correspondences of the affections of His love and wisdom in the whole natural world; while in our world, which is called the spiritual world, there are like correspondences with those who are receiving affections and perceptions from God.
The difference is that in our world such things are created by God from moment to moment in accordance with the affections of the angels. In your world they were created in like manner in the beginning; but it was provided that they should be renewed unceasingly by the propagation of one from another, and creation be thus continued.
[4] In our world creation is from moment to moment, and in yours continued by propagation, because the atmospheres and earths of our world are spiritual, and the atmospheres and earths of your world natural; and natural things were created to clothe spiritual things as skin clothes the bodies of men and animals, as outer and inner barks clothe the trunks and branches of trees, the several membranes clothe the brain, tunics the nerves, and the inner coats their fibers, and so on. This is why all things in your world are constant, and are renewed constantly from year to year."
To this the angel added, "Go and tell the inhabitants of your world what you have seen and heard, for hitherto they have been in complete ignorance about the spiritual world; and without some knowledge about it no one can know, nor even guess, that in our world creation is a continuous process, and that it was the same in yours while the universe was being created by God."
[5] After this we talked about various matters; and at length about hell, that no such things are seen there as are seen in heaven, but only their opposites; since the affections of the love of those there, which are lusts of evil, are opposites of the affections of love in which angels of heaven are. Thus with those in hell, and in general in their deserts, there are seen birds of night, such as bats and owls; also wolves, panthers, tigers, and rats and mice; also venomous serpents of every kind, dragons and crocodiles; and (where there is any herbage) brambles, nettles, thorns, and thistles, and some poisonous plants grow: and at times these disappear, and then nothing is seen but heaps of stones, and bogs in which frogs croak. All of these things are correspondences; but as has been said, they are correspondences of the affections of the love of those in hell, which affections are lusts of evil. Notwithstanding these things are not created there by God; nor were they created by Him in the natural world, where like things exist. For all things that God has created and does create were and are good; while such things on the earth sprang up along with hell, and hell originated in men, who by turning away from God became after death satans and devils. But as these terrible things began to be painful to our ears, we turned our thoughts from them and recalled to mind what we had seen in heaven. (TCR 78)
Only he who knows how degrees are related to Divine order can comprehend how the heavens are distinct, or even what is meant by the internal and the external man. Most men in the world have no other idea of what is interior and what is exterior, or of what is higher and what is lower, than as something continuous, or coherent by continuity, from purer to grosser. But the relation of what is interior to what is exterior is discrete, not continuous. Degrees are of two kinds, those that are continuous and those that are not. Continuous degrees are related like the degrees of the waning of a light from its bright blaze to darkness, or like the degrees of the decrease of vision from objects in the light to those in the shade, or like degrees of purity in the atmosphere from bottom to top. These degrees are determined by distance.
(…)
[3] Until one has acquired for himself a perception of these degrees he cannot possibly understand the differences between the heavens, nor between the interior and exterior faculties of man, nor the differences between the spiritual world and the natural world, nor between the spirit of man and his body. So neither can he understand the nature and source of correspondences and representations, or the nature of influx. Sensual men do not apprehend these differences, for they make increase and decrease, even according to these degrees, to be continuous, and are therefore unable to conceive of what is spiritual otherwise than as a purer natural. And in consequence they remain outside of and a great way off from intelligence. (HH 38)
From this ordering of creation it can be seen that the coherent linkage from first things to last is such that taken together they make up a single unit; in this prior cannot be separated from posterior, just as cause cannot be separated from the effect produced by it. Thus the spiritual world cannot be separated from the natural world, nor this from the spiritual. In the same way the heaven where the angels are cannot be separated from the human race, nor the human race from that heaven. It has therefore been provided by the Lord that one should perform services for the other, that is, the heaven of angels should perform services for the human race, and the human race for the heaven of angels. (LJ 9:[3]).
One who knows nothing about discrete degrees, that is, degrees of height, can know nothing about the state of man as regards his reformation and regeneration, which are effected through the reception of love and wisdom of the Lord, and then through the opening of the interior degrees of his mind in their order. Nor can he know anything about influx from the Lord through the heavens nor anything about the order into which he was created. For if anyone thinks about these, not from discrete degrees or degrees of height but from continuous degrees or degrees of breadth, he is not able to perceive anything about them from causes, but only from effects; and to see from effects only is to see from fallacies, from which come errors, one after another; and these may be so multiplied by inductions that at length enormous falsities are called truths. (DLW 187)
Everything created must needs be from an Uncreate. What is created is also finite, and the finite can exist only from the Infinite. (DLW 44)
A knowledge of degrees is like a key for opening the causes of things, and for entering into them. Without that knowledge, scarcely anything of cause can be known. For without it, the objects and subjects of both worlds appear so simple as though there were nothing in them beyond that which meets the eye, when yet the things that appear are as one to thousands, indeed, to myriads, compared with the things which lie hidden within. The interiors which do not lie open can by no means be disclosed except by a knowledge of degrees. (DLW 184)
On the other hand, degrees that are not continuous, but discrete, are distinguished like prior and posterior, like cause and effect, and like what produces and what is produced. Whoever looks into the matter will see that in each thing and all things in the whole world, whatever they are, there are such degrees of producing and compounding, that is, from one a second, and from that a third, and so on.
[3] Until one has acquired for himself a perception of these degrees he cannot possibly understand the differences between the heavens, nor between the interior and exterior faculties of man, nor the differences between the spiritual world and the natural world, nor between the spirit of man and his body. So neither can he understand the nature and source of correspondences and representations, or the nature of influx. Sensual men do not apprehend these differences, for they make increase and decrease, even according to these degrees, to be continuous, and are therefore unable to conceive of what is spiritual otherwise than as a purer natural. And in consequence they remain outside of and a great way off from intelligence.
One thing is formed from another, and the things so formed are not continuously purer and grosser …
Until the difference between what is interior and what is exterior according to such degrees is perceived, neither the internal and external man nor the interior and exterior heavens can be clearly understood …
(HH 38)
The interiors of man are distinct according to degrees by means of derivations, and according to these degrees are also the lights. The internal sensuous, which is nearest the sensuous things of the body, has the most gross light. This light it has been given me to discern by much experience, and I have noticed that whenever I sank into this light, falsities and evils of many kinds presented themselves, and even things scandalous against heavenly and Divine things, besides things filthy and foul. The reason is that this light rules in the hells, and by means of it chiefly do the hells flow into man. When a man is in this light, his thought is in nearly the same light as that in which is his external sight, and is then almost in the body. (AC 6310)
Every human being has been so created that Divine things that are the Lord's may come down through him even to the lowest things of natural order, and from the lowest things of natural order may return to Him. Thus the human being was created to be the means through which the Divine was linked to the natural world, and the natural world linked to the Divine. (AC 3702).
Miracles have not been done from causes sought out from nature ... Miracles related in the Word were done by means of influx from that prior world into this posterior one, ... by means of bringing such things as are in the spiritual world, into corresponding things in the natural world, so that the things which come forth actually in the spiritual world are actually brought into such things in the natural world as correspond. (Invitation 60)
Correspondences have all power ... what is done on earth according to correspondence, avails in heaven, because they are from the Divine. All miracles recorded in the Word were done by means of correspondences. (AC 8615.3)
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)
The eye sees the universe, and the mind thinks about it, first that it was created and afterwards by whom it was created. The mind that thinks from the eye thinks that it was created by nature; but the mind that does not think from the eye thinks that it is from God; while the mind that takes the middle path thinks that it is from an Entity of which it has no idea, for it perceives that something cannot exist from nothing. (D. Wis. 12)
The human rational as to truth is of such a nature that it cannot understand what the Divine is, for the reason that that truth is in appearances; and therefore that which it cannot understand, it does not believe; and by that which it does not believe it is not affected. (AC 2203)
The Word is not understood except by a rational man (WH 7)
The human rational as to truth is of such a nature that it cannot understand what the Divine is, for the reason that that truth is in appearances; and therefore that which it cannot understand, it does not believe; and by that which it does not believe it is not affected. (AC 2203)
A sensual man finds it impossible to believe that such is the state of man after death, because he cannot comprehend it; for a sensual man must needs think naturally even about spiritual things; therefore, anything that does not appeal to his senses, that is, that he does not see with his bodily eyes and touch with his hands (as is said of Thomas, John 20: 25, 27, 29) he denies that it is. (HH 461)
A man's mind is his spirit (DP 296).
Seeing that men after death are in the interior memory (which has belonged to their rational) therefore those who in the world have been preeminently skilled in languages, cannot call forth even one syllable of them; and they who have been preeminently versed in the sciences cannot call up anything of their knowledges, and are sometimes more stupid than others. But whatever they have imbibed by means of the languages, or of the sciences, this they bring forth into use, because it has formed their rational. The rational they had so procured is that from which they think and speak. He who has imbibed falsities by means of the languages and sciences, and has confirmed himself in them, reasons from nothing but falsities; but he who has imbibed and confirmed truths, speaks from the truths. (AC 2480)
[3] The human rational - that is to say, the rational formed from images of worldly things received through the senses, and later on from images of things analogous to actual worldly ones, such as are received from factual knowledge and from cognitions - virtually laughs or mocks if it is told that it does not live of itself but only appears to itself to do so. It likewise laughs if it is told that the less anyone believes that he lives of himself, the more he is truly living, that is, the more wise and intelligent he is, and the more blessed and happy. And it also laughs if it is told that that life is the life which angels possess, especially those who are celestial and are inmost or nearest to the Lord; for these know that nobody except Jehovah alone, that is, the Lord, lives of himself.
[4] This rational would also mock if it were told that it has nothing of its own, and that its possessing anything of its own is an illusion or an appearance. Still more would it mock if it were told that the more it is subject to the illusion that it possesses anything of its own the less it in fact possesses, and vice versa. It would likewise mock if it were told that whatever it thinks and does from what is its own is evil, even though it was good [in its effect], and if it were told that it has no wisdom until it believes and perceives that all evil comes from hell and all good from the Lord. This is a conviction, indeed a perception, that exists in all angels, yet they possess selfhood or a proprium in fuller measure than all others. But they realize and perceive that their selfhood comes from the Lord, even though it seems to be completely their own.
[5] This rational would again mock if it were told that in heaven the greatest are those who are least; that the wisest are those who believe and perceive that they themselves are the least wise; that the happiest are those who wish the greatest happiness to others and the least to themselves; that heaven consists in wishing to be below everyone else, but hell in wishing to be above everyone else; and that consequently the glory of heaven does not hold within it anything at all of that which the glory of the world holds.
[6] This rational would similarly mock if it were told that in the next life space and time do not exist at all but states in accordance with which there are appearances of space and time, and that life becomes more heavenly the further removed it is from the things that belong to space and time and the closer it comes to that which is eternal - for that which is eternal has absolutely nothing within it that is received from the notion of time or anything analogous to it. In the same way would the rational mock at countless other things it could be told.
[7] The Lord saw that such things were present in the merely human rational and that this rational therefore mocked Divine things. He did so from the Divine spiritual, which is meant by the words 'Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian', 2651, 2652. The fact that a person is able from within to have insight into the things residing with him that are below is well known from experience to those who have perception, and also to those who have conscience, for they see clearly enough to reproach themselves for what they think. This exemplifies how regenerate persons are able to see what their rational prior to regeneration is like. In man's case however such perception is received from the Lord, but in the Lord's case it was Self-derived. (AC 2654)
How important it is to have a right idea of God can be seen from the fact that the idea of God forms the inmost element of thought in all who have any religion, for all constituents of religion and all constituents of worship relate to God. And because God is universally and specifically involved in all constituents of religion and worship, therefore without a right idea of God no communication with the heavens is possible. So it is that every nation in the spiritual world is allotted its location in accordance with its idea of God as a person; for in this idea and in no other lies an idea of the Lord. (DLW 13)
The difference between the natural, the spiritual, and the celestial is such, that there is no ratio between them, for which reason the natural can in no wise by any approximation approach towards the spiritual, nor the spiritual towards the natural; hence it is that the heavens are distinct. This it has been given me to know by much experience; I have often been sent among the spiritual angels, and I then spoke with them spiritually, and then, retaining in my memory what I had spoken, when I returned into my natural state, in which every man is in this world, I then wished to bring it forth from the former memory and describe it, but I could not, it was impossible; there were no expressions, nor even ideas of thought, by which I could express it; they were spiritual ideas of thought and spiritual expressions so remote from natural ideas of thought and natural expressions, that they did not approximate in the least. (De Verbo 3).
Man cannot discover a single Divine truth, except by approaching the Lord immediately (INV 22)
All things of nature are like sheaths around spiritual things (TCR Additions 1)
From the fact that greatest and least things are forms of both kinds of degrees, there is connection between them from firsts to lasts, for likeness conjoins them. But yet there can be no least thing which is the same as any other. Consequently, there is a distinction of all the singulars and of the veriest singulars. There can be no least thing in any form or among any forms the same as another for the reason that there are like degrees in greatest things, and greatest things consist of least things. When there are such degrees in greatest things, and in accordance with those degrees, perpetual distinctions from top to bottom, and from centre to circumference, it follows that there cannot be any lesser or least of these, in which are like degrees, which are the same as any other. (DLW 226)
God is omnipresent from the firsts to the lasts of His order. God is omnipresent from the firsts to the lasts of His order by means of the heat and light of the spiritual sun, in the midst of which He is. It was by means of that sun that order was produced; and from it He sends forth a heat and a light which pervade the universe from firsts to lasts, and produce the life that is in man and in every animal, and also the vegetative soul that is in every germ upon the earth (TCR 63)
How the rational faculty may be cultivated shall also be told in a few words. The genuine rational faculty consists of truths and not of falsities; whatever consists of falsities is not rational. There are three kinds of truths, civil, moral, and spiritual. Civil truths relate to matters of judgment and of government in kingdoms, and in general to what is just and equitable in them. Moral truths pertain to the matters of everyone's life which have regard to companionships and social relations, in general to what is honest and right, and in particular to virtues of every kind. But spiritual truths relate to matters of heaven and of the church, and in general to the good of love and the truth of faith.
