Scientific discovery of Spiritual Laws given in Rational Scientific Revelations

9.0  Geography of the Spiritual World = Anatomy of the Mind

Theistic psychology is based on substantive dualism (see Section xx). It involves a distinction we must make about matter and substance. Substance from the Spiritual Sun acts, while matter from the physical sun reacts. Another way of thinking about this is that the phenomena in the spiritual world (which are made of substance) is the cause of the phenomena in the physical world (which are made of matter). Hence spiritual or mental substance acts upon natural or physical matter, and never the other way round. Matter is the effect, while spirit is the cause. What happens in the physical body is the consequence of what happens in the mental world -- our feelings, thoughts, and sensations. This is the perspective of substantive dualism (see Section xx).

All causes originate and exist in the spiritual world, and these control or cause all corresponding phenomena in the physical world. For example, if we observe the various instinctual physical behaviors of animals, our mind can formulate an idea about the spiritual causes of each behavior. The Writings reveal thousands of such correspondences, so that by studying them, we can begin to recognize them in our mind and in our regeneration process.

A consistent theme in the Writings is the idea that the spiritual world and the mind overlap. In other words the mind is the spirit and the spirit lives in the spiritual world. The spiritual world of our mind is not existent in place and time, like the physical world where our body is. This is the answer to the mind-body conundrum that has puzzled every generation of psychologists and philosophers since Aristotle. The puzzle is solved when we know that we are dual citizens (see Section xx). Our body is born and exists in the physical world while our mind is born and exists in the spiritual world. The two are connected by built in correspondences from creation. These laws of correspondences were known to the ancients, and those among them who were expert at knowing them, were called "wise"--thus like a doctor in Philosophy in our days ( the "Ph.D. Degree").

To say that the mind overlaps with the spiritual world, is more than to say that our mind lives in the spiritual world.

"Overlap means that when the spiritual world is described, the mind is also described. This reality is the basis for "spiritual geography." For example, in Swedenborg's numerous travels "in the spirit," he visited different societies of spirits. To be "in the spirit" means that Swedenborg was conscious of what his spiritual mind was experiencing,

When we are resuscitated in the world of spirits, a few hours after death, we are called "spirits." Swedenborg watched thousands of people "pass on" and being awakened as spirits (see Section xx). The "spirit" is nothing else than the mind, which was connected to the physical body. Much has been written in the literature about the mind over thousands of years. To my knowledge no one has ever known that the mind has a shape. People think of the mind as shapeless. Materialistic science and education have people believe that the mind is in the brain and from the brain. Have you ever thought about the shape of your mind?

What did Swedenborg see when he saw thousands of spirits awakening in the world of spirits? The shape he saw them in is the shape of the human mind. And what did he see?

He saw people just the way they appear on earth. They wore clothes, they walked, they shook hands and embraced, they ate, danced, slept, engaged in sex activity, gathered in groups, lived in cities, were involved in occupations. How is all this possible in the world of spirits where there is no space, time, or matter?

You can understand this rationally if you think about your familiarity with dreams. Imagine for a moment that you are in your dream and are having dinner with your family in a restaurant on top of a mountain. Now imagine that you are actually in your dream, being the you that you are dreaming about. From your perspective inside the dream, what is happening around you is reality. You can actually hear the waiter asking for the order, taste the food, talk to your kids at the table, and see the mountain top view outside the window. Now the question: What is the food made of that you are tasting?

And in general, what is the dream made of, that is, the objects in the dream? Where is the space coming from as you walk around or look at the scenery? We can ask the same questions about something you are day dreaming about, or imagining, or expecting. The answer is that your mind gives you the ability to create objects, space, and characters, whenever you want to and have a desire to do so. The spiritual world is no different in this respect. Swedenborg got used to this in the course of his years of experiencing in the world of spirits. It is so normal that it slips into the background of one's life as a spirit. Whatever spirits see around them are nothing but natural correspondences for their spiritual thoughts and feelings. For instance, spirits awaken from their resuscitation process and walk away. What is in their mind? They want to see people. Suddenly they find themselves in the midst of people. Now they want to eat. Suddenly they find themselves in a restaurant ordering food. Everything around them is instantly created by the thoughts and feelings of those who are co-present. Jointly they are mentally projecting into their external mind what they feel in the internal mind.

The external mind of the spirit is used to sensory input into the body, as on earth. Therefore that is what the spirit is experiencing -- a spirit body that feels solid and is able to experience sensation far more exquisitely and intensely than the physical body on earth. This is something Swedenborg was able to discover when he compared his sensations in the natural and spiritual mind. IN the natural mind he received sensory input form the physical body. In his spiritual mind he received sensory input from the spirit body. The latter was pure and open ended, while the former was mixed with physical matter, which absorbs and deadens sensations. More details on this topic can be found in Section xx.

All this makes rational sense when you remember that the spiritual world = the mental world (see Section xx). Our mind is born and lives forever in the spiritual world, that is, the mental world. There is only one mental world, and it is called the spiritual world of the afterlife and eternity. Eternity is in a mental world, not physical. At first this sounds strange because we have been educated in materialistic concepts which are time-bound, space-bound, and matter-bound. From this physicalistic perspective, what we call mental and rational appear as less solid, less real than matter itself. So when we hear that there is a spiritual world, that it is our mental, world, and that it is our immortality -- we are not very enthusiastic about the idea. Why not?

Because to live forever in a mental world is to be nothing but a dream, something unreal -- so one imagines from a materialistic perspective. Most people get the idea from their religion that eternity or immortality is to be lived in the physical world, when the world is recreated. But this is not rational. All things created or recreated on this earth, or any other earth, must be temporal, not eternal. The only eternal that exists is the eternal in our mind. As people progress in their thinking from materialistic ideas to dualist ideas, they begin to understand that since eternity is perfect, and since it is in the mental world, then what is mental must be far more real and solid than what is physical, impure, temporary.

This spiritual or mental body is the mind in its own human shape.

In its mental body the mind is immortal and indestructible because it is made of spiritual substances, unlike the physical body which is made of temporary matter.

In fact, the physical body has its shape by being an image of the mind in a solid and crude form. While the physical body deteriorates with time and gets old, the mind does not because it is perfect and immortal. The natural mind appears to lose abilities as the person gets old, but this is only a reflection of its close ties to the physical body. The spiritual mind does not have any ties to the physical world and it doesn't get old but stays forever young. When spirits first awaken after resuscitation, the mind-body they project outwardly in correspondence appears similar to the body they had on earth. People who knew each other on earth can in fact recognize each other in the world of spirits. But a little while later, when we reach the process of the second death (see Section xx), people then seem to themselves to arrive at their final dwelling place in eternity -- either in the heaven of their mind, or in the hells of their mind. Those who dwell in the heavens project a young appearance of themselves, such as they had at late adolescence, but more perfect and without flaws. But those who enter their hells, project a dreadful and deformed image of themselves, which progressively worsens as their feelings get more outrageous and thoughts become more insane.

The physical body has its human shape from the mind, which is in the human shape itself. When liberated form the ties to the physical body, the mind for the first time appears in its own perfect human shape -- lacking nothing in terms of external limbs and internal organs, all made of immortal spiritual substances from the Spiritual Sun (see Section xx). The mind has the human shape because it is an image of the Divine Human Mind which has always been in the Human shape, from eternity to eternity and without beginning. This is why it is that whatever the Divine Human created has this human shape in some respects. The human mind is most like the Human mind of God and in the human shape with all its limbs and internal organs. Everything whatsoever that is part of our mind and shape, is modeled after the Divine Human.

In fact, the mind has several discrete layers, and each layer is in the full human shape. Our third heaven is in the human shape, and so is our second heaven, and our first heaven. The entire universe is in the human shape. The infinite Divine Love and Divine Truth in the Divine Human, also have the human shape. When you consider plants, their human shape is more abstractly represented, as from the fact that they have an external bark which corresponds to our skin and bones; and from the fact that they have an inner portion where the sap is contained, which corresponds to our mental organs where our thought and feelings are located. And so on. Even rocks and atoms represent the human shape in terms of their parts and functions.

Since God has the Human shape from eternity, with all its parts and functions, He incarnated into a human fetus and child as Himself in His own form  (see Section xx).

Similarly, the lowest of the spiritual inhabitants were so vastly superior to the highest of the inhabitants in the interior-natural heaven (first), that the inhabitants of the natural heaven cannot comprehend a single idea of the inhabitants of the spiritual heaven (second). Such is the amazing difference in our life at different levels of consciousness. We are not fully human until we reach the celestial-rational consciousness. Spiritual geography is the method of drawing maps of the mind for the purpose of understanding and cooperating with our regeneration. Regeneration is the process by which our consciousness is opened to higher degrees while we are in the physical body. After we leave the physical body we can no longer be transferred to a higher degree than what our mind (or spirit) has been prepared for. This is why it is so crucial that we comprehend the process of how regeneration takes place, so that we may cooperate. This cooperation is the reciprocal conjunction with God, which is what gives us eternal life in our heavens.

9.0.1.3  Enneadic Gene Structures

When I first started reading the Writings in 1981, I was well prepared intellectually, having been a trained scientist since I had earned my Ph.D. in psychology in 1962 (see Section xx). Swedenborg's writing style delighted me profoundly. My approach was simple but very powerful: Never proceed to the next sentence before I clearly understand the current sentence. What amazed me is that this approach was fully workable and practical. I indeed was able to proceed from sentence to sentence with the feeling of rational clarity. Never before had I had this experience of full rational clarity, page after page, chapter after chapter, and volume after volume. It was a new giant intellectual edifice that was being built up in my mind. Other authors I read before did not have the full scope, the empirical knowledge, the rational integrity that I now was receiving from the Writings of Swedenborg.

The topics I was reading about revolved around one main theme: the anatomy and functioning of the mind, which was described as a spiritual organ. There were two methodologies presented and carried out simultaneously. The first was direct observational reports made by Swedenborg of the spiritual world. The second was the systematic extraction from the Old and New Testaments, of scientific knowledge about mental anatomy and spiritual development.

Swedenborg presents no tables, charts, maps, or matrices, though he provides excellent indices and often provides by way of summary, a sequenced list of the logical arguments addressed on a particular issue. To help me keep track of the running argument, I started making lists of my own that were keyed to psychology concepts I was used to. Here is one example which I included in an article published in New Philosophy, a General Church theistic science publication. The article is available at: newphilosophyonline.org/journal/article.php?page=1027&issue=104b

It was clear to me that what I was reading in the Writings of Swedenborg constitutes a scientific revolution in my field of psychology.

I noticed two recurrent methodological frames in all 30 volumes of the Writings. The first meta-frame was the vertical arrangement of discrete degrees in the spiritual world, namely, natural (heaven), spiritual (heaven), and celestial (heaven). The second meta-frame was the horizontal arrangement of discrete degrees in the organic mind, named "the will," "the understanding," and "the sensory." I then made this amazing discovery. By placing the vertical and horizontal arrangement together in dynamic interaction, one obtains a 3X3 matrix of nine intersecting cells, which may be called the ennead chart, reproduced below. What was amazing was this: the ennead chart turns out to be an actual map of the successive phases of spiritual development that is described throughout Arcana Coelestia. I was able to mark off the zones in the margins of each volume of Arcana Coelestia, as I was reading through it -- A1, C2, S3, A2, etc -- see below.

I was able to plot the precise movement of mental states that the Divine Child went through during the Incarnation Event (see Section xx). This is the mental path that was forged by Him, not only in His mind, but in the mind of every human being. The ennead map was the pathway of regeneration that every individual had to go through.

The ennead matrix is not flat, as it appears on the page or screen. It is constructed out of two trigrammatic slices, one vertical and one horizontal. Each slice consists of the three discrete degrees, one within the other, as shown in the graphic concepts above. When you look at the ennead matrix, what is higher is contained in what is lower. For instance, the natural degree contains the spiritual degree which contains the celestial degree. This is the universal law that successive degrees of development are present in simultaneous order (see Section xx).  Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AC 1955

in the internal sense that which is within or above is expressed in the sense of the letter by "after," when that which is within or above appears in that which is without or below.

It helps to visualize this relationship by drawing a diagram:

Quoting from the Writings:

DLW 205  IN SUCCESSIVE ORDER THE FIRST DEGREE MAKES THE HIGHEST, AND THE THIRD THE LOWEST; BUT IN SIMULTANEOUS ORDER THE FIRST DEGREE MAKES THE INMOST, AND THE THIRD THE OUTERMOST

There is successive order and simultaneous order. The successive order of these degrees is from highest to lowest, or from top to bottom. The angelic heavens are in this order. There the third heaven is the highest, the second is the middle, and the first is the lowest. Such is their relative situation. In like successive order are the states of love and wisdom with the angels there, also states of heat and light and of the spiritual atmospheres. In like order are all the perfections of forms and forces there. When degrees of height, that is, discrete degrees, are in successive order, then they may be compared to a column divided into three stages through which ascent and descent are made. In its upper storey are things most perfect and most beautiful; in the middle one, things less perfect and beautiful; in the lowest, things still less perfect and beautiful. Simultaneous order, however, which consists of like degrees has another appearance. In it the highest things of successive order which are, as was said above, the most perfect and the most beautiful are in the inmost, the lower things in the middle, and the lowest on the circumference. They are as if in a solid composed of these three degrees, in the middle or centre of which are the finest parts, round about this are parts less fine, and in the extremes which constitute the circumference are the parts composed of these and which are therefore grosser. It is like the column mentioned just above subsiding into a plane, the highest part of which forms the inmost, the middle forms the middle and the lowest the outermost.

You no doubt recognize the diagram as a graphic concept discussed in the previous Section above in relation to trigrammatic sets of concepts. Applying this principle to the ennead chart we are discussing, the vertical and horizontal slices appear as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

SPIRITUAL GEOGRAPHY	MENTAL ANATOMY
	SENSORIMOTOR ORGAN ("the sensory")	COGNITIVE ORGAN ("understanding")	AFFECTIVE ORGAN ("the will")
CELESTIAL DEGREE ("third heaven")	S3	C3	A3
SPIRITUAL DEGREE ("second heaven")	S2	C2	A2
NATURAL DEGREE ("first heaven)	S1	C1	A1

 

9.0.1.4.1  Mapping the Divine Child's Mental States

The ennead matrix can be helpful in following the details of the rational argument presented in a passage of the Writings Sacred Scripture. It is a formal framework that helps to unify the underlying topical fabric of the Writings. First, read the following passage and see if you can follow the argument. After this, I will refer to the ennead chart, charting each concept in the passage that refers to a mental state. The passage presents an analysis of a verse in the Old Testament.

AC 3030.

"Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land." [Genesis 24:5]

That this signifies a doubt of the natural man concerning that affection, as to whether it was separable, is evident from the signification of "woman," as being truth, here from the natural, which was to be conjoined with the Divine good of the rational. And as all conjunction is effected by means of affection (as was said above, n. 3024), so by "woman" is signified the affection of that truth: and also from the signification of "going after" or "following me unto this land," as being to be separated from the natural and conjoined with the rational; for "land" here as above (n. 3026) is the good of love that is of the rational. That there is doubt is seen from its being said, "Peradventure she be not willing."

[2] From what has been said above, it is evident what is involved in these words, and in what follows to verse 8, and further; and in order that these things may be better understood, we may say a few words more. The genuine rational is from good, but comes forth [existit] from truth. Good flows in by an internal way; but truth by an external way. Good thus conjoins itself with truth in the rational, and they cause the rational to be. Unless the good therein is conjoined with truth, there is no rational; although there appears to be, because the man can reason (n. 1944). This is the common way in which the rational is formed with man.

[3] As the Lord was born like another man, and as it was His will to be instructed like another man, so did He will to make His rational Divine in a similar way, namely, as to good by influx from His Divine by the internal way, and as to truth by influx through the external way. When therefore the rational as to good had been so far formed as to be in a state for receiving truth (which is meant by the words in the beginning of this chapter, "Abraham being old was come into days, and Jehovah blessed Abraham in all things," by which is signified when the state was at hand that the Lord's Human should be made Divine, and when all things should be disposed into Divine order, as may be seen above, n. 3016, 3017), there next follows that truth is to be conjoined with the good of the rational, and this, as before said, by the common way, that is, by means of memory-knowledges and knowledges from the natural man.

[5] These are the things contained in this chapter, namely, how truth, called forth from the natural man, was to be conjoined with the good of the rational; and as the good there was Divine, how the truth there should also be made Divine. To man these things (especially to one who does not know that the rational is something distinct from the natural, and who therefore does not know that the rational is formed successively, and this by knowledges) are very obscure, so that they are not understood; but still they are among things easily understood by those who have any knowledge concerning the rational and the natural man, and who are in enlightenment. The angels see them all as in clear day.

[6] Some idea of them may be obtained from what has been said and shown above, namely: That the rational as to truth is formed by influx into memory-knowledges and knowledges (n. 1495, 1563, 1900, 1964): That it is not born from these two kinds of knowledges, but from the affection of them (n. 1895, 1900): That these two kinds of knowledges are only vessels for good (n. 1469, 1496): That empty memory-knowledges must be destroyed (n. 1489, 1492, 1499, 1500): That in the rational, the affection of good is as a soul in the affection of truth (n. 2072): What is the affection of rational truth, and of the truth of mere memory (n. 2503): That by knowledges the external man is conjoined with the internal, that is, the rational man with the natural, when knowledges are being implanted in things celestial, which are those of love and charity (n. 1450, 1451, 1453, 1616).

Now here are my markings.

