|
| |
The Spiritual Significance of
Neologisms
(formerly: Leon A. Jakobovits)
University of Hawaii
2008
(version 27a)
With the collaboration, since 1976 of
Dr. Diane Nahl
This is Part III
Summary of the Organic Human Mind or Mental World of
Eternity
Neopower: How Conjoint Neos Produce Heaven
The Master Neochart
(overall) ||
Neochart by Sub-Categories ||
My Favorite
and Major Neos by Year
Part III starts here
Teaching children about all the neos they produce helps
them to prepare the mental ground for the open up the human rational mind, and
preparing it for its adult maturation. Meta-neo talk is the register of
perception in
self-witnessing. In other words, when we practice monitoring our thoughts
and feelings (self-witnessing) we need to find an observation perch, or climb up
to higher ground, in order to gain perspective on the mental scene or topic
focus. This new higher ground of self-witnessing is mental anatomical
layer 7Ce,
discussed throughout this article. Layer 7 is called the rational mind
(C=cognitive organ), and has an external component (e) which is based in
materialistic and abstracted thinking that we do in layer 6C, anatomically just
below. From conscious awareness in layer 7C we can observe the operations going
on in our layer 6C, like from mental balcony or first floor window. We can see
our thoughts with our rational mind. You have done this whenever you corrected
yourself about thinking something. You realize that that’s wrong or incorrect,
and you change your thinking as a result. Instead of going, you might decide to
stay. Instead of getting mad at your boss, you decide to keep quiet about it.
Etc. You are on your rational self-witnessing perch whenever you talk to
yourself in a reasoned manner, for instance planning an encounter with someone,
or judging an action as to whether it is good or bad, fair or unfair.
We operate our daily round from mental layer 8C, which is
called the external natural layer, the materialistic self. Social and ecological
adaption and survival require that we be practical in our thinking. Our moving
around in physical space with a physical body that we must protect, requires our
external natural mind to be materialistic. Layer 8C controls layer 9C below it,
which gets to control the physical body (layer
12), for as long as it lasts. So there is a chain of downward anatomical
mental command structure in place. At the top sits our external rational
thinking (7Ce). This is the part that needs to be instructed in childhood and
prepared for young adulthood when we fully become conscious in layer 7Ce. We
know what we are thinking and think what we believe, doing so from our own
reasoning as an independent human being. This mental state begins our adulthood.
Teaching children the mental architecture of neo production
on the daily round of living makes a lot of sense. Meta-neo literacy in
education should form part of the series of literacy skills we now take for
granted that they ought to be universally taught to children – math literacy,
reading literacy, writing literacy, information literacy, computer literacy,
science literacy, civics literacy, driving literacy, and spiritual literacy. Of
all these, neo-literacy and spiritual literacy are the slowest to be recognized
and developed. Spiritual literacy is the ability to
apply
correspondences to all Sacred Scripture and to derive theistic psychology
from it. This spiritual literacy operates in our
mental
anatomy layer 7Ci. This is the interior rational layer in the natural mind
(“i” is for interior). The interior-rational portion of the natural mind is our
highest level of conscious thinking that we are capable of in this world prior
to our resuscitation in the spiritual mind. Layer 7Ci thinking and consciousness
is purely rational from the world of rationality itself, which is the Grand
Human in the mental world of eternity into which we are born with a spiritual
body, and where we awaken upon the separation from the physical body through the
dying process. Our conscious understanding of rational meaning is pure in mental
anatomical layer 7Ci (the interior rational). This is because its knowledge and
concepts are sourced in layer 6, 5, and 4, which are the spiritual
layers in
which we operate after our
resuscitation.
Layer 7Ce (external materialistic thinking) does not fully
accept the dualism, two worlds, eternity,
Heaven and
Hell, God, Sacred
Scripture. Many people don’t think about these things, especially those who are
not fond of rational thinking as a permanent way of being. Many other people
accept these things on persuasive teachings or blind faith, following the notion
that spiritual mysteries cannot be penetrated by the human rational mind, hence
it’s useless to try. But this is a materialistic thinking and consciousness of
reality. It is based on the idea that what the physical senses bring us can be
the basis for figuring out reality. This monism in the external rational mind (7Ce)
restricts our humanity to the highest animal level on the planet.
Our true humanity begins with the pure rational thinking in
layer 7Ci which takes its information not from the appearances of the natural
world, but from the realities of the spiritual world of eternity accessible
through the correspondential meaning of all Sacred Scripture.
Spiritual
literacy is the stairway to heaven. Meta-neo instruction prepares the ground
for all of layer 7, external and internal, cognitive and affective, and
sensorimotor.
Affective neos are feelings and intentions attracted to our
consciousness by means of the offer for suitability for conjunction. This is the
called the spiritual marriage of the affective with the cognitive. Every
operation of our affective organ (“the will”) is experienced in consciousness as
a feeling and as an intention. It is the source of all motivation in daily life,
and in our immortal eternity. A feeling or an intention means a love. All
feelings are the result of loves. All intentions are the result of the
affections of love that long to be consummated by conjunction. Love is
consummated by conjoining, as in a marriage, with a suitable thought or idea or
plan or principle. To put it in a way that children might think of it, we make a
wish and it comes true. The wish is a love conjoined to an idea, which is the
hope that might come to pass even if it is only wish. It is in this spiritual
union between love and hop that the child now lives and feels enthusiasm and
energy and motivation to do this or that, which might be merely to wait in
patience.
The spiritual union of the affective with the cognitive can
be encouraged in affective education. Consider: “What do I need to think of, in
order to feel better?” This is the principle that one can feel better by
thinking different thoughts. Conversely, if one thinks of critical or negative
or cruel thoughts in the cognitive operations, the only conjunction that takes
place is with scary feelings, destructive loves, evil intentions, hateful
wishes. This union is called the infernal marriage or concubinage.
It is clear then that thoughts attract feelings and moods
that correspond to the thoughts and are compatible with them. The instruction of
affective neos involves learning the details of the heavenly and hellish
marriage in our mind, and in the mind of every human being. This is what it
means to be a human being. This is how human beings function as organic units of
eternity and substance.
Affective neo education is not only by verbal neologisms
involving thoughts and reasoning. It is also involves the sensorimotor domain.
All human senses can be used to perform expressions of harmony, rhythm, and
pattern, and each of these sensorimotor neos attract an affective partner. The
love is consummated when the physical expression is an offspring, as it were, of
the spiritual marriage between love and understanding, between longing and
fulfilling performance or act.
In this way morality and civics become the practice ground
and avenue for the affective loves, intentions, and satisfactions from
consummation. In other words, to feel the intensity and sincerity of patriotism
in our heart, we not only recite in our cognitive mind the meanings and symbols
of patriotism, but we also act out and perform the appropriate sensorimotor and
physical movements, gestures, and recitations. These outward acts are spiritual
offspring of the spiritual marriage between the affective and the cognitive
operations in our mind. The Swedenborg Reports indicate with emphasis that
“nothing is more important” in life than to know how the will and the
understanding conjoin. This is the key to reformation of character and
regeneration, for without these, we are drawn into the source of our selfish and
hurtful loves, which is the Grand Monster of hell eternity.
The goal of affective neo instruction is to enable
emotionally intelligent neo productions. Children will be able to feel the
motivation for being kind, compassionate, and civil. They will consummate their
love of showing kindnesses and acting peacefully. They will be empowered to
experience the satisfactions of being public spirited, altruistic, and orderly.
Emotionally unintelligent neos will gradually lose their value and
attractiveness.
Consider a case in point, this paragraph that appears in
the Preface:
/Neologistic records/, graphs, and /charts of a group or community/, /make
visible the topic focus/ of its people. It /is their very consciousness/ --
/their preoccupations, their interests, their values/, their desires.
Neolgistic records create a /spiritual geography/ of our /vertical
community/ depicting thought and meaning/, idea and truth. No doubt a “Human
Atlas of Neologisms” may eventually be derived from world-wide /neologistic
databases/, which can show the /mental unity of the human race/, and
possibly, the /directionality of its spiritual destiny/.
There are different ways of systematically parsing text for its
neologisms. Here I have followed the rule of parsing minimally, that is,
including the minimum number of words in an expression, as we go through the
paragraph cumulatively from beginning to end, and counting each neo only once
(even if used again). I have indicated the parsings above with a slash (/) where
a neo begins and ends. Note however that any of these neos may appear multiple
times in an article or adjacent paragraphs. For the article count they should be
counted only once. In My
Neochart I have counted a neo only once in my career regardless of how often
I have used it in various articles and at various times.
Using the minimal cumulative parsing technique on the
paragraph under analysis, we obtain 12 neos. The paragraph length is 82 words so
that the neo/word ratio is 82/12 or 7 (rounded off). A neo/word ratio of 7 in
scientific text indicates that it is fairly complex in conceptual structure,
which raises the cognitive load of “following the meaning” or sticking with the
topic focus of the writer. I have seen complaints by some authors in the
literature on neologisms that some of them are not necessary and merely increase
cognitive load on the reader for the mere sake of vanity of the writer. Of
course we want to avoid producing unnecessary neos in text whose purpose is to
communicate new scientific content and information. We also want to avoid using
an old expression for a new perception, since this would vitiate the writer’s
discovery and interfere with the diffusion of this previously unknown idea,
concept, focus, or perception. So we must reach a practical and reasonable
balance. Hopefully I will be seen as striving for that balance in my writings.
Now let us take another look at the parsing issue and
what’s involved in the implications. The first two neos in the paragraph when
taken together, express a more complex concept than the two separately:
(1) /Neologistic records/ (2) /charts of a group or community/
/Neologistic records, graphs, and charts of a group or community/
The second, longer
neo is the result of combining two sub-neos and including the in-between
words as part of the longer new neo.
Note the collection of separate sub-neos contained semantically within the
longer neo:
Neologistic records || Neologistic graphs || Neologistic charts
And then:
Neologistic records of a group || Neologistic graphs of a group ||
Neologistic charts of a group
And also:
Neologistic records of a community || Neologistic graphs of a community ||
Neologistic charts of a community
And finally:
Neologistic records, graphs, and charts of a group or community
This final neo
is the full idea or description that I intended to convey. It is not the same as
“Neologistic records of a community” even though this shorter neo contains
within itself all the sub-neos. “Records” contains graphs and charts, while
“community” contains group. I can see that some writers might prefer
“Neologistic records of a community” to “Neologistic records, graphs, and charts
of a group or community.” This depends on the specific intention the writer
wants to communicate, which depends on the audience, the social setting, and the
purpose of writing it. This is something that needs to be discussed further.
More research needs to be done to understand how we decide
whether our new construction is a
genuine neo or not. For instance, the expression “final neo” in the previous
paragraph shows a google occurrence
of 5, 500. But inspection of the documents listed indicates that none can be
found that match the meaning of “final neo” given here, namely, the last
neologism listed in as series of neologisms.
So it is clear that “final neo” is a
neo. But there are less clear cases as in my neo “spiritual psychology”
which has a yahoo occurrence of
300,000. Again, in so far that I can briefly go through hundreds of documents, I
have never been able to find any that relates to spiritual psychology based and
defined by the Swedenborg Reports. The expression “spiritual psychology” was not
in use back in 1984 among Swedenborg scholars and readers. So when I produced
the expression, it was a neo. Here is another example. I coined the expression “semantic
satiation” in 1958 and in 2008 it has a
google occurrence count of 2,000.
Only a small proportion of these documents reference my original work. Most of
the users may be unaware of where the neo came from. Neo-authentication research
may be able to disentangle these information diffusion procedures in science and
literature.
A more difficult situation presents itself when the
occurrences are few and seem to match the use I was making of it. For instance,
the expression “google occurrence” has a yahoo count of 31. They seem to be used
in the sense I used it when writing the above paragraph.
Do I put it on my neochart then? I
would say yes because I did not know the existence of this usage until I
searched for it, after I constructed it and reread it, noticing it there. This
answer may be practical for now, but I think that if
neocharting becomes a community
practice then we will need more reliable ways than introspection and memory. The
same paragraph also shows my neo “google occurrence count,” which still has a
zero occurrence in 2008. This is collateral evidence that “google occurrence”
and “google occurrence count” are produced as genuine neos.
Consider one of the neos in the next paragraph:
“intellectual, biographical, commercial, and spiritual uses of neos.” I entered
this entire expression in my neochart. It contains eight words, or six if you
count content words only. There are sub-neos in it like
/intellectual, biographical,
commercial/,
/biographical, commercial, and
spiritual/,
/spiritual uses of neos/,
/commercial, and spiritual uses of
neos/ and so on, all of which have
zero occurrence. But I wanted to preserve the entire expression as one complex
concept. The sequence /intellectual,
biographical, commercial, and spiritual/,
semantically represents a unit with four aspects that make neos useful in
revealing a person’s activity in a community. I have tried to maintain the
conceptual units in the entries in my neochart. This explains why many entries
are longer than the minimal sub-neos they may contain.
Consider the expression “scientific specifics.” It came to
just a few minutes ago as I was thinking about the general principle that such
as is the quality of love, such is the understanding (Swedenborg). I was then
thinking that we can comprehend the meaning of this general principle, but what
is needed is the knowledge of the specifics, the scientific specifics. I
remember searching my mind for a suitable expression, and “scientific specifics”
came into my awareness. From my perspective it is a neologism that I coined
since I do not know such an expression and don’t recall reading it anywhere. So
I googled it and its occurrence is 961. You would expect the occurrence to be
much higher, perhaps in the hundred thousand range, or more, given that
“scientific” has a google count of 228 million, and “specifics” occurs in 431
million documents on the Web. Yet “scientific specifics” occurs in less than one
thousand documents among the hundreds of billions.
The expression “scientific specifics” refers to the
specifics of “scientific explanations” which occurs in 222 million documents. So
why only one thousand for “scientific specifics”? At this point probably no one
knows the answer. But the answer is available to us in scientific revelations.
Further research on the correspondential sense of all Sacred Scripture will
bring us the knowledge for the scientific specifics of neo construction in the
human mind. The one thousand or so current occurrences for “scientific
specifics” may all be neo constructions, or some may be while others are
diffusions and borrowings in the way this process normally goes forth.
It is difficult to discuss neologisms without creating
meta-neos, which are neologisms about neologisms. Once you start discussing the
characteristics and properties of neologisms, you have to construct syntactic
variants such as the adjective “neologistic” and the adverb “neologistically”
(which I find has a yahoo occurrence of 500). This is not neo mania, nor neo
show off. Meta-neos are necessary communicative devices that aid the reader in
pin pointing the semantic shape and perceptual contours of the writer’s topic
focus to be communicated. This all assumes of course that the information is
useful to a reader. I believe it is, and I discuss the utility of neocharts and
neo-analysis in this document. All this will become more convincing to more
people as the intellectual, biographical, commercial, and spiritual uses of neos
become known through the work of future contributors to this topic.
This morning I got this email from
my son Rex who was
looking over my neochart for the first time:
cool. i was
thinking about how to write a program that automatically finds neologisms in a document (by leveraging google).
the problem is, a neologism has to be not just unique, but also meaningful, which means that an automatic
parser that just parses all possible phrases of adjacent words would come up with a lot
of false positives.
This technical linguistic issue deserves attention by
linguists. No doubt the Google people
have the resources to come up with a workable answer. Do they not see the
tremendous commercial opportunity in
neocharts? Perhaps it would help the
Yahoo people and the Microsoft
people, if I specified some of the practical and useful values of a
search engine for neocharts.
Companies,
institutions, organizations, agencies, and departments can
monitor their in-house neologistic
productivity in both quantity and quality. What on earth for? That kind of
reaction is part of our social
communicative practices regarding topics. When I talk about neocharts people
immediately treat it as non-serious topic. And no doubt throughout this article
many readers will wonder whether I speak tongue in cheek about ideas such as
neocharts, neocards, neo widgets, neocalendars,
neo biographies, annual neo
production, spiritual neos, Divine Neos, and so on. Let me assure those readers
that I am being serious about each one of the several hundred neos I introduce
in this article. The neo-inventiveness
and neo-ranking of individuals,
organizations, countries, books, email and texting messages, is a meaningful
index of the productivity potential of
the people and plans involved.
Plans that have a
high neo-occurrence value are more likely to succeed – that is my
hypothesis. I hope research will confirm it in the near future.
Company and agency neocharts are an
empirical description of the mental infosphere it manages as copyright
ownership. Research needs to show the differential functions of
affective neocharts, cognitive
neocharts, and sensorimotor neocharts. The
neochart infosphere relates to
mental anatomy and, accordingly, needs to be described as an ennead matrix of
nine zones of intersection.
Anatomical Layers of the
Natural Mind
|
NEO CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURES
|
SENSORIMOTOR
Neos
|
COGNITIVE
Neos
|
AFFECTIVE
Neos
|
7
Rational
|
7Si
rational
sensorimotor
neos
7Se
|
7Ci
rational
cognitive
neos
7Ce
|
7Ai
rational
affective
neos
7Ae
|
8
Materialistic
|
8Si
materialistic
sensorimotor
neos
8Se
|
8Ci
materialistic
cognitive
neos
8Ce
|
8Ai
materialistic
affective
neos
8Ae
|
9
Corporeal
|
9Si
corporeal
sensorimotor neos
9Se
|
9Ci
corporeal
cognitive
neos
9Ce
|
9Ai
corporeal
affective
neos
9Ae
|
This ennead matrix indicates the quality and level of neos.
The construction of corporeal neos occurs at the lowest level (9C) of cognitive
reasoning that is closely bound to particular or singular events, hence is
sensory bound, data limited, subject to illusory appearances of the senses.
Constructing materialistic neos or sensual neos (zone 8C) requires a more
abstract level of thinking that can see generals from particulars. Data are
merely used to objectify an abstract relation or perception. It is the relation
that is in focus and that matters. The relationships between elements of data or
observation are abstract neos that operate above and prior to concrete neos.
With level 7C thinking one can penetrate and perceive the causes of why generals
and their particulars occur together in phenomenal observation. This is the
rational level of scientific thinking. It sees for instance that we operate in a
dual universe: the physical and natural world in time-space, and the mental and
spiritual world in eternity. Level 7C neos are dualist neos sourced in the
correspondential sense of Divine Speech as Sacred Scripture. This is the
beginning of what is truly and purely human thinking, thus rational scientific
thinking informed by Sacred Scripture.
Level 7C neos fall in two categories, external (7Ce) and
interior (7Ci). These are two radically different types of rational operations,
one natural-rational, the other spiritual-rational. The external
natural-rational cognitive operations (zone 7Ce) are sourced in materialistic
neos (8C) while on the other hand, the interior spiritual-rational cognitive
operations (zone 7Ci) are sourced in Divine Neos coming through our spiritual
mental
layers (4, 5, 6). From the perspective of google-yahoo-microsoft people,
the corporeal and materialistic neos (9C, 8C) have the most commercial
significance at this point in time and historical development. Let us recall
that we are now in the stone age of technology in comparison to what will be
available to our great grand children. Eventually commercial use of
spiritual-rational neos (zone 7Ci) will usher in a new post-Web era that will
offer a heavenly Internet, which is an Internet that corresponds to the good and
truth of the spiritual-celestial zones of the human mind. That will be the
beginning of the true human neos whose higher order quality will include
collective quasi-omniscience. There will then exist nothing that is beyond human
knowledge, understanding, and control.
I can foresee in the distant future a synergistic
bio-technology that provides ways of usefully representing the operations of the
sensorimotor and cognitive organs. This would allow real time monitoring of neo
construction procedures. Bionic interfaces may have the capability of managing
these procedures, whenever the affective organ allows it. Thought-control and
thought-management could not occur against the free will of the individual’s
affective operations of love, purpose, and intention. We know from Sacred
Scripture that God manages all procedures, including neo construction procedures
in our cognitive organ. Our free will to choose in our own mind anything
according to our understanding, is a human right guaranteed by God and
maintained forever by God’s omnipotence. We know from this that human free will,
which is located in the affective organ operations, cannot be controlled.
Teaching people skills in the construction of affective
neologisms has its most significant effects in childhood when layer 8C is being
built up for full fledged operation. The teaching of heavenly love neos is
sorely needed everywhere you go. Hate neos abound in all our major socialization
networks – song lyrics, TV and DVDs, novels, the Internet. Our face-to-face
social networking procedures involve bullying, teasing, sarcasm, dispassionate
gawking at the pain and terror of others. At the top of our affective love
hierarchy sits a selfish despot whose name is Me and Only Me. The Swedenborg
Reports distinguish between heavenly and evil neos, as you might expect since
this is God’s principal, central, and essential information we need to have to
effect a spiritual personality makeover (called “regeneration”). On the job
training procedures need to deal with neo construction practices.
By inspecting the chart from bottom up (9, 8, 7) you are
looking at the ascending order of human consciousness prior to resuscitation
(about 30 hours after the dying process). As infants our consciousness of
reality and the world is spent in layer 9 of the mental world of eternity. This
is the layer closest to the physical body (layer 12) and its sensory-motor
productions. In childhood we spend our consciousness in layer 8 of the mental
world. Children are sense oriented but they perform abstraction procedures on
what they observe through the senses. Children are untrained engineers. What is
lacking is rationality, for without this there is no science, because no
rational explanation. This is acquired in adolescence when we spend our
consciousness in layer 7e. This is the external rational layer, closes to the
materialistic abstractions of layer 8. Our adolescent mind tends towards the
ideal which is perceived in the growing rational neos in one’s reflections. This
idealized rationality is external because it does not know about God and Sacred
Scripture except externally as teachings and readings.
Then our consciousness suddenly takes to an inversion. The
adolescent becomes a young adult. Not yet a mature adult, but an adult, and past
adolescence. This inversion is marked on the chart as layer 7i, the interior
rational layer. The reason it is called interior is that anatomically it is
closest to the spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4) which remains unconscious until
after resuscitation. The spiritual mind is unavailable to our consciousness
prior to resuscitation. In our daily awareness we can know about the spiritual
layers of our mind, but we cannot sense them, observe them, or even describe
them. All the information about our spiritual mind must therefore come from
Sacred Scripture where we have access to the full series of Divine Neos.
Now here is an amazing and frustrating phenomenon or
reality that I observed.
The meanings and relations we see, understand, perceive at
each layer of our mental anatomy are not transferable to a lower layer. In layer
7Ci (interior rational cognitive operations), we can perceive, observe, and
understand rational proof. This rational proof or demonstration is sourced in
the interior rational series of correspondences we can access in Sacred
Scripture. Theistic psychology is possible because of this availability in layer
7Ci. Now what happens when we describe the rational proof that is available to
our consciousness in layer 7Ci? We can see and perceive the meaning and the
proof in the description, and others can also see it when they are accessing
that layer in their mind. But when people look at this description of the
rational proof and meaning in their layer 8C, they see nothing of the proof and
the meaning. Efforts to make it comprehensible to them in that layer of thinking
is fruitless and frequently results in reactions of derision, denial, and even
hostility. One instance of this antipathy between rational proof (layer 7Ci) vs.
empirical proof (layer 8C), is the negative bias science that excludes God and
Sacred Scripture from science, vs. the positive bias science that includes God
and Sacred Scripture, as in theistic psychology and theistic science.
Mental layer 7Ci gives us access to the full series of neos
in Sacred Scripture. In a prior Section the following was presented.
Here is the entire series of
descending consciousness of Divine Truth in Sacred Scripture:
Layer 4: celestial-rational neologisms
Layer 5: spiritual-rational neologisms
Layer 6: spiritual-natural neologisms
Layer 7i: interior-natural neologisms
===========================
Layer 7e: external-rational neologisms
Layer 8: external-natural neologisms
Layer 9: corporeal-natural neologisms
Layer 7i is here designated as “interior-natural” while we
are using here the expression “interior rational.” These differences in name
reflect different features of the anatomical details involved in the mental
series. The highest consciousness that materialistic science can give us is
layer 7e thinking. Einstein presents a good example. Today (May 13, 2008) a news
story announces that one of Einstein’s letters is being sold at an auction in
London. In that letter Einstein declares that God and Sacred Scripture are
“childish” legends. Here you can see the absolute inability of a man who is
ranked among the most intelligent in the history of scientists, and especially
in modern science. When Einstein operates in level 7Ce, giving elegant
mathematical explications of relativity and time, he is restricted entirely to
facts and information that come from layer 8 and 9 in his mind. Every rational
idea or proof that he can provide is restricted to this external rational
operation. It is called “external” because it has no access to the interior, as
the interior rational does. “Interior” is also known as “spiritual” in the
Swedenborg Reports.
But the instant that Einstein would adopt the positive bias
science and say to himself that God and Sacred Scripture are possible, he enters
layer 7Ci thinking that sees rational proof in Sacred Scripture in endless
different ways. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) wrote his science books in the
language and thinking of 7Ci, in contrast to Newton who wrote from layer 7Ce
thinking.
Neo production turns out to be the central goal of our
temporary life connected to earth, as well as that of our permanent afterlife of
immortality. I didn’t know this as a conscious principle until I started working
on this project this year (2008). The facts had been available to me for the
past twenty-seven years, ever since I’ve been pouring all over the 27 volumes of
the Swedenborg Reports (Mmm, 27/27 – interesting correlation to be
investigated). How do these facts lead to the conclusion that neo production is
our current and permanent “central goal” in living? Let us put them together in
a rational account.
Reality exists in two worlds: the spiritual world of mental
eternity, and the natural world of time-space. The world of mental eternity
originates from the Spiritual Sun, while the natural world originates in the
physical suns or star galaxies. The two realities are deterministically
connected to each other, event by event, point by point, from general functions
to particular individual qualities. This connection is called the Law of
Correspondences and has been revealed Swedenborg Reports for the first time in
the history of science. Every event or quality at all levels of possible detail,
that exists in the natural world at any time or place, is called an effect of
correspondence. And, every event or quality at all levels of possible detail
that exists in the mental world of eternity (or “spiritual world”), is called a
cause of correspondence.
For the first time in scientific history, the Swedenborg
Reports (last volume published in 1771) empirically demonstrate that the literal
sense of Sacred Scripture is also a natural effect produced by a spiritual
cause. All things in the physical world are produced by correspondences, hence
Divine Speech or Dictation must also appear in the physical world by means of
correspondences. This is the law that applies to anything that appears in
physical reality in the natural world. Swedenborg’s unique dual consciousness in
both worlds (from age 57 to 84), allowed him to run this simple but impressive
experiment, on a repeated and regular basis for 27 (or 29) years. In his natural
consciousness and physical body he was reading a certain verse in his familiar
Swedish or Latin Bible. Simultaneously, in his spiritual consciousness and
spiritual body he was reading that same verse, and observing the difference.
From this dual observation platform he was able to take copious daily notes
detailing the difference between the natural sense and the spiritual sense of
every verse and every word in the Old and New Testaments.
He was an expert at making indices and laying out text in
numbered paragraphs that are cross-referenced to each other. He produced 6
volumes of analyses just for one Book in the New Testament called The Apocalypse
or Book of Revelation. It took him 12 volumes to give the word by word analysis
of the first two Books of the Old Testament called Genesis and Exodus. Each word
of Divine Speech is produced by correspondence in a natural language. First is
the reality of the Divine Spiritual Neo produced by God’s Mind in the Divine
Mental World. This is called Divine Truth or Divine Speech, and also “the Word
of God.” Note that Divine Speech or Truth does not have a creation history. It
is eternal and permanent. You can’t point to anything and say this precedes
Divine Speech or Divine Truth. Everything of creation has a beginning, by
definition. You can point to God’s Mind, which is Divine Love and Truth, and
correctly say that it precedes creation and all things in it.
The Divine Affective Neo called Divine Love is the
uncreated origin or source that produces and propels the Spiritual Sun into
creation. Creation is the work of the Spiritual Sun. This living eternal entity
is Divine, and is God as He is Outside of Himself and in Creation.
The Spiritual Sun is the infinite changeless
God-as-He-Is-in-Himself, presented in a visible form outside of how
He-Is-in-Himself. This outside of how He-Is-in-Himself, is the beginning point
of created reality. Everything created is produced by this one and only, and
eternal living Spiritual Sun.
The Spiritual Sun is infinite but it appears as finite when
viewed visually. Swedenborg was able to see the Spiritual Sun whenever he was
conscious in mental layer 4 called the Third Heaven. Every person he met in that
layer assured him that they too can see it, and marvel at it. They are conscious
of the influx that comes from the Spiritual Sun from within their mental organs,
as well as from without their sensory organs of sight and touch. They feel the
spiritual heat entering into their affective organ, and they see the spiritual
light in their cognitive organ as new understanding, new meaning, or new
consciousness. Spiritual heat and light flowing out of the Spiritual Sun creates
a rational ether or mental space around itself.
The spiritual heat creates a mental sphere of love with its
affections and feelings, while the spiritual light creates a mental sphere of
truth with its thoughts and rational understandings. This is the second sphere
in creation, and is the mental zone of eternity that is closest to Divine Love
and Truth streaming out of the infinite Spiritual Sun. The third mental sphere
around the Spiritual Sun is the layer in mental eternity that produces the
individual unique souls of every human being.
With layer 4 of the mental world of eternity we reach the
first existence of human conscious awareness as an individual person. This is
the mental state he calls the Third Heaven (or highest of the three heavens). It
is the highest existence and reality for the human race. God’s infinite Love in
Himself desires to make other minds happy from His Mind. Divine Love Neos are
constructed out of such desire to share with others outside of self. God desires
to make human beings happy and joyful from birth to endless eternity, and wills
through His infinite Wisdom or Truth, to multiply and diversify endlessly these
varieties of joys and intelligences that can live in human consciousness. The
mental world of eternity is the construction zone where these endless joys and
understandings can come into the living reality of every created soul. This is
the plan that is revealed in eternal and universal Divine Speech as it is laid
down in the natural-rational correspondences of the Swedenborg Reports.
When I tried to apply the analysis of correspondences to
Sacred Scripture other than the Old and New Testaments, I discovered that the
content of all Sacred Scripture is united and forms the natural representative
of universal spiritual reality contained in Divine Speech. In other words,
Divine Speech or Divine Truth is a permanent activity of the Spiritual Sun.
Divine Speech flows out of the Spiritual Sun into the mental world of eternity
that it forms around itself for the organic reception of good and truth (or love
and wisdom). Spiritual heat is a living organic substance of God called Divine
Love. We need to think about love as a substance from the Spiritual Sun, and
spiritual light as a substance also of the Spiritual Sun.
These two living eternal uncreated Divine substances in God
flow out of God into creation through the Spiritual Sun, which appears there,
visible to human consciousness. This layer of human consciousness is called the
celestial-rational mind. Swedenborg inspected the Sacred Scripture Book that is
read by people who dwell in that mental layer in eternity. He described the kind
of thinking that takes place through celestial-rational correspondences of
Divine Speech. Every element of thinking exists in a married state to a specific
element of love. Every thought is produced by a love. The thought is a “consort”
to the love and together, they make a unique combination or existential
neologism. Every neo in human consciousness is produced by this marriage between
some love we have with some thought that it can go with. Thoughts are
constructed in the cognitive organ out of the substances of spiritual light.
Loves and their affections and feelings, are constructed in the affective organ
out of the substances of spiritual heat.
In this way the organic spiritual marriage of love and
understanding in every person, actualizes by correspondence the organic Divine
marriage in God, which is the unity into one between His Divine Love or Good and
His Divine Wisdom or Truth. This actualization of correspondences in the human
mind fulfills God’s Love and strivings in creation as He is Outside of Himself.
Note that since all things are produced by the substances of the Spiritual Sun,
all things contain these substances. There is no way of getting rid of the
center of something. You can see this logical principle operating with physical
objects. You can’t get rid of what makes its center, namely the space and
whirling particles that were detached from a sun in the initial phases of
planetary evolution. A piece of that original star is at the center of every
object on the planet. These connections are actually representatives or models
(or effects) produced by correspondences of Divine Speech or Truth as it
exteriorizes from the Spiritual Sun outward in a circle and across the various
mental layers of eternity.
There is only one physical space, so the space at the
center of each atom is the same space in which the galaxies are. These relations
are actually representatives (effects) produced by the Spiritual Sun as its heat
and light stream out across the various mental layers of the world of eternity.
The Spiritual Sun is at the center of each thing or quality that is produced in
the mental world eternity. The substances of spiritual heat (or Divine Love) and
spiritual light (or Divine Light) produce each mental state organically. First
they produce the three mental organs – affective organ (or the “will”),
cognitive organ (or the “understanding”), and sensorimotor organ (or “spiritual
body”). These three organs form a unitary system or mind, and this is reproduced
in six distinct but interacting layers.
When our consciousness or understanding operates at
layer 4, we are thinking and
reasoning with celestial-rational
correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth.
When our consciousness or understanding operates at
layer 5, we are thinking and
reasoning with spiritual-rational
correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth.
When our consciousness or understanding operates at
layer 6, we are thinking and
reasoning with spiritual-natural
correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth.
When our consciousness or understanding operates at
layer 7i, we are thinking and
reasoning with
interior-natural
(or exterior spiritual and celestial) correspondences or meanings of Divine
Speech or Truth (that is, according to rationality based on spiritual and
celestial meanings (layers 6, 5, 4) contained within Sacred Scripture).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When our consciousness or understanding operates at layer
7e, we are thinking and reasoning
with
exterior-rational
correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth (that is, according to
rationality based on abstractions from sensuous appearances and meanings
contained within Sacred Scripture).
When our consciousness or understanding operates at
layer 8, we are thinking and
reasoning with exterior-natural
correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth (that is, according to
abstractions from sensuous appearances and meanings contained within Sacred
Scripture).
When our consciousness or understanding operates at
layer 9, we are thinking and
reasoning with corporeal-natural
correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth (that is, according to
mere sensuous appearances and meanings contained within Sacred Scripture).
These 6 organic mental layers reflect the geographic zones
of the mental world through which Swedenborg traveled. To reflect this
astonishing fact, I like to use this formula in theistic psychology:
spiritual geography = mental anatomy
In other words, the spiritual world of eternity and
afterlife is nothing else than the mental world we are familiar with already. We
are not conscious in layers 6, 5, 4 called the “spiritual mind” until after our
resuscitation. Swedenborg observed many people in the process of being
resuscitated (about 30 hours after death). In the initial mental states we are
still conscious in the natural mind (layers 9, 8, 7) as we gain full
consciousness in the spiritual mind. If the spiritual mind has not been opened
by regeneration, then there is an attempt to provide the opportunity for
character reformation to each individual. Swedenborg observed that each person
chooses according to the ruling love they have acquired prior to resuscitation.
If the ruling love is unregenerate, the spiritual layers cannot be
operationalized for their consciousness. That ruling love prevents it because
the spiritual mind is in the order of Divine Speech or “heaven”, while the
unregenerate ruling love is always in the opposite order called “hell.” The
ruling love selects a level of consciousness that is suitable to itself, and
shuts out all other levels of understanding and truth.
Swedenborg regularly for years spoke to people who live in
one of the numerous spiritual societies of hell, globally called The Grand
Monster in the mental world of eternity. He also spoke regularly to people who
live in one of the numerous spiritual societies of heaven, globally called The
Grand Human in the mental world of eternity. Since there is only one mental
world of eternity, every human being is in that one world. Individual mental
life is unique because each person’s organic soul and spirit (layer 2 and 3) is
created unique at birth. From birth onward to endless immortality, every
person’s mental organs receive the influx of Divine spiritual heat and light in
a unique way, engendering a unique consciousness, and consequently a unique
life, a unique relationship to God.
From all this you can see more rationally how it is that
neo- production is the central goal of existence and of the creation of the
universe. A neo (S) is born from the union between our love (A) and our
understanding (C).
Affective (A) operations conjoin with cognitive operations
(C) to produce a neo baby (S). The Neochart is an autobiographical record of
this marriage in the mind of an individual over the course of intellectual
development. Conjoint Neocharts form a record of the life of a conjoint self,
which is the united mind of a conjugial couple.
The Divine Neo fulfills itself in the reality of conjoint
neocharts.
In the Swedenborg Reports God is revealing one of the most
fundamental of all philosophical puzzles, namely, the rational and complete
answer to the question: “What is the purpose of the universe and human life in
it?”
The beginning purpose and the end purpose of all creation
is
conjugial love.
Creation and the universe exist for the purpose of
fostering this love between a
husband and a wife.
All other purposes in the running of the universe are
subordinated to this one purpose.
Conjugial Love (CL) between a husband and wife (called “the
celestial marriage”) corresponds to the conjunction of Divine Love and Divine
Truth in God (called the "Divine Marriage"). In between these two is “the
spiritual marriage” which is the conjunction of our affective and cognitive
organs (“will and understanding). Regeneration brings about the spiritual
marriage within each of us. After resuscitation we exist in the celestial
marriage in some society of the Grand Human.
The spiritual marriage is something each of us must focus
on. It is brought about and managed by the
Divine
Psychologist (“Holy Spirit” or “the Lord” or “God”). Regardless of people’s
beliefs and religions it is the Divine Psychologist who manages this process in
the mind of every human being past, present, and future, from birth to endless
eternity. This is true of us here before resuscitation, it is true when we live
our existence in heavenly consciousness after resuscitation, and it is true when
we are in the
Grand Monster. God
manages every human being’s mental world and organic mental operations through
the laws of correspondences, which God reveals in the Swedenborg Reports.
Natural marriages on earth are designed by God to foster
the psychological growth of our inborn conjugial character.
God manages couples in natural marriages here on earth by
providing for them intermediate steps of deepening the relationship from
relatively external to internal and inmost.
The inmost phase in a natural marriage is practiced when we adapt our
behavior to fit the
unity model.
The intermediate phase in a natural marriage is practiced when we adapt our
behavior to fit the
equity model.
The beginning phase in a natural marriage is practiced when we adapt our
behavior to fit the
male dominance model.
The male dominance model is in layer 9 of the mental world of
eternity (natural-corporeal mind).
The equity model is in layer 8 of the mental world of eternity
(natural-materialistic mind).
The unity model is in layer 7 of the mental world of eternity
(natural-rational mind).
In the male dominance model of behaving in marriage (layer 9), the
couple practices sensorimotor intimacy without cognitive and
affective intimacy within it.
In the equity model of behaving in marriage (layer 8), the couple
practices sensorimotor intimacy within which is cognitive intimacy,
but without affective intimacy.
In the unity model of behaving in marriage (layer 7), the couple
practices sensorimotor intimacy, within which is cognitive intimacy, within
which is affective intimacy.
Husbands who commit themselves to the
unity model can
search the Swedenborg Reports for information on how to behave and how to think
within this model. I have done this for many years and have formulated a series
of mental and interactional procedures that I collectively call
The Doctrine of the Wife (DoW).
The principal love in the unity model is to maintain
intimacy at all three levels – sensorimotor, cognitive, affective. Events that
break mental intimacy need to be studied by the husband, understood, and avoided
on a daily and hourly basis. Here are such anti-unity events that I have
observed in my life and the lives of other couples, both real and in the media.
The list should be very familiar to all readers:
-
Husband disagrees with his wife (breaks trust she has
in him to protect her and cherish her)
-
She asks him to do something and he ignores her request
(creates stress in her life, breaks her peace)
-
She wants to keep talking about it, he refuses,
obfuscates, or goes away (makes her feel like she is alone, abandoned,
rejected)
-
She argues with him to stop seeing certain friends, but
he refuses, picks a fight each time (makes her feel discouraged, like she is
unloved and failing)
-
When he is in a certain mood he criticizes her, calls
her names, acts like he is mad (makes her feel beaten up, abandoned, used,
discouraged)
-
He tries to make her feel guilty for not acting like
she wants to have sex with him when he wants to (makes her feel like a
victim of sexual blackmail and date rape)
-
He talks about her behind her back in a critical or
disrespectful way to his mother, children, friends, or strangers (makes her
feel like dying when she finds out about it, something inside her goes cold
towards him)
-
He feels comfortable letting her be stuck with stress
and inconveniences in domestic tasks and situations, without really coming
to her rescue, giving her relief by doing things with her and for her, in
the way she wants things to be done (doing this for her makes her feel sexy
towards him and returns to her the freedom to be a feminine woman)
There are all sorts of
interactional neos and
transactional neos. These are
new ways of having an exchange, or a
different way of communicating or saying
something to someone who can detect the neomaly (combination of neo and
anomaly). Neomalies are anomalous
neologisms. This happens frequently with friends, roommates, spouses. When
people live together they evolve forms
of sensorimotor coordination which one can perceive in their
interactional rhythm, verbal and
nonverbal. When married partners
practice the
unity model procedures in their interactions, they are each
other’s best friends and evolve an
interdependent conjoint self.
A conjugial
conjoint self is constructed out of the
husband’s masculine intelligence and
the wife’s feminine intentions. The
mental anatomy of men and women are
in reciprocal form relative to each other. In a man’s mind the cognitive organ
is on the outside, closest to the sensorimotor organ and his physical body,
while in a woman’s mind the affective organ is on the outside, closest to the
sensorimotor organ and her physical body.
You can see from this diagram that the anatomical
conjunction of the minds of husband and wife takes three phases to complete. The
first phase (1) is the mutual
adjunction of their sensorimotor organs. I call it
adjunction because, as the Swedenborg Reports show, two like organs cannot
conjoin anatomically but can only be coordinated to each other in operation,
each remaining independent and single. Mental conjunction requires reciprocal
organic structures that are constructed to form a whole. This means that
individuals are born single and remain incomplete in mental anatomical growth
until each person can conjoin with its own reciprocal.
Marriages that practice
the male dominance model involve sensorimotor and physical adjunction, but there
is no
cognitive and affective intimacy. In his own mind, the husband who
practices male dominance does not knows little about his wife’s cognitive life,
and knows even less about his wife’s affective life. Nor does he care to know.
The male dominance model of marriage never goes beyond sensorimotor and physical
intimacy.
Phase 2 begins when the husband gives up male dominance and
adopts the equity model of marriage. Now he feels obligated to consult his
wife’s thinking on many things about their domestic life. He even adopts a new
philosophical attitude about it, favoring in his mind and in his talk the
philosophy that “the sexes are equal” and that “women should be given the same
opportunities as men” etc.
Equity husbands negotiate and haggle about who does
what how much, and when things get rough and he feels he is expected to do too
much, he will rebel, throw a fit, fall silence, take a walk, go out, or worse,
make his wife feel jealous and insecure. The husband will self-servingly fall
back on the male prerogative model of society, giving him the ultimate word on
just about everything in their life together.
Still, there are many husbands who see through this self-created
subterfuge and how dangerous and hurtful and unfair it is.
Phase 3 begins when the husband realizes that sensorimotor
adjunction and cognitive sharing and intimacy, are not enough. He knows that his
wedding vow was to take care of her ‘till death do us part’ but in his heart and
desire he feels differently. He longs for the hope that their union may be
forever, beyond death and into immortality. She is his soul mate. He knows it,
he feels it. Soul mates are forever. So now, under the impact of this
regenerative affective neologism he changes his mind, he remakes his vow to her,
this time saying ‘till endless eternity.’ Now he is entering the unity phase of
affective intimacy. He very soon realizes and feels that this is not going to be
an easy task.
Conjunction is a powerful anatomical process of change and
remaking, restructuring. The
reciprocal anatomical components in each of them
are covered up by much thick growth belonging to other loves, other than
conjugial, having to do with self interest, gender politics, family ties,
preferences and fears, sympathies and antipathies in everything cultural in
which they are mentally immersed – lifestyle habits, prejudices, weaknesses.
These differences or interactional dividers were there before in the earlier
phases, but they were so much easier to cover up, to lay aside and ‘agree to
disagree.’ But now in the unity phase (3) there is no hiding from each other.
Masculine neologistic productions clash with feminine ones. You can see the
nature of this clash of characters when you consider the anatomical diagram of
their mind.
His cognitive organ is right next to the sensorimotor and
the outside physical world. His affective organ is hidden deep behind the
recesses of his cognitive awareness. The
masculine intelligence looks outward
into the physical world and is occupied with it. His affective operations remain
deep seated and not very well known. He is quick to disagree, then quick to get
angry at her when she interferes with his way of thinking about something. He
expects her to submit, to agree, to be loyal to his way of seeing it and
justifying it.
He resists her when she reflects to him his feelings and
motivational intentions. He denies them. He is different than she imagines, he
says and thinks. What is she to do?
Her affective organ is right next to her sensorimotor
environment and physical body. She feels things by perception. She is not as
practiced as he is in justifying and explaining how things are with him. She
just knows it, because she perceives it. Her intention and love for conjoining
him to herself is so powerful that she burns hot with desire for affective
intimacy. She can only obtain this if he wants to have that with her. He must
reciprocate by conjoining himself to her. This is the unity dynamic: She strives
to conjoin herself to him, and he strives to conjoin himself to her. Her outward
feminine love conjoins itself to his outward masculine intelligence (phase 2).
Now when this is done, she waits. She must wait for him to conjoin his inner
masculine love (affective organ) with her inner feminine intelligence (cognitive
organ). The diagram shows this process with the lines conjoining the parts.
The deepest form of masculine intelligence exists in two
phases, unenlightened (mental layer 7Ce) and enlightened (layer 7Ci). The
difference in level of operation between the external rational layer (7Ce) of a
man’s cognitive organ (C) and his interior (i) rational layer (7Ci) is like that
between the physical and the spiritual. One is temporary and sourced in
appearances, the other is eternal and sourced in realities. To depend on
appearances (in layers 9, 8, 7e) for one’s survival is to ultimately fail to
adapt, and consequently it is to fail and to miss the desirable potential,
giving up the desired goal. But to depend on realities for survival is to adapt
successfully, attaining full potential, and enjoying the attainment of all one’s
cherished goals. Enlightenment is the mental state of reasoning from realities.
Unelightenment is to reason from appearances.
For example, to say that the “sun rises and sets” is to
speak according to the visual appearances of the sun’s progression across our
daily horizon in the sky. This is merely a communicative convention that makes
things more convenient for people. There are many such instances in our daily
round of activities and settings. But to construct a scientific explanation that
relies on this appearance is to destroy science as the study of reality. Science
does not base its theories and explanations on mere data and observations –
these are merely appearances, effects, correlations, accidents. Instead science
bases its explanations on abstractions away from the appearances in data
observations. Theory must go beyond the data, or else it is imaginary and
unreal. Such imaginary theory has no power to explain, nor power to predict or
control anything of importance.
What is added in theory that is not in the observational
appearances of the data?
The answer is that rationality is what theory is made of.
We construct a theory by putting rational ideas together into a pattern that
enlarges our understanding of something. The something is the observational data
or “phenomenon” (whose etymology denotes the appearance to the senses).
Anatomical layer 7Ce gives access to external rational theories which are above
mere abstractions (layer 8C) of sensory observations and instrumental
measurements (layer 9C). But layer 7Ci gives access to interior rational
theories sourced in the spiritual layers of mental eternity. These spiritual
layers are created by the layers of correspondences in Sacred Scripture --
spiritual-natural in layer 6C, spiritual-rational in layer 5C, and
celestial-rational in layer 4C. These levels of spiritual consciousness are
purely rational, uncontaminated by the appearances of the physical senses that
restricts our natural world consciousness to appearances (layers 9, 8, 7e).
The unenlightened masculine intelligence practices the male
dominance model of relating to women (layer 9) in phase 1, then in phase 2,
practices the equity model (layer 8 and 7e). In these two phases men relate to
women in terms of appearances (layer 9) and in terms of abstractions (layer 8).
But in phase 3 men relate to women in terms of realities. The unenlightened
masculine intelligence (layers 9, 8, 7e) is incompatible with feminine
intelligence because one is external (belonging to the physical world) while the
other is interior belonging to the mental world of eternity. Feminine
intelligence is shown on the diagram above as being located in the inmost or
highest region of the woman’s mind. Feminine intelligence is informed by
rational perceptions more than by external appearances. It is the reverse with
the unenlightened masculine intelligence, which is more informed by and reliant
on external appearances and their abstractions, rather than by understanding of
the causes of these appearances. All causes are in the mental world of eternity
(or “spiritual world”), and all phenomenal appearances in the physical world are
effects of mental causes. Hence it is that feminine intelligence, which is based
on rational perception, is higher than masculine intelligence that is not yet
enlightened, and consequently is based on appearances and their abstractions.
This is why it is necessary for a man to subordinate his
own masculine intelligence to his wife’s feminine intelligence regarding all
matters pertaining to their life together. The Swedenborg Reports divide the
things between a husband and wife in two broad categories, “forensic” and
“domestic.” In the literal sense “forensic” refers to the things a man does
outside the home to support and protect his family, like employment, politics,
commerce, science, community-building. But in the correspondential or spiritual
sense “forensic” refers to unenlightened masculine intelligence (9C, 8C, 7Ce).
In the literal sense “domestic” refers to what a woman does in the home to take
care of home management and parenting. But in the correspondential or spiritual
sense “domestic” refers to enlightened masculine intelligence (7Ci).
So in a real sense a man becomes spiritually enlightened
when subordinates his masculine intelligence to his wife’s feminine
intelligence. This is known in theistic psychology as the
Doctrine of the Wife for Husbands (DoW).
This subordination is purely voluntary. The woman has no
power to compel the man to listen to her. She can plead and beg and complain,
but that’s where it ends if he chooses to ignore her. This subordination is
sourced in pure heavenly freedom guaranteed by the
Divine
Psychologist who
manages this process in all its details and progressions. Neither does God
compel anyone. God’s omnipotence is exercised to insure that the man’s choice in
this matter will be purely his own choice in accordance with his own love and
motivation. For only that which he chooses from love in accordance with his
reason, does belong to him in eternity. Through this attitude of unity the man
becomes more and more enlightened. God has arranged matters this way from
creation by making masculine intelligence to be the reciprocal of feminine
intelligence so that the two can form a one, and thus a higher self, a conjoint
self.
When the two minds work as one they produce conjoint neos.
Heavenly life in eternity is constructed out of conjoint neos. Swedenborg
describes the heavenly surroundings of the couples who construct their mental
environment by means of conjoint neos.
It is a heaven of neos!
Everything there that is visible as an environment is like
a dream space filled with everything surprising that is happy, charming,
beautiful, involving, and rationally meaningful. Swedenborg saw dream houses and
palaces, new types of gardens and plant arrangements, new fruits that are
delightful and even instructive because of their representations in the Grand
Human, which is the mental world of eternity. Every wonderful and meaningful
object that appears in mental anatomy layer 4 is a representative of conjugial
love between a husband and wife united into a conjoint self. This dream like
reality in eternity is very real, unlike a dream or daydream we have here in our
natural consciousness, which only lasts a short while then ends, making us face
the concrete facts before us and surrounding us. But in the spiritual
consciousness we have after resuscitation in layers 6, 5, 4, the surrounding
sensorimotor neos are mental performances of our inner loves that use our
thoughts and imagination to give them meaning.
Our cognitive life of thinking is in the service of our
affective life of loves. Every love has a built power to consume itself. To be
consumed is the purpose of a love’s existence. A love is consummated when it
conjoins itself to a thought, as in a spiritual marriage, and producing
offspring of that affective-cognitive union, that are visible as sensorimotor
neologisms.
Prior to resuscitation, while we’re here conscious in our
natural mind (anatomical layers 9, 8, 7), there is a discrete barrier separating
our sensorimotor operations (9S) and our temporary physical body (layer 12).
This may be called the dualist barrier of existence. Humans are born into a
dualist creation, one in time and physical matter, the other in eternity and
mental substance. Our physical body contains physical organs and structures
patterned after the spiritual body, which is a mini-version of the Grand Human.
The spiritual body contains our mental organs: affective, cognitive, and
sensorimotor. These interact with each other in correspondence with the
in the exact way in which the three systems in the physical body interact
– circulatory/digestive, respiratory/oral, and nervous/skeletal. Every detailed
physiological, biochemical, and atomic operation of the three interdependent
physical systems is a particular effect caused by some affective love in the
spiritual body, in conjunction with some cognitive idea, and together through
the intermediary of the sensorimotor determinations, readinesses, and
instantiations.
The conscious portion of our natural mind has control over
the physical body’s voluntary movements. This control ratio is like the
difference between a child’s knowledge of using a cell phone and the team of
engineers and computer scientists that built it and keep its global system
running. We know only the most general things of what is actually going on when
we make our arm and fingers move to place food in our mouth. So the control of
the physical environment we have is like the control a child has over the United
Nations. But we know from the memory of our dreams that in a purely mental world
we have the power of a god, like the author of a novel has power over the
characters. Our ruling love makes everything happen in our sensorimotor dream
environment. We can see the powerful attraction of beauty and feel the intensity
of the pleasure, and when we are captured by an infernal love, we feel the
terror and see the ugliness and deformation.
After resuscitation, for a relatively brief process or
phase, we are as if still located in our natural mind and consciousness, and our
earth bound cultural memories, identity, and self-image. Things are not normal
or as before, we realize that. People appear and disappear, the surrounding
environment instantly and drastically changes, people we know are as if there,
along with strangers who somehow inexplicably yet seem familiar. Scenes come and
go as if in an intense dream or spiritual
holodeck. Who is the
programmer? It is the
Divine
Psychologist managing the individual’s entry point
into the final and eternal destination – somewhere in the Grand Human or in the
Grand Monster. The individual’s ruling love is given the opportunity by the
Divine Psychologist to make that choice.
There are two kinds of ruling loves in the mental world of
eternity. One is the chief love in the spiritual layers (6, 5, 4) called the
love of good and truth, and the other is the chief love in the natural
layers of
our mind (7, 8, 9)
that is nothing but the love of corrupted good and falsified truth. For
example, when we love to do something for the sake of ourselves alone, we hate
to do something for the sake of others as well as ourselves. The first is an
infernal love, the second is a heavenly love. Following our resuscitation and
while we are still conscious in our natural mind, the Divine Psychologist brings
us face to face with our principal loves, both heavenly and infernal. This is
done through a series of Divinely orchestrated happenings and meetings that
provide people with the experiences they need to become consciously aware of
their deep seated and often hidden principal loves.
In the Swedenborg Reports the Divine Psychologist declares
that “Love is man's willing, and derivatively is his thinking, and thereby his
acting." (AC 3938)
People's loves have activated them throughout their life in
the earthly environment and body, forming their character, over which they
superimposed a social personality that others could accept and live with. But
throughout this time the real character of the ruling love remains hidden –
unless the individual undergoes reformation by spiritual enlightenment, and
proceeds with regeneration of character. This cooperation process with the
Divine Psychologist allows the mental rebirth of a new heavenly ruling love that
will take the person to the Grand Human. And otherwise the person remains
attached to the infernal love of wanting only what is of gain to self, and
hating all heavenly loves because
these loves benefit others and not merely self.
Both heavenly and infernal loves are empowered by the
Divine Psychologist. Hellish loves conjoin themselves with hellish thoughts in
what is called an “infernal concubinage” between corrupted good and falsified
truth. This infernal marriage or marriage made in hell, produces the
sensorimotor environment of the Grand Monster. Swedenborg describes many details
of this appearance in his book
Heaven and
Hell published in 1758, which forms a portion of the Swedenborg Reports.