[2] In every man there are three degrees of life (see above, n. 267 [in HH]). The rational faculty is opened to the first degree by civil truths, to the second degree by moral truths, and to the third degree by spiritual truths. But it must be understood that the rational faculty that consists of these truths is not formed and opened by man's knowing them, but by his living according to them; and living according to them means loving them from spiritual affection; and to love truths from spiritual affection is to love what is just and equitable because it is just and equitable, what is honest and right because it is honest and right, and what is good and true because it is good and true; while living according to them and loving them from the bodily affection is loving them for the sake of self and for the sake of one's reputation, honor or gain. Consequently, so far as man loves these truths from a bodily affection he fails to become rational, for he loves, not them, but himself; and the truths are made to serve him as servants serve their Lord; and when truths become servants they do not enter the man and open any degree of life in him, not even the first, but merely rest in the memory as knowledges under a material form, and there conjoin themselves with the love of self, which is a bodily love.
[3] All this shows how man becomes rational, namely, that he becomes rational to the third degree by a spiritual love of the good and truth which pertain to heaven and the church; he becomes rational to the second degree by a love of what is honest and right; and to the first degree by a love of what is just and equitable. These two latter loves also become spiritual from a spiritual love of good and truth, because that love flows into them and conjoins itself to them and forms in them as it were its own semblance. (HH 468)
The Rational is predicated solely of the celestial and spiritual Natural (9Q2)
The human commences in the inmost of the rational, AC n. 2106 (AC 2666)
The only source of wisdom is from Divine truths analytically arranged by means of the light which falls on them, coming from the Lord. Nor is there any other source of human intelligence, if it is truly intelligence. (TCR 350) (See also: NJHD 257; AC 8939; TCR 340, 347; SS 111; SE 5961).
(In this earth, more than in other earths, there are sciences and arts quite unknown elsewhere: [the following] sciences, to wit, the physical sciences in general, chemistry, medicine, optics, astronomy, geometry, and philosophy, whereof they know nothing at all elsewhere; [the following] arts, for example, the smelting of metals, the art of sculpture, of painting, music, the art of constructing ships, carriages, magnificent buildings and palaces out of stone and marble, and mirrors; besides very many arts, which are for use and pleasure. Not only are they [in this earth] skilful in these, but they also have communication, by means of ships, with distant regions; and the gains of different regions are distributed to others.
Similarly with the arts, and also with the sciences. These, when invented and known by one person, are communicated, by means of books and writings, to all others; and the things which are known in one region are likewise communicated to those who are in another; and those things which the ancients knew, are also known to posterity; for writings remain.
For which reason also, and especially, the Word and the truths of faith, could be given in this earth, because [they could be known] in many [places] at the same time, and successively through the ages; and so could be multiplied, which could not happen elsewhere.) (SE 4663)
Since they wondered that such things can be described in writing, I spoke with them concerning our earth: that such things are known in our earth; and that, so far as is yet known, it is not so in other earths; also, that in this earth are sciences, which are increased by being capable of inscription in writings, and so left to others and to posterity, and that hence are many arts in this earth, as for example, the art of constructing ships, and many other things.
It was granted me to tell them the reason; [namely], that, from the earliest times, those in this earth wished to be wise in such things, and that this was represented by the tree of knowledge in paradise; and that, because they had eaten thereof, therefore they cannot be made healthy [spiritually] by other means than by sciences, thus by the scientifics which are of faith.) (SE 4663)
(It was then told me, by the angels, that the Lord willed to be born in this earth, where divine truths are handed down by means of writings even from the earliest times, because, in this manner, the truths of faith could here be multiplied and preserved better than with others: but, with others, these truths are only learnt from parents, and so retained in the memory, and then very many things perish in the lapse of time; but, here, it is not so.
Thus, also, the angels of heaven are able not only to be perfected from the Word, but also to perceive blessedness and happiness of life: for the Word, read in this earth, passes, by correspondences, even into heaven, as was shown. Thus, also, can the truths of faith be communicated to the angels of other earths. This is the reason that the Lord willed to be born here, and to become, while he was in the world, the Divine truth, that is, the Word, and afterwards the Divine Good, that is, Jehovah.) (SE 4663)
As in the world it is quite unknown that there is a correspondence of heaven or the Grand Man with all things of man, and that man comes forth and subsists therefrom, so that what is said on the subject may seem paradoxical and incredible, I may here relate the things that experience has enabled me to know with certainty. (AC 3884)
Another reason that the natural mind reacts against the spiritual mind is that the natural mind consists not only of substances of the spiritual world but also of substances of the natural world, as was said above (n. 257), and substances of the natural world from their very nature react against the substances of the spiritual world. For substances of the natural world are in themselves dead, and are acted upon from without by substances of the spiritual world. And substances which are dead, and are acted upon from without, resist from their own nature, and thus from their nature react. From these considerations it can be established that the natural man reacts against the spiritual man, and that there is a conflict. It is the same thing whether it is said the natural and spiritual man, or the natural and spiritual mind. (DLW 260)
They are called "drunkards" who believe nothing but what they apprehend, and for this reason search into the mysteries of faith. And because this is done by means of sensuous things, either of memory or of philosophy, man being what he is, cannot but fall thereby into errors. For man's thought is merely earthly, corporeal, and material, because it is from earthly, corporeal, and material things, which cling constantly to it, and in which the ideas of his thought are based and terminated.
To think and reason therefore from these concerning Divine things, is to bring oneself into errors and perversions; and it is as impossible to procure faith in this way as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. The error and insanity from this source are called in the Word "drunkenness." Indeed the souls or spirits who in the other life reason about the truths of faith and against them, become like drunken men and act like them (AC 1072)
Creation itself cannot be explained to human comprehension unless one removes from his thinking any thought of space and time. But if these are removed, it can be comprehended. Remove if you can, or as far as you can, thought of space and time, and keep your mind intent on an idea abstracted from these. You will then perceive there to be no difference between a large interval of space and an infinitesimal one, and in that case you cannot but have the same idea of the creation of the universe as of the creation of particular elements in the universe. (AC 155)
For such is the case with all truths Divine; if the rational be consulted respecting them, they cannot possibly be believed, for they surpass all its comprehension. For example: that no man, spirit, or angel, lives from himself, but the Lord only; and that the life of a man, spirit, or angel is an appearance of life in him; this is repugnant to the rational, which judges from fallacies, but still it is to be believed because it is the truth. (AC 1936; see also: AC 4760)
Spirits from another earth were with me for a considerable time; and I described to them the wisdom of our globe, and told them that among the sciences pursued by the learned is that of analytics, with which they busy themselves in exploring what is of the mind and its thoughts, calling it metaphysics and logic. But I said that men have advanced little beyond terms, and certain shifting rules; and that they argue concerning these terms-as what form is; what substance; what the mind; and what the soul; and that by means of these general shifting rules they vehemently dispute about truths. I then perceived from these spirits that when men inhere in such things as terms, and think concerning these matters by artificial rules, they take away all sense and understanding of a subject.
(…)
[3] Learned men of our earth were present, and could not in the least comprehend these things, although in the life of the body they had discoursed much on such subjects in a philosophical way; and when the spirits just referred to in turn perceived their thoughts, in that they inhered in mere terms, and were inclined to dispute on every point as to whether it is so, they called such things feculent froth. (AC 3348)
As in the world it is quite unknown that there is a correspondence of heaven or the Grand Man with all things of man, and that man comes forth and subsists therefrom, so that what is said on the subject may seem paradoxical and incredible, I may here relate the things that experience has enabled me to know with certainty.
Once, when the interior heaven was opened to me, and I was conversing with the angels there, I was permitted to observe the following phenomena. Be it known that although I was in heaven, I was nevertheless not out of myself, but in the body, for heaven is within man, wherever he may be, so that when it pleases the Lord, a man may be in heaven and yet not be withdrawn from the body.
In this way it was given me to perceive the general workings of heaven as plainly as an object is perceived by any of the senses. Four workings or operations were then perceived by me. The first was into the brain at the left temple, and was a general operation as regards the organs of reason; for the left side of the brain corresponds to rational or intellectual things, but the right to the affections or things of the will.
[2] The second general operation that I perceived was into the respiration of the lungs, and it led my respiration gently, but from within, so that I had no need to draw breath or respire by any exertion of my will. The very respiration of heaven was at the time plainly perceived by me. It is internal, and for this reason is imperceptible to man; but by a wonderful correspondence it inflows into man's respiration, which is external, or of the body; and if man were deprived of this influx, he would instantly fall down dead.
[3] The third operation that I perceived was into the systole and diastole of the heart, which had then more of softness with me than I had ever experienced at any other time. The intervals of the pulse were regular, being about three within each period of respiration; yet such as to terminate in and thus direct the things belonging to the lungs. How at the close of each respiration the alternations of the heart insinuated themselves into those of the lungs, I was in some measure enabled to observe. The alternations of the pulse were so observable that I was able to count them; they were distinct and soft.
[4] The fourth general operation was into the kidneys, which also it was given me to perceive, but obscurely. From these things it was made manifest that heaven or the Grand Man has cardiac pulses, and that it has respirations; and that the cardiac pulses of heaven or the Grand Man have a correspondence with the heart and with its systolic and diastolic motions; and that the respirations of heaven or the Grand Man have a correspondence with the lungs and their respirations; but that they are both unobservable to man, being imperceptible, because internal. (AC 3884)
THE CONJUNCTION OF THE BODY AND THE SPIRIT IN MAN IS THROUGH THE MOTIONS OF HIS HEART AND LUNGS, AND A SEPARATION TAKES PLACE WHEN THESE MOTIONS CEASE.
That this may be comprehended it is necessary for some things to be premised which may as it were bear a torch in advance. The truth will appear from the following propositions:
1. The spirit of man is equally a man.
2. It has equally a heart and pulsation therefrom, and lungs and respiration therefrom.
3. The pulsation of its heart and the respiration of its lungs flow into the pulsation of the heart and the respiration of the lungs with man in the world.
4. The life of the body, which is natural, exists and subsists through that influx, and ceases by its removal, thus by the separation.
5. Man then from natural becomes spiritual.
1. The spirit of man is equally a man.
Of this you will find many proofs in the work on Heaven and Hell (n. 73-77, 311-316, 445-452, 461-469); also that every man as to his interiors is a spirit (n. 432-444).
To this it may be added, that everything spiritual is in its essence man, thus everything of love and wisdom that proceeds from the Lord, for this is spiritual. Everything spiritual, or everything that proceeds from the Lord, is man because the Lord Himself, who is the God of the universe, is Man, and from Him nothing can proceed except what is like, for the Divine is not changeable in itself and is not extended, and that which is not extended, wherever it may be, is such as it is. From this is the Divine omnipresence.
Man's conception of an angel, of a spirit, and of himself after death, as something like ether or air without a human body, comes from the conception of the sensual learned, which is derived from the term spirit, as meaning the breath of the mouth, also from their being invisible, and never evident to the sense of sight; for the sensual think solely from the sensual-corporeal and from what is material, and also from certain passages of the Word not spiritually understood. Yet they know from the Word that although the Lord was a man as to flesh and bones, still He became invisible to the disciples, and passed through closed doors. They know also from the Word that angels have been seen by many as men, who did not assume a human form, but they manifested themselves in their own form before the eyes of their spirits which were then opened.
That man, therefore, may no longer remain in a fallacious idea respecting spirits and angels and his own soul after death, it, has pleased the Lord to open the sight of my spirit, and to permit me to converse face to face with angels and men that have died, and to observe them and touch them, and to say many things about the unbelief and fallacies of men who are still living. With these I have had daily association from the year 1744 to the present time, a period of nineteen years. From all this it can be seen that the spirit of man is equally a man.
[2] 2. The spirit of man has equally a heart and pulsation therefrom, and lungs and respiration therefrom.
This shall first be confirmed by experience, and afterwards by reason.
By experience:-The angelic heaven is divided into two kingdoms, one called celestial and the other called spiritual. The celestial kingdom is in love to the Lord, and the spiritual kingdom is in wisdom from that love. Heaven is thus divided because love and wisdom in the Lord and from the Lord are two distinct things, and yet are united; for they are distinct as heat and light from the sun are, as has been said above.
The angels of the celestial kingdom, because they are in love to the Lord, have relation to the heart of heaven; and the spiritual angels, because they are in wisdom from that love have relation to the lungs of heaven; for the whole heaven, as has been said above, is in the Lord's sight as one man. Moreover, the influx of the celestial kingdom into the spiritual kingdom is like the influx in man of the heart into the lungs. Thus there is a universal correspondence of heaven with these two motions, that of the heart and that of the lungs, in every one. I have also been permitted to learn from the angels that their arteries have a pulsation from the heart, and that they breathe the same as men in the world do; also that with them the pulsations vary with the states of love, and the respiration with the states of wisdom. They themselves have touched their wrists, and have told me so, and I have often perceived the respiration of their mouth.