Be sure to look at the ennead chart while reading the markings. For your convenience I reproduce the upper half of the chart in a smaller font:. Quoting from the Writings (with chart added):

AC 3030. "Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land." [Genesis 24:5]

That this signifies a doubt of the natural man [C2 or -C2] concerning that affection [A1 or A2], as to whether it was separable, is evident from the signification of "woman," as being truth, here from the  natural [C1], which was to be

 conjoined with the Divine good of the rational [A3]. And as all conjunction is effected by means of affection [A1, A2, A3} (as was said above, n. 3024), so by "woman" is signified the affection of that truth [A2 / C2 interaction]: and also from the signification of "going after" or "following me unto this land," as being to be separated from the natural [A1 + C1 + S1]and conjoined with the rational [A2 + C2 + S2]; for "land" here as above (n. 3026) is the good of love that is of the rational. That there is doubt is seen from its being said, "Peradventure she be not willing."

[2] From what has been said above, it is evident what is involved in these words, and in what follows to verse 8, and further; and in order that these things may be better understood, we may say a few words more. The genuine rational [C2] is from good [A2], but comes forth [existit] from truth [C2]. Good [A2] flows in by an internal way; but truth [C2] by an external way. Good thus conjoins itself with truth in the rational [A2 + C2]l, and they cause the rational to be [A2 + C2 + S2]. Unless the good therein is conjoined with truth [A2 / C2 interaction], there is no rational; although there appears to be, because the man can reason [C1] (n. 1944). This is the common way in which the rational is formed with man.

[3] As the Lord was born like another man, and as it was His will to be instructed like another man, so did He will to make His rational Divine [C2 ==>C3]] in a similar way, namely, as to good [A2] by influx from His Divine by the internal way [A3], and as to truth [C2] by influx through the external way. When therefore the rational as to good [A2] had been so far formed as to be in a state for receiving truth [C2] (which is meant by the words in the beginning of this chapter, "Abraham being old was come into days, and Jehovah blessed Abraham in all things," by which is signified when the state was at hand that the Lord's Human [A1 + C1 + S1] should be made Divine, and when all things should be disposed into Divine order [A3 + C3 + S3], as may be seen above, n. 3016, 3017), there next follows that truth [C2] is to be conjoined with the good [A2] of the rational, and this, as before said, by the common way, that is, by means of memory-knowledges and knowledges from the natural man [C1].

[5] These are the things contained in this chapter, namely, how truth [C2 <==C1], called forth from the natural man, was to be conjoined with the good of the rational [A2]; and as the good there was Divine [A2<==A3], how the truth there should also be made Divine [C2 <==C3]. To man these things (especially to one who does not know that the rational [A2 + C2 + S2] is something distinct from the natural [A1 + C1 + S1], and who therefore does not know that the rational is formed successively, and this by knowledges) are very obscure, so that they are not understood; but still they are among things easily understood by those who have any knowledge concerning the rational and the natural man, and who are in enlightenment. The angels see them all as in clear day.

[6] Some idea of them may be obtained from what has been said and shown above, namely: That the rational as to truth is formed by influx into memory-knowledges and knowledges [C1<==C2] (n. 1495, 1563, 1900, 1964): That it is not born from these two kinds of knowledges, but from the affection of them [A1==>C1<==C2] (n. 1895, 1900): That these two kinds of knowledges [C1] are only vessels for good [A1==>C1](n. 1469, 1496): That empty memory-knowledges [C1 or -C1]must be destroyed (n. 1489, 1492, 1499, 1500): That in the rational, the affection of good [A2] is as a soul in the affection of truth [A2'] (n. 2072): What is the affection of rational truth [A2], and of the truth of mere memory [C1] (n. 2503): That by knowledges the external man [C1] is conjoined with the internal, that is, the rational man [A2 + C2 + S2] with the natural A1 + C1 + S1, when knowledges [C1] are being implanted in things celestial [A3], which are those of love and charity (n. 1450, 1451, 1453, 1616).

Now here is a summary list of the markings and the expressions used for them in the text::

Here are some further illustrations of how we can use the ennead matrix to track the particulars of what is being described about mental states. As you read the paragraph, try to follow the movement on the ennead chart. I reproduce it here, with a few equivalence concepts added (see Section 9.0.1.2).

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

There are two things in the internal man, namely, the celestial and the spiritual, which two constitute a one when the spiritual is from the celestial; or what is the same, there are two things in the internal man, good and truth; these two constitute a one when the truth is from good; or what is also the same, there are two things in the internal man, love and faith; these two constitute a one when the faith is from love; or what is again the same, there are in the internal man two things, the will and the understanding; and these two constitute a one when the understanding is from the will.  (AC 1577)

The "internal man" refers to the celestial degree (A3, C3, S3),and contains "the celestial and the spiritual" (A3, C3). "Good" in the "internal man" refers to A3. "Truth" in the "internal man" refers to C3. Further, A3 and C3 "constitute a one" when "the truth is from the good," that is, C3 <== A3. In other words, when C3 (celestial truth) is from A3 (celestial good). Or, which is the same, when celestial faith (C3) is from celestial love (A3). and also, when celestial understanding (C3) is from celestial will (A3).

Additional examples may be given:

"Affections of the natural man" (AC 1909) refers to zone A1.

"Hagar signifies the life of the affection of memory-knowledges in the exterior man" (AC 1960) refers to zone A1 in relation to zone C1.

"Abram signifies the Lord's internal man" (AC 1960) refers to zones A3, C3, S3.

Quoting AC 31 62 with ennead zones added:

And it came to pass that when Abraham's servant [A1, C1, S1] heard their words, he bowed himself down to the earth unto Jehovah," signifies a perception of joy in the natural man [A1] "and the servant brought forth vessels of silver and vessels of gold, and garments," signifies truth [C1] and good [A1], and their adornments [S1]; "and gave to Rebekah," signifies which then were for the affection of truth [A1]; "he gave also precious things to her brother," signifies spiritual things [A2, C2, S2] thence for natural good [A1]; "and to her mother," signifies for natural truth [C1] also; "and they did eat and drink," signifies the appropriation of good and of truth thus initiated; "he and the men that were with him," signifies which are in the natural man [A1, C1, S1]; "and they passed the night," signifies its peace [S1]; "and they rose up in the morning," signifies a degree of elevation; "and he said, Send me away unto my lord," signifies the affection of conjunction."

Here is another illustration of how the ennead chart clarifies the mental dynamics being described in the sentences of the Writings Sacred Scripture. Try to map the motion of the sentences to the ennead chart. The topic has to do with how our conscious natural mind ("external man") is put under the correspondence control, or harmony, of the unconscious spiritual mind ("internal man"). This is called "to be united." When we achieve this mental reorganization, or reformation,  we are progressing in our regeneration or spiritual growth. consequently we are preparing for our "ascension" to the heavenly layers of our mind (levels 2 and 3 in the ennead chart). The form of the chart below has been altered by merging the cells vertically. The symbol   ((A3))(A2)A1   is used to indicate this merger in the affective organ, and likewise with the other two organs. The passage discusses some of the details of this organic merger or "unition."

Quoting from the Writings:

AC 1577

[3] From all this it is evident what constitutes the internal man [A3, C3, S3]; and what constitutes the external thence appears. In the external man all is natural [A1, C1, S1] for the external man itself is the same as the natural man. The internal man is said to be united to the external when the celestial

SPIRITUAL GEOGRAPHY	MENTAL ANATOMY
	SENSORIMOTOR ORGAN ("the sensory")	COGNITIVE ORGAN ("understanding") TRUTH SPIRITUAL THINGS	AFFECTIVE ORGAN ("the will") GOOD CELESTIAL THINGS
CELESTIAL DEGREE internal man	[ ((S3))(S2)S1 ]	celestial truth --------------- spiritual truth [ ((C3))(C2)C1] natural truth	celestial good --------------- spiritual good [ ((A3))(A2)A1] natural good
SPIRITUAL DEGREE interior man
NATURAL DEGREE external man

 spiritual of the internal man [A3, C3] flows  into the natural of the external [A2, C2], and makes them act as a one [(A2)A1 ]. As a consequence of this the natural also becomes celestial ((A3))(A2)A1 and spiritual ((C3))(C2)C1, but a lower celestial and spiritual; or what is the same, the external man becomes celestial and spiritual, but a more external celestial and spiritual. (AC 1577)

What are we to think of when we read the phrase "but a more external celestial and spiritual"?

It is challenging to make it clear to ourselves what distinctions are drawn here in Sacred Scripture. We know that Divine Speech contains these particular concepts as they are put together, in order to allow human beings to extract the scientific details that are not available in the literal sense. We need therefore to apply the method of correspondences with enlightenment in order to form for ourselves higher genes of rational consciousness that can elevate to our rational heavens of eternity -- for this is what forms the upper portion of our mind.

At this very moment as you are reading this, the upper portions of your mind are in eternity, not here on earth! Now the issue is -- how do we get ourselves up there, from down here. This is what the paragraph above discusses. The Divine Human is talking to us about this subject because it is about the method of "ascension" that He has organically created in every individual's mind to go from the natural consciousness and life (level 1), to the celestial consciousness and life (levels 2 and 3).

The lower portion of your mind is the conscious natural mind (level 1). Each level of the mind has discretely different types of mental operations. The merger or "uniting" of the levels in the mind is accomplished by correspondence control or harmony. In order to see this more clearly, we can picture this successive progression in simultaneous order, using the graphic concepts methodology discussed earlier (see Section xx):

The diagram above depicts the resulting mental state when the "internal man" is "united" to the "external man." You can see that the affective operations in the natural mind ('natural good" A1) contains within itself the affective operations in the spiritual mind ("spiritual good" C2), which contains within itself the affective operations in the celestial mind. The visual portrayal of concentric circles one within the other, indicates that they are harmonizing in order by means of correspondences. The feelings and intentions we have in our daily activities (A1), our willing sequences moment by moment, are now in correspondence with the spiritual good (A2), or love, that is in our unconscious spiritual mind. This spiritual willing and intending is aligned in correspondences with the celestial willing and intending (A3). The whole person is now integrated. The same is the case with the cognitive organ (C3, C2, C1). The two organs cannot act on their own but only together, which is why the graphic concepts are shown to overlap.

What is the difference in the quality of operations at the three levels? For details see Section xx.

Continuing with the rest of passage from AC 1577:

[4] The internal man [levels 2 and 3] and the external [level 1] are altogether distinct, because celestial [level 3] and spiritual [level 2] things are what affect the internal man, but natural things [level 1] are what affect the external. But though distinct, they are still united, namely, when the celestial spiritual of the internal man [A3,A2 and C3,C2]  flows into the natural of the external [A1 and C1] , and disposes it as its own. (...)

[5] I(...) as there are two things in the internal man, namely, the celestial and the spiritual, which as before said make a one, so also are there in the external man, its celestial being called natural good [A1], and its spiritual natural truth [C1]. "Let there be no contention between me and thee," has reference to good, meaning that the good of the internal man should not disagree with the good of the external man [A3, A2 and A1] ; and "Let there be no contention between my herdmen and thy herdmen," has reference to truth [C3, C2 and C1], meaning that the truth of the internal man should not disagree with the truth of the external man. (AC 1577)

Access the underlying structure of the Writings Sacred Scripture is facilitated by teaching yourself to label the expressions you encounter in the sentences you are reading, as illustrate above. It is also useful to collect them into a type of dictionary listing as illustrated below, and to review them frequently and commit them to memory.

9.0.1.4.2   Using the Ennead Chart to Map the Mental Steps to Unity in Marriage

The ennead chart has numberless applications because it is a mental gene structure created by the Divine Child's mental activity during the Incarnation Event (see Section xx). Whatever the Divine Child created in His Natural Mind was simultaneously being created in the mental organs of every human being in both worlds.

Every human being born since then, also has these new mental gene structures. These new evolutionary organic structures that were to be created by the Divine Child in His natural mind, were described in extraordinary detail in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, many centuries before the Divine Child was born. This was shown in the previous Section. Evidently, it serves the Divine Human's purpose to have His Divine Speech create Sacred Scripture that gives historical details of an ancient people. And it serves His purpose to bring about the details of these historical events in such a way that their spiritual correspondences, when extracted, will give a precise scientific description of the mental states He was to go through during the Incarnation Event, which was to occur hundreds of years later. How absolutely astonishing! The truth of this was confirmed in the previous Section, and in many other places in the Writings Sacred Scripture.

Hence it is that the human genes of consciousness are organically structured into an enneadic shape constructed out of slices of trigrammatic concepts, as demonstrated in the Sections leading up to this one. Everything that humans do, think, sense, and feel will be constructed out of these dualities and trigrammatic series, because they form the syntax of thinking, of meaning, and of human consciousness. These gene structures are extractable from Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture when applying the method of correspondences with enlightenment (see Sections xx).

Applications of the ennead structure are described in several of the volumes (see Sections xx). The following application to the marriage relationship illustrates the sequence of mental states and interactions of a husband and wife as they grow through the stages of preparation for conjugial love (see also Section xx). Every husband goes through these nine zones of sequenced experiencing. Every individual may become convinced of this by the evidence of their own self-witnessing observations in daily activities (see Section xx).

Study the ennead below. Do you recognize it? Do you see the trigrammatic slices with which it is constructed?

The psychodynamics of spiritual growth is governed by the interacting slices of trigrammatic concepts in the vertical and horizontal axes. For instance mental states in zone 2 are the result of a husband's level 1 dominance model mentality, which is operating in his sensorimotor mind. Note that that this is the lowest of the three discrete portions or degrees of the sensorimotor mind (below zones 4 and 7). The mental operations of zone 2 are therefore named corporeal cognitive processes in the husband's mind. Two forces create the psychological conflicts and issues in this phase of mental growth. One is the natural- corporeal mentality of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture. The other is the organic properties of the cognitive mind, which is an intermediate organ -- higher than the sensorimotor mind but lower than the affective mind. In terms of the graphic concepts discussed in the previous Section, the affective is inmost or highest, the cognitive is intermediate, while the sensorimotor is external. Hence also, the cognitive is called spiritual, which is in discrete degrees in between the lower natural and the higher celestial. 

Let's look at the trigrammatic slices that make up the marriage ennead above.

The vertical slice contains this complex trigram series:

[ DOMINANCE                  /  EQUITY                          /  UNITY                            ]
[ OLD TESTAMENT        / NEW TESTAMENT       / THE WRITINGS            ]
[ LEVEL 1                         /  LEVEL 2                         /  LEVEL 3                        ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ NATURAL DEGREE  /  SPIRITUAL  DEGREE  /  CELESTIAL DEGREE ]
[ EXTERNAL MAN      /    INTERIOR MAN            /    INMOST MAN               ]
[ FIRST HEAVEN       /    SECOND HEAVEN      /  THIRD HEAVEN             ]
 

The three trigrams above the dotted line are explicitly stated in the ennead above. The three trigrams below the dotted line are taken from the ennead charts in the previous Section describing the Divine Child's mental progression. The ultimate goal of the Divine Child was to achieve a unity between His natural mind grown on earth and his spiritual mind from eternity. In the Writings Sacred Scripture, forming this unity is called the Divine Marriage. The Divine Child had to create the mental pathway for His thoughts and feelings that would take His natural mind grown on earth, to be able to form a unity with Himself from eternity -- a process called "Glorification of the human born in time." In other words, the Divine Child's natural mind born in time and grown on earth, was to be made one with His eternal and infinite Mind. The result would be a new ability of human beings to appropriate to themselves the Divine Human's mental states. This constitutes a giant step forward in the biological evolution of the human mind and the consciousness or experiences it affords (see Section xx).

Hence it is that a husband and wife in preparation for their eternal marriage, must go through the same enneadic series of mental states that was created by the Divine Child when achieving the Divine Marriage in Himself ("Glorification"). Furthermore, the same enneadic movement of mental states applies to the marriage within our mind between the will and the understanding represented on the horizontal dimension of the marriage ennead above. This marriage within each individual is called regeneration (see Section xx). You can see from this that the series of mental states in individual regeneration recapitulates the series of mental states in Divine Glorification. The two are connected like cause and effect (see Section xx).

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

TCR 397

There is nothing more important to know than how the will and the understanding make up one mind.

They do so, just as good and truth make one, for there is a marriage between the will and the understanding similar to that between good and truth,

The facts about to be cited concerning good and truth will make clear what sort of a marriage that is; namely, that just as good is the very being (esse) of a thing, and truth is its coming-into-being (existere) as a result, so in a person his will is the very being of his life, and the understanding is the coming-into-being of his life as a result. For good belonging to the will takes on form in the understanding and becomes visible.

If you look at the horizontal dimension of the marriage ennead above you will detect this trigram, above the dotted line:

[ SENSORIMOTOR MIND  /  COGNITIVE MIND            /  AFFECTIVE MIND        ]
[ NATURAL DEGREE        /  SPIRITUAL  DEGREE     /  CELESTIAL DEGREE  ]
[ EXTERNAL ORGAN      /    INTERIOR ORGAN           /   INMOST ORGAN          ]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ SENSORY                      /    UNDERSTANDING            /  WILL                                  ]
[ USE                                /     TRUTH                                  /  GOOD                                ]
[ LIFE                               /     EXISTERE (BECOMING)   /  ESSE (VERY BEING)     ]
[ VISIBLE                       /     FORM                                      /   SUBSTANCE                  ]

The trigram below the dotted line is from the passage being quoted on the will and the understanding (TCR 397).