Evil loves, or lusts, are consummated in abominable ways so that the
sensorimotor environment they instantiate as a surrounding environment is dark,
dreary, dangerous, dungeon and dragon-like. People in their role as devils and
genii, or sirens and sorceresses, play out an immortal life that is beastly,
debasing, and devoid of any rational and sane sentiment or understanding. Cave
like bandits and bands of pirates roam around, appear and disappear, threatening
others with mental tortures known as the “fires of hell.” Sirens and magicians
prey upon the less corrupt than they are, capturing lesser devils than they are,
and consummating on them their love of dominating, enslaving, and extinguishing
whatever they have left that is their own. Such is the sensorimotor environment
produced by the infernal marriage in the human mind.
But if our ruling love after resuscitation allows those
loves we have acquired that desire to benefit others and not just self, then we
are incorporated into the anatomical framework of the Grand Human. The
Swedenborg Reports describe various methods or mechanisms by which this
incorporation is achieved. They involve spiritual “gyres” or sensorimotor
induction procedures by which the individual’s anatomical framework is made to
become an integral part and functioning component of the Grand Human. Swedenborg
witnessed and described gyres or spiritual dances that involved thousands of
participants. Often he could hear very large choirs accompanying the induction
activity. The individual is inducted into some society of the Grand Human that
shares the specific loves of the new arrival. And upon arrival there, the person
feels like “coming home” and the neighbors have faces that look like brothers,
sisters, and cousins. Above all, one begins life as a conjoint self, by being
united to one’s soul mate as a spouse. This celestial marriage produces as
offspring the endless neos in the universe.
For a discussion of these diagrams
see
here.
are of three types:
- sensorimotor intimacy neos
- cognitive intimacy neos
- affective intimacy neos
When the husband or boyfriend is in the male dominance
mood, the wife or girlfriend is restricted to living with his sensorimotor
intimacy neos, while being deprived of his cognitive intimacy neos and affective
intimacy neos. When the husband or boyfriend is in the equity mood, the
wife or girlfriend is living with his sensorimotor intimacy neos as well as his
cognitive intimacy neos, but is deprived of his affective intimacy neos. When
the husband or boyfriend is in the unity mood, the wife or girlfriend is
given access to all three mental layers of his mind, being able to conjoin with
his sensorimotor intimacy neos, with his
cognitive intimacy neos, and with his
affective intimacy neos. The natural marriage turns into a spiritual marriage as
the husband spends more of his time in the unity mood. The wife is then able to
deepen the couple’s conjunction and advance progressively to anatomical
conjunction in all
layers of their mental world together. They are then united
to eternity as soul mates. Through this joint effort at conjunction they have
grown for themselves a conjugial couple’s conjoint self, which is the final
completion of a human being.
Swedenborg interviewed conjugial couples in
layer 4 of the
mental world of eternity. As they approach him from a distance the two appear as
one walking, and when the two are face to face talking it appears that they are
talking as-if together in facial expression. These are examples of celestial
sensorimotor intimacy neos within which are cognitive intimacy neos, within
which are affective intimacy neos. They are joined in all their loves through a
reciprocal conjunction of their mental anatomy. This affective conjunction is
reciprocal between masculine love and feminine love. They each receive the love
as spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun, but this Divine Love enters the
masculine affective organ differently than its received by the feminine
affective organ. Hence it is that the conjunction is possible being in
reciprocal loves. This reciprocal and differentiated affective conjunction
produces affective conjoint neos that express themselves, and thereby find their
fulfillment, in the sensorimotor intimacy neos of their separated faces, as
witnessed and described by Swedenborg.
CL 42. I shall append here accounts of two experiences from the
spiritual world, of which this is the first.
One morning I looked up into heaven and saw above me one broad level above
another, and as I watched, the first level near to me was opened up, and then
the second above, and finally the third, which was the highest. I was
enlightened by this so as to grasp that the angels forming the first or lowest
heaven were on the first level, those forming the second or middle heaven on the
second level, and those forming the third or highest heaven on the third level.
At first I wondered what this meant and why it so appeared; and then I heard a
voice like the sound of a trumpet coming out of heaven, which said, 'We have
noticed and now see that you are meditating about conjugial love. We know that
so far no one on earth knows what truly conjugial love is in its origin and
essence, important though it is to know this. It has therefore pleased the Lord
to open up the heavens to you, so that the light which enlightens may flow into
the inner levels of your mind and allow you to perceive it. Our celestial
delights in the heavens, especially the third, are chiefly from conjugial love.
We have therefore been given permission to send down a married couple for you to
see.'
[2] Then suddenly there was to be seen a chariot coming down from the highest or
third heaven, containing what seemed to be one angel. But as it approached, it
seemed to have two angels in it. The chariot seen from afar sparkled like a
diamond, and had harnessed to it foals as white as snow. The travelers riding in
the chariot held in their hands two turtle-doves, and they called out to me,
'You would like us to come closer, but be careful then that the fiery radiance,
which is from the heaven we come down from, does not strike too deep. It will
certainly enlighten the higher concepts in your intellect, which are in
themselves heavenly. But these are inexpressible in the world where you now are.
So understand rationally what you are about to hear, and so explain this to your
intellect.'
'I will be careful,' I replied, 'come closer.' They did so, and turned out to be
a husband and wife. 'We are a married couple,' they said. 'We have led a blessed
life in heaven from the earliest time, which you call the Golden Age. We have
been perpetually in the bloom of youth, in which you see us today.'
[3] I gazed at them both, because I realised that in their life and their
adornment they were a picture of conjugial love. Their lives were to be seen
from their faces, their adornment from their dress. For all angels are
affections of love in human form. Their ruling affection shines out from their
faces, and it is their affection which provides and determines what they wear.
So in heaven there is a saying, everyone is dressed by his affection. The
husband looked to be of an age half way between an adolescent and a young adult.
Sparkling light glittered from his eyes, an effect of the wisdom of love; this
light made his face shine with a kind of internal radiance, and this radiation
made his skin shine on the outside, so that his whole face was a single lovely
splendour. He was dressed in an ankle-length robe, over a blue garment with a
gold belt, decorated with three gems, a sapphire at either side and a carbuncle
at the centre. He wore stockings of shining linen with silver threads in the
weave, and pure silk shoes. This was the picture presented by conjugial love in
the husband.
[4] In the wife it appeared like this. I saw her face and at the same time I did
not see it. It looked like Beauty itself, but I could not see it because this is
inexpressible. Her face shone with fiery light, the light the angels in the
third heaven enjoy, and this dazzled my sight, so that I was simply amazed. When
she noticed this, she spoke to me. 'What can you see?' she asked. 'I can see
nothing but conjugial love and the form it takes,' I answered. 'But I both see
and don't see.'
At this she turned sideways on to her husband, and then I could gaze at her more
fixedly. Her eyes flashed with the light of her heaven, a fiery light, as I have
said, which derives from the love of wisdom. For the love wives have for their
husbands in that heaven comes from and is focussed on their wisdom, and the love
husbands have for their wives comes from and is focussed on that love for
themselves, so that it unites them. As a result her beauty was such that no
painter could ever rival it or render it in its true appearance, for his colours
lack radiance and his art has no means to express her loveliness. Her hair was
beautifully dressed in an arrangement which had a meaning by correspondence, and
it had flowers in it made of jewelled settings. Her necklace was of carbuncles,
and from it hung a rosary of gold-coloured gems, and she had pearl bracelets.
She was dressed in a red gown over a purple blouse, fastened at the front with
rubies. But I was surprised to see that the colours changed as she turned
towards or away from her husband, and this too made them sparkle more or less,
more when they looked at each other, less when not directly facing.
[5] When I had seen this, they spoke with me again; and when the husband spoke,
it was as if what he said came at the same time from the wife, and when the wife
spoke, it was as if it came at the same time from her husband, so closely united
were their minds, from which their utterances flowed. And I could also then hear
the sound of conjugial love, which was in inward unison within their speech, and
arose from the delights of a state of peace and innocence.
At length they said, 'We are being called back, we must go.' Then they were seen
again riding in a chariot, as before. They drove along a paved road between
flower-beds with olive-trees and trees laden with orange fruit springing from
them. When they approached their own heaven, maidens came out to welcome them
and escort them in. (CL 42)
CL 51. VII. THAT MARRIED PARTNERS ENJOY SIMILAR INTERCOURSE WITH
EACH OTHER AS IN THE WORLD, BUT MORE DELIGHTFUL AND BLESSED, YET WITHOUT
PROLIFICATION; FOR WHICH, OR IN PLACE OF IT, THEY HAVE SPIRITUAL PROLIFICATION,
WHICH IS THAT OF LOVE AND WISDOM. That married partners enjoy similar
intercourse as in the world, is because, after death, the male is a male and the
female a female, and in both, an inclination to conjunction is implanted from
creation. This inclination is an inclination of the spirit and thence of the
body. Therefore, after death, when man becomes a spirit, the same mutual
inclination continues, and this cannot exist without similar intercourse. For
man is man as before, nor is there anything lacking either in the male or in the
female. They are like themselves as to form, and equally so as to affections and
thoughts. What else can follow then, but that they have similar intercourse? and
since conjugial love is chaste, pure, and holy, that the intercourse is also
complete? But see further on this subject in the Memorable Relation, no. 44.
That the intercourse is then more delightful and blessed, is because, when that
love becomes a love of the spirit, it becomes more interior and purer and
therefore more perceptible; for every delight increases according to perception,
and it so increases that its blessedness is observed in its delight. (CL 51)
Most sensorimotor intimacy neos produced by a united couple
were not directly described by Swedenborg, but in
theistic psychology we expand
our knowledge of all spiritual subjects through the study of
correspondences in Sacred Scripture, and especially in the book
Conjugial Love
(published in 1763), which forms part of the collection called the
Swedenborg Reports (or “the
Writings of Swedenborg”).
Further discussion on intimacy in united couples
will be found in my lecture notes for
The Unity Model of Marriage.
Many of Swedenborg books are available online from this
site:
When Swedenborg’s spiritual mind became conscious at age
57, he was able to describe in a natural scientific language what his spiritual
mind was observing. The Swedenborg Reports are published today in various
languages, sometimes in a collection comprising around 30 volumes. These are now
available free online and can also be searched.
Swedenborg had daily familiarity with the layers of the
mind called the three heavens: layer 6 (first and lowest heaven), layer 5
(second heaven), layer 4 (third and highest heaven). He described the life of
the cities he visited. Swedenborg describes life in the third heaven as almost
inconceivable to our natural mind, in which we are conscious of our thoughts. We
will become conscious of our spiritual mind immediately following the dying and
resuscitation procedures. Then we will have conscious access to the three
layers. We will go through a process of recognizing what our inner loves really
are, especially our ruling love. If this ruling love is new and regenerated,
then the three heavenly layers will be accessible to us in accordance with the
degree of regeneration of our ruling love – either first degree, second degree,
or highest degree. The higher the degree to which we are regenerated, the more
we are capable of loving the heavenly mental order of God and creation.
The ruling love of the highest mental layer in heaven is
conjugial love.
I was amazed, dazzled, and overjoyed when I first
discovered this in the Swedenborg Reports (back in 1981). My wife recognized the
significance of this new spiritual truth. It took me four more years of intense
study of the Swedenborg Reports before I was able to approach this topic with
rational understanding and a scientific attitude.
Women know this all along – the highest and deepest heaven
is the heaven of conjunction with a soul mate.
Men act like they need to understand this from their
masculine intelligence and understanding. Women perceive it, and from that know
it. Sometimes they say it out loud. But they know that a man is normally scared
of the idea of unity with the same woman forever. When men speak their thoughts
freely, they say that the idea feels like a depressing prison. Research shows
that men who think this way live out their un-neo of being “chained” to a
woman’s love, and lose their romantic passion after about seven years with the
same woman. Nontheistic psychology recognizes a silver lining in this loss of
passionate love after years of intimacy and joint living. The literature calls
the new relationship without passion by the name of “companionate love.” This
love expresses itself in being supportive of each other, being loyal, and
deepening their overall general intimacy.
But there is another possibility, as described in theistic
psychology based on the Swedenborg Reports. According to Swedenborg’s
observations in mental layer 4 (celestial heaven), passionate love never has to
cease, and continues to grow more and more, in spiritual relationships. The
unity model of marriage is the method by which the husband can achieve affective
intimacy with his wife, after achieving cognitive intimacy and sensorimotor
intimacy. Once the husband operates from the unity model, he is establishing an
organic entity called the conjoint self (see above). This new conjugial couple
is within a passion of mutual love that intensifies and magnifies progressively
to endless eternity. Swedenborg interviewed couples who had lived on this earth
thousands of years ago and have been living ever since their resuscitation in
mental layer 4 with each other as a conjoint self. They testified that their
passion of love for each other has had this progressive and endless quality
since then. They also looked to be “in the flower of youth” and exceedingly
beautiful and attractive.
The surrounding environment of the people who live in
mental layer 4 are difficult to describe because they attain a degree of
excellence and perfection totally unknown and unimagined here in our natural
mind (layer 8 and 7). He saw magnificent houses and palaces, filled with Divine
art and designs of jewelry that cannot be described in a natural language,
surrounded by spacious gardens that that were shaped in indescribable harmonious
arrangements, filled with amazing plants, flowers, and fruits that are unknown
on earth. Their clothes were magnificent, their food was beyond culinary
excellence, their demeanor and interactions were genteel and coordinated. They
had copies of Sacred Scripture written in celestial-rational correspondences of
Divine Speech, from which they have all their intelligence and their
quasi-omniscient knowledge. Whatever topic they think about, they are able to
understand and know everything there is to know about it.
The magnificent appearances of the third heaven in mental
layer 4 constitute a celestial sensorimotor reality that surrounds the spiritual
body of each person there. How is this heavenly environment created? Do they
have factories and artisans and transportation vehicles? No. There are no
machines, no work force, no raw materials, no delivery crews, no interior
decorators. These things are present and needed in a natural environment such as
that which surrounds our physical body. But our spiritual body is born in the
mental world of eternity and contains our mental organs in which are produced
our immortal feelings, thoughts, and sensations, all coalescing into a
personality or unique self. The mental world of eternity is constructed out of
rational ether surrounding the Spiritual Sun (as discussed before). Everything
in the surrounding “outside” is actually produced by loves in the affective
organ (A), and reasonings in the cognitive organ (C).
In other words, the following formula of
correspondences produces all heavenly sensorimotor neos in the mental world of
eternity:
Loves in the affective organ (A)
à corresponding thoughts
in the cognitive organ (C)
à
corresponding sensations in the sensorimotor organ (S)
à
surrounding appearances (clothes, food, cities, gardens, animals, jewels,
etc.)
Or, in different words:
Divine Neo
à Conjoint celestial affective neos
à Conjoint celestial cognitive neos
à Conjoint celestial sensorimotor neos
à Corresponding heavenly appearances in layer 4 (Third
Heaven)
The first arrow indicates influx from the Spiritual Sun
into the mental world of eternity. The Divine Neo is from the Divine Marriage
in God’s Mind between Divine Love (affective) and Divine Truth (cognitive). The
second arrow indicates the celestial marriage between the husband’s
affective neos (from his ruling love), and the wife’s cognitive neos (from her
ruling love). This organic spiritual anatomy was described above. The celestial
sensorimotor neos are their conjoint neo-babies. These produce the surrounding
appearances by the built in laws of correspondence. In other words, everything
Swedenborg could see around the people in the third heaven (mental layer 4) –
palaces, fruits, jewels, animals – was produced by the sensorimotor organ active
in that layer (4S).
Swedenborg noted a distinct lowering in magnificence and
complexity of the surrounding sphere in which the people are in layer 5 (Second
Heaven). This was a surrounding produced by the love of truth, while the
celestial surround in layer 4 (Third Heaven) is produced by the love of love.
The spiritual heaven (layer 5) is perfect at a lower degree in comparison to the
celestial heaven (layer 4). The two spheres are so distinct that they are
unattainable to each other. The most perfect truth is far less in excellence and
power than the least perfect love.
The celestial marriage (layer 4) is between the husband’s
inmost love (4A) and the wife’s inmost intelligence or wisdom (4C). She
corresponds to Divine Truth and he corresponds to Divine Love. This is the
reverse of what it is here in the natural mind, where he corresponds to truth,
while she corresponds to love. The celestial marriage is the conjoint self. The
power of the conjoint self to produce a sensorimotor environment is a far
greater power than that available in the mental layers below (5 and 6). The
spiritual mind contains three layers: 4, 5, 6. They are arranged in discrete
levels of operation or capability.
To obtain the power and reality of layer 4 we need to
acquire a ruling love that is supportive of conjugial love, and is in harmony
with it. To obtain the power and reality of layer 5 we need to acquire a ruling
love that is supportive of the love of truth for its own sake, and is in harmony
with it. To obtain the power and reality of layer 6 we need to acquire a ruling
love that is supportive of the love of uses for the sake of others, and is in
harmony with it.
Our ruling love at resuscitation determines in which
heavenly layer we exist in the mental world of eternity. If our ruling love Is
not regenerated prior to resuscitation, our heavenly layers (6, 5, 4) are
inoperative for conscious life. They remain unconscious as before death. Our
unregenerate ruling love determines which level we select from the three
available in the natural mind: layer -7 (first hell), layer -8 (intermediate
hell), layer -9 (lowest hell). To be conscious in the natural mind while living
in the mental world of eternity, is analogous to being an electrical engineer
and applying for the position of chief surgeon in a heart transplant hospital
unit. Everything in our natural mind is based on experiences from the physical
body and world of time-place. What is left, or up, or far, or near, or cold,
etc., everything from the natural world is irrelevant to the spiritual world.
There is no direction between them on anything whatsoever. The only connection
is correspondential.
You are already familiar with these ideas if you think
about what happens in your dreams. You produce the dream scene through your
loves and desires in your affective organ. These sub-loves conjoin with thoughts
that your cognitive organ constructs. Each thought or reasoning procedure is
supportive of a sub-love, and their conjunction produces a sensorimotor
environment that you experience as the dream. Since the sub-loves in many dreams
are not conscious when we are awake, they prompt thoughts and events that are
not like the thoughts and events in your waking state. There is a whole army of
these little known sub-loves in our affective organ, all held together and
managed by our ruling love. This also is mostly unknown until we are
regenerating.
When you are in a stressed and frightened mental state,
your dreams may contain hellish scenes where you are being pursued relentlessly
by some hidden enemies that appear here and there. The appearances of hell in
the mental world of eternity (layers -7, -8, -9) is produced by hellish loves
adjoined to insane thoughts. Swedenborg visited the people who live in these
layers since their resuscitation. They are each totally one hundred percent
insane. Their insanity is spiritual. They think and reason as if they believed
to still be in the physical world. They deny that there is an afterlife, God,
heaven, conjugial love, heavenly peace, innocence, or beauty. On a number of
occasions, Swedenborg recited a true sentence to them and asked them to repeat
it and explain it (e.g., “Complete loyalty in marriage makes the spouses the
happiest.”) They would repeat: “Complete loyalty in marriage makes the spouses
most unhappy.” Or “Infidelity in marriage makes the spouses most happy.” They
then went on to argue for their side. Whatever Swedenborg countered, they turned
into its opposite.
Other signs of their complete insanity shows by what they
call beautiful. They live in dilapidated houses in atrocious condition, filled
with squalor and vermin, surrounded by dark clouds and a horrible stench. The
pick ordure up, and hold it to their nose, and declare that this is what they
find most pleasant, most beautiful. They have no knowledge of anything and
resist all attempts at education or rehabilitation. They plot wild and
impossible schemes against each other, betraying each other, enjoying cruelty
and the suffering of others.
Mental power in layer 4 produces heavenly cities and joy.
It originates from the love of love. Love is the enjoyment and intention of
making others happy by benefitting them with our skills and capacities. This
love is first and foremost the conjugial love of married spouses. The Swedenborg
Reports reveal that God is loved when we love good in others. The highest good
is identified as conjugial love. So the love of conjugial love is the highest
good, the most powerful love. Conjugial love is loved in one’s spouse, hence
that is the love for the highest good. There is no higher love than the love of
God as the conjugial love in one’s spouse. When I love my wife I am not to love
the person of my wife but the conjugial love in my wife that is God with her.
Only from my wife can I have conjugial love from God.
The power of conjugial love as the highest good in creation
is the neo production power in mental layer 4. Hence the Third Heaven that it
produces as a surrounding appearance is unmatched by anything elsewhere in the
human mind. The next lower power is the power of the love of truth. At this
level of consciousness (layer 5) the love we have for God and our spouse (layer
5A) is the result of the truths we understand (5C). Our primary love is for
truth, and our secondary love from that, is for God and our spouse. The next
lower power is the power of the love of uses. At this level of consciousness
(layer 6) the love we have for God, for truth, for conjugial love is secondary,
and what is primary is our love for skills and abilities.
In summary:
The Grand Human Neos (three heavens)
The power of layer 4 (Third Heaven) is the love of conjugial love from
celestial-rational correspondences of Sacred Scripture.
The power of layer 5 (Second Heaven) is the love of truth from
spiritual-rational correspondences of Sacred Scripture.
The power of layer 6 (First Heaven) is the love of uses from
spiritual-natural correspondences of Sacred Scripture.
The Grand Monster Un-neos (three hells)
The un-power of layer -7 (first hell) is the hatred of uses.
The un-power of layer -8 (second hell) is the hatred of truth.
The un-power of layer -9 (third hell) is the hatred of conjugial love.
I discovered this
scientific law just today (May 12, 2008).
I’ve been trying to keep track of all my neo productions –
written, conversational, and reflective. At first I naively believed that I
could keep a record of my reflective neologisms by following one of my favorite
long standing rule of life: If you think, ink it. I have this from the well
known author and lecturer Paul Pearsall who was kind enough to provide a blurb
for the cover jacket of my book with Diane on Road Rage and Aggressive Driving
(2000). Interestingly, there are no occurrences on the Web of “If you think, ink
it.” I advocate this rule to all the students that happen to register for my
section of the psychology curriculum for majors. And I have them practice the
self-witnessing approach to keeping track of one’s emotions, intentions,
thoughts, and sensory-motor behaviors, including verbal. But this is the first
time that I was imagining that I could snatch most of if not all of my
reflective neos from sudden memory, that I might add them to my Neochart. While
I was still holding on to this dubious intentionality I was also trying to go
through my published articles to identify all the scientific neos they
contained. This time I was even more confident that this would be a task I can
handle.
Neither task is actually possible. Today I had the
perception of the reason why it is impossible. I should have known better to
begin with, given that I have constructed many scientific neologisms during the
1970s when I was writing about ethnomethodological psycholinguistics – as you
can see from a number of entries in my Neochart from that period. One of the
great and deep ethnomethodological neologisms that I received from other
intrepid ethnomethodologists preceding me, is this one in
Garfinkel’s 1967
book Studies in Ethnomethodology:“Dana
succeeded in putting a penny in the parking meter today” – which still today 31
years later has no other occurrence if you google it. Remember that googling and
yahooing only brings you to Web pages. Still this is a huge sample that should
accurately estimate the occurrence of various sentence fragments. I was struck
back then when I read the book in 1971 by Garfinkel’s demonstration, and
theoretical proof, that it would be impossible to explain in full what this
sentence means. And yet, it did mean something specific and informational to the
wife to whom this sentence was said by the husband. Garfinkel tries at first to
explain the direct meaning, the context, the past history, the relationship
between the couple, how the family is involved, their sub-cultural background
and social practices, the law, the geography, the times and period. All of this
had to be explained to some historian who wanted all the explanations needed to
understand this sentence spoken in an ordinary dialog.
Garfinkel shows
with other examples from office and work contexts that when you write an
explanatory paragraph as part of a collection of paragraphs like a Report or
Letter, each explanatory paragraph opens up new issues that have not been
explained before. And when you try to explain the new issues, the paragraphs you
construct for their explanations, now require more paragraphs to be explained.
In other words there is no way of fully explaining anything that is part of
human social practices like relationships, interactions, events, objects and
their use.
I could have
remembered this sooner when I started forming the idea that a Neochart can be
more or less complete. Here is the amazing point, or mental law that I
discovered today: The more complete you try to make your Neochart, the further
behind you get.
Neos are not only
immortal and spiritual but they are visible to consciousness for only a split
second in sudden memory, then they are gone forever. We can only snatch a very
small proportion of them into short term memory, and then store them in our long
term memory and from there through our fingers into digital databases on
computers. Neocharts must therefore be considered highly selective and not
representative of the continuous and endless series of neos that human living
produces in the mental world of eternity. Each of those endless neos, born in
one mental location in an individual’s unique mind, are like food morsels and
liquids in the diet that keeps our body alive.
A case in point: my entry for this afternoon produced the
above page and a half of around 800 words. In an attempt to describe my
perception or meaning I had to produce 30 neologisms. On the average, every
fifth word is a neo. This applies to writing. Things multiply by several
magnitudes when you consider people’s talking, where many more sentences are
produced than in writing. Clearly, talking neos are constructed much more
effectively than writing neos. The production of reflective neos is by several
magnitudes greater than that of talking neos. The very act of monitoring our
reflective neo production produces meta-neos of still greater quantity, which
increases inordinately with meta-meta-neos. The highest production of neos
across the
layers of mental eternity is in layer 4 called the “Third Heaven” in
the Swedenborg Reports. In this region of the Grand Human (heart and
reproductive organs) human neos are the direct result of Divine Neos through the
Omniproprium that provides the source of all loves and understandings existing
in that highest region of human consciousness.
By the time this Neo article reached 90 pages in length
(May 27, 2008) it contributed 700 neos to the Master Neochart, which at the time
had 1870 entries. The neos I produced just in this article amounts to a third of
the neos I identified in two dozen previous articles that I sampled. The most
likely explanation is that I am trying to be exhaustive about counting all the
neos in this Neo Article, while I only sampled the previous ones, and mostly for
one-word and two-word neos. But even in this Neo Article I am not fully
exhaustive because I am exhausted by this losing battle of trying to keep up
with all or most of my neo productions. I spend more time adding neos to the
Master Neochart than I have time left for writing new paragraphs, whence still
more neos are born. My wife gets exhausted seeing me exhausted by this task. She
has exhausted her motivation to keep up with my discoveries and enthusiasm for
neos. Of course, if you have bigger resources available to you than your own
hard work, such as assistants, or a few computer programmers, paid or
volunteers, then go right ahead and see how exhaustive you can be about keeping
track of all your neo babies. No doubt a research grant on neo productivity
might solve these technical issues.
What is the distinction we are to make between these three
words or concepts? A "neo" is short for neologism, which means a new mental
unit. All mental units come into existence in the cognitive organ of one of the
six
layers of the mental world of eternity. Higher order neos are progressively
more spiritual and rational as they approach the
highest
layer (4C). A “word” refers to a unit of speaking, writing,
communicating. The “word” is the smallest stand alone unit that is listed in a
dictionary. A “correspondence”
is the relationship between cause and effect, given that “effects” are natural
phenomena, while their “causes” are mental phenomena.
Neos are new words, either singly, or in new combination. Correspondences
are relationships between natural and spiritual neos.
Related Links to Leon
James
This is the end of Part III
The Spiritual Significance of
Neologisms
(formerly: Leon A. Jakobovits)
University of Hawaii
2008 (version 27c)
With the collaboration, since 1976 of
Dr. Diane Nahl
This is Part II
The Master Neochart
(overall) ||
Neochart by Sub-Categories ||
My Favorite
and Major Neos by Year
Part II starts here
Neologisms come into existence in the mental world of
eternity and they remain there forever. Neologisms are immortal spiritual
objects or entities. Neologisms float around in the mental world of eternity
like white and red corpuscles patrol the blood stream in the circulatory system
of the physical body, along with numerous other elements and compounds, which
are both beneficial and harmful, even deadly. Evil neologisms are
anti-neologistic forces in the mental world of eternity. Evil is defined in the
Swedenborg Reports as the “corruption of good,” while good is defined as
spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun flowing into the mental
layers of humanity and into our affective organ where they produce good in
our will or willing, that is, they incline us and propel us to “good works”
which are good uses. In other words, our good abilities, skills, intentions, and
thoughts originate and are rooted in the inflowing spiritual heat from the
Spiritual Sun. It is an organic inflow and a biological process, like the inflow
of physical heat into a plant on earth, which has the consequence of generating
and producing organic physiological operations by which the cells grow,
reproduce, and multiply, and with this organic bulk comes the growth, health,
and use of the plant, that is, its usefulness to human beings, animals, other
plants, and the environment.
Everything that is good is the good that inflows from the
Spiritual Sun. Should this inflow cease for a moment,
every good then disappears. The
good that inflows belongs to and
remains part of the Spiritual Sun, just as the heat that inflows from the
physical sun into the plant on earth, is now
in the plant, and its atoms and cells,
but is not part of the plant. The heat remains part of the sun. And so the good
in us is not part of us, but is in us. And since this good in us is
God’s good through the Spiritual Sun,
it remains God’s good. And hence it is
that God is in us. Neologisms existing
and floating around in the mental world of eternity are
substantive forms of cognitive
good in our mind. They are Divine Literal Neologisms ultimating, not in
Sacred Scripture, as we discussed above, but in human consciousness. God’s
Consciousness is a fusion of Divine Good and Divine Truth in Himself, in His
infinite Essence that cannot be fathomed or described or known by mere finite
human beings. In order for God to have a personal relationship with a human
individual, God-As-He-Is-in-Himself entered creation through the Spiritual Sun,
which is the emanation from His infinite Love and infinite Wisdom or
Rationality. Divine Truth is from God’s Divine Rationality or Wisdom, and good
is from God’s Divine Love. Our affective organ is an
organic receptor of spiritual heat, and our cognitive organ is an
organic receptor of spiritual light.
The Spiritual Sun is
the origin of all created substances. First there is a
living organic mental sphere or
ether of rationality created around
the Spiritual Sun. This living substance called
rational ether is the mental world of
eternity into which the human mind is born, and in which it exists forever as an
immortal individual, and collection of individuals called “spiritual societies”
in the Swedenborg Reports. It is constructed out of the
spiritual substances of heat and light
that endlessly and forever stream out of
the Spiritual Sun in infinite variety,
diversity, and quality. The mental world of eternity is
endless, borderless, boundless. It is
human through and through.
This is because God-As-He-Is-in-Himself is
Human, and thus God as He Is Outside
of Himself and in creation, is also Human. In fact, Swedenborg reports that
when he was present in consciousness in
Layer 4 of the mental world of eternity, he was able to see the
Spiritual Sun visually, and gives a description of it. And in fact, he reports
that everyone whose consciousness is raised to that layer, can see the Spiritual
Sun. He conversed about it with many who
in the afterlife existed in that layer, which is also called “the Third or
Highest Heaven.” When we arrive there
after our second death, we begin a
life of endless conjugial happiness in
that Divine Human layer, where God
overlaps with human beings through our
reception of His Omniproprium. We
are then quasi-omniscient persons,
understanding everything about whatever we
think of. And our loves are then
heavenly loves in endless variety and
quality of good. Our thoughts are then
correspondences of Divine Celestial Neologisms. Our loves are then
correspondences of conjugial love in
endless variety and quality of good.
When we become
celestial angels we assume the role as
chief architects in the evolving construction of the mental world of eternity.
The loves that we then receive in our affective organ
from the Divine Human through the Spiritual Sun,
give rise by correspondences to the
loves and affections of people whose consciousness is in a
lower layer called the Second Heaven. The
correspondences of their loves and truths form the
loves and affections in the layer below
called the First Heaven. All three
Heavenly
layers in the mental world of eternity are
connected by organic correspondence to the
three layers that form the Natural Mind. You are reading this in
your consciousness in the natural mind, which has three layers: from top down:
the rational layer (layer 7), the sensual
or sensory layer (layer 8), and the
corporeal layer (layer 9). This is the layer that is
closest to the temporary physical body and its sensory input through
physical matter and energy (layer 12). In between is the spiritual body (layer
11), and the natural limbus or cutaneous
membrane (layer 10) (see
the
Anatomical Chart of Layers).
One of the most significant Divine Neologisms appears in this verse of the
New Testament Sacred Scripture that begins the Gospel of John, the last of the
Four Gospels:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God.
(John 1:1)
For the past two thousand years much has been written about this mysterious
sounding verse. It was not fully understood until the Swedenborg Reports arrived
on the scene in the eighteenth century. Today from the perspective of theistic
psychology this verse can receive a scientific meaning that is rationally
integrated into mental anatomy, spiritual geography, and theology. This rational
integration is based on nothing but Sacred Scripture. And it is confirmed
scientifically by observation and experiment over the 27 years of Swedenborg’s
daily life as a conscious dual citizen in both the world of time and the world
of eternity.
From this evidence we now can explain scientifically how it is that “the
Word was God.”
Several more things are revealed in the ensuing verses:
He was with God in the beginning.
3Through
him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
4In
him was life, and that life was the light of men.
5The
light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood[a]
it.
14The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory,
the glory of the One and Only,[d]
who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
In theistic psychology it is known that the creation of the universe by God
was by means of the Spiritual Sun, which is an emanation from God and contains
the substances of good and truth in infinite variety. Spiritual heat within
spiritual light, flowing out from the Spiritual Sun into creation, produces the
mental world of eternity where human beings are born and exist as immortal
feeling and thinking subjects.
Once the mental world of eternity was created, a physical world in time and
space was created. The content of the physical world was fashioned in accordance
with the content of the mental world of eternity. Hence it is that every planet,
every object, every physical property comes into existence when inert physical
matter from any sun or star, including the sun itself, and all its components,
corresponds through its property to some property of the mental world of
eternity. In this way nature is nothing but a theater of the spiritual, and
correspondences dictate the connection as cause dictates effect.
The correspondential meaning of “the Word” in the above passage is “Divine
Truth,” and this is the same as “spiritual light from the Spiritual Sun.” In
other words, “the Word” or spiritual light creates all things that are created.
Spiritual light enters the cognitive organ of every individual and sets it
“online” with the Spiritual Sun, hence, God. Whatever flows out of the Spiritual
Sun is part of God and is God. This is because God cannot be divided, so what is
God in the Spiritual Sun must be God in the spiritual light that flows from it.
Thus it is that God is in us, as written in the New Testament Sacred
Scripture.
We are not part of God, for this would mean that God is divided. But the
infinite can be within the finite as the spiritual is within the natural, or as
the whole is in the part. God in us does not mean that anything whatsoever of
ours is Divine, for this would bean that God is divided. But God in us is
necessary for every human being since without this there is no source of life
for the individual. God in us as His own spiritual light is what we call “our
life.” Should God in us cease as a continuous co-Presence in our mental organs,
we would no longer have any life.
It is said that “the Word became flesh.” This is a historical reference to
the birth of the Divine Child two thousand years ago. It is known that
Christians celebrate this event every year as Christmas. But Sacred Scripture is
not only relevant to religion, but also to science, even if in a different way.
For instance, if there is a God who is omnipotent (positive bias in science),
then it follows logically that Sacred Scripture is absolute truth brought to
humanity’s natural consciousness by God. Then it follows that the Incarnation
Event occurred as told in Sacred Scripture. Then it follows that this is a
scientific revelation about God. It is scientific because it is true, and it
shapes all of reality, its history, our evolution, and the current events of our
individual lives. However, all of this may be true and scientific, but it is
necessary to show this, and it is necessary that people understand it rationally
so that they themselves can think about it and talk about it.
I have attempted to do this in my
textbooks
on theistic psychology. I welcome you to consult them online.
See also by Leon James: "Recognizing Our Dual Existence" and "A Brief
History of God and Humanity" Information Swedenborg. Winter 2008 Issue. Pp.
6-10. Available online here:
http://www.swedenborg.ca/newsletter/NewsletterW07_08.pdf
The “indeterminacy
of meaning” (1969) is one of my deepest insights prior to 1981 when I began
studying the
Swedenborg
Reports. After several years of researching the area of semantics, meaning,
verbal learning, language teaching, and discourse analysis, I came to the
realization that the meaning of a sentence or speech act cannot be determined by
the meaning of its words. We can paraphrase the sentence, translate it, analyze
it, but we will not arrive at its actual meaning it had in the interaction.
Recall that every exchange you have, every conversation, every nonverbal
interaction, is a unique event. This is the definition of “actual.” When A says
X to B, what actual joint meaning does X have, if the event is unique? When I
saw that the answer I constructed the neo titled “indexical meaning.”
In other words, meaning is indeterminate and indexical, rather than fixed.
It is a popular idea in the social sciences or psychology, that communication
involves “message and code transmission” from one person (message sender) to
another (message recipient). This idea involves another idea, which is that
meaning is a fixed code that can be codified in a dictionary or in our memory.
This idea certainly fits our educated common sense understanding in daily life.
We think about the email message or text message that we received, and we see it
codified in language text, fixed in content as it careens across the miles, same
when sent, same when received.
This is true. But it’s not yet about the meaning of the message, only about
the codified digital electronic signal that carries the message as an outward
envelope. The meaning of the message is not carried by the technology. The
meaning is organic, human, mental, spiritual. Meaning and text or message are in
different discrete degrees. Computers cannot think with meaning, and yet they
can translate documents. Translating is possible because it involves a fixed
code, and this code carries the message within which is the meaning. The carrier
is physical and can carry only physical messages and text. The mental content or
meaning cannot be carried by the physical carrier.
Once you see this clearly and rationally, thus scientifically, you will
understand that actual meaning is a mental transfer process involving two minds.
Remarkably, this simple and basic solution is not available to non-theistic
psychology which denies the dualism of human reality as being simultaneously in
time and in eternity. This is obvious when you recall the idea that we are “born
into eternity” with a permanent spiritual body, which is connected by
correspondence to a temporary physical body. This procedure of temporary dual
citizenship is necessary for our spiritual development, which in turn is
necessary to insure the heavenly conjugial happiness of our immortal life in
eternity. What are the two people doing when they are having a physical
interaction, such as “Hi. How are you?” “Hi. Pretty good. You?” The interaction
is taken by both participants to be appropriate speech acts produced as a normal
greeting exchange for the two of them.
There is a well practiced sensorimotor coordination in the performance of
the exchange. The meaning is constructed as a sense-making procedure of the
cognitive organ (C), as it is applied to the incoming sensorimotor information
(S). This sense-making is also called appraising the incoming information. When
person M says to person N in that exchange, “Hi. How are you?”, then person N
sees and hears it (S), makes sense of it (C), and attaches some value to it (A),
as for example, the judgment that “it’s normal.” This affective satisficing
procedure is the occasion for the affective optimizing procedure to be applied
to it. Our normal state of sensorimotor vigilance (S) in public places includes
a motivational readiness or intentionality (A) to show an appropriate overt
sensorimotor performance (S) that matches that of the other person. This is a
social requisite for normalcy. “Accounted non-reactions” may be acceptable
later, as for instance, “Sorry I didn’t say Hi. I’m incredibly overloaded in my
schedule.” Not making up for ignoring a greeting is value-attached as abnormal
or hostile. Hence there is a sanctioned social obligation to respond to a
greeting, or else to account for it later.
All this is very familiar to all of us, though it may sound technical to
discuss it. But it’s worth it because it gives us more skills in rational
thinking. If you examine the details of your participation in an exchange you
will observe that we use indexical meaning when appraising or performing
cognitive sense-making procedures, applied to what we noticed in our physical
environment. We notice the person walking towards us, and we are motivationally
ready to optimize the exchange. We notice the person’s normal performance of
greeting initiation (“Hi. How are you?”). We satisfice the performance as a
normal greeting, and we optimize it by our coordinated performance (“Hi. Pretty
good. You?”).
Where is the meaning of the exchange?
Recall that the physical exchange is a natural event that must correspond to
a spiritual event, the latter being the cause of the former. What spiritual
events cause the natural events that produce greeting rituals? Mental events are
spiritual. They are made of the operations of the affective (A), cognitive (C),
and sensorimotor (S) systems of the spiritual body. The “mind” is the spiritual
body with its three systems of operations from which we have feelings (A),
thoughts (C), and sensations (S). The meaning in the greeting exchange is the
desire or love (A) of one person being consummated in another. For instance,
each person is motivated (A) to make a normal impression (C) in the routine
exchange (S). To accomplish this, each person has access to overlapping
indexical meanings for each particular exchange they have together. For instance
they can vary the tone of voice or facial expression in order to facilitate the
consummation process of a particular affection. For instance, we might like to
create a good impression by being a little funny in the performance of the
greeting exchange.
You can see from this that there are no limits to the particular ways in
which you can select from the indexical meaning of this situation between them.
You can be serious, or downcast, energetic or ready to drop. You can be friendly
or neutral, depending on the specific affection or love that is striving to be
consummated. If you are motivated to achieve closer friendship you select an
indexical meaning that the other person can satisfice for your intention for
greater closeness. When you witness in the other person the evidence for
reception of your intention, then your love for greater closeness is
consummated. You feel satisfaction when your motive is achieved. Now you can
form another motive that progresses your love still further. This is the meaning
of the greeting exchange that was performed. The meaning of the greeting is the
exchange of love in it.
The indeterminacy of meaning in a ritualized greeting exchange suggests that
when semantic and cultural content is involved in the exchange, the meaning will
be still more involved and indexical. In general, the more complex the meaning
exchange, the more indexical it is. Every exchange is unique and is constructed
out of unique neo production procedures in the three organic mental systems (A,
C, S).
The indeterminacy of meaning insures that all actuality will be composed of
only neos, and no repetitions can occur. This principle is a rational
consequence of God’s omnipotence. In God infinite things make one. God’s Mind is
the source of infinite creations. The good and truth streaming out of the
Spiritual Sun are infinite in variety and diversity and consequently,
uniqueness. Nothing that exists can be exactly like anything else that exists.
This is because God is the source of all that exists, and God’s infinity
produces the uniqueness of all created things.
Sacred Scripture is a Divine Neo production. Infinite ideas and truths are
enclosed within every word. Swedenborg talked to people in layer 4 (Third
Heaven), the highest human intelligence yet attained. They confirmed that they
can perceive the uniqueness of every object or event. They confirmed that
infinite things are enclosed in every Divine Neo in Sacred Scripture.
Consider the following situation:
A man walks into store and says, “Do you sell triple A batteries?” The clerk
reaches over to a display case and places a box of six on the counter. Question:
If meaning is indeterminate, how did the clerk know to hand the customer the box
of AAA batteries? Answer: The clerk applied indexical meaning procedures to come
up with the box. For instance:
“This man is asking if we sell AAA batteries. He wants to buy a box of them.
I’ll just hand it to him.” This sense-making procedure fits the sensorimotor
exchange sufficiently to be judged as normal for the situation. It happens
regularly that someone asks if we sell the batteries and they buy the box when I
put it in front of them. Except for that other time, but that was abnormal. The
man wanted to break a 20 dollar bill and he didn’t want the batteries. So he
said never mind the batteries, he needs the money for something else, but can I
please break the twenty for him. Oh, yeah, there was this other time when the
man was trying to rob me, so when I put the batteries in front of him, he pulled
a gun.”
Each of us performs mental procedures when we are having a communicative
exchange. Talking is mentally exchanging. In fact, Swedenborg reports that after
resuscitation in our spiritual mind, we communicate more by thought-language
than by verbal-language. The human thought-language is universal and unlearned,
unlike the various natural languages we use in our natural mind, which have to
be learned. Swedenborg communicated in thought-language with people from other
planets and galactic systems, completely independent of each other in contact
and development. And yet, they all communicated by the same human
thought-language.
This does not mean that they necessarily understand each other in the same
way. In fact, Swedenborg encountered varieties of human thinking and loving,
vastly different from ours on this earth. In some situations he mentions that
“intermediate spirits” or mental states, were required for him to place himself
into those non-earth meanings or consciousness. The intermediate minds were able
to serve as a kind of interpretive bridge between Swedenborg’s mental states and
the mental states of the aliens (or vastly different human beings). The
differences are called differences in “genius” and are too strange or stressful
to contact directly. Hence the intermediate spirits made this indirect contact
possible given that they partook to some extent of both types of human genius.
Despite these great differences in loves and thinking, the same universal human
thought-language is used by all human beings after their resuscitation.
Quoting from the Swedenborg Reports:
EU 1. Since, from the Divine mercy of the Lord, the interiors,
which are of my spirit, have been opened to me, and thereby it has been
granted me to speak with spirits and angels, not only with those who are
near our earth, but also with those who are near other earths; because I had
a desire to know whether there are other earths, and what their nature is,
and the quality of their inhabitants, therefore it has been granted me by
the Lord to speak and converse with spirits and angels who are from other
earths, with some for a day, with some for a week, and with some for months;
and to be instructed by them concerning the earths, from which and near
which they were; and concerning the lives, customs, and worship of the
inhabitants thereof, and of various other things worthy to be related: and
because in this manner it has been granted me to know these things, it is
permitted to describe them from what has been heard and seen. (…) (EU 1)
EU
6. There are spirits [ =
people after their resuscitation ]
whose sole study is to acquire to themselves knowledges, because they are
delighted only with knowledges. Therefore these spirits are permitted to
wander about, and even to pass out of this solar system into others, and to
procure for themselves knowledges. They have declared that there are earths
inhabited by men, not only in this solar system, but also out of it in the
starry heaven, to an immense number. These spirits are from the planet
Mercury. (EU 6)
EU 50.
My long continued association with the spirits of Jupiter proved
to me that they are more upright than the spirits of many other worlds.
When they arrived, their coming, their stay and the influence they
exerted were so gentle and sweet as to defy expression.
In the next life the character of each spirit reveals itself in his
influence, which is a sharing of his affection.
Uprightness is revealed by gentleness and sweetness, by gentleness
because he is fearful of doing harm, and by sweetness because he loves to do
good. I could very clearly tell
apart the gentleness and sweetness of good spirits from our world from that
of theirs. They said that when
any mild dispute arises between them, there is to be seen a kind of thin
shaft of light, such as lightning often produces, or a band filled with
flashing and moving stars. But a
dispute among them is quickly settled.
Stars which flash and at the same time move indicate falsity;
flashing stars which are fixed indicate truth.
So the former type indicates a dispute. (EU 50)
EU
55. I was further
informed by the spirits from that world [EU 50] about various matters
concerning its inhabitants, such as their way of moving, and their food and
houses. When moving, they do not
walk upright like the inhabitants of this and many other worlds; nor do they
go on all fours like animals, but when they walk they help themselves with
the flat of their hands, at every other pace half rising to their feet.
As they move, at every third pace they turn their faces to one side
and look behind them, making a slight twist, quickly accomplished, of the
body. This is because they think
it impolite to be seen by others except face to face.
[2] While they walk in this
fashion, they always keep their faces up, as we do, so that they can see the
sky as well as the ground. They
do not keep their gaze fixed on the ground, a practice they call
reprehensible. The worst sort of
people among them do this, and if they do not become used to lifting up
their faces, they are banished from their community.
[3] When, however, they sit
down, they look erect like people in our world as far as the upper part of
the body is concerned, but they squat cross-legged.
They take great care, not only when walking, but also when sitting,
to avoid being seen from behind, but only in the face.
In fact, they rather like to be seen face to face, since this
displays their mind. They never
display a facial expression which does not match their mind, something they
find impossible. Those present
can by this means see quite plainly what another's intentions towards them
are, since they do not hide them, especially whether their apparent
friendliness is genuine or forced.
The spirits from there demonstrated this to me and their angels
confirmed it. As a result their
spirits too do not appear to walk upright, but rather like swimmers to
assist their progress with their hands, looking around them from time to
time. (EU 55)
EU 102. The spirits of the earth Saturn came from afar into view, and
there was then opened a living communication between them and such spirits
of our earth. The latter, on thus perceiving the former, became as if
insane, and began to infest them, by infusing unworthy suggestions
concerning faith, and also concerning the Lord; and whilst abusing them with
these invectives and insults, they also cast themselves into the midst of
them, and from the insanity in which they were, they endeavored to do evil
to them. But the spirits of Saturn feared nothing, because they were secure
and in tranquility; whereas the spirits of our earth, when they were in the
midst of them, began to be tortured, and to respire with difficulty, and so
they cast themselves out, one in this way and another that, till they all
disappeared.
The spirits who were present perceived from this, what is the quality of
the natural man when separate from the spiritual, and when he comes into a
spiritual sphere, namely, that he is insane; for the natural man separate
from the spiritual is wise only from the world, and not from heaven; and he
who is wise only from the world, believes nothing but what be can apprehend
with his senses, and the things which he believes he believes from the
fallacies of the senses, which, unless they are removed by an influx from
the spiritual world, produce falsities. Hence it is that spiritual things to
him are not anything, insomuch that he can scarcely bear to hear mention
made of anything spiritual; wherefore such become insane when they are kept
in a spiritual sphere. It is otherwise during their abode in the world,
where they either think naturally concerning spiritual things, or avert
their ears that they may not hear them; that is, they hear and do not
attend.
It was also manifest from this experience, that the natural man cannot
introduce himself into the spiritual, that is, ascend; but when man is in
faith, and thereby in spiritual life, in this case the spiritual man flows
into the natural, and thinks therein. For there is given a spiritual influx,
that is, an influx from the spiritual world into the natural, but not the
reverse. (EU 102)
EU 148. A THIRD EARTH
IN THE STARRY HEAVEN, ITS SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS.
Some spirits appeared at a distance who were not willing to come near.
The reason was that they could not be with the spirits of our earth who were
then around me. From this I perceived that they were from another earth, and
afterward I was told that they were from a certain earth in the universe;
but where that earth is, I was not informed. These spirits were altogether
unwilling to think of their body, and indeed of anything corporeal and
material, differently from the spirits from our earth. This was why they
were not willing to come near. But still after the removal of some of the
spirits of our earth, they came nearer and spoke with me. But then anxiety
was felt, arising from the collision of spheres; for spiritual spheres
encompass all spirits and societies of spirits; and because they flow forth
from the life of the affections and of the thoughts therefrom, therefore
where there are opposing affections there arises collision, and thence
anxiety. The spirits of our earth said that they did not dare to approach
them, since when they were approaching, they not only were seized with
anxiety, but also appeared to themselves as if bound hand and foot with
serpents, from which they could not be loosed until they withdrew. This
appearance had its origin from correspondence; for the spirits of our earth
have reference in the Greatest Man to the external sense, thus to the
corporeal sensual, and this sensual is represented in the other life by
serpents.
# Man's external sensual is represented in the spiritual world by
serpents, because it is in the lowest things, and in comparison with the
interiors with man, lies on the ground and as it were creeps; and that they
were thence called serpents, who reasoned from that sensual (n. 195-197,
6398, 6949). (EU 148)
EU 149. Because the
nature of the spirits of that earth is such, they appear before the eyes of
other spirits, not like others, in a manifest human form, but like clouds,
and for the most part like a dark cloud, in which is mingled something of a
bright human appearance. But they said that they are white within, and that
when they become angels, the dark color is turned into a beautiful blue, as
was also shown to me. I asked whether they had such an idea of their body,
when they lived as men in the world. They said that the men of their earth
make no account of their bodies, but only of the spirit in the body, because
they know that this is to live to eternity, but the body to perish. They
also said that many on their earth believe that the spirit of the body has
been from eternity, and was infused into the body at conception. But they
added that they now know it is not so, and that they repent having been in
such a false opinion. (EU 149)
EU 150. When I asked
whether they wished to see anything on our earth, and said that this could
be done through my eyes (see above n. 135), they answered at first that they
could not, and then that they did not wish it; since they would see only
earthly and material things, from which they remove their thoughts as far as
possible. But still there were represented before them magnificent palaces,
like those of kings and princes on our earth, for such things can be
represented before spirits, and when represented, they appear altogether as
if they were there. But the spirits from that earth set no value upon them,
calling them marble images; and then they told me that they had more
magnificent ones, which are their sanctuaries, not of stone, but of wood.
When it was said to them that these were still earthly, they answered that
they were not, but heavenly; because when they look upon them, they have not
an earthly, but a heavenly idea, believing that they will also see similar
ones in heaven after death. (EU 150)
EU 168. A FIFTH EARTH
IN THE STARRY HEAVEN, ITS SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS.
I was led again to another earth which is in the universe out of our
solar system, and this also by changes of state, continued for nearly twelve
hours. There were in company with me several spirits and angels from our
earth, with whom I discoursed in the way or in that progression. I was
carried at times obliquely upwards and obliquely downwards, continually
towards the right, which in the other life is towards the south. In only two
places I saw spirits, and in one I spoke with them. In the way or
progression I was enabled to observe how immense is the Lord's heaven, which
is for angels and spirits; for from the parts uninhabited I was led to
conclude that it was so immense, that if there were many myriads of earths,
and on each earth a multitude of men as great as in ours, there would still
be a place of abode for them to eternity, and it would never be filled. This
I was enabled to conclude from a comparison made with the extent of the
heaven which is about our earth and designed for it, which extent was
respectively so small, that it did not equal a hundred millionth part of the
extent uninhabited. (EU 168)
EU 170. The spirits
with whom I now discoursed were from the northern part of their earth. I was
afterwards led to others who were on the western part. These also, wishing
to discover who and what I was, immediately said that there was nothing in
me but evil, thinking thus to deter me from approaching nearer. It was
perceived that this was their manner of accosting all who came to them; but
it was granted me to reply that I well knew it to be so, and that with them
also there was nothing but evil, by reason that every one is born in evil,
and therefore whatever comes from man, spirit, and angel, as from what is
his own, or his proprium, is nothing but evil, inasmuch as all good with
every one is from the Lord. Hence they perceived that I was in the truth,
and I was admitted to speak with them. They then showed me their idea
concerning evil with man, and concerning good from the Lord, how they are
separated from each other.
They placed one near the other, almost contiguous, but still distinct,
yet as it were bound together in a manner inexpressible, so that the good
led the evil, and restrained it, insomuch that it was not allowed it to act
at pleasure; and thus the good bent the evil in whatever direction desired,
without the evil knowing it. In this manner they exhibited the dominion of
good over evil, and at the same time a state of freedom. They then asked how
the Lord appeared with the angels from our earth. I said that He appears in
the sun as Man, encompassed therein with solar fire, whence the angels in
the heavens have all light; and that the heat which proceeds thence is the
Divine good, and that the light which proceeds thence is the Divine truth,
each from the Divine love, which is the fire appearing around the Lord in
that sun.
That sun, however, appears only to the angels in heaven, and not to the
spirits who are beneath, since they are more removed from the reception of
the good of love and of the truth of faith, than the angels who are in the
heavens (see above, n. 40). It was granted them thus to inquire concerning
the Lord, and concerning His appearance before the angels from our earth,
because it then pleased the Lord to present Himself before them, and to
reduce into order the things which had been disturbed by the evil spirits of
whom they complained. This also was the reason why I was led thither, that I
might see these things. (EU 170)
EU 176. To an inquiry
concerning their houses, they said that they are low, of wood, with a flat
roof, around which project caves sloping downward; and that in the front
part dwell the husband and wife, in the next adjoining part the children,
and after them the maid-servants and men-servants. Of their food they said
that they drink milk with water, and that they have the milk from cows,
which are woolly like sheep. Of their life they said that they walk naked,
and that to them nakedness is not a cause of shame; also that their social
interaction is with those who are within their families. (EU 176)
The mental
layers of eternity, of which our individual mind is a component, are not to
be pictured like horizontal arrays across a page, but like the inside anatomical
components of the human body. Each layer corresponds to different
anatomical, physiological, and
biochemical components and systems.