[[2]] As the entire heaven is divided into societies according to the affections which belong to love, and as all wisdom and intelligence is according to these affections, so each society has its peculiar respiration distinct from the respiration of any other society, likewise its peculiar and distinct pulsation of the heart; therefore no one can enter from one society into another that is separated from it, nor can any one descend from a higher heaven into a lower, or ascend from a lower into a higher, without causing the heart to labor and the lungs to be oppressed; least of all can any one ascend from hell into heaven; if he ventures to ascend he pants like one in the agony of death, or like a fish lifted from the water into the air.
[[3]] The most general difference in respiration and pulsation is according to the idea of God, for from that idea the differences of love and of wisdom therefrom spring; and for this reason a nation of one religion cannot approach nations of another religion. I have seen that Christians could not approach Mohammedans on account of the respiration. The most easy and gentle breathing is enjoyed by those who have the idea that God is Man; and from the Christian world those who have the idea that the Lord is the God of heaven; while those who deny His Divinity, as the Socinians and Arians do, have a hard and rough breathing. As the pulsation makes one with the love of the will, and the respiration makes one with the wisdom of the understanding, therefore those who are about to come into heaven are introduced into angelic life by harmonious respirations; and this is effected in various ways; and from this they come into interior perceptions and into heavenly freedom.
[[4]] By reason:-The spirit of a man is not a substance that is separate from his viscera, organs, and members, but it cleaves to them in close conjunction; for the spiritual goes along with every fiber of these from outermosts to inmosts; and thus with every fiber and filament of the heart and lungs; consequently, when the bond between man's body and spirit is loosed the spirit is in a form like that in which the man was before; there is only a separation of spiritual substance from material. For this reason the spirit has a heart and lungs the same as the man in the world, and for the same reason it has like senses and like motions, and also speech; and there can be no senses or motions or speech without heart and lungs. Spirits also have atmospheres, but spiritual. How greatly, then, are those deceived who assign to the soul a special seat somewhere in the brain or in the heart, for the soul of man, which is to live after death, is his spirit.
[3] 3. This pulsation of its heart and the respiration of its lungs flow into the pulsation of the heart and the respiration of the lungs with man in the world.
This, too, must be confirmed by experience and afterwards by reason.
By experience:-It is not known that during his life in the world man has a double respiration of the lungs, and a double pulsation of the heart; because it is not known that man in regard to his interiors is a spirit, and that a spirit is equally a man. But it has been granted to perceive sensibly that these two motions exist continually in man, and that these two motions of the spirit flow into the two motions of the body.
I was once admitted into these motions when certain spirits were with me, who from a strong power of persuasion were able to deprive the understanding of the faculty of thinking and at the same time to take away the ability of breathing. That this might do me no harm I was brought into the respiration of my spirit, which I then plainly felt to be harmonious with the respiration of the angels of heaven. And from this it was clear that heaven in general and every angel there in particular breathes; also that so far as the understanding suffers, the respiration also suffers; for the power to persuade that is possessed by some evil spirits in the spiritual world at the same time suffocates, consequently this power is called suffocative in reference to the body, and destructive in reference to the mind.
On one occasion it was also granted to the angels to control my respiration, and to diminish and gradually withdraw the respiration of my body until only the respiration of my spirit remained, which I then sensibly perceived. Moreover, I have been in the respiration of my spirit whenever I have been in a state like that of spirits and angels, and whenever I have been raised up into heaven; and oftentimes I have been in the spirit and not in the body, at other times both in the body and in the spirit. See the work on Heaven and Hell (n. 449) for an account of the removal of the animation of the lungs and of the body, while the animation of my spirit remained.
[[2]] By reason:-From these living experiences it can be seen that since every man enjoys a double respiration, one within the other, he has the power to think rationally and also spiritually from his understanding, and by this is distinguished from the beasts; also that as to his understanding he can be enlightened, raised up into heaven, and respire with the angels, and thus be reformed and regenerated. Moreover, where there is an external there must be an internal, and the internal must be in every action and in every sensation; the external supplies the general and the internal the particular, and where there is no general there is no particular.
For this reason there is in man both an external and an internal systolic and animative motion, and external which is natural an internal which is spiritual. And thus the will together with the understanding can produce bodily motions, and the understanding with the will can produce bodily sensations. General and particular pulsations and respirations exist also in beasts but with them both the external and internal are natural, while with man the external is natural and the internal is spiritual. In a word, such as the understanding is such is the respiration, because such is the spirit of man; and the spirit is what thinks from the understanding and wills from the will.
That these spiritual operations may flow into the body and enable man to think and will naturally, the respiration and pulsation of the spirit must be conjoined to the respiration and pulsation of the body, and there must be an influx of one into the other; otherwise no transfer is effected.
[4] 4. The life of the body, which is natural, exists and subsists through that influx, and ceases by its removal, thus by the separation.
A man after death is just as much a man as before death, except that after death he becomes a spirit-man, for the reason that his spiritual is adjoined to his natural, or the substantial of the spirit to the material of the body, so fitly and unitedly that there is not a filament or fiber or smallest thread of them in which the human of the spirit is not in union with the human body. And as the life of the whole and the life of the parts depend solely on these two most general motions, the systolic motion of the heart and the respiratory motion of the lungs, it follows that when these motions in the body cease, natural things, which are material, are separated from the spiritual things, which are substantial, because they are no longer able to do the same work together; and in consequence the spiritual which is the essential active withdraws from the particulars acted upon, which are natural, and thus the man becomes another man. This, therefore, is the death of man and this is his resurrection, about which some things from living experience may be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell (n. 445-452, 453-460, 461-469).
[[2]] It is known that when respiration ceases man seems to be dead, and yet man is not dead until the motion of the heart also ceases, and this commonly takes place later. That until this the man is not dead is shown by the life of infants in the womb, and by the life of adults in swoon or suffocation, in which the heart maintains its contractions and dilations, while the lungs are at rest, and yet they live, although without sensation and motion, thus without any consciousness of life. The reason of this is that the respiration of the spirit then continues, but there is no corresponding respiration of the body, and thus no reciprocation between the two vital motions, that of the heart and that of the lungs; and without correspondence and reciprocation there is no sensitive life, neither is there any action.
What is true of the natural life of man's body is true also of the spiritual life of his mind. If the will and understanding, or love and wisdom, do not act conjointly, no rational operation can take place. If the understanding or wisdom withdraws, the will with its love becomes as it were dead; nevertheless, it continues to live, though with no consciousness of itself, so long as the understanding only ceases to act, as takes place when memory fails. But it is otherwise when the will or love recedes; then all is over with the mind of man, as all is over with him when the heart stops beating. That the separation of the spirit from the body generally takes place on the second day after the last struggle I have been permitted to know from the fact that I have talked with some deceased persons on the third day after their decease, and they were then spirits.
[5] 5. Man then from natural becomes spiritual.
A natural man is wholly different from a spiritual man, and a spiritual man from a natural man; the difference is so great that they cannot be given together. One who does not know what the spiritual is in its essence may believe that the spiritual is only a purer natural, which in man is called the rational; but the spiritual is above the natural, and as distinct from it as the light of midday from the evening shadow in the time of autumn. The distinction and the difference can be known only to one who is in both worlds, the natural and the spiritual, and who can change alternately from one to the other, and be in one and then in the other, and by reflection can look at one from the other.
From this privilege, which has been granted to me, I have learned what the natural man is and what the spiritual man is who is a spirit. That this may be known it shall be described briefly.
In all things of his thought and speech, and in all things of his will and action, the natural man has as his subject matter, space, time and quantity; with him these are fixed and permanent, and without them he can have no idea of thought and speech from it, and no affection of the will and action from it. The spiritual man or the spirit does not have these as subjects, but only as objects.
[[2]] The reason is that in the spiritual world the objects are altogether similar to those in the natural world; there are lands, plains, fields, gardens and forests, houses containing rooms, and in them all useful things; moreover, there are garments for women and for men, such as are in the world; there are tables, food, and drinks, such as are in the world; there are also animals both gentle and destructive; there are spaces and times, and numbers and measures. All these things have such a resemblance to the things that are in the world that to the eye they cannot be distinguished, and yet all these are appearances of the wisdom belonging to the understanding of angels, and perceptions of loves belonging to their wills; for these objects are created in a moment by the Lord, and in a moment are dissipated.
They are permanent or not permanent according to the constancy or inconstancy of the spirits or angels in the things of which they are the appearances. This is why these things are merely objects of their thoughts and affections, while their subjects are those things of which these are the appearances, which, as has been said, are such things as relate to wisdom and love, thus spiritual things. For example, when they see spaces they do not think of them from space; when they see gardens containing trees, fruits, shrubs, flowers, and seeds, they do not think of these from their appearance but according to the things from which these appearances spring; and so in all other cases.
[[3]] In consequence of this the thoughts of the spiritual, and their affections also, are wholly different from the thoughts and affections of the natural, and so different that they transcend natural ideas and do not fall into them except in some measure into the interior rational sight, and this in no other way than by withdrawals or removals of quantities from qualities. This shows clearly that the angels have a wisdom that is incomprehensible and also ineffable to the natural man. As their thoughts are such so their speech is such, and so different from the speech of men that they do not agree in a single expression. The same is true of their writing; although as to its letters this resembles the writing of men in the world, no man in the world can understand it. Every consonant in their writing expresses a distinct meaning, every vowel a distinct affection. The vowels are not written, but pointed. Their manual employments, which are innumerable, and the duties of their callings, likewise differ from the employments and duties of natural men in the world, and cannot therefore be described in the terms of human language.
[[4]] From these few instances it can be seen that the natural and the spiritual differ from each other like shadow and light. Nevertheless, there are, various differences; there are some who are sensual-spiritual, some who are rational-spiritual, and some celestial-spiritual, also there are the spiritual evil and the spiritual good. The differences are according to the affections and the thoughts therefrom, and the appearances are according to the affections. From all this it is clear that man from natural becomes spiritual as soon as the. lungs and heart of the body cease to be moved, and by this means the material body is separated from the spiritual body.
(D. WIS 7)
Those who receive the light of intelligence from the Lord as a sun are those with whom the intellectual and its rational have been opened, and who have, in consequence, thought rationally about what should be believed from the spiritual affection of truth; while those who receive light from the Lord as a moon are those in whom the intellectual and interior rational have not been opened, but only the natural, and who in consequence have thought from the memory about what should be believed; and to think about this from the memory is to think only from such things as have been heard from a teacher or preacher, which they call truths and believe to be truths although they may be falsities, since they are not seen beyond the memory.
If such while in the world were also in the faith of charity, they are in the heavens under the Lord as a moon, for the lumen, from which is their intelligence, is like the moon's lumen in the nighttime, while the light from which is the intelligence of those who are in the heavens under the Lord as a sun is like the light of day.
(...)
Their affection of knowing truth and doing good is, like themselves, natural, thus deriving more or less from the glory of being learned, and from reputation that looks to honors and gain as rewards, differing in this from such spiritual affection of knowing truth and doing good as those have who are in heaven under the Lord as a sun, for with these this affection is so separated from natural affection that the natural affection is under the feet.
(...)
To this is to be added, that there are three heavens that are under the Lord as a moon, a higher, a middle, and a lower; or what is the same, an interior, a middle, and an exterior, but yet all who are in these heavens are natural. These heavens are interior, middle, and exterior, because the natural like the spiritual is divided into three degrees; the exterior-natural communicates with the world, the interior with heaven, and the middle conjoins.
Nevertheless, those who are in the heavens under the Lord as a moon cannot enter into the heavens that are under the Lord as a sun, because their interior sight or understanding has been formed to receive the lunar light there, and not to receive the solar light. They are comparatively not unlike those birds that see in the night and not in the daytime, consequently when they come into the sunlight that those have who are under the Lord as a sun their sight is darkened. Those who are in these heavens are those who have been in charity according to their religious principle, or according to their faith; but such as are natural and are not in the faith of charity are in the hells under these heavens. (AE 708)
The preacher who was with me had no belief at all in the existence of planets other than our own, because in the world he had thought that the Lord was born solely on this planet and that without the Lord there was no salvation. He was therefore brought into a state like the one spirits enter when they appear on their planet as people - the one described above - and was then sent to that planet, not only to see it but also to talk to the inhabitants there. When this had been done, communication from there was granted to me as well in order that I might in a similar way behold those inhabitants and also some things on that planet. Spirits and angels can talk to people, whatever language they speak, because their thought passes into the ideas in people's minds and so into the words they speak. (AC 10752)
A CONTINUATION ABOUT THE FIFTH EARTH IN THE STARRY HEAVEN.
It was afterward granted me to speak with these spirits about their own earth, for all spirits know about this when their natural or external memory is opened by the Lord, because they bring this memory with them from the world; but it is not opened except with the Lord's good pleasure. With regard to the earth from which they were, the spirits then said that when leave is granted they appear to the inhabitants of their earth and speak with them as men, and that this is effected by their being let into their natural or external memory, and consequently into thought such as they had when they lived in the world; and that at the same time the interior sight of the inhabitants, that is, the sight of their spirit, is opened, and in this way the spirits appear to them. They added that the inhabitants know not but that they are men of their earth, and only notice that this is not the case when the spirits are suddenly taken away from their eyes.