The marriage ennead can be contextualized by putting the two shaded trigrams together:

[ DOMINANCE                     /  EQUITY                          /  UNITY                              ]
[ OLD TESTAMENT            / NEW TESTAMENT       / THE WRITINGS             ]
[ LEVEL 1                              /  LEVEL 2                         /  LEVEL 3                         ]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ NATURAL DEGREE        /  SPIRITUAL  DEGREE  /  CELESTIAL DEGREE  ]
[ EXTERNAL MAN              /    INTERIOR MAN            /    INMOST MAN               ]
[ FIRST HEAVEN                /    SECOND HEAVEN      /  THIRD HEAVEN            ]

===============================================================

[ SENSORIMOTOR MIND  /  COGNITIVE MIND            /  AFFECTIVE MIND        ]
[ NATURAL DEGREE        /  SPIRITUAL  DEGREE     /  CELESTIAL DEGREE  ]
[ EXTERNAL ORGAN      /  INTERIOR ORGAN           /   INMOST ORGAN            ]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ SENSORY                      /  UNDERSTANDING            /  WILL                                  ]
[ USE                                /   TRUTH                                  /  GOOD                                ]
[ LIFE                               /   EXISTERE (BECOMING)   /  ESSE (BEING)                 ]

This trigram puts all the basic gene structures together to form a navigational plane for mental states as they develop from external to internal, that is, from lower to higher.

Now we need to add relationship content within each of the nine zones of mental states in marriage. The next ennead chart characterizes the husband's relationship style in each of the nine zones. Each zone contains mental states specific to it that are different from the mental states of the other zones. The differences are produced by the interacting gene structures in the vertical and horizontal axes that define each zone uniquely.

9.1.4   The Double Ennead Matrix -- Plotting Spiritual History and Individual Development

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Quoting from De Hemelsche Leer Fascicle IV (Pp. 8-9)   by REV. ERNST PFEIFFER

It is according to order that the Church first must pass through a series of preparatory natural states, before the spiritual state can commence, in which for the first time the Doctrine of the Church in its relation to the Word of the Church comes to the fore. In all of those preparatory states it cannot be but that the Church regards the Word itself of the Church as the Doctrine. Every Church from its beginning must as it were pass through all the states of the ages of a man, entirely as has been shown on a previous occasion (see Third Fascicle, pp. 90---108) with regard to the history of the human race as a whole.

Accordingly also in the history of the New Church a series of successive, states may be discerned, which entirely corresponds to the series of the great periods of the entire history of the human race. In the history of the New Church too there is as it were an Adamic state, which is the age of its infancy, a Noachic state, which is the age of its boyhood; a Hebrew and an Israelitish state, which is the age of its adolescence; a state of the Coming and Sensual Presence of the Lord, which is the age of its early manhood; a Christian state, which is the age of its manhood: and a state of the Second Coming of the Lord or a proper state of the, New Church itself, which is its old age.

While, however, in the general series in all periods before the Coming of the Lord the basis for the thinking lay in the sensual things of creation, and in the period between the Coming and the Second Coming of the Lord it lay in the Divine Natural of the New Testament, in all the periods of the particular series the basis for the thinking lies in the Divine Rational of the Third Testament.

From this it is evident that; the Third Testament in the first periods of the New Church plays a role corresponding to the role which the sensual things of creation fulfilled in file ages before the Incarnation of the Lord, and subsequently a role corresponding to the role which the Divine Natural of the Divine Human of the Lord fulfilled in the Christian age; and that this the Third Testament really only in the last period of the New Church, which is the period of the Second Coming of the Lord in the New Church, when the Church for the first time comes into the fullness of its proper state, will be able to fulfill that role which fully agrees with its proper essence, as a result of which the Church for the first time will see therein the proper rational, that is. celestial truth.

There is a correspondential unity between evolutionary biology and history. For instance, the Old Testament is Sacred Scripture written at an intellectual level suitable for children and the uneducated as well as the educated and theologian. On the surface it is a history book about the people of God extending over thousands of years. Geographical places are mentioned that are still there today and names of individuals who have left behind records and achievements documented in other books. Natural phenomena are described such as earthquakes or floods, many animals mentioned, besides cities, battles, and pestilences that befell some people. And yet, below the surface of these natural historical events, underlying meanings can be extracted by the laws of correspondence. These extracted meanings are discovered to be arranged in orderly series or taxonomies of spiritual biological facts and phenomena. This extraction process is rational or scientific, following a demonstrable and verifiable methodology accessible to all rational persons who seek truth in them for the sake of their closeness and love to God. Evidently God sees to it that every item mentioned in the historical content of Sacred Scripture be precisely such that it corresponds to the internalizing meanings arranged in rational series. Though any rational person can expound Doctrine based on these extracted series only those can understand it who can see the series in themselves. A scholar or theistic scientist could create Doctrine through this methodology, but will not perceive what it actually stands for until the Doctrine is seen in oneself. Others who are more advanced in their regeneration process will be able to perceive much more in the Doctrine than its developer and creator.

Here is a matrix that summarizes the series discussed: MATRIX 2

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AE 948. [3] What the Divine providence of the Lord was in revealing Divine truths can be seen from the successive establishment of churches. There have been several churches on our globe one after another. There was the Most Ancient, that was before the flood; there was the Ancient, that was after the flood; then the Hebrew; and then the Israelitish; after this the Christian; and now the New Church is beginning. Inmost Divine truths were revealed to those who were of the Most Ancient Church; more externalizing Divine truths were revealed to those of the Ancient Church; and most externalizing or ultimate Divine truths to the Hebrew Church, and afterwards to the Israelitish, with which church all Divine truth finally perished, for at last there was nothing in the Word that had not been adulterated. But after the end of the Israelitish Church internalizing Divine truths were revealed by the Lord for the Christian Church, and now still more internalizing truths for the church that is to come. These internalizing truths are such as are in the internal or correspondential sense of the Word. All this makes clear that there has been a progression of Divine truth from inmosts to ultimates, thus from wisdom to mere ignorance; and that now there is a progression of it from ultimates to internalizings, thus from ignorance again to wisdom.

Biology and psychology students are familiar with the expression "Ontology recapitulates phylogeny." This means that the developmental stages of a growing egg or fetus undergo a series of changes that correspond to the series of changes described by evolutionists for various species. Some common process operates on both. In theistic psychology we have a description of this common process because all natural phenomena are effects of spiritual causes. There is a law of correspondence that dictates what happens in one and therefore in the other. The spiritual and natural worlds  are inexorably linked in this fashion from creation. The two matrices here discussed are a description of the principle "Individual development recapitulates the evolution of civilization." The evolution of civilization is the history of the race's major steps in becoming modern rational societies. Relying on Swedenborg direct investigations of ancient peoples through his dual citizenship, the two matrices show the correspondential relations between individual development of self and the history of the Churches on this earth. The Church signifies a society's level of moral evolution. The level of thinking of an era is the Church for the individuals of that time. There is a common process determining the steps of both. This common process is the degree of the mind that has been opened for that generation.

Degrees are the mechanics of the operation of the Laws of Divine Providence. This is the generator. All parts move only and strictly in unison as a whole. To God the universe is one. As Swedenborg expresses it, In God all things are one. This is the meaning of infinity and omnipotence. The more diverse things make a one, or unity, the more perfect it grows. To God all details of past, present, and future states of the universe are determined, governed, willed, and known. This is an infinity because the process is endless. The Third Testament focuses on this issue in multiple places and Works. In all this there is rationality and orderliness. All events, if they exist or can exist, occupy a pre-cast position in a rational and orderly series. This structure of reality is God's mind. Prior to the Incarnation, that is, the amazing event of God birthing Himself on this earth through a virgin woman, the human race had a mental development that went through three major stages corresponding to Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence. These periods correspond to the lower regions of the mind. These regions in our mind are relatively externalizing to our main core, which is much higher.

The lowest regions in our mind are called corporeal and sensual. These are major components of the natural mind. This region of our mind overlaps with those of "lower" animals in that both are based on sensory input. The basis of our thinking at the natural level when our higher regions have not been opened yet, is like that of a clever ape. No doubt the cleverest of apes, but not yet human. The human begins with the rational. When the rational begins to be opened, the individual begins the journey to humanness. But the rational region also has a range of depth of development so that the lower regions of the rational mind is called externalizing rational, while the upper regions are called internalizing rational. There is an enormous difference between the externalizing and internalizing rational. The externalizing rational borders the corporeal-sensuous-natural region (animalistic). And so it is only a filter for these incoming sensuous facts about the natural world only. There is a huge step for society to take when it evolves from an animalistic natural state to a human rational state (externalizing rational). And yet the rational is not operating in a fully human manner until it abandons all the facts coming from the natural world (that is, from below), and filters through only those facts coming in from the spiritual world (that is, from above).

Such is the mind created, for dual citizenship, so that it can develop first through thinking based on sensuous consciousness, and then through an inversion, the basis of our thinking switches to rational consciousness. The first process is a descending pathway from infancy to adolescence because in these three phases of growth, the basis of our evolving thinking is sensuous input. This is our socialization and culture. It is the individual's horizontal community. After the inversion, our true human functioning starts and we become spiritual beings. Spiritual beings receive their experiential input from the spiritual world. As soon as our mental receptors in the internalizing degree are activated, the basis of our thinking becomes spiritual. From then on our feelings, motives, and acts are activated from a new degree of the self. There are three internalizing degrees of the self and of civilization. These are the internalizing natural, the internalizing spiritual, and the internalizing celestial. These correspond to the three heavens. They constitute our vertical community

It is common for the Incarnation to be associated exclusively with the Christian Church. This has an historical explanation. But from the perspective of theistic psychology, all religions are cultural expressions of a particular stage of human development. As fully documented in the Writings of Swedenborg, all religions that worship God have their own special place in the highest regions of the human mind. God is the God of all religions, and there is only one God. Those who point the finger at other individuals, saying they worship the wrong God, are exercising a political gesture, not a scientific one. Every religion in its highest achievement leads to the same one God. This is a scientific and universal fact that follows from the entire rational structure to be found in the Writings of Swedenborg. The highest level of the mind is the internalizing celestial. All religions point to this degree as their ultimate and final destination. Swedenborg has talked to individuals who are in this degree of the mind called the Celestial Heaven, and all recognize the same universal Divine facts no matter what religion they originally started out with and went through on the way up. There those below this degree of the mind, whom Swedenborg interviewed, and they all clung to their religion in more externalizing degrees. In these relatively more externalizing or lower degrees, they were intolerant and prejudiced, thus not at all celestial and scientific. When the universal facts are laid out for them by the celestial angels, they are not willing to receive the truths and reject them. Thus they remain forever outside the heavenly state of mind and consciousness, below the heavenly feelings, motives, decisions, and actions, and even contrary to them.

The purpose of religion is to conjoin the individual with God and God with the individual. Only in this conjunction can the internalizing degrees of the mind be opened, and the opening or growth is limited by the degree of conjunction. For the internalizing celestial of the mind to be opened we must undergo the process of regeneration through temptations.   The precise moment of the death of our physical body is an event directly tied to this process. Our life in the physical body is for the sole purpose of opening the mind to its internalizings. If this opening process is no longer possible due to local circumstances surrounding the life of an individual, death immediately ensues, and the person is released from the physical body into its truly proper body, the spiritual body. Swedenborg has witnessed this process with thousands of individuals who passed on as they were extracted or "resuscitated" from the corpse. The process of extracting the spiritual body from the physical body, and thus freeing it into its world, takes about 36 hours under normal circumstances. Upon awakening the individual slowly emerges to the new consciousness of life in the spirit body in the spiritual body. At first the natural sensual memories and identity of the individual are retained to such an extent that the new "place" appears very similar to the old. Swedenborg was amazed to hear many doubt that they are now in the spiritual world, especially those whose minds were not opened to the internalizing degree and so did not take the existence of the afterlife seriously.

But gradually, within a matter of days and weeks, the externalizing sensual memories and thoughts are "quieted down" and moved out of immediate focus to the sub-conscious mind where it remains hidden and inactive. Instead there now emerges the internalizing levels of the individual that were not in direct focus in one's former life within the physical body. For instance, our conscious awareness of the affective domain (at all levels and degrees--Zones 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, and 16) is extremely restricted at all times. We are more conscious of the cognitive domain. We are most aware of the sensorimotor domain. During the initial period of our afterlife we are still cognizant mostly of our externalizing sensual memory and identity, which is located in the sensorimotor and the cognitive domains. But as we pass on into our "second death" we come alive fully in our internalizing parts of the functioning mind, that is, in the affective domain. When this happens we are a changed person in actuality and in appearance. Friends and family (in the spiritual world) no longer recognize us and we don't recognize them. To our new friends and family however, we are entirely familiar. Now for the first time we come into our own, or as the Old Testament prophet puts it, we are gathered to our fathers. Everyone who shares similar affective structures now are congregated by the inexorable geographic laws of the spiritual world. Like is congregated with like and the unlike cannot meet, do not exist for each other.

This is why reaching heaven or hell is not a matter of punishment or reward or choice, once we enter the spiritual world. It is our life in the physical body that determines where our spiritual body ends up--in heavenly regions of the mind or in hellish regions. Choice ends at death's door. Such as we are internalizingly upon leaving earth, such is our lot where we arrive. This makes it super-imperative for each of us to amend our character through regeneration and temptation. When we allow God, everyone's Divine Therapist, to bring us to particular individualized temptations and help us conquer them, then we can change our moral character from negative to positive, from selfish to altruistic. This we cannot do on our own, just as we can do nothing on our own but only through Divine power given us by influx. We are all born animalistic with the potential of being regenerated. If we cooperate with God in the process of regeneration, the spirit body that emerges at death is healed or "saved." If we refuse to cooperate, more and more we strengthen our vertical associations with those in the lowest regions of the mind called the hells. Our mind is formed into life with them and is unsuitable and impossible for life in heaven where those are whose minds have been opened to the internalizing degrees.

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AC 5114. The intellectual part in general is the sight of the internal man, which sees from the light of heaven, which is from the Lord, and all that it sees is spiritual and celestial. But the sensuous in general is of the externalizing man, here the sensuous of the sight, because this corresponds and is subordinate to the intellectual; this sensuous sees from the light of the world, which is from the sun, and all that it sees is worldly, bodily, and earthly.

[2] There are in man derivations from the intellectual part, which is in the light of heaven, down to the sensuous, which is in the light of the world; unless this were so, the sensuous could not have any human life. The sensuous of man has no life in consequence of seeing from the light of the world, for the light of the world has no life in it; but in consequence of seeing from the light of heaven, for this light has life in it. When this light falls with man into those things which are from the light of the world, it vivifies them and causes him to see objects intellectually, thus as a man; and from this, by knowledges born from things he has seen and heard in the world, thus from things that have entered through the senses, man has intelligence and wisdom, and from these has civil, moral, and spiritual life.

[3] As regards the derivations specially, in man they are of such a nature that they cannot be briefly set forth. They are steps or degrees as of a ladder between the intellectual part and the sensuous, but no one can apprehend these degrees unless he knows that they are most distinct from one another, so distinct that the internalizing can exist and subsist without the exterior, but not the exterior without the internalizing. For example: the spirit of man can subsist without the material body, and also actually does so subsist when by death it is separated from the body. The spirit of man is in an internalizing degree, and the body is in an exterior degree. It is similar with the spirit of man after death: if he is among the blessed, he is in the last degree among them when in the first heaven, in an internalizing degree when in the second, and in the inmost when in the third; and when he is in this, he is indeed at the same time in the rest, but these are quiescent in him, almost as the bodily part in man is quiescent in sleep, but with this difference, that with the angels the internalizings are then in the highest wakefulness. Therefore there are as many distinct degrees in man as there are heavens, besides the last, which is the body with its sensuous things.

[4] From this it may in some measure appear how the case is with the derivations from first to last, or from the intellectual part down to the sensuous. The life of man, which is from the Lord's Divine, passes through these degrees from the inmost down to the last or ultimate degree, and in each degree it is derived from what is prior, becoming more and more general, and in the ultimate degree most general.

           9.1.5    The Law of Recursiveness in the Growth of Consciousness

Swedenborg explains that our intromission into the internalizing degrees of the mind, or the three heavens, is by gyres. I did not understand the meaning of this until years after I first read it. My understanding today (in March 2001) is that the mind is constructed out of spiritual substances that are set in perpetual motion. The form or directionality of these motions is represented by a vortex. There are two fundamental motions to a vortex, clockwise and counter-clockwise. At every level and degree of growth, the mind builds upon itself with more and more of these vortex motions arranged in taxonomic correspondence with the regions of the spiritual world. Think of the brain. It is made of convoluted fibers twisting into each other in masses and clumps, each clump having different functions depending on its geographic location of the brain. The brain has this type of shape and organization because it corresponds to the mind's shape and organization. The mind is composed of layers of fibers made of immortal or permanent spiritual substances. The location of the layer, or its level of degree, determines its function: degrees of sensual consciousness (Zones 1 through 9 in matrix2 above) and degrees of rational consciousness (Zones 10 through 18).   Not shown in this matrix are the opposite of these Zones.

Oppositeness in consciousness comes about when the vortex motion of the spiritual fibers that constitute the mind or spirit body, is gyrating in the opposite direction of the spiritual Sun and heaven. Hell is nothing but the exact opposite replica of heaven. There are numerous uncountable heavens in all three degrees just as there are numerous uncountable stars in the physical world. And yet, all the heavens are united into a one because they gyrate in compatible motion to create the unity within the diversity. A complicated mechanical machine like an airplane may have thousands of pieces of parts, each with their own shape, but these shapes must be consistent with the whole of the airplane, or else they oppose the working of the airplane, and even destroy it. The human mind or spirit body is an organic machine or psychobiological entity. When its parts depart from unity, there is dysfunction, and eventually cessation of all function. A virus introduced into our blood stream can quickly kill the body and end all circulation. It is opposite to the functioning of the body cells, like cancer, gangrene,  or Alzheimer. The spiritual world, that is the mind of all individuals, gyrates in two opposite directions called heaven and hell.