Swedenborg navigated his consciousness across the entire
geographical region of spiritual
societies in the Grand Human and Grand Monster. He would meet with and
explore the mentality of people in various societies of the Grand Human or Grand
Monster. He would describe the quality of consciousness of the people in “the
region of the right eye” vs. the left eye, or the region of the heart and
“loins” vs. the region of the pancreas, right hemisphere of the brain, or the
cranium, etc. He discovered that the mind-body connection exists by the laws of
correspondences that integrate the layers
and its systemic operations. In other words, the laws of correspondences are
cause effect relations between physical and mental, between body and mind, and
between the natural things and spiritual things.
Spiritual things are mental things
since they are operations of the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor organs.
Speaking from our subjective experience,
spiritual, immortal, and eternal things are no other than
sensations, cognitions, and loves.
This is because the mental world of
loves, thoughts, and sensations is
eternal, non-physical, and outside time, while what is physical is in time
and space, thus is temporary, limited,
and conditional.
Every biological component and function of the body corresponds to some
particular mental component and function
of the mind. For instance, the physiological function of the lungs
corresponds to the mental operation of the cognitive organ. The sub-components
of the lungs, such as the air sacs, or the rib cage that encloses it and
protects it, correspond to specific
functions of thinking, reasoning, and imagining. The anatomy and physiology
of the body are correspondences to the
mentality of the people who exist or
congregate in that geographical
region of the Grand Human and Grand Monster. For more details on this
bio-geographical map, chart, or
taxonomy see
Physiological Correspondences by Worcester (1889).
What is involved in the idea of “mentality of the people”? Every quality and
variety of human mentality is formed by means of neologisms. The categories of
neologisms are the categories of human mentality. The universe of neologisms
exists as a collection of individuals arranged in sub-collections that portray
the human anatomical form, its outside and its inside. Neologisms are
experienced subjectively as new meaning, new insight, new understanding, new
causal connection, new truth, new power. Neologisms bring new consciousness, new
perceptions, new wisdom and rationality. The word “new” in the correspondential
sense involves renewal, or new birth into a higher plane of consciousness,
goodness, love, and connectivity with the
Divine
Psychologist. “Neo” means new, hence higher and more excellent in humanity.
While “-logism” is from “logos,” meaning word, idea, meaning, truth. “Neologism”
in the spiritual sense therefore means “New Word” or a higher form of neologisms
out of which our new higher consciousness is formed into a plane or layer of
operation that is of a superior quality and virtue.
Collective Neologisms
A form of collective spiritual
neologisms is described in the Swedenborg Reports as follows:
[Note: “Good spirits” are the people
who live in anatomical layer 6 of the mental world of eternity, and “angelic
spirits” in layer 5. Those who inhabit the highest human layer (4) are referred
to as “angels.”]
AC 1648. There is
a speech of good spirits, and also of angelic spirits, which is a
simultaneous speech of many, especially in circles or choirs, concerning
which of the Lord's Divine mercy hereafter. The speech in choirs has often
been heard by me; it has a cadence, as if in rhythm. They have no thought
about the words or ideas, for into these their sentiments flow
spontaneously. No words or ideas flow in which multiply the sense, or draw
it away to something else, or to which anything artificial adheres, or that
seems to them elegant from self, or from self-love, for such things would at
once cause disturbance. They do not inhere in any word; they think of the
sense; the words follow spontaneously from the sense itself. They come to a
close in unities, for the most part simple; but when in those which are
compound, they turn by an accent to the next. These things are the result of
their thinking and speaking in society; hence the form of the speech has a
cadence in accordance with the connection and unanimity of the society. Such
was once the form of songs; and such is that of the Psalms of David. (AC
1648)
In other words, after our
resuscitation we think and speak differently than the natural languages we
use here. This spontaneous and automatic way of talking and thinking reflects
the greater collectivity of the
social-psychological environment in the mental world of eternity, in
comparison to the social relations we have now through our physical bodies. Our
choirs here require practiced and deliberate training to achieve the appearance
of performing collective neologisms.
But the choirs after our resuscitation (which occurs 30 hours after death),
proceed without training or direction, completely spontaneously. This occurs
because all the individuals in that group or collectivity are activated in their
affective organ by the same series of sentiment.
This “simultaneous speech of many” or “speech in choirs” has a “cadence, as
if in rhythm.” The normal thinking mode is suspended and each individual
spontaneously excludes any thought or focus on self and what is the person’s
own. Thus, the normal single independent individual thinker is transformed into
a collective self or a group self. In
this mental state we experience a richer and higher form of
thinking, meaning, and consciousness.
This elevation of the individual through the collective self is embodied in the
sensorimotor environment that Swedenborg witnessed. The “thinking and speaking
in society“ produces collective neologisms that enlighten and pacify their
character and experience.
AC 1649. Wonderful to say, this kind of speech, possessing the
rhythmical or harmonic cadence of songs, is natural to spirits. They speak
so among themselves, although they are not aware of it. Immediately after
death souls come into the habit of speaking in this way. I have been
initiated into the same, and it has at last become familiar. The reason
their speech is of this nature, is that they speak in society, which for the
most part they are not aware of: a very clear proof that they are all
distinguished into societies, and that consequently all things fall into the
forms of the societies. (AC 1649)
After our resuscitation into the mental world of eternity we become
collective personalities speaking and thinking collective spiritual neologisms –
but without being aware that it is collective. Swedenborg had that awareness
because of his dual citizenship, which allowed him to contrast his speech
through his physical body in his horizontal community in Sweden, vs. his speech
through the spiritual body in the vertical community of the mental world of
eternity. This is called “vertical” because distance is determined by similarity
and difference of sentiments, consequently of thinking and speech. Our
horizontal community here is determined by physical distance, independently of
social and psychological similarity. After resuscitation we can no longer visit
and travel to places in our vertical community that are different and at
variance with our norms, ideas, and loves. Our travels and visits in the mental
world of eternity can only take place by modification of our mental state, that
is, of our loves and thoughts. This is how Swedenborg navigated through the
mental ether of eternity. This
process of mental change often required the
intermediate neologisms of
“intermediate spirits” whose sentiments and thinking were closer to Swedenborg’s
but not yet close enough to his target audience of people who had been born on
different planets and were of a different genius or mentality from earthlings.
When the psychological distance was very great, a series of intermediate
neologisms were required that took Swedenborg several days of processing or
mental travel (counting his earth days in time).
Swedenborg describes the existence of
performative neologisms in the mental world of eternity, to which we
are all headed from here, so that each of us will witness these
spiritual human gyres and what’s more,
will participate in them! (I am looking forward to that.)
AC 3889. In order that I might know not only that there is a
correspondence of the celestial things which are of love with the motions of
the heart, and of the spiritual things which are of faith from love with the
motions of the lungs, but also how the case is with this correspondence, it
was given me for a considerable space of time to be among the angels, who
showed it me to the life. By a wonderful and indescribable flowing into
gyres they formed a semblance of a heart and another semblance of lungs,
together with all the interior and exterior contextures that are in them.
They then followed the flow of heaven in a free way; for heaven is in the
endeavor toward such a form, from the influx of love from the Lord. Thus
they presented the several parts that are in the heart; and afterwards the
union between the heart and the lungs, which they also represented by the
marriage of good and truth.
From this it was evident that the heart corresponds to the celestial
which is of good, and the lungs to the spiritual which is of truth; and that
the conjunction of these two in a material form is precisely as is that of
the heart and the lungs. I was also told that the case is similar in the
body throughout (that is, in its several members, organs, and viscera) in
regard to the things therein which are of the heart, and those which are of
the lungs; for where both do not act, and each distinctly take its turn,
there cannot be any motion of life from any principle of the will, nor any
feeling of life from any principle of the understanding. (AC 3889)
These performative spiritual
neologisms executed in our anatomical layer 4, or “Third Heaven of angels”
where Swedenborg was travelling in the mental world of eternity, are different
from ordinary verbal neologisms that
are performed by collective speech. The performative gyres communicate
new meaning and consciousness that
Swedenborg could not describe in natural
verbal neologisms and called them “wonderful and indescribable.” From the
meaning communicated through these performative spiritual neologisms, Swedenborg
received a whole new insight and understanding about how the effects of the
heart inflow into the lungs, this action being a correspondence to how the good
we receive in the affective organ directs and fuses with the truth that is in
our cognitive organ, and by this action we achieve a new and more excellent
life.
 What
is consciousness?
In theistic psychology I define consciousness as the
vertical dimension of the mental world of
eternity. We are born into this world but we are not conscious of it until
after resuscitation when we lose all connectivity to the physical body and
world. Swedenborg interviewed a large sample of people who were undergoing the
process of resuscitation, at the end of which they open their eyes and find
themselves conscious in their spiritual mind, having but vague memories of their
natural mind which gradually shuts down and is no longer present to our
conscious awareness or memory. What remains are all the spiritual
correspondences that are contained within every natural neologisms. So our
consciousness is not the same in the spiritual mind, but it is related to our
natural mind as the contents of a box are related to the box, because the
meaning of the natural neologism contains within it the meaning of the
corresponding spiritual neologism, and this in turn contains the meaning of the
celestial neologism that corresponds to it.
Meaning within meaning within meaning. These three
anatomical layers of the human mind form its consciousness. There is no
other human consciousness than what is formed at these three interconnected
layers of the mental world of eternity.
The mental world of eternity is a human sphere shaped into the form of every
anatomical organ familiar to us in the physical body. The mental world has the
human anatomical form because it is the original form from which the form of the
physical body was created. The mental world is the cause that is within the
effect, which is the physical body. Where is the mental world of eternity? It is
within the physical world of time-place. The word “within” as used here was
coined by God during His Physical Incarnation Life on earth, whose biography and
sayings are preserved as the New Testament Sacred Scripture. As discussed above
nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the
kingdom of God is within you.(Luke 17:21)
This Divine Natural Neologism, “within you,” referring to the “kingdom of
God” or heaven, contains within it a Divine Spiritual Neologism, and within
that, a Divine Celestial Neologism. We gain a higher spiritual consciousness
when we extract the Spiritual Neologism that is contained within the Natural
“within.” At the spiritual anatomical level of consciousness (layer 5), the
meaning of “within” in the Divine Spiritual Neologism, derives the meaning of
the light of truth in our understanding or cognitive organ. At the celestial
anatomical level of consciousness (layer 4), the meaning of “within” in the
Divine Celestial Neologism, derives the meaning of the heat of love in our
affective organ (or “the will”). The spiritual meaning of “within” is the cause
of something. The celestial meaning of “within” is the source of that cause.
For example, the expression of eating food appears frequently in Sacred
Scripture. Through knowing correspondences from the Swedenborg Reports we can
derive the Divine Spiritual Neologism that is within the Divine Natural
Neologism of eating food. This spiritual meaning is to appropriate spiritual
truths through loving them and willing them. As there are different varieties of
spiritual truths in the mental world of eternity, therefore there are varieties
of foods on earth. The two are connected like cause and effect. Now to get to
the source of this cause we need to derive the celestial correspondence that we
have in layer 4 of our mental anatomy. This celestial meaning that corresponds
to “eating food” is to receive spiritual goods in our affective organ by loving
the good that inflows from God as spiritual heat. Eating is therefore a
representative of incorporating spiritual light and loving its good.
The reason that eating is so frequently mentioned in Sacred Scripture is
that our eternal existence and happiness in the heavenly
layers of the human mind depends entirely on our appropriation of spiritual
good through loving them and willing them in our daily choices of living here on
earth. And this most critical
appropriation cannot take place except through spiritual neologisms that
introduce our thinking and speaking to what is good vs. what is good corrupted.
 Constructing
a neologism is a “performative speech act” (Austin and Searle come to mind).
There are three types of constructed neologisms: affective, cognitive, and
sensorimotor. These constitute the threefold self or mental anatomy of every
human being. Affective organs produce affective neologisms. Cognitive organs
produce cognitive neologisms. Sensorimotor organs produce sensorimotor
neologisms. God produces Divine Neologisms. In terms of the sequence of
production of neologisms in the universe we have the following sequence: (see
the
Chart of Mental Anatomy)
Divine Rational Neologisms (Layer 1)
Celestial-rational neologisms (layer 4)
Spiritual-rational neologisms (layer 5)
Spiritual-natural neologisms (layer 6)
Interior-natural neologisms (or natural-rational neologisms) (layer 7)
Exterior-natural neologisms (or materialistic neologisms) (layer 8)
Corporeal-natural neologisms (layer 9)
A layer is called a “discrete degree” in the Swedenborg Reports. This means
that there are no direct connections between layers, but only a functional
relation of correspondence. The
layers are arranged “sequential order”, and as it proceeds from top to
bottom, or from internal to external, what succeeds contains within itself what
precedes. Layer 1 events cause by correspondence all layer 4 events, and the
cause is within the effect it produces. “Within” means a discrete degree more
interior, hence, prior, or higher in command. Layer 5 is caused by layer 4,
within which is Layer 1). By the time the exteriorizing sequence reaches the
outmost layer, the sequential order is complete. Now the entire series from
first to last is contained in layer 9 in “simultaneous order.” The accompanying
diagram is a visual representation of this type of embedded cause-effect
structure.
The diagram makes it clear that when we look at a neologism written by
someone we are looking at layer 9, which is the outmost containant of all the
neologisms that are contained within its discrete degrees. Every neologism
coined by a human being is therefore a Divine Neologism (Layer 1) that has
exteriorized from the inmost of existence (Layer 1) to the outmost natural mind
and world. This shows how God is the source of all neologisms produced by human
beings. It also shows that the entire human race participates in the production
of one individual’s neologism.
Autobiographical neologisms are
expressions and sayings by others that provide you with a source of insight into
some mental area. Affective
autobiographical neologisms bring us to a deeper or higher love in relation
to an area of activity or use that we perform.
Cognitive autobiographical neologisms
brings us a higher or deeper understanding to go along with that higher love.
Thus takes place the mental marriage of love and understanding, which produces
the constant stream of sensorimotor
autobiographical neologisms as an objective and visible record of our mental
life in its growth and development. The mutual sharing and exchange of all types
of neologisms is the mental economy by which God unites all individual human
beings into one global individual called
the Grand Human in the mental world of eternity. In the
Swedenborg
Reports God reveals this about Himself, namely that He is the Life of the
Grand Human, which in its totality makes up the eternal heavenly abodes of human
beings who desire to be in
mutual conjugial love with a soul mate, and led in totality by the
Omniproprium of God
in His Presence as the Divine Human.
The Swedenborg Reports explain that “to love” is to want to make another
happy from oneself.
The love that we have for our pets or our children fits very well with this
Divine Neologism. God is explaining to each of us what we must do to love. This
is true love. Love that is
God’s love in human
beings. God gives this love because His Nature or Character is Love Itself.
God loves the human race or the human individual, which means that God wants to
make the individual and the race happy from Himself. This means that He wants us
to have whatever good He can give us, or that we are willing to receive in our
affective organ as spiritual
heat from the Spiritual Sun that is around God like a living Aura of Life,
of Love and Truth.
We want to make our children and pets happy when we love them. And we want
to do this from ourselves. That means that we want to give them whatever good we
have and we want them to take it so they can have it. This is the thought that
we find rewarding “so they can have it.” We want them to have our good so they
can own it, so it is theirs. If we have some food they need or like, we give it
to them. If we have money to buy them things, we spend it. If we have a certain
skill that we love that makes us happy and better, we want them to have it. We
want to teach it to them so they can have it as their own. If we have values
that we cherish we want to pass those on to them so they can have those values,
and they can have the satisfactions that come with owning those values. So it is
with God and us human beings.
The grand plan and ultimate destination God has created for human beings is
the Grand Human in mental world of eternity. Every human awakens in
consciousness at resuscitation, a few hours after the dying process and
separation from being intertwined with the physical body. Then our consciousness
in eternity begins. We have arrived to our life of immortality in our eternal
spiritual body, with which we were born along with the temporary physical body.
In this spiritual body we can participate and receive the Life of the Grand
Human, and join one of the numberless spiritual societies in the various regions
of the Grand Human. Swedenborg described the differing mentality of the people
in many of these regions, like the region of the heart, or the province of the
lungs, etc.
Now you can have a better perspective on the sentence you read just above:
“The mutual sharing and exchange of all types of neologisms is the mental
economy by which God unites all individual human beings into one
global individual called the Grand Human
in the mental world of eternity.”
In other words, your particular unique thinking, speaking, and writing are
the personal and autobiographical venues by which God is integrating you into
the synergy of the Grand Human. Your uniqueness is essential to the perfection
and evolution of the Grand Human. Isn’t this amazing? I coined a neologism for
it when I first wrote about it in 2004: the
Perizonius Thesis. This means that your daily production of neos is like
“daily bread” to the people in the Grand Human.
Neologisms are semantic way stations
or platforms in the mental world of eternity. Each neologism is a
pin point on the spiritual map of the
region in which the neologism is enrooted. Every region of the Grand Human, and
its perversion or opposite as the
Grand Monster,
originates a particular mental variety of neologisms. Affective neologisms
originate in the regions of the Grand Human that involve the circulatory organs
and operations of the blood and lymph system. Cognitive neologisms originate in
the respiratory system of the Grand Human, including the larynx, mouth, and
lips. Sensorimotor neologisms are sourced from the skin, membranes, cartilages,
bones, sensory organs, nervous system, and brain.
Divine Celestial, Spiritual, and Natural Neologisms are the varieties of
truths that construct our intelligence and rationality at each anatomical layer.
The physiology, anatomy, and biochemistry
of the body are nothing but correspondences and symbolic representatives of the
mental internet that constitutes the
Grand Human. This is the true reality, while the
physical internet of communities and
societies on earth are temporary
appearances instantiated by correspondences of the physical world with the
realities of the eternal mental world.
If all this sounds to you somewhat abstract rather than concrete and
immediately relevant you can bring it down to concrete objectivity simply by
realizing that you are now in the mental world of eternity. “You” means your
self, your conscious identity as a unique person, the “me” that forms your
actuality in daily life, namely, your sensations, your thoughts, and your
feelings. This is you. Now where are these mental events? They cannot be in your
brain or physical body because sensations, thoughts, and feelings are not
material operations, but mental operations, and these have no space or energy or
time as do other physical objects.
It is clear therefore that the mental world is outside space and time, and
this is called the world of eternity. When we
die and resuscitate a few
hours later, we awaken in the mental world of eternity, which is the same
world you are in right this moment, and were in since your birth. You are not
conscious of this because we are born with a natural mind or consciousness, and
a spiritual mind or consciousness. Our natural consciousness is from sensory
input through the physical body, and therefore our natural thoughts and natural
feelings reflect the physical world only. But our spiritual consciousness after
resuscitation is from sensory input through the spiritual body, and therefore
spiritual thoughts and spiritual feelings
reflect the mental world of eternity alone, and nothing at all about the
physical world of time.
This is real and concrete, like anatomy and physiology. Sensations,
thoughts, and feelings are
organic-physiological spiritual operations of the mental organs called
sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective. It’s very useful to know this because it
allows us to plot the strategy of our
spiritual navigation in the afterlife of eternity. If we monitor our daily
production neologisms we can keep track of how much of our loves are rooted in
the societies of the Grand Human, and which of our loves are rooted in the
societies of the Grand Monster. This spiritual economy is called “salvation” in
the Swedenborg Reports. In other words, after resuscitation into our spiritual
consciousness, we are compelled by the laws of spiritual physiology to undergo a
search for our hidden loves, especially our ruling love that controls all the
loves.
The ruling love we have when we are resuscitated always wins, as we can see
from the many observations Swedenborg made over the course of 27 years of daily
observations and records. The ruling love is what we care the most for, more
than any other love. If this love is enrooted in the Grand Monster, we are
irresistibly drawn by our own love to
the region of the Grand Monster where that love exists with the
people who inhabit that region of the
mental world. If our ruling love is enrooted in the Grand Human, we are
irresistibly drawn to that society of people, and when we arrive there, or into
that mental state, we become
synergistically linked in consciousness with them. We breathe and live that
specific variety and species of love.
Clearly then, nothing can be more important to us in this life than to
manage the production of our daily neologisms so that
our ruling love, with its retinue of
sub-loves in our affective organ, be enrooted in the Grand Human’s endless
supply of Divine Celestial and Spiritual Neologisms. When we come across such a
hellish driving neologism as “Look at
that idiot. He forgot to turn off his turn signal,” we need to react to it with
a heavenly driving neologism as
“That’s not kind of me to think that about him. I take it back.” When we do this
systematically as a daily spiritual
self-witnessing discipline in all the areas of our activities and exchanges
with others, then we are following the rational and effective strategy God makes
available to us to insure that our ruling
love after resuscitation is enrooted in the Grand Human. What can be more
important than that in the few decades we spend in our natural consciousness,
vs. the endless life of immortality in our eternal spiritual consciousness. You
be the judge if there is anything that could possible more critical to you.
Spelling-neologisms are new ways
of spelling a word or name, which may be accompanied by a change in
pronunciation. A prominent example comes to mind: “nucular” for “nuclear”
(starting in the 1950’s I believe). More recently I witnessed “anacronym” for
“an acronym” or for “acronym.”
Spelling-neos are related to
phonological neologisms, which are new ways of pronouncing a word or name.
No doubt there is a discoverable law that describes the
cross-modal interaction dynamics
between spelling-neos and phono-neos.
We know that the visual and auditory systems can behave both
independently and interdependenty.
Research on correspondences may
reveal what this dynamic is.
All neologisms are eternal.
Every neo is an immortal neo.
This is clear when you consider that neologisms are
semantic units or meaning objects,
and these are mental objects and
operations. The Swedenborg Reports demonstrate that all mental objects are
constructed out of substances that flow out of the Spiritual Sun in the mental
world of eternity, into which we are born with an eternal spiritual body that
contains our immortal mental organs – affective (“will”), cognitive
(“understanding”), and sensorimotor (“body”). Our sensations, thoughts, and
feelings are therefore immortal objects preserved forever in our spiritual body.
Neologisms are innovative operations in our three mental organs, namely,
affective neologisms, cognitive neologisms, and sensorimotor neologisms. You can
see from this that neos are immortal mental
objects preserved forever in the mental
world of eternity through our spiritual body.
Living necessitates the continuous
construction of endless immortal neologisms. This is because
all neologisms are sourced from Divine
Neologisms through the Spiritual Sun and its outflow of good and truth in
the form of spiritual heat and light. Every single thing that flows from God
through the Spiritual Sun is an “image and likeness” of God, and since God is
infinite, every single thing that flows from God must be infinite and unique.
The infinity within every existing thing
makes every object that exists completely unique and innovative. This means that
every object, quality, or operation is a
Divine Neologism. There can never be two identical objects or two
repetitions of the same thing, or two repetitions of a sensation, thought, or
feeling, desire, and satisfaction.
Heavenly life is the life of neologism
itself.
Heavenly life is the happiness of
neologisms.
Human beings are maximally happy only when every moment of living is more
exciting than the previous one. Swedenborg reports that those who are in mental
anatomy layer 4 (or “third and highest heaven”), are maximally happy. If God
were to add to their happiness, their
being would burst and end. To keep this
layer of human consciousness in a
state of maximal happiness God
provides people with His Own Omniproprium
or Divine Human Character which each person in that conscious layer can
experience subjectively as his own or her own. Our as-of self in anatomical
layer 4 is quasi-omniscient so that the desire to know something is filled
instantaneously in our consciousness, without searching, reflecting, or
remembering. Everything that can be known about something we want to know about,
instantaneously and without mental effort, fills our awareness.
With the Omniproprium as our as-of self
in layer 4, we are able to operate from
the highest human loves possible, which gives us
access to the highest goods in existence,
which means the possession of skills and
abilities that we are unable to even begin to imagine, no matter how much we
fantasize about it. Reality will always
be larger than our fantasy of it.
The celestial-rational neologisms that operate in mental anatomy layer 4
(our “highest” heaven), are located in the region of the heart and the region of
the reproductive organs in the Grand Human. These are the human neologisms that
are closest to the Divine Neologisms. The mental states that we experience in
this layer provide the source of our rationality and abilities in the lower
layers of consciousness. The celestial-rational meaning is the highest form
of human understanding of Sacred Scripture. Swedenborg saw the Books of
Sacred Scripture in that layer of the eternal human mind. The people who
keep their daily consciousness in that region spoke to him and said that every
neologism that comes to them is from
Sacred Scripture .
Loud-talking neologisms are
things people say for show, for the attention of the listeners, more than the
person they are talking to. Loud-talking
neologistic speech acts are insincere and manipulative, and if we do this
for selfish reasons, then these are evil acts that hurt you because they connect
you more powerfully to a ruling love that is sourced in the Grand Monster.
Neologisms of insincerity are
corruptions of neologisms of sincerity.
There is a point by point relationship
between the Grand Human and the Grand Monster, with the latter being the
transformed opposite of the former. All
evil is nothing but the distortion of good, and all falsity is the
distortion of truth. The infernal
concubinage of evil and falsity is the opposite of the heavenly marriage of
good and truth.
Rearrangement neologisms are new ways of combining existing words.
For example, the arrangement of three very common words into this: “feeling,
desire, and satisfaction” creates a
rearrangement neologism. The novel arrangement is normally motivated by the
perception of a new pattern. Rearranged
neos belong to paraphrastic sets of semantically related neos. In this case,
the arrangement “feeling, desire, and satisfaction” is achieved by thinking of
affective selections only. On the other hand the arrangement “affective,
cognitive, sensorimotor” is motivated by mental anatomy, just as the arrangement
“anatomy, physiology, biochemistry” is motivated by the anatomy of the physical
body.
Endearment neologisms are affectively motivated and sourced in the
celestial
layers of our mind (4). The love we have for our pet, child, partner, car,
etc., creates the endearment neo. I
produce endearment neos when I hold my wife, or when I groom my black cat Mana.
Homonymous neologisms are
words, phrases, arrangements that
appear the same but involve different
innovations. For instance, if I say “So sweet” to my wife, and then also to
my cat, the two appear to be the same (“So sweet”) but they are different, one
having my wife as a context, the other
having my cat as the context. The
context alters the meaning of the
neologism. If I call my wife “Sweetie” and a minute later I call her
“Sweetie,” these are homonymous endearment neologisms and they denote different affective
operations. This is because time and sequence change the interactional context
therefore the meaning.
There are two kinds of loves and each kind has distinct properties or ways
of operating in our mental world. Inherited loves operate one way, acquired
loves another way. Both kinds of loves share some properties, while they are
different in others. A shared property of all loves, or all operations in our
affective organ, is that they are sourced in either the Grand Human or the Grand
Monster. No love exists that is not heavenly from the Grand Human or hellish
from the Grand Monster. There are no other
created sources for loves.
Another shared property of all loves is that they arrange themselves in a
management hierarchy, with a few “cardinal” loves, or primary loves, and very
many sub-loves. These sub-loves are
like assistants to the chief loves.
At the very top of the love hierarchy,
managing, directing, and controlling the
entire affective hierarchy, sits the “ruling love.”
The Swedenborg Reports identify many
loves that are described in Sacred Scripture. For the “fallen”
spiritual race known as the
split-brain race, the principal inherited loves cumulatively passed on to
every succeeding generation, are the love of self for the sake of self, the love
of dominating others for the sake of self, the love of materialism and earthly
objects for the sake of self. These inherited loves operate as impulses and
triggers in the affective hierarchy. These
spiritual trigger loves function by
connecting our mind to specific societies in the Grand Monster. Every individual
joins one of these societies when after
resuscitation they decide to throw off or anesthetize the
entire collection of heavenly loves
in the affective organ. This decision
moment of eternal fate is called “the second death.” This is why we are
called the “fallen race” in the sense that if we don’t
cut our inherited ties to the Grand
Monster, we go down in life on the
path of least affective resistance, almost imperceptibly, like a boat being
drawn away by an unknown undercurrent,
and headed towards disaster on the rocks.
We also inherit heavenly trigger
loves that connect our affective organ to the societies of the Grand Human.
These heavenly trigger loves include the love of innocence in obedience and
surrender to the parental order that is a representation of God’s order. We can
see this principal heavenly love in
infants and toddlers, and in adults who love to be good and orderly because it
is God’s order. At the same time we can see in babies and toddlers the hatred of
this love of obedience, and this negative
rebellious selfish love comes from their connection to the Grand Monster
societies. Such is the zone of the mental
world that we live in every day and
every minute while we are earthbound and our
natural mind is tied by correspondence to
the physical body. It is a spiritual
war zone. We alternate between sides, so that one moment we are with the
hellish societies in our vertical
community, and another moment we are with the heavenly societies. The
heavenly and hellish societies battle
each other inside our thoughts and feelings.
The
Divine Psychologist with every person’s mind
manages the details of this mental
warfare. Remember that the warfare refers to ourselves.
We are at war against our self and within
our self. The societies on either side cannot battle each other.
Heaven cannot battle hell apart from our
loves. The battle of evil vs. good, and its sub-battle of falsity vs. truth,
is a battle that we keep going. We can end it at any moment because the Divine
Psychologist is there managing the details and the goal or outcome God wants and
provides for each person. We can cooperate or resist.
God honors both by supplying the events
for either.
The
Divine Psychologist provides a
methodology or spiritual discipline to allow us to win this
battle for eternity.
It is the method of neologisms.
We receive heavenly
neologisms from Sacred Scripture and
commandment neologisms from our
conscience. These are the mental
vehicles of delivery for spiritual truths that give us
awareness and judgment of the quality of
our loves, whether hellish or heavenly.
In order to understand this rationally let’s bring it down to anatomy and
see how this actually works. The details are revealed in the correspondential
sense of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, as demonstrated and proven fully in
the Swedenborg Reports. God’s Divine
Speech issuing from the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity
reaches mental anatomy layer 4 (“Third Heaven”) in the form of the written
Sacred Scripture that exists in that
layer of human consciousness. Swedenborg saw the actual book in a temple
that housed it. It is surrounded by a
spiritual light that is thousands of times more brilliant and intense than our
sun at noon on a clear summer day. Yet this light doesn’t blind the onlooker
or reader, but is experienced as interior
enlightenment with wisdom and
understanding. The letters, words, and expressions are celestial-rational
correspondences of what God actually spoke. These
celestial-rational neologisms
constitute the first entry point of God’s
Divine Truth and Rationality into the conscious minds of human beings.
What determines how much of this light we can take into our conscious
understanding and awareness?
The answer is love. Such as our love
is, such is our understanding. To be conscious of the meanings of
celestial-rational neologisms (layer 4) we must
admit into ourselves, our affective organ,
celestial loves such as are sourced in that mental layer. The
chief love in that layer of human
consciousness is conjugial love. In the Swedenborg Reports God reveals the
scientific fact that all loves are arranged in a top-down hierarchy, and that at
the very top of this is conjugial love – the mutual and reciprocal love of unity
between a husband and wife existing as a
conjoint self. This ruling love of
the heaven and the universe is the
exteriorization of spiritual heat (or love) and spiritual light (or truth).
These two Divine and infinite eternal
living substances make a one in God. Good (or love) and truth (or
rationality) exteriorize into creation through the Spiritual Sun, and the human
consciousness of these two spiritual substances starts with the mental world of
eternity, layer 4.
Good and truth are united in God as one, and this is called the Divine
Marriage of Good and Truth. As spiritual heat and light flow into layer 4 they
are received as two – spiritual heat (or love) is received in the affective
organ (layer 4A) while spiritual light (or truth) is received in the cognitive
organ (layer 4C). The result is that love and truth from God now exist in human
beings and their consciousness – love in the affective organ (or “will”) and
truth in the cognitive organ (or “understanding”). If both good and truth have
been received and are in the person, they operate in the person bringing about a
coordinated interaction between our loves (layer 4A) and our meanings (layer
4C). We experience the motivation (4A) to think about (4C) how we might be
maximally useful to others, starting with our conjugial partner, and extending
the circle to our neighbors in the society we live in layer 4. From there the
“good will” and “good works” or “uses of charity” (4S) exteriorize to layer 5
(“Second Heaven”), and from there downward and outward, until it the chain of
neologisms enters our conscious natural mind we use in daily life here (layers
7, 8, 9).
When the affective and cognitive
organs are conjoined in a person the new mental state is called “the
spiritual marriage of good and truth.” This is the way of salvation because it
is the method by which we are regenerated and become spiritual. This means that
the spiritual marriage of good and truth in our natural mind (layers 7, 8, 9)
must take place prior to our
resuscitation. We must engage in
spiritual
combat prior to our death here. Without this, we cannot be regenerated
in character so that the “infernal marriage of evil and falsity” with which we
are born and raised, will remain forever as our
mental state of disorder, insanity, and
hell. The Swedenborg Reports explain why it is said in the New Testament
Sacred Scripture that there are
no marriages
in heaven. The correspondential sense of “marriage” is “the conjunction of
good and truth in our mind.” This conjunction must take place before death, and
if it doesn’t, it cannot be obtained after resuscitation, as it is explained in
the parable of the
five virgins
who brought lamps without oil, and were denied entrance into heaven (Matt.
25:1-12).
The reason we cannot obtain “oil” (=good of love) after “waking up”
(=resuscitation) is that the good of love can be ours (“buy for ourselves”) only
if we acquired it by
first voluntarily giving up evil
loves that are contrary to good. This cannot be done after our death. How do you
give up enjoyments you love? The method is given in Sacred Scripture. The
purpose of the existence of Sacred Scripture is to teach people how they can
give up their inherited and acquired evil
enjoyments. This process is called regeneration of character. And it always
involves
spiritual combat.
What is spiritual combat?
It is the method of Divine Psychotherapy or Healing. The
Divine
Psychologist is in every person’s mind through the good and truth we are
willing to receive from the inflow coming from the Spiritual Sun. As the good
enters the affective organ we experience some
heavenly desire, intention, or motive.
Now we experience a mental conflict. This
good strives to bring about the spiritual marriage in the person. The good
seeks out anything in the cognitive organ that is compatible with it.
Only truth is compatible with good.
All truth enters our understanding and awareness through teachings that
originate in Sacred Scripture – that there is a God, that God gives Sacred
Scripture as a Divine guide, that there is
Heaven and
Hell, that we are to shun evils as sins against God, and that if we
do not, our fate in eternity is in hell. These spiritual truths are compatible
with the heavenly intentions and motives
that inflow as good.
Now begins the
spiritual
combat. The infernal marriage of evil enjoyments in the affective organ, and
falsified truths in the cognitive organ, puts up resistance to the
spiritual marriage of good intentions and
true understandings. We experience
this combat as a temptation. The
Divine
Psychologist arranges surrounding events so that our infernal desire for an
evil enjoyment is intensified. We feel the temptation to reject the truth, to
believe the falsity, to justify the evil enjoyment. At the same time we
feel the intention of conscience as a
powerful motive to remain true to the good.
“I feel like doing X, I feel like not stopping doing Y, because it’s what I
want, what I enjoy, what is me -- even though I know from
truth, conscience, morality, and Sacred
Scripture that I must not do X or continue to do Y. I must stop, but it
feels like I can’t. I feel terrible, conflictual, pulled in opposite directions.
Please God, help me.”
That’s it. The last speech act brings victory. Until then, defeat was
certain. The hells were already waiting to welcome us. But the last speech act
changed the outcome. We are a “firebrand snatched from the fire.” We just got
saved by the grace of God. The Divine Psychologist gave us victory in
temptation. The instant we acknowledge and appeal to God in our struggle to
“shun evils as sins against Him,” and against heaven, that instant the
temptations eases, slips away, hides in a mental cave, returns to the mental
dungeon of evil loves that keeps all enslaved who hold on to them out of
enjoyment.
Once the temptation is overcome, and victory is experienced, the
Divine
Psychologist gives a new peace, a new heavenly strength, a new ability to
love what is good and true in our mind – until the next temptation. Regeneration
is the process of undergoing temptations in spiritual combat. It is a lifelong
process, and we must cooperate with the Divine Psychologist all along the way.
In order to understand the psychology of cooperation with the Divine
Psychologist, we need a basic grounding knowledge of mental anatomy in relation
to spiritual geography. The physiology and biochemistry of regeneration proceed
in a lawful and orderly sequence of mental operations. These steps are described
in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture in the correspondential sense of Jacob’s
Ladder (Gen. 28:12-13).
“…He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its
top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending
on it. There above it stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God
of…”
God is Divine Human Person possessing an infinite Soul, Mind and Body which
are the Very Forms into which human beings are created, with a soul, mind and a
body.
1. The Trinity of neos we
produce:
You are producing an affective neo when you have a new love, intention,
or motive.
You are producing a cognitive neo when you have a new thought, plan, or
principle.
You are producing a sensorimotor neo when you have a new sensation,
movement pattern, or verbal expression.
2.
The Trinity of Divine Human Neos God produces:
God’s Divine Love is within every affective neo.
God’s Divine Wisdom is within every cognitive neo.
God’s Divine Proceeding is within every sensorimotor neo.
3.
The Trinity of Three Divine Aspects of God’s Neos:
God’s Affective Organ comprises an integrated whole in which infinite
loves and purposes are present to eternity.
God’s Cognitive Organ comprises an integrated whole in which infinite
truths and principles are present to eternity.
God’s Sensorimotor Organ comprises an integrated whole in which infinite
sensations and motor determinations
are present to eternity.
“Discourse
thinking” (1975) refers to thinking in discourse or sentences. I discovered
that I spontaneously do this when I’m trying to become aware and remember
something that I’m thinking. I was delighted with this discovery, which I
consider one of the most significant of all my neos prior to 1981. Making
yourself think in words is possible most of the time. This strategy allows the
following mental procedure to be performed:
Influx
à
sudden memory
à
short term memory
à
discourse thinking
à
long term memory
This sequence of operations shows that our thoughts are produced by a
spiritual influx from the
mental
layer that is immediately above the consciously active layer. The influx is
not direct since mental layers are in discrete degrees and influence each other
solely by the laws of correspondences. We normally figure things out on our
daily round of activities in consciousness layer 9 and 8. When our thinking is
bound to the appearances of sensory input (layer 9C), the influx comes from
layer 8C, which is more abstract and independent of the literal appearances
given by our senses. When we are conscious in layer 8C (“scientific
materialism”) the influx comes from our layer 7eC (“natural-rational”), which is
the highest form of external natural thinking, that is, rational thinking or
reasoning that is based on the abstractions of appearances. When we are thinking
consciously in layer 7eC, the influx comes from our layer 7iC
(“interior-natural”), which is the first layer that is not bound to the
abstractions of sensory appearances. This layer is based on the spiritual truths
that we extract from Sacred Scripture and understand rationally.
Sudden memory is the first phase of our consciousness that is tied to the
influx. I discovered the existence of sudden memory in 1974. I was engaged in
the practice of
self-witnessing, which involves monitoring the contents of sudden memory. I
found out that there is a period prior to short term memory when I examined the
contents of my short term memory and realized that it is sparse in comparison to
the fast pace density of sudden memory. Thoughts tumble into our consciousness
at a higher rate than we can record them in short term memory. By the time we
access short term memory as much as 1,000 milliseconds have gone by, during
which a sequence of ideas have actually occurred. With a little focus and
practice you can actually perceive the difference.
The experience of trying to “snatch something” from sudden memory is similar
to the procedure of trying to recall the contents of a dream, one or two seconds
upon waking from one. There is the familiar feeling of the “tip
of the tongue phenomenon” where you can almost say what it is you’re
trying to remember, but something is blocking it at the last millisecond. My
current interpretation is that the contents of sudden memory and of most dreams
are spiritual, not natural. In other words, they are pre-verbal thoughts.
Pre-verbal thinking is the external natural and cultural form (layers
7e, 8, 9) of the universal human thought-language that every person
spontaneously starts using immediately upon resuscitation, when the spiritual
mind (layers 6, 5, 4) becomes conscious to us.
The language we use in the spiritual mind is innate and does not have to be
learned.
Swedenborg confirmed this by speaking to many people immediately after their
resuscitation. I believe that sudden memory is the first conscious localized
cultural translation of the innate spiritual thought-language within an
individual. We can perceive it and monitor it, but we cannot recall it. It’s
like being awake and conscious in all your dreams, but when you wake up, you
have no memory of what you were conscious of. By using the discourse thinking
technique it is possible to snatch more content from it, and place it in short
term memory before it is gone, out of our reach. Discourse thinking seems to
actually
slow
down the stream of sudden memory. If you make yourself to think in words,
second by second as you’re doing something, you are able to be aware of more
things that you are actually thinking.
Children spontaneously think out loud using language. It’s not until around
the age of 6 or 7 when they learn to inhibit the tendency to think out loud. But
even as adults we sometimes think out loud without realizing it, and if others
can hear us, it can be embarrassing to some people. I recall thinking out loud
as I walked on streets, realizing too late when another pedestrian came into
earshot, and feeling foolish for doing it. As people get older the tendency to
think out loud reasserts itself and has to be actively repressed for social
reasons. I believe that all these thinking out loud situations have a common
cause, which is the people’s motivation to become more aware of what they are
thinking.
The progressive filtering down of the Divine Neo (layer 1, Spiritual Sun)
across the mental layers of eternity can be seen materialistically (layer
8C) or with a rational (layer 7eC) or an interior-natural (layer 7iC)
perspective. First we see it in a materialistic perspective (layer 8C). We might
think of a physical model we are familiar with in our thinking and reasoning, as
for example, a glass elevator on the side of a building going down from the
Divine Penthouse, passing across all the lower floors, until it reaches the
ground floor. Each floor represents a mental layer. The elevator could be a
symbol of our consciousness, and the floor level could represent the level of
our consciousness. We, the “I” or the conscious “me,” stands in the elevator and
gets a different vision or perspective from each floor.
This is a materialistic perspective on consciousness.
Layer
8C thinking and reasoning is called materialistic because it is based on sensory
input from the physical world, as recorded in layer 9S. This layer is the
closest the two worlds get to each other, namely, the mental world of eternity
(layer 9S and above) and the physical world of material space and time (layers
11 and 12). The world of eternity is the mental world and it is an organic
living world. The world of time, space, matter, and energy is a dead world. The
energy and matter in physical space have one origin and source, namely, a
physical mass of intense solar energy. This mass of solar matter and gravitation
expands everywhere to generate the planets. The solar mass is dead, and the
planet is dead, with everything whatsoever that is constructed on the planet
from the planet. Something dead is the origin of only what is dead.
In contrast to this dead world, the mental world of eternity is a living
world because its origin and source is from the Spiritual Sun. This is a living
Divine Solar Mass of spiritual energy and substance. What is this? What is
spiritual energy and substance? This is not a materialistic analogy at layer 8C
or 7eC thinking and reasoning. This is a literal and empirical description, not
a figurative speech. When I started bringing the
Swedenborg
Reports into psychology after 1981, I started using the expression
“substantive dualism” to reflect this idea that the spiritual world outside time
and space is a substantive world. The concept of “spiritual substance”
corresponds to the concept of “physical matter.” The Spiritual Sun is living not
dead. All its substances are living. Nothing but what is living can exist in the
world created by the Spiritual Sun around itself and from itself. Whatever is
created from the living substances of the Spiritual Sun is inherently living and
remains living to eternity. Death is not possible in the mental world of
eternity since everything, with no exception, is constructed out of the
Spiritual Sun.
The Divine Human Neo, as the Spiritual Sun Itself (layer 1), exteriorizes
and descends from above across the layers of the human mind (2 to 9). This is
not a physical descent, as in the materialistic analogy of the elevator standing
for consciousness, discussed above. We need to think of this descent in terms of
correspondence alone. The mental layers are organic and living. This means
that they are reactive and adaptive. Our affective organ closest to the
Spiritual Sun (layer 4A) is the first to be flooded with the spiritual heat of
the Spiritual Sun. The affective layer of the mind (A) is a living organ that is
built from the infinite variety of spiritual heat, which insures that every
affective organ is unique. The substance of spiritual heat is also called “love”
and its diverse “affections” or supporting cast of sub-loves. Each unique
affective organ being created at birth is located in the spiritual body which
also houses the cognitive and sensorimotor organs. These three organ systems
operate at different levels, each level of operation being called a mental
layer.
Layer
4A of our mind is therefore made out of Divine Love, which is also called
spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun. Layer 4C of our mind is made of Divine
Truth, which is called spiritual light from the Spiritual Sun. Layer 4S of our
mind is made out of the spiritual marriage between layer 4A and 4C. This layer
produces all the mental neo babies that make up the Third Heaven of eternity.
Note that the Divine Human Neo does not actually descend from layer 1
(Spiritual Sun) to layer 4. Instead, spiritual heat floods the affective organ
(4A), which is made of spiritual heat, so that the unique living affective organ
of a person reacts to it, each in its own unique way. The relationship between
the Divine Human Neo in God (Divine Love and Truth, layer 1) and the human neo
in us (layer
4A, 4C) is a discrete difference. There is no possibility of a continuity
between the Divine substances out of which our mental organs are constructed,
and our own self or consciousness as a human being. God’s Consciousness is
infinite and ours is finite. It Is not possible for the infinite to turn into
the finite, or the finite to contain the infinite at its level of existence.
But the infinite can be within the finite in a discrete way that is related
by correspondence. The Divine substances of heat and light out of which our
mental organs are constructed are and remain God’s substances, God’s living or
God’s life. There is an absolute duality between what we are made of and what we
have that is our own. The unique reaction of our affective organ (A) to
receiving the sphere of spiritual heat, is the unique consciousness we have of
our feelings. No other human being has the same affective organ as you have, and
therefore the feelings you are experiencing in your consciousness are your own
unique feelings. They are not God’s feelings, and they are not someone else’s
feelings. They are your own. These unique personal feelings, or loves and
sub-loves, coalesce into a personality we call “me” or “self.” The self is a
product of
mental
biology.
The self is our own, but the organic mental organs that make up the self,
are not our own. They are part of the outgoing Spiritual Sun and all things in
the mental world are made of it and remain of it. Your watch or pen is made of a
piece of the dead sun. Your affective and cognitive organs are made of a piece
of the Spiritual Sun. What we call “pieces” of the sun are, in substance, the
sun itself, but now seemingly in a different location from its origin.
Once the Divine Human Neo is adapted to mental layer 4, producing there a
conjugial life in the celestial heaven, it descends by
correspondence to layer 5, producing there the spiritual heaven. Swedenborg
reports observing that the differences are not continuous but discrete. For
instance, the lowest possible level of operation at layer 4 is out of reach of
the highest possible level of operation for layer 5. Swedenborg compared the
meaning of the layer 4 Sacred Scripture with the meaning of the layer 5 Sacred
Scripture. There was no comparison possible. The only relationship was that of
correspondences. Every idea of thinking and reasoning in our layer 4C, is the
cause of the corresponding lower every idea of thinking and reasoning in our
layer 5C. Similarly, every love and intention in our layer 4A, is the cause of
the corresponding lower love or intention in our layer 5A. When our
consciousness is in layer 4C, we operate at a discretely higher level in our
motive and intelligence, than in our layer 5C. We are a higher form of human
being and human consciousness in layer 4 than in layer 5. Similarly with layer
6, which is the correspondential action of layer 5.
When the Divine Human Neo descends past layer 6, it enters in a new
relationship of correspondence. Layers 4, 5, 6 are called the spiritual mind,
but layers 7, 8, 9 are called the natural mind. They are both organic, both
constructed from the substances of the Spiritual Sun, but they operate entirely
differently. When we are born we have a temporary natural body and a permanent
spiritual body. These two unique bodies are in exact correspondence to each
other, part for part. Our spiritual body with its mental organs changes and
progresses spiritually, while the physical body and its organs, grow naturally.
The connection ends through the process of death and resuscitation.
The spiritual body and its organs, hence what we call “our mind,” has a
lower and more external portion called the natural mind (layers 9, 8, 7), and a
higher and interior portion called the spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4). The
natural mind grows in
correspondence to the sensory events activating the physical body. Our
mental layer 9 is the closest in correspondence to the physical world of time,
place, matter, limits, etc. Our thinking in layer 9C is based on the appearances
of the senses, and we say “The Sun rises.” But in layer 8C, our thinking is
abstracted, knowing that the sun does not rise, even as we speak from
appearances by mere convention. In layer 7eC we can reason rationally, above
mere materialistic abstractions that in themselves remain materialistic ideas
and ways of thinking. So layers 9, 8, 7 of the natural mind are called natural
because they are built up in content, culture, and meaning by the things and
events in the physical world.
But layer 7eC is still a type of rational thinking that is limited by the
appearances and abstractions of the physical world of time and space. There is a
spiritual gulf between the spiritual mind and the natural mind that cannot be
crossed, even by correspondences. Hence it is that the Divine Incarnation was
necessary to create a new layer called the interior-natural mind (layer 7i)
which could also become our own rational, like layer 7eC is our own. But with
this new higher rational operation (layer 7iC), we are able to think and reason
without using any of the abstractions and appearances of the lower layers (7eC,
8c, 9C). With our interior-natural thinking (7iC) we are able to be conscious of
and comprehend higher meanings and truths that are contained several discrete
degrees within and above the literal meaning. Layer 7eC is external thinking and
reasoning, based on the natural-rational abstractions of the literal sense of
Sacred Scripture. Layer 7iC is interior thinking and reasoning, based on the
spiritual-rational correspondences of Sacred Scripture.
Our conscience in layer 7eA (external natural conscience), operates at a
level of power far below in magnitude than the level of our conscience in layer
7iA (interior-natural conscience). The external natural conscience has failed
the human race. All people are born with a conscience of good and justice, but
this fails to prevent them from abusive, cruel, and unjust actions. We know that
we are not supposed to be overweight, and even feel guilty about it, from the
weak conscience we have. But this conscience is not strong enough to keep us
from being overweight. Similarly, people who injure others, steal from them, lie
and discriminate against them, also have a weak conscience incapable of
preventing them from doing horrible and stupid things from which they and others
suffer. This is the “Fallen Conscience” of the human race.
But the Divine Incarnation Event created a new conscience in layer 7iA. This
new “will” receives the spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun, and retains it
without dissipating it by hating it. It is able to receive love and motivation
(7iA) that has spiritual correspondential power over the love and motivation in
the lower rational conscience (layer 7eA). An example is the requirement of the
popular and successful Alcoholics and Drugs Anonymous health movements, which
specify that the person must acknowledge a “higher power” from which one
receives the ability to overcome the addiction. This higher power is God acting
by correspondence in the person’s mind, activating the operation of layer 7iC.
The person becomes conscious of a higher meaning in life. Life is managed by a
higher power, and we are healed by this power when we acknowledge and accept the
spiritual-rational idea that God is active in our mind and in our lives,
managing all the details. This is spiritual sanity. The idea we had before that
acknowledgment, and its rational understanding, was that we manage our own lives
ourselves. And this is spiritual insanity.
Theistic psychology is the knowledge and reasoning we have in the
interior-natural mind (layer 7iC). This knowledge and reasoning is gathered by
applying the science of correspondences to Sacred Scripture, using the methods
prescribed in the Swedenborg Reports.
Meaning and consciousness are
subjective and collective experiences of truth and rationality issuing from
the Spiritual Sun in the form of spiritual light within which is spiritual heat.
The unity between these two living and eternal Divine substances enters creation
and existence outside of God. God is present in the created universe as this
Divine substance from Himself. The first creation outside of God is mental ether
or the mental world of eternity. This is where human minds are born, become
unique individual selves, and live forever.
No death exists in the mental world of
eternity.
What is mental ether?
It is the consciousness of truth, the meaning of truth, the understanding of
truth and reasoning with truth. This acknowledgment of truth and engaging
process with truth, creates meaning and consciousness. The mental world of
eternity is suddenly filled with light, the light of truth understood. All
things in the physical world are created from this process of acknowledging
truth and engaging truth by thinking from it and which gives us human
rationality. From Divine Truth and Rationality, to human truth and rationality,
to physical logic and mechanics – this is the descent of truth as it
exteriorizes into the created universe, forms it, directs and manages it. This
is God’s Divine Order by which all created
layers and objects, and events are managed, from the sub-atomic to the
galactic, and from the individual particular to the collective universal, or as
it is said in Sacred Scripture: “From firsts to lasts”:
TCR 63. (5) 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; and these two flow into each
thing and all things, and cause every subject to live and grow according to
the order implanted in it by creation. And as God, though not extended,
fills every extense in the universe, He is omnipresent. It has been shown
elsewhere that God is in all space without space, and in all time without
time, and consequently that the universe in its essence and order is the
plenitude of God; and this being so, by His omnipresence He perceives all
things, by His omniscience He provides all things, and by His omnipotence He
effects all things. From this it is clear that omnipresence, omniscience,
and omnipotence make one, or that one implies the others; and thus that they
cannot be separated. (TCR 63) (Swedenborg Reports)
The
Divine Psychologist has established the order of regeneration, manages it
directly in every human being, and reveals in Sacred Scripture the manner of our
cooperation in that process. Our willingness sets a limit to the progressive
steps of regeneration. The further we progress in character reformation (or
regeneration) the deeper the hellish loves that we are called upon to give up in
order to progress still further. There seems to be an endless series of hellish
loves in which we are intertwined. The process would fail in every case were it
not for the Divine Intervention and omnipotent management of every detail from
firsts to lasts, from our birth to our endless eternity. No evils are allowed to
come into existence in the mental world of eternity except those evils that God
manages and uses for good purposes for the benefit of the individual and the
collectivity of humankind. In this sense this is a perfect world and a perfect
creation. All evil events and happenings in both worlds, are used by God for
good, No single event can occur except as part of God’s perfect plan for the
good of all concerned.
God’s management of the universe is through the
descent and ascent of human consciousness
as embodied in neologisms. Layer 1 of the mental world of eternity is the
Spiritual Sun from which flow out Divine
Rational Neologisms in the form of spiritual light within which is spiritual
heat. These form and enter the subsequent layers, of which the first conscious
layer is formed by spiritual truth in the
form of celestial-rational neologisms in Sacred Scripture. From there human
consciousness and meaning of Divine Truth descends and forms the next layer in
the human mind. Here is the entire series of
descending consciousness of Divine Truth
in Sacred Scripture:
Layer 4: celestial-rational neologisms
Layer 5: spiritual-rational neologisms
Layer 6: spiritual-natural neologisms
Layer 7i: interior-natural neologisms
===========================
Layer 7e: external-rational neologisms
Layer 8: external-natural neologisms
Layer 9: corporeal-natural neologisms
Our regeneration proceeds from top to bottom (layer 7, 8, 9) after we
developed from bottom up (layers
9, 8, 7) –
see chart. It starts in young adulthood when we begin to think from
ourselves instead of from our socialization or
imbibed neologisms. Reaching young
adulthood required our psychological development from layer 9 (infancy), then to
layer 8 (childhood), then to layer 7e (adolescence and young adulthood). At this
point there is an inversion from ascending to descending. It starts with one’s
reformation, which is the state of acknowledgement of
Sacred Scripture as the source of all
knowledge and understanding of spiritual truth and regeneration. This is
layer 7i called the interior-natural layer. Layer 7e is the natural-rational
mind thinking with self-intelligence based on the knowledge of the physical
world. This natural-rational thinking cannot detect the actuality of the dual
universe, God, or
Heaven and
Hell in our mind. All spiritual knowledge is from spiritual truth,
and this is from Sacred Scripture alone.
God’s delivery mechanism of truth and reality is through the
neologisms contained in Sacred Scripture
at each mental layer.