I told them that in ancient times it was the same on our earth, as with Abraham, Sarah, Lot, the inhabitants of Sodom, Manoah and his wife, Joshua, Mary, Elizabeth, and the prophets in general; and that the Lord appeared in the same way, and that until He revealed Himself those who saw Him knew not but that He was a man of the earth; but that now this rarely happens, lest such things should compel men to believe; for a compulsory faith, such as enters by means of miracles, does not cleave to the man, and also might be an injury to those with whom faith could be implanted through the Word in a state that is not compulsory. (AC 10751)
Thus, the reason that conscious rapport with spirits is never allowed on this earth any more is that such direct awareness takes away one’s rational, hence one’s spiritual freedom to choose. In the past the rational did not play that role in regeneration. The result is corporeal spirituality in the natural mind, while the spiritual mind remains closed. All who are in this state are infernal (AC 141). Since the dispensation of the Second coming has now begun only the rational can support spiritual life. Either the rational must be opened here, or hereafter. When arriving in the afterlife our mind (spirit-body) must have been grown into a form that can receive spiritual-rational truths which are more interior than the natural mind. But the natural mind must have suitable conceptual vessels to contain the spiritual-rational truths we receive by being instructed when we arrive in the afterlife (NJHD 51).
All articles listed are by Leon James except where otherwise noted. Each article on the Web has links to others, in a cumulative pattern.
1) For a linked topical directory giving access to all articles relating Swedenborg, see the Swedenborg Theistic Science Glossary available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss.html
2) A linked list of all my journal publications may be found at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonpublish.html
3) Access to the Swedenborg Hawaii Web site is at
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/swedenborg.html
4) A linked directory of online articles is available at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonarticles.html
5) A directory of Swedenborg’s Writings and collateral books available full text at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/abbrev.html
6) Full text access with search capability, of all of Swedenborg’s Writings is available online at:
7) Overcoming Objections to Swedenborg's Writings Through the Development of Scientific Dualism (1998). (Published in New Philosophy, 2001, v.CIV n.3 & 4 pp. 153-217.) Article available on the Web at: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/np98.html
8) Substantive Dualism: Swedenborg's Integration of Biological Theology and Rational Psychology (1985). Article available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/dualism.html
9) Spiritual Psychology Based on the Writings of Swedenborg (2003).. Article available at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/spiritual-psychology.html
10) Spiritual Psychology (1985). Article available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/spirpsy.html
11) Theistic Science: An Introduction (1990). Article available on the Web at: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/theistic.html
12) See also Dr. Ian Thompson’s related articles on his Theistic Science Web site at:
13) Spiritual Geography--Part 1--Graphic Maps of Consciousness for Regeneration (2000). Available on the Web at: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/geography.html
14) The Horizontal and Vertical Communities of our Dual Citizenship:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/man/citizenship.html
15) A Man of the Field: Forming The New Church Mind in Today’s World.(2002) (Volume 1: Reformation: The Struggle Against Nonduality; Volume 2: Enlightenment : The Spiritual Sense of the Writings; Volume 3: Regeneration: Spiritual Disciplines For Daily Life; Volume 4: Uses: The New Church Mind In Old Age (in preparation) All three volumes available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
16) The Genes of Consciousness: Spiritual Genetics for Regeneration (1997). Available on the Web at: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing4.htm
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing3.htm
17) De Hemelsche Leer Articles: Methodological Tools for Extracting The Doctrine of the Church (2001). Available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dhl.html
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dhl3.html
18) The Doctrine of the Wife for Husbands: A Spiritual Practice for Achieving Unity (1999). Available on the Web at: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/wife.html
19) When We Discovered Swedenborg. (1981). Available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/conversion.html
20) The Coming Swedenborgian Revolution In The Social Sciences And Humanities (1982). Available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s98/shintani/logos.html
21) Religious Psychology or Theistic Science. (1984) Available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/man/religious.html
22) Temptations and Spiritual Psychology (1996). Available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/spirpsy3.html#temptations
23) Bryn Athyn: The City of Levites in the New Canaan (2003). Article available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/brynathyn.htm
24) Article entry for New Church in the Swedenborg Glossary (1997). Available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/newchurch.html
25) Article entry for Regeneration in the Swedenborg Glossary (1997). Available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/regen.html
26) The Ennead Matrix (1990). Article available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/ennead.html
27) Article entry for Correspondences in the Swedenborg Glossary (1997). Available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/correspondences.html
28) DrDriving’s site on Road Rage and Aggressive Driving – List of Interviews
www.DrDriving.org/about
Abbreviations to Books by Swedenborg
Full text access with search capability, of all of Swedenborg’s Writings is available online at:
1. AC: Arcana Coelestia
(Full title: Heavenly Secrets Contained In The Holy Scriptures Or Word Of God Unfolded -- Beginning With The Book Of Genesis Together With Wonderful Things Seen In The World of Spirits And In The Heaven Of Angels) (In 12 volumes)
2. AE: The Apocalypse Explained (In 6 volumes)
3. AR: The Apocalypse Revealed (In 2 volumes)
4. BE: A Brief Exposition Of The Doctrine Of The New Church
5. CJ: Continuation Concerning the Last Judgment
6. Canons: Canons Of The New Church
7. Charity: The Doctrine Of Charity
8. CL: Conjugial Love
9. DLW: Divine Love And Wisdom
10. D.Love, D.Wis: On The Divine Love And On The Divine Wisdom
11. DP: Divine Providence
12. EU: Earths In The Universe
13. Faith: The Doctrine Of Faith
14. HH: Heaven and Hell
15. I: Invitation To The New Church
16. ISB: Interaction Of Soul And Body
17. LJ: The Last Judgment (Full title: Concerning The Last Judgment and Babylon Destroyed
18. LJ(Post.): The Last Judgment (Posthumous)
19. Life: The Doctrine Of Life
20. Lord: The Doctrine Of The Lord
21. NJHD: The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine
22. PP: Summaries Of The Internal Sense Of The Prophets And Psalms
23. SD: The Spiritual Diary or SE: Spiritual Experiences. Also SEM: Spiritual Experiences Minor (Several volumes)
24. SS: The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture
25. TCR: The True Christian Religion (In 2 volumes)
26. Tremulations
27. WH: The White Horse
Brief content description of each title and date are available on the Web at:
newearth.org/frontier/esbooks.html
The Web address of this document, along with links to other related documents is:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html
For printing with original pagination, use this file:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.doc
Appendix
Diagnostic Test of Rational Spirituality 100 Items
The purpose of this test is to help you to critically examine your thinking about spiritual topics. These include:
What or who is God
What is heaven and hell
What happens when we die
What are spirits and can we communicate with them
What are angels and devils and do they affect us
Why God allows evil in the world
What is sin, rebirth, reformation, regeneration, and salvation
What is the importance and role of revelation
Can there be a science of God from God about God
What is love, good, truth, and wisdom
What is spiritual enlightenment and higher consciousness
What is the role of marriage in creation and the future
What is the relation between the finite and infinite
What is the relation between the natural and spiritual or supernatural
Are miracles real
Instructions: For each question, select the alternative that is closest to your current thinking by circling the appropriate choice on the Answer Sheet below. Then rate the description you selected in terms of how much confidence you have that this view is correct by writing in one of the numbers on the Answer Sheet next to the choice you selected:
Uncertain 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. 4 .. 5 .. 6 .. 7 .. 8 .. 9.. 10 ..11 .. 12 Absolutely certain
This test has 100 items and many of them require reflection. To minimize fatigue or boredom I recommend that you take several sessions to complete it.
Use the Answer Key given below to figure out your score. The score reflects your dominant level of thinking regarding spiritual subjects. Each question has three alternative answers and each alternative reflects one of the three ideologies of rational spirituality – phase 1 ideology, phase 2 ideology, phase 3 ideology. These three phases are explained in the book. The Answer Sheet allows you to circle the alternative that most closely represents your way of thinking about that topic. When you complete the test, you can lay your Answer Sheet next to the Answer Key. You can then circle the phase of the alternative you selected for each item. You then count the number of answers you selected from each of the three phases. That’s your score. It is made up of three numbers. Instructions on how to interpret your score are given on the Answer Key below.
For each of the 100 questions, circle the alternative that best represents your thinking on the topic. Then write a number 1 to 12 in the box next to it to indicate your rating of certainty. Answer every question. When in doubt, pick the best possible answer for you. Scoring instructions and an explanation of how to interpret your score, appear at the end of the test items.
For each of the 100 questions, circle the alternative that best represents your thinking on the topic. Then write a number 1 to 12 in the box next to it to indicate your rating of certainty. Answer every question. When in doubt, pick the best possible answer for you. Scoring instructions and an explanation of how to interpret your score, appear at the end of the test items.
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Questions
1. What is your view on immortality?
a. Every human being is immortal. Upon death of the physical body the individual awakens in the world of spirits to continue life in a spirit-body that is immortal.
b. In the future, prolonging life by artificial means could postpone death indefinitely. In this sense we are potentially immortal.
c. Immortality is the gift of resurrection and eternal life for all those who have faith in the Lord as the Savior and have thereby been declared righteous in the eyes of the Father.
2. Where is the mind of a human being?
a. The mind of a human being could not exist anywhere in the natural world, but exists in the spiritual world only. Hence we are born dual citizens – our physical body on earth which is attached to our mind in the world of spirits.
b. The mind is in the brain but the spirit is with God. Upon death, the body and the spirit are separated, but then reunited at the universal resurrection.
c. The mind is an emergent epiphenomenon of the brain’s evolutionary activity. If you destroy the brain, the mind is also destroyed.
3. What happens when we die?
a. When the physical body dies, the immortal mind awakens a few hours later in a spirit-body that lives forever in either heaven or hell.
b. When we die, the brain stops functioning and the entire body disintegrates, returning to its originating elements. The mind cannot survive without this body.
c. When we die, it is only temporary until some future time when things are ripe on earth, and all who died will awaken and begin again a new life, repopulating the earth under better conditions than before.
4. What determines your fate in the afterlife?
a. If there is an afterlife people’s fate there would no doubt depend on their intelligence and skills of survival.
b. Your faith determines whether you’re going to heaven or hell.
c. Your character determines whether you’re going to heaven or hell.
5. Is sex possible in heaven?
a. In heaven we do not have a sensuous body capable of eating or engaging in sexual activity. We are then more like angels than people on earth.
b. Upon death of the physical body, we awaken in a spirit-body which is even better equipped for a sensuous life, including sexual activity. However, this is not a material physical-sensuous experience but a substantive spiritual-sensuous experience.
c. Sex is a physical activity, and without a physical body sex cannot exist.
6. Is sex possible in hell?
a. Those in hell do not have a sensuous body capable of sexual activity. They have a spirit that is afire with lusts that cannot be satisfied and for which they are tormented.
b. Sexual activity in the afterlife depends on possessing a spirit-body equipped with the five senses and its organs. Those entering the afterlife who bring with them a character of evil loves, enter the life of hell. All bodily acts are therefore possible there, including sexual activity.
c. Sex is a physical activity, and without a physical body sex cannot exist. Hell is what you feel here on earth when you’re depressed or in agony, or when you’re tormented with bad luck and failure. In that sense you can have sex in hell.
7. Angels are people from earth who made it to heaven.
a. True
b. False
c. It’s not possible to know
8. Devils are people from earth who ended up in hell.
a. True
b. False
c. It’s not possible to know
9. There are many heavens, one for each religion
a. True
b. False
c. It’s not possible to know
10. What is most crucial to our salvation?
a. The right faith
b. The right character
c. The right deeds
11. Consciousness raising and spiritual progress is accomplished most by:
a. By practicing of the right physical and mental disciplines
b. By experiencing ecstatic union with God
c. By accumulating genuine truths in the understanding and goods in the will
12. What is heaven and hell?
a. Heaven and hell are operations in the human mind maintained by our chief love and affections.
b. Heaven is the Kingdom of God on earth restored to its glory. Hell is the prison of the damned.
c. When you feel great, you’re in heaven. When you’re depressed, you’re in hell.
13. There is a natural world and a spiritual world.
a. True
b. It depends on your assumptions
c. The spiritual realm is the holy and the Divine. God is a Spirit, and so is the Holy Spirit, as well as angels and Cherubim. Also the devil.
14. When we die we eventually return to earth for another life, until it is no longer necessary for us to do so.
a. An awful lot of people have thought this for millennia so there must be some truth in it.
b. There is no returning to earth once we are cut off from this world and enter the afterlife where we pursue life to eternity.
c. This may be true for some individuals in special cases like Elijah who returned as John the Baptist.
15. Is God Divine and Human or only Divine?
a. God is only Divine while humans are Divine only when they reach their highest self
b. God is Divine and we are human
c. God is Human as well as Divine
16. How do you see the relation between God and human beings?
a. God is in every human being, hence we can meaningfully say “the God in me greets the God in you”
b. Nothing that is Divine can belong to a human being, though we can be conjoined to God through love and truth received in our mind
c. God is far above human beings though some people can be saintly enough to be nearer to God than most.
17. On the relation between God and human beings:
a. God inflows into every human being with love and truth
b. God is part of every human being
c. God dwells in every human being
18. What’s the difference between natural matter and spiritual substance?
a. Matter is more fixed; substance is more fluid
b. Matter is in space-time; substance is not
c. There is no essential difference, though there may be surface differences
19. Which assertion about planets represents more nearly your own view?
a. Most planets do not support human life, but some might. Space exploration will provide a valid answer.
b. Life was created on this planet. In the coming future, all planets and stars will be destroyed and a new Kingdom of God will arise with those who are saved, and it is going to last forever.
c. An endless number of planets are constantly being created to support a human population that can prepare itself for heaven.