At every level in each degree our mind grows like a plant made of spiritual substances. Growth of the mind means growth of those fibers arranged in shapes that are unique to every individual. Our sensory input, our experiences, our socialization, our culture and religion, are all determiners of these shapes and arrangements or taxonomies. Above all, our individual decisions, choices, and loves or passions, determine the unique shape of these permanent never-dying whirling vortices. Nothing of them can ever be removed from the self. This is why it is so critical that we undergo regeneration through temptations. God introduces a particular temptation to an individual at a particular time and phase of development for the purpose of laying aside the clumps that whirl in the wrong direction, and substituting in that place a new vortex clump that whirls in the heavenly direction. Thus the oppositeness of our evils can gradually be laid aside bit by bit, day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. This process is called regeneration and is possible only while we are still in the physical body.

A mechanical analogy may be helpful to explain how the mind develops in organic networks that gyrate in one direction only. Suppose you want to secure a hook against the wall using a screw. Using a screwdriver you need to apply a forceful twist in the clockwise direction, and with each twist the screw gets further in and the hook fastens itself tighter to the wall, fulfilling its function successfully. But if you twist the screwdriver counterclockwise, no matter how often or with what force, the screw will not succeed to fulfill its function. The two motions, clockwise and counterclockwise are opposites. Living our consciousness in the internalizing degrees of the three heavens in our mind is only possible when functional preparation is made while in the physical body, before the spirit body is set free. Entering our heaven is possible only if, during our growth phase, we establish the heavenly gyres in our mental structures. Since we are born with inherited tendencies towards the love of self and all its associated evils, our natural tendency right from birth is to establish hellish gyres in our affective and cognitive organs. This is going down the stream and is easy in comparison to resisting the counter-gyres, battling with them, wrestling them down, stopping them, casting them to the side and keeping them chained forever. Whichever gyres we have established, remain forever.

Gyres in the mental organs cannot associate as opposites since opposites annihilate or neutralize each other. But since it is a necessity to have both types of gyres within the mind while we are being regenerated (but not thereafter), God governs the process by separating them and keeping a barrier between them that they may not interact. Counter-gyres are kept in the externalizing consciousness while heavenly gyres are retained in more internal levels of that degree. As the counter-gyres are stopped and made non-functional, they are removed to the side and below, tucked away, never to be re-activated except under special situations. For example, when an angel from the internalizing degrees is to meet a recently deceased family member, which sometimes happens, the angel descends into lower and more exterior degrees of the mind where the new arrivals are. To achieve this some of the old counter-gyres may be briefly reactivated. The Laws of Divine Providence exert a determining influence on the development of gyres and their interaction. God's love is so intense that there is ceaseless effort on His part to influence our as-of-self twists and turns in our daily and hourly lives. By mediate (conscious) influx God speaks to us through the voice of our conscience, constantly urging and nagging us to choose what's right and good. By immediate (unconscious) influx God constantly bends our inclinations and moderates our viciousness and selfishness. Gyres not only turn towards God, or away, but they also vary in strength or power or intensity. God moderates the intensity of our counter-gyres and limits their vehemence and destructiveness. In this way people who associate with the hells freely can be persuaded and guided into lesser evils. The hells are actually arranged in depth from weakest to worst and God saves many from ending up in a worse hell. If this moderating force were not exercised by the Divine Love and Wisdom, everyone would instantly cast themselves into the lowest possible hell--such has become the force of our fallen inheritance.

The vortex development within each level is achieved by making the levels recursive. Every level contains within itself a representation of all the other levels. This idea is familiar in biology since every cell of the body contains a copy or representation of the entire gene structure of the entire body. In other words the entire body is replicated by representation in each part of the body or cell. I searched for a name for this principle and have been using the word synecdoche, which the dictionary defines as "a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole  and the whole for a part." In this case it is not a figure of speech but a spiritual and psychobiological reality. All degrees are contained as a representation in every level or degree. This means that as we grow in a single level or degree, we must step through in consciousness, all the levels and degrees. The entire structure is recapitulated in the smallest part of it. The recapitulation accomplishes a different result at each level and appropriate to that level. It cannot be otherwise. This is how the growth of the spiritual fibers takes place. The recursiveness of this system allows for the establishment of the vortex in each clump at every level. The vortex is nothing but the stepping through from degree to degree, hence each degree must be stepped through at each level in order to establish the vortex.

A moral character is created by the self's striving to achieve self-articulated goals that are heavenly. An evil or depraved character is created by the self's striving to achieve self-articulated goals that are hellish. All strivings for goals are either heavenly or hellish--there is no other possibility. such is the human mind because such is the spiritual world or Divine Reality. God's mind is heavenly and everything that departs from it is unreality and hellish, opposed to the heavenly in each fiber and each motion of the fiber as it relates the the rest of the fibers that make up the immortal unique individual mind. The hellish regions of the mind are the hellish regions of the spiritual world. Only those gyres are possible in these regions that are   opposite to the heavenly gyres. Swedenborg has described numerous experiments whereby individuals with hellish gyres were brought into a mental state where the internalizing degrees were--the three heavens. And it always ended very quickly as those individuals at first saw and heard nothing, and developed internal spasmodic motions they described as agony tearing them apart, like an airplane disintegrating under excessive and violent shaking. They thus cast themselves out of the heavenly sphere and revive as soon as they arrive back to their hellish sphere, never again wanting to visit the heavenly sphere.

This explains in scientific rational terms why hell exists and why it is not a punishment due to lack of forgiveness on the part of an unforgiving God. God loves nothing better than to take every individual into the heavenly sphere called eternity and bliss. The mind was constructed for this purpose. But God also acts within a Divine rational order, for only such an order is congruent with God's infinite Love and Wisdom. No other way is possible, no other way is reality. One may wonder why God constructed the human mind in such a way that it has the power to create opposite gyres in the mind. The answer is that without this power given us, we could not be truly human, we could not conjoin ourselves reciprocally to God, and we could not therefore be immortal being living in eternal bliss in heaven. The mechanism that allows us to conjoin reciprocally to God is called the as-of-self or proprium.

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

SS 21. I have been instructed that the men of the Most Ancient Church (the church before the flood) were of a genius so heavenly that they spoke with angels of heaven, and that they were able to speak with them by means of correspondences. From this the state of their wisdom was rendered such that whatever they saw in this world they thought about not only in a natural way, but spiritually also at the same time, so that they thought unitedly with angels. I have been instructed besides that Enoch (of whom mention is made in Genesis 5:21-24) together with his associates, collected correspondences from the lips of those men of the Most Ancient Church, and transmitted the knowledge of them to posterity, and that in consequence of this the science of correspondences was not only known but was also much cultivated in many kingdoms of Asia, especially in the land of Canaan, in Egypt, Assyria, Chaldea, Syria, Arabia, and also in Tyre, Sidon, and Nineveh; and that it was carried over from places on the seacoast there into Greece; but there it was turned into fabulous stories, as is evident from the earliest writers of that country.

SS 22. But when in process of time the representative things of the church, which were correspondences, were converted into things idolatrous and also into magic, then of the Lord's Divine Providence the knowledge of correspondences was gradually blotted out of remembrance, and among the Israelitish and Jewish people was altogether lost and annihilated. The worship of that nation did indeed consist exclusively of correspondences, and was consequently representative of heavenly things; but still they did not know what anything of it signified, for they were utterly natural men, and therefore were neither willing nor able to know anything about spiritual things, nor consequently about correspondences.

SS 26. v. Henceforth the correspondential sense of the Word will be imparted solely to him who from the Lord is in genuine truths. The reason of this is that no one can see the correspondential sense except from the Lord alone, nor unless from Him he is in genuine truths. For the correspondential sense of the Word treats solely of the Lord and His kingdom; and this is the sense in which are His angels in heaven, for it is His Divine truth there. To this sense a man can do violence if he has a knowledge of correspondences, and wishes by means of it and from self-intelligence to investigate the correspondential sense of the Word. For through some correspondences with which he is acquainted he may pervert the meaning of it, and may even force it to confirm what is false, and this would be doing violence to Divine truth, and also to heaven. And therefore if anyone purposes to open that sense from himself and not from the Lord, heaven is closed; and then the man either sees nothing, or else becomes spiritually insane.

 

                      9.1.6    The As-of-self or Proprium

The as-of-self is a good alternative to the usual word "self." It is proven in many ways in the Writings of Swedenborg that the self has no power to act or do anything from  itself because nothing created can act from itself. Only God can act from Himself or only the Divine can act from itself. Therefore all things in the created universe are called "passives" while all things uncreate that exist in God are called "actives." For example, love is an active while the affective organ of the mind is the passive for it. Similarly truth is an active while the cognitive organ of the mind is the passive for it. The self is thus a receptor organ for Divine love and wisdom, just as the eye is a receptor organ for sunlight and the objects it illuminates. 

In order to develop and grow each self we must have strivings in accordance with our loves and interests, and make decisions that are congruent with these. Out of these two acting together flow our actions. This is our life. Human beings are human to the extent that they act from rational choice in accordance with their heavenly goals. In order to keep this process actual we must have the feeling that we have a self from which we act. But since we cannot act from self (as just explained) God must give us the actual appearance that we do. Rationally we can understand this by using the idea of as-of-self.

The as-of-self appearance and feeling is achieved by God through the vertical community. We are hitched to one another in clumps, gyres, and series. The entire human race, past, present, and future, is hitched in this fashion. When we are faced with life we are faced with choices, and humans make choices rationally in accordance with their goals or desired ends. God uses the various elements of the vertical community to keep an individual in moral and intellectual balance. For instance, a particular temptation is provided through the Divine management of circumstances, which necessitates a decision on our part. Now God brings us into communication with spiritual societies from heaven and from hell. There is influx into our spirit or mind so that our thoughts correspond to one side in one moment, and to the other side in another moment, just like a battle or duel that is going on.

Our thoughts and feelings are now activated, in turn from heavenly gyres and hellish gyres. At any instant in this process we can go along with one side or the other. We feel pulled in both directions, and the letting go of resistance in one direction is achieved by turning our mind towards that gyre and entering it, thus eliminating the other gyre. In this way we daily, hourly, and by the minute choose heaven or hell in our minute decisions. The cumulative memory and identity of these numerous decisions coalesces and the as-of-self. It thus grow without any power of itself, and yet it is truly the self. We feel that our self thus cumulated is our own.

If God were to create a heavenly mind without also giving it the as-of-self appearance of being able to be oppositional, then the self would not be our own, would not feel our own, and we would not value life, we would not have any happiness whatsoever. Clearly then hell is necessary so that we can choose heaven as of ourselves.

The following quotation from Swedenborg describes his mission to the world in a conversation he held with angels. These are the last pages Swedenborg wrote before his death in 1772. They are placed at the end of his last Work called The True Christian Religion.

TCR 846. I was once taken up as to my spirit into the angelic heaven and into a society there; and some of the wise ones there came to me and asked, "What news from the earth?"

I answered, "The news is that the Lord has revealed mysteries, which in excellence surpass all the mysteries revealed from the beginning of the church even to the present time."

They asked "What are they?"

I replied, "They are the following:

(i.) That in each thing and in all things in the Word there is a correspondential sense corresponding to the natural sense; that by means of that sense the Word conjoins the men of the church with the Lord, and also associates them with angels; and that the holiness of the Word resides in that sense. [2] (ii.) The Correspondences of which the correspondential sense consists are disclosed."

The angels asked, "Did not the inhabitants of the earth know about correspondences before this?"

I answered, "Nothing whatever; these have been hidden now for thousands of years, that is, since the time of Job; but among those who lived at that time and before it, the knowledge of correspondences was the knowledge of knowledges, from which they had wisdom, because thereby they had knowledge of the spiritual things pertaining to heaven and the church. But because that knowledge was changed into idolatrous ideas, it became, by the Lord's Divine Providence, so obliterated and lost that not the least sign of it remained visible. Nevertheless it is now disclosed by the Lord, in order that a conjunction of the men of the church with the Lord and their affiliation with the angels, may be effected, and this is done by means of the Word, wherein each thing and all things are correspondences."

The angels rejoiced exceedingly that it had pleased the Lord to reveal this great mystery, so deeply hidden for thousands of years; and they said that this was done in order that the Christian church, which is founded on the Word, and which is now at its end, may again revive and draw breath through heaven from the Lord. They asked whether the signification of baptism and of the holy supper, about which such different opinions have heretofore been held, is now disclosed by means of that knowledge.

I replied that it was.

[3] (iii.) I said further that the Lord had at this time made a revelation respecting the life of men after death.

The angels said, "What about the life after death? Does not everyone know that man lives after death?"

I replied, "They know it and they do not know it. They say that man does not live after death, but only his soul, and that this lives as a spirit; and the idea they have of spirit is that it is like wind or ether; and they say that man does not live as a man until after the day of the last judgment, when the corporeal elements which he had left in the world, although eaten up by worms, mice, and fishes, would be collected together again, and again formed into a body, and that in this way men will rise again."

The angels said, "How is this? Does not everyone know that man lives a man after death, with the sole difference that he then lives a substantial man, not a material man, as before, and that the substantial man sees the substantial man, in the same way as the material man sees the material, and that men know no difference except that they are in a more perfect state."

[4] (iv.) The angels asked, "What do they know about our world, and about heaven and hell?"

I answered, "They have known nothing; but at this day the nature of the world in which angels and spirits live, that is, the nature of heaven and of hell, has been disclosed by the Lord; also that angels and spirits are in conjunction with men, besides many wonderful things respecting them."

The angels rejoiced that it had pleased the Lord to disclose such things, so that man might no longer from ignorance be in doubt respecting his immortality.

[5] (v.) I said further, "It has been revealed by the Lord at this time that there is in your world a sun different from that of our world; that the sun of your world is pure love, and the sun of our world pure fire; consequently all that goes forth from your sun, because it is pure love, partakes of life, while all that goes forth from our sun, because it is pure fire, partakes not at all of life; also that this is the nature of the difference between the spiritual and the natural, which difference, hitherto unknown, has also been disclosed. And all this has made clear the source of the light that enlightens the human understanding with wisdom, and of the heat which enkindles the human will with love. [6] (vi.) And still further, it has been disclosed that there are three degrees of life, and consequently three heavens; that the mind of man is divided into those degrees, and that man therefore corresponds to the three heavens."

The angels asked, "Did not men know this before?"

I answered that they knew about the degrees existing between more and less, but nothing about the degrees between the prior and the posterior.

[7] (vii.) The angels asked whether anything further had been revealed.

I said that many other things had; in respect to the Last Judgment; the Lord, as being the God of heaven and earth; God, as being one both in Person and in Essence in whom is a Divine Trinity, and as being the Lord; a New Church to be established by Him; the Doctrine of that church; and the Holiness of the Sacred Scripture; that the Apocalypse had been unfolded; an account had been given of the Inhabitants of the Planets; also an account of the Earths in the Universe; with many other memorable and wonderful matters from the spiritual world, whereby much more pertaining to wisdom had been divulged from heaven.

TCR 847. After this I again talked with the angels, and told them that another matter still had been revealed in the world by the Lord.

They asked what. I said, "Respecting love truly conjugial and its spiritual delights."

The angels said, "Who does not know that the delights of conjugial love surpass those of all other loves? And who cannot see that into some one love all kinds of blessedness, happiness, and delight that it is possible for the Lord to bestow may be gathered together, and that the recipient love of these is true conjugial love, since that love corresponds to the love of the Lord and the church, and is capable of receiving and perceiving a full sense of these joys?"

I replied, that men are ignorant of this, because they have not approached the Lord, and so have not shunned the lusts of the flesh, and therefore could not be regenerated; and love truly conjugial is from the Lord alone, and is given to those who are regenerated by Him; and these are they who are received into the Lord's New Church, which is meant in the Apocalypse by "the New Jerusalem." And to this I added that I doubted whether those in the world at this day are willing to believe that this love is in itself spiritual, and therefore from religion, since they cherish a merely corporeal idea of it; and therefore are willing to believe that since it is in accord with religion, it is spiritual with the spiritual, natural with the natural, and merely carnal with adulterers.

TCR 848. The angels were exceedingly delighted with both of these conversations, but perceiving a sadness in me, they asked, "Why are you sad?"

I said, "Because these mysteries that are now revealed by the Lord, although they surpass in excellence and dignity all the knowledge hitherto divulged, are nevertheless regarded on the earth as of no value."

At this the angels were astonished, and besought the Lord to permit them to look down upon the world; and they looked down, and behold, mere darkness was there. And they were told to write these mysteries on paper and the paper would be let down to the earth, and they would see a strange sight. This was done, and behold, the paper on which these mysteries were written being let down from heaven, in its progress while it was still in the spiritual world shone like a star, but when it reached the natural world its light waned, and as it fell was darkened. And when it was let down by the angels into assemblies of learned and accomplished clergy and laymen a murmur of many voices was heard, in which were the words, "What is this? Is it anything? What matters it whether we know these things or not? Are they not mere progeny of the brain?" And the appearance was that some of them took the paper and folded it up and rolled and unrolled it with their fingers, and that others tore it to pieces and wished to trample it under foot. But they were withheld by the Lord from such an outrage, and the angels were directed to withdraw the paper and guard it. And because the angels were thereby saddened, and thought "How long shall this be?" it was said:

For a time, and times, and half a time (Apoc. 12:14).

TCR 849. After this I heard a hostile murmur from the lower regions, and with it these words, "Work miracles and we will believe."

I answered, "Are not these things miracles?"

They replied, "They are not."

I asked, "What then, are miracles?"

They said, "Show and reveal future events, and we will have faith."

But I said, "Such things are not granted by the Lord, because so far as a man knows what is to come his reason and understanding, with his prudence and wisdom sink into inertness and become torpid and collapse."

Again I asked, "What other miracles shall I work."

Then arose the cry, "Such as Moses wrought in Egypt."