Regeneration of
layers 7, 8, 9 (natural layers) proceed under the motivation and influence
of layers 6, 5, 4 (spiritual layers). The spiritual layers do not need
regeneration since they are formed by
Divine Neologisms at each layer. We are not conscious of the operation of
these spiritual layers (4, 5, 6) until after our resuscitation. Swedenborg’s
spiritual mission required that these
layers become conscious to him prior to his death, while he was still able
to write and publish the scientific Swedenborg Reports in this world. Among the
earliest generations on this planet everyone had this dual consciousness to some
extent.
TCR 63. (5) 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; and these two flow into each
thing and all things, and cause every subject to live and grow according to
the order implanted in it by creation. And as God, though not extended,
fills every extense in the universe, He is omnipresent. It has been shown
elsewhere that God is in all space without space, and in all time without
time, and consequently that the universe in its essence and order is the
plenitude of God; and this being so, by His omnipresence He perceives all
things, by His omniscience He provides all things, and by His omnipotence He
effects all things. From this it is clear that omnipresence, omniscience,
and omnipotence make one, or that one implies the others; and thus that they
cannot be separated.(TCR 63) (Swedenborg Reports)
Individual biography recapitulates
collective evolution. The phases of our individual regeneration replicates
the phases of the historical evolution of civilizations in history. The
mentality level of the Divine Literal Neologisms that make up Sacred Scripture
matches the mentality level of the people to whom that Sacred Scripture was
given – otherwise they would not receive the new teachings of how they are to
live. The mentality of the people who lived in ancient times four thousand years
ago was rudimentary and barbaric. The idea they had of God was a corporeal idea
in layer 9 (9C). God was understood as a powerful despot or king who punished
people who don’t perform the rituals they were prescribed to follow. God was
seen as loyal to that particular small nation and ethnic group. God not only
punished, but boasts repeatedly of how he is going to take revenge on those who
don’t honor His Glory. In terms of the commandment to love, they interpreted
this as meaning to love themselves as a people, and to exclude from this love
all others in the universe. They were willing to serve a God only if He made
them superior over all others. And they were willing to accept as reward only
that which was materialistic and belonging to this world only. Such were the
people of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, and such is the level of discourse
in the literal sense of that Testament.
Historically the three Testaments complete each other and form a perfect and
complete whole:
Old Testament Sacred Scripture (second millennium BC)
New Testament Sacred Scripture (first century AD)
Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture (18th century)
In the ascending phase of psychological development, we go through
layer 9 (infancy), layer 8 (childhood), layer 7 (adolescence to young
adulthood). This ascending developmental series corresponds to the historical
ascending level of consciousness and mentality:
civilization in the days of the Old Testament (the Age of Antiquity)
civilization in the days of the New Testament (the Age of philosophy and
pre-modern rationality), and
civilization in the days of the Swedenborg Reports (18th
century, the Age of Enlightenment and beginning of modern science).
In the descending phase of regeneration and spiritual development,
we go through layer 7 (young adulthood), layer 8 (adulthood), and layer 9 (old
age).
The regeneration of our layer 7e (natural-rational mind) is by means of the
Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture, in coordination with spiritual layer 6
(“good spirits in the First Heaven”). Layers 6 and 7i become conjoined, and this
brings our consciousness to a new level of spirituality.
The regeneration of our layer 8 (external-natural mind) is by means of the
New Testament Sacred Scripture, in coordination with spiritual layer 5 (“angelic
spirits in the Second Heaven”). Layers 5 and 8 become conjoined, and this brings
our consciousness to a still newer and higher level of spirituality.
The regeneration of our layer 9 (natural-corporeal mind) is by means of the
Old Testament Sacred Scripture, in coordination with spiritual layer 4 (“angels
in the Third Heaven”). Layers 4 and 9 become conjoined, and this brings our
consciousness to the highest and final level of spirituality. At this point we
lose our connection to the physical body through the dying and resuscitation
process, and continue life in our spiritual
layers (6, 5, 4) that constitute the heavens of the Grand Human.
The Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture is written in
natural-rational neologisms that are
understandable in our layer 7 (natural-rational mind). The New Testament Sacred
Scripture is written in natural-sensual
neologisms that are understandable in our layer 8 (natural-sensuous or
materialistic mind). The Old Testament Sacred Scripture is written in
natural-corporeal neologisms that are understandable in our layer 7
(natural-corporeal mind). The psychological characteristics and mentality for
each layer are
described
here.
The cumulative construction of neocharts provides you with snapshots of the
organic growth of your mind and its rational development. It is the chart of
your spiritual journey. A case in point is my neochart construction. As I kept
working on the project, sampling more of my articles, the number of entries kept
increasing from a few hundred to a few thousand. The document size was slowing
down the application’s ability to handle it and every command became painfully
slow, even typing! I had to devise new strategies of working on the document and
still end up with one easy list readers could see alphabetized, numbered, and
linked. I kept a back up copy regularly so now I am able to see how the neochart
was changing in identity over time. Here is an example of how the
‘neochart developer-record’ (=a record about the developer of a neochart),
produces a poetic picture of the evolution in consciousness in the spiritual
landscape of the chart developer. The first analysis is a collection of sentence
neos in the chart, arranged in successive days over time.
Neologisms are born in the minds of human beings. They are our mental
children, immortal, indestructible, existing forever in the mental world of
eternity. Neos are constructed out of rational ether that forms the expanse of
the mental world of humanity. There is only one mental world and every person is
born into it, and remains in it forever. Your mental world is my mental world is
every one’s mental world. Mental ether is created as an expanse around the
Spiritual Sun which forms its center and its highest point. This creation is
prior to time which does not exist in this spiritual expanse in which our
feelings, thoughts, and sensations exist and have their source of life. The
result of this activity of our mental organs is experienced by each person as
consciousness of a unique self (or ‘the me that I am’). This is what is called human “life.” The
consciousness of self is life. It is our life, each of us immortal humans. We
have it forever – self and life. This life is the life of our neos.
If we stop producing neos we cease to have life. We are then in a mental
zone called death. Our consciousness experiences darkness, ignorance, fear,
stupidity, insanity, suffering, a being enslaved to animal like lusts devoid of
humanity, rationality, compassion, knowledge. Death is also called hell. No neos
are produced in hell. The mental layer where hell operates in every human mind
is devoid of neo production, which belongs to life and sanity. Mental children
are stillborn in hell. Infernal ideas in hell are anti-neotic, contrary to
inventiveness, which is from the higher
layers of the mental world called heaven.
Only love in the heavenly layers of our mind is capable of bringing
neo-babies into eternity. A heavenly love, like the love of doing things that
are useful, or the love of being sincere and truthful, seeks out a rational
justification or idea with which that love can conjoin itself as a synergistic
functioning unit. The good love is a reception in the affective organ of the
spiritual heat inflowing from the Spiritual Sun in the midst of the mental
world. Every individual’s mind is exposed to the same Spiritual Sun in eternity.
The same spiritual heat inflows into every individual’s affective organ, but is
received uniquely according to the individual’s innate and developing uniqueness
to eternity. Hence it is that the affective operation from the reception of
spiritual heat creates a unique love, a unique self, along with unique
inventiveness, and finally unique neos.
The neo-baby is born from the marriage between the love in the affective
organ and the understanding in the cognitive organ, that is, the marriage
between good and truth. This is called the spiritual marriage in the Swedenborg
Reports. It is the basis for regeneration and salvation, consequently our
ability to live in our heavenly
layers in eternity. The spiritual marriage is the synergistic conjunction
between our will, which consists of our loves (affective organ), and our
understanding, which consists of our awareness of rational things (cognitive
organ). Love marries understanding and begets a neo. The neo is born in our
sensorimotor organ. This is the closest that our mind gets to the physical world
where our physical body is located. The sensorimotor layer of the corporeal mind
(layer 9S) is adjacent to the physical body (layer 12), with the spiritual body
(layer 10) and the limbus (layer 11) intervening between the mental and the
physical, the eternal and the temporal.
Neos in the sensorimotor layer of the corporeal mind (layer 9S) make an
appearance in the concrete physical world (layer 12) through language that is
spoken, heard, or written by the physical body. The neo lives within the meaning
of the verbal expression. The Swedenborg Reports show that the neos of Divine
Speech exist within every verbal expression in Sacred Scripture. They are lined
up in a rational series or arrangement like the DNA of the cells of the physical
body. The spiritual DNA series of every Divine neo is available to us by
extraction from Sacred Scripture, using the method of correspondences that is
revealed in the Swedenborg Reports.
Neo-extraction methodology involves the following:
-
Studying the laws of correspondences revealed in the Swedenborg Reports
-
Organizing them into a scientific account called “doctrine of truth from
Sacred Scripture”
-
Applying this doctrine to our daily willing and thinking by undergoing
spiritual combat through temptations, which we face by means of our
understanding of the doctrine of truth and our
reliance on God even as we fight as-if
our self, consequently with effort, anxiety, and mental pain.
This three-step process is repeated every day, every hour of our
life on earth, until at death, we reach the point of full regeneration of
character. When we resuscitate a few hours later, we have our regenerated loves
which make it possible for us to live in them, and they exist at the heavenly
layers of human existence and consciousness. Everyone lives in their loves. If
these loves are evil loves, sourced in the Grand Monster layers of the mind,
then they live in hell. But in heaven, if these loves are sourced in the Grand
Human, where only good loves exist.
Step 3 above is the spiritual marriage. It is the operation of a heavenly
love – opposing evil traits in our mind, with a rational idea or plan – doctrine
of truth from Sacred Scripture. The desire and intention to oppose our evil
traits is a love in our will (affective organ). This love is received there from
the spiritual heat inflowing. This love by itself cannot bring forth results in
the sensorimotor behavior. Love gets pregnant with an idea and a plan. The
sensorimotor executes the plan from the love. Understanding of truth, or
rationality, has no ability to bring forth a single neo. It is the love of using
that understanding that brings forth the neo. We can know truth, but it will
makes us free only if we live the truth, and this requires loving the truth.
Without love, truth is cold and infertile. Dead. Love appears as truth. The love
that is implanted in truth gives it life. Truth applied to our willing and
thinking is hot from love. Truth not applied, is cold and dead, without power or
life. Truth separated is not genuine truth but appears as truth under certain
loves that are not heavenly. The love of self for the sake of self, or the love
of greed, etc., can engender the effort of gathering truths and thinking
intelligently and adaptively. But in the end, self and greed only lead to
falsified truths, insanity, and a non-human life of death in the hell zones of
eternity.
The Swedenborg Reports reveal that during the life of the first generations
of people on this earth there was no evil. There was a potential of evil in the
mental world of eternity in layers 9, 8, and 7. In other words God creates the
natural mind to be able to operate in a manner that is contrary to the heavenly
order of good and truth which inflows into the spiritual mind of every person
since birth. The spiritual substance of good, in the form of spiritual heat
enters the affective organ of the spiritual mind (layers 4A, 5A, 6A), and the
spiritual substance of truth, in the form of spiritual light enters the
cognitive organ of every human being (layers
4C, 5C, 6C). Those who have disconnected from the physical body and have passed
into resuscitation, perceive this influx directly since their conscious
awareness of life is no longer in the natural mind (layers 9, 8, 7).
After resuscitation into the mental world of eternity, the natural
layers of the mind are disconnected from our conscious awareness, and
replacing that life is the new immortal life of the spiritual mind. The loves
and understandings we then have determine the nature of our consequent external
sensorimotor life. During the early generations all the varieties of love people
experienced on this earth in the conscious natural mind (layers
9, 8, 7), were in correspondence with the varieties of love that inflow into the
spiritual mind from the Spiritual Sun in the mental layers of eternity (layers
4, 5, 6). Everything in nature was friendly to human beings because it was a
garden paradise in the order of heavenly gardens and paradises that are
spiritual and mental, thus eternal and truly real.
God created the operation of devolution in the natural mind as a potential.
Why? Why not have a permanent heaven on earth, as the generations multiply, pass
on, and populate the Grand Human of eternal conjugial heavens. This is God’s
Divine purpose revealed in Sacred Scripture. In the Swedenborg Reports God
explains, through the mind of Swedenborg, why He created the devolution
potential in the natural mind. God compares the human race to a growing vine, or
its branches. Sometimes God compares a human being to a tree. As our modern mind
knows from science, all organic species have a built in capacity and endeavor to
reproduce themselves. What is less generally known is the cause of this process
of reproduction and transmission of inherited characteristics in physical
bio-organisms and species.
The Swedenborg Reports expand our scientific understanding of the process of
generational transmission or inheritance. The natural process of inheritance of
traits in the physical world, is a representative model of the original process
of inheritance of traits in the mental world of eternity where we have our
spiritual body from birth onward. What is being transmitted from parent to
offspring in the mental world of eternity where we live our conscious and
unconscious lives?
Loves are being transmitted and inherited.
The loves that the parents have are reproduced in the mental genes of each
unique soul and mind. The mental
layers of the parents are reproduced in the mental layers of the offspring.
What the parents and grandparents and great grand parents love, that will also
be loved by the next generation. Loves are inherited. The spiritual body at our
birth houses the three mental systems of our life – affective (feelings,
intentions), cognitive (thoughts, imagination), and sensorimotor (outside world
interactions). Each mental system is an organic entity that is constructed out
of the fibers of substances flowing in from the Spiritual Sun. These substances
of good (heat) and truth (light) are living, immortal, and Divine.
Loves are affective operations with these living Divine substances. God is
“within us” in actual organic sense since these substances of the Spiritual Sun
are His Own Loves and Truths. God creates the universe by means of these
substances that are His Own. There is nothing else out of which anything can be
created (certainly not out of nothing). Everything that exists comes from
something prior to itself, as discussed in the Swedenborg Reports. God alone,
and His Own Eternal Substances, are prior to existence and belong to Being,
which is eternal and infinite, having no beginning. God’s Being, in the form of
the Spiritual Sun, makes up the platform of existence, which includes eternity
and time. This is the meaning of “God is within us.”
Rationality sees that God’s substances cannot mix with created objects or
minds. Infinite substances cannot mix with finite objects. Hence this platform
that is the Being for existence is within existence, not mixed up with
existence. Existence and Being are forever separated and can never be continuous
with each other. Being must remain separate for existence to exist. This
separation is called distinct degrees. The Divine and the created are in
separate degrees, When the Divine is within the created it is called a
relationship of correspondence. The Being is the original and real, while the
existing is an image of it in an altogether separate and lower construction.
The mental world of eternity is the first organic existence on the exterior
and beneath the Spiritual Sun. There are six
layers for the spiritual and natural minds, three each. The outermost layer
of existence is 12, which is the physical body and the natural world that
supports it. The closest layer to the order of the Spiritual Sun is layer 4 in
the mental world of eternity. Every individual is born with this layer in the
mind. This is the highest potential for created human beings. It is called the
Third Heaven in the Swedenborg Reports.
In the original generations, spiritual love and truth flowed into layer 4,
then successively into
layers 5 through 9, which is the corporeal mind and consciousness that is
formed from the sensations of the physical body. The entire chain of discrete
layers of correspondences remained in the order of heaven (layer 4) that was
formed by God through the Spiritual Sun as His Own Loves and Truths. Physical
earth was a paradise, a heaven on earth, an earth that models the heavenly
order, the heavenly loves, which model God’s Divine Human Loves.
People lived in families in harmony with nature and themselves. There was no
guile, no desire to lie or possess the goods of others. There was loyalty in
marriage and friendship. There was sincerity in all communication. This heavenly
order in the natural mind could not be achieved by imposition through God’s
Omnipotence. The loves that each human baby inherited were not the individual’s
own loves. They were merely present to the individual. Each love had to be made
one’s own before the person could become a mature adult ready for eternity in
the spiritual mind. To achieve this process of individual ownership of loves
after they’ve been inherited, God faces the person with a choice of accepting
and loving that love, or not loving it, and leaving it to sink into the silent
background.
To accept and love an inherited love we must consummate it as a habit. This
makes that love our own forever. When we are resuscitated this love will be with
us in our consciousness and will be active in determining the quality and nature
of our continuing life. Every love we acquire by practice remains forever as a
portion of the mental world attached to us, forming us, determining who we then
are.
This choice-making procedure cannot be actualized in human beings without
giving them a comparison between heavenly loves and infernal loves, that is,
loves that are in the heavenly order vs. loves that are the opposite of the
heavenly order.
The capacity to choose the opposite of good is the origin of evil in the
human mind.
For instance, among the numberless loves we inherit is the enjoyment of
winning. God sets up events in each person’s daily biography which are occasions
for the person to experience the joy of winning. It becomes our own love as we
strive to acquire the various skills needed for winning and succeeding. As we
acquire this love we also acquire many of its sub-loves or affections. For
instance, we acquire skills of deceit to help us win and succeed, and we enjoy
these insincerities and manipulations when they are successful. God activates
our conscience to indicate to us that these side-loves are not compatible with
heavenly loves. And now we have a moral and spiritual choice.
We discover from experience (arranged and managed by God), that we have
loves that are contrary to heavenly loves. Instruction from Sacred Scripture
informs us that these un-heavenly loves are called hellish loves, and that we
must voluntarily choose to reject them, even though we enjoy them intensely.
This is difficult to do, so God provides assistance at every step of the
process. It is called the process of regeneration. This involves our inherited
loves and all the sub-loves that we have made our own by practicing them and
allowing ourselves to enjoy them, to make them a part of our character forever.
Regeneration is the long process of daily choices that God manages to bring us
in order to allow us to consciously reject the inherited enjoyments that are
contrary to heavenly order.
As we grow and mature, we make more choices of our own. If our choices are
progressively towards the hellish order, our natural mind becomes more and more
a model of hell. What we enjoy is hellish, like the fun of vandalizing, the
enjoyment of getting away with deceiving or stealing, the lust of indecency, the
disdain of others in comparison to self, etc. These hellish enjoyments are the
opposite of heavenly enjoyments, such as the desire to be useful to others, the
zeal of honesty, the love of truth, the humility of self in comparison to
others, etc.
The purpose of life on earth is to acquire heavenly loves which form our
experience in eternity. These can be acquired only by voluntary choice and
regular practice. Hence the potential for evil must be created in the human mind
to permit us to grow into true human beings. The Swedenborg Reports define what
is the true human mind, namely, to choose good from the understanding of truth.
We learn truth from Sacred Scripture and conscience, and this truth teaches that
we ought to choose good in order to fulfill our potential for being true humans.
When we choose what is contrary to good, the truth in our understanding
becomes falsified truth. This falsified truth now justifies the choice of what
is contrary to good. When this justification in the cognitive organ marries the
enjoyment of what is contrary to good in the affective organ, the infernal
marriage takes place, and the result of it, is the sensorimotor hells in the
natural mind.
Likewise, when we use truth to justify our choice for good, we create the
spiritual marriage in our mind, and this establishes a heavenly order in our
natural mind. We then love and enjoy what is good, love and enjoy willing,
thinking and doing what is good. We
abhor what is contrary and threatening to heavenly loves. We understand that the
wages of sin is death. After resuscitation we can no longer possess both
heavenly and hellish traits in our conscious mind. God manages to embroil us in
events that are occasions for expressing our ruling love and its chief
sub-loves. They come out from behind. These loves now demand the attention of
the cognitive organ’s understanding, its ability to manufacture falsified truths
and principles that acknowledge these loves as good.
With this development, the mental world goes topsy turvy. What is true is
turned into falsification of truth. What is irrational is turned into the false
appearance of reasoning. Now heaven is despised, and feared. Swedenborg was able
to do an experiment in which some heavenly neos were written on a piece of paper
in layer 4 of the mental world of eternity. By Divine Providence and Management,
the truths written on the paper reappeared in appropriate correspondences at
each layer as it appeared to descend the layers of the human mind. The
appearance of a representative paper in the zone of resuscitation was noted by
some people who were in that mental state, with whom Swedenborg was having a
discussion.
These people were normally in their Grand Monster states called the hells,
but when there is a purpose for it, they are permitted by God’s management
procedures to appear in the zone of resuscitation. This is the mental state we
all have when we are resuscitated. Our conscious awareness is then in a divided
state. This is possible only in external states (layers
9, 8, 7e). This is our natural mind while we are conscious with it here on
earth. When we are awakened by the resuscitation process, which takes about 30
hours from death, we are able to recognize our self as the same person who was
conscious on earth. This provides a continuity of life, and a progressive
introduction into the consciousness of our spiritual mind, which had remained
unconscious until then.
The people from the Grand Monster, now in the resuscitation zone, were shown
the piece paper on which was written spiritual truths expressed in natural mind
correspondences. They were asked to read what was written on the paper. And what
they saw and read was the precise opposite of the assertion written down. This
provided evidence that the natural layers of the mind have the capability to
invert truths and to produce clever and ingenious reasoning that confirms the
reality of the inversion.
Take for instance the truth that God’s omnipotence must express itself in
both general and in particular, so that there is no detail about anything that
is not managed by God. This includes therefore the details of our thinking.
People are willing to accept the general idea that God is omnipotent, but not
the specific idea that God manages our thoughts. They think and say: God doesn’t
manage our thoughts because that’s our business. Or that God doesn’t manage the
blood corpuscles movements in our arteries because those obey the natural laws
that God put in place at creation.
People also say that God sometimes cannot save someone from suffering or
death because there is evil in this world that God has not yet vanquished. These
statements or reasonings are falsifications of the simple rational truth that
God is Omnipotent. In the Swedenborg Reports rational explanations are given
regarding how God’s Omnipotence insures that only those events or thoughts can
occur for which God gives permission, and only those are allowed which God turns
into the spiritual and eternal benefit of all involved. God’s Omnipotence
maintains a perfect world, both natural and mental (or spiritual).
For every heavenly neo, there is a corresponding un-neo. The loves of those
who live in the Grand Monster are exact opposites of the loves with the people
in the Grand Human. The reality of heavenly life is turned into the un-reality
of hellish life. Heavenly neos create a sensorimotor environment and appearance
of heavenly beauty, grandeur, and peace. The un-neos of the hell
layers create a sensorimotor environment and appearance of hostility,
insanity, and suffering. The insanity and ferocity of loves in that state of
mind immerses the consciousness in dreadful fantasies that are induced on each
other, and lived like never ending nightmares. All spiritual light and heat, or
truth and love, that inflow into the spiritual layers of the mind in these
people, is turned into its exact opposite love and meaning of truth when the
inflow reaches their natural mind in its descent of correspondences across
successive layers.
To continue existing in the Grand Monster states of the mind people there
have to continue to exert effort in inverting every heavenly neo that comes
their way in conscious awareness. Swedenborg visited those awful mental states
and talked to the people who exist there permanently. They are each active in
the group fantasy life of insanity. The variety of nightmares they live is
astounding, captured in essence in the book
Heaven and
Hell (1758).
Prior to resuscitation, while our natural mind is filled with the content
and events of the physical world, we are a mixed bag. Our natural mind
consciousness is filled with both neos from our heavenly loves that are sourced
in the Grand Human, as well as un-neos from our hellish loves that are sourced
in the Grand Monster. Self-observation on your daily round of activities will
demonstrate this to you. One moment you smile at your roommate, and a few
moments later, having heard or seen something you don’t like, your face takes on
a stern appearance and there is vengeance and retaliation in your voice and
actions. Some time later you smile again and are filled with the desire to be
friendly and useful. An hour later as you drive home you denigrate a motorist
for being in your way. You feel impatient to get home. You take risks in the way
you drive, allowing yourself to be distracted, posing a threat to innocent
others. You think about someone you don’t like and you enjoy the fantasies of
their demise and suffering. You get home and you start cooking for others who
will soon arrive. You have a love for preparing dishes in the way the others
enjoy and prefer. You want to satisfy them. You get mad at a stranger on the
phone who is doing a survey. You retaliate for being disturbed, attempting to
make the person feel bad before you hang up. Before bed, you study Sacred
Scripture and pray to God to give you happiness and success.
You can adapt his generalized scenario to your own daily round. Do some
self-witnessing. Make a record of the number of times a day your mind is in a
heavenly love, and when in a hellish love. There is no need to be exhaustive.
Just sample the highlights. You will then see the evidence for the spiritual
principle that we oscillate between heaven and hell on any normal day of our
life on earth. Some people’s heaven-hell oscillation is slow, remaining in one
or the other for periods of time, while other people alternate quickly between
heavenly and hellish loves.
This oscillation ceases at our second death when we enter either the Grand
Human or the Grand Monster, and become fully and completely integrated in one of
the societies there, and this forever. Individual thinking then resembles group
thinking, and individual feeling and intention is actually a group feeling and
intention. This is because the spiritual body in mental ether does not offer the
same resistance as the physical body in the natural world. People living in a
specific spiritual society act together as a mental unit, or generalized other
that Swedenborg calls “subject spirit.” He observed on his mental visits to the
Grand Human and Grand Monster, that it is common for a spiritual society to
speak and intend as one group mind, speaking through one of them whom they
appoint as the subject spirit. So when Swedenborg talked to one individual in
that society, others, and perhaps all the others, were also present in the
exchange, though they could not be seen.
These phenomena reveal the nature of our life after resuscitation into the
mental world of eternity, which is quite different than the nature of our life
on earth. Our life here serves to give us opportunities for acquiring heavenly
loves, such as exist with those who exist in the Grand Human societies (layers
6, 5, 4). God manages these opportunities, creating the occasions in which we
can act from the marriage in our mind of truth and good inflowing from God
through the Spiritual Sun of the mental world of eternity in which we are born
and in which we remain forever after. Consequently, it is absolutely necessary
that we be a mixed bag in our character here on earth, loving both good and
corrupted good, and thinking both truths and falsified truths.
This co-mingling spiritual soup in our mind establishes the freedom to
choose loves. Our eternal destiny is based on the quality of these chosen loves.
The loves that are sourced in the Grand Monster betake us there, while the loves
that are sourced in the Grand Human, betakes us there. We are our loves, and we
live where those loves exist. Falsified cognitive neos create an imaginary
un-reality that nurtures and satisfies corrupted affective neos. The two form an
infernal marriage that spews out un-neo babies of sensorimotor illusions and
delusions which immerse their consciousness in un-satisfiable lust, stupefying
fear, un-imaginable suffering, sub-human stupidity, and furious hatred of
everything and everyone. In short, the un-reality of un-neos is a sub-human
mental state.
Upon resuscitation we are in a mental state called the resuscitation zone.
Mental physiology then takes its inevitable course. The person’s ruling love
must take total charge of the affective organ. The mixture of heavenly and
hellish loves in our natural mind must now be undone. No one can enter their
permanent mental state in the Grand Human or the Grand Monster without first
eliminating the loves that are incompatible. Swedenborg was given to observe
what happens when people in the resuscitation zone are still unclear about which
ruling love they have grown in themselves over the years of life on earth. He
accompanied a group of them who resuscitated together on account of some
disaster they were in on earth. They were persuaded of the idea that they
deserved to go to heaven on account of their faithful adherence to the rituals
of their religion.
They were taken to one of the societies in the Grand Human, using the
heavenly loves they possessed. But as soon as they had arrived into that mental
state within themselves, they became very disturbed and acted with great
agitation, complaining that they saw nothing, heard nothing, experienced
nothing, except this inner pain that felt like they were dying all over again.
They were then brought back into their former mental state they had in the
resuscitation zone, where they felt completely revived and ready to continue
their journey to the second death. Eventually they were integrated into one of
the societies of the Grand Monster, where they could feel at home and on a
familiar territory of loves.
This event demonstrates that the mental states in the Grand Human and Grand
Monster are purified from any mixture. This purification process is
physiological. Every mind contains two ruling loves, each with their own army of
compatible and assisting administrative sub-loves. All loves in the mental world
of humanity fall into two categories, as for instance:
·
the
love of self for the sake of self alone vs. the love of self for the sake of
others as well as self
·
the
love of things for the sake of self alone vs. the love of things for the
sake of others as well as self
·
the
love of ruling over others for the sake of self alone vs. the love of ruling
over others for the sake of others as well as self
These three sets of opposite loves are the chief loves Swedenborg
encountered in the afterlife of eternity. Think of something you did in the past
hour that you loved to do and felt its satisfaction or enjoyment. For instance,
you thought about phoning your friend, and after doing it you felt satisfied.
Some love got you to think about calling, calling, and finishing the
conversation. What was this love? It could have been the love of conjoining
mentally with the person you called. Or, it could have been the hatred of that
person, and the calling allowed you to express your retaliation and punishment.
The satisfaction of punishing and retaliating is a love for the sake of self
alone, hence a hellish love sourced in the Grand Monster. Or perhaps you called
to give the person some information you knew they would want, information that
might help the person in their effort to get a job or succeed in a useful
project. This is a love for the sake of others as well as self, hence a heavenly
love sourced in the Grand Human.
The love of something for the sake of self alone produces un-neos with which
that infernal love can produce a hellish sensorimotor environment in which to
enjoy that infernal love. The love of something for the sake of others as well
as self, produces genuine rational neos with which that heavenly love can
produce a heavenly sensorimotor environment in which to enjoy that heavenly
love. Every love in the affective organ produces its own neos in the cognitive
organ, with which to be conjoined as in a marriage, and thereby engender the neo
world around the person who is the subject of that love. This exterior world of
mental appearances can be shared with others who have this love within them. In
this way, a group of people in the mental world form a spiritual society in
which the outward world is shared in common. This outward world exists in the
sensorimotor organ or system and is projected by representatives in the social
environment, creating the subjective experiences of being in a “city” or
attending a “conference” or singing in a choir, etc. There are multiple
activities going on in every spiritual society that Swedenborg visited. The
continuity of loves maintains the continuity of neos, which maintain the outward
appearances of eternal life. Hence it is that after our second death our
position in a spiritual society remains forever. It is our ruling love that
keeps us there in eternity. Every love is eternal because it is constructed out
of the eternal substances of the Spiritual Sun.
You can now see that the switchover from the reality of neos to the
un-reality of un-neos begins at resuscitation and is complete at our second
death. Swedenborg notes that this is a relatively short period, when viewed
through his earth consciousness. He was a dual citizen of both worlds for 27
years according to his earth life, so that he was able to observe that most
people are inducted into either the Grand Human or Grand Monster within a few
days, weeks, or months, of earth time, depending on individual make up. It made
sense for Swedenborg to estimate things in terms of time, but for the people
going through the process there was no impression of time since this belongs
only to the physical body, which is left behind as inert.
What determines the quality of our ruling love at our second death?
It is the process of regeneration prior to resuscitation that allows us to
replace our inherited enjoyment of hellish loves. This process requires that we
acknowledge God, study Sacred Scripture for the knowledge of what is good and
evil, and then using this knowledge of truth to battle against our selfish loves
by which we desire to own things and do things for our sake alone. Battling the
temptations that God brings into our mind every day is the only way of acquiring
heavenly loves as our own. This process takes the entire lifetime and God bring
a series of events and temptations systematically designed by Him to face our
loves for the sake of self alone, to battle against them by means of truths, and
to compel ourselves to act as if from the love of others as well as self.
Eventually this heavenly love will become our own genuine love so that we become
ready to undergo resuscitation process of purification, and finally, the process
of physiological induction into the organs of the Grand Human or Grand Monster.
The Grand Human societies are in layers 6, 5, 4 of the spiritual mind, while
the Grand Monster societies are in layers 9, 8, 7 of the natural mind. While we
are on earth the spiritual
layers are unconscious but operational, influencing by correspondence what
goes on in the natural layers. The natural layers are a mixed bag, as discussed
above, containing heavenly and hellish loves. Regeneration is a physiological
process that must take place prior to resuscitation, while we are still filled
with loves of both kinds, and God keeps us in a balance between the two. This
balance is necessary for the free exercise of our choices for type of love. When
we undergo regeneration, our spiritual layers are readied for conscious
operation immediately after resuscitation. Those who are regenerated prior to
resuscitation, can then after resuscitation, function in the spiritual mind, in
which are the layers of the Grand Human. But those who are not regenerated prior
to resuscitation do not have their spiritual mind operational after
resuscitation. Consequently, people have to make do with an existence in the
natural mind.
This is contrary to the order of creation, and contrary to the order of
mental ether around the Spiritual Sun. As a result, the subjective life of the
person in eternity is stuck in the natural mind. These
layers (9, 8, 7) now become corrupted as the heavenly loves are removed from
them in the purification process prior to the second death. The person becomes a
mere caricature of their former self. The Grand Monster societies are all
located in these corrupted natural layers. The people who are in that mental
state are insane in a rational world of truth and good. They change truth into
falsity and good into evil. What they believe to be reality, is unreality. All
their thoughts are un-neos, falsified from the real neos, to which they hang on
as truth and as reality. Everything in their sensorimotor world is turned upside
down.
Those who are in the Grand Monster societies become the source of un-neos
for the natural mind of people on the numberless earths in the physical
universe. Their function is to provide the continuity of inherited evil
enjoyments in the minds of people on earth, so that these may provide a mental
balance with the neos of the people who are in the Grand Human societies. In
this way the mind of every individual on the earths is connected to the minds of
people in eternity, in both chambers.
The entire human race is thus kept together by God in one perfectly
functioning synergistic entity.
In the Swedenborg Reports God reveals a new scientific theory about how
human being communicate. Currently, scientists believe that when we communicate,
meaning is being transmitted from one person to another. For example, when I say
to my students gathered in a class room, “Today there will be three students
giving their oral presentations.” The speech act I uttered in the context of our
semester long course, conveys a specific message through its meaning. Now the
students know some things they didn’t know before I made the announcement. They
understood the meaning of my speech act. They each can make the same predictions
of the future of that day’s class. Usually, after the second oral presentation,
they start their team meetings, but today, they know from the meaning of my
message, that there will then be a third student giving an oral presentation.
Scientists who study how people talk and exchange meanings, usually explain
that the meaning of a communicative act is analyzed and fixed by cognitive
operations or process. First we isolate the message from its background of
sounds and then analyze the words and their arrangement by linguistic skills we
learn in childhood.
Heavenly loves are living mental substances (spiritual heat) which strive to
be fulfilled by what is outside of themselves and separate from them.
·
The
fulfillment of each unique heavenly love is to see itself in another human
being.
·
Love
(A) perceives through the senses (S) what is usable for its fulfillment, and
sharpens their power (S) of detecting or locating what is usable by that
love to fulfill itself.
·
Love
directs cognitive operations (C) to formulate a plan or method of attaining
its fulfillment.
·
Heavenly love is fulfilled when it can see its own good in another person,
by recognizing the good of that love when it appears in the other person.
Every love is unique, possessing
some unique feature of good, some unique virtue or quality.
Divine Love in the form of spiritual heat, is within every unique heavenly
love, and causes that heavenly love to appear in human beings, that is, to be
received in the affective organ.
Now the Divine Love is within the heavenly love that a human being can feel
or be motivated by. The heavenly loves possessed by human beings are dead
without the Divine Love within them, which is what is its life. The Divine Love
cannot be divided into pieces of itself. In the Divine Love infinite unique
loves exist as one Divine Love. When the Divine Love is received in the
affective organ of an individual, all of the Divine Love is within each of the
heavenly loves the individual may possess. We may possess numerous heavenly
loves, and in each of them the Divine Love is present in full. This is what it
means that the Divine cannot be divided.
The Divine Love inflows into the affective organ successively for each of
its six discrete
layers (4 down to 9). The Divine Love as it inflows into humanity, takes on
a fourth covering in layer 4A, called the celestial-rational loves. It then
takes additional covering in layer 5A (spiritual-rational loves), and layer 6A
(spiritual-natural loves). This completes the “descent” of Divine Love into the
layers of the spiritual mind. There is no corruption of the Divine Love, but
only adaptation in the variety of human genius created by God. Now the Divine
Love, covered over with 6 mental layers, takes on a seventh mental covering as
it crosses into the natural mind. Starting with this natural layer (7), the
Divine Love creates for the first time the Divine Law of Permissions, and
continues this Law into covering 8, and finally into covering 9, which is the
corporeal mind whose loves (9A) fulfill themselves in the physical world. Layer
8 loves (8A) fulfill themselves in the operations of the operations of the
cognitive organ, while layer 7 loves (7A) find their fulfillment in the
operations of the affective organ.
The Divine Law of Permissions allows the creation of mental zones in the
natural mind where the Grand Monster societies can form and continue their
immortal existence. This is our inherited anatomical connection to the hells.
God creates the mental world of eternity with facilities to serve both the Grand
Human heavens, and the Grand Monster hells. Both types of loves exist in the
human mind from birth. Heavenly loves in the natural mind represent and
correspond the uncorrupted layers of our spiritual mind. These heavenly loves in
our natural mind allow the spiritual mind to grow and be serviceable for us at
our resuscitation. We can acquire a heavenly love as our very own only when we
first banish from our mind the hellish loves that correspond to it in its
opposite. God brings us to events which give us an opportunity to reject the
contrary love from hell. In the Swedenborg Reports this is called “shunning
evils as sins.” With each episode, God makes sure that we are not tempted beyond
our ability or readiness to resist. Resisting a temptation as-if of our own will
power, allows God to remove that evil love and neutralize it so it never comes
to haunt us again.
Creating facilities for the hells in the natural mind allows God to present
us with temptations. Without spiritual temptations we would never be able to
perceive that we are inverted, and what we call good is actually taking us to
hell, and what God calls good is what can take us to heaven, we call evil. The
presence of evil in the natural
layers of the mind is allowed by the Law of Permissions in order to fulfill
the Divine Love which wants to give the good of eternal conjugial happiness to
every human being. Hell serves the Divine Love by providing a balance in the
natural mind between good and evil traits. Only if we know both can we choose
from our own love. What we choose from our own love, remains forever as ours.
God provides the process of regeneration for every individual on earth
through the desire to improve and to be good. This desire is aroused in each
person through the inflow of spiritual heat. As the individual is regenerating
through resisting temptations, the inherited and acquired connections to the
Grand Monster societies in the natural mind, are gradually and progressively
eliminated or silenced. More and more that individual’s life on earth becomes a
representative of the spiritual mind (or heaven). At death and resuscitation,
the person’s natural mind is quickly silenced and embalmed, and the person
continues eternal life in the Grand Human, which is the spiritual mind. But if
the person resists regeneration by killing the implanted love of becoming good,
the connection to the Grand Human in the spiritual mind, is cut or embalmed.
After resuscitation the person lives in the natural mind, which is now one with
the Grand Monster.
What is a neo?
Besides being the short form for neologism, the word neo refers to a mental
operation or state of one individual that is being induced upon another
individual.
Ordinarily the word communication, or to communicate, refers to one person
constructing a message that carries some meaning, and attaching it to a
conventional sensorimotor performance, or signal, in the sphere of another
person, who is in a position of detecting, or noticing it, and of reacting to it
by performing a conventional sensorimotor response to which the person attached
some meaning. The two people ordinarily alternate turns in performing for each
other. Ethnomethodologists (Sacks, Shegloff, Sudnow, come to mind), have studied
the alternating patterns of conversationalists when there are more than two
participants, and the sequence of mutual performances reflect the affective neo
ball game that is going on, as well as reflecting the cognitive (or meaning of
the message).
Ethnomethodologists have not yet, as far as I know, discussed the idea that
conversational interaction involves the induction of mental states on each
other. That’s what a neo does. Consider as an instance, the actuality of two
people riding in a car, and the driver and passenger are talking to each other.
From the materialistic plane of analysis (layer 8C) we can say that the two
conversationalists are in a car traveling together across streets and roads. But
from the rational plane of analysis (layer 7C) we can see that the two people
are not actually in a car traveling across city streets, which we can see is an
appearance that pictures or represents, the real e vent that is going on with
the people, namely, that they are having a mental state exchange, taking turns
inducing upon each other, some particular mental state they select for the
occasion.
This exchange of mental states proceeds by affective induction, which then
engenders a cognitive construction that corresponds to it, and unites with it,
to produce the performative sensorimotor neo that embodies the mental state. The
alternating turn taking of neo selection is the basis of community life.
Consider for instance the turn taking rituals you participated in today. You
enter a room and say “Hi” -- or one of the many other existing formulaic
expressions that are used in your group when entering a room. Performing “Hi”
through your sensorimotor determination, is the outward conventional (agreed
upon and practiced) signal that packs the affective neo. That’s what a
performance does in a social exchange. A conventionalized sensorimotor
performance is the interactional occasion, or detectable event, that induces a
new mental state in the other conversationalist. Hence the performance is called
a neo, which makes its appearance as the verbalization of “Hi” along with its
tone, facial configuration, and gestures (or paralinguistic features).
Note that a neo is a full service transactional device. It involves the
other person in a mental wrap around the entire spiritual body and changes the
state in all three of its organic systems – affective, cognitive, and
sensorimotor. Neos are social procedures people use for inducing mental states
on each other.
Various neo-production practices exist in each spiritual society. Neo
selection when you walk into a room is an open ended set since the ability of
the other to detect and receive neos has no specifiable limits. For example,
instead of walking into the room and performing a formulaic greeting, you can
walk in backward, carrying a big bag, with your key chain in your mouth, and
mouthing an indistinct sound as you widen your eyes big, and hurry across the
room. You can be a stage director and imagine any number of ways someone might
be able to perform a greeting neo while entering a room. By selecting a
particular sensorimotor neo to perform in a social event, you are fulfilling a
particular love you have. In other words, your affective organ is in a
particular state of reward or consummation, when you experience the fulfillment
of that love, as you go through with the performance of the particular neo you
selected.
The other person who is the recipient or beneficiary of your performative
neo, perceives the unique and inventive quality of good that is in your love.
Love perceives love. One person’s love is detected by another person’s love. The
two loves find each other, meet, and react. The reaction consists of a
collection of new affective neos being experienced by each. Conversational
interaction is a conventionalized dance or gyre in which tremulations of
affective neos expand in patterned ripples across the entire expanse of the
mental world of eternity. These modulations of mental states ultimately affect
every human mind. Right now as you are reading this your mental state is
affected by the neo ripples initiated by countless others in the societies of
the Grand Human and Grand Monster (see my article on the Perizonius Thesis for
more details). When you say “Hi” to someone, you are involving the entire
humanity. Every neo you produce ripples across eternity. Every neo others
produce ripple across your mind.
The neo ball game is the actuality of life. Human beings appear as
individuals outwardly, but inwardly we are connected and networked through the
Grand Human and Grand Monster. One way to think about it rationally is to
consider the logical implications of the Divine Law revealed in the Swedenborg
Reports, namely, that ‘In God, infinite things are together as one.’
I discussed earlier the idea that the Divine Neo, in the form of spiritual
heat and light flowing from the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity,
enters our affective and cognitive organs, producing there heavenly neos. These
heavenly neos are our loves and understandings in operation, the two together
being our very life. Each heavenly neo we possess has the Divine Neo within it.
An endless stream of heavenly neos issues from the Divine Neo. Infinite things
make a one, in the Divine Neo. Heavenly neos in our spiritual mind are within
natural neos in our natural mind. Hence every natural neo we produce on our
daily round of living, has the heavenly neos and the Divine Neo within it. Hence
it is that God is within every single thing that exists. Since ‘In God, infinite
things are together as one” therefore all things that already exist are together
as one in God. Hence all human beings, the entire humanity of individuals here
and in eternity, are together as one in God. And from this you can now see that
what happens in one individual’s mind must necessarily influence the mind of
every other individual in the human race.
God’s Omnipotence, God’s Love (or “Divine Good”), and God’s Intelligence (or
“Divine Wisdom”), are therefore the source and cause of creation. They hold all
existing things together as a universe. The function and meaning of the universe
are given by God’s Rational Purpose for creation. The goal and plan of Divine
Love and Divine Wisdom are that human beings come into life by conception and
birth on some nurturing planet in a supportive community, which allows the
individual to grow and to become mature adults, whose minds are a representative
of the heavenly order of good and truth. In the love and wisdom of people living
in an eternal conjugial heaven, God finds His Divine Love and Yearning
fulfilled. This is then the purpose and plan that God has in creating and
evolving the universe.
The human heaven is the Grand Human and its endless societies forming a
networked and connected entity in the shape and function of the human body. The
life of this heaven is the neo ball game. The affective (A) and cognitive (C)
neos produced in the two mental organs (A and C), are the feelings or intentions
(A), and the meanings and understandings (C) we each have in our consciousness
or awareness. Each intention and each meaning is unique. God’s Law of Infinity
determines that only things that are unique can come into existence. Every
single thing that exists must be a neo, a new thing, a new creation. This
endless collection of unique mental neos is the evolving and expanding life of
humanity. Each neo can be born only once, and in only one individual’s
consciousness. Once the neo exists, it is transmitted to all the zones of the
mental world of eternity, permeating and reverberating in every self and
personality.
The charting of neos may be possible in future research when humankind
learns to extract that knowledge from Sacred Scripture. In the meantime we can
begin charting the neos that appear in our natural mind. This article and
project may hopefully serve to encourage others to engage in this research.
The central shaft of every created thing is the Divine Neo, also called the
“Spiritual Sun” (Swedenborg Reports). From this inmost position the Divine Neo
exteriorizes into the discrete
layers of existence – first, through the mental world of eternity (anatomical
layers 4 through 9), then, through the remaining layers of existence (10,
11, 12). This exteriorization is called the “descent” of the Divine Neo because
what is interior is superior, while what is exterior is inferior. The
exteriorization of the Divine Neo takes place by successive coverings. Covering
4 is called celestial-rational consciousness (or “Third Heaven”) and is formed
by Divine Speech in the form of Sacred Scripture written in celestial-rational
correspondences. These are an endless collection of heavenly neos in the
affective and cognitive organs of the those who exist consciously in that mental
sphere. Third heaven neos are the highest and most excellent of all human neos,
being closest or purest in reception of the spiritual heat and light that
constitute the neos.
The Swedenborg Reports give an indication from Swedenborg’s direct
experience and observation, of what kind of consciousness we have when our loves
are celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture.
Foremost in prominence about the people in that mental state, is that conjugial
couples, man and woman soul mates, are reciprocally fused into a single conjoint
self. From a distance Swedenborg saw each couple as one “Angel,” but from close
up he saw them as
husband and wife, each with their own beauty, manner, and intelligence. The
masculine portion of the conjoint self in mental anatomy layer 4, is a
representation and correspondence of the Divine Neo within his affective organ.
The husband in his inmost anatomy is masculine love. The wife in her inmost
anatomy is feminine intelligence. These inmost reciprocals are conjoined in the
celestial marriage. No particle of the husband’s mental anatomy can be like
anything in the wife’s mental anatomy. Their perfect reciprocal unity is made
possible by this absolute differentiation.
Every particle of the
husband’s mental anatomy strives to conjoin itself with the corresponding
feminine particle in the wife’s mental anatomy. Wisdom corresponds to love, and
love has its fulfillment in wisdom. The celestial woman corresponds to wisdom
(spiritual light), while the celestial man corresponds to love (spiritual heat).
Spiritual heat conjoins itself irresistibly to spiritual light, forming the
celestial marriage. This is caused by the Divine Marriage, which is the
conjunction of Divine Love with Divine Wisdom in God’s Mind.
The Divine Neo, having filled layer 4 with celestial-rational neos, and
consequently, being now covered with covering 4, then descends, or more
accurately, appears in layer 5 (“Second Heaven”), which it fills with
spiritual-rational correspondences of Divine Speech in the Sacred Scripture that
appears there. Swedenborg saw the text of Sacred Scripture in each of the three
layers of the spiritual mind (4, 5, 6). He confirms by observation that the
three versions are correspondences of each other. Letter by letter, word by
word, the three versions correspond to each other precisely. The Divine Neo
under covering 5 appears under various Second Heaven neos, which are so below in
quality to Third Heaven neos (layer 4) that there was no comprehension of
anything across the two
layers. Even the simplest of ideas in layer 4C are absolutely
incomprehensible to layer 5C. The only possible connection is that of
correspondence, so that the idea in layer 5C is an exact correspondence of the
idea in layer 4C.
The descent or exteriorization of the Divine Neo then appears in layer 6
(“First Heaven”) which becomes filled with spiritual-natural correspondences of
Sacred Scripture. Again the relationship is discrete, so that the lowest or
simplest idea in layer 5 is absolutely incomprehensible to layer 6 ideas and
meanings. Now under covering 6 the Divine Neo leaves the perfection and purity
of the spiritual mind and takes on covering 7, which is the highest portion of
the natural mind. This mental state plays a critical role in our regeneration,
and consequently our salvation for life in heaven.
The natural-rational mind (layer 7) has two functional parts, as already
discussed. Layer 7i (“interior”) is the interior layer closest to layer 6, which
is the lowest portion of the spiritual mind. Layer 7e (“external”) is the
external layer closest to layer 8 (materialistic mind). These two functions – 7i
and 7e – initiate and direct the regeneration of our natural mind. The work of
the Divine Neo in these two layers is contrastive. It is explained in detail in
the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, through the correspondences to the story of
the four patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, each of whom represents the
operations of the Descent of the Divine Neo across the mental layers during
regeneration. The creation of human consciousness took many generations for its
evolution, and attained its final anatomical completion barely two thousand
years ago, through the Incarnation Event, which was the process by which God
acquired a Divine Natural Mind and Body on this earth. This process is described
in Sacred Scripture as the “Glorification of the human,” that is, the uniting of
the earthly human with the eternal Human Divine, so that the human becomes the
Divine Human. During this glorification process, which involved the most severe
temptations of the external human being prepared for becoming the Divine Human.
This spiritual physiological process is described in great detail in the
correspondential sense of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament Sacred
Scripture. The Swedenborg Reports give a word by word analysis of the entire
Book, giving the correspondential sense, and showing how this makes a perfect
rational series with numerous sub-parts fitting into a whole. The process of
glorifying the external human involved expelling all the inherited un-neos that
filled the affective organ of every human. No human being was able to do this.
God could not appoint or prompt anyone to do this work. It absolutely required
that God Himself do this. It could not be delegated or done through human
beings, even angels. Neither was it possible for God to do this directly in His
full omnipotence, without destroying the Grand Monster, and its countless
numbers of societies, which would also destroy the Grand Human, as the balance
would no longer exist in the minds of people on earth (as discussed above). The
entire human race in both the world of time and the world of eternity stood at
the line of death and extinction.
The Grand Monster societies had become stronger in the minds of people than
the Grand Human societies. If this imbalance had continued, no human being could
be regenerated, and consequently everyone would have been born for hell, and no
one could have existed in heaven. By assuming for Himself an external earthly
personality and body, God on earth could accomplish what no one could, namely,
the salvation of the human race from destruction in the Grand Monster. Those who
are in the Grand Monster are called “dead” because nothing human or heavenly, is
functioning in them.
God saved the human race by creating the interior portion of mental anatomy
layer 7i (in the natural rational mind).
The existing external layer 7e in the natural-rational mind looks outward
and downward to the natural world. Every rational idea in layer 7e is sourced in
the materialistic abstractions of layer 8, which are grounded in the
sensory-corporeal mind that immediately controls and lives with the sensations
from the physical body. Scientific thinking has done considerable progress as it
moves from the observational data in layer 9 (e.g., “the sun is rising”), to the
abstracted theoretical explanations in layer 8 (e.g., “the earth moves around
the sun”). The progress continues still further when scientific thinking
operates in layer 7Ce (external portion of the natural-rational layer). Examples
include such ideas as “emergent phenomena,” “hyper space,” “multiple realities,”
or “morphic
resonance” (Sheldrake comes to mind). These super-ideas are grounded in
earthly ideas, which are grounded in sensory input, and consequently sourced in
the world of time, space, and matter. Level 7Ce thinking could not overcome the
hold of the Grand Monster societies upon every human’s natural mind on earth. No
regeneration was possible because this requires other-worldly ideas and power,
that is, ideas based in the spiritual mind (layers
6, 5, 4) and consequently on the Spiritual Sun, not the natural sun.
Human consciousness had to be raised by a notch, a discrete degree, to its
final completion. This required creating mental layer 7i within the
natural-rational mind. This was accomplished in His own mind by the external
human who was being prepared to become the infinite Natural Body and Mind of
God. The process of glorification was completed at the death and resurrection of
the external human, now the Divine Human. A new Divine entity was created in the
created world. From then on, anatomical
layer 7 of every human mind, past, present, and future, possesses an external
and an interior portion or function. The interior portion and function of layer
7 is called the “interior-natural” layer (7i).
Prior to the glorification process human beings possessed the ability of
constructing external-natural neos (layer 7Ce), but after it, humans possessed
the ability of constructing interior-natural neos. What is the difference?
When we read Sacred Scripture in layer 7Ce consciousness, we are not capable
of understanding higher order correspondences that are within Sacred Scripture.
We are unable to take off the 7th covering in which the Divine Neo is
wrapped or covered, as discussed above. For instance, when we read the
Swedenborg Reports in their literal sense, we are thinking and comprehending
natural-rational meanings of the Divine Neo (layer 7Ce). For example, we do not
comprehend the formula “spiritual world of the afterlife in eternity = mental
world in which we are in now.” People have the image that they are here now, on
earth, and that when they die, they “pass on” to the other side. They see heaven
and hell as the future of their lives, and not the present. But when we think
from layer 7Ci ideas, we can comprehend that we are born into eternity and that
we cannot exit it or enter it as we are already there. Death is therefore not a
“passing on” but a “waking up.”
In layer 7Ce (external-natural-rational) we think of God as the Being we
encounter after death, while in layer 7Ci (interior-natural-rational) we think
of God as the Divine Neo at the center of all our neos. In the
external-natural-rational layer (7Ce) we are persuaded that our salvation
depends on understanding the spiritual truths of Sacred Scripture, but in the
interior-natural layer (7Ci) we realize that salvation depends on the quality of
our love, regardless of our knowledge of spiritual truth. In layer 8C we think
that our salvation depends on being “forgiven by God” for our sins, or hellish
traits and enjoyments. We then think that this forgiveness is given when we are
repentant and acknowledge to God that our nature is evil and hellish. In layer
9C we think that we gain salvation by performing the proper rituals of one’s
religion.
But in layer 7Ci we see that religion and salvation are two separate things.
We are saved not by proper rituals (layer 9, not by our repentance (layer 8),
not by our understanding of truth (layer 7Ce), but by loving the good (layer
7Ci).
The Divine Neo in the Spiritual Sun is the Divine Marriage between Divine
Love or Good, and Divine Wisdom or Truth. When the Divine Neo exits the
Spiritual Sun and enters the mental world of eternity, the Divine Marriage
appears to dissolve. Divine Good in the form of spiritual heat enters the
affective organ at the highest level (layer 4A), while Divine Truth in the form
of spiritual light enters the cognitive organ at its highest functioning point
(layer 4C), which does its thinking with celestial-rational correspondences of
Divine Truth found in Layer 4 Sacred Scripture.
The Divine Neo at the center, or inmost structure, of the affective and
cognitive organs, is undivided in Itself, but when it is covered over with layer
4 consciousness, the Divine Neo appears as split into two kinds of things –
affective heat and cognitive light. We feel the heat, love, and good from the
Divine Neo in our affective system of functioning. We see the light, understand
truth, and think according to wisdom and rationality from the Divine Neo in our
cognitive system of functioning. Now the cognitive neos (within which is
spiritual light), and the affective neos (within which is spiritual heat) long
to get back together again. When they do, it is called the spiritual marriage.
The conjunction of good in our affective with truth in our cognitive is the
process of regeneration.
Good and truth come into us divided, but when we are regenerated, they are
conjoined in us.