20. What is consciousness?
a. Consciousness is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit when we are receptive
b. Conscious awareness is a higher order emergent epiphenomenon
c. Consciousness is the elevation of the mind into rational perception when we receive truth
21. What are the parts of the human mind?
a. Spirit, truth, and love
b. Natural mind, rational mind, and spiritual mind
c. Cortex, cerebellum, and brain stem
22. What is a discrete degree “within”?
a. What is within is above, higher, and superior in rationality
b. What is within is more mystical and less rational
c. What is within something is revealed by structural and chemical analysis
23. What produces consciousness in the mind?
a. Emergent evolutionary capacity
b. Miraculous gift of life and love
c. Rational understanding of Divine Truth
24. What is the meaning of the assertion: “Heaven is within you.”
a. Heaven is a poetic reference to an imaginary utopia of happiness and immortality
b. Heaven is a state of mind that is fully receptive of the Lord’s love and truth
c. Heaven is the Kingdom of the Lord to which are admitted those who are saved by their faith in His sacrifice
25. What is the meaning of the assertion: “Hell is within you.”
a. Hell is a state of mind when we turn ourselves away from the Lord’s love and truth
b. Hell is a poetic reference to an imaginary place of torture and despair
c. Hell is the punishment of the damned
26. How many layers or levels of heavens are there?
a. Natural Heaven, Spiritual Heaven, and Celestial Heaven
b. Imaginary heavens in potentially endless layers
c. One Heaven under One God
27. Which reasoning is closest to your own thinking?
a. The idea of higher and lower heavens is discriminatory of some people, which God does not do, and therefore all faithful believers who are sincere and good, are in one Heaven under God
b. All social groupings must have status differentiation of members based on power and influence
c. Heaven is not a reward or an honor, but a state of mind or character, some of which are good but simple minded, while others are good and wise. Therefore the good and wise are in a higher heaven than the good and simple.
28. The idea of “hell forever” is controversial. Which reasoning is nearest to your own thinking?
a. It is repugnant to suppose that a loving and omnipotent God could keep people in hell forever, no matter what they did before getting there. Hell is a place of purification from evils that we picked up along the way, and when it is done, we emerge from hell
b. God allows people in hell to exit by giving up their injurious intentions, but they stubbornly refuse, even to eternity, testifying to the truth of the expression “I rather rot in hell forever”
c. The idea of “hell forever” testifies to the depth of depravity of the human psyche
29. What does spiritual salvation consist of?
a. Salvation is by means of sincere faith in the cleansing power of the blood of Christ
b. Salvation is by means of progressive character reformation from evil to good
c. Salvation is by means of religious piety sincerely performed until death
30. Is doing “good works” and “charity” necessary for salvation?
a. Salvation is achieved when we reform our character from evil to good, by daily struggles with our temptations, made effective by relying on God
b. Salvation is by sincerity of faith, not by changing our sinful nature
c. Altruism counteracts selfishness and benefits society, insuring its survival
31. What is the relationship between truth and love?
c. With a sincere person, love and truth are both from the heart
a. Love is immediate in experience while truth is more abstract
b. Love is within truth, and therefore truth is the outside form by which love manifests itself
32. Are there different types of truth?
a. There is natural truth, spiritual truth, and celestial truth
b. Truth from God is unitary, not varied
c. Truth is drawing correct conclusions after considering all the facts
33. What is scientific dualism?
a. The premise that there are two separate and interacting worlds, natural and spiritual, with God creating and managing both
b. A contradiction in terms since dualism refers to God or spirit, which is outside the purview of science
c. The theory that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon from brain evolution
34. What is theistic science?
a. The attempt to turn science into religion, or to blur the differences
b. Scientific dualism in which God’s role in every phenomenon is explained by means of scientific revelations given through the Word
c. An intellectual movement in the history of science that ended with the modern era in science
35. What is the Threefold Word in which God gave us scientific revelations?
a. The Word of God is Sacred Scripture -- Old and New Testaments
b. If it’s the Word of God, it is about religious revelations, not science
c. The Threefold Word is The Hebrew Word, the Greek Word, and the Latin Word
36. What is the relative standing between religion and science?
a. Religion is above science
b. The two cannot be compared in this way
c. True Science, which is from the Threefold Word, is above religion
37. Can atheistic scientists be rational?
a. Yes -- atheistic science has done well in its own sphere of civilization and technology, due to the rationality of scientists
b. God does not intervene in the experiments of scientists but lets natural laws govern the results
c. No -- the success of atheistic science and engineering was brought about by Divine Providence despite the lack of rationality of atheistic science
38. What does it mean that Swedenborg had a dual consciousness?
a. That he was capable of trance like states during which he was possessed by spirits.
b. That he was consciously aware of what went on around him in the natural world and in the spiritual world.
c. That he developed the ability to be consciously awake in his visionary states.
39. Did Swedenborg’s exploration of the spiritual world include scientific experiments he conducted while there?
a. No. Scientific experiments are conducted in the natural world.
b. Yes. He had the assistance of angels to introduce experimental states in spirits, and then observe the consequences, and this repeatedly.
c. The departed in spirit are in the Lord and are not involved in scientific research.
40. What kind of information about the spiritual world did Swedenborg report in the Writings?
a. Subjective personal accounts
b. Objective empirical observations
c. Interpretive descriptions of spiritual visions
41. Can God be a legitimate concept in scientific explanations?
a. Yes because the universe is a global system acting as a whole, which can be described by more and more abstract principles. These super-abstractions give rise to the idea of God, and in that sense, God is an appropriate concept to use.
b. Yes because God provides scientific revelations of Himself and His rational methods of achieving creation and management it.
c. No because God is beyond scientific description. To try describe God by science is to turn God from an infinite Spirit, into a finite natural thing.
42. Can the Writings be considered True Science?
a. Religious revelations are for people’s salvation and not for science. They may contain scientific references used for illustrating theological points, not for science.
b. Yes, the Writings contain scientific revelations about how God created the universe and how He manages it by means of rational laws that are observable and verifiable.
c. The only “true science” is the entire enterprise of science by which it progressively gets more and more exact and inclusive, advancing by spurts, changing directions, always pursuing truth.
43. Can the Lord appear to people again in the natural world as He did before?
a. Yes
b. No
c. No one can know such a thing.
44. Is it rational to think that there is a Trinity of Three Divine Persons?
a. A valid definition of God awaits further scientific progress on explaining the universe as an integrated system. It is possible that a “Trinitarian” system of super-abstractions can act as one.
b. It is not rational because “three persons” cannot be one person, and therefore three Divine Persons cannot be One Divine Person. The Trinity refers to God’s three Divine Aspects as Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator.
c. The Trinity is a Divine mystery that cannot be rationally comprehended. Our faith is that Three Divine Persons constitute one Godhead.
45. When is the Second Coming of Christ supposed to take place?
a. The Second Coming of Christ will take place after this world goes through the tribulations of the end times and a new Kingdom on earth is established by the Lord composed of all the saved.
b. The Second Coming of Christ refers to a new evolutionary step in human consciousness, as evidenced by the New Age of post-modernism and universal spirituality which have started but have not reached their maturity.
c. The Second Coming of Christ has already happened in the Writings of Swedenborg, written in the 18th century.
46. Is there a sun in the spiritual world?
a. No, we have no need of any sun since the Lord supplies us with all we need.
b. That information is not available.
c. Yes, but it is made of love and wisdom, not material fire.
47. Can other religions possibly adopt the Writings as a revealed science book about God?
a. Yes, all religions can ultimately accept the Writings as a book of True Science, though they would certainly not be able to see that fact today.
b. No, since the Writings are a religious revelation, not scientific. To adopt the Writings means to become a New Church Christian.
c. Books that talk about God are religious books and every religion insists on their own books.
48. Compare the rationality of theistic and atheistic science.
a. Materialistic science is atheistic, but it is rational even though it doesn’t try to bring God into its explanations. It is rational as long as it sticks to natural phenomena.
b. Materialistic science is atheistic in the traditional sense of God, but not so in the sense of rational super-abstractions in universal system theory.
c. Theistic science, or scientific dualism, is rational while materialistic science, or scientific monism, is not rational since atheism is not rational, and materialistic science is atheistic.
49. If God is omnipotent, why does He allow evil in His creation?
a. There are forces of evil or fallen angels that struggle against God.
b. Evil is not really evil but a perspective on the world.
c. God allows certain evils, but not others, depending on when He can turn the evil to people’s ultimate benefit.
50. What happens to the Divine power God gives us to be able to plan and execute tasks?
a. The Divine power is given as a gift of Grace to be appropriated for ourselves.
b. The Divine power remains God’s power in us and never becomes ours.
c. The Divine power in us makes that part of us Divine and God-like.
51. Why does God give people the power to ignore Him and deny His existence?
a. Evil forces act against God and the minds of people against Him.
b. God keeps people in spiritual freedom. If we are given the power to acknowledge God we must also have the power to deny God.
c. God strives to be acknowledged, knocking to be admitted, but the Holy Spirit has no power where He is not wanted.
52. There is a controversy about whether or not the Writings have an inner sense. Which best represents your position?
a. The Writings say that the Word has a literal sense understood by all, and an inner spiritual sense understood by those who know correspondences and are enlightened by the Lord in accordance with their progress in regeneration. Therefore since the Writings are the Word, they have an inner sense.
b. The Old and New Testaments have an internal sense because they are Sacred Scripture, but the Writings are the Heavenly Doctrine, a Divine rational revelation whose literal sense is already spiritual, and hence it doesn’t need an internal sense like the Old and New Testaments. The Writings are the Word as Heavenly Doctrine, but they are not the Word as Sacred Scripture.
c. Possibly, but it has to be proven first before one can know for sure.
53. Is it possible to prove that the Bible is Divine?
a. No, since it requires spiritual faith rather than proof.
b. Yes, by using correspondences to demonstrate the existence of an orderly internal semantic series from Genesis to Revelations, showing that the historical events were brought about by Divine Providence to convey the internal series to our understanding, by which we might be regenerated.
c. No, because it was written by human beings!
54. What are demons?
a. Demons are people living in hell whose evil loves God brings into our mind to keep us in spiritual freedom, balanced in decision making between them, on the one hand, and the other, the people in heaven whose good loves He simultaneously brings into our mind. Thus we have spiritual freedom to choose.
b. Demons are fallen angels who have turned against God and try to lead people to evil.
c. Demons are bad characters in people’s imaginations.
55. What is the difference in the mentality of the Old and New Testaments?
a. They have the same mentality since they are both the Divine Word of God given for the salvation of the human race.
b. OT mentality is several centuries older than NT mentality, and this is reflected in the details of the historical narratives.
c. OT mentality is sectarian and literalistic, and prescribes ritual worship, while the NT mentality is inclusive and spiritual, and prescribes inner worship.
56. What role do temptations play in regeneration?
a. By means of temptations the Lord brings our evils to our attention and gives us the power to shun them.
b. Temptations are trials God brings to us in order to test our faith and to strengthen it.
c. Temptations are states of motivational conflict, usually involving the desire to do something and the fear of the taboo associated with it.
57. Miracles are of two kind, covert and overt. Overt miracles include healing or controlling the physical elements. Covert miracles include “lucky” events and success stories. Explain the difference.
a. Overt miracles are being witnessed today every day by both individuals and groups. People pray for their child to be healed, or for rain for the crop, and they get it. Without that prayer would the child be healed or the rain fall? Evangelists on TV and in large audiences of thousands perform miracles of healing every week. Miracles prove the presence of the Holy Spirit, so miracles abound with those who have faith, and may even be steadily increasing. The Lord promised that we shall perform miracles like He has, and we are. The Lord channels the power of healing to individuals to whom He gives that gift. The Lord listens to the prayers of the people in Church and the lonely individual alone in a desert.
b. All so called miracles are actually natural phenomena and those that cannot be explained have not been established as having taken place. There is a difference between “reporting a miracle” and a miracle “actually happening.” The easiest way for God to resolve all this doubt about His existence is to simply appear before us and give proof that He is above natural laws and that He controls them at will. Or He could take a group of trusted scientists and transfer them to Heaven, preferably with video cameras. Then they can be returned and tell the world.
c. Overt miracles produced by the Lord are described frequently in the Old and New Testaments. Their purpose was to strengthen the people’s faith, and for this they needed physical proof. This is called developing a “sensuous consciousness” of God. After the Lord left earth to ascend to Heaven, He gave the Holy Spirit as proof of God’s presence with every individual. This is called “rational consciousness” of God. In the new age of the Holy Spirit overt miracles have not been allowed because physical proof of God’s presence injures the further development of rational consciousness of God. This is what’s needed to prepare the mind for heaven and therefore the Lord now only produces covert miracles.
58. Paul declared that works do not save, but faith in the Lord saves. Which of these three explanations is closest to your view?
a. Paul argued that no one can keep from sinning and therefore everyone stands guilty before God’s Justice. It is useless to try to keep every commandment, for no one can. Instead we must rely on receiving the merit of Jesus who was sacrificed for the atonement of everybody’s sins. This attribution of the merit of Jesus to all sinners, is what saves. Therefore we are to rely on our faith in the saving power of the blood of Jesus and not on any attempt to keep all the commandments.
b. Faith is the power of the human mind to strengthen and comfort people. Works refers to altruism and obedience. These are more external rewards compared to the power of faith. Hence Paul was warning people that faith is more powerful than their struggle to be good.
c. Paul was referring to the Mosaic Laws of ritual sacrifice commanded by Jehovah to the people of Israel for the atonement of their sins. With the Coming of the Lord into the world, these former laws were no longer effective for the atonement of sins. Instead, faith in the Lord is the new way to salvation. Paul was not referring to the Ten Commandments, which were reinforced by Jesus and still apply to all Christians. Therefore unless we obey the Ten Commandments, in the letter and in the spirit, we cannot be saved regardless of our faith.