And I replied, "Perhaps you would harden your hearts thereat, like Pharaoh and the Egyptians."

The answer was "No."

Again I said, "Assure me that you will not dance about a golden calf and worship it, as the posterity of Jacob did a single month after they had seen all Mount Sinai burning, and had heard Jehovah Himself speaking out of the fire, thus after the greatest of all miracles. ("A golden calf" means in the correspondential sense the pleasures of the flesh.)

An answer came from the lower regions, "We will not be like the posterity of Jacob."

At that moment I heard it said to them from heaven, "If you believe not Moses and the Prophets, that is, the Word of the Lord, you will not believe on account of miracles, any more than the posterity of Jacob did in the desert, or any more than they believed when with their own eyes they saw the miracles wrought by the Lord Himself when He was in the world."

TCR 850. After this I saw some persons ascending from the lower regions, from which these things had been heard; and addressing me in a grave tone, they said, "How is it that your Lord revealed the mysteries that you have just enumerated in a long series, to you who are a layman, and not to some one of the clergy?"

To this I replied, "Such was the good pleasure of the Lord, who prepared me for this office from my early youth. Nevertheless, I will ask you a question in return; Why did the Lord, when in the world, choose fishermen for His disciples, instead of some of the lawyers, scribes, priests, or rabbis? Discuss this question among yourselves, draw your conclusions from judgment, and you will discover the reason."

When they heard this, a murmur arose among them, and then they became silent.

In the following quotation Swedenborg describes how he found his Writings in the spiritual world where they were shining with light from the holy things that were in it and protected by a cherub. The inscription NUNC LICET was inscribed on the wall of the temple where it was laid open. This Latin phrase means "It is now permitted" and the full inscription given below, says that it is now permitted to enter rationally into the former mysteries of Sacred Scripture. This means that as we enter the internalizing celestial degree of our mind called "the Church of the New Jerusalem" (see matrix2 above) the former mysteries of the Divine are laid open to the internalizing rational of our consciousness. The mysteries are now scientifics laid down in the Third Testament (or the Writings of Swedenborg). This is then the beginning of theistic psychology.

TCR 508. The sixth experience.

One day a magnificent church building appeared to me; it was square in plan with a roof like a crown, with arches above and a raised parapet running around. Its walls were all windows made of crystal, its door of a pearly substance. Inside on the south side towards the west there was a platform, on which the open Word lay at the right surrounded by a blaze of light, so bright as to spread round and light up the whole platform. In the middle of the church was a shrine with a curtain in front of it; but this was now raised and there stood a golden cherub with a sword which he brandished in all directions in his hand.

[2] When I caught sight of all this, as I meditated, the meaning of each of the details came flooding into my mind. The church meant the new church; the door of a pearly substance, entry into it; the windows of crystal the truths which enlighten it; the platform the priesthood and their preaching; the Word on it, open and lighting up the top of the platform, the revelation of its internal, or spiritual, sense; the shrine in the middle of the church the link of that church with the heaven of angels; the golden cherub there the Word in its literal sense; the sword brandished in his hand meant that this sense can be twisted in different ways, so long as it is made to refer to some truth. The lifting of the curtain in front of the cherub meant that now the Word was laid open.

[3] Later, when I got closer, I saw there was an inscription over the door: NOW IT IS PERMITTED. This meant that now it is permitted to enter with the understanding into the mysteries of faith. Seeing this inscription led me to think that it is extremely dangerous to enter with the understanding into the dogmas of faith which have been put together out of one's own intelligence and the falsities it produces, and even more so to seek to support them by quoting the Word. This has the effect of shutting off the understanding at the top and little by little also at the bottom, to such an extent that theology is not only disliked but actually wiped out, like the writing on a paper being destroyed by book-worms, or the wool of a piece of cloth by grubs. His understanding then concerns itself only with political affairs which affect his life in the country where he lives, and with civil affairs relating to his official duties, and with domestic affairs of his household; and in all of these he constantly embraces nature, being led by the enticement of its pleasures to love it, as an idolater does the golden image in his lap.

[4] Now since the dogmas of present-day Christian churches are put together not from the Word, but from people's own intelligence and the false ideas that come from that, and also by means of some ideas supported from the Word, for this reason the Lord's Divine providence has seen to it that among Roman Catholics the Word has been taken away from laymen, while among Protestants it remains open, though shut off by their frequent saying that the understanding must be kept in obedience to their faith.

[5] But in the new church the opposite happens; here it is permitted with the understanding to approach and penetrate all its secrets, and also to support them from the Word. The reason is that its doctrines are a series of truths revealed by the Lord through the Word; and proving them by rational argument causes the understanding to be opened up above more and more. This lifts it into the light enjoyed by the angels of heaven; and that light is in essence truth, and it makes the acknowledgment of the Lord as the God of heaven and earth shine out in all its glory. This is what the inscription 'NOW IT IS PERMITTED' over the door means; and the removal of the curtain of the shrine in front of the cherub has the same meaning. It is a rule in the new church that falsities shut off the understanding, and truths open it up.

[6] After this I saw what looked like a child overhead, holding a paper in his hand. As he approached me, he grew in size until he was a man of average height. He was an angel from the third heaven; all there look at a distance like children. When he reached me, he held the paper out to me. But since it was written in the rounded script customary in that heaven, I gave it back and asked them to expound the meaning of what was written on it in words I could comprehend in my thinking.

'What is written here,' he replied, 'is: FROM NOW ON ENTER INTO THE MYSTERIES OF THE WORD WHICH HAVE SO FAR BEEN HIDDEN: FOR EACH ONE OF ITS TRUTHS IS A MIRROR IN WHICH WE SEE THE LORD.'

 

9.1.7     The Phases of Consciousness in Theistic Psychology

Since the development of consciousness is recursive (see above) the sequence of degrees must be stepped through in our growth for each phase or degree. For theistic psychology and the New Church, this notion may be illustrated by the depth of internalizing understanding of doctrine as one proceeds with development.

The infancy or beginning phase of theistic psychology and the New Church begins when as adults we confirm the idea in our mind that the Writings of Swedenborg are a Divine revelation not given to the human race before. Those who are born into the New Church or are introduced into that religion in childhood, have not yet reached this state of the externalizing celestial degree of the mind with regard to their religion. When we are mature adults we need to re-confirm our childhood religion as adults, that is, thinking from our own self and not just obeying our parental beliefs. When as adults we confirm in our mind that the Writings are a Divine revelation unlike any before that given to the human race, then for the first time, we enter into the externalizing celestial consciousness. This is a sensual consciousness based on the literal of the Writings. In this state we feel happy that we have been privileged to perceive a new Divine revelation. We even feel superior to those who have not yet acknowledged this new revelation for humankind. At the same time we feel that the study of the Writings is a hardship; we find them arcane and difficult and foreign to our everyday culture. Sometimes we complain about it. We search for easier and "more modern" translations of the original Latin. We also hold on to other authors and books as being "inspired" and we feel we need these ties to those who have been seekers of truth and had a brilliant genius. We see contradictions and "errors" that we attribute to Swedenborg's culture and times and some things are necessarily outdated and not fully modern. (See Christen Blom-Dahl's list of Swedenborg's so-called "intellection failure".)

We then evolve into the second phase of childhood when as adults we become fully convinced that the Writings are not only a new inspired revelation, but the are actually Sacred Scripture from God. This is an externalizing spiritual state of consciousness and is also sensuous. In this phase we believe that the Writings are a rational revelation and their meaning is the internal sense of the Old and New Testaments. As we read the literal text of the Writings our focus remains on the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture of the Bible. These are considered Sacred Scripture in greater measure than the Writings. The Writings take their strength and power from being an explanation of the internal sense of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture. In this state we do not fully recognize that the Writings are fully Sacred Scripture in the same sense as the New Testament Sacred Scripture and Old Testament Sacred Scripture are fully Sacred Scripture. When reading the literal of the Writings and see the expression "the Word" our mind flips instantly to the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and the New Testament Sacred Scripture rather than the Writings.

In the third phase of adolescence we are focused on understanding the Writings as Doctrine. We identify the literal of the Writings with Doctrine--calling them the Heavenly Doctrines--though we recognize that our understanding of the Doctrine needs to be deepened ever more as we go through life and practice our religion. This is an externalizing natural state in which we have a sensuous consciousness. We rely entirely on ourselves, on our own intelligence, to deepen our understanding of the Doctrines. We rely on the study of others to give us lectures, sermons, and summaries in our attempt to grapple with the Doctrines and make them our own understanding. Our life doesn't change much except for our striving to live our religion honestly and with integrity.

Quoting from De Hemelsche Leer Third Fascicle pp. 144 by Rev. THEODORE PITCAIRN.

"The review of DE HEMELSCHE LEER that appeared in the January [1931] issue of NEW CHURCH LIFE is of such a nature, that it is hard to believe that the writer read DE HEMELSCHE LEER with care, or reflected on what he read. In any case the essence of DE HEMELSCHE LEER is passed over as if it did not exist.

It is surprising that the GENERAL CHURCH does not as yet see that the opening of the Writings takes place by means of the opening of the discrete degrees of the mind of the Church, and not by what is called the normal working of the human mind, or the rational method. That CONVENTION or CONFERENCE should not see this would not be surprising, for they are unaware of any discrete degree in the understanding of the Writings. But it should be evident to the members of the GENERAL CHURCH that the understanding of the Writings by one who sees them as the Lord Himself in His Second Coming, differs by a discrete degree from the understanding of those who look upon them as the works of Swedenborg. That the latter vision is granted to the Church by the opening of a more internalizing degree of the mind and not by what is called .the normal process of man's thinking, may be seen from this, that a man in CONFERENCE or CONVENTION might be very learned in the Writings, might have studied them much and thought about what he read, and still not have his eyes opened to see their Divinity; while on the other hand a simple man who has not been able to study the Writings, may still clearly see them as the Lord in His Second Coming. The simple man who has had his eyes opened is evidently in a more internalizing degree of understanding than the learned man whose eyes have remained closed.

As the man of the GENERAL CHURCH can see this discrete degree in the understanding of the Writings, he should be able from Doctrine to acknowledge that there are other discrete degrees still to be opened."

Then there is an inversion.

Before this inversion we remain in the state represented by the First Coming of the Lord in the New Church; after the inversion we advance to the internalizing states represented by the Second Coming of the Lord in the New Church. Before the inversion the idea that the Writings have an internal sense is rejected, as shown by a negative review of De Hemelsche Leer proposals:

Quoting from De Hemelsche Leer Third Fascicle pp. 136

"But to New Churchmen whose comfort it has been to feel that this surpassing Revelation has disclosed the correspondential sense, and ended the age of mystery and uncertainty, there comes a decided disturbance of mind when it is suggested that the Writings are, perhaps, only another sealed Letter, whose treasury of hidden truths has to be drawn out by some special process, or translated into spiritual doctrine by specially enlightened prophets yet to come!"

But after the inversion, we see confirmation of the inner sense, as shown by this contributor to De Hemelsche Leer:

Quoting from De Hemelsche Leer Third Fascicle pp. 130-132 by N. J. VELLENGA

"THESES: (based on TCR 226 to 233)

1. The Writings are the Word.

2.The Word without Doctrine is unintelligible.

3. The Word, in its literal sense, consists of pure correspondences.

4.Spiritual and celestial things lie hidden in that letter.

5.The letter serves as a basis, and spiritual things are confirmed therein.

6.Divine truths in the letter are rarely found uncovered.

7.Divine truths are clothed in appearances of truth.

8.These appearances are accommodated to the apprehension of the simple.

9. Some things appear to be contradictory.

10.There is not a single contradiction in the Word, seen in spiritual light.

11.Such being the nature of the Word in the literal sense, it is very evident that without Doctrine the Word cannot possibly be understood.

12. The Word by means of Doctrine does not only become intelligible, but also clear and enlightening the understanding.

13. Doctrine reconciles apparent contradictions.

14.All Christian churches have a Doctrine.

15. Only true Doctrine gives a true interpretation of the Word.

16. This true Doctrine is like a lamp in the darkness.

17. Those who read the Word without Doctrine are in darkness concerning all truth.

18. They easily fall into heresies.

19. The Word is to them like a candlestick without light.

20. Doctrine alone could give them light.

21. The danger is that the Word without Doctrine only favors the love of self and self-intelligence.

22. Doctrine must be drawn from the literal sense, and be confirmed by it.

23. The letter is and remains the basis or the foundation of Doctrine.

24. The significance of Doctrine is that it arranges the truths of the Word in order, so that they are seen in mutual connection.

25. Doctrine is not acquired by means of the correspondential sense of the Word, which is given by the science of correspondences.

26. By this, Doctrine is only illustrated and corroborated.

27. Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone, namely to those who love the truths because they are truths, and apply them to the use of life.

28. With others, there is no enlightenment in the Word.

29. The Word is from the Lord, thus also enlightenment from it, and thus Doctrine also.

30. The man who opens himself for influx by a life according to that Doctrine, acknowledges the truth from an internalizing perception, afterwards he sees that truth in his thought, and this as often as he is in the affection of truth for the sake of truth; for out of affection is perception, out of perception is thought, and thus arises acknowledgment, which is called faith.

31. The contrary is the case with those who read the word and confirm it by their doctrine with a view to their own glory and worldly interests.

32. The study of the Word should be done from the affection of knowing truth because it is true and leads to the good of life.

All these theses result immediately. from the basic thesis, that the Writings are the Word."

Sensual consciousness in the externalizing natural state is the lowest of the orderly states of spiritual progression and it is only in this state of full vastation and consummation that it is possible for the Lord to come to us. For the Lord's Coming is a sensual coming directly perceived. The consummation is necessary in order to make visible the falsities and evils of that level. By rejecting these falsities and evils we are transferred to the next highest degree of consciousness, and the process restarts. In historical terms there was only one Incarnation and Resurrection where God "came to His people" in a natural and physical presence on this earth about two thousand years ago. This physical reappearance cannot take place again, yet a sensual presence of the Lord in the literal of Sacred Scripture is possible and necessary ("God was the Word and the Word was made Flesh"). The expression "eating the flesh and drinking the blood" refers to this coming of God to each individual when the age of development is consummated and another degree of the mind is opened. Eating and drinking refer to what we must do in our mind or spirit, that is, appropriating to ourselves the new and higher goods and trues given to us in the infancy phase of the next highest degree of development. Now we can receive higher trues and insights than before which will in time decline and be consummated in preparation for the next coming of God to us. This coming is not in physical presence but in spiritual presence, or a coming to our mind or spirit. This spiritual coming cannot take place except in and through Sacred Scripture, that is, in and through the trues and goods we appropriate to our life as we read and are guided by Sacred Scripture.

The fourth phase of our development (young adulthood) is the opening of the internalizing natural. This for the first time, gives us access to a rational consciousness of the Writings. In this new phase of the internalizing natural, or natural spiritual, we immediately recognize the Writings as fully Sacred Scripture, having an externalizing literal in which is hidden the spiritual and celestial meanings, just like the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture. Now for the first time we love to call the Writings The Third Testament (or the Last Testament). We have elevated the Writings to be fully Sacred Scripture, equal to the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture. We perceive clearly that we must not get "stuck" in the literal of the Writings, and become conscious of the dangers of doing that. The literal of the Writings Sacred Scripture, like the literal of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture, are mere appearances of Divine truths and people can easily confirm by it anything they please, leading to heresies as abundant and false as there are in the religions based on the Bible. Now for the first time we realize that everything the Writings say about the Word, or Sacred Scripture, applies equally to the Writings. When we read the expression "the Word" our mind no longer flips to the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture, but to the Writings Sacred Scripture. Now we fully realize that everything said in the Work called Sacred Scripture (SS) and other books of the Writings, apply to the Writings themselves. We are in love with the idea that the Word for the New Church is the Writings Sacred Scripture, even more than the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture which were given in previous dispensations for the human race. From now on the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture will be secondary, while the Writings Sacred Scripture is primary, even though the Threefold Word is one, united, and inexorably linked and interdependent.

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AC 97 He who does not know the arcana of Heaven. . . . supposes that the Word in the letter or the literal sense of the Word, is the Doctrine itself. . . . But the Doctrine must be collected out. of the Word, and while it is being collected, the man must be in enlightenment from the Lord" (n. 9424). The great significance of the difference between the Word of tile New Church, that is, the Latin Word, and the Doctrine of the New Church out of that Word, here clearly appears. If man is not open to the acknowledgement of this difference, the arcana of Heaven will not be accessible to him. The Word is given to the Church as the infinite and inexhaustible source of all truth, but its Doctrine, the Church as of itself must bring forth from the Word by the orderly means. The Doctrine is entirely such as the Church is; the purer the Church, the more internalizing its Doctrine, and also the reverse, the more internalizing the Doctrine the purer the Church. We read in the APOCALYPSE REVEALED: "Who does not know that the Church is not Church without Doctrine.

We reach the adulthood phase of development in theistic psychology,  when we fully perceive that the Doctrine of the Church is not the literal of the Writings but must be extracted in an orderly way by means of correspondences applied to one's life. This is an internalizing spiritual state of consciousness--for the first time internalizing rational and truly human. The literal understanding of the Writings is mere scientifics. Anyone in any stage of development, within or without the New Church, can be a scholar of the Writings, even recognized as an expert. But not a single element of the Doctrine of the Church can thus be understood. This is because the Doctrine of the Church is spiritual and is revealed by the Lord directly and immediately while we read the Writings. Even if we write down the Doctrine as we perceive it, that language is in the natural, and even if others can read and teach that Doctrine as laid down in natural language, nothing of it will be understood unless it is directly, immediately, and personally revealed by the Lord. Now for the first time we have a true internalizing relation with God. The Lord must speak to us in the words of the Writings and point to their referents or meanings. These referents or meanings are nothing elements of our daily lives as we proceed with our regeneration. Now we fully realize and perceive that Doctrine is spiritual and incomprehensible without the referents in our lives. The Writings are about regeneration and we need to perceive Doctrine in it referring to the steps of our regeneration. Our ability to understand the elements of Doctrine from the Writings Sacred Scripture is proportional to our progress in regeneration. Thus the Doctrine of the Church is an individual and personal revelation from the Lord based on the particulars of our life.