Consider some examples from our daily life. We live in a society that has
both heavenly and hellish features. The heavenly features include people’s
striving to improve their life and environment. This deep seated motivation for
improvement gives us the many sub-loves that energize us into acquiring a
variety of useful skills and pro-social attitudes that build society and
maintain its institutions, including all the professions and trades. The hellish
features include people’s striving to improve their own life at the expense of
others. The Swedenborg Reports identify the ruling love among all of our hellish
traits and motivations. It is the love of doing everything for the sake of self
alone. This purely selfish love hates the idea that we shouldn’t do things
merely for our own benefit or comfort.
Before we are regenerated in our inherited character, we hate to be good,
and we hate the good. We don’t like to do things for others. We feel no reward,
no excitement of living until we see how something is going to benefit us. Just
to be useful to society for the sake of being useful, or for the sake of
altruism, or for the sake of community, or God, is to our unregenerate
consciousness a heavy burden. We rather not have it. We would much prefer to do
everything for our own comfort and gain. And when we will allow that some things
we do should be for the sake of others, nevertheless we don’t like it, and we
try to keep it at a minimum. Our joy of living depends on everything happening
for us, for our comfort, pleasure, interest.
God makes sure that our conscience tells us when we are being selfish,
unfair, unjust, unloving. God also makes sure that every society possesses
Sacred Scripture, which is the source of the spreading knowledge in society
about God and regeneration. God allows people to resist and reject regeneration,
conscience, and Sacred Scripture. This freedom is necessary for regeneration,
which proceeds by temptations in events that God manages to bring to each
person. Resisting temptations while being in freedom to choose, seals our
spiritual fate to the ruling love of hell, with which we are born as a mental
inheritance from our biological parents.
In order to be able to resist temptations we must conjoin in our mind the
truth we know (C) with the good we feel (A). For instance, we may know the truth
from Sacred Scripture that we should be considerate of others and look out for
their comfort as much as we look out for our self. We enjoy watching TV or
listening to loud music, or partying with friends in our apartment, or riding a
motor cycle that makes noise, or using a car that smokes pollution because we
have postponed a needed repair out of negligence or bad planning. These are
common things we do every day, and they all fall into the hellish category
because they are selfish. What is happening to us as we do these hellish things?
Even though we know the truth that these are selfish or hellish things we
do, yet we continue to do them. The truth we know (C) is not married to the good
of feeling compassion for others (A), feeling the desire to improve the life of
others around us (A). We know what to do to be good (C), but we don’t have the
motivation (A) to do it. The heavenly love (A) is not married to the heavenly
truth (C) in our mind. We must unite these two in order to become good. This
involves resisting the temptation to continue just being selfish, and to give up
that way of feeling about others. This is the process of regeneration.
One function of
neologisms is to provide scientists and trainees with new words and phrases that
denote new ideas and descriptions of phenomena or relationships. I don’t know
how many neologisms scientists produce in one decade, or in one person’s career,
or how one field differs from another. When I inspect my own writings in science
for the past half century I obtain thousands of neologisms, of which
the neochart only
presents a modest sample. This leads me to suppose that the majority of
scientists create neologisms. No doubt there is a normal distribution to these,
with one in ten scientists producing thousands of them in a career of several
decades. This implies that neologisms have a normal function in the progressive
expansion of the ideas and concepts in a field. A scientific field progresses on
the backs of neologisms.
A second function of
neologisms is to organize the amassing literature in a field and its exploration
through search engines. If you search the Web or electronic databases in
libraries using a neologism chart such as the present one, you obtain a smaller
collection of results that provides information on a slice of the topic in a
field, and how the topic crosses over to related fields. It provides a more
restricted view of the infosphere surrounding that concept or idea. It shows
more hidden connectivity between topics than what we get from the surface view
of a regular search. Perhaps in the future there will be specialized searches
allowing you to search on neologisms only.
A third function of neologisms is personal since people’s lifetime neologisms
chart constitutes an autobiographical record of their intellectual production
and inventiveness. The
neochart is arranged on a time line that allows researchers to investigate
the history of ideas in science. The developmental phases of a new concept can
be charted. The rate and pattern of diffusion of neologisms within a field and
across science, and across time, can be monitored and correlated with
developments in culture, society, business, etc.
A fourth function of neologisms is the tracings of the evolution of a
community or sub-area of the infosphere. Neologisms are instances of
community cataloguing practices (CCPs). These are the conventions and
agreements in a group or institution that constitute their ritual
interactions, codified procedures, and standardized norms and
expectations. They include what’s worth noticing or ignoring, what events or
observations are worth reporting, what constitutes merit, who has more
authority, and what are the ranges of acceptance and normalcy vs. what is
deviant or unusual. These socialized mental practices have a unique
subjective life within the experience and consciousness of each
member or individual. I refer to these uniquenesses as
standardized imaginings (a neologism that I coined in 1975).
All individuals experience the CCPs in their mental operations, but
attribute them to self. This systematic misattribution
process has deep consequences that reverberate through many regions of
the self, causing much anxiety, pain, depression, preoccupation, and manic
swings. An example is the
myth of inadequacy -- a neologism that Diane and I neologued in 1975,
but it did not appear in publication until 2003 in one of her articles. These
negative self-beliefs are rooted in the misattribution of standardized
imaginings, from socialized practices to self-practices. There are
many areas of such learned helplessness. For instance, we are socialized to feel
inadequate in the area of health care, and we evolve various dramatic
relationships in our mind with doctors, drugs, hospitals, insurance. We
constantly talk about this to ourselves, playing out the drama of the inadequacy
myth in relation to health issues, concerns, and needs. It works in a
similar way with positive scenarios that we play out in our strivings,
ambitions, hopes, plans, day dreams, and even night dreams. Individuals in a
society, community, or group are socialized into mental practices that
include:
I. What to notice in the environment, on a
screen or page – and what to ignore or overlook
II. What to make of something, what sense we
are to make of it, what interpretation are we to construct
III. How to evaluate it, what are appropriate
emotions we can have with it, what falls outside the range of
acceptability
IV. Whether to do something about it, whether
to act on it, whether to optimize it
V. How to engage it, what options are
available, how to carry it out to the goal
VI. How to execute it, to perform it, to do
what it takes to achieve it
These mental procedures are organic and biological, involving
the
three basic mental organ systems:
(A) affective organ – operations felt subjectively as feelings, intentions,
motives, desires for specific things or outcomes
(C) cognitive organ -- operations felt subjectively as thoughts, imaginings,
reasonings, ideas about specific things or events
(S) sensorimotor organ -- operations felt subjectively as sensations and
motor determinations (seeing, tasting, moving)
In the mental practices list above, the standardized operations in I and VI
are performed as sensorimotor procedures (S), the operations in II and V are
constructed as cognitive procedures (C), and the operations in IV and V are
enacted affective procedures (A). Self-witnessing
(a 1971 neologism) is the construction and enactment of systematic procedures
for self-monitoring one’s mental practices on the daily round of activities.
When self-witnessing is acquired and practiced as a habit, it provides a
constant source of neologisms about the mental world. We can also call them
spiritual neologisms since spiritual refers to our conscious life in the
mental
world of eternity after undergoing the
mental resuscitation
process, which takes about 30 hours from the moment of physical death or
multiple organ failure.
The collection of mental neologisms in a community is a more accurate and
realistic description of its actual life. The community cataloguing practices of
a group, charted by means of ethnographically produced neologistic databases, is
a spiritual map of the community’s connectivity with the Grand Human and the
Grand Monster in the mental world of eternity. It is a real indication of the
quality of life in a civilization, and its moral and rational level of
evolution. Hence neologisms can not only tell us about the actuality of the
present, but they can also give us new directions to consider and plan for, new
hopes and endeavors, and ultimately, a closer presence of heaven, thus to
God the Divine
Human.
Another use for neologisms is exemplified by an email I received this
morning from a friend-writer on whose Web site I was commenting. For fun, I
included ten neologisms that I identified on his brief document in which he
discusses one of the Ten Commandments as it applies to marriage. He wrote back:
“Thanks, Leon. It's neat to read those neologisms. This line is the most
important to me: Expectations like these
lead to power struggles. It's the core concept in what we are trying to
elucidate in this commandment.” My friend’s response leads me to think that
writers will benefit from keeping track of their neologisms. There may be
several specific uses that research will need to disentangle and identify
precisely. For instance, in this case with my friend-writer, the neologisms
helped him see more specifically the central focus and purpose of this segment
of his workshop for couples. Another use might be to search who else has said
something about a particular neologism you have constructed, when the results
for the search are not zero or one (your own document). The fact that others
have in dependently constructed the same neologism is a momentous and historical
event in the autobiographical record of humanity’s intellectual life and
development.
A neochart is an index of one’s intellectual autobiography. Global
alphabetized neocharts may provide dates and a reference to an article where a
particular neo is used. One may provide additional information such as
occurrences of a neo in the work of others, information about the adoptions and
spread of a neo, and a glossary that defines each neologism in the chart. There
may also be related information and references. Also, research data may be
provided such as word and word combination frequency distribution tables, how
people evaluate a particular neo in terms of usability, attractiveness,
information value, and so on. Also, comparisons may be offered between
sub-categories of a neochart, and between neocharts of different people, epochs,
type of publication, genre of literature, characteristic of the author, social
conditions, and so on. The collection of neocharts in a community constitutes an
intellectual record and history of that community.
Every time a neologism is constructed by an individual, humanity’s
intellectual evolution expands one phase further towards its greater perfection.
We know from the Swedenborg Reports
that there is only one mental world of the human race, and therefore every
individual’s mental world overlaps with this human mental world. They are the
same. Hence whatever happens in one person’s mind has consequences for every
human being. The entire race’s mental activity of sensations, thoughts, and
feelings coalesce into a human shape called the
Grand Human and the Grand
Monster. All heavenly neologisms
coalesce into a form that replicates a human anatomy chart in every known
detail. Swedenborg interviewed people who were living their afterlife in various
regions of the Neologistic Grand Human
in the mental world of eternity. Spiritual
geography maps and mental anatomy
charts, drawn from the Swedenborg Reports, show that the neologisms being
created in say, the region of the skin and membranes, contain a cultural content
distinctly different from the neologisms being created in say, the region of the
heart, or lungs. Every feature of spiritual geography in the spiritual world of
the afterlife, coincides and corresponds with some particular feature of mental
anatomy in the mental world of eternity. These two neologisms are just different
expressions for the same world, since the spiritual world of the afterlife and
immortality is the same as the mental world of eternity into which we are born,
and in which we awaken in consciousness following our resuscitation process,
which takes about 30 hours following death.
Today I said to Diane, “You just had a
neologistic insight!” after I heard her inspiring analysis of a news
event about the ongoing presidential elections. Later I reflected on the
expression “neologistic insight” that I heard myself spontaneously speak out
loud in reaction to my wife’s analytical comment. When would we designate an
insight as neologistic? After some reflection I conclude that every insight is a
neologism. What is an insight? It is the process of receiving a new rational
perception. It is the ‘inner eye’ that has insights, while the outer eye only
sees appearances. Insights are visions of the inner, and what is inner is called
“cause” while what is outer is called “effect.” So when you have an insight you
are ‘seeing’ something new, and the content of the insight is about causes in
relation to the effects, about which one has the insight. In this case Diane
received a rational perception of the cause of the political event in the
elections – why someone prominent was saying and behaving in a certain way.
We produce neos by means of our ability to rationally understand what we
perceive and observe around us. Our motivation for searching for this
understanding is the love we have for making sense.
Affective love for making sense
à cognitive procedures of
sense-making
à
neo production by sensorimotor operations
Neos are sensorimotor performances that are the outward representations of
perceiving meaning and constructing explanations. The meanings we perceive and
become conscious of are those that are selected by our love. According to the
Swedenborg Reports, such as is our love, such is our understanding, and
consequently, such is our neo production.
In the context of social interactions and communicative exchanges, neos are
speech acts we produce that are expressions or images of our inner loves. We
speak according to our motives and intentions, which come from love. When we are
free, we will to think and to do that which we love. Speaking or writing a neo
is an invitation to others to travel to the same mental platform where they too
can have the perception of that neo. This is called sharing meaning. All human
beings have an inborn love for neo production and neo reception. Sharing neos in
communicative transactions affords mutual satisfaction as it involves
alternating turns of neo production and neo reception. The neo that one person
loves to produce is enjoyed by another person when it is received.
Conversational neos constitute a rich and rewarding motivational resource, which
explains why talking is the most common and enjoyed human activity, both here,
and in the afterlife.
Neo construction in conversation has an anatomical dimension and relevance.
In layer 9-consciousness (corporeal mind), our neo-construction is
sensorimotor and concrete in focus and significance.
In layer 8-consciousness (materialistic mind), our neo-construction is
cognitive and abstract in focus and meaning.
In layer 7-consciousness (rational mind), our neo-construction is
affective and spiritual in focus and meaning.
Let us contrast layer 7-neos with layer 8-neos. Rational neo construction is
above materialistic neo construction in the same way that rational-spiritual
ideas (layer 7C) are above abstract-materialistic ideas (layer 8C). Layer 7
thinking produces dualist neos, while layer 8 thinking produces monist neos.
Scientific abstract reasoning is thoroughly materialistic and steeped in the
negative bias in science. All layer 8 scientific thinking is reductionistic,
preferring and insisting on reducing the two worlds to one. In non-theistic
psychology the mental world is reduced to a thinner version of the physical
brain.
A “thinner version” of the mental world refers to the idea that the mind is
an “emergent phenomenon” of the physical brain. This is an
abstract-materialistic neo. To be “emergent” “of the physical brain” means that
what emerges is also physical. It is believed within this framework of thinking
(layer 8C) that the emergent “phenomenon” – namely the mind or the mental world
of experience, is rooted in the physical world and cannot be other than what
belongs to the physical world of time and place. Of course this physical world
includes gradations of “thinness” as in the following illustrative sequence:
1.
solid matter
2.
liquids
3.
gases
4.
energy
5.
gravity
6.
light
7.
space or ether
8.
propensities
9.
life or intelligence
10.
spirit or consciousness
11.
time-space
12.
infinity, God, Universe, Fate, etc.
These 12 phases of thinness of the physical world are contained within the
single dimension of materialistic monism. People who add God to this list also
like to add Universe or Fate, and the like. Note that anything added to this
list as its extension is going to be materialistic, regardless of the degree of
abstraction one can construct through intelligent thinking routines. Hence there
are people who think of God in materialistic and corporeal terms (layer 8 and 9)
as in “spirits” or “ghosts” etc., that can be seen or interacted with because
they are materialistic, even though thinner in material than their former
physical bodies. Some resuscitation neos I have seen in various articles on the
Web indicate the belief that the afterlife is in the physical world, at some
future date from now. The idea of physicalistic spirits (layer 9C) and
materialistic afterlife (layer 8C), consequently the reasoning that supports it,
gives its meaning to such commonly discussed topics as consciousness, life, God,
eternity, heaven, and hell. These are discussed and defined materialistically in
abstract terms such as capitalizing the word Universe and using it as the
definition of God or highest power that exists. Another materialistic
abstraction is the meaning given to “eternity” as some future time on earth.
The rational neos in layer 7C are of two kinds, external (7Ce) and interior
(7Ci). External-rational neos constructed in layer 7Ce are tributes to the
genius and ingenuity of great inventions that advance human civilization and
fill society with science, engineering, art, management. These
rational-materialistic neos (layer 7Ce) are discussed in the Swedenborg Reports
under topic of “consulting one’s self-intelligence” when considering the
rational issue of the existence of God and the spiritual world outside time and
space. This rational-materialistic neos (layer 7Ce) are then contrasted with
rational-spiritual neos (layer 7Ci) about which we read in Sacred Scripture. For
instance, the idea that God is “not of this world” which leads to the
interior-natural idea (layer 7Ci) of dualism – two worlds. The “dual
universe created by God who is outside of creation” is a conscious idea
belonging to the highest level of neo construction in the natural mind (layer
7Ci). All layer 7Ci-neos are interior-natural correspondences of higher layer
neos constructed in the spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4), which in turn are
correspondences of the Divine Neos continuously streaming out of the Spiritual
Sun and into the mental world of eternity.
Sacred Scripture contains all the infinite Divine Neos to endless eternity
in one integrated series of rational neos. A version of Sacred Scripture exists
in all six
anatomical layers of the mental world of eternity, that we call our mind.
Each layer has its own meaning of dualism and God.
For instance, the Old Testament Sacred Scripture presents a Corporeal Vision
of God, manifesting Himself in natural disasters, miracles, and physical rewards
or physical punishments. There are almost no details given about the afterlife,
so little actually, that many believe that the afterlife is going to be in the
future on earth. This version of God presents Him somewhat like a Benevolent
Despot or Emperor who wants to be glorified by human beings who are commanded to
worship Him in certain specific ways, under the threat of physical punishment
and loss of country, home, and comforts. This version of God presents Him as
being partial to a specific people or ethnic group, considering everyone else as
having a secondary status in relation to Him and “His people” or “Church.”
The New Testament Sacred Scripture presents an Abstract-Materialistic Vision
of God (layer 8C), manifesting Himself as a physical, historical person,
time-bound, place-bound, and identity bound. The abstraction neos in the New
Testament Sacred Scripture require complex ideas that need to be figured out by
rational reasoning. Then the materialistic feature can recede in the background
while the abstract feature comes to the foreground of meaning or consciousness.
For instance, the Divine Neo called “Trinity” expressed as “Father-Son-Holy
Spirit” is thought of by some as a “mystery” which means that human rational
reasoning cannot explain this “Divine mystery” to our comprehension. Bo others,
the Trinity Neo is understood as One God who manifests Himself in three Aspects
of Himself and His Creation. This neo is produced in layer 7Ce when remaining
consistent about the “God is One” Neo.
Another example from the New Testament Sacred Scripture (layer 8C) that is
contrastive with the Old Testament Sacred Scripture (layer 9C), is the meaning
of sin. For our corporeal mind (9C) God defines sin as sensorimotor trespassing
or behavioral neglect of the rituals of animal sacrifice, or of the commandments
that governed one’s relations with neighbors, such as lying, stealing, or
coveting. This corporeal focus on behavioral transgression as sin changes
entirely in the New Testament abstracted focus on mental transgression. You
can’t see the mental transgressions of someone else, hence it remains outside
the scope of law and ritual in a group. There are no civil laws against
thought-crimes.
Laws are about expressing the thought-crimes in words or deeds. Now, in the
New Testament Sacred Scripture God is saying that mental crimes are the real
sins we need to do something about. The layer 8C-sins of the New Testament
Sacred Scripture are not identified or spoken of in the layer 9C-sins of the Old
Testament Sacred Scripture. The idea that sin is mental rather than physical
requires a new level of abstraction in materialistic thinking.
Human consciousness evolves according to the layer in which we are
understanding Sacred Scripture. Layer 9 understanding of Sacred Scripture is
corporeal and physical regardless of the version of Sacred Scripture. When we
look at the spiritual neos of the New Testament with the perspective we have in
layer 9 (corporeal mind), we see everything in it as corporeal neos. For
instance, when we read about the idea of sin as “mental crimes” it does not
impress us in layer 9 consciousness. When we read about the meaning of “burning
in hell” as being immersed in our own lusts and cravings, we are not as
impressed by this as when we read that hell is a prison where you get tortured
by devils. The idea that our own evil enjoyments lead us into debilitating
slavery to them requires a higher level of abstraction (8C) than we can
comprehend in layer 9C.
The Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture presents a fully rational and
scientific level of description and explanation of God, Trinity, sin, heaven,
hell, Sacred Scripture, Creation, death, afterlife, eternity, marriage, Divine
Providence, Holy Spirit, evolution of consciousness, and so on. These spiritual
concepts are explicated through scientific revelations. Nothing is left out. It
is now permitted (“Nunc Licet”) to learn scientific reasons explaining how sin
and hell are connected through our freedom of choice in our daily lives. Through
our understanding of the Swedenborg Reports God is opening up a new mental layer
in human ability to think and reason with spiritual truths from Sacred
Scripture. This layer is 7Ci. It is the interior-natural layer. With this mental
layer God has completed the creation of the mental world of eternity. This layer
could not be “opened” or operationalized in the human mind until the 18th
century when the Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture were written, published,
and disseminated by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).
Since then layer 7Ci neos have been created and diffused in all of humanity
through the Grand Human societies in the mental world of eternity. An integrated
collection of these neos was produced by me in my writings since 1981. These can
be accessed through The
Master Neochart. The content and reasoning that create layer 7Ci neos
consist of the correspondences in which all Sacred Scripture is written. The
Swedenborg Reports show that the afterlife is our mental world of loves,
understandings, and sensations. Such as our loves are such are also our
understandings, and consequently, such is the sensorimotor environment in our
mental world. Nightmares are events and experiences in our mental world. Loves
are immortal substances in our affective organ, and consequently our eternal
life after death is determined by these loves.
If these loves are heavenly loves such as the love of truth or the love of
being useful to others, then our external life becomes that of the joys, beauty,
and intelligence of heaven. But If these loves are hellish loves such as the
love of falsifying truth or the love of caring and benefitting self alone, then
our external life becomes that of the lusts, ugliness, and insanities of hell.
It is a free choice in the here and now of the mental world of eternity,
following resuscitation there. There is no punishment for past sins. Love sticks
to us forever. Our own loves takes us to our heavenly layers, or to our hellish
layers. Both layers exist in every mind since there is only one mental world,
and everyone is in it from birth to eternity.
The expression “cause-effect” is used in science and elsewhere, in two
distinct ways. In theistic psychology, as in the Swedenborg Reports, all natural
phenomena are effects, and all spiritual phenomena are causes, that is ‘true’
causes. In non-theistic science causes and effects are both natural phenomena,
like virus and illness, or pressing gas pedal and car speeding up. This is known
in the literature as materialistic monism (sometimes “positivism” and even
“empiricism”). I call it the negative bias in science. It denies that God has anything to do with
the cause-effect of phenomena. It prohibits scientists from giving explanation
for phenomena that include God. This is the reason that the Swedenborg Reports
have not been referred to in the voluminous non-theistic literature on
psychology that has accumulated in the past 200 years. This is astonishing to
me. The mental censorship, or if you prefer, mental standardization of thinking
and reasoning, is extremely effective in the preparation of scientists, and
throughout their professional careers.
I think this is bound to change in the near future because the Swedenborg
Reports are getting more attention from scientists. This new evolution of
science from non-theistic to theistic is bringing in the positive bias mode of
thinking and reasoning in science, as exemplified by the Swedenborg Reports and
the theistic psychology that is derived from its correspondential sense. In this
new dualist perspective of the universe it is clearly seen that all natural
phenomena are effects of spiritual causes. The two created worlds are locked
into each other by the laws of correspondences. The science of spiritual
phenomena is the study of causes, while the science of natural phenomena is the
study of effects from those causes. The two together finally make a whole
science of reality, a true science that is from the Divine.
Back then to consider an earlier sentence above: So when you have an insight
you are ‘seeing’ something new, and the content of the insight is about causes
in relation to the effects, about which one has the insight. Neologistic
insights are perceptions of causes. The history of science, and literature
generally, documents the intellectual inventiveness of people across the ages
and generations. Scientific empiricism, positivism, and materialism are
methodological issues rather than theoretical, explanatory, or rational.
Scientific theory is above empiricism. It must be so or else causes cannot be
brought into science. There are no causes in empiricism, no theoretical
explanations, only (at the most), operational definitions and empirically
constructed taxonomies. These are merely observations of the senses through
mechanical measurements or digital instruments. They are devoid of theory,
devoid of explanation, and therefore, devoid of understanding of the causes that
create those observed effects.
Scientific neologistic insights
are rational, theory-building constructions that represent enlightened or
spiritual perceptions about the world of causes. These rational mental
operations occur in the anatomical layer of the mind called natural-rational
(layer 7), while the operational definitions and empirical taxonomies are
materialistic or sensual operations in anatomical layer 8, which is called the
“external natural” mind. The thinking and reasoning operations in this mental
layer (8) are not rational but empirical, that is, sense-bound, or sensual,
dependent on sensory input from the physical world of time-space. These thoughts
are time-bound and place-bound, attached to physical objects and the appearances
of the earth environment. But the rational layer of the mind (layer 7) is not
time-bound and space-bound in this way. It is rooted in the world of causes
since the rational is the cause of the empirical. The rational layer of the mind
(7) represents the spiritual world of eternity and is from that world and
operates in that world of causes. The empirical-materialistic layer (8)
represents the natural world of time-place-matter and operates in accordance
with the appearances of the sensory organs of the physical body and its
instrumental extensions.
Natural scientific neologisms are about effects, while spiritual scientific
neologisms are about causes.
So there must be a whole series of neologisms, and a universal taxonomy or
Atlas, in relation to mental anatomy:
Spiritual Sun (layer 1)
Celestial- rational neologisms
(layer 4)
Spiritual-rational neologisms
(layer 5)
Spiritual-natural neologisms
(layer 6)
Interior-natural neologisms (layer
7i)
==============================
Natural-rational neologisms (layer
7e)
Natural-sensual neologisms (layer
8)
Natural-corporeal neologisms
(layer 9)
It is tempting to fall in love with one’s own neologisms, thinking, “Hey,
look at my clever productions. These are my babies. I am their inventor. I
possess the genius to create them. Look how superior they are. I am so creative.
I deserve an award for each of these babies. Don’t you think? Etc.” There is no
ultimate payoff to this kind of self-meritoriousness or self-aggrandizement. All
neologisms are produced the same way, namely, from the Spiritual Sun through the
layers of the mental world of eternity, and finally into the layer of
conscious thinking in your natural mind. Our interior-natural mind (layer 7i)
reacts to the end of the sequence originating in the Spiritual Sun (layer 1):
Scientific neologisms are born in either layer 7e or layer 8. Notice the
line separating 4, 5, 6, 7i and 7e, 8, 9. Layer 7e or “external layer 7” is made
of content from layers 8 and 9, and consequently all the semantic and cultural
content we are aware of at that layer has come to us from the natural world of
time and place. These enter our mind through the mental correspondences to the
operations of the sensory organs in the physical body (layer 12). The content of
our natural-rational mentality (layer 7e) comes to us from reading and hearing,
and reflecting abstractly on sensory observations. But the content of our
interior-natural layer (7i) is entirely from the mental world, from the
Spiritual Sun through layers 4, 5, 6. Layer 7i plays a critical role in becoming
regenerated and spiritual while we are in this life. This anatomical layer was
not operational prior to the Divine Incarnation two thousand years ago (see
The Scientific
Meaning of Christmas).
In this more elaborated context, you can see that the study of neologisms is
the study of how the human mind is organized in
layers and what mental operations take place at each layer in relation to
the laws
of correspondences. An application of this idea in general form is my
analysis of the spiritual
sense of songs about cars and driving. The explanation of the
anatomical layers of the human mind will be found in my
lecture
notes for the study of theistic psychology.
You can see from this discussion that neologisms play a key role in the
evolution of human consciousness and the integration of the human race into one
synergy. The human race is being created endlessly along the model of all
organic growth familiar to us in biology. Life means growth, for the cessation
of growth is death or the absence of life, consequently being inert or
‘life-less’. Endless progression of growth is a necessary condition for
permanent human happiness. The heavenly layers of the human mind cannot endure
unless there is ceaseless progression to greater perfection. God is infinitely
perfect so that our endless progression towards perfection is the way closer and
closer to God. The closer we get to God as an integrated Grand Human the more
perfected we each become in conjugial love and wisdom from Sacred Scripture.
Swedenborg interviewed angels of the highest heavenly layer in the Grand Human,
the societies in the region of the heart and the region of reproductive organs
(see
chart here). They were
quasi-omniscient, knowing everything about any topic they were thinking
about. Their ruling love was to love God by striving to receive God’s
Omniproprium as their own. They know that the moment they have a desire for
something of their own proprium, like self-intelligence or independence of God’s
Proprium, they lose all happiness and intelligence, thus falling back to their
former mental states before they entered the Grand Human.
I became tired of thinking “neologisms” and saying it so many times in the
course of the day. My wife Diane started protesting and at one point called it
my obsession. So instead of neologisms as started saying “neos.” Ah, that felt
good. It took so much less effort to say it and to think it. I started keeping
track of how many neos I discovered today, or yesterday, and wondering how many
neos I will come my way tomorrow. I started wondering how many scientific neos
(would you mind if I called that “scineos”?) have I produced in half a century
of dedicated and concentrated daily effort.
How would I know this? It’s too arduous a job to count them all and keep
track of what they are and when they were first published and making a link to
the article on the Web. But fear not. I am a social scientist and well familiar
with the methods of sampling, and their accuracy and value, if done correctly,
and if none of the major assumptions and conditions are violated, knowingly or
unknowingly. Still, that process may be more realistic and practical.
Observation 1: every one of my articles I have so far analyzed – about 100 so
far, contained far more scineos than I could process. So I would quit after
getting about 50 neos from that article, and move on to another one. I
hypothesize that an average length article of mine is about
200 pages (range: 7 to 700). I know that sounds like a lot, but writing
is what I do every day for hours. The average page contains about 40 scineos, so
that the average article of mine contains (200 x 40), which is 8,000 scineos per
article. In my fifty years of writing scientific articles I have published about
250 average articles, which is (250 x 8,000) or 2 million scineos for 50 years
of writing by one scientist. There might be about 200,000 scientists in the US
who write heavily, so the annual scineos
production for the US science infosphere is (200,000 X 2 million) divided by
50 (years), which comes to 8 billion
scineos.
There, that feels better. Now I have a number to think about and savor and
analyze. Eight billion scineos per year in the US alone. Well, this number is no
doubt pretty small compared to the annual production of non-scientific
neologisms in the totality of the infosphere, which may run into the trillions
per day. And this number is no doubt miniscule compared to the total daily
production of mental neologisms for the entire human race now on earth, and this
in turn miniscule compared to the universal human race past and present. All
this give us some indication of the inventiveness of human beings. We cannot be
happy unless we are free to produce neos in all departments of life and zones of
interest. The production of neos is a basic human right. Anti-humanity dictators
and political bullies are afraid of this freedom and they try to suppress the
production of neologisms in the country. They try to exercise thought control so
that people’s thinking may remain neoless, impoverished and imprisoned in
formulaic expressions advanced by the dominant political forces.
This is the end of Part II
The Spiritual Significance of
Neologisms
(formerly: Leon A. Jakobovits)
This electronic book published in 2008 may be copied for personal and
educational use. Commercial republishing or redistributing is prohibited without
written permission.
This is Part I
Introduction
Exercise Homework 1: The Visible Body
The Dual Universe:
Time and Eternity
Our Spiritual Barcode
The Spiritual Dimension of Neologisms
The Evolution of Neo Consciousness
Raising our
Consciousness by Thinking in Correspondences
The Battle of Heaven
and Hell in Our Mind
The Mental Zone of
Resuscitation
Spiritual Garfinkeling
-- Engineering Our Mental States on the Daily Round
Taxonomy of Unregenerate and Regenerate Loves in the Natural Mind
The Anatomy of
Spiritual Combat in Temptation
Quotes From the Swedenborg Reports on the Organic Basis of Mind
Related Spiritual
Ideas on the Organic Basis of Consciousness
Part I starts here
Author's Note
This electronic book
published in 2008 is a kind of 'executive summary' of my efforts to build a
foundation for theistic
psychology, which I began in its current approach in 2000, after 20 years of
studying the Swedenborg
Reports. Its most recent expression, prior to this one, is available from my
Lecture
Notes.
The journey of life begins in full at death.
If I had heard this sentence prior to 1981 I would have thought "O yeah,
sure. What does that mean?" My education as a Ph.D. and as a scientist in
psychology, did not prepare me for an answer, did not give me an answer to this
all important subject of what happens to me when I die. This is a subject that
intensely interests me, so much so, that it took me decades to learn that only
some people would show real interest in the answer to this question. This book
provides the definitive and scientific answer to what happens to us at death,
and also provides the answer to why and how it is that the majority of people
are not intensely interested in the answer.
Our first hurdle may be the biggest for some, but only small for others. We
have been educated to think about science within the negative mode of science,
rather than the positive bias mode of science. The negative bias mode is called
monism or materialism, while the positive bias mode is called dualism and
theism. When we, as scientists or scientists in training, now hear about the new
concepts and ideas called "theistic psychology," we react with rejection,
aversion, and spiritual venting. These affective or emotional reactions call
forth thoughts of disconfirmation and ridicule, at first, and later, thoughts of
how to prove these concepts wrong for science and in science.
But the new field of theistic psychology puts these concepts right in front
of our focus, and challenges us to comprehend it rationally. In order to do
that, readers or students are asked to switch from the negative bias mode in
science to the positive bias mode in science. The challenge includes the promise
or intention to lay out the empirical scientific facts and the integrated
rational explanations, that will permit the average reader or student to decide
whether it makes rational sense to them, or not. This is the challenge that must
be faced at the start. Further, there is also the intentionality and claim in
theistic psychology, that it does not contain explanations of religions or their
doctrinal beliefs. This has been excluded from the methodology of theistic
psychology. Some people may be puzzled by this claim, in view of the fact that
theistic psychology is knowledge "extracted from the correspondential sense of
Sacred Scripture."
The difficulty is resolved when you consider that all religions are based on
the literal sense of the Sacred Scripture that they call their own. No religion
is based on the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture. But theistic
psychology is. It is based on the correspondential sense exclusively. This
methodology insures a discrete and complete separation between religion and
theistic psychology.
I invite you to step out of the negative bias mode of thinking about science
and God, and to step into the positive bias thinking of theistic science. You
are not giving up anything, and you stand to gain a lot, as I have when I first
started reading the Swedenborg Reports -- the only existing fully scientific and
empirical account of the spiritual world and the afterlife of eternity.
I will share my greatest discovery on this topic, namely, that we are born
into eternity, and that we have already been in eternity since our birth. We are
therefore immortal beings. To be born into eternity means immortality, since
what is born into eternity is eternal, by definition, and what is eternal is
immortal.
What about "eternal" makes us immortal?
The concept of "eternal" contains two components:
one is "outside time"; the other is "mental."
Phenomena that exist "outside time," by definition, exist in eternity. And
what has been generally unknown in science until the Swedenborg Reports in the
18th century, is the empirical fact discovered by him, that "eternity" is the
mental world that is familiar to every human being since birth.
That's right. It's an awesome discovery that will shake the modern mind from
its current historical trend of materialism in science. Today, under the
philosophy of the negative bias materialism, psychology cannot learn anything
from the Swedenborg Reports, even though these 37 volumes have been around in
several languages for the past 200 years. Swedenborg in Sweden published his
book Rational Psychology (1743) more than a century before German psychologist
Wundt opened the first modern laboratory of psychology in Germany. Swedenborg
published several books on the physiology of sensation and on brain neurology.
He was the first in history to conclude correctly that the left hemisphere of
the brain functions in correspondence with the cognitive organ (thinking,
reasoning), and the right brain with the affective organ (intention,
perception).
Swedenborg discovered by direct observation that the mental world of
eternity, where every person's mind resides since birth, is a large expanse in
the shape of the human body. This expanse is filled with the human race. Every
individual's mind resides somewhere in this Grand Human expanse. The location of
each person can be specified by the anatomical structure relative to others. For
instance, Swedenborg would indicate where his mental travels took him across the
expanse of the Grand Human, by saying that he was "in the province of the right
eye," or, "under the foot," or "in the gall bladder," etc. In each mental place,
Swedenborg was able to talk to the people that lived there in full conscious
awareness. He discovered that there was a perfect and exact correspondence
between the quality of the ruling love of each person and the function of the
organ in the anatomical region of the Grand Human in which they were living. The
people living in the region of the gall bladder had an entirely different
personality than the people who lived in the heart or lungs of the Grand Human.
"Mental harshness" corresponds to the "harsh" chemical treatment of digested
food in the gall bladder, where it is stripped and separated of non-digestibles.
"Mental conjunction" or "spiritual love" corresponds to the "nourishing" and
life-giving action of the heart and its circulatory system, which feeds every
cell in the body.
Swedenborg's discovery is critical for the continued
scientific development of psychology. The Swedenborg Reports provide us with an
empirical methodology for the study of mind through its correspondences with the
body.
The reason Swedenborg has been completely omitted from the history of
psychology is that all his science is theistic, and there is no room for
theistic science in non-theistic science.
This is not the idea that Swedenborg believed in God. Half or more of all
scientists alive today say that they believe in God. The problem is not that
scientists believe or don't believe in God. The problem has to do with
scientific methodology. There are two varieties: the non-theistic methodologies
and the theistic methodologies.
Swedenborg discovered by direct observation that the mental world of eternity
contains a Spiritual Sun, only one. In the physical world of time, the star or
"natural sun" of a solar system, is the origin of the planets in that system.
All the physical objects on our earth, including our physical body, is made of
materials from the natural sun. This natural phenomenon corresponds exactly to
the phenomenon of the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity. Everything
in eternity is made of substances from the Spiritual Sun. Our mind is made of
these substances. These spiritual substances are living and immortal. There are
two broad categories of spiritual substances radiating out of the Spiritual Sun
and filling the entire mental world of humanity. One is called "spiritual heat"
and the other "spiritual light." This corresponds to the "natural heat" and
"natural light" that streams out of the natural sun to create objects, energy,
movement, and life on the planet.
Our mental life is an organic process that begins at birth and continues
endlessly in eternity. Life must have an organic basis. Mental life is carried
out by mental organs. These organs are made of the substances from the Spiritual
Sun. At birth, every human being lives in two bodies simultaneously that are
connected together by correspondence. We have a physical body that is temporary
and is made of natural substances from the physical sun. And we have a spiritual
body that is permanent and is made of spiritual substances from the Spiritual
Sun. Our spiritual body contains our mental organs.
We have three systems of mental organs, corresponding to the three systems of
physical organs.
|
PHYSICAL BODY
in time and space
natural anatomy and physiology
|
SPIRITUAL BODY
in the mental world of eternity
mental anatomy and physiology
|
CIRCULATORY SYSTEM
heart, blood vessels, blood, lymphatic, digestive, reproductive,
endocrine, biochemical, genetic
|
AFFECTIVE ORGAN
reception of spiritual heat, loves, motives, intentions, enjoyment,
pleasure, fun, perceptions, impulses, preferences, conscience,
attachments, relationships, togetherness, conjunction, marriage,
socialization of feelings and emotions, value-attachment and ranking,
goal-directedness
|
RESPIRATORY SYSTEM
lungs, bronchial, larynx, mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, vocal cords
|
COGNITIVE ORGAN
reception of spiritual light, thoughts, imagination, variety of
intelligences, inventiveness, understanding of truth, rationality,
language, abstract reasoning, morality, science, socialization of
thinking
|
NEURAL-SKELETAL SYSTEM
brain, sensory organs, bones, joints, muscles, skin, hair, nails
|
SENSORIMOTOR ORGAN
receptivity to sensory information, experiencing sensations, maintaining
situational vigilance, variety of motor readiness, motor skills and
habits of performance, speaking and listening, writing and texting
|
The above is a general classification of mind-body
correspondences.
The above indicates that the circulatory system in the spiritual body is
nothing but the affective organ. Further, the respiratory system in the
spiritual body is nothing but the cognitive organ. Finally, the neural-skeletal
system in the spiritual body is nothing but the sensorimotor organ. This
relationship of correspondence is an important research method for discovering
and charting mental anatomy. The physical body is the window to the mind. The
body is the visible mind. The temporary physical body is a perfect copy or model
in physical matter, of the spiritual body which is permanent and eternal. By
studying the anatomy of the physical body we are enabled to chart the
development and evolution of the mind and its consciousness.
Go to
http://www.visiblebody.com/ and register. Then learn to use the Visible Body
application. It takes several hours to explore all that it can do. While
learning the anatomy of the body, keep thinking that these anatomical
structures and interrelations are the visible mind.
Explore the circulatory system (Hide Others). See
how it is in the shape of the body. You are seeing the affective organ, whose
operations are the source of your feelings, loves, and motives -- hence our very
life. Our very life is nothing but our loves, and your loves are the operations
of the affective organ, which is the circulatory system of the spiritual body.
The circulatory system or affective organ, is the central lifeline of everything
human and living. The other systems of the mind are derivative of this and
dependent on this for mental nourishment and consciousness. Explore the heart.
You are seeing the ruling loves of a person, or of humanity as a whole. The
ruling love disposes all other loves, and the loves together dispose all
thinking and intelligence that belong to the cognitive organ or respiratory
system.
Explore the respiratory system by itself (Hide
Others). You are seeing the cognitive organ of thinking and reasoning, imagining
and knowing. Explore how the heart and the lungs are connected and how they act
together. You are seeing the interdependence between the affective (A) and
cognitive organs (C), between how our thinking and reasoning (C) are influenced
or determined by our motives and needs (A). Note that the heart in the spiritual
body (our loves) could not live or survive on their own. If the blood is
prevented from flowing through the lungs it cannot be oxygenated, and in that
case all its nutrients are useless to the cells and everything dies. This is in
exact correspondence to the interdependence between our loves (A) and our
thoughts (C). Our loves (A) act upon our thoughts (C) in order to produce our
sensations and motor determinations (S). The circulatory system acts upon the
respiratory system to produce or enable sensory perception and motor action.
Moving your finger in the physical body (layer 12),
requires a determination from your sensorimotor system (9S) in the spiritual
body (layer 10). This sensorimotor determination to move your finger (layer 9S)
is produced by the conjunction or co-action of your affective organ (9A) with
your cognitive organ (9C). This may be expressed as:
9A --> 9C --> 9S --> 12 (finger moves)
There must first be a motive (A) in the circulatory
system of the spiritual body in layer 9. For instance, you are typing at the
keyboard and coming to the end of your sentence. Now your finger moves over to
the period key and presses it. You had to have a motivation (A) to press that
particular key. Your motivation was to end the sentence you were typing. This
connects with the love (A) you have of communicating with someone or finishing
writing something. This love you have is nothing else than the operation of your
affective organ, which is the circulatory system of your spiritual body.
The love of communicating or completing your
sentence, cannot exist on its own, cannot be anything on its own. In order for
this love to have an existence in your affective organ, it must connect with
thinks in your memory or knowledge that are in your cognitive organ (C). In the
Swedenborg Reports this is called the connection between "the will and the
understanding." or, the connection between "good and truth." This connection or
conjunction is called the "spiritual marriage." It is the spiritual force in
eternity that corresponds to the natural force of gravity in time. All movement
and relative position in the physical world is ultimately determined by gravity.
This corresponds to the mental world of eternity where the quality and level of
all human consciousness is given by people's relative position in the Grand
Human (S), which is the product of their love (A) conjoined with their
understanding (C). The AC connection, or spiritual marriage, engenders the
totality of our living (S). What we call "heaven" (Grand Human) or "hell" (Grand
Monster) are the externalized sensorimotor (S) appearances produced by the
internal marriage between our loves (A) and our thoughts (C). Love produces
everything in eternity; in eternity everything is produced by our loves.
Here are some additional body-mind correspondences:
Beating the chest = feeling sorry, repenting or: being proud of oneself
Beating the chest = feeling sorry, repenting or: being proud of
Burning, boiling = feeling angry, passionate
Covered = secret, having a plan to deal with it ("I've got it covered")
Drinking = learning, believing ("He is drinking it all in")
Eating bread = to nourish the mind
Food = operations in the affective organ, love, affection, charity
Left hand = mentally incapable ("He's got two left hands")
Paying taxes in a democracy = the effort we are willing to put into our
character reformation
Ruminating = thinking about it, reflecting, considering
She's the pupil of his eye = cares a lot for her
Standing on the head = thinking and believing the opposite of truth
Taste = choices ("He has good taste in clothes")
Teeth = power ("that amendment has no teeth in it")
Tied up in knots = feeling disturbed or conflictual
To be hitched = to be married, mentally conjoined
Washing the body = repenting, cleansing or purifying the mind from evil traits
Wine = "faith", rational faith, positive bias in science, affirmative principle
towards Sacred Scripture
More at:
Correspondences in Our Thinking and Language
Now here are more specific mind-body anatomical correspondences.
CHART of Body-Mind Relationships in the
Spiritual Body
| LAYER
|
CIRCULATORY SYSTEM
AFFECTIVE
Ruling Love
|
RESPIRATORY SYSTEM
COGNITIVE
Governing Truth
|
NERVOUS AND
SKELETAL SYSTEM SENSORI-MOTOR
External Appearances
|
MENTALITY THEMES
IN THE HEAVENLY ORDER |
MENTALITY THEMES
IN THE HELLISH ORDER |
4
CELESTIAL-RATIONAL |
A4 HEART,
ARTERIES, REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS
|
C4 LUNGS,
BREATHING, LIPS, CHEEKS
|
S4 HANDS,
EYES, RIGHT BRAIN, CEREBELLUM, RIB CAGE, THIGHS
|
Receiving
conjugial love from God.
Conjunction with God through His Divine Human Omniproprium.
Love of innocence and children.
Love of fidelity. Altruism.
Perceiving interior rational truths.
Inspiring in people good thoughts and dreams.
Inspiring in people the love of good. |
(SEE LAYER 9) |
5
SPIRITUAL-RATIONAL |
A5
STOMACH, LIVER, MASTICATION, ASSIMILATION
|
C5
ESOPHAGUS, MOUTH CAVITY, SMELL, TONGUE, TASTE
|
S5
INTERIOR OF NOSTRILS , EARS, LEFT BRAIN
|
Discussing and
reasoning about truths and doctrines.
Inspiring people who are seeking to understand truths and strengthen
conscience.
Helping people in spiritual combat during regeneration efforts. |
(SEE LAYER 8) |
6
SPIRITUAL-NATURAL |
A6
NUTRITIONAL EXCHANGE IN CELLS
|
C6
RESPIRATION, OXYGENATION, AIR SACS
|
S6
|
Practicing the
human virtues in community life.
Inspiring people with being useful.
Inspiring people to acquire motor skills.
Inspiring in people the rational foundations for aesthetics, art,
sports, civics. |
(SEE LAYER 7) |
7
INTERIOR-NATURAL |
A7 SPLEEN,
PANCREAS, BLOOD, ARTERIES, VEINS, CAPILLARIES
|
C7
DIAPHRAGM
|
S7 HANDS,
OUTWARD SKIN OR LINING OF ALL INTERNAL ORGANS
|
Practicing the
unity model of marriage and striving to attain eternal conjugial love.
Motivated to master the mental environment.
Religious or spiritual views based on what is rationally understandable.
Puts importance on cooperating with God in one's regeneration for
eternity.
Values thinking from scientific dualism and theistic psychology.
Values sincerity, spiritual responsibility, rationality, diligence,
altruism. |
Hating conjugial love and
desiring to pervert the institution of marriage.
Opposing and subverting moral virtues in community life and engaging in
hurtful practices as a lifestyle.
Inspiring people with the enjoyment of selfish traits.
Inspiring people to dislike healthy activity and eating habits.
Inspiring in people the desire and enjoyment of tearing down the
rational foundations for aesthetics, art, sports, civics, etc., in order
to pervert or destroy their goodness and rationality. |
8
EXTERIOR-NATURAL |
A8 GALL
BLADDER, KIDNEYS, URETHRA, BLADDER
|
C8 TEETH
|
S8
NEURONS, FEET, SKIN, BONES, CARTILAGE, MUSCLES, TENDONS
|
Practicing the
equity model of marriage.
Motivated to master the social environment.
Abstract thinking from materialism and negative bias in science.
Religious or spiritual views based on mystery, blind faith, authority,
history, tradition.
Love of legalism, egalitarianism, symbolism, idealism.
Concerned with parity, duty, honor, recognition, glory, achievement.
Valuing honesty, social responsibility, patriotism. |
Practicing the male
dominance model under the guise of equity.
Love of reasoning about spiritual ideas in order to justify their chosen
persuasions which consist of falsified truths and hurtful practices.
Love of inspiring people to deny or falsify Sacred Scripture, and to
kill the conscience by attacking it and ignoring it.
Love of influencing people who are in spiritual combat during
regeneration in order to get them to give in to their temptation. |
9
NATURAL-CORPOREAL |
A9
INTESTINES
|
C9
|
S9 SOLES
OF THE FEET, HEEL
|
Practicing the
male dominance model of marriage.
Motivated to master the physical environment.
Desire to punish and suppress individual freedoms.
Spirituality based on ancestor worship, saints and holy objects,
miracles supernatural events, and on persuasive teachings.
Authoritarian and strict parenting and schooling. |
Perverting conjugial love to promiscuity
and infidelity.
Corporeal spirituality based on disjunction from God through opposing
and hating His Divine Human Omniproprium.
Rageful hatred of innocence and children.
Lust of infidelity. Selfism. Arrogance.
Being blind to all interior rational truths.
Inspiring in people wicked thoughts and frightening dreams.
Inspiring in people the lust of evil.
|
Note that this chart gives the
correspondential connection between organs in the spiritual body and our
sensations (S), thoughts (C), and feelings (A). Note that we have a threefold
self at each of the six layers. When you look at the mentality themes at each
layer you can notice that they arrange themselves so as to match the
physiological functions of each body part or zone.
See if you can use this chart to locate your mental states in
the course of a normal day. What proportion of time do you spend in the three
heavenly mentality zones and in the three hellish mentality zones. Study the
characteristics of the heavenly and hellish order in layers 7, 8, 9. (More
discussion on this in the
Mental anatomy Lecture Notes)
One might think that so far, Swedenborg's dualist psychology might have been
acceptable enough to receive mention in the history of psychology textbooks
taught to psychology majors and graduate students today. But that is not the
case. The reason becomes clear when you consider what is the Spiritual Sun, and
what are its spiritual substances out of which our mental organs are
constructed.
Swedenborg observed that every person goes through a dying-resuscitation
process that separates the connection between our physical body and our
spiritual body. The process lasts about 30 hours starting from the complete
cessation of all life in the physical body either by medical death, or violent
and accidental death. Swedenborg himself underwent the dying-resuscitation
process so that he could describe it as an eye-witness. He interviewed thousands
of people immediately after they were awakened from the resuscitation process.
These included strangers and people he was acquainted with personally. Everyone
awakened in the spiritual body remembers their identity and life, but they now
speak a universal thought-language that spontaneously comes out as they think or
desire to communicate with others. Everyone can also see the Spiritual Sun.
The spiritual body contains the mental organs at several discrete layers of
anatomy, as will be discussed next in detail. In summary, the spiritual body
contains the natural mind and the spiritual mind. The natural mind is conscious
until the dying-resuscitation process begins, and then the spiritual mind takes
over at resuscitation. Until resuscitation, the spiritual mind is unconscious,
so that all our consciousness is focused on the natural mind. But after
resuscitation there is a physiological change so that the natural mind and our
outward social personality is gradually being "decommissioned" or "put out of
circulation." We then continue our life of immortality in eternity by means of
our conscious life in the spiritual mind.
Our mental organs are not only constructed out of spiritual heat and light
from the Spiritual Sun, but they are also activated by them. This corresponds to
the phenomenon in the physical world that if you prevent sunlight and heat from
the natural sun from reaching the planet, everything perishes and the planet
becomes a dead planet. All plant life depends on continuous radiation from the
physical sun, and the weather system that it causes in the atmosphere. This
corresponds to the phenomenon in the mental world of eternity, whereby our
mental organs and their operations of feelings, thoughts, and sensations, would
cease and disappear if the radiation from the Spiritual Sun stopped.
Now the final point: What is this endless stream of spiritual heat and light
coming out of the Spiritual Sun?
Spiritual heat is nothing else than Divine Love or
Good, and spiritual light is nothing else than Divine Truth or Wisdom.
Now you can see the fundamental and unavoidable
theistic aspect of the Swedenborg Reports.
This is one of the most astonishing facts of science that has ever come to
human knowledge. Our mental organs are constructed, activated, and directed by
God through God's Divine Love as spiritual heat, and through Divine Truth as
spiritual light. The mental world of eternity is an expanse created, activated,
and directed by God through love and truth substances.
This is a difficult rational concept to understand at first, because we think
of love and truth as conditions or states of the body, or the mind, but not as
substances like heat or light. After our resuscitation we will be able to look
straight at the Spiritual Sun and experience the actuality of good and truth
streaming into our spiritual body and activating our loves, thoughts, and
sensations. Swedenborg found out that the people who dwell in the highest layer
of the mental world, which is closest to the Spiritual Sun (layer 4), are
conscious of the "influx" of heat and light as they gaze at the Spiritual Sun.
Swedenborg also looked at Spiritual Sun and describes it as thousands of times
brighter than the noon day sun in summer we experience here. The physical sun
rays blind our eyes, but the rays of the Spiritual Sun have the opposite effect
-- they clarify one's thinking and warm our heart with happiness from its heat
of love and good. The spiritual light, which is Divine Truth exiting from God,
is received by the people in layer 4 as quasi-omniscience, that is, whatever you
think about while in that light, you can understand rationally and
scientifically, spontaneously knowing everything that is knowable about it.
The reality described in the Swedenborg Reports show that God is at the
center of every phenomenon in both worlds. The two worlds are connected, point
by point, by means of the laws of correspondences that are a central part of
creation. It is not possible for science to discuss reality without describing
the direct hands on role of God in that reality. Every existing physical object,
and every existing mental operation, are directed or managed by God from within
their inmost structure and substance, which is spiritual heat and light from the
Spiritual Sun. God's feelings and thinking are therefore at the center of every
phenomenon, that is, the origin and cause of every phenomenon. In terms of
reality and existence, God's love and truth first enter the mental world of
eternity in its highest layer (4), then descend or exteriorize through all the
mental layers, and finally exist into the natural world of time where it creates
every object and makes it to come into existence in a way and pattern that
follows and brings about God's order and purpose.
In the Swedenborg Reports God reveals that His purpose for creating and
maintaining the universe is
(1) to arrange for human beings to develop a natural mind on planets in the
physical world,
(2) which allows their spiritual mind to be opened and activated after
resuscitation,
(3) so that they can lead an endless life of conjugial happiness with a soul
mate,
(4) which is communicated mutually to all who live in the Grand Human,
(5) so that the overall happiness of the human race continues to increase
endlessly to eternity.
God's purpose is activated by God's Divine Love, which is to create people
and make them evolve to ever grander happiness and intelligence, endlessly,
forever. And all this is accomplished through God's Divine Truth, which is the
source of human rationality and intelligence. The more we are in order with
God's purpose and order, the more we experience this grand life, and the sooner.
We can solve the problems of society and mind that non-theistic psychology has
been unable to do so far. The positive-bias in science and the Swedenborg
Reports have been made available to all people to further this Divine purpose
for the world and humankind.
Even if traditional non-theistic psychology were to admit and accept the
mind-body dualism of the Swedenborg Reports, it would encounter the other
intellectual barrier, which is the barrier of "God" as a concept in science.
To by-pass this intellectual barrier we need to adopt the positive-bias in
science.
The negative-bias in science is called a "bias" because it is not dependent
on the proof that God does not exist, or that the concept of God cannot function
in science. The negative-bias science is materialistic in its foundations, hence
it rejects dualism (eternity outside time) and God. Both are rejected without
proof, hence we can call it the negative-bias of materialism in science.
Similarly, the positive-bias in theistic psychology is not dependent on any
proof that God exists, or that Swedenborg's reports of resuscitation are correct
and valid. No such proof is possible within a materialistic perspective. Hence
it is called the positive-bias of theistic dualism.