59. Why did Jesus pray to His Father since the Father and He were one, as it is written in the New Testament?
a. Jesus was the Son of God from eternity, now come down on earth and stuck in a frail human body. Whenever He was in need, He prayed to His Father Jehovah, the Creator, to receive strength and comfort, which the Father in Heaven gave Him as often as Jesus needed it.
b. Many people pray in an attempt to feel better when they are scared or depressed, especially people who are very religious oriented, like Jesus was.
c. Jehovah God Himself incarnated as Jesus. In this frail human form, God was temporarily divided between Himself as the infinite invisible Father, and Himself as the finite visible Jesus. Jesus was praying to Himself as the Father from within whenever He was in temptation and felt blinded and cut off from His inner Divine. But after Glorification, Resurrection, and Ascension, the visible Jesus and the invisible Father were united as one, like soul, mind, and body are one within one person.
60. What’s the relation between the Epistles in the New Testament and the Gospels?
a. The Gospels and the Book of Revelations are the Word of the New Testament, while the Book of Acts and the Epistles are the doctrinal commentaries that provide a rational understanding of the Gospels in relation to the Old Testament.
b. The Gospels, Book of Acts, the Epistles, and Book of Revelations together form the Word of the New Testament.
c. The Epistles, especially those of Paul to the Churches, show how the early Church solidified its hold over Christians and is a valuable historical document.
61. How do you resolve the fact that Jesus loved one disciple (John) more than another? Does God have favorites?
a. John’s personality was more pleasing to Jesus so He could love John more than Peter or James or the rest. God loves everyone but some people have a special relationship with God.
b. Jesus loved the disciples equally and it's only an appearance that he made distinctions. The distinctions Jesus made were not based on merit but on reciprocal love. It is John who loved the Lord more than the others, hence Jesus could give John more love that the other disciples could receive.
c. In every group you have distinctions of leadership and followers. John was evidently a leader who was closer to the chain of command than the other disciples who followed Jesus on a regular basis.
62. If you were to describe the hierarchical organization of heaven, which alternative would be closest to your thinking?
a. Heaven is a place in the clouds of glory around the Throne of God where He is constantly worshipped by Cherubim, angels, and saints. The closest are the Cherubim, then the Principal angels, then the lesser angels and saints.
b. There is a diversity of heavens, each suitable for the genius of its inhabitants. Within each heaven there is a diversity of citizenry, some who are in governmental positions of leadership in the community. These activities reflect the mind of those who are there.
c. People in heaven are not distinguished in rank, with one person being a prince or governor, while others being ordinary citizens, or with one city in heaven being higher in rank than another.
63. Compare the effectiveness of communal vs. individual prayer.
a. Many people believe in the power of prayer. If prayer releases some power that alters the events, then it makes sense to think that group prayer would be more effective, and especially if the number of people involved is large or very large.
b. Prayer cannot be thought of as effective or not effective. Prayer cannot influence God’s decisions. God wants us to pray because by praying we don’t ignore Him and He can give us more goods and truths.
c. Communal intercessionary prayer in Church gatherings are more effective than individual prayer for oneself. A group of worshippers is more pleasing to God than a single worshipper, which is why worshippers who share the same belief seek each other out and congregate together.
64. What is your view on the controversy as to whether the Writings have an inner sense hidden by the code of correspondences?
a. The Writings are Sacred Scripture or the Word, and therefore they have an inner sense like the Old and New Testaments. The Writings make a one with the Old and New Testaments, and the three collections together make up the Threefold Word. The Old Testament makes up the legs, the New Testament is the torso, and the Writings are the head or crown.
b. The Writings are the inner sense of the Old and New Testaments. The Writings are the Heavenly Doctrines that rationally reveal the spiritual sense of the Old and New Testaments. Therefore they themselves do not have an internal sense.
c. The Writings are a rational revelation and the more we study it, the deeper we can understand it. This depth of understanding distinguishes individuals so that some understand more deeply than others. This deeper meaning is hidden from the eyes of those whose understanding is not as deep.
65. Explain the ennead matrix of rational spirituality.
a. Don’t know what it is.
b. It is a matrix depicting a diversity of cultural practices in spiritual behavior, including secular humanism, but excluding materialistic science.
c. It depicts three phases of development in rational spirituality, each phase with three sequential states, forming nine evolutionary zones or developmental steps.
66. Why does God want us to pray? Does that influence Him?
a. No, God cannot be influenced by prayers. He commands us to pray for our sake, that we may make Him part of our life, which allows Him to elevates us.
b. Yes, God is influenced by our prayers if we ask it sincerely and unselfishly. He wants us to pray for the sake of His Glory, because He is Holy. He can then reward us with what we ask of Him.
c. It is not God who wants us to pray, but we want to pray to Him in order to feel better about what’s happening to us.
67. Can God love an unrepentant sinner?
a. God knows in advance who will end up in heaven and who in hell, and therefore he loves the former but hates the latter.
b. God hates sin therefore when we sin and do not repent He turns away and cannot love us.
c. God loves us even when we sin and do not repent, but then He cannot make us happy and wise like angels.
68. Who or what is the devil?
a. The devil is the snake in paradise, a liar who deceived Adam and Eve. He reappears in other places as well to tempt people and cause them to sin by misleading them through their weaknesses and vices.
b. The devil is a force in the universe that opposes God’s order and strives to create chaos where there should be order.
c. The devil is collective word for all the people who inhabit the hells. God gives them the power to influence the minds of people on earth who hold on to lusts and false beliefs.
69. If there are layers of heaven, what’s the lower heaven like?
a. The lower heaven is for lesser saints while the upper heaven is for greater saints. At certain occasions however, the lower and higher heaven get together to sing and give glory to God. Whichever heaven one belongs to, God’s love for us is always perfect.
b. The lower heaven is for people with less developed intelligence who are not capable of understanding God at the same level as the people of the higher heavens, nor to love Him to the same degree. For example, people in the lower heaven are occupied with science, art, government, sports, conferences, and business, while people in the upper heavens do not care for these activities.
c. The lower heaven is for adults who grew up on earth. The higher heaven is for the children who died and are now with the angels. The heaven of the children is like a playground while the heaven of the adults is like a temple.
70. Who was Swedenborg?
a. Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish mystic and theologian who produced an elaborate system of Christianity that eliminates the Trinity and makes Jesus to be the Father. He claimed to have visions of heaven and hell and was possessed of many spirits. Followers of Swedenborg call themselves the New Church. They believe that the Second Coming of Christ has already occurred.
b. Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist commissioned by the Lord to write the third and final portion of the Threefold Word. The Lord introduced him into dual consciousness – natural and spiritual -- so that he could interview many people who passed on and now live in heaven or in hell. He talked to King David, the Virgin Mary, Aristotle, Newton, and many others including devils and angels. He wrote a lot of it down and published it in a collection called the Writings.
c. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1782) was a Swedish scientist who became a spiritist at age 57 and acquired psychic powers to see events at a great distance and to communicate with people in the spiritual world and on other planets. He also claimed to be able to talk to God. Some contemporary psychiatrists have analyzed Swedenborg’s claims and have labeled him a genius with multiple psychosis.
71. True Science refers to the science of God, that is, the science revealed in the Threefold Word. What is your view on it?
a. True Science is now being created by the Lord. It is the knowledge about reality that we can extract from the Threefold Word using the rules of extraction specified in the Writings. Scientific revelations are necessary to allow the human race to develop along the path of rational spirituality by giving people on earth facts and information about the spiritual world and how it influences the natural.
b. The existence of True Science depends on the claim that the Writings of Swedenborg contain scientific revelations. Although they contain scientific illustrations, these are not the main point, which is theological and spiritual. “Scientific” does not normally extend to the theological and spiritual, which are not considered scientific fields.
c. True Science as the “science of God” is not an idea many scientists can accept today. The idea that God intervenes in reality is not supported by science which shows that phenomena are caused by specifiable conditions, consistently repeatable and predictable. If this is the “science of God” then how is it different from the science of man?
72. The three developmental steps of rational spirituality can appropriately be labeled Ritual Faith (1), Mystic Faith (2), and Rational Faith (3). Describe their differences.
a. 1 Ritual faith is first because it is pre-scientific and superstitious. Then comes mystic faith which is experiential and non-analytical. Finally comes rational faith which is leaving behind superstition and mysticism for the sake of rationality. However, since rationality and spirituality are operations in different directions of the human mind, faith and rationality break apart, and what’s left behind is either rationality and science or faith and religion. Both of these can be present in one individual, though not simultaneously but by alternating turns.
b. 3 Ritual faith is the lowest because it consists of an external idea of God who is seen as responding to our communal worship. Mystic faith is more internal because the locus of interaction with God is through thoughts and emotions, rather than through rituals of worship and external conduct. Rational faith is the highest or inmost because it is based on a scientific understanding of the interaction laws between God and our thinking and willing operations.
c. 2 Ritual faith is the underpinning of faith, consisting of the Sacraments and the prayers of the people. Mystic faith is deeper because it involves giving assent to the mysteries of the Trinity and the Cross. Rational faith goes still further because it is the full acceptance of the mysteries and miracles of faith without feeling a strain in one’s perspective on the universe.
73. Define God.
a. God is the invisible infinite Father Creator who sees all and does all. No one can see God for God is not here or there, but everywhere. God is unchanging, forever the same from Alpha to Omega.
b. God is a visible Person who has once been seen on earth and is seen in heaven every day. In this visible Divine Human Person there exists an infinity of love and wisdom that create, sustain, and manage all finite things.
c. God is the all in the universe. God is this and God is that. Nothing is that is not God. Everything that is, is God, and what is not God, is not anything.
74. What are the consequences of sinning?
a. Sin is defined somewhat differently in every religion. The common idea is that God gives commandments and specifies what punishment goes with breaking them. God also prescribes remedies for sinners, which consist in rituals of purification, sacrifice, and prayer. God is placated by these demonstrations of contrition and forgives the sinner.
b. Every sin brings inevitable spiritual death to the sinner. The only deliverance is resurrection to a new life in the Holy Spirit. This new life is received by anyone who sincerely acknowledges that Jesus died for his or her sins, so that the entire human race is now reconciled to the Father forever by the sacrifice of His Son on the Cross.
c. No one is punished for their sins, but every sin has its own built in punishment that remains attached to the sinner and inevitably leads to hell. The only deliverance is by the death of the old character through our victories in temptations, followed by the birth of a new character that is received from the Lord and takes us to heaven.
75. Compare humans and animals with respect to immortality and the afterlife. Which answer is closest to your thinking?
a. Animals are created with only a corporeal mind, without a rational and spiritual mind. Therefore they cannot be conjoined to God since that requires reciprocation of love by rational consciousness. All humans are born with a natural and spiritual mind, by which they can develop a rational consciousness of God, and every person who reciprocates by loving God, is conjoined to God, which is the source or condition for immortality in heaven. But if God is not loved, the spiritual mind remains shut and conjunction with God becomes impossible. Without conjunction with God, the state of life sinks to the level called spiritual death or immortality in hell.
b. Animals have living souls and when they die their souls go to the spiritual world. Animals with a good disposition go to heaven and the others go to hell. In heaven, they are a joy to the inhabitants there, but in hell, they are feared. Animals are close to God even if they are not conscious of that relationship. Animals sense the harmony that God built into His creation. They are part of this harmony. Domesticated animals were created by God to provide assistance and aid to the human race. We are permitted to kill and eat since God provided some animals for this purpose.
c. It depends on whether you think that animals have souls or not. If you think that animals don’t have souls, then they are merely biological organisms of survival and adaptation. If you think that animals have souls, then animals and people share the circle of reincarnated life. All life is animated by the living spirit manifesting itself in many forms like animals, people, plants, elements. And in that case it is contrary to the divine to kill and eat animals since they are living souls.
76. Does it make sense to spend a lot of effort trying to prepare oneself for the unknown afterlife?
a. No, it doesn’t make sense. The important thing is to live a full life while one can and thereby to be prepared for whatever comes next. If you buy into this or that religion or theory about how you are to prepare, and you rearrange you life accordingly, denying yourself this or that, it may be all for nothing if it turns out to be the wrong theory.
b. Actually, it doesn’t take effort, only an inwardly sincere acknowledgement that we cannot save ourselves but are saved by the grace of God. We cannot prepare for eternal life by our own efforts, but if we live within the acknowledgment of our powerlessness, God creates a change in our life, sanctifying our efforts, making them fruitful to eternity.
c. Yes it makes sense. It's rational, and sane to want to prepare oneself for eternal life, especially since we're told by a fully reliable source (Divine revelation), that the quality of our life, our vitality and mental health throughout eternity, will depend entirely on how we prepare ourselves during this near insignificant time on earth
77. What is a “good soldier” ?
a. A “good soldier” is one who trains well for his mission and when in battle, uses his best skills to defeat the enemy. Good soldiers remain loyal to their country no matter what. They obey their officers unconditionally. They hate the enemy who threatens their homeland and its citizens. They kill as many of the enemy as possible, getting rid of the bad people that threaten their homeland. They reserve pity and compassion for their own comrades, not for the enemy who tries to kill them.
b. .A “good soldier” is one who uses permissible weapons effectively against the enemy, yet feels pity and compassion for them, even as he strives to kill them efficiently. He also strives to limit the damage to the minimum and already thinks of the reconstruction effort after the enemy is defeated. After the battle, the good soldier switches roles to help the defeated enemy to recover and to adopt an attitude of peaceful cooperation.
c. A “good soldier” is a pacifist who hates war and is eager to lay down his arms at the first sign of peace. Good soldiers agonize over commands they are given to kill since they hold life to be sacred. It is a gift given by God to every person and life should not be taken. When the country is attacked, a good soldier defends against invaders. Good soldiers retain their individual conscience and refuse to follow orders that violate their conscience.