At last we come into the state of old age of our spiritual development, which is an internalizing celestial state. Now we can perceive that the Doctrine of the Church is the inner sense of the Writings. (See also this related article on the phases of religious development.) The same steps that needed to be taken and transcended when going from the Old Christian Church to the New (see matrix2 above) must be made when going from the sensual consciousness of the New Church, to the rational consciousness of the New Church.  Here is a contributor to De Hemelsche Leer:

Quoting from  De Hemelsche Leer Third Fascicle pp. 134-135 by J. P. VERSTRAATE

"It is the Doctrine of the Church which shows that all that has been said in the Latin Testament concerning the state of the old church, Roman Catholics and Protestants, etc., in the internal sense gives a description of the evils and falsities which are present in the New Church and now continually form a menace to the life and the development of the Church. Lately it has been pointed out repeatedly that the literal sense by itself can be of no use to our Church, for the old church is dead and no longer counts before the Lord. The literal sense in the New Church has significance only if in reality the things are applied to itself, and if every member is conscious that these evils and falsities are present in him also. In this application to himself, man can never be severe enough, and he can never think too seriously of the danger with which he himself, and also the Church, are threatened."

Quoting from De Hemelsche Leer Third Fascicle pp. 141 by H. D. G. GROENEVELD

"The New Church therefore ever more and more, and this to eternity, is essentially a Church by its Doctrine. But its Doctrine is genuine only if it is received out of the Third Testament from the Lord, and consequently if it is of the Lord alone and thus Divine. (...)

The Doctrine of the Church is the Doctrine such as it has been accommodated by the Lord to Angels and men of the Church. It is therefore different for the Angels according as they are Angels of the Third Heaven, of the Second Heaven, or of the First Heaven. and different for the Church according to the state of the Church."

The Doctrine of the Church revealed to our celestial rational consciousness is therefore Divine, the Holy Spirit with us.

9.1.8    The Birth of the Rational--The Beginning of Being Human

We begin the recursive sequence of development with the Descending Pathway, during which all truth or reality has a representative sensual consciousness. The three discrete phases of the natural, the spiritual, and the celestial are represented in the natural. The natural itself has three levels or layers: the corporeal (which is the lowest natural), the sensuous, and the natural proper which is the externalizing rational. Animals also have a corporeal consciousness, but they do not have a natural rational or externalizing rational. Thus in the descending pathway our awareness of reality is partly animal. Even with the upper range of the natural, the externalizing rational, which animals do not possess, we are not fully human because the externalizing rational is based entirely on the corporeal and sensuous representations of reality, and these are nothing but appearances of truth or reality. Thus our externalizing rational mind can only be aware of appearances of truth, not real truth.

Then we begin the Ascending Pathway as we cross the inversion point (see matrices above). Now we enter the internalizing of the human mind, which is the true human mind. This is because we are created spirits to live an immortal life in the spiritual world, and our physical body is a temporary condition. In the spiritual world as we move about and live our life in the spirit body our mind is conscious only of spiritual influx from that world. The appearances around us in the spiritual world are natural spiritual appearances. The mountains, the animals, the houses, the clothes, the food are all natural looking objects but of spiritual origin. They are made of spiritual substances, not natural. They are instantiated by God through the Laws of Correspondence so that what appears around us, or outside our consciousness, instantly appears and disappears, in accordance with our thoughts and feelings. Similarly with spaces, distances and time. And so while we are still in the physical body the development of our internalizing consciousness must be based on spiritual influx into the mind, not natural.

Spiritual influx for the development of our internalizing consciousness must therefore be rational, not physical. Whether you say rational or spiritual, it is the same, as long as you mean internalizing rational, not externalizing. The spiritual world is an internalizing world and is "located" "within" the natural world. For our spirit body to develop we must develop our internalizing rational consciousness, and this takes place within our natural mind, or above it. Whether you say within or above is the same. Our relation to God determines our state of life and as we develop internalizing consciousness we move closer and closer to God through closer and closer conjunction with God. God is Spirit and therefore internalizing rational, that is, Divine Rational. God is therefore Divine Human since whether you say Rational or Human it is the same.

During the Descending Pathway development of the human race (see matrix2), relation to God was possible only by representation, and so the three main Churches in that evolution of the race--Adamic, Noachic, and Israelitish, were representative Churches or religions. Conjunction with God was not possible directly but only indirectly through the mediation of angels. When God appeared to those people He did so by occupying the spirit body of an angel. After the Incarnation, an inversion took place and the subsequent Churches were true religions based on internalizing rational consciousness. Now God could appear directly in His Own Glorified Body, which was the Divine Natural. During the interim period while God was in the physical world---see matrix2), He was reluctant to perform Divine miracles, more than a few that are recorded in the New Testament Sacred Scripture, and only with those who already believed in Him as the Son of God. The reason for this is very important to understand. It is the same reason why no conscious demonstration miracles have been allowed after the Lord's departure from the physical world at Ascension.

Miracles are persuasive to the sensual consciousness. One's spiritual freedom is eliminated when one witnesses a Divine miracle. In the earlier Churches miracles were allowed because there was no opening of the internalizing rational consciousness in the human race. For instance, in the Adamic Church, miracles were routine such as direct dialog with angels of heaven and warning in advance of the individual's day of passing on--thus without "dying" as we know it today. In the Noachic Church, miracles were allowed in the direct witnessing of the laws and power of correspondences. In the Israelitish Church, miracles were allowed as recorded in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture. During the inversion period after the Incarnation, miracles performed directly by the Lord were allowed for a brief period during the three years preceding the Ascension. At that time the New Testament Sacred Scripture records the Lord's warnings to His disciples that only a wicked generation demands miracles and that it is convenient for them that He depart from this world that they may gain true spiritual freedom through the Holy Spirit which He will send and which speaks only of Him and from Him. This is because the Holy Spirit relationship to God is an internalizing relationship.

Had the the Lord not departed from this World the human race would have not been able to evolve an internalizing consciousness but would have been stuck in sensual consciousness. God Himself in a Divine Natural (physical) body would have reigned as an earthly King capable of performing miracles, but not capable of conjunction with the actual human race. For the true human consciousness starts in the internalizing rational and He had to remove His sensual presence in order that He may come to us in the internalizing rational consciousness as the Holy Spirit.

This being the character of the internalizing rational it is important to understand that the literal of Sacred Scripture, which is Holy and Divine, only affords us with a sensual conjunction with God and this is not a true conjunction but more like and an adjoining. It is only an appearance or representative truth, not a a reality. As we recursively step through the Zones of consciousness we recapitulate these steps of the Churches in historical evolution. At first, in our Descending Pathway from infancy, through childhood, through adolescence (Zones 1 through 9), our relation to Sacred Scripture is by sensual consciousness as we study and reflect upon the literal of Sacred Scripture. The First Coming of the Lord to us is through the mediation of the Celestial angels when we become convinced that Sacred Scripture is Divine. Then, as we become conscious of Sacred Scripture as God Himself we are in connection with the Spiritual angels, then as we enter the adolescent phase of our relation to God, we are with the Natural angels and begin to develop Doctrine from Sacred Scripture, but only as natural sensual representations. This Doctrine is not yet true Doctrine for it is based on our own self-intelligence of the literal of the word, and is thus externalizing rational, not yet internalizing and spiritual. Even if we apply the laws of correspondence, the result is still sensual, not spiritual, and we can only see Divine truths in appearance, not reality.

With the inversion, we enter for the first time into the internalizing degrees of the rational and begin to perceive natural rational truth. This is the Second Coming of the Lord to us. We begin to see that the literal of Sacred Scripture is not yet spiritual even if the Divine is within it (see matrix3). As we advance to spiritual adulthood, we are opened in the mind to the internalizing spiritual degree and begin to perceive spiritual rational truth. This is the true mature human consciousness. Now as we read the literal of Sacred Scripture the internalizing spiritual truths are perceived as a direct revelation from the Lord and this becomes our true Doctrine of the Church. At last, in the age of innocence of the wisdom of old age, we reach the pinnacle of human consciousness in connection with the highest angels in the third Celestial Heaven. In this state we perceive celestial rational truths as our Doctrine when we read Sacred Scripture. At last we are fully in the internalizing or correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture, thus in full reciprocal conjunction with the Divine Human.

The development of a rational consciousness has not been understood before. Influential psychologists in the twentieth century like Carl Gustav Jung have advanced the notion that rational is opposite to or independent of the intuitive mode of thinking which was associated with mysticism, religion, and spirituality. But this idea was based on incomplete knowledge of the spiritual world. For instance, Jung, Gurdijef, Ouspensky and other influential psychologists and theologians were not aware of and never stated the most basic and simplest of all facts about spirituality, namely, that the spirit is the mind and the mind lives in the spiritual world. They were unaware and unconscious of the spiritual world, as no one except Swedenborg was empowered by God to report on his dual citizenship for 27 years. Swedenborg states that this is the greatest miracle performed by God since the beginning of creation. This greatest of miracles is the Second Coming of the Lord in His Divine Rational in the Writings of Swedenborg as the Third or Last Testament. Now that the Threefold Word--the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, New Testament Sacred Scripture, and Writings Sacred Scripture, has been completed, God's creation is complete. The evolutionary changes have been brought about for the opening of the internalizing rational consciousness of the human race--past, present, and future. This is a state of mind that renders us fully human. Now anyone anywhere in the universe has the ability to receive celestial rational truths to the extent that the individual is willing to proceed all the way in regeneration.

The orderly process of regeneration is the principal theme of the Threefold Word. By reading and studying the literal statements of the Writings of Swedenborg we put ourselves into communication with the Lord's Divine Rational to the extent that our motive is to know Divine truths for the sake of being guided to shun evils as sins against the Lord. We are born with innumerable inherited sins and we quickly add to the heap as we unfold in development from infancy to adolescence and beyond. Sins are character faults that we are tempted to act upon, follow, and cherish as so many false gods. If we give in, our character, which is our spirit, grows increasingly in counter-gyres by which we are inexorably tied to the hells with which we communicate as a vertical community (discussed above). No heavenly life in eternity is possible except through victory over temptations given us by the Lord in a careful and precise series. First natural temptations that strengthen our moral character. Then spiritual temptations that clear our mind from false beliefs and religions. Finally celestial temptations by which we are able to acquire the Lord's character of goodness whenever we give ourselves no credit but all the credit to the Lord. Then we are angels or true human beings. Regeneration then goes on to eternity because our humanness is infinite when based on God's Divine Humanity.

The development of internalizing consciousness empowers us with true spiritual freedom. Until then we do not have real freedom but rely on persuasion and mysticism in our belief systems. Any religion or spirituality that is based on sensual contact or communication does not allow the development of internalizing consciousness. The sensual can confirm the spiritual that is obtained through the rational, but the spiritual must not be based on the sensual but only on the internalizing rational. However it is necessary to start with the sensual and proceed in orderly series of steps to the rational. The sensual is based on the physical world and we are born sensual that we may develop and grow in this world. But when we enter the young adulthood stage we must suffer ourselves to be inverted so that the basis of our thought is no longer the natural world but the spiritual world. And there is only one source given us for conscious communication with the spiritual world, and that is Sacred Scripture. People are brought to Sacred Scripture through religion and all religions have a Word or else, Doctrine based on Sacred Scripture. We are also brought into communication with God through our concepts about Him and our behavior towards Him. These concepts are also based on Sacred Scripture as is our ritualized behavior towards Him. These rituals of worship are more important in the sensual consciousness phase. Later we acquire internalizing worship that is rational and particular.

The following diagram (matrix 3b) shows the Descending and Ascending Pathway of human spiritual development in relation to the threefold self:

The above diagram (matrix 3b) shows the dynamic events that occur during the descending and ascending pathways of spiritual development. The threefold self is the mind's three organs called the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. In the state of infancy there is a celestial sensual consciousness given through our association with celestial angels of the third or highest heaven. The focus of this influence is affective, and from this are the cognitive and sensorimotor events. As this phase is consummated, the focus shifts to the cognitive in the childhood phase for that level. This sensual consciousness is an externalizing spiritual state in association with the spiritual angels of the second heaven and the affective and sensorimotor events are from this cognitive focus. In the adolescence phase of the descending pathway the sensual consciousness is produced in association with the natural angels of the first heaven and its focus is on the sensorimotor. From this focus are derived then the affective and cognitive events that take place in this phase.

Inversion then occurs at the consummation of the externalizing natural phase of sensuous consciousness (adolescence). Then starts the ascending pathway, with a focus on the sensorimotor but from a rational consciousness this time (young adulthood). When this phase is consummated we are brought into association with the spiritual angels again as the focus shifts to the cognitive again, but this time from the internalizing rational (adulthood). At last when this phase is consummated we are brought back into association with the celestial angels with a focus on the affective, but in the internalizing celestial degree. This is our homecoming. Through this recursive process of spiritual growth each succeeding sub-phase brings us into new truths, goods, and perceptions, and as these decline over time and are consummated, new trues, goods, and perceptions are made available that allow deeper and deeper temptations, until we reach the internalizing celestial state (old age) and then we continue evolving on a daily basis to eternity without ever being consummated again. We are then in pure uninterrupted bliss to eternity marked by ever new perceptions on a daily basis, bringing us ever into closer conjunction with the Divine, endlessly.

From De Hemelsche Leer Fascicle IV page 22 by Ernest Pfeiffer:

"The next state of the New Church, which corresponds to the Christian period and to the age of manhood, brings the development of the Doctrine of the Church. This state is to be compared with the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, which indeed characterizes the Christian Church. Just as the Lord had to leave the 'earth, if this pouring out were to become possible, so the Church must leave the letter of the Third Testament in the realization that within the letter by way of correspondence all the infinite particulars of the proper, abstract, spiritual truth lie hidden. The leading principle determining the Church's attitude in this state is the thesis that the DOCTRINE CONCERNING THE SACRED SCRIPTURE must also be applied to the Third Testament, and it is then seen that the up building of the Church is possible only through the Doctrine of the Church. The letter by itself brings to man only the generals of truth. The letter in itself is of such a nature, purely Divine and infinite, that from it into eternity ever new particulars of truth may be drawn. This drawing of the particulars of genuine spiritual truth is the task of the New Church in this state. The proper essence thereof lies in the masculine which has entered upon the combat with the natural in a more internalizing, the second, degree, and which thereby is in the genuine spiritual rational, which sees the genuine correspondential sense of the Word. The New Church in this state is for the first time a genuine spiritual Church."

             9.1.9   The Doctrine of the Church and Theistic Psychology

Theistic psychology is the methodological extraction of knowledge from revelation or the literal of Sacred Scripture. The diagram above (matrix4), portrays the relationship between the Doctrine of the Church, as demonstrated in De Hemelsche Leer, and science as demonstrated in Christen Blom-Dahl's work. The Descending Pathway of extraction (see matrix2 and matrix3 discussed above), involves taking up concepts and phenomena described by Swedenborg in the spiritual world and using orderly principles of extraction, formulating medical, biological, physical, chemical, etc., hypotheses that can be tested by scientific research. Blom-Dahl has made several such extractions and was able to confirm them by already established medical research in relation to the phenomena he extracted. When this method reaches a more advanced development, predictions will be possible that will serve to guide scientific research for new discoveries or confirmations. The Writings of Swedenborg are filled with thousands of names, places, and numbers, even maps of the spiritual world and a detailed description of the relative placement of inhabitations by various ethnic groups and religions. Extracting scientific facts and principles from these descriptions is now a definite possibility--see the entry on spiritual geography and its relation to cross-cultural and social psychology. Others who are aware of this possibility may be mentioned such as the work of physicist Ian Thompson, and this New Church college professor:

"I have been working on a little thing about chemistry and how metals are truth givers, and non-metals truth receivers, and how chemistry illustrates the wonderful truth that "All creation is in an image of good and truth and their conjunction."

Just tonight, in grading my students Electronics tests, as I looked over their answers to the extra credit question about relating electro-magnetism and coils and capacitors to good and truth, I was amazed at the parallels. Yes indeed Revelation reveals scientifics, for without revelation nothing can be revealed. Sure we can learn the facts, but without the Bible Darwin would not have even known about the sequence of creation and the concept of higher and lower animals. In fact the word evolution itself means to "unfold", to unfold the human form to which all nature strives." AH in an email message 3-11-2001

Quoting from one of my email messages may also be informative in this connection:

... And further: What is the object in your dream made of? The chair you're sitting on? The clothes people are wearing in your dream? Can you not instantly create those substances? Etc. Etc.

For cyberspace, in my Cyberpsychology course, I say to my students: What is cyberspace made of and where is it? No, it's not the hardware, or the telephone lines connecting the networked computers, no it's not the chip or its electromagnetic state and properties. So where is cyberspace? Does it have a size? Does it have a shape? How do you have a presence there? The laws of cyberspace and the laws of the spiritual world are correspondential (using Swedenborg). I prefer spiritual world to "spirituality" because it's concrete, that is, substantial, while spirituality is so abstract that people can hide under its rubric just about anything, including its opposite (corporeality, cf. Swedenborg). A fascinating piece of data: Swedenborg was allowed to interview some of those who lived in their mental states called "the hells" and these pitiful people (or "spirits" -- cf. Swedenborg) insisted that they were still on earth in their physical bodies, and they denied the existence of the spiritual world. I've seen similar delusional discussions by those who thought they were talking about "spirituality."