However, thought there is no proof either way, there are many empirical facts
reported by Swedenborg, thanks to his ability to be conscious in his spiritual
mind, simultaneously with his normal consciousness in his natural mind. This was
the first time in human history that a modern scientist was given the
opportunity of collecting observational evidence of the dying process, and of
the life immortal that begins at resuscitation. At age 57, in the middle of an
active and successful scientific and engineering career in Sweden, Swedenborg
awoke one day feeling very strange, hearing and seeing things, being confused.
After a few days however, he realized that his spiritual consciousness was
present along with his natural consciousness. He was able to see and observe
people in the afterlife, even as he was carrying on his busy life as a
government engineer, prominent legislator, and publisher of scientific works and
inventions.
He found himself with dual consciousness -- aware of his natural world
surroundings as before, but in addition, aware of the surroundings of those who
pass on, resuscitate, and continue their life in the spiritual mind and body.
When each of us are resuscitated, we will be able to confirm all of Swedenborg's
observations. Until then we need to approach the Swedenborg Reports without
proof, in the positive-bias orientation, so that we can give it a serious
examination (positive-bias in science), rather than reject it out of hand as
impossible (negative-bias in science).
The examination of the Swedenborg Reports in the
positive-bias mode does not mean that we are going to merely accept uncritically
what they describe.
We must apply the tools of rational and scientific
thinking as we examine the Swedenborg evidence.
-
Do the descriptions and their explanations make
rational sense
-
Do they hold together consistently into an
overall integrated system of scientific explanation
-
Do any of the descriptions or explanations
contradict each other
-
Are the explanations usable for the phenomena
and events we can observe around us in the physical and social world
-
Are there any philosophers and scientists who
have read these reports and accepted them
-
Did Swedenborg have a good reputation as a man
and scientist
-
Did any of his contemporaries read him and
agree with him
-
How scientific are the explanations of mental
phenomena, how detailed, how mechanistic and functional
-
Are the cause-effect interactions explained
rationally
-
Can the knowledge be applied to current issues
and problems
-
Is research possible
-
Are there factual data, or experimental set ups
with variables being manipulated
-
Empirically specific enough to be testable with
data and observations
-
Organic (like biology, anatomy, physiology), so
that every piece can be isolated and studied on its own as well as its
structural part and role in the functioning of the whole
I have studied the Swedenborg Reports since 1981 and have made available
several of my articles
and books online, showing that they fundamentally meet the rational and
scientific standards specified above. To review this evidence you can consult
these sources, where you will also find collateral literature (some online), by
various authors who have also studied the
Writings of Swedenborg.
The fact is that there is no precedent in the history of
psychology for a theory as global and all encompassing as the presentation in
the Swedenborg Reports. The theories and accounts in psychology are generally
addressed to a small zone of human behavior or thinking. There is no theory or
presentation tying together the most common issues of relevance to everyday life
and society into one integrated account. For the first time in science history,
the Swedenborg Reports present such a unified presentation of everyday life
issues – birth, development, social life, death, resuscitation, life in
eternity. If we apply the above assessment grid to a number of well known and
accepted theories in psychology, none of them would pass the test.
The fact is that theories in psychology change rapidly. One
of my graduate school professor at McGill University in 1960, the famed
physiological psychologist Donald Hebb, insisted that a “good” theory in
psychology lasts about ten years. It takes a few years to test a theory and
develop new data that the theory cannot handle. The theory must be changed. And
so on. This is what has been called the regular “revolution” in “normal science”
(Kuhn comes to mind). If a theory in psychology lasts a long time, like that of
Freud, it is not a good theory, according to this view, because it means it is
not specific enough to be disproven by new data.
Hebb’s perspective may be accurate for non-theistic
psychology. But it does not apply to the the theistic psychology extracted from
the Swedenborg Reports. Here we have a theoretical account that is totally
rational and so successful that it does both things that other theories have
never done before:
(1) It is empirically specific, so that it can be tested with data and
observations
(2) It is totally organic, holistic, or synergistic so that it is able to
account for new data
Given all this, it makes sense for you to lay aside the negative-bias
materialism in the study of these reports, and to examine them with a
positive-bias. This means that you are accepting the possibility that the
Swedenborg Reports might be scientific and valid. You are not saying that they
are scientific and valid, but only that you acknowledge that they might be, if
you lay aside the usual negative-bias materialism.
 Duality
encompasses two worlds, one physical in time, and the other mental in eternity.
This is also called the spiritual world or the afterlife. Born into eternity
through a dual body, one in each world, we ‘pass on’ at death and resuscitate a
few hours later in the spiritual body and our own familiar mind and identity of
self. To say that we “pass on” is to speak according to the appearance,
especially to those still “on earth.” The scientific specifics revealed in the
Swedenborg Reports indicate that our mind and self are in the spiritual body
only, and therefore we are born into eternity and stay there. We are merely not
conscious that our spiritual body is functioning in the mental world of
eternity. Our thoughts and feelings are in that immortal spiritual body in
eternity. So instead of actually “passing on” from “this side to that side”, we
are merely becoming conscious that we are already in the mental world of
eternity from birth.
This new spiritual consciousness is made possible by the dying and
resuscitation process. It is something we look forward to with anticipation,
though we also know from Sacred Scripture that we are responsible for preparing
ourselves before that process of consciousness transition. If we awaken
unprepared, we follow our inherited ruling love of doing everything for the sake
of self only. This love exists in the Grand Monster, in the hells of the human
mind. But if we awaken from resuscitation being prepared, we have undergone
character reformation and regeneration through resisting temptations. Then we
have a heavenly ruling love that pulls us irresistibly to conjugial life in the
Grand Human.
The two worlds are tied together in an integral coordination. Every event in
the physical world of time and nature is called an effect, and every event in
the mental world of eternity and the Spiritual Sun, is called a cause. The
effect once it comes about, cannot exist by itself but must have the cause
within itself. This is the Divine Law of Correspondence between the natural and
the spiritual, between physical and mental. In the discourse of many people,
including scientists, the word “natural” is normally opposed to “spiritual,” and
the word “physical” is normally opposed to “mental.” Few people have suspected
or known that these two sets refer to each other. “Natural” refers to
“physical,” and “mental” refers to “spiritual.” Consequently, natural and
physical refer to phenomena in time, and these are effects, while spiritual and
mental refer to phenomena in eternity (not in time), and these are causes.
These two, the physical and the mental, or in other words, the natural and
the spiritual, are correspondences and are fully determined by the laws of
correspondences. These are revealed in the Swedenborg Reports. Correspondences
apply only across discrete degrees. The physical and the mental are in discrete
degrees. This means that nothing from the physical can come into contact with
the mental – they are separate universes. But they are tied to each other, point
by point, phenomenon by phenomenon, object by object. A mental object is in the
world of causes, thus the spiritual world. That particular mental object has an
effect in the physical, and the two are functionally tied and determined by each
other.
 For
instance, the existence of the substance of water in the physical world is an
effect whose cause is the existence of the substance of truth in the mental
world. The mental world of eternity is a rational ether or expanse or field
created by the Spiritual Sun. This phenomenon was visually observed by
Swedenborg over the course of 27 years of daily dual consciousness, from age 57
to 84 when he was separated from his physical body in 1772. In his spiritual
consciousness he was able to see the sensorimotor neos appearing in the various
layers of the mental world of eternity, which is shaped overall into the
appearance of the Grand Human. Every person he talked to in that spiritual
consciousness (layer 4, Third Heaven) was able to see the Spiritual Sun.
The Swedenborg Report describe the Spiritual Sun as an aura that localizes
the point of interchange between God and creation. God As He is in Himself,
infinite, unknowable, unapproachable created mental and physical existence by
means of this Divine Aura or Substance that flows out of Him and into His
creation. The Spiritual Sun is therefore called
Layer 1 of the mental world of eternity. From the Spiritual Sun issue an
endless variety of mental substances out of which human minds are organically
constructed. There are two types of spiritual substances, each infinite in their
own. One type is spiritual light coming from the
Spiritual Sun, and the other type is spiritual heat that is within the
light. What is amazing is that the mental substance of spiritual light is
nothing else than truth upon which is based rationality and the functioning
purposeful order of reality. Further, the mental substance of spiritual heat is
nothing else than love from which is constructed our will to live and survive.
When we are conceived and born God forms a spiritual body that contains the
three systems of mental organs we call affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor.
These organs are constructed out of the substances of spiritual heat and light.
Since spiritual heat (Divine Love) and spiritual light (Divine Truth) are Divine
substances they are living and immortal. Anything constructed out of the
substances of the Spiritual Sun is therefore indestructible and permanent. Our
spiritual body and its mental organs are born into eternity and remain immortal
and eternal. Our self and identity as a unique person remains forever and is
indestructible. That’s nice to know, right? I thought so myself when I first
found out, in 1981, having
found the
Swedenborg Reports in our university library on the campus of the University
of Hawaii. My wife and I were searching for Bible Commentaries and came across a
shelf of 40 books written by one man, E. Swedenborg. We each took a volume home
and have kept reading, studying, and researching those volumes since then.
The order of reality has therefore been created with the Spiritual Sun
creating the mental world of eternity, and then, outside of that by a discrete
degree, creating the physical world in time. This is the sequential order of
phenomenal existence in creation –
Spiritual Sun à
mental world of eternity
à
physical world in time
Source
à
cause
à
effect
These are created into discrete degrees, which means that the
substances of the Spiritual Sun are the constructing elements of the mental
world of eternity, and that these constructing elements do not become part of
each other. Our feelings are constructed out of spiritual heat, which is Divine
Love. That Divine substance is “in us” as components, but they are not part of
us. This is because Divine substance cannot mix with non-Divine. This is the
relationship of discrete degrees and correspondence. The Divine substance out of
which our affective organ is constructed is the cause, while our affective
operations and feelings of love, are the effects. Cause and effect are discrete,
one is within the other, but they cannot mix or touch.
Quoting from the Swedenborg Reports:
SS 28. It will be comprehended by the learned that these three may be
called end, cause and effect; also being, becoming and existing: the end is
being, the cause is becoming and the effect is existing. Consequently, in
everything that is complete there is a trine, called the first, the middle
and the last; also, the end, the cause and the effect; and also being (esse)
becoming, (fieri), and existing (existere). When one understands these
things then also does one understand that every Divine work is complete and
perfect in its last; and also that the whole is in the last, which is a
trine, because the prior things are simultaneously therein. (SS 28)
It is similar with what is mental in relation to the physical. The mental is
prior and is the cause, while the physical is posterior and is the effect. The
cause cannot mix with the effect but they correspond to each other and act
together, and live together. When the Source is within the cause and the two
together are in the effect, the sequence is completed in simultaneous order.
This is the order of reality. Here are some diagrams that depict and discuss
simultaneous order of a variety of things in discrete degrees:
diagram 1 ||
diagram 2 ||
diagram 3 ||
diagram 4 ||
diagram 5 ||
diagram 6 ||
diagram 7 ||
God chose our planet earth to effect the Divine Incarnation. The reason is
that of all the myriad of inhabited planets across the billions of galaxies,
this earth is the only one that has supported a scientific civilization based on
rational methods of thinking. In order for God to complete the creation of the
human race, He had to acquire for Himself a Natural Body in the physical world.
He had prepared this momentous event since the beginning of the generations of
people on this earth. God’s Natural Body contained a Spiritual Body in which was
a natural mind with its three layers (corporeal (9), scientific (8), external
rational (7e). It also contained a spiritual mind with its three layers (First
Heaven (6), Second Heaven (5), and third Heaven (4).
Just as it is with all people born on this planet, God’s Natural Mind was
connected by inheritance to the societies of the Grand Monster. In order to
disconnect this inherited natural mind from the hell societies, God-Man had to
regenerate His inherited natural mind before He could make it Divine, and hence,
truly His Own. To accomplish this God-Man had to do what no human being could,
before Him. This was the very purpose for which He wanted to be Incarnated and
acquire for Himself a Divine Natural Body that He could take to Himself in
eternity, so that those in the afterlife of eternity could see Him visually, and
touch Him with their hands. This visible touchable God is called The Divine
Human. There is only One God. Until the Incarnation God could only be seen as
the Spiritual Sun. This is because He had not acquired for Himself a
Sensorimotor Body, which is the ultimate of human life. Swedenborg was told by
those who live in layer 4 consciousness (Third Heaven) that the Divine Human
sometimes appears to them face to face and talks with them.
The method that God-Man created to regenerate His Natural Mind is the method
that every human being after that, must use to regenerate his or her natural
mind. This method involves three steps:
(I) God-Man creates a new evolutionary layer in His natural mind. This is
layer 7i or the interior-natural layer. This organ never existed in the
current split-brain spiritual race, though it did exist in the earlier
whole-brain celestial race that first lived on this earth (“the Most Ancient
Church”). The interior-natural layer (7i) that God-Man constructed in the human
natural mind actually completes the full evolution of the human race. With this
new interior organic system in our rational mind (layer 7i) we are able to raise
our consciousness to the spiritual and celestial level, almost as if our
spiritual mind became conscious. Through this entirely new ability our rational
mind has been able to evolve progressively for two thousand years and to produce
modern science, society, and a global civilization.
This evolution could not have occurred on any other planet in the universe,
and it is on this account that God was Incarnated on this earth. Hence it is
that viewed spiritually, this earth is the center of the universe. All other
human generations have been benefitted by the organic evolution that took place
on this earth. The entire human race is kept by God as one organic unit called
the Grand Human, and its opposite, the Grand Monster. These organic entities
operate as one so that whatever changes occur in one place, affect all the other
places, each in its own unique way.
You can see from this that neo production is the basis upon which human
evolution depends. Layer 7i neos are the higher correspondences of Sacred
Scripture that we can extract and organize into a science called
theistic
psychology.
Our
soul at conception and birth (layers 2, 3) is imprinted with a spiritual bar
code that contains the unique traits and abilities of the person's mental layers
(4 to 9). This spiritual gene contains the entire future states of the person.
Every mental layer contains its own portion of the spiritual barcode, which
gives the person a unique spiritual identity in all states of consciousness.
Spiritual barcodes are
organic. They are made of a mixture of lighter and darker stripes or bars. Each
stripe is a spiritual address located in one of the numberless societies of the
Grand Human (layers 4, 5, 6) and the Grand Monster (layers -7, -8, -9). As each
layer grows and develops in the course of our daily life, the operations taking
place in each layer are determined by the barcode addresses organically stamped
on that layer. Each spiritual address is actually an open connection or channel
of communication between the loves of the people in the society at that address,
and the loves that the individual is attached to.
For example, suppose
you feel depressed because your supervisor criticized your for the way you are
doing your work. Feeling depressed is a hellish love sourced in the Grand
Monster. There is an address in your spiritual barcode in layer 9A that connects
your feeling of being depressed with a society in the Grand Monster populated
with people whose chief passion is to enjoy people's depressive thoughts and
emotions about themselves. It's a kind of sadistic enjoyment, as when you and
your friends enjoy teasing someone. This kind of bullying happens frequently in
school, at work, with friends. Some people feel enjoyment when they see
someone's misfortunes. These people also feel depression when others gain
something or have something that you want, but can't have. There is a large
collection of loves and sub-loves around feeling depressed. As long you the
spiritual address with that society remains open for communication, you are
going to experience these loves at various times (depression when losing,
elation when winning, etc.).
Your emotion of
depression when your boss criticizes you, or when a friend rejects you, or when
you don't win the contest, etc., is produced by this connection that you keep
open in your "vertical community" or mental world. Although we are all born with
an inherited spiritual bar code that determines our heavenly and hellish loves,
we are not part of the spiritual society where our loves originate from. We do
not own these loves, nor are they within us. They are merely open channels that
transmit this love to our affective organ in layers 7, 8, 9. They become our own
only when we develop a love for that inflowing affective operation. For
instance, one way we can react to our depression is to satisfy our love for
retaliation. We enjoy thinking bad thoughts about the person who offended or
rejected us. This enjoyment of retaliating, punishing, denigrating is a hellish
enjoyment coming from a hellish love (layer -9, -8). Each time we experience the
enjoyment of vengeance, the satisfaction of seeing someone suffer, even if it
goes no further than in our imagination, we are making that love our own. And
once a love is made our own, we can get rid of it only through regeneration,
only by spiritual combat against temptations brought to us by the Divine
Psychologist.
The process of
regeneration by temptation is an organic process managed entirely by the Divine
Psychologist within every person who is still active in the natural mind prior
to dying and resuscitation. The cumulative activity of regeneration over days,
months, years, and decades, consists of disowning our hellish loves, and owning
our heavenly loves. We inherit both loves through the spiritual barcode
connection in our vertical community. The lighter and darker stripes insure that
we oscillate all day between heavenly and hellish emotions and thoughts. This
regular and frequent alternation process of our consciousness is necessary for
the ability to undergo regeneration. We inherit connections to the Grand Human
(lighter stripes) and the Grand Monster (darker stripes) but the loves that come
through the connections do not become our own loves until we decide to practice
them and allow ourselves to enjoy them without opposition.
We can practice
inherited heavenly impulses like curiosity, studying, cooperation, sincerity,
conscience, etc., and they become our own loves, our abilities, our own good.
But if we don't practice sincerity by preferring to lie and get away with
deception, then we make the love of fraud and thievery to be our own love. The
Divine Psychologist faces us with temptations in daily life in order to allow us
to choose to love the hellish trait and enjoyment, or to refuse to love it, and
to try to reject it, and even hate it. By refusing to practice an evil
enjoyment, we are making it possible for the Divine Psychologist to remove that
inherited connection in the spiritual barcode.
The more we regenerate
a mental layer, the more the lighter and darker stripes are separated into two
camps. Eventually all the heavenly stripes will be in one camp, and all the
hellish ones in an opposing camp.
Today the neuroscience of consciousness has human awareness
located in the physical brain. This may be called reductionist neuroscience
because it reduces two dimensions into one. It views physical brain and mental
consciousness as one material substance in time and place. Non-reductionist
neuroscience allows for a dualism of substances. Physical substance is in time
and place, and composes the brain of the physical body. Mental substance is not
in time and place, and composes the brain of the spiritual body. There are
therefore two bodies to consider at our birth, one made of temporary physical
substances, the other made of eternal mental substances. The physical substances
originate in the sun or star systems, while the spiritual substances originate
in the Spiritual Sun, which is the center of the mental world of eternity. The
two bodies grow up together in correspondence, and when the physical body dies,
our conscious life continues as before through the spiritual body.
In other words our feelings, thoughts, and sensations are
not events located in the physical brain and body. They are events located in
the mental organs called affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. These mental
organs are located in the spiritual body since birth, and remain there forever.
Since the spiritual body is immortal, the mental organs are permanent in
eternity. Our conscious self does not stop at the death of the physical body
since the self is located in the spiritual body right from the start of
conscious life.
Our mental organs are arranged in layers of operations from
lowest (layer 9) to highest (layer 4). Our consciousness is determined by the
level at which it is operating in any situation. The feelings, loves, mentality,
thinking, preferences, limitations at each consciousness level have been
described in the Swedenborg Reports and are presented in theistic psychology.
The above makes it clear that human consciousness has an
organic basis. Note also that we consciousness is a composite contributed by
three mental systems or functions of operation – affective (A), cognitive (C),
and sensorimotor (S). Affective consciousness is determined by the quality of
our loves in relation to God and the Spiritual Sun. This is because the
Spiritual Sun, which is the origin of all human mental substances in eternity,
is nothing but an exit point or outflow of the spiritual substances of Divine
Love and Divine Truth, flowing into the created mental world of humanity. The
Spiritual Sun is at the center, also at the highest region (layer 1) of the
created mental world. There is only one mental world, and you and me and
everyone is in that one same mental world. We cannot see one another now, while
we are still attached to the physical body by correspondence. But immediately
after our resuscitation, at the end of the dying process, we are awakened in
consciousness in our higher or spiritual mind, and in that consciousness we can
see everyone who has passed into the afterlife.
Swedenborg was an extraordinary Divinely initiated
exception so that he was given conscious awareness in the spiritual mind while
he was still here conscious in his natural mind and physical body. He led a
strange dual consciousness life for 27 years, from age 57 to 84. He left behind
the Swedenborg Reports which are about 30 volumes of his empirical and
experimental observations during these years of the mental world of eternity and
ho wit corresponds and relates to the conscious life we know here prior to
passing on through dying and resuscitation.
Prior to our resuscitation our consciousness is limited the
three layers of the natural mind (9, 8, 7). After resuscitation our
consciousness operates in the layers of the spiritual mind (6, 5, 4). The task
we have in our years on earth is to regenerate the natural mind, which allows
the spiritual mind to open, grow, and mature. If the natural mind is not
regenerated, the spiritual layers do not function after resuscitation. This
means that we must then continue to operate in our natural mind, but now in the
mental world of eternity. This is a disastrous situation and leads to an unhappy
life in eternity called “hell.” But if we regenerate the natural layers, the
spiritual layers are ready to function after resuscitation, and our
consciousness can dwell in an eternal “heaven” with our soul mate.
Regeneration is an organic process. It is made necessary
because our natural mind is born with inherited hellish loves. More precisely,
we are each born with a unique spiritual bar code that automatically ties us to
certain “hellish” societies, each of whom specialize in some selfish, cruel,
insane, and destructive love or enjoyment. Regeneration is the organic process
that separates us from that inherited connection. The process is carried out in
cooperation with the Divine Psychologist who brings events and situations to the
life of each person in such a way as to bring awareness to the individual of the
inherited ties to the hellish societies. We can observe, witness, monitor our
thoughts and feelings in the course of the day and evaluate them in terms of
what we know about heavenly and hellish traits. The process is experienced as a
"temptation" during which we are pulled by opposing emotional forces: to give in
or to reject the hellish love, enjoyment, or habit. When we reject a hellish
connection with the Grand Monster, we are gradually cut off from those societies
so that we no longer "own" those hellish traits.
As regeneration proceeds day by day, and year by year, our
spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4) is opened, operationalized, prepared for our
conscious life in it after resuscitation. If we are unwilling to go through the
lifelong process of regeneration, or conscious disowning of inherited hellish
traits, then our spiritual mind is not opened or functional after resuscitation.
We then experience consciousness in the natural mind (layers -9, -8, -7). The
minus sign indicates that these natural layers after resuscitation are not
suitable for genuine human life in the mental world of eternity. People in that
consciousness are sub-human caricatures of their former selves when they still
had heavenly traits along with the hellish. But after resuscitation, when the
spiritual layers are non-functional, the heavenly traits are rejected or lost,
leaving behind a monstrous version -- people who invert all truth and good into
falsity and evil, creating a community of hell around them in which they have to
spend their consciousness in mental eternity.
The construction of
novel sentences, novel expressions, novel words, novel nonsense words,
nicknames, names of endearment, titles, lyrics, names of people, streets,
places, products, lifestyle practices, etc. -- these are normal speech acts all
speakers of a language employ constantly. Children at play produce novel
verbalizations that may be called nonsense neologisms or meaningless neologisms.
I have neologued many romantic neologisms of endearment to describe the
diversity of conjugial delights her appearance and presence initiates in me.
According to my favorite author, no two things can ever be the same because all
created things, qualities, or events must reflect God's infinity (Swedenborg).
In other words, if things were not absolutely unique the created universe would
not accurately reflect the creativeness of God, in whom "infinite things make
one" (Swedenborg). In other words, all creations by God and all constructions by
people are existential neologisms.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a voluminous writers. The current
publication of his entire works translated in English take up nearly 50 volumes.
About 37 of these were written after his dual consciousness was awakened at age
57. I have been studying these volumes since 1981 and have based my work on it
since then, especially my 18-volume project called "theistic
psychology." I coined the neologism "the Swedenborg Reports" to refer to
this collection of scientific reports on his observations during his dual
consciousness. He was quite surprised when he found himself one day being
conscious of two worlds simultaneously. One was the conscious awareness of the
natural world through his natural mind and physical body, the other was the
conscious awareness of the spiritual world through his spiritual mind and
spiritual body. Every human being is
born into
eternity, with a temporary physical body attached to the natural mind,
and a permanent or eternal spiritual body attached to our spiritual mind. The
Swedenborg Reports are the first scientific reports on the afterlife world. No
scientist before him had direct observational access to the dying process and
the resuscitation process that takes place a few hours after the death of the
physical body.
In 27 years of full
conscious awareness of the spiritual world, Swedenborg observed thousands of
people being resuscitated and was able to talk to them, both strangers and
people he knew in this life. He also interviewed people who had lived on this
earth thousands of years ago, yet appeared in the "flower of youth" in their
heavenly habitations in eternity. Some of my favorite neologisms coined by
Swedenborg are these:
the Divine Human
the as-of-self
discrete degrees
conjugial love
interior sense of Sacred Scripture
natural, spiritual, celestial senses
science of correspondences
spiritual rational
celestial rational
spiritual natural
ruling love
spiritual heat or love
spiritual light or truth
Spiritual Sun
One Person in Three Divine Aspects
Grand Man (or Grand Human)
spiritual doctrine
Most Ancient Church
Pre-Adamites
In my attempt to
render the Swedenborg
Reports into contemporary psychological ideas and methods I had to coin a
variety of neologisms such as these:
theistic psychology
the mental world of eternity
the
Divine Psychologist
mental anatomy
spiritual psychobiology
genes of consciousness
substantive dualism
conjoint self
doctrine of the wife
surrendered husband
sweetheart rituals
unity model of marriage
substitution technique
self-witnessing
Perizonius thesis
Grand Human
Grand Monster
The act of
constructing neologisms has a spiritual dimension or significance when examined
from the perspective of the Swedenborg Reports. Note the
etymology of
neologism: neo=new and logos=word or meaning. Thus, neologism=new word or
meaning. The Swedenborg Reports present the view that a new spiritual age was
ushered in by God through Swedenborg's Writings in which God reveals through him
the science of correspondences that describes the laws by which God manages the
universe in its various
layers or discrete degrees. These laws are contained in the "spiritual
sense" of Sacred Scripture.
All Sacred Scripture
is
Divine Speech or Truth that has descended from God and was transformed from
a celestial meaning, to a spiritual meaning, to a natural meaning. The natural
meaning of Sacred Scripture is the literal meaning. By applying the knowledge of
correspondences to the verses and words of the literal sense of Sacred
Scripture, one can extract the spiritual and celestial senses that are hidden
within it. This extraction process is possible only when the individual is
enlightened by God to see these more interior truths within the literal sense.
Everyone is enlightened by God who is willing to stop acting and thinking from
selfish traits, and wants to become a "new person" who is altruistic and happy
with heavenly enjoyments.
This new human ability
accessible to every human being now and in the endless future is called the New
Word or the New Church. Thus "neologism" has a spiritual meaning that refers to
this New Word, this new consciousness that God is bringing about, a new step in
the evolution of human consciousness. When we coin a new term in science we are
enacting the new human consciousness which is a more interior thinking, more
spiritual and rational, closer to truth, to Divine Truth or Rationality.
The process of
constructing neologisms must be connected to the process of sharing them.
The adoption of
neologisms by others and from others is a spiritual sharing called "spiritual
love" by Swedenborg. Every person is a neologist and constructs neologisms every
day in ordinary speaking, writing, and reflecting. The process of thinking
produces neologisms as a by product. To speak is to create. The inventiveness of
our thinking and speaking is produced by our love -- what it is that we want and
desire to express outwardly. The nature of love is to strive to externalize. To
achieve this external existence, love transmutes by correspondence into thinking
and reflecting, then at last into doing and sensing.
Speaking more
anatomically, every human being is a threefold self -- affective self, cognitive
self, sensorimotor self. Each self resides and operates within its own
specialized organ -- affective organ, cognitive organ, sensorimotor organ. These
mental
organs are fused into operational synergy by the Divine laws of
correspondences that activate and coordinate the
layers in every human mind. The affective organ is a receptor for spiritual
heat, while the cognitive organ is a receptor of spiritual light. In other
words, our feeling and willing are subjective experiences resulting from the
operations of the
affective organ stimulated by spiritual heat. And similarly, our thinking
and reflecting are subjective experiences resulting from the operations of the
cognitive organ stimulated by spiritual light.
This operational
synergy between the affective and the cognitive, between the inner willing and
its understanding, transforms itself by correspondence into an outward existence
in the sensorimotor organ, whose operations we experience as sensing, moving,
verbalizing, and doing. The threefold self is therefore an
anatomical
construction activated by God through the inflow of spiritual heat and
light. What is truly amazing is that spiritual heat and light are
live substances, not at all like physical heat and light that come from the
natural sun. In fact, the Swedenborg Reports fully establish the existence of
the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity. From age 57 to his passing on
at 84, Emanuel Swedenborg was a dual citizen, living a dual life, one through
the physical body in the natural world of time and place, and the other through
the spiritual body in the mental world of eternity, which he called "the
spiritual world." He daily wrote copious notes of his observations, which have
been published and translated and known as the Writings of Swedenborg. They
amount to about 30 volumes.
Swedenborg confirmed
that the
Spiritual Sun is visible to all who raise their threefold self consciousness
to the highest layer of their mind called the celestial-rational layer or "Third
Heaven." He encountered and interviewed numerous inhabitants of this mental
layer of humanity. These people told him that they had been born on earth in
"Most Ancient" times and had been living in their Third Heaven since their
death. Swedenborg marveled at their appearance and how they looked in their
"early youth," which I take to mean around the age of 20. And what was even more
amazing and delightful to discover, was that they were living as married couples
in what Swedenborg called "conjugial
love."
These Most ancient
people were special and different from the race that evolved subsequently on
this earth. We are part of the
split-brain
race whose genius and mentality is called spiritual, while the Most Ancients
were a celestial race and their brain was not split into a left and right
hemispheres. They were unable to simulate, lie, or act outwardly contrary to
what they felt inwardly. Whereas our spiritual race can separate and break up
the perfect synergy between willing and thinking and speaking. Our threefold
self has evolved to be able to act somewhat independently of each other. As a
result we are able to alternate between mental states called heavenly, and
others called hellish. For instance when people drive in traffic it is common to
alternate between relatively calm or good states and negative or agitated
states. Sometimes it is called the Jekyll-Hyde syndrome. This kind of
alternation is impossible for the celestial race, but for us, not only is it
normal but the ability that makes it possible for us to regenerate the threefold
self from its inherited negativity.
God works with every
individual, continuously being active in the operations and synergy of the
threefold self. From
birth to endless eternity we are co-managers with the
Divine
Psychologist in the domain of our mind.
God's
management procedures are carried out through two types of forces acting on
us. One is called "immediate
influx" and the other is called "mediate influx." This refers to the way
spiritual heat and light from the Spiritual Sun enters or inflows our threefold
organs in the
spiritual
body. God's Divine Love inflows as spiritual heat substance, while God's
Divine Truth inflows as spiritual light substance. The "flow" of spiritual
substances first enters the layer of the mind that is closest to the Spiritual
Sun. This is called the Third Heaven of mental eternity. Every human being is
born into time and born into eternity. One is through a temporary physical body
in the natural world, the other is through a permanent spiritual body in the
mental world of eternity (or the "spiritual world").
Upon the death of the
physical body, we lose contact with the physical world. A few hours later we
awaken in our spiritual body. Remember that all along, since birth, our
threefold self resides in the spiritual body in the mental world of eternity.
When we lose connection to the physical world, we merely continue as before in
the spiritual body. There is actual "passing on" or going anywhere. Our self and
consciousness, our thoughts feelings and sensations, are already in the mental
world of eternity. These have never been, and never could, exist in the physical
world, as for instance in the brain of the physical body. Feelings, thoughts,
and sensations are immaterial, hence cannot exist in something material.
Swedenborg observed
then interviewed thousands of people who have just been resuscitated in the
conscious awareness of the spiritual body. He describes the 30-hour process in
some detail. He himself had been conscious in his spiritual body from age 57
onward, while normally one regains spiritual consciousness only after
resuscitation, when natural consciousness ends. As a result of his dual
existence for 27 years, Swedenborg was able to write the Swedenborg Reports
which gives science for the first time in history, an empirical glimpse into the
world of the afterlife.
One of the most far
reaching discoveries Swedenborg's has made is that the threefold self has the
spontaneous or automatic ability to project or create a sensorimotor environment
that reflects, represents, and corresponds to the affective and cognitive organs
acting in synergy. We have a foretaste of the mental world of the afterlife in
eternity right now, when we are engaged in dreaming during sleep. We can gain a
rational understanding of our afterlife if we reflect on what we are doing when
we are dreaming.
It is the threefold
self that is doing the dreaming during sleep. When we remember the dream upon
awaking, especially when it is vivid, we can still picture or visualize parts of
it. Our dreams are sensorimotor expressions and creations of the cognitive and
affective organs acting together. We can actually experience sensations in all
our modalities -- we can see things, taste and smell them, we can grab things,
we can be held down by force or locked up in a room, and we can talk, eat, make
love, even fly and transport ourselves instantly anywhere at any distance. This
is the power of the sensorimotor organ in giving us subjective experiences. And
all the operations of the sensorimotor organ are reactions by correspondence, to
the operations in our affective and cognitive organs.
This is what
Swedenborg discovered when he became conscious in the spiritual mind, the
spiritual
layers of our mental anatomy, into which all human beings arrive after
resuscitation. The environment of the afterlife is somewhat similar and
congruent with the environment here on earth. When people are resuscitated they
see their spiritual body as similar to their former physical body -- it looks
like it, feels like it, operates like it. We also know this from our dreams
where the mental body (or dream body) of others, and our own body, appear just
like the physical body we are all familiar with. Of course they are not similar
in construction, the physical body being made of physical matter from the
physical planet and sun, while the spiritual body and its threefold system of
mental organs, is constructed out of the spiritual substances of the Spiritual
Sun. The spiritual body cannot die, cannot starve to death, or get sick from
germs and poisons, cannot be held by force in a room, cannot be disciplined
against its own will. The spiritual body and its mind is forever free.
Swedenborg observed
the interaction patterns between people in their life of eternity. Everything
you see around someone, and everything that happens there, is a construction of
our "ruling love." This refers to the affective hierarchy that is embedded
anatomically in our affective organ. We develop and grow this hierarchy of
feelings and intentions by the life choices we make every day, and every hour or
minute of the day. All choices that are freely made, that is not coerced by
circumstances or people, are called free will choices of love. It is love that
dictates and determines the choices we think about and execute. Since we
alternate all day between heavenly and hellish loves, we slowly and gradually
construct our love hierarchy, both in the heavenly category of operations, and
in the hellish. By the time we "pass on" in our consciousness from this world to
the next, which occurs at resuscitation, we "arrive" in the other life fully
equipped and loaded with our loves in both categories.
Swedenborg discovered
that after resuscitation people go through a psychologically and emotionally
intense series of mental states during which they are progressively exploring
their love hierarchies through experiences and events arranged and provided by
the
Divine Psychologist. This intense Divine psychotherapy has but one purpose:
to bring people in touch with their ruling love and its hierarchy of sub-loves.
At last all pretenses of the personality fly out the window, leaving in place
the ruling love and its total and absolute control over the threefold self.
Now this ruling love
takes over the person's existence. It dictates what the person intends, desires,
thinks, and does. Every love that is incompatible or contrary to the ruling
love, gets banished forever to the outmost regions of the mind, and they just
lie there, inert, no longer operative, as if no longer alive. By the laws of
existence in the mental world of eternity, the sensorimotor environment or
appearances begin to reflect the new person, now stripped of anything
ambivalent. The threefold self is now rendered completely consistent, completely
unified.
If the person's ruling
love is a heavenly love, a love that is compatible with heavenly order in the
heavenly
layers of the mental world of eternity, then the person begins a new life of
eternity in the heavenly zones of the mental world of humanity. Bit of the
ruling love is a hellish one, a love that is incompatible with heavenly order,
the the person begins a new life in the hellish zones of the mental world. Thus
it is that some people live in heaven, and others in hell.
Swedenborg explored
the mental spaces of
Heaven and
Hell. He describes how people live in habitations, cities, gardens,
mountains, and how these sensorimotor appearances are beautiful, benign,
spacious, and diverse in the case of the heavenly layers, and how they are ugly,
noxious, cavernous, dark, and filled with unspeakable horrors that the
inhabitants there impose on each other, playing out their infernal loves,
hatreds, and insanities. When those who are in hell are taken up in
consciousness to the sensorimotor environment of the heavens in their mind, they
experience even more severe tortures of the mind than the worst they have in
hell. They feel torn apart from the inside seams of their being, and they
spontaneously precipitate themselves back into their hellish loves, environment,
and companions. There they feel revived due to having their infernal loves back.
For without one's loves, one is not alive.
Even more amazing
discoveries are described in the Swedenborg Reports. He was allowed to receive a
bird's eye view of the mental world of eternity. And from that perspective he
confirmed the shape of the mental world of humanity: the heavenly
layers are in the shape of a Grand Human in angelic appearance, and below
that, the hellish layers of the mind are in the shape of a Grand Monster.
Swedenborg's spiritual geography is therefore identical to mental anatomy. The
shape of our threefold self is a human form, and every organ is in the human
form as well. Swedenborg visited the various spiritual societies that form the
Grand Human and the Grand Monster, and he would refer to his location by
reference to the body parts. He would say that he is "in the province of the
liver" or in the region of the uterus, or heart, or lungs, or pancreas. The
Grand Human and Monster possess the organs of both sexes. People live in one
region or another as determined by their ruling love. Those who have compatible
ruling loves are close to one another, which means that they communicate with
one another more than with distant societies whose ruling love is at variance.
And even more amazing:
the character or mentality of the people, as determined by their ruling love,
corresponds to the functions and properties of the organs they live in.
And further,
Swedenborg discovered that the societies in the Grand Human and Monster are
completely integrated and function synergistically. There is a common
"respiration" that affects every society mutually. There is a constant
"communication" of all operations in the threefold self of every person in a
society with all others in that society. And after that, there is a similar
reverberation of influence that spreads across the entire mind of humanity.
Every single love, thought, and sensation experienced by one human being
reverberates and is communicated to the entire network of human beings. As
Swedenborg puts it, in the eyes of God all human beings are integrated and seen
as one human being.
Now
we can get back to the role of neologisms in all this.
All life is of love
and all love reflects the infinity of God's love. Love is behind all neologisms.
Think of a sentence you wrote or said recently to someone. Where did that
sentence originate from? It came from some love, something you wanted to say to
someone, something you desired to express in words, some perception or insight
you've had by looking at something, or thinking about it. Love comes out on the
wings of some thought or idea, and shows itself in the medium of sensorimotor
appearances. Heaven is a sensorimotor appearance created by heavenly loves
acting through heavenly thoughts. Heavenly loves enter our affective organ
through spiritual heat, and transforms itself as the accompanying thoughts,
which then produce the environmental appearances, objects, sensations, and
actions.
Neologisms are
therefore affective loves in cognitive form that create the word, phrase, or
sentence.
If you want to know
the quality of a person's love, look at the neologisms they produce. The meaning
of each neologism is a spiritual map of where the love is that produced it, or,
that is within that meaning. Every meaning contains a love. The meaning and the
love become one, like husband and wife become one in the
conjugial couples of our heavenly society. The marriage between our love and
its meaning engenders the coming into existence of a neologism. The parents of
the neologism are the love and its meaning. An operation in our affective organ
("love") forms a union with a corresponding operation in our cognitive organ
("meaning"), and the two together create a corresponding operation in our
sensorimotor organ, which is the neologism when it activates the speech
mechanisms, or the typing-texting of the fingers. The source of the neologism is
the love, and the love is an inflow of the spiritual heat into the affective
organ.
Such is the nature of
infinite Divine love. Its infinite intensity comes out into the created universe
through the Spiritual Sun, which Swedenborg described as an aura surrounding the
Divine Human. This Spiritual Sun is the origin of all loves in the mental world
of eternity. God's infinite love is infinitely diverse and abundant, which is
why everything that comes into existence must be unique. No two things that
exist can be identical since every thing is created from some love, and all
loves from the Divine Human are infinite and unique. This means that there are
also infinite truths in God since every love must be married to its own truth.
All meanings are forms of truth, and also, forms of truth that are distorted or
falsified by the loves of each individual. Spiritual light is truth substance
itself, and spiritual heat is love substance itself. Swedenborg interchanged the
words love and good, and also the words truth and wisdom, from which come
knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom.
In a pointed sense neos are zones of community ignorance. No one knows a neo
prior to its construction by just one person. The diffusion of neos to others is
the basis of community existence. People obtain their ideas and ideals from the
neos of others. This is the process of cultural enrichment. Neo production of a
group or society is an index of its inventiveness, adaptability, survivability.
Cross-cultural sharing of neo production builds a unified globalism anchored in
mutual love. It is the antidote to warfare and ethnocentric antipathy. People
who benefit each other from their neo-construction procedures feel integrated in
a community of humanity. All neos come down from God into the mind of its
inventor. To love another’s neos is to love God in whom the neos are sourced.
God is at the center of every neo.
Neologisms are new
meanings, hence new truths from new loves.
When a neologism is
born in the mental world of eternity, its location in the mind is either in the
Grand Human or in the Grand Monster. Neologisms form a continuous reverberation
within the spiritual societies that gave birth to its existence in the mind of
an individual on earth, who is reflecting, speaking or writing. From there the
reverberation of neologisms continue to the adjoining mental societies, and
eventually every human being that ever existed or was born, experiences the
results of that original reverberation of the birth of the neologism. Since
every neologism is a unique spiritual child, it becomes the source of endless
new meanings being added to the human understanding. This allows the generations
to cumulate in intelligence and form ever more advanced, more humane, more
heavenly civilizations on earth.
Each new generation
thus benefits from this more advanced mentality and is able to create still more
advanced and marvelous neologisms, that will further enrich the spiritual
societies of eternity. This endless cycle of progress in the marriage of love
and truth within each threefold self, is the organic mechanism that God provides
for the endless evolution of the Grand Human, the endless expansion our loves
and intelligences, with heaven and earth working together, the
spiritual-celestial and the natural-corporeal acting by correspondence as one.
Be conscious of your
neologisms and keep track of them. The
semantic map or web, they form reveals the nature of your immortal
existence in eternity.
Commercial neologisms like
trademarks and product names are guaranteed by federal law the right to remain
unique. Although one can use the name for other than commercial purposes, the
owner can request a judge to prohibit certain ongoing uses by others of that
name or title. Literary neologisms cannot be copyrighted, and once introduced or
published, they are quotable and usable by anyone, including commercial
dictionaries. Scientific neologisms are considered literary products and have no
claims to ownership, except historical. Entertainment neologisms include titles of books, scripts, movies,
and television programs. These are treated as commercial products and ownership
of title and script are protected by federal copyright and patent laws.
Masculine neologisms are
fundamentally different from feminine
neologisms. One is the product of a man’s cognitive organ, while the other
is the product of the feminine cognitive organ. Nothing in a man can be like
anything in a woman, and vice versa (see
here). I have not made an empirical study of this, and if anyone does, or
already has, please email me if you would.
It is well known that childish neologisms,
that is, neologisms produced by the mind of children, revolves around the
sensorimotor awareness of self. They
respond with involvement and enthusiasm to little
phonological games and interactions that involve
verbalizing sound patterns and rhythms.
They like stories where the teller imitates
sounds of people, things, and animals.
When they are a little older, they move on from
sensorimotor neologisms to
cognitive neologisms and invent clever
and engaging limericks that people over the centuries have kept track of (the
name Opie comes to mind). Adolescents respond with heart to
patriotic neologisms that facilitate
the development of a sense of belonging and identity. Young adults fall in love
with affective neologisms or
romantic neologisms found in the
lyrics of songs. They also begin to be enmeshed in
political neologisms in which they
find a source of validation and self-confidence.
Religious neologisms gain their deeper
influence on people as they move into mature adulthood. Worshippers gain access
to the doctrines and belief systems embodied in the titles of rules, principles,
and creeds. In theistic psychology readers and students are introduced to the
correspondential sense of Divine
Neologisms, which are the words and expressions in Sacred Scripture.
As Swedenborg demonstrates, the Divine Style of Sacred Scripture is composed from
Divine dictation or direct inspiration,
and is such that every word and expression in it carries three meanings: the
literal, the spiritual, and the celestial.
Literal Divine Neologisms are expressed in a natural language and in the
context of a particular cultural and historical milieu. This is why the literal
sense of Sacred Scripture from different religions and time epochs appear to
show independence or disagreements and contradictions. This is a
necessary consequence of socialization practices in all cultures and
places. We must provide intellectual
content to religion so that children can be socialized into it, and so that
adults can hold on to it with loyalty and belief, and pass it on to their
children. This generational process of
transmission of religious neologisms requires that their content be
congruent with the content of the culture and
belief systems that are being practiced.
Hence it is that all Sacred Scripture in the literal sense reflects the
content of the culture and civilization.
God manages the two together, namely, the evolution of civilization and culture,
and the progressive revelations in Sacred Scripture over the millennia and
centuries.
But the spiritual and celestial senses of Sacred Scripture from different
religions, cultures, and epochs are
not only compatible but similar in intellectual content. The
Swedenborg Reports demonstrate that
every Literal Divine Neologism
encapsulates within itself, a Spiritual
Divine Neologism, and within that, a
Celestial Divine Neologism. Everyone who studies the language or science of
correspondences revealed in the Swedenborg
Reports can perform this extraction
process from the literal-historical, to the
generalized spiritual, to the universal celestial. This
threefold embedding of meaning and
consciousness in Sacred Scripture is the
physiological process that activates and maintains the threefold self of
every individual – sensorimotor self, cognitive self, affective self.
The Literal Divine Neologisms of Sacred Scripture create and establish the
sensorimotor self of every human being.
The Spiritual Divine Neologisms of Sacred
Scripture create and establish the
cognitive self of every human being. The
Celestial Divine Neologisms of Sacred
Scripture create and establish the
affective self of every human being.
The sensorimotor self is constructed out of our
sensations, sensory involvements, and
motor readinesses and determinations.
The cognitive self is constructed out of our thoughts, reflections, images, and
understandings. The affective self is constructed out of our feelings, loves,
intentions, and desires. Hence it is that
human consciousness and civilization is
produced and managed by the Divine
Neologisms in Sacred Scripture. The specific cause-effect connection varies
with cultural and individual personality. The connection is more direct when
people acknowledge Sacred Scripture as
Divine Speech or Absolute and Divine Truth given to humanity for the growth
and development of every human being. The connection is more indirect when
people deny that Sacred Scripture is God’s Divine Speech or Word. The minds of people who reject the idea
that God is real are nevertheless equally managed by God, without which the
individual would cease to be human and
intelligent. God manages the mind of atheists and others who have a system
of beliefs that deny or exclude God, since without this Divine
omnipotent management or control, the
thoughts of the individual would not
remain coherent and adaptable to survival.
The Swedenborg Reports, written in the 18th century, constitute a
neologistic revelation as opposed to a
“new” revelation which implies something different and foreign. But a
neologistic revelation is a revelation about the old and familiar, now seen in a
“new light,” which means that “new truths” are now seen in the old that were not
seen by anyone before. Thus, the Swedenborg Reports (more commonly known as “the
Writings of Swedenborg”), are a neologistic revelation about the Old Testament
and the New Testament. These two Sacred Scriptures were studied by thousands of
serious scholars and scientists for many centuries, generation after generation,
and yet not one single individual saw the correspondential meaning that is
hidden within these Sacred Scriptures. The Swedenborg Reports reveal the
correspondential sense of the Old and New Testaments. This is not a “new”
revelation, but a neologistic revelation about the old and familiar.
For instance, the New Testament has this verse:
nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the
kingdom of God is within you.(Luke 17:21)
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2017:21,
What does it mean to say that “the kingdom of God is within you”? Generations
of thinkers have been involved in this issue.
Wikipedia summarizes a number of these
views, which I sample here:
(…)
Albert Schweitzer,
Rudolf Bultmann,
Norman Perrin and
Johannes Weiss argued that Jesus’ “Kingdom” was intended to be a wholly
futuristic kingdom. These scholars looked to the apocalyptic traditions of
various Jewish groups existing at the time of Jesus as the basis of their
study
[22],
[23],
[24],
[25]. In this view, Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who would
bring about the end times and when he did not see the end of the cosmic
order coming Jesus embraced death as a tool in which to provoke God into
action.
The most common view of the “Kingdom” in recent scholarship is to embrace
the truths of both these parties – present reality and future manifestation.
Some scholars who take this view are
N.T.
Wright and
G.R. Beasley-Murray. In their views, the “Kingdom” that Jesus spoke of
will be fully realized in the future but it is also in a process of
“in-breaking” into the present. This means that Jesus’ deeds and words have
an immediate effect on the “Kingdom” even though it was not fully manifested
during his life. Even greater attention has been paid to the concept of the
“Kingdom of God” by scholars during the current third quest for the
historical Jesus (of which
N.T.
Wright is associated). (…)
The present aspect of the Kingdom refers to the changed state of heart or
mind (metanoia)
within Christians (see
Luke 17:20-21), emphasizing the spiritual nature of His Kingdom by
saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within (or among) you." The reported
activity of Jesus in healing diseases,
driving out demons,
teaching a new ethic for living, and offering a new hope in God to the
poor, is understood to be a demonstration of that Kingdom in action.
The
Seventh-day Adventist Church accepts the doctrine of the Kingdom of God
dividing it into two phases. These are, the Kingdom of Grace which was
established immediately after Adam and Eve sinned, and the Kingdom of Glory
which will be fully established when Christ returns to earth for the second
time.
(The above is from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Heaven )
As you can see from this no one was able to think of the
correspondential sense that lies hidden in this verse of Sacred Scripture.
Divine Speech is Divine Truth itself, and Divine Rationality and Wisdom, and is
the source of whatever rationality and understanding human beings are permitted
to borrow from God, and to possess “as-of self” in freedom. Every word and
expression of Sacred Scripture must have a correspondential sense, and in fact,
has a series of correspondential senses since these are arrayed in the mental
world of eternity, from its top, which is God, through the
layers of the human heavens, and finally and ultimately, in the natural
language in which Sacred Scripture comes to us externally in our natural
conscious mind. This is called Divine Literal Neologisms, as mentioned above.
This Divine literal-historical sense is the ultimate transformation of Divine
Speech as it descends across the layers of the mental world of eternity (more
commonly known as the “spiritual world” or the afterlife of immortality).
The knowledge of correspondences revealed in the Swedenborg Reports gives
scientists a new technology of knowledge
extraction or a new spiritual
discourse analysis, that provides us with a
scientific methodology able to translate Divine Literal Neologisms
into Divine Spiritual Neologisms and into Divine Celestial Neologisms. This is
literally a Jacob’s Ladder by which we can carry our scientific methodology
across the array of discrete
layers in eternity (or “discrete degrees”), with each layer or degree
getting closer to God’s Divine Speech. The Writings of Swedenborg are called
“the New Word” but not in the sense of a “new” revelation, but in the sense of a
neologistic revelation of the Old and New Testament Sacred Scriptures, which are
then called “the Old Word.” To say it
again, the New Word does not replace the Old Word, but strengthens it, reveals
its inner sense, which is infinite, because Divine Speech is in it.
The Divine Literal Neologism written in one English version as “the Kingdom
of God is within you” is the external literal-historical sense that contains
within it an internal Divine Spiritual Neologism. What is this? You can see from
the Wikipedia summary that no one has known this. In the Swedenborg Reports we
finally have the answer through revelation of the knowledge of correspondences,
which are cause-effect connections between Divine Literal Neologisms and Divine
Spiritual Neologisms. The “Kingdom of God” in the literal sense corresponds to
the mental world of eternity in the spiritual sense. This is the world which
contains the mental
layers called “heaven” and “hell.” At the moment of our death here on earth,
the resuscitation process begins. Swedenborg observed this process numerous
times for 27 years. It takes about 30 hours to complete, and then we awaken as
if from sleep, and begin our life of immortality in the mental world of
eternity, supplied with a spiritual body (which we have from birth), and a
mental environment that responds or reacts to our thoughts and feelings, as
dreams respond and react to our wishes, desires, or fears.
The Divine Literal Neologism “within you” corresponds in its spiritual sense
to the individual’s mind, which is born in the mental world of eternity and
exists there forever. Hence, the entire Divine Literal Neologism “the Kingdom of
God is within you” corresponds to the heavenly mental states we have after
resuscitation – “if, and only if, we love and enjoy these heavenly mental
states.” This is the Divine Celestial Neologism.
Divine
Literal Neologism
|
Divine
Spiritual Neologism
|
Divine
Celestial Neologism
|
the kingdom of God is within you
|
the heavenly mental states we have after resuscitation
|
if, and only if, we love and enjoy these heavenly mental states
|
Human
beings are born with a spiritual body in the mental world of eternity. This body
is made of substances from the Spiritual Sun, hence it is a living body, in
contrast to the other body we also have on a temporary basis, the physical body,
which is made of the dead substances of the physical sun. The physical body is
connected by correspondence to the spiritual body so that every mental event in
the spiritual body has a corresponding correlate somewhere in the physical body.
The dying and resuscitation process disengages our spiritual body from the
physical body. We then continue immortal life in the mental world of eternity,
hardly ever remembering our association to earth. Swedenborg talked to people
who had been just resuscitated, and they can still remember clearly their life
on earth. But after awhile, the new life of eternity is so engaging and vivid
that the past has little value or interest to the person.
The
spiritual body is born with a spiritual mind and a natural mind, each arranged
in three discrete degrees. We are conscious in the natural mind while we are
still connected to our physical body on earth, but we are not conscious of our
spiritual mind until after resuscitation. The spiritual mind serves as our
consciousness after death and resuscitation. It has the power to create a
heaven. The spiritual mind must therefore be carefully prepared so that it is
fully operative for us after resuscitation. If we neglect to operationalize the
spiritual mind prior to our death and resuscitation, it will not function. Our
consciousness cannot move on from the natural mind we use here, to the spiritual
mind we use in the mental world of eternity. The natural mind is well suited to
give us a level of consciousness and intelligence that we use for our life on
earth. But it is totally inadequate in the mental world after resuscitation.
Those whose spiritual mind has not been operationalized have nowhere to go but
to remain in the consciousness of the natural mind. This makes them insane and
reduces their life to sub-human levels called hell.
In order
to operationalize our spiritual mind we must regenerate the natural mind.
The
natural mind must be regenerated in order to operationalize the spiritual mind.
This is because we inherit sub-human traits in the natural mind. These sub-human
traits give us many enjoyments to which we become very attached. Even though our
rational level of thinking tells us that we must give up these sub-human
enjoyments, we are unwilling to give them up. We love them and we make them part
of our habits and our identity. They include all the loves of self for the sake
of self. For instance, selfish loves regard only our own enjoyments, even if
these actions hurt others. It I s more important for us to have those enjoyments
than to stop hurting other people, whether they are strangers, family, or
society and humankind universally. We violate the human rights of others. We
operate below the level of our skill and intelligence. We mismanage,
miscalculate, procrastinate, neglect, destroy many of the good things that
belong to society and the human race – such as altruism, being useful, being
peaceful, being honest, protecting innocence, rational judgment, etc. These are
the human traits we inherit. They are our heavenly traits, while the former are
our hellish traits.
We
inherit both hellish and heavenly traits. These traits are grounded in, and
managed by, our ruling love and its hierarchy of assistant sub-loves. The ruling
love is the chief or dominant motive in our life. We are born with two ruling
loves: a heavenly ruling love and a hellish ruling love. Every individual
personality expresses these loves in a unique way. No one has exactly the same
ruling loves. As we grow daily we acquire habits of emoting, thinking, and
interacting. Each habit is controlled and managed by one of the ruling loves.