78. .Compare monism and dualism in science in relation to God.
a. Science is not about God and heaven. It’s about reality on earth and in the natural world. Therefore science must remain monist and materialist. Science is a method that can investigate anything, including what people think of God or what miracles they claim to have witnessed.
b. Monist (atheistic) science is inferior and invalid because it denies true reality, which is that God creates and runs the dual universe for the purpose of bringing into existence immortal human beings born on some earth, then bringing them to heaven where He can make them happy to eternity Atheistic or materialistic science is a distortion of this reality and leads to spiritual insanity.
c. Science is a tool God uses. In some sphere God is distant leaving events to be governed by the natural laws he instituted from creation. In other spheres God intervenes by means of miracles that have a supernatural cause. Science is monistic since it doesn’t recognize God, but scientists can be theistic by believing in God’s existence.
79. According to religionists, atheistic science paints a false picture of reality. If this is true, how can you explain the success of industry, engineering, and control over the environment, which are visible accomplishments of science?
a. God allowed atheistic science to become successful and continues to lead its scientists despite their false picture of reality. God inspires the minds of scientists, unconsciously to them, so that their thinking can be kept in external rationality while they remain in internal insanity. On the other hand, dualist science is theistic, and paints a dual reality where the natural and the spiritual act together by predetermined laws.
b. God allowed atheistic science to become successful because He gives people freedom to discover and control the natural environment. The natural world belongs to atheistic science while issues of heaven and hell belong to religion. Every scientist will meet their Maker in due course. As long as science and religion remain separate, there is no conflict between them.
c. Atheistic science does not paint a false picture of reality. It paints a true picture of natural reality, as evidenced by the successes of inventions and discoveries. Sunday Church topics such as worship, Sacraments, God, rebirth, and heaven are not of this world, hence not part of the picture that science paints of reality.
80. Is God Human?
a. God the Father is Divine but God the Son is Divine and Human at the same time. These two Divine Persons form a Holy Trinity called the One Godhead, together with a third Divine Person called the Holy Spirit. We do not have access to God the Father directly and therefore must pray to the Father in the Name of the Son who is the Divine Intermediary.
b. God is the infinite source of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom operating in the created universe. These two operating together define what is human, and they cannot exist in animals, plants, or objects. But they exist in human beings who are willing to receive love and wisdom from God. Even then, that love and wisdom, in their essence, remain with God. Hence only God is the actual and True Human, and we are human only to the extent that we are willing to receive love and wisdom from God.
c. God cannot be considered human since God is supposed to have created humans. God is Divine, not human. God creates humans to be able to feel love and hatred, decency and deceitfulness. To be human is to have all these traits. And even being human is often mixed since we also share traits with animals, and even with plants.
81. Consider these values: wealth, power, reputation, knowledge, fear of exclusion, desire for approval, obedience to authority, and the like. How are these motivators related to salvation and regeneration?
a. They are moral motives for self-improvement and success. But salvation depends on spiritual motives such as the faith in the redeeming power of the Cross.
b. They are motives of a good person and therefore deserve the right rewards.
c. They are moral motives that begin the road to salvation but do not lead there unless spiritual motives are added to them so that they are also done for the sake of one’s religion or place in heaven in the afterlife.
82. Consider these types of traits: merit, righteousness, holiness, humility, understanding, intelligence, wisdom, and the like. Are they natural, moral, or spiritual?
a. Natural
b. Moral
c. Spiritual
83. Consider these types of traits: charity, love, unity, conjunction, acceptance, inclusion, interior perception, and the like. Are they natural, spiritual, or celestial?
a. Celestial
b. Spiritual
c. .Natural
84. Does God favor some people with more good than others, since some people are obviously more gifted than others?
a. God gives maximum good to every person all the time, but each individual filters it out, some turning it into its opposite or evil. God allows this since there is no other way of maintaining freedom of choice, which is essential for retaining the capacity to become human.
b. God’s wants to create a variety of people to make room for all possibilities and experiences. To arrange for this, He gives some people special gifts when He foresees that this individual can turn it into benefits for others. Not every person is suitable or willing to serve God in the highest possible way.
c. God distributes human traits throughout the population so that they form a bell shaped curve – the majority around the middle or “normal,” and a small minority in either extremes, good vs. evil.
85. What is the cause of acceleration of a vehicle when the driver presses the gas pedal?
a. The gas being released into the fuel chamber.
b. The driver’s purpose to accelerate.
c. The laws of physics and chemistry.
86. What is the inmost portion of a pebble upon which its existence depends?
a. Truth within which is good.
b. Sub-atomic particles arranged in a particular dynamic order in space.
c. God’s Will.
87. Swedenborg talked to spirits and there are some today who desire this ability. Can they succeed?
a. No, because direct communication with spirits interferes with the maturation of our rational consciousness of God, and therefore God does not allow such communication to take place today in modern times, though this was allowed in ancient times.
b. Yes, and many psychics have proven that they can and do. Such communication is also reported by thousands of people who have had Near Death Experiences (NDEs).
c. All things are possible to God and should He want an angel or devil to communicate with someone, He arranges for it to happen.
88. Is there a common evolution in the human race? Is the human race integrated into one or is it partially independent?
a. The human race is limited to this earth, as far as is known. Generations succeed one another as one civilization comes, thrives, and then ends, succeeded by yet another. There is a steady evolution from past to future but not a synchronous interdependence, but rather a successive independence.
b. Wherever there are people, whether only on this planet or possibly on others, they are created by the One God, the Father in Heaven and they are His children. In that sense the human race is integrated. The same Word is given to everyone as a means of salvation.
c. Elevation of consciousness is by means of rational truths from revelation, understood more and more interiorly in proportion to our regeneration. This elevation of our rational consciousness is communicated to the entire human race by means of the heavens (or Grand Human) and, through that, to the other earths in the universe. This occurs because the entire race in the dual universe is united and functionally interdependent.
89. What kind of love are we commanded to have?
a. We are to love the Lord as to His Person, even the Robe He wears and the sandals He walks on. We are to love Him for Who He is, the Son of God from eternity who sacrificed Himself for us. We are to love all children, each one as to their unique person, being tolerant of the weaknesses that are human. We are to love our country and all of God’s children and creatures.
b. We are to love whatever good is in a person or thing, not the person or thing, just as we should strive to love the Lord as to the Divine Good and Truth in Him, and not as to His Person. We are not to love the evil in a person, or find it acceptable or excusable on account of who the person is. Nothing should be loved but what is good and true, knowing that all good and truth is from God and is in God.
c. We are to love our neighbor and show charity where needed. We are to love God. If our neighbor is a sinner, we should still love him or her. Loyalty to person is the highest friendship. Loyalty to country, right or wrong, is required, and we are to accept the bad with the good.
90. What’s the difference between theoretical and applied knowledge of the Writings?
a. Theoretical knowledge of the Writings comes first, then applied knowledge of it. For example, a student taking a course in the Writings might gain a theoretical knowledge of it, but when he or she becomes a graduate student or minister, there develops an applied knowledge of it through Doctrine.
b. Theoretical knowledge of the Writings is called enlightenment, while its applied knowledge is called perception. Enlightenment is in the understanding, perception in the will. First the understanding is reformed, then the will is regenerated. Salvation is therefore not from theoretical knowledge of revelation and consequent enlightenment, but from applied knowledge and perception of our intentions and thoughts, whether they are from hell or heaven. If from hell, we shun them, and if from heaven, we love them.
c. Theoretical theology differs from applied theology like a business professor differs from a business investor. While a minister is in Divinity School, he acquires a theoretical knowledge of the Word, viewed as theology. But once he has a parish he acquires an applied knowledge of Doctrine, which helps him to look after the souls in his charge. It is similar with medical students on campus vs. hospital interns, or a soldier in training vs. on the battle field.
91. Compare sensuous and rational consciousness of God.
a. Our sensuous consciousness of God is direct and immediate, wordless, eternal. Our rational consciousness of God is indirect through our thoughts and interpretations. Direct mystical or ecstatic union with God is only possible in sensuous consciousness.
b. Sensuous consciousness is higher than rational consciousness because it is more immediate. Rational consciousness is the attempt to explain in words what the sensuous experience is. As a result, rational consciousness is more remote and subjective.
c. The Lord was a public citizen of Nazareth while He grew up into adulthood, but after His Resurrection He only appeared to those whose spiritual eyes were opened by Him to see. The difference is that He was present to everyone’s sensuous consciousness until the Resurrection, but afterwards, only to those whose rational consciousness was advanced enough to receive the Holy Spirit.
92. Is either heaven or hell forever?
a. Hell is a place of purification from sin. When the process is over, the individual emerges purified of evils and is then capable of enjoying the life of heaven in eternity with the Lord. Hell forever is inconsistent with the perfect love of God for every human being.
b. Heaven is a place the Lord creates for good people and hell is a place for evil people who are called the damned. Hell is an aberration and has no place in a created universe that is perfect, as perfect as God. Ultimately God’s perfection will win out and hell will only be a memory or a possibility but not an actuality.
c. Every person has both heaven and hell in the mind, for there is no other heaven or hell except the one in people’s minds. To descend to the bottom of our mind means to enjoy and justify evil loves. To climb to the top of our mind means to enjoy and justify good loves. In this life we are mixed, but in the other life, once your are either in your hell or in your heaven, you cannot switch because you are unwilling no matter what. To switch would be to acquire again what you have discarded (either good or evil loves). Therefore hell is forever and heaven is to eternity.
93. Explain what is spiritual enlightenment.
a. Spiritual enlightenment is the emergent phenomenon of higher consciousness achieved through acts of discipline and meditation.
b. Enlightenment is a spiritual gift an individual can use to minister to others who are in need and who are ignorant of the Lord or keep the Lord at a distance in their lives.
c. While studying revelation, light from the spiritual Sun enters our spiritual mind from within, and produces conscious correspondences of itself in the natural-rational mind. This higher rational consciousness is called enlightenment.
94. Is there a difference between morality and spirituality?
a. Morality concerns the appropriate treatment of people in our behavior. Morality regulates our behavior towards our neighbor. The Ten Commandments given by God prohibit stealing, lying, murder, and adultery. These are all matters of morality and ethics. God wants us to be moral with one another by keeping the Commandments. Spirituality is faith in Christ as our Savior and Lord.
b. Morality is done for natural motives. Shunning evils as sins is done for spiritual motives. Morality is about the outward social personality, while spirituality is about one’s character or inner loves. Merely being a moral person is not regenerating, unless we connect our morality to our spirituality. If we refrain from stealing because it is immoral, the desire to steal remains. But if we refrain from stealing because it is a sin against God, that is, destroys our heavenly life, then we connect spirituality to morality, and we are saved.
c. The difference is one of emphasis rather than substance. Morality is a measure of how sincere we are in the values we uphold publicly, that make up part of our personality structure. Spirituality is a measure of how deeply our values go, whether they are part of our core being or only the surface personality.
95. What’s the differences between corporeal, sensuous, rational, and spiritual, in relation to the mind.
a. Corporeal refers to biochemistry, sensuous to physiology, rational to psychology, and spiritual to theology.
b. Corporeal refers to things in us that are corrupted by sin. Sensuous refers to that part of human nature that can be tempted or seduced. Rational is that which we intellectualize in our mind, interpreting our experience rather than taking it in immediately without the mediation of our intellect. Spiritual is the core of our being or soul and is unique and eternal.
c. The corporeal mind is close to the physical body processes which do not involve thinking. The sensuous mind receives information from the corporeal and differentiates it through words and labels. The rational mind takes information from the sensuous and puts it into abstract categories. The spiritual mind unconsciously receives information from the spiritual world, which is transmitted by correspondence, to the rational mind where it is conscious.
96. Identify the phase to which the following six traits are characteristic:
enlightened; literalist; universalist, arrogant; conjunctive; inclusive, pacifist.
a. 3, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 2
b. 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 1
c. 3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2
97. What is the “vertical community” and how can we be conscious of our communication with spirits? Illustrate with our eating behavior.
a. The “vertical community” refers to our position in the hierarchy of spiritual beings. First are the Holy animals like the Cherubim, then the Angels who minister at the throne of God, then the elders and saints, and finally all the believers. The non-believers are cast out in outer darkness. When we eat we pay tribute to the throne of God by blessing the food and giving thanks. We are then in the company of Angels.
b. We can map out the spiritual societies we are connected to, which can be called our “vertical community.” For instance, when we are eating, if we stuff and swallow repeatedly we are with different spirits than if we moderate the size and rate of intake. If we deny ourselves another portion, we are with different spirits than if we give in to our appetite and overeat. Affections for unhealthy foods come from different spiritual societies than affections for healthy food.
c. The “vertical community” refers to the social hierarchy in a society. This hierarchy may be considered to be the spirit of the underlying organization of that society. Food behavior is among the daily occupations of that society and requires the hierarchical execution of sequenced steps from farmer, to distributor, to local market where the customers gather to shop.
98. The following are three thinking protocols reported by people while doing their workout. Identify each entry as to phase (1, 2, or 3).
(i) I better not skip my workout today. It really keeps me in shape. To be successful you’ve got to look attractive. That means being in shape. Besides, you avoid heart attacks. I need to learn to like my workout session. It’s the right thing to do. It keeps me from bad habits like laziness and lack of self-control. It’s necessary for a healthy life.