Also notice this: Much much verbal discourse is being created everywhere about "spirituality" but almost none about the spiritual world. Would you care to explain this?

I agree with you that cyberspace development can be understood usefully in terms of the laws of the spiritual world. One example I give my students: in the spiritual world co-presence occurs when mental states match in affective states (intentions, feelings, moods, values). When this affective similarity exists between two people, they are co-present and need only have the desire to talk in order to see one another. As soon as they fall into dissimilar affective states (disagreement, hatred), they instantly vanish from each other presence.

In cyberspace, co-presence (surfing the Web, hits, traffic, connected, busy signal, links, hypertext, search engines, reference, cookie, etc.) is also possible only through affective similarity between the user's affective state (interest, need, motive, value) and the site content (information, interactivity, networking). An instance of this law may be seen in Newsgroups. First that there are so many (15,000) and second, that they are each topic defined. "Topic" in the spiritual world defines the co-presence maps (also known as spiritual geography, cf.Swedenborg). In my view cyberspace development or evolution will not take place automatically, as physiological development on earth has. Instead, cyberspace evolution will be dependent on consciousness, or conscious decisions about how to make it evolve out of chaos (today) to heavenly forms in the future.

These superior forms in the human mind are not visible at will and so we need to evolve the instructional technology that will allow people to navigate their spiritual development. Cyberspace navigational tools and skills will allow them to acquire these spiritual tools by which they can make their heaven accessible to themselves. In this connection of forms, I have studied a great deal of it through semantic inventories and categories, leading me to behavioral taxonomies of correspondences between the mental and the rational/spiritual (some of this is available on my Web site under the topic of "ethnomethodology" and "ethnosemantics" and "cataloguing practices of the North American Peoples"). Of course Swedenborg did much work in this, as you point out. Cyberspace evolution will have to be consciously gained and the forms Swedenborg saw in the spiritual world will help us do this: the spiral and the funnel shapes, especially. As well: Swedenborg's studies of "tremulations." Leon James in 1998

The Ascending Pathway (see earlier matrix3), involves taking up concepts from the literal of the Writings of Swedenborg and using orderly principles of extraction, formulating Doctrine for the Church. The pages of De Hemelsche Leer contain many such demonstrations. The Web site of the  Lord's New Church advertises a course on De Hemelsche Leer.

Theology 241-243: The Doctrine of the Lord's New Church which is Nova Hierosolyma. A study and analysis of the development of doctrine in the Church. The theological works of Charles Augustus Tulk and Abraham J. LeCras, as well as the English fascicles of De Hemelsche Leer, are read during the course, and the doctrinal insights of the Church are correlated with the subject matter of other courses that are taken concurrently. Three terms.

        9.1.10   Stages of Development in Theistic Psychology

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

INV. 46. What are miracles over against these things? Miracles are not done at this day, because they seduce men, and make them natural. They close the internalizings of their minds, wherein faith ought to be rooted; wherefore mere falsities proceed thence (see Matt. 24:24). What did the miracles effect which were done in Egypt with the sons of Israel? What did those miracles effect which were done before them in the desert? What those miracles when they entered into the land of Canaan? What the miracles which were wrought by Elijah and Elisha? What those which the Lord Himself wrought? Was anyone ever made spiritual by their means? What has been the use of miracles among the Roman Catholics? and of those of Anthony at Padua and of the three wise men at Cologne? And what has been the use of the countless miracles in the monasteries, whose walls are fitted with pictures, plates, and gifts? Has anyone ever been made spiritual thereby? Have they not become natural thereby, so that there is scarcely any truth of the Word among them, but only the externalizing things of worship, which have their origin from men and traditions?

The above Number (Invitation 46) refers to our adolescent state of mind, which is externalizing natural and thinks from a sensual consciousness. Note especially the sentence "What did the miracles effect which were done in Egypt with the sons of Israel?" where Egypt usually represents externalizing knowledges or scientifics and the sons of Israel represent the Israelitish Church prior to the Incarnation (see matrix3 above). Miracles represent faith in the omnipotence of the Divine Human. "What did they effect" signifies that there is a lack of faith. In other words, our mental state of adolescence is so dependent on material evidence that we cannot have a true faith in the Divine Human. In contradistinction to this natural and corporeal mind there is the rational consciousness that begins to develop only after the Inversion takes place (see matrix3) and our new basis for thinking becomes the rational, not the natural. At first a natural rational that hovers between the two types of consciousness just as depicted by the Lord's disciples. But when that state of young adulthood ripens and is consummated, the adult state of the human individual can at last begin. Now at last our spiritual evidence and relation to God is totally purged of the sensual natural and is based entirely and purely in the internalizing spiritual mind. Now at last we have the true and full influx of the Holy Spirit. Our consciousness and basis of thinking is now based exclusively on internalizing evidence, that is, evidence from spiritual and celestial things from God in us. When this adult state is fully mature, our consciousness, and we, become truly and fully human for the very first time. This is called the old age state of the innocence of wisdom. At this point we have become angels, for the angelic or celestial spiritual state, is the true human, the end of our evolution as a race. It is also the beginning of individual evolution to eternity.

And the first and most immediate proof of God's living presence is Sacred Scripture.

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

SS xx. The style of the Word is such that there is holiness in every sentence, and in every word, and in some places in even the very letters. This is why the Word conjoins man with the Lord, and opens heaven.

INV. 44. In addition to these most manifest evidences, there is the fact that the correspondential sense of the Word has been disclosed by the Lord through me; which has never before been revealed since the Word was written with the sons of Israel; and this sense is the very sanctuary of the Word; the Lord Himself is in this sense with His Divine, and in the natural sense with His Human. Not a single iota in this sense can be opened except by the Lord alone. This surpasses all the revelations that have hitherto been made since the creation of the world. Through this revelation a communication has been opened between men and the angels of heaven, and the conjunction of the two worlds has been effected; because when man is in the natural sense the angels are in the correspondential sense. See what has been written concerning this sense in the chapter on the Sacred Scripture [in True Christian Religion].

The Word refers to the literal text given to any nation in the form of Sacred Writings and containing Divine Revelations concerning our relation to the Divine. Thus we have the Three Testaments:  Old Testament (Hebrew), New Testament (Greek), Last Testament (Latin). We read in Swedenborg's Writings about other than these three instances of Sacred Scripture. But these three in particular are tied together in a rational series of meanings and principles that portray precisely the knowledge we need about spiritual laws that allows us to cooperate with God in our regeneration. Without this cooperation we cannot be regenerated and thus cannot reach full humanity in partnership with God. Hence the vast vast crucial importance of this new era in human evolution whereby we can now enter into the former mysteries with our internalizing rational consciousness. This was not possible to anyone before the Writings were completed in 1771. This is why Swedenborg, in the above quote (Invitation 44) says that the Writings Sacred Scripture "surpasses all the revelations that have hitherto been made since the creation of the world."

Theistic psychology as indicated in matrix4 above, is the orderly extraction process by which we acquire knowledge from the literal of the Writings Sacred Scripture. The Last Testament is the Crown of Revelations because in it God for the first time reveals to us the inner workings of the Laws of Divine Providence by which we and the universe are created and governed. No prior generation had such a specific revelation in the literal. The Old Testament is very obscure in many places so that the mind is left uninformed and wildly speculating about the most basic pieces of information about what is spirit, what is the afterlife, what rational laws govern the world, why is marriage holy, what is life in heaven and in hell, what is sin and redemption, and so on. In the New Testament we have a lot more information about many of these things but always only in some suggestive way, never fully satisfying our rational curiosity. At last in the Last Testament, everything is disclosed. All the things mentioned above are laid out crystal clear in the literal of that Crown of Sacred Scripture.

So one may ask in wonderment: What then is this extraction process? Why is it necessary since it is all laid out in the literal? But this question is quickly set aside when we read in the Last Testament that Sacred Scripture cannot be Sacred Scripture unless it is laid down in a natural or literal text within which is hidden the spiritual and celestial subjects and meanings. When we read that this is the character of Sacred Scripture it becomes fully obvious to our mind that the Writings contain an infinitude of subjects and meanings, that is, of and infinitude of revelations that can be mined by generations and generations and never reach very far. This is superbly Good News! Now humanity (we, us) has an inexhaustible source of knowledge, both for science and for the Doctrine of the Church. This insures our future evolution to be only positive and beneficial and creative beyond our imagination. theistic psychology is a boon to humanity.

The above table (matrix 5) portrays the series of steps we encounter in the extraction process for both the ascending pathway to the Doctrine of the Church and descending pathway to science. This chart also applies to the evolution of consciousness in the history of science. Starting with the descending pathway (Infancy--see earlier matrices), the externalizing celestial state of science was achieved in Ancient Greece by such men as Pythagoras, Aristotle, Plato and others, who have given us the consciousness that Nature is a theater for playing out God's Mind. There is never a question in this state of mind about the separation of the Divine from natural things but a recognition that by studying natural laws and phenomena one is seeing the manifestations of the Divine.  In this state conjunction with God is possible through science and religion.

When this state of externalizing celestial consciousness was consummated it was succeeded by the externalizing spiritual state of the Childhood of science. This period marks the beginnings of modern science starting with Copernicus and Galileo and ending with Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton. It brings us the consciousness that although God created nature, He has removed Himself from the equation and things are now run by natural laws, not Divine. It involves the persuasion that God does not intervene except in the case of miracles, far and in between. Thus one can study natural phenomena fully without the necessity of referring to God's laws and actions. This state is thus a distancing from the Divine which is now pushed into the background of life as we live it. God is tolerated not as a Divine person but some unspecified and infinite force or energy in the universe. No conjunction with God is possible in this state of mind.

When this phase was fully consummated it was succeeded by the Adolescence of science which is an externalizing natural state. In this state of consciousness nothing whatsoever is left over to God and in fact the idea of God is no longer allowed in science. Science has here become fully non-theistic. The scientists of the 20th century as represented by Nobel Prize winners and by school textbooks not only omit God from science but are antithetical to the use of God in science. The existence of God has been fully laid aside. In this externalizing sensual state we are no longer able to believe a single internalizing rational truth. The spiritual thus vanishes from one's consciousness and one sits in total darkness as to inner things. Instead of believing and comprehending the spiritual this state of mind is seduced by sensual demonstrations of occult and psychic powers. Science remains in this non-theistic counter-reality until a new theistic psychology is created following the completion of the ascending pathway.

Looking now at the ascending pathway in terms of historical evolution of consciousness, the initial phase of extraction from the literal of the Writings Sacred Scripture represents the state of Young adulthood, which is an internalizing natural state. This involves an externalizing rational consciousness that is limited in scope and clarity, but it is already the beginning of a spiritual consciousness. This spiritual consciousness is absent where Sacred Scripture is unknown (remember that all religions have their Word). Paul's Epistles in the New Testament exemplify this state of mind. Paul is able to distinguish between the natural man, or mind, and the internal spiritual man, or mind, and he discusses the conflictual dynamics between them. This state of consciousness lasted 17 centuries and includes the early Christian theologians like Augustine as well as the later ones like Luther. This internalizing natural state is not a purely rational consciousness but includes natural elements such as the sensual persuasion that rituals and prayers are effective means of salvation (rather than the actual reformation of one's character). For example, in this state of consciousness we believe that Baptism can save someone, or that those who are not born within the Church and receive Baptism, are damned. In this state it is also believed that some people's prayers, such as "saints," are more effective, and on this account prayer requests are practiced. Also that places of worship are valued as being nearer to God and more holy than other places, causing people to view Church attendance as a measure of one's faith. Moreover, this state of consciousness falls into many heresies or falsities of religion that can be seen with clear hindsight from the next phase of evolution. One example is the idea that being saved and entering heaven is a matter of God willing to forgive our sins. Later one can see that God is pure Love and Good and loves nothing more than to forgive all our sins, and yet, we cannot enter heaven unless we are adequately prepared for it, and this means that our character must be reformed and regenerated through daily battles with our temptations.

When this state is fully consummated we enter the Adult phase of consciousness which is internalizing spiritual. This now for the first time is fully rational and internalizing. This phase is so entirely different from the preceding phases that a new Word is necessary. This new Word was given through Emanuel Swedenborg and the process was completed in 1771 when he published his last work called The True Christian Religion just a few months before his passing into the spiritual world at age 84. The consciousness based on this new Word is called the New Church state of consciousness and involves only spiritual and celestial ideas about faith. Nothing in it is from the man Swedenborg himself but everything is from his experiences in the spiritual world as a dual citizen.  In this internalizing spiritual state we are for first time able to comprehend, believe and perceive the internalizing rational idea of the Divine Human. Now we can clearly see that the spiritual is not separate from the natural, but within it. All natural phenomena are effects of spiritual causes. Swedenborg's Scientific Works which preceded his Theological Writings, exemplify this state of consciousness. The Theological Writings also give us this consciousness.

When this phase is consummated we are at last brought into the Old age state of the innocence of wisdom, which is an internalizing celestial state, the highest in the human mind. This is the crowning phase for theistic psychology and so far remains mostly for the future of our development. The birth of the celestial Doctrine of the Church among the handful of contributors to De Hemelsche Leer in the 1930s marks the beginning of this state of consciousness in human evolution. It is marked by an entirely new consciousness that is not yet available in the internalizing spiritual state of adulthood. Now in this new state of internalizing wisdom we experience direct communication with the Divine Human through the literal of the Third Testament. Unlike all the preceding states of consciousness, this is a particular and individual enlightenment that continues to evolve without ever being consummated to eternity.

These various relations are further represented in the next diagram (matrix 6) below.

                    9.1.11    Levels of Extraction from Sacred Scripture

The above diagram (matrix 6) again shows the descending and ascending pathways of extraction of knowledge from the literal of Sacred Scripture, and in particular, the Latin Word or the Writings of Swedenborg. The externalizing celestial state of Infancy is exemplified in the work of Christen Blom-Dahl on medicine and physiology, Ian Thompson's work on physics, and mine on spiritual psychobiology, besides others that will be named in the future. This phase of consciousness depends on seemingly haphazard and unpredictable insights we receive as we read the Writings, then try to confirm them with the science that we are familiar with. This phase is to be succeeded by an externalizing spiritual state of consciousness that involves the systematic application of the laws of correspondences that takes into account the series or taxonomies that are hidden in the literal of the Writings. This now for the first time gives us a cumulative methodology. When this Childhood phase is consummated, the Adolescent state of science extraction is reached, which is an externalizing natural state that is fully in conformity with the literal of Sacred Scripture . Now for the first time we have a science that is totally theistic based exclusively on Divine revelations. Beyond this point science turns into the Doctrine of the Church, which is entirely an internalizing state. There is a flip flop from sensual consciousness to rational consciousness and the descending pathway ends while the ascending pathway begins.

In the state of Young adulthood, which is an internalizing natural state, we rely entirely on the literal of the Writings. Our exegesis tabulates and arranges the statements of the literal and we are persuaded that our understanding of this literal is the Doctrine of the Church. But this understanding is not pure but full of our own self-intelligence and, meritoriousness attaches itself to our results. Only when this phase of literalism is consummated do we enter the internalizing spiritual phase of Adulthood.

Now for the first time our mind comes into possession of the true Doctrine of the Church. We can clearly perceive that our understanding of Sacred Scripture has become internalizing rational, dependent only on the spiritual meaning that is hidden in the literal. This perception grows and develops gradually, matching our own work of regeneration. The more we advance in our regeneration, the more we come into possession of internalizing truths of Doctrine. We make use of correspondences in a systematic manner and are able to cumulate our knowledge and understanding of Doctrine. When this phase is at last consummated we enter for the very first time into the true human consciousness, which is an internalizing celestial state of mind. It is the old age of the innocence of wisdom when our understanding of Sacred Scripture becomes spontaneous and automatic as it were, requiring no conscious extraction as before. We are enlightened by God as we read Sacred Scripture or reflect on it in relation to the environment we can perceive sensually, just like the highest angels, and there is no longer any effort in knowledge acquisition. We simply know at once anything we want to know. This is the fully human state of life and continues to develop to eternity.

It is important to remember that we are dealing with a multiple or embedded recursiveness when describing the developmental steps overall, and within every level or degree. We go through the same representative steps many times, perhaps an indefinite number of times, from infancy to old age and the consummation of that phase. The consummation is necessary in order to make visible the falsities and evils of that level. By rejecting these falisties and evils we are transferred to the next highest degree of consciousness, and the process restarts. Then the transfer to the next highest level of development, avoiding the inevitable downgrading that follows when we fail to transfer after consummation. Through this downgrading our consciousness becomes more and more externalizing sensual, and at last, corporeal, where we imbibe innumerable falsities from mere appearances. No further regeneration is then possible since this can take place only through truths, at first externalizing, but after that, more and more internalizing.

Additional articles on this subject are contained in the diagrams linked below.

9.1.11.1   List of Additional Diagrams in Theistic Psychology:

DIAGRAM 1 The Trigrammatic  Universe
DIAGRAM 2 The  Three Layers of the Universe
DIAGRAM 3 The Three Levels of Science
DIAGRAM 4 The Three Divine Aspects
DIAGRAM 5   Male and the Female Mind (part 1)
DIAGRAM 6 Male  and the Female Mind (part 2)
DIAGRAM 7 Trigrammatic  Series
DIAGRAM 8 Substances: Celestial, Spiritual, Natural
DIAGRAM 9 Trinitarian God in theistic psychology
DIAGRAM 10: The Divine Human

                9.1.12   The Two Heresies Possible in Relation to De Hemelsche Leer

There are two heresies that arise in our mind regarding the proposals of De Hemelsche Leer. The first heresy is that the Writings of Swedenborg do not contain a spiritual internal sense that needs to be extracted out of the literal. The second heresy is that since the Writings of Swedenborg contain a spiritual internal sense, therefore the literal is allegorical and cannot be taken as historical events experienced by Swedenborg. Both these heresies need to be understood and avoided, in accordance with the perspective of De Hemelsche Leer. Historically today in 2001 both heresies are held and expounded, the first by members of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, headquartered in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, the second by members of The Lord's New Church Which is Nova Hierosolyma [New Jerusalem], also in Bryn Athyn. I will illustrate these points below.