You can see form this that every habit of thinking and doing, feeling and
emoting, must be controlled either by a heavenly ruling love or a hellish ruling
love. Every thought, attitude, or reaction must be sourced in either heaven or
hell, also called, the Grand Human and the Grand Monster.
The
purpose of living on earth for awhile is to develop our natural mind and
consciousness through interaction with the physical environment through our
physical organs and body. Once we become adults, we are mature enough in mental
development to enter the lifelong process of regeneration that will
operationalize the spiritual mind we need to access our eternal heavenly life as
a conjugial couple with our soul mate. Operationalizing the spiritual mind
through regenerating the natural mind is the central purpose for our life here
on earth. God works with every
individual either with or without acknowledgement by the individual. When
not acknowledged as present in the person’s mind, God manages the events,
thoughts, and emotions of the individual in such a way that the person has no
inkling that anything in their mind is managed by anyone. And when these people
hear of this idea of God’s presence and management in their mind, they deny it.
Still, God manages everything in such a way as to maintain that individual in
perfect freedom to choose between a hellish habit and enjoyment, or a heavenly
habit and enjoyment. God activates their sense of conscience and natural
morality in order to incline them to human traits, and to disincline them from
sub-human traits. This protects them and the people with whom they live.
When God
is acknowledged as present, the individual feels attracted to Sacred Scripture
and other spiritual writings and topics. God then begins a personal relationship
with that individual. In theistic psychology God in that relationship is called
the Divine Psychologist. It is a relationship between the Divine Human and the
mere human. Human beings are human when they acquire the traits of the Divine
Human. When these traits are in human beings, they are called heavenly traits.
When these traits are deliberately turned into their opposites through the
freedom that God maintains in our mind, they are called hellish traits. The two
are opposites to each other and cannot coexist at the same time without the
heavenly being destroyed or “corrupted” (no longer heavenly).
Our
ability to oppose hellish habits and enjoyments is the basis for the
regeneration of our natural mind, which is necessary for the operationalizing of
our spiritual mind, which contains our conjugial heaven with our soul mate in
eternity. The Divine Psychologist first brings rational truths about life, God,
heaven, hell, and regeneration. These are the essential theistic knowledges we
must have in order to undergo the regeneration of our natural mind by the Divine
Psychologist. He is doing the regenerating, and maintains the freedom to choose
in the dilemma He brings to us on a daily basis. For example, we love to laugh
out loud and have a good time with our friends at a party or other places. This
activity can be carried out in a heavenly order or in a hellish order. The
heavenly order is to have fun without being offensive to others. The hellish
order is to have fun regardless of bothering other people. The Divine
Psychologist brings this event to your life so that your heavenly ruling love
may have an opportunity to take over and so that you can have fun without
bothering other people who are trying to sleep, or who are trying rest and
relax, and they have become innocent by-standers or neighbors of your noisy
party.
To take
another example: You have the habit of skipping appropriate dental care once or
twice day. You either never acquired the habit of daily flossing, or you are
performing it without consistency. This is called the hellish order for dental
care. The hellish order brings with it all sorts of unpleasant and painful
experiences to oneself, and it often hurts those you love, and innocent
strangers in the community. The heavenly order of dental care is to think about
the good you are doing by flossing, to think about the teeth you are maintaining
and taking care of. This gives a good feeling, a heavenly feeling that is far
deeper than the hellish enjoyment of skipping and ignoring. The heavenly order
gives you results, healthy teeth, clean breath. Your friends and intimates are
not exposed to the awful experience of receiving your hellish breath into their
nostrils, where it is nauseating them. They can love you more as you make
yourself more attractive to love. It alos shows you care about them, which is a
good love that others can love in you.
Take
another example: As you are looking around you, at work, in school, in a
restaurant, at a party, you make comments to yourself about people there. This
is normal. There is a heavenly order and a hellish order in which this activity
is performed. The hellish order gives you hellish enjoyments, and the heavenly
order gives you heavenly enjoyments. This is how you are operationalizing your
spiritual mind. You choose to perform daily activities in a way that conform to
the heavenly order. This makes your spiritual to respond more and more, higher
and higher, being readied by your actions, to serve as the consciousness of your
eternal conjugial heaven with your soul mate. The hellish order of thinking
about other people is to enjoy putting down, judging them, ridiculing them,
resenting them, wanting vengeance on them, wishing bad things to happen to them,
wanting to take away what they have and give them to yourself, etc. etc. Doing
these hellish mental acts give us pleasure, enjoyments, hellish happiness.
The
heavenly order of thinking about people is to think of both the good and bad in
every person, and to honor or love the good in them, and to ignore or not love
the bad in them, hoping and wishing that they strengthen their resolve for the
good, and weaken or abandon their attachment to the bad. This is the heavenly
order of thinking about others. It creates a heaven for you, if you think this
way, and it does not take away anything or punish the other person. The heavenly
order honors the humanity and right to dignity of every human being.
This includes the heavenly order of
loving not the person, but the good in every person.
The
regeneration of our natural mind proceeds by a specific process that we need to
know about and cooperate with.
As we
know from experience in learning skills, we go through intermediate learning
stages. So we can’t expect to regenerate our natural mind by going from hellish
motives and enjoyments directly to heavenly motives and enjoyments. There are
transitional states of mediate good that is not yet good, but is compatible with
genuine good, and eventually leads to good. For example, consider how we learn
to be successful in our jobs when we first enter the workforce as a teenager or
later. At first we learn to do things so that we don’t get fired. This is not a
hellish or selfish motive, but it is not our ultimate goal, which is to love to
do a good job for the satisfactions it brings us, as we are thinking about how
we benefit others in one way or another by the way we do our job.
There
are two stages here: (1) doing our job so we can satisfy our love for not
getting fired; (2) doing our job so we can satisfy our love for being useful.
The first love is not yet heavenly. The second love is heavenly because the
ruling love it belongs to is the love of being useful to others, and this is one
of the chief heavenly loves. Consider another example. Since gas at the pump has
gone to four dollars a gallon compared to less than half of that just a few
years ago, more drivers are learning to save gas by what they drive how they
drive. Newspaper stories and Web discussion groups have been discussing the
practice of “hypermiling” which involves using a collection of strategies, each
of which saves gas. The motivation to save gas can be heavenly or hellish, and
the difference is observable in how drivers are performing the activity of
saving gas.
Hellish hypermiling techniques
include “drafting” (following illegally close behind another vehicle), “pulse &
glide” (moving up to wanted speed, then letting the vehicle coast on its own
back down, then giving it enough gas back to the wanted speed, and so on – while
motorists following behind are subjected to this pattern), turning the engine
off and coasting when other vehicles are around, etc. These bad hypermiling
strategies increase the risk and inconvenience on others who are being subjected
to these illegal driving methods. Heavenly hypermiling techniques include
keeping tire pressure up, using higher quality engine oil, carrying less load,
avoiding unnecessary acceleration, avoiding the emotional use of the gas pedal,
maintaining proper car maintenance schedules, driving less when possible. From
these consequences of their actions you can see that the motive or love to save
gas can be either a hellish motive (“It’s good for me, and too bad for the cars
around me.”), or a heavenly motive or love (“It’s good for everyone, and no one
is punished through it.”).
Here is
another common instance of an intermediate good that leads eventually to more
genuine good and to heaven. It is the idea many people have that heaven is a
reward from God for the good deeds we accomplished, and hell Is a place of
punishment from God for the bad deeds we accomplished. This intermediate good is
not fully compatible with the rational understanding of Sacred Scripture and
God, from which we realize that God is pure love and cannot punish people for
something they did in the past, especially in such a horrific way as what we
imagine happens in hell as a form of punishment and torture. We rationally
understand that God is good and omnipotent, hence does not have such loves that
involve the satisfaction of punishing people who have evil loves and hurt
others. Instead, God makes a way of isolating the acts of such people and
keeping others safe from the consequences.
As you
by now understand from what precedes, that heaven and hell in eternity are not
rewards and punishments but consequences of one’s own ruling loves. Swedenborg
observed that when people with a hellish ruling love (though not yet knowing
it), ask after resuscitation, to be led to heaven, when they are there, they
become numb, see nothing, and experience inner torture as if they are falling
into a death swoon. These are the anatomical and physiological consequences of a
ruling love existing in the wrong mental layer. The individual feels like dying,
in agony, and being tortured. It Is not possible for a hellish ruling love to
live in a heavenly environment. Hence it is that God makes provision for hellish
loves to exist in the unregenerated natural mind after resuscitation. Hell Is
not a place of punishment, but a mental state provided of the mercy of God, who
is taking care of those who love hellish traits and consciousness, so that they
too may have an environment in which they can pursue their loves in eternity.
What
people do in their mind individually sums up to the level of humanity in a
society or civilization. Humanity on this earth has been evolving in
consciousness since the beginning. It took thousands of generations to cumulate
the modern scientific civilization in which we live today. We get a good
indication of the three phases of our individual regeneration when we consider
the three phases of the collective evolution of rational and scientific thinking
that evolved in the Western cultures during the past three thousand years. We
know from the Swedenborg Reports that God manages the level of our thinking and
feeling through the diffusion of knowledge and principles based in Sacred
Scripture. We can contrast the level of thinking that is evident in the literal
and historical meaning of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture (written between
3000 and 2000 BC), the New Testament Sacred Scripture (written between 35 and
100 AD), and the Writings Sacred Scripture, which we call the Swedenborg Reports
(written in the eighteenth century).
Our
motives and thinking in layers 9A and 9C (sensual-corporeal mind), matches the
level of thinking of the Old Testament civilization. When we are still children
mentally, we think a lot about being punished and getting rewards from our
parents, teachers, and other adults. Our motives (9A) serve the ruling love of
“me first.” We want our childhood pleasures and conveniences, insist on them no
matter what, and throw a temper tantrum when we are opposed in our loves. We
give in to our loves of owning the toys of others by taking them away from other
children, if we can. We always look out for “number one” and we enjoy being
cruel to other children who are different or who are more successful than we
are. As children we think of God as a Father Figure that punishes and rewards
what we do. We also have heavenly loves such as the love of obeying our parents
and the love of being good, of cleaning up, and sharing food and toys. When we
remain at this level of thinking and emoting as we grow up, we become corporeal
minded adults, living a life that is mixed with prejudice and selfishness, and
also with pride in parenting, loyalty to one’s own group, and a steady work
ethic for self and family.
Those of
us who grow out of the corporeal mentality of living, do so by acquiring higher
mental loves that are available to our consciousness in layer 8 (abstract
materialism). We must have a love of learning and being instructed, in order to
move on in thinking and emoting to level 8C and 8A. We learn scientific
explanations for everything around us. We begin to understand the objective
material world around us. We can understand management and government
principles, so that our laws become oriented towards supporting democracy and
equal opportunity. We can create abstract forms of art and architecture. We can
build an engineering industry capable of manufacturing machines, computers, and
sophisticated armaments that can destroy and kill many people at once. In the
United States in 2008 people will donate one billion dollars a day in voluntary
charitable contributions. Every individual has equal rights under the law. One
third of the population is overweight or obese, and half of all marriages end in
divorce. Millions of children grow up without adequate medical care or
parenting. And so on. I am drawing here a mixture of hellish and heavenly values
and attitudes.
Such as
are the individuals in the United States, such is that nation. One is a
reflection of the other. The mentality of the United States is grounded in the
New Testament Sacred Scripture. The Old Testament Sacred Scripture at mentality
9 focuses on the corporeal and the physical. God commands people what physical
things they must perform to merit a fruitful life here on earth (e.g., specific
animal sacrifices with specific rituals). God is portrayed as angry when people
do forbidden physical things. God then rages in wrath and screams vengeance, and
takes it out on the people, on their children, and on their children’s children.
The punishments and the rewards are physical. There is almost nothing specific
mentioned about the afterlife. This corporeal spirituality at layer 9 mentality,
contrasts with the abstract and materialistic spirituality at layer 8 mentality,
to which the New Testament is addressed. Now God is no longer portrayed as
partial to just one nation and religion (the “Chosen People” in the Old
Testament). God is now portrayed as universal, regardless of culture and
religion.
In the
abstracted mentality of the New Testament Sacred Scripture (layer 8), the new
consciousness is attained that God wants to relate to us in the mental world as
much as, or more than, He wants to relate to us in the physical world. Sinning
is now defined as a mental corruption. The physical becomes secondary and is
seen as the mere result of the mental. By themselves, physical rituals,
sacrifices, and regulations are meaningless and useless. It’s the thought and
motive in the physical act that must be examined and judged. Now for the first
time in Western history, the New Testament Sacred Scripture reveals an
astonishing and shattering new scientific fact, which is, that the afterlife of
eternity is the mental world that is already familiar to us. One instance of
this revelation is the well known declaration of Jesus in the New Testament that
“the kingdom of God is within you.” The “kingdom of God” refers to heaven, and
“within you” refers to our mental world. Hence it is that “sinning in the mind”
is the actual sin that bars heaven to us. Not by punishment – but by the love
that attaches us to thinking that way.
The Old
Testament (layer 9) is for the concrete-corporeal mind. The New Testament (layer
8) is for the abstract-sensuous mind. The Swedenborg Reports (layer 7) are for
the external-rational mind. These three anatomical layers are the origin of the
three degrees of human consciousness and mentality in this world.
The
Swedenborg Reports reveal that both the Old and New Testaments are written in
the code of correspondences, as it applies to each level, which is distinct. It
is shown that when you know these correspondences and apply them to the literal
text using the specified procedures, the new underlying meaning that is derived
is entirely at a different level of consciousness. While the literal sense of
the Old Testament Sacred Scripture is addressed to layer 9 (corporeal-sensuous
mind), its correspondential sense is actually addressed to layers 7i, 6,
5, 4 – in other words, to the spiritual mind, not at all to the natural mind.
Layer 7i is the interior of the natural-rational mind (layer 7e), which forms
the exterior of that layer. The interior anatomical portion of the
natural-rational mind receives its influx of reality from the higher spiritual
mind (layers 6, 5, 4), while the exterior anatomical portion of the
natural-rational mind receives its influx of reality from the lower natural
layers of the mind (layers 8 and 9). Hence it is that we have two discretely
different registers of thinking available to us while on this earth. One is a
rationality based on the external natural world (layer 7e), and the other is a
rationality based on the interior spiritual world (layer 7i).
We do
not, like Swedenborg, have consciousness in our spiritual mind, while we are
conscious in the natural mind. Swedenborg talked to some of the people who had
lived on this earth during the initial generations of human beings, many
thousands of years ago. He was able to interview them when he visited their
heaven in layer 4. The are mentioned in Sacred Scripture as the “Most Ancient
Church.” They are described as a celestial race, possessing a whole brain, while
our race of humanity that came afterward is called the spiritual race, and we
possess a split-brain with left and right hemispheres. These people had dual
consciousness, like Swedenborg, who was given the ability at age 57, while they
had it since birth. At any rate, I don’t know how far the two situations are
similar since they were whole-brained, while Swedenborg was split-brained.
Swedenborg found out that their Sacred Scripture was “written on their heart,”
which meant that they were spiritually “online” with the mental world of
eternity, where their grandparents and great-grant parents lived in layer 4.
While on earth they looked at the physical world around them as representative
effects of mental causes. Today we too can do this when we adopt the thinking
order and rationality that is expressed in the universal correspondential sense
of Sacred Scripture. These meanings or truths raise our consciousness when we
allow it to be immersed in the thinking of correspondences.
The
pre-modern person was unable to think in correspondences. The wisest of the
ancients were able to immerse their mind in the knowledge of correspondences,
but it took a lifetime of harsh spiritual discipline, and only a few people in
each generation could master it, and pass the knowledge on to the next
generation. But today’s modern mind can easily handle the complexity and
rationality of thinking in correspondences. The study of theistic psychology
gives every student the ability to acquire the mental skill of thinking in
correspondences. In the future, thinking in correspondences will be taught in
public schools to children as part of the general literacy curriculum. It will
greatly enhance the interest and receptivity of physical subjects such as
biology, farming, husbandry, art, dance, sports, hand craft, etc. Thinking in
correspondences is to translate the sensory input from external-natural (layer
9, 8, 7e) to interior-natural (layer 7i).
The
duality of reality is expressed in the dualism of the external-natural and the
interior-natural.
When we
see the interior-natural of an event, quality, or object, we see its cause, its
spiritual origin in the mental world of eternity (layer 7i), but when we see the
exterior-natural of an event, quality, or object, we see the mere effects, the
representation of its true reality in the mental world of eternity (layer 7e).
The content and meanings in our exterior-rational thinking is limited to the
appearances of reality. Imagine someone buying a large plot of land for just a
few hundred dollars. Hard to believe – until you find out that the plot of land
is a reflection in a mirror, or a painting on the wall, or just a video of the
real thing. Now you can see that the person who bought this for a few hundred
dollars got fleeced. If you take the appearances of reality to be reality, then
your consciousness and thinking will be limited to layer 8 (these being
materialistic abstractions of appearances).
According to the Swedenborg Reports, God has revealed the knowledge of
correspondences to the modern mind of humanity in order to allow science and
education to be the vehicle for its transmission to the new generations. There
are critical benefits available to people who have been prepared for
resuscitation through the skill of thinking in correspondences. Regeneration of
the inherited natural mind progresses to the degree that people are willing to
think in correspondences. The more the natural mind is regenerated, the more the
spiritual mind is enabled. There is therefore a direct relation between thinking
in correspondences and the quality of our life in eternity.
All
genuine Sacred Scripture given by God anywhere anytime to some culture or
people, is addressed to the spiritual mind when considered in the
correspondential sense. In the new millennium of 2000, when I first
published theistic psychology on the World Wide Web, another landmark step was
taken in the history of research on human consciousness. Theistic psychology is
defined as the scientific knowledge of God that is extracted from the
correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture. This new way of thinking in science
(interior-natural layer 7i), begins a new age in science, leaving behind the
monism of materialism, and immersing itself in the new methodology of theistic
science.
The
dualist thinking in science (layers 7e and 7i together), integrates into a
rational unity the physical and the mental, the temporal and the eternal. At
last, science can explore cause-effect relations between the rational and the
sensory, the universal and the local, the spiritual and the natural, the mental
and the physical. God has created a dual reality which we can now recognize and
make part of our literacy, our culture, our government and industry. Every
detail of society is a representative of some eternal reality in the mental
world of eternity. Managing society will be far more successful and effective
when we understand how every detail is caused by some mental love that is
sourced either in the Grand Human (mental layers 4, 5, 6) or in the Grand
Monster (mental layers -7, -8, -9). Similarly, managing ourselves will be far
more effective if we understand how our loves today create our future in
eternity.
The
powers of a new scientific thinking in the interior-natural mind is awesome to
behold. Every human being possesses all the anatomical layers of the human mind.
Nothing whatsoever prevents us from operating our life from the interior-natural
layer (7i) instead of the exterior-natural layer (7e). Nothing prevents us –
except our own ruling love. Love prevents thinking that is contrary to love’s
fulfillment. Such as our love is, such is our thinking. When we love
materialistic loves more than we love spiritual loves, our natural mind is
called a “little hell.” This is our daily consciousness, the meanings and
thoughts with which we operate our conscious life and manage our identity as a
person. But when we love spiritual loves more than we love natural loves, our
natural mind is called a “little heaven.”
When we
begin our regeneration in young adulthood, we turn our natural mind more and
more into a little heaven. This means that our feelings (A), thoughts (C), and
actions (S) are conjoined and arranged in a heavenly order, that is, in the
order of layers 6, 5, and 4 (the “Grand Human”). Until then our natural mind was
a little hell activated by thoughts and feelings sourced in the Grand Monster
(layers -7, -8, -9). The people in these mental layers who are connected to us
in our unregenerate states, are collectively a hell as a spiritual society, and
each member’s mind is a little hell. The negative marker indicates that these
layers were not regenerated prior to resuscitation. As discussed earlier, people
after resuscitation who imagine that they live in a physical world are insane,
and live out a delusional life in eternity based on fantasy and make-believe.
One
striking example is given by the people in the hellish layers that Swedenborg
observed who live in a collective and mutual fantasy of owning a fortune of
gold. By various means and laborious efforts over a long period, each member is
able to acquire a few tiny pieces of gold. At regular intervals they all gather
together in one room, each placing their few pieces on the table. When these
grow into a large heap of gold, they sit around it in silence, watching it, and
imagining that this is their own gold. One man that Swedenborg interviewed said
that they do this when they begin to experience an interior compulsion to see a
large heap of gold that they can imagine is their own. He said that they know
rationally that the gold they own is actually a tiny fraction of the large heap.
And yet, they are able to fantasize that all of it is their own.
The
fantasy is actually created by their ruling love. They are obsessively slavish
to this love. The rational thoughts they can think remain on the outside of
themselves. The ruling love will allow one thought that it keeps close by – the
thought of “All this is mine, mine alone.” This false sensory reality (S)
appearing in the cognitive organ (C) is constructed there by the love in the
affective organ (A). It is their love for such a fantasy that is so extreme, so
much more intense than any other love they can have. This is the top rank in
their hierarch of satisfaction and enthusiasm. This is the way they can
experience life again, or being alive again – like after a long sickness. He
said that this state lasts for awhile, and then they all experience the
irresistible need for a ‘recharge’ session. If they are prevented from it, they
begin to feel depressed, as if all enthusiasm of living has departed from them.
Then they are revived again after the fantasy recharge session.
The
awful thing about this, I think, is that in between the fantasy recharge
sessions, their folly does not diminish. The recharge experience works only on
their affective organ, where the ruling love sits and commands. Their cognitive
reality remains insane and unreal, filled with un-neos of everything. The mad
ruling love (A) turns their mind and their society (C) into a mad, mad world
(S). There is no consistency of growth and mental development. The people in
that mental state become progressively more mad, less capable of having human
feelings and rational thoughts. They are in a degraded form of sub-human life in
terms of their emotions, their reasoning, and their interactions with each
other.
Consider a common situation. We have the love of living in a clean place and
keeping our living space clean and uncluttered. We enjoy that when someone else
does it for us. We enjoy clean and orderly living and work spaces. We have a
love for these things. This is a heavenly love since nothing in the perfection
of the mental heaven of eternity can be less than perfect. Our love has the
power to make things perfect in our mental world. But we don’t have the love of
cleaning. Instead, we have the love of not cleaning, the love of avoiding
cleaning, the love of not having to do what it takes to keep things orderly and
clean around our living spaces. Many people hate cleaning chores. Many people do
cleaning chores while they are hating it. Many people procrastinate and postpone
cleaning because they hate it. Yet they all love a clean place. So something is
wrong here.
What’s wrong with our natural mind is always the same thing: it is
contaminated by inherited hellish tendencies and enjoyments. These are called
hellish not out of moralistic judgment, but out of rational and medical
assessment. In theistic medicine, the definition of “hellish” is any love that
is sourced in the Grand Monster. The definition of “heavenly” is any love that
is sourced in the Grand Human. The scientific and medical fact is that every
love is an organic operation of the affective organ (also called the “will”).
The affective organ is activated by an influx from either the Grand Human (or
mental layers 4, 5, 6), or in the Grand Monster (our unregenerate mental layers
-9, -8, -7). There is no other source of activation. These are the only two
possibilities, given the mental anatomy revealed in the Swedenborg Reports. We
inherit from our parental line, built-in connections to these two sources. Our
life as an infant is activated by these two sources.
Observe an infant’s behavior and you will notice both heavenly traits (like
innocence, curiosity, smile, focus on faces, etc.), as well as hellish traits
(battles with parents about eating, lying down, sleeping, not touching, not
eating, etc.). In childhood, the hellish traits become more visible and
problematic – disobedience, stubbornness, rebellion, temper tantrum, screaming,
hitting, getting away, not cooperating, etc. In adolescence and young adulthood
we begin to see a lot of rebellion, criminality, addiction, destructiveness,
emotional problems, selfishness, irrationality, etc. Every hellish act or habit
comes from a hellish love, which comes from the people who live in the Grand
Monster layers of the mental world of eternity. It’s a downhill journey. All we
need to do is to give in to our hellish loves until we have a hellish ruling
love entrenched at the top of the love hierarchy in our affective organ (layers
-9A, -8A, -7A).
Immediately after resuscitation we are fully ready and eager to join one of
the numerous mental societies of the Grand Monster. We are inexorably and
irresistibly drawn to a particular society that is closest in compatibility to
the hellish ruling love we brought with us in our natural mind (layers 9, 8, 7),
from our life on earth. This is a downhill journey. It’s easy. You just coast
with the river of inherited traits and enjoyments, living your life with them,
enjoying them, loving them, becoming part of the society in which our ruling
love is sourced. Swedenborg observed that when people first enter their “place”
in the Grand Monster they are overjoyed, having the feeling that they at last
have arrived “home.” The people around them who welcome them look familiar, feel
like brothers, sisters, and cousins This is because all along we have been
connected with these people as we developed our specific hellish loves.
God must intervene in this downhill slide towards and into hell. Every modern
human being born today would take that affective slide, and arrive at their
resuscitation surrounded by and grounded in some society of the Grand Monster.
When they open their eyes after resuscitation is complete, and begin their final
journey to immortality in eternity, they are surrounded by people from their
society, and follow them quickly with gladness. Little do they know, or suspect,
that after the introductions and the honeymoon period, their life turns into a
hellish misery. They discover that the people around them are cruel and
masterful manipulators. Their evil loves progressively worsens and creates a
monster or demon, where a human being was before. This happens because the
hellish ruling loves systematically finds and destroys any heavenly love
remaining active. The individual becomes a mere evil caricature of the former
self. The person is no longer a mixture of good traits and hellish traits.
Imagine what you would be like if everything good and intelligent were put to
sleep in your mind, and everything evil and stupid were to be intensified and
magnified. Such is the person you would be in the hell of your eternity.
This is why God must intervene on behalf of all those people who are willing
to undergo the process of regeneration before their resuscitation. This is a
process that starts in young adulthood and goes on for the rest of your life on
earth. God as the Divine Psychologist arranges the events of your life and the
thoughts of your mind in such a way as to confront you with natural, spiritual,
and celestial temptations. These are mental states during which you are
consciously reflecting on your regeneration, while facing a dilemma or choice.
The Divine Psychologist keeps you in a perfect balance by connecting you
unconsciously to one of the spiritual societies in the Grand Human and a
counter-society in the Grand Monster. The loves of the people in the Grand Human
flow into that portion of your affective organ that contains your hierarchy of
heavenly loves and sub-loves. The loves of the people in the Grand Monster flow
into that portion of your affective organ that contains your hierarchy of
hellish loves and sub-loves. The heavenly and hellish loves flowing in can
actually be felt very intensely during the temptation moments.
For example, during your reflection of cleaning up your work space, you
actually feel the intense motive to clean up. This is from the loves of the
Grand Human flowing in. At the same time, or moments later, or alternately
between the two, you feel like not cleaning up, like letting it go this time,
postponing it. This postponement gives you an intense love and satisfaction. You
are in a perfect balance. A heavenly love and a hellish love precisely oppose
each other in your will. The Divine Psychologist manages with omnipotence and
omniscience to keep you in this balance by maintaining the contact between you
and the opposed societies. Every time you have this temptation you are given the
opportunity to reject the love of not cleaning up, and to attach yourself to the
love of cleaning up. That’s how the process of regeneration operates. You can
see that you have plenty of time, plenty of opportunities – but not a limitless
amount. Your time comes and you are thrown into the dying and resuscitation
process. Then it’s too late to change anything after that. Your ruling love now
at the top of your love hierarchy, makes the final decisions.
You can see from all this that “hellish” and “heavenly” are objective medical
terms associated with mental anatomy, not subjective terms that are moralistic
or judgmental.
The journey of life begins in full at death.
The
dying and resuscitation process lasts about 30 hours. Swedenborg observed
thousands of people in the course of 27 years of observation who were undergoing
the dying and resuscitation process.
Swedenborg was allowed to undergo the dying and resuscitation process in order
to understand the details of the procedure. He reports that upon awakening
from this process people first see the faces of the spiritual medics who are
assigned by God to handle every resuscitating person. There is a special zone in
the mental world of eternity (or “spiritual world of the afterlife”), where
resuscitation takes place. It is a biological process completely unconscious to
the individual. Swedenborg says that God is especially close in attendance,
managing the medical skills of the volunteers who came “down” out into the
mental zone of resuscitation. These volunteers live in their mental layer 4
(celestial-rational consciousness). I was very surprised when I first read about
these details in the
Swedenborg
Reports. It is quite likely that you too are surprised at these details. The
mind is flooded with obvious questions, all of which come down to this one
central question: Is this fact or fiction?
When I
first started reading the Swedenborg Reports in 1981 I started with no
knowledge of who he was or what these books are about. I just started reading
one of the 27 Swedenborg volumes on the library shelf. Since I was a professor I
had done this many times before about a favorite topic – the mind, spirituality,
consciousness, God, the Bible, immortality, the afterlife. I confess here that I
was little motivated to finish these books. I went as far as I could to keep my
interest up. I felt guilty about this, wondering what was wrong with me. Other
people love books, talk about books and authors, look forward to more books.
They are very involved in books. I thought I was too. For many years I kept
buying books to add to my collection. I kept all my books from college and
graduate school. When I moved from one place to another, boxing and carting the
books was my biggest expense. Again, I confess here that most of the text of
these books remained unread by me. So I loved books. Why then was I not reading
them like other people normally do.
Actually, I am still surprised to find out from people I talk with that they
don’t read books. Swedenborg mentions that God (whom he always reverently
referred to as “the Lord”), forbade him to read many books he may have otherwise
read. This had to do with books on the subjects that he was going to write
about, namely: Sacred Scripture, God, the spiritual world, angels, theology, and
doctrines of the Church. Swedenborg’s thinking on these subjects had to remain
neutral and impartial between the various religious and philosophical factions.
He had to remain the impartial scientist and researcher. Swedenborg’s mind was
the human vehicle by which God was constructing a new science to be known as
Theistic Science, of which theistic psychology is the first instance.
This book written in 2008 is an executive summary, if you will, of my efforts
to build a foundation for theistic psychology, which I began in 2000 after 19
years of studying the Swedenborg Reports. These were the only books that I have
ever voluntarily read in full. Not only that, I have read them several times, I
listen to audio versions of them every night when I go to bed, every day when I
drive to and from work, every time I’m on an air flight, or in a doctor’s
waiting room. I love having those audio versions that I listen to silently
through ear phones, bothering no one. At the beginning I sometimes had the urge
to start talking to people and to give them the good news – Did you know we are
immortal? Did you know we are born into eternity with a spiritual body? Did you
know that the Bible has a hidden spiritual meaning? Do you know why God allows
evil in the world? Do you know what happens to children who die? To old people
who die? Etc. etc.
It was fascinating for me to discover that people were not as interested as I
was in these topics. I could not get over this. How could they just have a sort
of take it or leave it attitude towards these topics? What other topic could be
more important and fascinating that to know who is God, what kind of life do we
have after death, do we lived a married life, do we have a body with which to
enjoy sensual things such as we know them in the physical body or will we be
sexless, foodless, passionless, and just a floating ghost or a dream fantasy…How
does God manage every detail of every person’s life? How can Sacred Scripture be
Divine and Holy? What makes it Holy? Did God really speak those words? Where is
their supernatural power?
What is “mental”? Is it real? Is it as real as what is physical? What is the
relation between the physical and the mental? Is it the same as the relation
between the natural and spiritual? Are there angels? Devils? Do they influence
people’s lives? What are natural laws? Does God manage these directly or
indirectly? Do we have a spiritual body? What does it look like and what is made
of? Do we mental organs, or only mental functions? Are some people born evil?
How can people improve themselves and society? What does it take to have peace
in the world? Why do some children die? Are there animals in the afterlife? What
are the basic scientific laws God wants humanity to know about? Etc. etc.
I apologize for this long string of questions. They show you what some of the
topics are in the Swedenborg Reports. Rational and full answers are provided to
each of these questions. These were my questions, and the answers I sought in
books in my adult life. I did not find the answers in those books. I only found
incomplete, partially inconsistent, aesthetically inelegant speculations,
theories, and intellectual constructions of vast proportions. I was desolate and
desperate, my mind starving for rational truths about reality and the future. No
one had them. No, not one. Until the Swedenborg Reports. Since then, everyone
anytime anywhere can have rational, scientific, and complete answers to all
these questions, to begin with, and many more as one continues studying them.
Why? What is so special about the Swedenborg Reports?
The Swedenborg Reports are written in natural-rational correspondences of
Divine Speech or Divine Rationality. In other words, Divine Truth in the form of
spiritual light from the Spiritual Sun, flows
first into the cognitive organs of
those who are conscious there in
anatomical
layer 4C of the mental world of eternity. This highest level of human
consciousness is also called “Third Heaven” and “celestial angels.” Our thinking
layer 4C is by means of the
celestial-rational correspondences in which is written the Sacred Scripture
version that is in layer 4.
Second, the people who are
conscious in mental layer 5C react to the activity in layer 4C above them, or
within them. Our thinking in layer 5C (“Second Heaven” or “spiritual angels”) is
based on the spiritual-rational
correspondences of the version of Sacred Scripture they have in
mental layer 5C.
Third, the people who are
conscious in mental layer 6C react to the activity in layer 5C above them, or
within them. Our thinking layer 6C (“First Heaven” or “spiritual-natural
angels”) is based on the
spiritual-natural correspondences in which is written the Sacred Scripture
version that is in layer 6C.
Fourth, the people on earth who
are undergoing regeneration of the natural mind (layers 7, 8, 9), react to the
activity that is going on in their spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4). When we are
conscious in mental layer 7Ci (the interior-natural mind) we are open to react
to the correspondential sense of the Swedenborg Reports. Through reflecting on
the correspondential sense, constructing a rational meaning out of it, we are
able to react by correspondence to the activities in the layers of consciousness
above us (layers 6, 5, 4).
Fifth and Sixth, the people on
earth who are unwilling to study the correspondences in Sacred Scripture, react
to the materialistic (layer 8C) and corporeal (layer 9C) components that only
represent and correspond to the real operations that take place in their higher
spiritual layers of consciousness (layers
7i, 6, 5, 4).
You can see from this that the descent of the Divine Neo, or exteriorization
process of creation, goes through the sequential discrete anatomical layers of
the mental world of eternity. At each successive layer the correspondences of
Divine Truth or Divine Speech become more opaque, more covered over, more
distant in meaning and consciousness. By the time Divine Speech has exteriorized
and descended to
mental layers 8 and 9, the Divine Truth has been transformed five or six
times, translated into lower and lower forms of spiritual truth that is
comprehensible to people whose consciousness is based in physical appearances of
the senses (layer 9C), and on the logical abstractions based on those
appearances.
This sequence of exteriorization of spiritual light through the mental world
of eternity is replicated in exact proportions in the history, development, and
evolution of human civilizations. The Old Testament Sacred Scripture was
delivered to humanity three thousand years ago. The literal and historical
meaning was addressed to the mentality of the people living in that age. But
unbeknownst to them, the entire sequence of descent of Divine Truth in
correspondences was contained within the literal sense of that Sacred Scripture.
This follows the Divine law that sequential degrees are together in simultaneous
degree. The first of the sequence is the center of the simultaneous. It is the
deepest, most hidden. This is layer 4 with its celestial-rational
correspondences to Divine Truth, the closest there can be in human minds. This
layer can be recovered by extraction through the application of the laws of
correspondences applied as prescribed in the Swedenborg Reports.
Layer 5 is next in the literal sense, less hidden, more visible, easier to
extract. This layer allows us to extract the spiritual-rational correspondences
hidden the literal of Sacred Scripture. Layer 6 is closest to the literal sense.
It is less hidden and more visible in the extraction process.
So when we look at Sacred Scripture we are looking at the outside of Divine
Truth, transformed and represented by correspondences. We can reflect on the
spiritual-natural correspondences (layer 6) that lie hidden just below the
surface of the literal and historical details being related in the text.
Similarly with
layer 5, which raises our consciousness to the spiritual-rational level of
thinking and feeling (“Second Heaven”). Finally we can access layer 4, which
raises our consciousness to the celestial-rational level of quasi-omniscience.
All Sacred Scripture that is genuine and from God must go through the
sequence described above, and therefore, all Sacred Scripture contains the
entire sequence to be extracted. While the literal sense is cultural,
time-bound, and ethnic, applying mostly to one people, the correspondential
senses that are extracted are not cultural, because not natural. The topics are
spiritual, that is, relating the mental world of eternity.
It is anatomical layer 7i (interior-natural
mind) that makes this extraction process possible. The Divine Psychologist
must first activate this layer which otherwise remains dormant and
non-functional. God activates layer 7i when the individual begins the
regeneration process. The activation process is progressive, only a little at
the beginning, and much more after that as we make progress in our regeneration.
The more we resist our inherited hellish loves, the more our loves become
heavenly, and the more activation takes place in our interior-natural mind.
This process slows down or dies when we make up our own interpretations to
the literal of Sacred Scripture, using human knowledge, nontheistic science, and
theory. This was done for hundreds of years in the case of the Old and New
Testament Sacred Scriptures. And yet, after thousands of books written over
hundreds of years, not one of them was able to present the correspondential
sense that lay hidden within. This is because God prevents that path of thinking
in order to protect people from “profaning” Sacred Scripture. This refers to
destroying the spiritual mind, or, preventing it from ever being opened. When
this is done, the fate of the individual is a progressively worsening hell to
eternity. To protect people from profaning the knowledge of correspondences it
remained hidden until the Swedenborg Reports, which begin the modern era of
theistic science.
With respect to consciousness, individual development recapitulates
collective evolution.
The regeneration process begins the phases of spiritual development. All
spiritual development progresses by the elevation of our consciousness. Our
consciousness exists at the level of the meanings with which we think. Early in
the regeneration process we think with the literal meaning of the Sacred
Scripture that we acknowledge as the basis of our relationship to God. Our
consciousness is immersed in the literal meanings. For instance, when I first
started reading the Swedenborg Reports my consciousness was immersed in the
literal meaning of it. This literal is written in natural-rational
correspondences at layer 7e, the external portion of the rational mind (layer
7). This layer is the highest of the three anatomical layers of the natural
mind (8 and 9 are the other two).
As already explained, our thinking in this external layer of the rational
mind (7e) is based on our own ability to figure out the meaning and try to make
rational sense out of it. This is the approach or method we use when we study a
textbook in a high school or college course. Also, when we read a technical
manual for building or assembling something – we read the literal sense of the
instructions and apply them to the physical objects to which they refer. This
approach to the task of extracting the hidden layers of Sacred Scripture, is
therefore done from the external layer of the natural-rational mind (layer 7e),
using our own intelligence and methods of discourse analysis. This approach
fails because it rests on layers 8C and 9C, which are time bound, culture bound,
place bound, and ignorance bound. These are mere representations and
appearances, not the real thing.
The real thing is what comes from the Spiritual Sun in the form of spiritual
light substance and spiritual heat substance flowing into the mental world of
humanity. This is real. This is the reality. By the time this reality or truth
filters down to layers 8 and 9, the literal meanings no longer show all the
hidden layers which the literal meaning covers over. This fundamental limitation
and existential problem is overcome by the Divine Psychologist managing things
in every individual’s mind form birth to endless eternity. In order for this to
happen we ourselves must develop a love for the Divine arrangement, which is
truthfully reflected in the arrangement of feelings, thoughts, and sensations in
layers 4, 5, 6. We are not conscious in these layers prior to resuscitation. How
then can we re-arrange our natural mind into a “little heaven” if we cannot rely
on our own thinking regarding what Sacred Scripture says that God wants from us?
The answer is that we cannot rely on our interpretation of Sacred Scripture
but must rely on enlightenment from the Divine Psychologist. This enlightenment
is given in proportion to our love for cooperating with the Divine Psychologist
in our regeneration. The Swedenborg Reports reveal that when we read Sacred
Scripture the people in
layers 6, 5, 4 are involved through correspondence. While we think of the
literal sense as we read, they think of the inner sense hidden within the
literal. First in line are the people in layer 6 who think of the
spiritual-natural correspondences that are just below the surface literal
meanings. Next in line are the people in layer 5 who think of the
spiritual-rational correspondences that are two degrees below the surface
literal meanings. Next in line are the people in layer 4 who think of the
celestial-rational correspondences that are deeply buried below the surface
literal meanings.
When a child reads Sacred Scripture the people in layer 4 are especially
moved by the celestial correspondences that are hidden in the inmost sense. They
can see this inmost celestial sense more clearly when a child reads Sacred
Scripture because the ideas they have of the meanings are purely literal in the
appearances (layer 9), rather than in the abstracted thoughts of the
appearances, which is more nearly how adults read the language and style of
ancient Sacred Scripture. The people in layers 6, 5, 4 are affected by the
correspondence and are conscious of being affected – but they are not
conscious or aware of any personal features of the people by whom they are
affected, such as their identity, gender, or cultural origin. The vertical
community operates by the laws of correspondences and without the conscious
awareness of the people involved.
Progress in regeneration is possible to the extent that we do not consult our
own self-intelligence when we are engaged in the process of extracting
correspondences from Sacred Scripture. Neither can we consult the
self-intelligence of someone else, which is also inevitably based on the order
and arrangement of the physical world (layers 9C, 8C, 7eC). Our success in
regeneration can come only from the interior layer of our natural-rational mind
(7iC). An example of this is theistic psychology which excludes all hypotheses
and theories that we can come up with about the hidden layers of Sacred
Scripture. It includes only that which is explained in the literal sense of the
Swedenborg Reports, but not on the literal sense itself, but the
correspondential senses that lie within it.
Layer 7iC thinking is possible only as enlightened thinking. Anyone has this
enlightened thinking when willing to use the information for one’s regeneration.
This is the only love that will work. This love connects the individual to the
Divine Psychologist in a conscious rational relationship in
layer 7Ci. This new consciousness is called spiritual consciousness and is
at first spiritual-natural (layer 6), but advances further depending on our
willingness to fight our temptations in spiritual combat.
Regeneration is a lifelong process of getting rid of our hellish loves, and
replacing them with new heavenly loves. The replacement of old loves with new
loves is an organic process involving spiritual substances in the mental world
of eternity. We are these living spiritual organic entities. Our identity and
uniqueness comes from the unique personal “print” that God assigns to each of us
at conception, which gets actualized in birth and maturation. Our mental organs
are permanent, immortal, eternal. Our unique self must therefore be permanent,
immortal, eternal. We have this immortality and permanence from the substances
out of which we are constructed, namely, the spiritual heat and spiritual light
flowing out of God into the mental world of eternity.
Our unique identity becomes more and more personal, more and more our own
loves, as we live out our immortal existence, constructing a mental dwelling
place for our self and our conjugial soul mate. This place is joined and
enriched by new neighbors that continuously fill that mental dwelling place.
Each new couple appears to us as family, having an appearance and manners that
resemble ours. It is an idyllic mental dwelling in the world of rational ether
where loves and truths are God’s building blocks. We have more and more of God’s
good and truth as we develop more intense passion and attraction towards the
heavenly order, which is the order of God’s Mind, and the reality of creation
and existence by God.
The
perfect human heavenly order is the inmost of every human mind (layer 4). Every
human being receives a perfect and unique soul “print” in creation. This unique
person is born to change the whole race and universe. Every soul that is added
and integrated into the Grand Human (layers 4, 5, 6) changes the Grand Human
forever. God is building or growing the living Grand Human into ever grander
perfection. This is the evolution of consciousness of the human race. This
building up and perfection process involves the adding and integrating of new
souls. If a soul doesn’t get to the Grand Human after resuscitation of its
spiritual body, then it is added to the Grand Monster. This is an eternal mental
dwelling place for unrelenting selfish and cruel people. They have their own
life of freedom to do as they please, which they do by being incredibly cruel
and fiendish to the others who share their mental dwelling places.
The laws of spiritual locomotion or displacement in the mental world of
eternity are such that you are always in the place of your desire or love. This
contrasts with the physical world where we have to get our body to that place by
some method like walking, driving, or being carried by another person, an
animal, an airplane, boat, or rocket. But after resuscitation we are fully
conscious in our spiritual body. There are no places to go to, only mental
constructions directed by our loves and desires. Since there is only one mental
world of eternity, all human beings are born into it and remain forever. This
world of eternity is far more real than the physical world of time and space.
This is a difficult idea to accept and
understand.
If we think about this idea from the meanings we have in layer 8C, we will
see it as illogical, and hence not acceptable to our comprehension. And if it is
unacceptable to our comprehension we cannot love the idea, cannot relate to it,
cannot get enthusiastic about it. Right. I understand. Fortunately I have the
solution for the problem, a way of overcoming this mental barrier in our
cognitive organ. This is where your difficulty is felt, sensed, perceived in
yourself. How is it that you’re aware of the difficulty in your layer 8C
operations addressed to this idea – the idea that there is only one mental world
and everyone is in it?
But now, is you start thinking about it from above layer 8C, things
immediately change. If you are looking down mentally on your thinking in 8C,
then you must be doing the looking from your thinking in layer 7eC, which is the
cognitive operation of the rational mind, external portion. You are doing that
very thing (climbing to 7eC), when you notice how you’re thinking in your normal
thinking layer, which tends to be layer 8C for most of us most of the time in
daily social life and work. So when you notice in yourself that some new idea or
principle that you are thinking about does not make sense to you, you are
climbing in consciousness from 8C to the observation platform in 7eC. It is the
rational mind (layer 7) that controls the operations of the abstract materialist
mind (layer 8C).
The control exercised by the natural-rational mind (layer 7e) over the
natural-materialistic mind (layer 8C) is by correspondence. This control is
completely automatic and part of the mental flow and operation across the layers
of the mental world of humanity around the Spiritual Sun in eternity. The
Spiritual Sun as Layer 1, constructs and controls all the mental sub-layers from
2 to 10 through the built in laws of correspondence. This law is built in
because worlds, layers, and objects are created by spiritual heat and light.
These two infinitely varying substances are conjoined in God’s Mind as one. It
is called the Divine Marriage in God. Every human being must also have a
spiritual marriage in one’s mind, which is the conjunction of our affective
(“will”) and cognitive (“understanding”) organs into a joint living synergistic
operation that instantiates the sensorimotor world of the environment around us.
These are the created dwelling places – physical for the physical body, mental
for the spiritual body.
After resuscitation our consciousness is not in the spiritual body. It now
displaces itself differently than we are used to in our physical body.
Physical closeness in the natural world
corresponds to mental similarity in the mental world. Since there is only
one mental world you can understand the idea that all human beings can be
together who want to, once they are conscious and functioning in their spiritual
body after resuscitation. “Geographic place” or physical location corresponds to
“mental dwelling place” which actually refers to “mental state.” Since mental
states are organic operations in our mental organs, it follows that sharing
loves brings people together in the mental world. We don’t need to travel or be
carried since our love carries us. Love longs to be united to ideas, and
together they love to create neo babies – new feelings, new thoughts, new
sensations. When people get together in the mental world of eternity the
similarity of their loves bind them together into a permanent community.
I was making up instructions for exercises that my students can do to
increase their awareness of the level of consciousness they are thinking at any
particular moment in the course of their daily activities. We all oscillate (or
vacillate) between layers 9C, 8C and 7eC. For example, think about a routine
task you have to do on a regular basis, like running errands for someone to whom
you feel obligated. As you are thinking about the schedule for the day, while
brushing your teeth or preparing breakfast, you feel flooded by a feeling of
resentment: “I hate having to do this.” For a few more seconds, or minutes, your
thoughts are compulsively addressed to this topic. It pushes other things out,
for awhile. You are in the mode of venting. The Divine Psychologist has
connected you with some spiritual society in the Grand Monster who specialize in
the ruling love of feeling resentful. They absolutely adore and live for this
sentiment, feeling, emotion.
During these few seconds, or minutes, and with some people hours and even
days, our consciousness or mentality is situated (captured) in layer 9C. This
layer is called concrete materialism, and sometimes sensual-corporeal. The
people in the Grand Monster who operate permanently in this mental state feed on
such connections between them and us. They are hoping and striving to be able to
be connected to people in their natural mind, like we are here every day. Why
does the Divine Psychologist connect you to them while you are brushing your
teeth or preparing breakfast? The answer is always the same: get used to it.
It’s because of your love. All day long,
moment by moment, the Divine Psychologist connects and reconnects your mind to
societies in the Grand Human and Grand Monster.
I think this may be one of the most difficult concepts to understand in
theistic psychology.
It is also the very basis of theistic psychology. The purpose of theistic
psychology is to acquire systematic, rational, and practical knowledge about
regeneration. The success of this organic lifelong process determines our
immortal life in eternity, which begins immediately after death. There is no end
to that life. There is no comparison in choice between the value to us of
safeguarding our eternal happiness versus safeguarding a tiny fraction of it
here on earth. If we do not regenerate we are safeguarding the loves that we now
have as unregenerate persons. These are not our loves, really, they are the
loves of the people in the Grand Monster to whom you are connected. They become
our loves only after resuscitation, when we enter their society, and immediately
feel at home in that mental state of resentfulness.
The Divine Psychologist manages the process of regeneration in every little
detail. This is necessary since mental states in our natural mind in daily life
are always associated to corresponding physical events. These physical events
must be arranged so that they happen to you. This requires omnipotence and
omniscience, and Divine Love and caring for each human being. So all day long,
the Divine Psychologist connects and reconnects each of us to the societies of
the Grand Human and Grand Monster, meanwhile, making things happen in our
physical and social environment that correspond to our mental states.
As you are venting your resentful thoughts to yourself in layer 9C, you are
also conjoining these thoughts to your love of feeling resentful about the
obligation you feel and the things it requires of you. This love is in layer 9A.
It is a corporeal love joining up with a concrete materialistic thinking in
layer 9C. This conjoining together of an unregenerate or hellish love (9A) with
distorted reasoning (9C) is called the infernal marriage. It is the counterpart
in the Grand Monster of the spiritual marriage of a regenerate or heavenly love
(7A) with a rational thinking (7C).
As you are wallowing in the infernal marriage in layer 9, hating it, feeling
hellish feelings that torture you like wanting to run away, wanting to tell the
person off, wanting to destroy something, wanting to scream as if in agony, etc.
These are hellish loves creating hellish feelings. As long as your consciousness
is captured in that mental layer, you are going to be in hell with your
feelings, with corresponding thoughts, and with the negative sensorimotor
behaviors (9S) that the infernal marriage produces – pressing too hard on your
toothbrush causing injury to your gums, or burning your toast, or cutting your
finger, or banging drawers and doors, or driving off and practicing the
emotional use of the gas pedal, etc. These series of little and big disasters go
on and on – until your mentality, consciousness, and meaning of what’s
happening, is liberated by some regenerated loves of happiness and control.
What is the mechanism by which we can change our mental state and raise our
consciousness and mentality?
We change our loves by changing our thoughts.
Remember that -9A loves, like the love of feeling resentful, cannot
“materialize” into your actuality or life until you are willing to think the
thoughts and perform the reasoning procedures of venting to yourself about the
obligations you hate. If you inhibit or suppress these thoughts and
justifications, then the love of feeling resentful cannot be consummated. That
is when the Divine Psychologist disconnects you from that society, and
reconnects you to some other society. Now which one? That again depends on your
love, since the Divine Psychologist is obligated to honor your love since that
is your spiritual freedom to choose that love, whether it is hellish or
heavenly.
As you are still brushing your teeth, or waiting for the microwave oven to
deliver your meal, your love of getting out of hell is activated by the Divine
Psychologist. Now comes the critical choice you have to make in full spiritual
freedom to choose your loves. The love of getting out of hellish mental states
(like feeling resentful, angry, and trapped), originates with some society in
the Grand Human. It is a heavenly love that’s being offered to you. They don’t
know who you are or what you are, and they don’t know your circumstances. They
are just absolutely moved by the love of assisting people in getting out of
hellish states. This love is used by the Divine Psychologist to make it
available to you by connecting your consciousness to them. You cannot feel their
love in layer -9A, but you can, in layer 8A and 7A. All you need to do is to
cleave to that love being offered to you, namely, the love of getting away from
hellish feelings and thoughts.
You are aware of this love “in the back of your mind.” You need to use a
deliberate technique to bring that love to the fore of your mind, so that you
can actually be in that state of love, which is heavenly and which brings peace,
being focused, feeling enthusiasm and happiness for the coming day – the first
day of the rest of your immortal life, one day closer to eternal conjugial
happiness with your soul mate. These are the thoughts in layer 7C that you can
dwell on as you finish brushing your teeth, or when the microwave oven beeps. As
you develop these rational and heavenly thoughts about reality and your
wonderful future, new loves can become active in your affective organ in layer
7A and 8A. The Divine Psychologist now connects you to societies that are
immersed in the loves of scheduling and completing tasks. You feel imbued with
new strength and enthusiasm.
As you are locking up the apartment and proceeding to your car or moped, you
are back in layer 9, sequencing the sensorimotor activities that will take you
to school or work. You are now far away from the place in the Grand Monster that
hates the feeling of having these obligations to meet. Gone is the love of
feeling resentful. It is replaced with the love of completing your tasks in as
efficient way as possible, and still stay within the bounds of your standard of
accomplishing things (which is also a heavenly love).
As you are locking up the apartment and proceeding to your car or moped, you
are back in layer 9, sequencing the sensorimotor activities that will take you
to school or work. You are now far away from the place in the Grand Monster that
hates the feeling of having these obligations to meet. Gone is the love of
feeling resentful. It is replaced with the love of completing your tasks in as
efficient way as possible, and still stay within the bounds of your standard of
accomplishing things, all of which involve a bunch of heavenly loves – the love
to stay out of trouble, the love to enjoy friends, songs, and movies, the love
to strive for success and prepare for a career or project, the love to be
rewarded for work done, the love to be recognized and acknowledged for our
skills and intentions, etc. etc.
These useful heavenly loves allow us to progress to our ultimate destination,
which is to become a mature adult who is committed to regeneration progress on a
daily basis.
This is then the personal challenge facing each of us – the challenge of
regeneration. And this is assisted by knowledge of how the process of
regeneration works. This process is revealed all around the world in every
culture when you examine the Sacred Scripture they possess from tradition over
the generations. Approach these holy texts with the knowledge of correspondences
acquired for your own regeneration. These are the spiritual meanings that are
hidden within the literal meaning. No one can extract this spiritual meaning
except through the prescribed process, which is the only actually effective
mechanism that God provides for human beings to access spiritual truths hidden
within the literal meaning of all Sacred Scripture.
Theistic psychology is a phrase used to cover any and all knowledge that
people have as a result of applying correspondences from enlightenment by the
Divine Psychologist. That is how the spiritual organic process works. The
natural organic process of the growth of a plant cannot be altered. All the
variations of environmental conditions to which its organic process can adapt
and function, will result in the plant surviving. But if some conditions are
given outside this limit, the plant dies. This organic process is built into all
organs, physical and mental. Our mental
organs are constructed out of the substances that are within Sacred Scripture.
This is a difficult and confusing concept to understand from layer 8C, but it
is clearly understandable in layer 7eC. Remember that our mental organs are
constructed out of the mental substances of spiritual heat and spiritual light.
These are mental substances, Divine substances, living, infinite, and eternal.