(ii) I’m actually looking forward to my workout. Yes, it takes effort and motivation, but it’s worth it. I feel better, clean, purified, satisfied with myself. I feel that every movement brings me closer to my heavenly character. I sense the physical power in my body to be connected to my will and motive. Since this is from heaven, I feel closer to heaven as I exercise.
(iii) Exercising the physical body is like exercising the mind with study. Compelling myself to do it as scheduled, develops my mental discipline upon which rests my spiritual development. I must look on the physical exercise as a spiritual discipline. I hate this workout stuff. I rather watch TV or surf the net. But I’m making myself do it. I refuse to break my resolution. I’m scared to get sick and end up under a doctor’s care. Besides, it’ll be soon over then I can watch TV.
a. 3, 1, 2
b. 1, 3, 2
c. 1, 2, 3
99. The following six statements characterize various attitudes about wars. For each item, identify the phase (1, 2, or 3).
(i) All wars are under the direct auspices of the Lord. All evil is moderated by the Lord to its maximum allowed. Evil itself punishes the enemy. Our job is to neutralize their ability to hurt others and to try to amend them. Striving to win by means of as-of self effort powered by the Lord. Striving to avoid hate as self-corrupting. Sense of sadness rather than joy in hurting and killing enemy. Desire to protect enemy by keeping injury and damage to the minimum necessary for gaining control.
(ii) There are just wars and evil wars. Protecting ourselves and coming to the rescue of the subjugated are just wars. The enemy must be treated humanely and not hated. God is on the side of the just. Those who are pacifists think that all wars are evil. They would rather see the enemy continue its cruelties against others. Feeling confident in winning and relying on God. Wanting to defeat the enemy without hating them. Hoping that enemy may be amended rather than destroyed. Wanting to minimize damage and ready to help with reconstruction of the country.
(iii) War is an instrument for advancing one’s nation or religion. It’s good to hate the enemy. They don’t deserve humane treatment since they want to harm us. Eye for an eye philosophy. Hating the enemy with self-righteousness. Wanting to deny humane treatment to the enemy. Feeling justified in using illegal types of weapons and in killing the unarmed innocent. Wanting to inflict maximum damage. Feeling justified in maltreating prisoners of war. Joy in the spoils of war.
a. 3, 2, 1
b. 2, 2, 1
c. 1, 1, 3
100. Characterize the relation between natural and spiritual, and between finite and infinite.
a. The natural world is within the spiritual world. The finite is within the infinite.
b. The spiritual world is within the natural world. The infinite is within the finite.
c. The natural is the source of the spiritual, just like the brain is the source of the mind. The finite is a technical or local limitation for the universal infinite since space and time are infinite and all finite things are contained within them.
|
1. 3 1 2 |
21. 2 3 1 |
|
41. 1 3 2 |
61. 2 3 1 |
81. 2 1 3 |
|
||
|
2. 3 2 1 |
22. 3 2 1 |
|
42. 2 3 1 |
62. 1 3 2 |
82. 1 2 3 |
|
||
|
3. 3 1 2 |
23. 1 2 3 |
|
43. 2 3 1 |
63. 1 3 2 |
83. 3 2 1 |
|
||
|
4. 1 2 3 |
24. 1 3 2 |
|
44. 1 3 2 |
64. 3 2 1 |
84. 3 2 1 |
|
||
|
5. 2 3 1 |
25. 3 1 2 |
|
45. 2 1 3 |
65. 2 1 3 |
85. 2 3 1 |
|
||
|
6. 2 3 1 |
26. 3 1 2 |
|
46. 2 1 3 |
66. 3 2 1 |
86. 3 1 2 |
|
||
|
7. 3 2 1 |
27. 2 1 3 |
|
47. 3 2 1 |
67. 1 2 3 |
87. 3 1 2 |
|
||
|
8. 3 2 1 |
28. 2 3 1 |
|
48. 2 1 3 |
68. 2 1 3 |
88. 1 2 3 |
|
||
|
9. 3 2 1 |
29. 2 3 1 |
|
49. 2 1 3 |
69. 2 3 1 |
89. 2 3 1 |
|
||
|
10. 2 3 1 |
30. 3 2 1 |
|
50. 2 3 1 |
70. 2 3 1 |
90. 2 3 1 |
|
||
|
11. 1 2 3 |
31. 1 3 2 |
|
51. 1 3 2 |
71. 3 2 1 |
91. 2 1 3 |
|
||
|
12. 3 2 1 |
32. 3 2 1 |
|
52. 3 2 1 |
72. 1 3 2 |
92. 1 2 3 |
|
||
|
13. 3 1 2 |
33. 3 2 1 |
|
53. 2 3 1 |
73. 2 3 1 |
93. 1 2 3 |
|
||
|
14. 1 3 2 |
34. 2 3 1 |
|
54. 3 2 1 |
74. 1 2 3 |
94. 2 3 1 |
|
||
|
15. 1 2 3 |
35. 2 1 3 |
|
55. 2 1 3 |
75. 3 2 1 |
95. 1 2 3 |
|
||
|
16. 1 3 2 |
36. 2 1 3 |
|
56. 3 2 1 |
76. 1 2 3 |
96. 3 1 2 |
|
||
|
17. 3 1 2 |
37. 1 2 3 |
|
57. 2 1 3 |
77. 1 3 2 |
97. 2 3 1 |
|
||
|
18. 2 3 1 |
38. 2 3 1 |
|
58. 2 1 3 |
78. 1 3 2 |
98. 1 3 2 |
|
||
|
19. 1 2 3 |
39. 1 3 2 |
|
59. 2 1 3 |
79. 3 2 1 |
99. 3 2 1 |
|
||
|
20. 2 1 3 |
40. 1 3 2 |
|
60. 3 2 1 |
80. 2 3 1 |
100. 2 3 1 |
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For each column, count the number of circles for each phase: |
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phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
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Now add up the five columns to get the total number of circles for each |
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phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
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This is your diagnostic score. It consists of three numbers. They must add up to 100.
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For each column, count the number of circles for each phase: |
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phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
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Now add up the four columns to get the total number of circles for each |
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phase 1: _____ phase 2: _____ phase 3: _____ |
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This is your diagnostic score. It consists of three numbers. They must add up to 100.
Lay your Answer Sheet next the this Answer Key. For each question circle the phase that corresponds to the answer you selected on the Answer Sheet. For example, if you circled alternative b for question 1 on the Answer Sheet , then you need to circle phase “1” on the Answer Key for question 1.
Note: the first digit in each box is the Question Number, while the other three digits are the three phases for that question’s alternatives.
The three numbers of your score display the dominant mode of your current thinking about spiritual subjects. Look at the relative strength of each ideology in your thinking. For instance, suppose your diagnostic score is [72-23-5]. This indicates a mode of thinking about spiritual topics in which phase 1 dominates strongly but has strength in phase 2. If your score is [5-12-83], it is phase 3 thinking that dominates, with little strength in the other two phases. And so on.
You can also examine the ratings of certainty you gave for each answer. Inspect the pattern of numbers. What is the average certainty you have in each of the three modes of thinking? Examine each choice you picked and the certainty rating you gave – are you more confident when you are in lower phases of thinking, or the other way around? Many other comparisons of interest can be made if you have an interest in using the test as a diagnostic tool. Go over each item you selected that is at phase 1 and 2 thinking. What would it take to elevate your thinking to phase 3 operations? This book offers discussions on all the topics in the test, showing the progression of rationality from phase 1, to 2, to 3. By making an effort to understand these discussions in a rational way, you will develop the ability to raise your consciousness by means of rational truths all the way to heaven.
Here is a description of the major characteristics of each of the three phases of thinking about spiritual topics:
Phase 1 dominant thinking about spiritual topics is characterized by a mixture of traits, both religious and secular. Therefore the items below will apply selectively to each individual, depending on religious and lifestyle outlook.
sectarianism (salvation is for themselves only)
fundamentalism (male dominant views about women and society)
literalism (Scripture is to be applied to life without
interpretation or doctrine, sticking to what is stated in the literal)
extremism (willing to be indiscriminately violent, beyond law and
tradition)
fanaticism (intolerance and desire to suppress contrary views)
superstition (pre-scientific, irrational)
ritual faith (a view of God as a tribal Covenant, distant, and
unapproachable by ordinary individuals)
cultism (reliance on living “holy men” and on
“personal inspiration” rather than on the Bible)
profanation (quoting the Bible for personal testimony, but
without believing it, thus, hypocritically)
spiritism (seeking contacts with the departed)
reincarnation or related ideas (seeking a non-Western philosophic
identity)
nonduality (there are no absolute differences)
materialism (there is no spiritual world)
agnosticism
atheism
sexual permissiveness
relativism (all religions are equivalent, all truths are
relative)
secular humanism (the human race has its own destiny independent
of any God)
positivism (only the external is real)
animism (everything is alive, everything is a spirit)
Phase 2 dominant thinking about spiritual topics is characterized by universalism and personalism. In the Christian Protestant religion it takes the following forms:
universalism (salvation by faith regardless of cultural
background)
inclusiveness (Redemption covers the entire human race)
personalism (personal relationship with God)
symbolism (Christ is foreshadowed in the Old Testament)
mysticism (Trinity of Three Divine Persons in One Godhead)
reliance on intercessionary prayers
tendency to believe incomprehensible “mysteries” of
faith
belief in salvation by blind faith alone without works
fear of ascribing the Merit of Christ to self
willing to be led by persuasive faith
willing to give allegiance to creeds containing mystical doctrine
desire to penetrate deeper meaning of the Bible through
application of verses to self
focus on charity work or volunteerism
focus on repentance (being contrite, feeling guilty, making
amends)
focus on the sanctity of marriage
Phase 3 dominant thinking about spiritual topics is characterized by a rational or scientific understanding of God and regeneration, as revealed by God in the Writings of Swedenborg:
scientific dualism (the universe consists of a natural world and
a spiritual world)
salvation depends on regeneration of character from evil to good
regeneration is a lifelong struggle with temptations and
victories over them by looking to the Lord
God is a Divine Human Person who has a Trinity of Roles (Creates,
Redeems, Regenerates)
our immortality is due to our rationality
everyone has heaven and hell in the mind
rising to heaven is by acquiring virtuous habits of willing and
thinking
sliding into hell is by being unwilling to let go of inherited
evils
becoming conscious of God’s co-Presence and participatory
involvement in our thinking and feeling
salvation is solely by character reformation and regeneration
emphasis on scientific or rational explanations of the mechanisms
of salvation and regeneration
application of rational spirituality to everyday reality
These three modes or spiritual ideologies are discussed in the book.
I would like to know your score so that I may add it to the statistics I keep on this test. Also, let me know your relevant background and any comments you have on any questions. Please email me: leon@hawaii.edu
Age _____ Gender _____ Education ____________________________________
Marital status – check all that apply _____single _____married _____divorced
Other: _____________________
Describe your life outlook by checking all that apply to you:
_____ Religious
_____ Not-religious
_____ Agnostic
_____ Atheist
_____ Free thinker
_____ Hedonist
_____ Buddhist. What denomination? _________________________________
_____ Jewish. What denomination? ___________________________________
_____ Muslim. What denomination? ___________________________________
_____ Catholic. What denomination? __________________________________
_____ Protestant What denomination? _________________________________
_____ New Church. What denomination? _______________________________
_____ Other religion or faith? ________________________________________
_____ Bible lover
_____ Conservative
_____ Orthodox
_____ Liberal
_____ Pacifist
_____ Outgoing
_____ Health enthusiast
_____ Vegetarian leaning
_____ TV enthusiast
_____ Pop music enthusiast
_____ Gambler enthusiast
_____ Sports enthusiast
_____ Movie enthusiast
_____ Feel angry at least once a day
_____ Feel depressed at least once a week
_____ Aggressive driver
Please rate your current happiness with your life by circling one of the numbers:
Extremely low 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. 4 .. 5 .. 6 .. 7 .. 8 .. 9.. 10 ..11 .. 12 Extremely high
What is the likelihood that you will attain all the major life goals you have?
Extremely unlikely 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. 4 .. 5 .. 6 .. 7 .. 8 .. 9.. 10 ..11 .. 12 Absolutely certain
How optimistic are you of the future?
Extremely pessimistic 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. 4 .. 5 .. 6 .. 7 .. 8 .. 9.. 10 ..11 .. 12 Extremely optimistic
Please add any other explanation or comment that you think is relevant:
The Web address of the test file by itself is: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/test-spirituality.html
For other than personal use, please email Dr. James: leon@hawaii.edu
Comments on any aspect of this book are welcome. Please email Leon
James: leon@hawaii.edu
Permissions Note
Permission to reproduce or copy this book in whole or in part for personal or educational purposes, including book review articles, is hereby given on the condition that (1) this entire Permissions Note be included with the copied text; (2) that the text or diagrams not be altered in any way or added to; and (3) that it be clearly identified as follows: Reproduced from Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg: Three Steps in Rational Spirituality by Leon James, an online textbook published on the Web in 1999 at this address and updated in 2007: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html
The book may be used for educational purposes, but may not be placed in the public domain. Any commercial reproduction, redistribution, publication or other use by electronic means or otherwise, is prohibited without written permission from the author.
Related Links to the Works of Leon James:
De Hemelsche Leer Article
|| Article on The Making of Theistic Psychology
|| Swedenborg Hawaii Home Page || A Man of the Field: Forming the New Church Mind ||
The Unity Model of Marriage || Directory of Full Text Articles and Books Online
See also:
BibleMeanings.info || TheisticScience.org || TheisticPsychology.org (mirror site)
Back to Leon James Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leon.html
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