Spiritual heat is nothing else than Divine Love and spiritual light is nothing
else than Divine Truth. The problem of comprehension is resolved as soon as you
allow in your mind the entrance of a layer 7iC idea. This is an interior-natural
concept, not a external-natural concept. It is the idea that physical=temporary
appearances representing reality, and mental=permanent eternal reality in our
mind, which is the mental world of eternity, of which there is only one, for all
people.
Once you allow that idea as “possibly real” (which is called the positive
bias in science), you are departing from and removing the existing negative bias
in science, which says that this idea is “outside the realm of logic,
rationality, empiricism, and science.” The negative bias thinking about the
Divine Psychologist, the Grand Monster, etc., is that it is just some idea by
some author whose research and conclusions do not qualify as materialistic
science. The thinking level of materialistic science is layer 8C and layer 9S.
In other words, the data and measurements obtained at layer 9S, provide the
sensory input and data recording instruments. Then, our ability to construct
mental abstractions (layer 8C) of the empirical data provide us with scientific
explanations, principles, and theories.
Note that the abstractions and scientific explanations in layer 8C are above
or within layer 9C, which involves constructing concepts and explanations based
only on the appearances of reality which we see in data. Clearly, the rational
and scientific explanations must be at a level higher in thinking and
consciousness than the level of the data which are appearances of the senses and
the physical instruments. Scientific explanation is at level 8C, which is why
that mental layer is called “abstract materialism,” while the layer below is
called “concrete materialism.” Data and measurements are concrete, while
explanations are abstractions of the concrete. Abstractions of data are much
closer to actuality and truth than the appearances of those data, which hide or
cover up the actual reality or truth.
The concrete materialistic thinking of our anatomical layer 9C is related to
the concrete materialistic thinking of the literal sense of the Old Testament
Sacred Scripture. The abstract materialistic thinking of our anatomical layer 8C
is related to the abstract materialistic thinking of the literal sense of the
New Testament Sacred Scripture. The external-rational thinking of our anatomical
layer 7eC is related to the external-rational thinking of the literal sense of
the Writings Sacred Scripture (or “Swedenborg Reports”). These three sets of
sacred text are unlike any other discourse produced by human beings on their
own. The discourse and text produced by human beings only has a literal sense
that can be abstracted and symbolized in many ways. But this text does not
contain a spiritual sense corresponding to the layers above our natural mind and
the Spiritual Sun. Some text comes from Divine Speech to produce Sacred
Scripture, while all other text is constructed at whatever level the person is
thinking, the consciousness level of the person, which is in the natural mind.
You can test out this principle by learning correspondences and applying them
to various types of discourse and text. The results will show that only Sacred
Scripture text contains the layers of the mental world of eternity in discrete
correspondences to each other, from layer 1 to layer 9.
Consider the external-rational concepts you are studying in theistic
psychology, like regeneration, the Grand Monster, the Grand Human, layers of
mental organs, eternity, spiritual substances, etc. Consider them within the
positive bias. That is, allow yourself the benefit of saying “possibly true” and
reject the idea that will rob you from that benefit, which says “not possibly
true, clever fantasy, not science.” It is your choice. To me it makes sense to
teach the positive bias framework. I can understand it rationally as a scientist
who respects consistency, organicity, rationality, usefulness, empirical
confirmations, power to generate new explanations that lead to better
understanding, etc. etc. These are the reasons why I think that it is worthwhile
for me to teach the positive bias in science.
One of the exercises that I found useful involves the activity of spiritual
garfinkeling. I constructed this sensorimotor neo by considering the exercise in
Garfinkel’s 1967 book. He gave his students the exercise of going home and
acting like they are guests. This would allow them to observe two useful things.
First, other people’s reactions. Second, what is normal and ordinary is an
arrangement or order managed by the participants who coordinate their actions to
each other. When the students acted like a guest would act, they broke up this
coordinated arrangement, and the ordinary was no longer in force. The social
world of the participants was turned upside down.
“May I use the bathroom?”
“Where do you want me to sit?”
“Who are the people in this photograph?”
“How long have you lived here?”
Etc. etc.You can see that the normal ordinary exchanges were disrupted by
such questions and stances.
The exercise I am recommending uses a similar approach in a spiritual area,
so I call it spiritual garfinkeling. I’m not sure if I should use a capital “G”
or if Professor Garfinkel’s followers today would see my point for extending to
theistic psychology what Harold Garfinkel did in non-theistic ethnomethodology.
I see the neo I constructed as honoring the scientific value of his
instructional assignment.
Spiritual garfinkeling consists of carrying out a regular activity while
acting as if you are operating from layer 7, when actually you might be in layer
8 or 9. To act as if one’s consciousness is in a higher layer than it is –
that’s the process that can help us raise our actual consciousness level to that
higher layer. In this higher layer we have access to mental states that are
sourced in the Grand Human (layers 6, 5, 4). This higher way of thinking (layer
7C) is rational rather than materialistic (layer 8C). For instance, when you
analyze your feeling of hating your obligations, you can do it from layer 9C
thinking (“I just hate it. I don’t want to do it. I resent having to.”). Or, you
can do it from layer 8C thinking (“I can’t just walk away from the situation. I
want to honor my obligations in this case. I am being a good person.”). Or, you
can do it from your layer 7eC thinking (“Everything I do fits into a Divine plan
for my future. It would be folly for me to ignore this central fact about it.
Striving to be good will bring me the motivation, freedom, and happiness I crave
for.”)
Once you begin to elaborate a higher form of thinking, you create the
thoughts that your higher loves need in order to become actual in you, and to
give you the mental states that you want for yourself. If you are in layer -9A
facing concrete appearances (9S) that make you unhappy (-9A), the way out of the
situation is to raise your level of thinking to 8C by the abstracted materialism
to which we have access in that layer. We can construct abstracted explanations
of our situation. Our situation appears bad (“I hate having to do this.”) (layer
-9C). Our negative emotions (marked by the – sign), are supported by false
thinking (“It’s not fair.”). The two form an infernal alliance to produce our
disturbing environment (-9S) (feeling trapped, braking things, taking it out on
innocent others, being in a bad mood, putting on a sad or mean face, etc.).
An effective method to gain control over the situation is to move right on up
to layer 7eC thinking. You can do this if you are a student of theistic
psychology, or, if you study Sacred Scripture and understand it in its deeper
spiritual meanings. Layer 7eC thinking consists of paraphrases and applications
of your knowledge and understanding of theistic psychology, or equivalent. It
works most effectively when you are willing to think in the interior-rational
layer (7iC), obtaining your information from the correspondential or spiritual
meanings within Sacred Scripture. We need to be aware that when Sacred Scripture
is applied in the literal sense, our thinking is restricted to the level at
which the holy text is written.
Sacred Scripture text that is written for concrete materialistic thinking
(9C), allows you to hate some people and to ignore their human rights. Sacred
Scripture text that is written for abstract materialistic thinking (8C), does
not allow you to hate some people and to ignore their human rights. You are
commanded to love all people and to benefit them, not hurt them. Sacred
Scripture text that is written for natural-rational thinking (7C), also does not
allow you to hate some people and to ignore their human rights, but in addition,
shows you what is actually going on with you when you hate some people versus
when you love the good in all people.
At level 7iC thinking you are adding a critical missing component that is not
present in 7eC thinking. This is the process of undergoing regeneration. Once
you begin this process you are given access to 7iA loves and motives.
Interior-natural loves are sourced in your higher layers (6, 5, 4). These loves
are spiritual and celestial, while the loves in 7eA, 8A, and 9A are natural
loves, possessing negative natural powers and weaknesses. Loves that are
available in layer 7eA can conjoin only with 7eC thoughts (external loves with
external thoughts). These are based on the materialism of the natural world,
either concrete (layer 9) or abstracted (layer 8). There is a direct dependency
between the content of 9C, 8C, and 7eC. To move the content to spiritual and
celestial layers (6, 5, 4) it is necessary to operate in layer 7i, the
interior-natural layer.
You move on from layer 7e to layer 7i when you activate the love of
regenerating (7iA). This is called reformation. You change your world around by
moving everything in it under the rule and command of your love of regenerating.
You can elevate this love above all other loves you have, above the loves of
what is concrete (9A), above the loves of what is abstract (8A), and above the
loves of knowing and understanding rational truths (7eA). You enthrone a new
love in the interior portion of your natural-rational mind, within the love that
is in the external portion of your rational mind (7eA). This highest love in the
natural mind is the love of regenerating. When you cleave to this love, holding
on to it as dear life, you are given access by the Divine Psychologist to your
spiritual and celestial layers.
When you practice spiritual garfinkeling you are acting as if you are in
layer 7e or 7i, depending on your actual loves. For instance, when you are
immersed in the negative feelings and thoughts of hating your obligation and
lack of freedom, as discussed above, you can start acting as if you moved out of
layer 9A, out of layer 8A, and into layer 7A. All you need to do is to figure
out rationally within your understanding of the positive bias, how your
regeneration motive applies to this one instance of feeling disturbed by your
obligation, feeling rebellious, feeling enslaved. For example:
“What is my main task here. What am I trying to accomplish. Where am I
trying to go. I want to be free of these negative feelings. I want to be
free, really free. I cannot feel free on my natural loves. I need to access
my spiritual and celestial loves. Sacred Scripture tells me that “with God
all things are possible.” This means that the Divine Psychologist can give
me new loves that will overcome the feelings of dissatisfaction and loss of
emotional control. These new loves are spiritual and celestial, from my
eternity, from my own heaven. I am moving towards that state. I must let the
Divine Psychologist bring me these temptations of hating and rebelling
against what I picked for myself as the right thing to do. I accepted this
obligation out of a feeling of loyalty and caring. These are heavenly loves
and I’m going to reject the hellish loves of trying to escape my obligation,
then regretting it later, feeling the pain of guilt and self-hatred.” Etc.
You can see from the above discussion what is involved in spiritual
garfinkeling. It’s like a mental bootstrap operation, lifting yourself out of
the states you are in. Knowing about the details of regeneration and the work of
the Divine Psychologist in your mind, allows you to access new loves, new
powers, new satisfactions, new self-confidence, new skills and abilities.
The availability to us of this progressive level of abilities, is the result
of the organic anatomy of our mental operations. As you know from prior
discussions, we have the built in anatomical ability to operate our three mental
organ systems at three levels of operation – layer 9, 8, and 7 (7e and 7i).
These three levels of mental operations are in sequential discrete degrees, as
discussed. This means that the highest possible progress in one level cannot
reach the lowest operations of the next level. You also know that our
consciousness or mentality level oscillates between these three, although as you
can expect, the rate of oscillation will vary with the extent of our
regeneration.
The process of regeneration starts in layer 7, when we abandon our thinking
loyalty in layer 7eC to layer 8 and 9. Instead, we adopt a new loyalty in layer
7iC, which is filled with spiritual content from the correspondential sense of
Sacred Scripture. From this interior-natural layer, we can raise our
consciousness to the highest levels by extracting higher correspondences from
Sacred Scripture. The regeneration of our layer 7 turns our natural-rational
mind from a little hell into a little heaven. This transformation is achieved
through the influx of correspondences from layer 6 into layer 7i. The result is
that layer 6 is made fully functional. This insures that we will be able to live
in first heaven after resuscitation.
Following the regeneration of our natural-rational mind (layer 7), the really
hard work then begins – the regeneration of the external-natural mind, layer 8.
Our rational mind can be a little heaven while our materialistic mind can still
be a little hell. Our regenerated rational mind (layer 7) cannot impose a new
heavenly order on the materialistic mind below (layer 8). Our feelings and
thoughts in layer 8 prior to its regeneration, are abstractions of mere
appearances (layer 9). The abstractions from the physical cannot get rid of the
physical. Every scientific theory and concept in the negative bias approach,
will exclude the non-physical, the non-temporal or eternal, and the spiritual or
mental. These are excluded. But if this turns out to be the real reality, then
science in the negative bias excludes the true reality. This is then the reason
why our layer 8 is called a little hell – because our thoughts about reality are
inverted. The result is that what is true, we call false; and what is false, we
call true. This is the meaning of “hellish order” or “little hell.”
The rational mind (layer 7) has to be regenerated first because layer 8 and
layer 9 resist all efforts at regeneration. However, things are different once
layer 7 is regenerated. When we read the Swedenborg Reports, or study genuine
theistic psychology based on it, we can make the effort of studying every
paragraph until we can understand it. As we build paragraphs that we can
understand, our rational mind is formed by the Divine Psychologist, regardless
of our awareness, and regardless of our ideas about God and the afterlife. This
paragraph by paragraph cumulation of rational ideas and explanations results in
the gradual regeneration of the rational mind (layer 7). It is accompanied by
much activity in the affective organ. Our rational loves (layer 7A) seize upon
our new rational ideas (7C) and they reciprocally conjoin into one – the
spiritual marriage in layer 7.
Now we look down upon our feelings and thoughts in layer 8C below, and what
do we see?
We see a little hell. We see negative loves and false principles and
attitudes. We see habits that we cannot condone. We see enjoyments that are
selfish and cruel. We see thinking that is often stupid, reasoning that doesn’t
conform to rationality. We see a life of weakness and neglect, addiction and
powerlessness, a disorder of the mind that translates into a disorder of
society. This is the unregenerate layer 8. But we also see some brilliance
there, feats of engineering and medical achievements, large institutions and
huge armies operating in an orderly and efficient manner. Layer 8 is not only a
little hell, it is also a little heaven. But the heavenly order and abilities
cannot remain because the hellish order destroys them. Regeneration of layer 8
must take place before the heavenly portion in it is destroyed. This is
accomplished through the influx of our layer 5. When layer 8 is regenerated, our
layer 5 is fully opened and functional. After resuscitation we will be able to
exist in the second heaven.
After layer 8 is regenerated, layer 9 can be regenerated. This is achieved
through the influx of layer 4. When layer 9 is regenerated, layer 4 is fully
open and functional. After resuscitation we will be able to exist in the third
and highest heaven.
Reasonings under the three levels of human consciousness:
Layer 7:Positive bias rationality: Reasoning based on rational-spiritual
correspondences
Layer 8:Negative bias materialism: Reasoning based on abstractions from
sensory appearances
Layer 9:Concrete materialism: Reasoning based on sensory or corporeal
appearances
When
we are beginning our process of regenerating we are motivated by a rational love
in layer 7A. Loves are named according to the organic layer of our mind at which
they operate:
Organic layer 9A supports corporeal loves, attached to the appearances of the sensorimotor
world around it (9S). Corporeal loves (9A) encourage concrete materialistic
thinking (9C), and together they produce the sensorimotor appearances of our
meanings and consciousness in the corporeal mind (layer 9).
Organic layer 8A supports sensuous loves that encourage abstract materialistic thinking (8C),
and together they produce the sensorimotor appearances of our meanings and
consciousness in the sensuous materialistic mind (layer 8S). The difference in
consciousness between layer 8 and 9 is of a discrete degree. No matter how
advanced we get in layer 9, we can never reach layer 8 by using corporeal
consciousness and meanings. In layer 9 the meanings reflect the appearances. For
example, you are driving and another car has been following closer than you
think that one car should follow another. You are conscious that you are feeling
annoyed. All of a sudden things around your corporeal mind (9S) are no longer
OK. You are not conscious of the hellish love (-9A) that gives you the feeling
of annoyance (-9A). Your corporeal cognitive operations (9C) fall in line to
support this love. But you don’t know what this love is, or even that it is
operating in your affective organ, triggering the thoughts.
You are thinking that the driver behind you is annoyed with you and wants you
to speed up. This conclusion is entirely based on the appearances in your rear
view mirror. That’s all you are going by to make this conclusion.
What is this love? It is the love of self for the sake of self as it operates
at the corporeal level of appearances (layer -9A). The car behind you is
invading your territory. There is pressure and threat to such behavior from one
motorist to another. You resent that. They should respect you by being more
considerate. You hate people who…Wait! Quick! Start doing some spiritual
garfinkeling. You’re thinking: “OK, I need to calm down. I’m just going to act
like it’s the other’s driver’s inattention. It’s not a personal message to me
that he is annoyed with me and is pressuring me to go faster.
Not necessarily so! Maybe he is
distracted. Maybe he has the habit of following too close. Maybe he is busy
multitasking and isn’t even aware of me.”
This new thinking is in your layer 8C. Your consciousness, rationality, and
meanings have jumper from the corporeal level of appearances (9C), to a more
realistic interpretations of the situation based on emotional intelligence
(layer 8C). This is the skill of knowing how to use spiritual garfinkeling
procedures to allow your consciousness to escape from the reasoning that is
based on appearances (“He is annoyed at me”) in layer 9C, to the reasoning based
on an abstract interpretation of these appearances (“Not necessarily so!”) in
layer 8C.
There is a discrete difference in the two loves that support these two
layers. Corporeal loves are for the most part unregenerate (9-A). The love of
self for the sake of self and the love of the world for the sake of self are the
two ruling loves in layer 9-A before regeneration. So until the regeneration
process reaches layer 9 we need to use spiritual garfinkeling to escape that
inherited love in our natural mind. We suddenly just start acting as if we are
operating in layer 8. We don’t try to reason our way out of it. We just jump.
Our consciousness just takes off to a higher zone of existence. When we act this
way, the Divine Psychologist is right there to support us. He provides the power
and the effectiveness for whatever is supposed to happen in that situation. Our
job is simply to act as if we are doing it ourselves, as if we are jumping from
a corporeal love (9-A) to a sensuous love (8+A).
The laws of operation for consciousness in the mental world of eternity allow
us to “look down” from one mental layer to that immediately below. When we are
thinking with meanings that operate in layer 8C, we can use these meanings to
show us what is happening in the meanings that is just external or below.
Remember that in the mental world, what is “below” is the same as what is
“external.” The three sequential mental layers of the natural mind – 9, 8, 7 –
are together in simultaneous order, so that layer 7 is within (or above) layer
8, which is within (or above) layer 9. Think of three concentric circles with 7
at the center, 8 in the middle, and 9 on the outside. This is the organic
arrangement of our natural mind, the mind in which we are conscious prior to
resuscitation. Similarly, the spiritual mind in which we are conscious after
resuscitation, has three sequential and simultaneous layers – 6, 5, 4.
Our conscious awareness is created by the meanings we are using in our
thinking. These meanings are nothing else than the operations of the cognitive
organ. Hence our consciousness level at any one moment in our daily activities
is determined by which of the three cognitive organs it is attached to by a
love. Loves in the natural mind exist at three levels, since loves are nothing
but the operations of our affective organ. Our natural mind contains an
affective organ at three anatomical layers – 9A, 8A, 7A. The 9A loves in the
affective organ will generate 9C meanings in the cognitive organ. Similarly, 8A
loves will generate 8C meanings, while 7A loves will generate 7C meanings.
Consequently, such as our love is, such are our meanings, and such is our
consciousness.
In our daily life, the level of human consciousness in our sensorimotor organ
(S) is determined by the marriage between our affective loves (A) with our
cognitive thoughts (C). This is the spiritual marriage (S) between our will (A)
and our understanding (C).
You can see from this mental anatomy and physiology that our daily life
consciousness operates at three levels:
7S: rational consciousness
from correspondences
8S: materialistic
consciousness from abstracted appearances
9S: corporeal consciousness of
concrete appearances
In terms of mental development,
In infancy: corporeal consciousness (9S)
In childhood materialistic consciousness (8S)
In adolescence: rational
consciousness (7S)
As young adults: rational consciousness (7S)
As mature adults: materialistic
consciousness (8S)
In old age: corporeal consciousness (9S)
Remember that S (sensorimotor system of the mind) is the spiritual child or
offspring – neo baby – of the spiritual marriage between the affective organ (A)
and the cognitive organ (C). This is a feature of mental physiology in the
organic layers of the mental world of eternity. What you see around you, outside
of you, and coming into you through your senses (S), are the actual appearances
(S) created instantaneously by the spiritual marriage in your own mind between
your loves (A) and your thoughts (C).
The taxonomy of natural loves is arranged in three
levels (9A, 8A, 7A). Examples:
Unregenerate 7A loves:
-
Values forms of spirituality and religion that appeal to symbolism
-
Wants natural meanings to count as spiritual meanings, eliminating the
discrete difference
-
Feels a distaste for thinking with correspondences
-
Loves to introduce self-made speculative interpretations of Sacred
Scripture
-
Uses Sacred Scripture to support the male dominance model in marriage
-
Prefers the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture to its correspondential
meaning
-
Values doctrinal understanding above the love of good in others
-
Values faith (C) and declarations of loyalty (S) above charity (A) and
uses (S)
-
Loves to postpone the work of regeneration, or only wants to do the
early phases of it
-
Etc. etc.
Unregenerate 8A loves:
-
Feels attraction to forms of spirituality and religion that appeal to
mystery
-
Values knowledge and expertise only when they can use it for personal
gain
-
Likes to be inventive for competitive reasons only
-
Motivated to donate their money, time, expertise only when it leads to
social approval
-
Likes to acquire administrative, managerial, and executive skills in
order to benefit from success
-
Indiscriminate love for media entertainment, drama, novels, without
judging its moral level
-
Enjoys music that is popular, with lyrics or messages that are
political, stereotyped, sexist, abusive, rebellious, crude, violent,
explicit
-
Values the equity model in marriage
-
Etc. etc.
Unregenerate 9A loves:
-
Values forms of spirituality and religion that involve rituals,
ceremonies, pageantry without being involved in their meanings
-
Feels attraction to superstition, black magic, spiritism, healing
powers, idols, relics, cults
-
Attaches happiness to money, possessions, objects more than to other
things
-
Feels happiness in feasting on large size meals that lead to being
overweight
-
Loves to be inactive or “lazy”, loves to avoid physical workouts
-
Loves to resist or ignore health information and healthy lifestyles
-
Loves to procrastinate by avoiding obligations and the expectations of
others
-
Enjoys ridiculing and downgrading certain others who are different, who
are feared, or who are competitors
-
Likes to use religion and knowledge to control and manipulate others for
one’s own selfish reasons
-
Loves to disobey legitimate authority and get away with what is illegal
or not sanctioned
-
Lusts for the goods of others, hoping to take it away from them
-
Likes to enter into plots and conspiracies against innocent others
-
Feels elated when competitors and enemies lose everything or are
destroyed
-
Feels loyalty to the person, both to the good and the bad in the person
-
Etc. etc.
Regenerate 7A loves:
-
Values the knowledge of correspondences in Sacred Scripture
-
Values forms of spirituality and religion that make sense
-
Values the unity model in marriage
-
Values a rational understanding of God and the afterlife
-
Loves only the good in a person, not the person, or the bad in the
person
-
Loves to use rational thinking to understand everything
-
Loves to be sincere and peaceful because they are heavenly
-
Likes the ideas in theistic psychology
-
Strives to eliminate all hellish loves and thoughts
-
Etc. etc.
Regenerate 8A loves:
-
Strives to be inventive
-
Values education and science
-
Motivated to share and donate their money, time, expertise
-
Values and rewards administrative, managerial, and executive skills
-
Fascinated with media entertainment, drama, novels
-
Enjoys a variety of classical and popular music genres
-
Values the equity model in marriage
-
Values traditional forms of spirituality and religion for the sake of
learning to become a better person
-
Etc. etc.
Regenerate 9A loves:
-
Enthusiasm and energy for work
-
Enjoyment of laughter and fun
-
Enjoyment of physical activity
-
Motivated to support and protect family, property, country
-
Willingness to obey legitimate authority
-
Values being honored, recognized, acknowledged
-
Values loyalty to selected others
-
Enjoys traditional music and folk dance forms
-
Values the male dominance model in marriage
-
Values forms of spirituality and religion that involve rituals,
ceremonies, pageantry as a foretaste of heaven
-
Loves large size meals, banquets, group cooking, outdoors fun and social
events
-
Etc. etc.
We can influence where are
consciousness is moment by moment, by deliberately thinking about thoughts and
meanings that are attractive to a higher love within us. This is the
spiritual garfinkeling technique.
For instance, you are brushing your teeth and thinking that you need to floss
next. You are experiencing a feeling of distaste, reluctance, sadness. You are
aware of your thinking: “I hate flossing. I think I’ll just skip today. Nobody
is perfect. I’ve got more important things to take care of.” What level of
consciousness is this cognitive operation going on? It’s level 9C. It’s a
corporeal consciousness rooted in infancy, and as well in old age, when it is
unregenerate. Having identified the level of thinking, you can conclude that the
love in this marriage is in the affective organ layer 9A. Now you can consult a
mental dictionary of loves that you need to acquire by study, observation, and
systematic reflection.
It is useful to study and memorize taxonomies and diagrams in theistic
psychology. Each taxonomy, matrix, and diagram constitutes what the Swedenborg
Reports call “vessels” and “scientifics” in Sacred Scripture. These are
cognitions, concepts, ideas, principles, relationships, rational accounts and
explanations. We need to commit them to memory so that we can access them when
they become relevant to an event, situation, or observation. We prepare
ourselves for spiritual combat by “packing” these spiritual weapons in our long
term memory, where we can access them when we face a spiritual temptation.
The Divine Psychologist needs for us to be ready to face combat when He
brings an event to us (which takes omnipotence), while at the same time He sets
our focus and our memory to deliver to our consciousness, the “vessel” or
concept of truth that we have previously acquired. Now with this information or
idea in our conscious focus, we face the temptation, and we fight emotionally as
of self, knowing rationally that it is the Divine Psychologist who is actually
managing the details and the outcome.
But if we are not prepared with concepts and understandings in our memory, we
cannot face spiritual combat, and win. And in that case, the Divine Psychologist
postpones the contest for another time in the future. And if we do not prepare
at all, because we are not regenerating and don’t believe in regeneration, then
there will be no spiritual temptations brought to us. We will then enter
resuscitation without being regenerated. Our spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4)
cannot be operationalized. Our consciousness must remain living in an
unregenerate natural mind (-9, -8, -7), and this constitutes “spiritual
insanity” or the Grand Monster.
When we face spiritual combat we are experiencing it as temptation. This is
the conflict between opposing loves. For instance, you’re walking on the beach,
keeping up a steady pace for your daily workout. Your eye catches a sharp piece
of glass sticking out of the packed sand. You’re thinking: “Could give someone a
nasty cut on the foot!” This is the event that the Divine Psychologist has
brought to you, including managing your eye movements to locate the sharp glass.
Now the combat is set up in the resuscitation zone of the mental world of
eternity where your spiritual body is lying, quietly, not moving, as if asleep.
A delegation of thrill seekers from a society in the Grand Monster arrives
simultaneously with a delegation of volunteers from a society in the Grand
Human. Every one on both sides was summoned by the Divine Psychologist. They
were spending a normal day in their society when they received the Divine
summons. They responded with opposing loves.
The people from the Grand Monster society responded from an infernal love to
the chance of being able to suffocate compassion in some natural mind. That’s
all they know. They have no identity or idea of who this person is, or even that
this is a person on earth. They just sense that they have been given an
opportunity to exercise their infernal love. They can see it too, since they are
brought into a visual presence of your spiritual body, lying there, waiting for
the resuscitation process to begin -- which may not happen for decades,
depending on how long you are to live on earth. But in the meantime, while your
spiritual body is in this semi-conscious state, it affords your natural mind to
undergo the physiology of temptations.
As the Grand Monster people are brought near your spiritual body, on its left
side, the Grand Human volunteers are also brought near, on the right side. They
face each other. Your natural mind, which is also housed in the spiritual body
(along with your spiritual mind), is now spiritually “flooded” and “immersed” in
the hellish loves with their “falsities” or un-neos. Neos fight un-neos, and the
what is at stake, is your life in heaven or hell in eternity. Nothing can be
more important to you than this battle, and all the others like it, that you
will have to go through. There is no other way of raising your consciousness
level in eternity to your heavenly happiness (layers 6, 5, 4).
The reason there is no other way is that love sticks. When you attach
yourself to a love, it will stick to you. Your mind cannot get rid of it –
voluntarily. The Divine Psychologist cannot cut it out for you, which would be
like cutting off the wick of a burning candle. The flame cannot live without the
wick. You cannot live without your love. You are your love. Cut out the love,
and you are gone. What then is the Divine Psychologist going to do when you
inherit evil loves and you make them your own loves when you are an infant, a
child, an adolescent, a young adult, a mature adult? The Divine Psychologist
provided a way during the Incarnation Event. By forming a new mental layer in
His mind as God-Man in the physical world, He achieved a new creation in the
universe. He formed a new layer in the mental world of eternity that did not
exist until then. He divided layer 7 into an external (7e) and interior (7i)
portion. The external portion was already there and remained the same (layer
7e). Inside this external portion He formed a new interior portion called the
interior-natural mind (layer 7i).
We now have the new ability of being
conscious of the presence of the Divine Psychologist in our mind.
This new ability may be called the regeneration ability. Layer 7iC thinking
is a discrete degree higher than layer 7eC thinking. We may read the Swedenborg
Reports for instance, and understand it rationally by figuring out the literal
sense, which is written in natural-rational correspondences of Divine Speech.
This forms our layer 7eC with concepts and ideas from the Swedenborg Reports.
Your own study of theistic psychology concepts is also done at this
external-rational level of thinking about God and eternity (layer 7eC). This
knowledge prepares you for spiritual combat. Loves from hell and loves from
heaven now surround you, flood you with temptations. You consider picking up the
dangerous glass. The temptation begins.
You slow down your pace, you hesitate. You turn your head and look at the
glass again. Now the Grand Monster people are allowed by the Divine Psychologist
to come closer to your spiritual body. You become aware you are feeling
resentful, angry. This hellish love constructs a bunch of thoughts in your
cognitive organ, thoughts that support the love of resentment and anger against
people. Now the delegation of the Grand Human are allowed to come closer.
Suddenly you feel compassion for the beach runner who is going to get cut up by
the sharp glass. You can prevent that by being civilized and caring. You feel
the love of community and patriotism and thoughts are formed to support this
noble sentiment.
What happens next depends on what love you decide to hold on to – the love of
being compassionate and civilized vs. the love of resentment and anger. All
sorts of assisting loves may come into play here. More delegates from the
heavenly and hellish societies are summoned by the Divine Psychologist. In a few
seconds there may be dozens or hundreds of people involved on both sides of your
spiritual body. What a tremendous drama. Talk about entertainment fiction. This
is real, more involving than fiction. You swivel, turn around, and walk back.
You decide to pick up the glass.
But the hellish hoards who are summoned to your side, have not given up the
battle. Not by a long shot. They wiggle themselves into your love of performing
your workout routine in an effective manner. You’ve trained yourself not to slow
down in your fast pace. It’s the aerobic benefit you need. This love is an
intermediate love, neither clearly heavenly, nor clearly hellish. We have many
intermediate loves that serve as a transitional function. We love to exercise
our body for various sub-loves, some of which are not heavenly. For instance, it
flatters our vanity, and if relevant others don’t notice your healthy looks, you
feel disappointment, and lose some of the motivation for keeping your workout
up. The love of pushing yourself as far as possible in workout routines, leads
to many injuries for millions of people every year. I see people running on the
beach who have their knees bandaged. This can’t be good for them. I see
overweight people who run, and this can’t be good (one of them told me she keeps
injuring her knees because she is too heavy).
Before you reach the broken piece of glass in the packed sand, you swivel
again and start your fast pace away from the tempting object. “I’m not getting
involved. Let someone else pick it up. I’m keeping up my pace. That’s what I am
here for.” But now a delegation of the Grand Human draws nearer to your
spiritual body. They call out a love you have that is from their society, which
you have had for years. You did not know this, and they did not know this. But
now, as they are brought near you, that love of theirs is aroused in you again.
It is the love of feeling clean and wholesome when you do the right thing. The
thoughts tumble in your consciousness: “I can’t just leave it there and pretend
I didn’t see it. I’ll just do it quickly and it won’t affect my pace too much.”
You swivel once more, and this time you make to the glass, and pick it up,
hardly losing a beat, as you continue your fast walk.
You know feel the relief of victory in spiritual combat. The Grand Monster
delegation withdraws in fear and disgust. The Grand Human delegation now
surrounds your spiritual body on all sides. Wonderful warm heavenly sensations
surround you. You are basking in the glow of the aftermath of a spiritual
temptation in victory. The people nearby who watched you swivel twice, then pick
up something, have no idea of the momentous battle that just took place in four
seconds. The Divine Psychologist is especially near and watchful during all our
temptations. It is our lifeline to eternal happiness or unhappiness. Much is at
stake.
Now reread this entire Section, and prepare yourself for your next combat!
See how many loves you can add to the list where it says "etc."
Observe what happens when you talk to your friends about theistic psychology.
You are presenting concepts from layer 7C. Quite probably, your friends will be
in layer 8C or 9C as they listen to you. If in layer 9C, they might be annoyed,
and might start ridiculing what you say or making fun with it, possibly tease
you about it. If they are in layer 8C, they will ask you questions. They will
try to prove how silly the ideas are. But if they are in layer 7C, you will
experience a conversation about it in layer 7, which could be a surprising and
pleasing exchange.
Now ask yourself why 7C thinking arouses the ire and ridicule of 8C and 9C
thinking. The answer is that the loves of the rational mind (7A) that produce
the ideas of the rational mind (7C) are opposed to the loves of the
materialistic mind (9A, 8A) that produce the materialistic ideas (9C, 8C) that
ridicule rational ideas (7C). Loves across the mental layers are discretely
different and cannot be reconciled to each other (until regeneration takes
place).
So there is a built in opposition to consciousness-raising in the natural
mind. The Swedenborg Reports state that when a lower layer “looks up” to see
what there is at a higher layer from itself, it sees “nothing but darkness.”
Consider your own initial reactions to reading theistic psychology concepts and
principles such as “mental world of eternity,” or “anatomical layer 8C,” or
“extracting the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture,” or “the Grand Human
and the Grand Monster,” or “the Divine Psychologist,” etc., you were reading and
considering the meanings of these new concepts, with your usual layer 8C
thinking that you use in getting through other “technical” books or courses. You
were trying to make sense of a statement like, “Love is spiritual heat
substance, and truth is spiritual light substance, both streaming from the
Spiritual Sun into the mental world of eternity and immersing our mind in it.”
What meaning did such a statement have when you first heard it and tried to
make sense of it?
When we are thinking with layer 8C meanings we are immersed in materialistic
ideas originating and rooted in sensory input from the physical body and the
natural world of time-space. So when you are constructing some meaning to
“truth” as being “spiritual light substance” you are thinking of “spiritual
substance” like you are thinking of “physical matter.” And you confirm this
notion in your mind by considering that our eyes can see when they are immersed
in physical light from the natural sun, or else, some artificial light like
electricity, which is also physical light from the sun.
This 8C thinking equates the meaning of the expression (a) “physical light as
being physical matter or energy from the natural sun,” with the meaning of the
expression (b) “spiritual light as being spiritual substance from the Spiritual
Sun.” To equate the meaning of (a) with the meaning of (b) is 8C level thinking.
This equalizing of the two meanings form different discrete levels, is called
“reductionism in science.” All 7C concepts from the rational mind will be
reduced to 8C concepts form the materialistic mind. The result is that layer 7C
is totally dark or non-existent to layer 8C. Nothing form our rational mind
(layer 7) can exist in our materialistic mental layers (8 and 9).
The only solution to this situation is to accept the new idea that we can
think at different layers of the mind.
These different layers are actually “discrete degrees” which means that no
matter how high you get in your 8C thinking, you can never attain the lowest
level of 7C thinking. You can confirm this principle in yourself when you
monitor and analyze your thinking in layer 9C (concrete corporeal mind) vs. your
thinking in layer 8C (abstract materialistic mind). This you can do because you
alternate between these discrete ways of thinking in the course of your daily
activities and situations. For instance, when you have the impulse and love to
tell somebody off, you are engaged in venting your anger in your mind, thinking
in layer 9C (e.g., “I wish I could make them suffer like I am now. I should burn
this place down to show them, etc.”). But instead of proceeding with the awful
action (9S), your consciousness jumps to layer 8C due to a bunch of 8A loves
that motivate you to exercise self-preservation by looking to the consequences
of your actions.
This 8A love of self-preservation and self-protection constructs new
thoughts, new meanings in your consciousness regarding the situation and what’s
going on: “No, I can’t do that. Don’t want to go to jail. I’ll find another way
to get even. This place sucks!” etc. You can see that two discrete sets of
different loves and thoughts are involved as your consciousness of the meaning
of the situation flip flops between layers 9 and 8. The concrete materialism of
the corporeal mind (layer 9) is based on the direct sensory input of the
physical body and situation. We rely on the abstract power of layer 8C thinking
to get us out of mere physical appearances. We can’t just act on what it looks
like. We must figure out what’s actually going on. We are more intelligent in
abstract thinking about appearances (layer 8C) than in thinking that is based
directly on the senses (layer 9C).
So now with theistic psychology concepts, you are trying to understand them
by constructing new types of meanings that are based in a rational universe, not
physical universe. To raise our thinking level from the materialistic (8C) to
the rational (layer 7C) we have to create a new world in our idea of the
universe. We have to accept the positive bias in science and think: “It is
possible that there are two worlds, one physical in time, the other mental in
eternity.” The positive bias in science says: “This is a possibility” while the
negative bias in science says “This is not a possibility.” If you adopt the
negative bias in science you are keeping your thinking in layer 8C and 9C. If
you adopt the positive bias in science you are changing your thinking level to
7C. One thinking level is appropriate for the physical world, and the other is
appropriate for the rational world.
Now if you can extirpate yourself from the negative bias in science, during
the time that you are studying theistic psychology concepts, then it is possible
for you to attach meanings to rational ideas that are based in the mental world
of eternity. You will be able to avoid reductionism, which takes away your
ability to understand the reality of the mental world in eternity.
If you allow the possibility of two worlds, you empower yourself with the
ability to understand theistic psychology and how it is a knowledge that you can
apply in critical areas of your daily life that need greater effectiveness and
control. Knowledge provides power to adapt, control, and modify. Assuming that
our mind is real, and exists in its own real world, what are the consequences to
me and my future? This is the beginning of level 7C thinking.
DP 279. III. SO FAR AS EVILS ARE REMOVED THEY ARE
REMITTED. It is an error of the present age to believe
1. That evils are separated from man and indeed cast out when they
are remitted; and
2. That the state of man's life can be changed in a moment, even to
its opposite, so that from being wicked he can become good, and consequently
can be brought out of hell and straightway transferred to heaven, and this
by the immediate mercy of the Lord.
3. Those, however, who entertain this belief and opinion do not in
the least know what evil is and what good is; and they know nothing whatever
of the state of man's life.
4. Moreover, they are totally unaware that affections, which belong
to the will, are nothing but changes and variations in state of the purely
organic substances of the mind; and that thoughts, which belong to the
understanding, are nothing but changes and variations in the form of these
substances; and that memory is a permanent state of these changes.
From a knowledge of these things it may be clearly seen
that no evil can be removed except by successive stages, and that the
remission of evil is not its removal. These things are stated here in a
summarised form; and unless they are demonstrated they may indeed by
recognised but they cannot be comprehended; and what is not comprehended is
vaguely defined like a wheel which is kept spinning round by the hand.
Therefore, the propositions just stated must now be demonstrated one by one
in the order in which they are set forth.
[2] First: It is an error of the present age to believe that evils
are separated and indeed cast out when they are remitted. It has been
granted me to know from heaven that no evil into which man is born and to
which he has actually habituated himself is separated from him, but is only
so far removed that it does not appear. Before that, I held the belief
entertained by most people in the world, that when evils are remitted they
are cast out, and are washed and wiped away as dirt from the face by water.
This, however, is not the case with evils or sins. They all remain, and when
after repentance they are remitted, they are moved from the centre to the
outskirts; and then what is in the centre, because it is directly under
view, appears as in the light of day, and what is at the outskirts is in the
shade, and sometimes as it were in the darkness of night. As evils are not
separated but only removed, that is, relegated to the outskirts, and as a
man may pass from the centre to the parts round about, it may also happen
that he can return to his evils which he supposed had been cast out. For man
is of such a nature that he can pass from one affection into another, and
sometimes into an opposite one, and thus from one centre to another, that
affection in which he is for the time being constituting the centre, for he
is then in its joy and in its light.
[3] There are some who after death are raised up by the Lord into
heaven because they have lived well, but who yet have carried with them the
belief that they are clean and pure from sins and therefore are not in a
state of guilt. These are at first clothed in white garments in accordance
with their belief; for white garments signify a state purified from evils.
Later, however, they begin to think as they did in the world that they are
as it were washed from all evil, and so to boast that they are no longer
sinners like other men. Now this can hardly be separated from a certain
elation of mind (animus) and a measure of contempt for others compared with
themselves. Therefore, in order that they may be removed from their
ill-founded belief they are sent down from heaven and permitted to enter
upon the evils which they practised in the world; and at the same time they
are shown that they are in hereditary evils, of which they were ignorant
before. When they have thus been induced to recognise that their evils have
not been separated from them but only removed, and consequently that of
themselves they are impure, and indeed that they are nothing but evil, and
that they are withheld from evil and kept in good by the Lord, and that this
only appears to them as of themselves, they are again raised up by the Lord
into heaven.
[4] Second: It is an error of the present age to believe that the
state of man's life can be changed in a moment, so that from being wicked he
can become good, and consequently can be brought out of hell and straightway
transferred to heaven, and this by the immediate mercy of the Lord. Those
are in this error who separate charity and faith, and place salvation in
faith alone; for they suppose that merely thinking and uttering the words
which state their faith, if it is done with assurance and confidence, is
what justifies and saves. Moreover, many suppose that this is effected
instantaneously, and, if not before, about the last hour of a man's life.
These cannot but believe that the state of a man's life can be changed in a
moment, and that he can be saved by the exercise of immediate or direct
mercy. That the mercy of the Lord, however, is not immediate, and that a man
cannot from being wicked become good in a moment, and can only be brought
out of hell and transferred to heaven by the continual operation of the
Divine Providence from infancy right on to the end of his life, will be seen
in the last chapter of this treatise. At this point this only need be
observed, that all the laws of the Divine Providence have for their end the
reformation and thus the salvation of man; and consequently the reversal of
his state, which by birth is infernal, to the opposite state, which is
heavenly. This can only be effected step by step as man, withdrawing from
evil and its delight, enters into good and its delight.
[5] Third: Those who entertain this belief do not in the least know
what evil is and what good is. They do not know that evil is the delight of
the lust of acting and thinking contrary to Divine order, while good is the
delight of the affection of acting and thinking according to Divine order;
nor do they know that there are myriads of lusts entering into and composing
every individual evil, and myriads of affections entering into and composing
every individual good, and that these myriads are in such connected order in
man's interiors that it is not possible to change one without at the same
time changing all. Those who do not know this may believe or suppose that
evil, which to them appears to be one single entity, can easily be removed;
and that good, which also appears to be one single entity, can be introduced
into its place. As these do not know what evil is and what good is they
cannot but suppose that there is such a thing as instantaneous salvation and
also immediate mercy; but it will be seen in the last chapter of this
treatise that these are not possible.
[6] Fourth: Those who believe in instantaneous salvation and
immediate mercy do not know that affections, which belong to the will, are
nothing but changes of state of the purely organic substances of the mind,
and that thoughts, which belong to the understanding, are nothing but
changes and variations in the form of these substances, and that memory is a
permanent state of these changes and variations. Everyone acknowledges, when
it is stated, that affections and thoughts exist only in substances and
their forms, which are subjects; and as these exist in the brain,* which is
full of substances and forms, they are said to be purely organic forms. No
one who thinks rationally can help laughing at the fanciful notions of some
that affections and thoughts do not exist in forms that are substantiated,
but that they are exhalations formed into shapes by heat and light like
images appearing in the atmosphere. For thought can no more exist apart from
a substantial form than sight apart from its form which is the eye, hearing
apart from its form which is the ear, and taste apart from its form which is
the tongue. If you examine the brain you will see innumerable substances,
and likewise fibres; you will also see that everything in it is organised.
What need is there of any other than this ocular proof?
[7] The question arises, What is affection and what is thought in the
mind? This may be inferred from all the things in general and in particular
in the body where there are many viscera, each fixed in its own place and
all performing their own functions by changes and variations of state and
form. It is well known that they are engaged in their own operations - the
stomach, the intestines, the kidneys, the liver, the pancreas, and the
spleen, the heart and the lungs, each organ in its respective operation. All
these operations are kept in motion from within, and to be moved from within
is to be moved by means of changes and variations of state and form. Hence
it may be evident that the operations of the purely organic substances of
the mind are of a similar nature, with this difference, that the operations
of the organic substances of the body are natural, while those of the mind
are spiritual, and that both act together as one by correspondences.
[8] The nature of the changes and variations of state and form in the
organic substances of the mind, which are affections and thoughts, cannot be
shown to the eye; but still they may be seen as in a mirror from the changes
and variations in the state of the lungs in speaking and in singing. There
is, moreover, a correspondence; for the sound of the voice in speaking and
singing, and also the articulations of sound, which are the words of speech,
and the modulations of singing, are caused by means of the lungs, and sound
corresponds to affection and speech to thought. Further, sound and speech
are produced by affection and thought; and this is effected by changes and
variations in the state and form of the organic substances in the lungs, and
from the lungs through the trachea or windpipe, in the larynx and glottis,
then in the tongue and finally in the lips. The first changes and variations
of the state and form of sound take place in the lungs, the second in the
trachea and larynx, the third in the glottis by the various openings of its
orifice, the fourth in the tongue by its various adaptations to the palate
and teeth, and the fifth in the lips by their various modifications of form.
Hence it may be evident that the mere changes and variations, successively
continued, in the state of organic forms produce sounds and their
articulations, which are speech and singing. Now, since sound and speech are
produced from no other source than the affections and thoughts of the mind,
for they exist from these and are never apart from them, it is clear that
the affections of the will are changes and variations in the state of the
purely organic substances of the mind, and that the thoughts of the
understanding are changes and variations in the form of those substances, as
is the case in the pulmonary substances.
[9]
As affections and thoughts are simply changes in the state of the forms of
the mind, it follows that memory is nothing else than a permanent state of
these changes. For all changes and variations of state in organic substances
are such that once they have become habitual they are permanent. Thus the
lungs are habituated to produce various sounds in the trachea, to vary them
in the glottis, to articulate them in the tongue, and to modify them in the
mouth; and when once these organic activities have become habitual such
sounds are in the organs and can be reproduced. That these changes and
variations are infinitely more perfect in the organs of the mind than in
those of the body is evident from what has been said in the treatise THE
DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM (n. 199-204),** where it is shown that all
perfections increase and ascend with degrees and according to them. On this
subject more may be seen below (n. 319).
(DP 279)
AC 10367. And on the seventh day is the Sabbath of the
Sabbath. That this signifies the state of good which is the end regarded,
thus when man becomes the church and enters heaven, is evident from the
signification of "the seventh day," as being a state of good, which is the
end regarded. For when the six days which precede signify the state of man
which precedes and prepares for the heavenly marriage, then the seventh day
is when the man is in this marriage. This marriage is the conjunction of
truth and good with man, thus when man becomes the church and enters heaven.
That man enters heaven and becomes the church when he is in good, is because
the Lord flows into the good with man, and through good into his truth. The
influx betakes itself to the internal man where his heaven is, and through
the internal into the external where is his world; and therefore unless the
man is in good, his internal man is not opened, but remains shut, however
much he may be in truths as to doctrine. And as heaven is in the internal
man, it follows that when this is opened the man is in heaven, for heaven is
not in a place, but in man's interiors. That man has been created according
to the image both of heaven and of the world; his internal man according to
the image of heaven, and his external according to the image of the world;
may be seen in the places cited in n. 9279, 9706.
AC 10367. And on the seventh day is the Sabbath of the
Sabbath. That this signifies the state of good which is the end regarded,
thus when man becomes the church and enters heaven, is evident from the
signification of "the seventh day," as being a state of good, which is the
end regarded. For when the six days which precede signify the state of man
which precedes and prepares for the heavenly marriage, then the seventh day
is when the man is in this marriage. This marriage is the conjunction of
truth and good with man, thus when man becomes the church and enters heaven.
That man enters heaven and becomes the church when he is in good, is because
the Lord flows into the good with man, and through good into his truth. The
influx betakes itself to the internal man where his heaven is, and through
the internal into the external where is his world; and therefore unless the
man is in good, his internal man is not opened, but remains shut, however
much he may be in truths as to doctrine. And as heaven is in the internal
man, it follows that when this is opened the man is in heaven, for heaven is
not in a place, but in man's interiors. That man has been created according
to the image both of heaven and of the world; his internal man according to
the image of heaven, and his external according to the image of the world;
may be seen in the places cited in n. 9279, 9706.
[2] That the whole man is such as he is as to good, and
not as to truth without good, everyone who reflects is able to know; for by
means of and according to this he deals with others, feels with them,
conjoins himself with them, and suffers himself to be led by them; but not
by means of his truth, unless this is in accord with his good. By "good" is
meant his delight, his pleasure, or his love; for all things that belong to
these are to the man goods, and insofar as he is left to himself, so as to
think from himself, he regards as truths those things which favor these
goods. From this it can be seen that a man is conjoined with the Lord by
means of good, and never by means of truth without good.
[3] Conjunction with the Lord by means of good has indeed been already
frequently treated of in speaking of the regeneration of man, but as the man
of the church at this day studies much the truths which are of faith, and
but little the good which is of love, and for this reason is in ignorance
about good, something further may here be said about the conjunction of good
and truth which is called the heavenly marriage. Man is born into evils of
every kind, and consequently into falsities of every kind, thus of himself
he is condemned to hell. In order therefore that he may be rescued from
hell, he must needs be born again of the Lord. This being born again is what
is called regeneration. In order therefore that he may be born again, he
must first learn truths, and if he is of the church he must learn them from
the Word, or from doctrine derived from the Word. The Word and doctrine from
the Word teach what is true and good, and truth and good teach what is false
and evil. Unless man knows these, he cannot possibly be regenerated, for he
remains in his evils and their falsities, calling the former goods, and the
latter truths.
[4] For this reason the knowledges of truth and good must precede, and must
enlighten the man's understanding. For the understanding was given to man in
order that it may be enlightened by means of the knowledges of good and
truth, to the end that these may be received by his will, and may become
good; for truths become good when the man wills them, and from willing them
does them. From this it can be seen in what manner good is formed with man,
and that unless man is in good, he is not born anew, or regenerated. When
therefore a man is in good as to the will, he is then in the truths of this
good as to the understanding. For the understanding with man actually acts
as a one with his will, because that which a man wills, he thinks when he is
left to himself. This then is what is called the conjunction of truth and
good, or the heavenly marriage. Whether you say to will what is good, or to
love what is good, it is the same; for what a man loves he wills. And
whether you say to understand the truth which is of good, or to believe it,
it is also the same. From this it follows that with the regenerate man love
and faith act as a one. This conjunction, or this marriage, is what is
called the church, and heaven, and also the Lord's kingdom; nay, in the
supreme sense, the Lord with man.
[5] But those who love their evils (which they either have received
hereditarily, and from infancy have confirmed with themselves, or else have
of themselves added, and have become imbued with anew) are indeed able to
apprehend and in some measure understand truths from the Word, or from
doctrine derived from the Word, but still they cannot be regenerated. For
every man is kept by the Lord in this state in respect to the understanding,
to the intent that he may be regenerated; but when he loves his evils, then
the understanding of his internal man is not imbued with these truths, but
only that of his external man, which understanding is mere memory-knowledge.
Such men do not know what good is, nor do they care to know; but only what
truth is. It is for this reason that they make the church and heaven to
consist in truths which are said to be of faith, and not in goods which are
of life. They also explain the Word in various ways in favor of their
principle. From this it is that in the case of such, who are not at the same
time in truths as to life, there is no conjunction of truth and good; thus
neither are there the church and heaven. Moreover, in the other life the
truths which they have called truths of faith are separated from them, for
the evil of the will casts them out; and in their place succeed falsities
that are in agreement with the evils in which they are.
[6] From all this it can now be seen what is the conjunction of good and
truth which is signified by "the Sabbath." This conjunction is called "the
Sabbath" from "rest," because "Sabbath" means rest. For when a man is in the
first state, that is, when he is being led to good by means of truths, he is
then in combats against the evils and falsities which are with him; for by
means of combats, which are temptations, evils and their falsities are
shaken off and separated; and yet there is no rest from them until good and
truth have been conjoined. Then man has rest, and the Lord has rest, because
the man no longer fights against evils and falsities; but the Lord in the
man.
[7] That in the supreme sense "the Sabbath" signifies the Lord's Divine
Human, is because when the Lord was in the world He fought from His Human
against all the hells and subdued them, and at the same time reduced the
heavens into order, and after this labor united His Human to the Divine, and
made this also Divine good; consequently He then had rest, for the hells
open not against the Divine. From this then it is that by "the Sabbath" in
the supreme sense is meant the Lord's Divine Human.
[8] But with regard to these subjects see what has been already shown; as
that when the Lord was in the world, He first made His Human Divine truth,
to the end that He might be able to fight with the hells and subjugate them;
and that He afterward glorified His Human and made it the Divine good of the
Divine love (see the places cited in n. 9199, 9315; and n. 9715, 9809): That
when the Lord was in the world He underwent the most grievous temptations
(see the places cited in n. 9528): That consequently He has Divine power to
save man, by removing from him the hells, and thus regenerating him (n.
10019, 10152): Concerning the twofold state of the man who is being
regenerated by the Lord, see the places cited in n. 9274: That man does not
come into heaven until there has been effected with him the conjunction of
truth and good (n. 8516, 8539, 8722, 8772, 9139, 9832): And that the
regeneration of man is an image of the glorification of the Lord (n. 3138,
3212, 3296, 3490, 4402, 5688).
(AC 10367)
Chakras
See these YouTube videos:
Chakras (etherguide)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-frC2RLF0Ns&feature=related
Reiki Healing and Chakras
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5E666G1uI6U
Human Body Energy Centers
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DMxKffswZ1Q&feature=related
Yoga
Yoga and Correspondences
http://web.archive.org/web/20161031210444/http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/yoga.htm
Human Body
Register then explore the 3D human body application
http://www.visiblebody.com/Tour_Demos
Animation Video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bv3gRdPMGZw
This is the end of Part I
Theistic Psychology Series and Other Online Books by Leon James
The Organic Mind:
Discovering the Mental World of Eternity (2008) ||
The Spiritual Function of
Neologisms (2008) ||
Lecture Notes on Mental
Anatomy (3 volumes) (2007) ||
Principles of Theistic
Psychology (18 volumes) (2004) ||
A Man of the Field: Forming the New Church Mind (3
volumes) (2002) ||
The Unity Model of
Marriage (2001-2007) ||
Moses, Paul, and
Swedenborg (1999) || Swedenborg
Encyclopedia of Theistic Psychology (1996) ||
De Hemelsche Leer
Commentary (1996) ||
The Doctrine of the Wife (1985)
||
See also:
Scientific Neologisms Coined by Leon James in
Psychology For the Period 1958-2008 ||
Collection of Driving
Psychology Articles (2000) ||
Road Rage and Aggressive Driving (2000)
||
Songs About Driving
Cars on Roads and Highways Spiritually Understood (2007)
Directory of Full Text
Articles and Books Online (1960-2008) ||
Leon James Home
This electronic book published in 2008 may be copied for personal and
educational use. Commercial republishing or redistributing is prohibited without
written permission. Dr. Leon James
leon@hawaii.edu
|