By calling it "heresies" one may get the incorrect impression that I am criticizing these New Church organizations. Historically of course being a heretical was pretty bad as viewed from the ruling hierarchy, and heretics were severely punished. But fortunately these cruel times are over and now there is no need to attach any personal attack to scientific polemics in a public arena. In theistic psychology a heresy means an incorrect theory or explanation. With respect to the Doctrine of the Church, or the ascending pathway, a heresy means false doctrine or doctrine that is contrary to truth. All Three Testaments discuss heresies because false ideas arise almost by necessity to our progression within each degree. As discussed above, our consciousness within a degree progresses like a plant and its flower, then is consummated and declines to the bottom of the mind or spiritual world. A Divine deliverance is then necessary, and when we cooperate appropriately ad instructed in Sacred Scripture, we are transferred by unknown Divine means into the next highest discrete degree of human growth in consciousness. We are thus progressively on our way to life in our heaven in eternity, which is the internalizing celestial consciousness.

Since heresies are discussed in all Three Testaments it is obviously of great importance for theistic psychology. It was stated above that historical evolution recapitulates the progressive series of development of individual biography. In the case of these two "heresies" we a have a living illustration of how history recapitulates ontogeny. This same series was true for the history of the Churches depicted in the charts above. Please remember that from the perspective of these two Church organizations this article would itself be seen as a heresy, just as they regard each other as heresies. In other words, theoretical differences in theistic psychology offer a special challenge to the people involved not to take discussions on heresies as personal attacks. If this type of reaction is inhibited by each involved then theoretical disagreements in such crucial matters for the human race can be tolerated as matters for theistic psychology to settle through rational methodologies. In my published articles in New Church Life, the official organ of the General Church, I have argued that New Church ministers, as sermon writers and instructors, are theistic scientists (see for example this article).

In non-theistic psychology, a profession I have been part of all my life as a psychology professor, we have numerous basic differences, even disagreements, about theoretical issues such as behaviorism, rationalism, dualism, and so on. Special professional organizations exist of which we are member in more than one, that revolve around a particular "paradigm" which is the equivalent of "heresy" in non-theistic psychology. When we wear one of the hats of these organizations, our statements appear as contrary or contradictory to those wearing another organization's hat. Amazingly, through such a process, science progresses. Similarly,  the Doctrine of the Church progresses through the resolution of heresies. Thus humankind as a whole can progress to celestial enlightenment and "create" a heaven on this earth.

From the Writings Sacred Scripture:

DP 318(11): Everything confirmed by both the will and the understanding remains to eternity, but not what has been confirmed only by the understanding. For that which pertains to the understanding alone is not within the man but outside him: it is only in the thought. Moreover, nothing enters into man and is appropriated to him but what is received by the will, for it then comes to be of his life's love.

AC 377: Anyone who subscribes to a particular system of doctrine is referred to by the name of that system, as is anyone who subscribes to a particular schism or heresy; and so 'ground' at this point stands for schism or heresy within man.

The theoretical debate that took place in the early 1930s between the Dutch branch of the General Church and the mother Church in Bryn Athyn (Philadelphia) is recorded in the pages of De Hemelsche Leer (see for example, Theodore Pitcairn's 1931 rebuttal of Alfred Acton's review of De Hemelsche Leer in these pages starting on page 29). For theistic psychology this is a fascinating and instructive record which I hope to analyze in a future article. Even a surface reading of the written exchanges and journal articles between the two parties shows clearly that they were on opposite sides of a paradigm shift. This shift in intellect and perspective is irrevocable and separates the two consciousness activities like a schism or split in the ground separates the two sides of the earth that was formerly of one piece. The view from across the split is then seen as a heresy. From that point onward a special challenge exists because this heresy is not only on the outside but within us. We therefore need to analyze the outside historical debating points available to us as a means to map the same contradictory coordinates in our mind. To the extent that we are honest and sincere, to that extent we are enlightened by the Lord and transferred in our consciousness to a place of more internalizing truth and thereby, a higher good.

From the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AC 6047. This shows that the Word must be searched, and there it must be seen whether the doctrinal things are true. When this is done from the affection of truth, then the man is enlightened by the Lord so as to perceive, without knowing whence, what is true; and he is confirmed therein in accordance with the good in which he is. If these truths disagree with the doctrinal things, let him take heed not to disturb the church.

AC 6822. Good can be instilled into another by anyone in his country, but not truth, except by those who are teaching ministers; if others do this, heresies arise, and the church is disturbed and rent asunder. Charity is practiced, if through the truth which is of the church, the neighbor is led to good. If in the church anything is called truth which leads away from good, this is not worthy of mention, for it is not truth. Everyone must first obtain for himself truth from the doctrine of the church, and afterward from the Word of the Lord; this must be the truth of his faith.

AC 5432 But they who are in the affection of truth for the sake of truth and of life, consequently for the sake of the Lord's kingdom, have indeed faith in the doctrinal things of the church; but still they search the Word for no other end than the truth, from which their faith and their conscience are formed. If anyone tells them that they ought to stay in the doctrinal things of the church in which they were born, they reflect that if they had been born in Judaism, Socinianism, Quakerism, Christian Gentilism, or even out of the church, the same would have been told them; and that it is everywhere said, Here is the church! Here is the church! Here are truths and nowhere else! And this being the case the Word should be searched with devout prayer to the Lord for enlightenment. Such do not disturb anyone within the church, nor do they ever condemn others, knowing that everyone who is a church lives from his faith.

AC 10798. Priests must teach the people, and lead them to the good of life by means of truths. But they must not compel anyone, because no one can be compelled to believe contrary to what he thinks in his heart to be true. He who believes differently from the priest, and makes no disturbance, must be left in peace; but he who makes a disturbance must be separated; for this also belongs to the order for the sake of which is the priesthood.

The second heresy as mentioned above, is the teaching that since the Writings have an inner sense, the literal therefore cannot be taken as historically accurate. I was unaware of this point of view until a short time ago when I saw this statement on the Web site of The Lord's New Church:

"From a thoughtful study of the religious writings of Swedenborg, the careful reader will observe that they are treating of the principles of regeneration from the internalizing truths of the Word of God, which, he asserts, is written by pure correspondences between spiritual and natural laws, embodied in earthly names. In order to discover the spiritual principle within these names, the thoughts must be abstracted from the appearances of persons, places, and things, which exist in the mind when the words are first read. If this statement is accepted as true--that the whole Word of God is written in its literal sense by pure correspondences or analogies, and that the spiritual reality which is thus clothed in natural language is to be found in the internalizing signification of all the names there recorded, which are given in historic and personal form, for the natural world of thought to grasp--then the logical and startling conclusion follows, that none of the apparent historical events recorded in the Word of God ever had a literal culmination outside of the words which contain them, or outside of the mind which receives the truths contained within these words. Neither did the personages there represented ever physically exist on this earth; but their existence, to the natural thought of the mind, is in the allegorical form of the literal sense of the Word of God. The principle which he declares is that the externalizing exists from the internal, and the externalizing of the Word culminates in its literal expressions." Retrieved from the Web in March 2001 at www.swedenborg.net/lnc/newstuff/iswrit.html 

When I saw this I experienced an immediate disagreements within me and my head began to shake in protest. I tried to formulate my thoughts by clicking on the "Contact us" button and wrote this e-mail message:

"In AC 66 we read: "The SECOND is the historical style, which appears in the books of Moses to describe the time of Abram onwards, and in the books of Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, and the Kings. In these books the facts of the books of Moses to describe the time of Abram onwards, and in the books of Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, and the Kings. In these books the facts of history are exactly as set out in the sense of the letter, yet every single one contains something entirely different in the internal sense, which in the Lord's Divine mercy will be dealt with in proper order later on."

Note the statement: "...In these books the facts of history are exactly as set out in the sense of the letter..."

On your Web site you say that "Scientific minds reject the literal relations of Swedenborg concerning the Earths in the Universe as untrue when compared with discoveries in science; but, in those relations, he is treating of the spiritual principles of the externalizing mind, signified by earths in the universe of thought, by the laws of correspondence, which exist as fixed principles, but which he is the first to put in coherent form."

Is this not like saying that the the historical details in the Word didn't really happen?? Can you not say that (a) the literal of the Writings give historical facts that actually happened, and (b) nevertheless it contains the spiritual meanings that are to be extracted by correspondences.

Or are you saying that the memorable relations are not historical but prophetical?

What parts of the Writings are true in the literal?

Are you saying none of it?? Surely you agree that the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and the New Testament Sacred Scripture relate events and facts called "historical" and therefore are true. Why is this not true of the Writings as the Word?" Leon James 3/9/2001

I received the following answer:

"Thank you for e-mail of March 9, 2001. I am well aware of the theological issues alluded to in your e-mail, particularly since I once held many of the same concerns. You have asked for a response, which I happy to give, but I will qualify my response by making the observation that I detect certain axiomatic assumptions in your brief letter that I acknowledge as commonly held by many of my fellow Swedenborgians. I, however, do not necessarily accept them--certainly not uncritically--which is why I am a member of the Lord^' New Church, a group that champions a theological perspective somewhat different from that of other Swedenborgians, yet well in agreement with my personal beliefs.

First, let me observe that there are many styles or forms a Sacred Text will take. You have alluded to a historical style, which Swedenborg attributes to: all but the beginning of Genesis; the other books of Moses; and the former prophets (Joshua-Kings). There are other styles, including that of the later or writing prophets, and the Psalms. Not to mention the New Testament, which itself is a combination of these styles. When one makes a blanket statement like, the Bible is historically true, I would respond, Well, which part?

You write "Surely you agree that the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and the New Testament Sacred Scripture related events and facts called historical and therefore true." I do agree that portions of the Bible contain historical information, but I do not agree that the Bible is true BECAUSE it is historical. I see these as separate issues. Large parts of the Bible are not historical, yet the self-evidencing reason of love instructs me that they are true.

Similarly, I consider it naive to make blanket statements about Swedenborg's writings. You ask, "Can you not say that the literal of the Writings give historical facts that actually happened?" The historicity of a teaching of Swedenborg is simply not important to me; I am more concerned with gleaning truth from the teaching. If pressed on the matter, I would need to respond on a case by case basis.

You also ask, "Are you saying that the memorable relations are not historical, but prophetical?" Well, they cant be historical in the way Swedenborg uses the term to describe portions of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, since the Old Testament Sacred Scripture history refers to events in the natural world (most of which can be corroborated by scholarship), but Swedenborg is describing events in the spiritual world.

Also, I certainly agree that what Swedenborg describes is, in fact, real: his conversations with spirits and angels probably took place as he reported them. Though I don't see that it makes much difference. After all, Swedenborg's asserts that the spiritual world is in fact imaginal, and externalizing phenomena there correspond to the internal states of humanity, so these accounts must, by their nature, if we accept the doctrine of correspondences, be symbolic of a higher order of reality that involves immutable spiritual truths. Hence, an internal sense.

But again, I will not hold this position uncritically, because I am aware of instances, particularly in the later material, where Swedenborg seems to be adapting his experiences to the reading public, and therefore I conclude that SOME of these probably didn't occur exactly as recorded. I believe they were adapted to make a point or teach a lesson, and it is that lesson I am concerned with.

I will now anticipate and respond to a concern many of my fellow Swedenborgians raise at this point. "Are you saying that Swedenborg's writings are not true?" Of course not. As I said, historicity and truth are, in my opinion, separate issues. "Are you saying that Swedenborg is sometimes wrong, or that he disagrees or contracts himself?" Yes I am saying that because I feel a need to be loyal to Swedenborg's works, and therefore I must acknowledged disagreements and contradictions for what they are. Let this short list demonstrate:

The Apostolic church worshipped one god (TCR 638) The Apostolic church distinguished the Divinity into three persons (Lord 55:4).

The name of Jesus is so holy that it cannot be named by any devil in hell (TCR 297). I heard the name of Jesus uttered in hell (SD 228).

John Calvin was honest, and is in heaven (CLJ 54). John Calvin is an evil spirit shut up in a cave in hell (TCR 798-9).

The Apostolic word (Coronis 59:5) has no internal sense (AC 10325) The Apostolic word has an internal sense (Acts 2:3-4; AE 455:22).

No one remains in the world of spirits beyond thirty years (HH 426). No one remains in the world of spirits beyond twenty years (AR 866).

The hells are eternal (AE 383, 1164:2, 1220:3; HH 521). The hells are not eternal (SD 228, 286,3489, 1742).

It is the responsibility of the reader to choose, to the best of his or her ability, guided by the light which the Divine bestows, which statement is genuine, and which is apparent. Just as one who follows Swedenborg's advice must choose between contradictory statements in the Bible. Hence the LNC assertion that the Latin Word must be treated as a Sacred Text.

I and my fellow churchmen are often accused, somewhat unjustly I feel, by other Swedenborgians of "picking and choosing" which parts of Swedenborg we accept at face value, and which we feel we need more clarification of. Our response is that we have to do this, and to pretend otherwise is not loyal to the Writings. We are often accused of ignoring portions of the text, but the reality is we actually have a hypersensitivity to the text, and we have discovered several internal principles that are useful in shedding light on the letter.

We do not search for and find an internal sense apart from the letter. Rather, we seek a deeper, internal understanding of Swedenborg's works.

I hope this has answered your question." Email received on 3/12/2001

Here is my reply:

"I appreciate your quick response. Also that you took time to explain your views in detail. I'd like to respond and would love to hear your reaction or interpretation or opinion. I find this very instructive because I myself am a scholar who has been studying De Hemelsche Leer for 7 years in an intense way. You can read an article on my views about this here: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dhl.html 

First let me say that I do not belong to any Church organization but in my heart I see myself and my wife as having a New Church mentality.

Regarding your comments, and they relate to the purpose I sent my email, I was struck when I read your Web site--which was the first time, that you call into question something I believed from the start of my Swedenborg studies in 1981, that the Writings were written by an honest man who told it like he saw it "by commandment of the Lord." It is inconceivable to me that he was just taking us for a ride when he declares over and over again that what he wrote actually happened (see the subtitle of Arcana, and many places as at the end of TCR, etc. etc.).

I fully agree that the Writings are in heaven in a correspondential sense, not natural, as the Writings tell us about the Word, all of the Threefold Word. This is independent as you say, from the issue as to which parts or sentences of the Writings are historically accurate. Thus the point of De Hemelsche Leer that we must extract the Doctrine of the Church from the literal, and we must do this in an orderly and appropriate way, in sequence, as we are enlightened by the Lord, and to the extent that we progress in our regeneration through temptations. All this is clearly explained in the article whose Web address I give at the beginning.

But my shock is due to what you are saying about the literal. So I think I understand fully what you are saying--I noticed this attitude also in the Doctrinal Classes of the Right. Rev. Philip Odhner whom I had the great pleasure and honor of meeting during a trip he took to Hawaii several years before he passed into the spiritual world, and who was so very kind to send me his Lessons and a copy of DHL. How fortunate indeed I have been for the privilege of receiving these valued gifts!! Thanks be to the Lord!

So now I would really like to see the logic that allows you to believe this today about the literal of the Writings. Philip Odhner said that Earths in the Universe couldn't possibly be historical since the Word doesn't contain scientific revelations, lest it lead to the destruction of the Writings after science proves something in there is inaccurate. I was never able to confirm this idea, or believe in it. In fact, as you will see if you read my article, I am convinced that the Word contains scientific revelations and that all of the historical parts of the Word are true and accurate in the natural sense.

But you also said that you think one should judge in each case (every sentence??) whether it is meant historically or figuratively, as in the prophetical parts of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture. This seems inconceivable to me. For in order to judge, you would do so on externalizing rational grounds, not internalizing rational. And this is not allowed, as fully explained in DHL with reference to the stories of Abraham and Sarah, when he called her sister, not his wife. And besides other places.

I do not wish to disagree with what you believe, neither do I feel offended or alienated from you when I say that I'm shocked. I wonder in amazement how such a thing could be, and so this is what motivates to react and ask for your reaction.

What do you say: did Swedenborg think EU and Memorable Relations are figurative or allegorical but didn't want to ever say this in his Writings or letters? Did he pull the wool over the eyes of so many of his friends, and us, to all times? Or was he himself unaware that his descriptions were not historically accurate, just things he made up to allow us to draw spiritual meaning out of them?

On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, you wrote:

"Also, I certainly agree that what Swedenborg describes is, in fact, real: his conversations with spirits and angels probably took place as he reported them. Though I don't see that it makes much difference. After all, Swedenborg's asserts that the spiritual world is in fact imaginal, and externalizing phenomena there correspond to the internal states of humanity, so these accounts must, by their nature, if we accept the doctrine of correspondences, be symbolic of a higher order of reality that involves immutable spiritual truths. Hence, an internal sense."

Yes. I agree. Yet it does make a difference whether Swedenborg thought he was reporting real conversations he had in the spirit. If I think that they were not real conversations and events, I immediately have to ask myself, But why then does he present them as if he believed they were real? Therefore I'm wondering on what grounds and with what further assumptions you are operating when you say that these conversations may not have been real in his actual experience. If they were not real but he thought they were real--What grounds do you have for supposing that? If he knew they were not real, but used them as a figure of speech, why did he not tell us that? What answers or theory are you constructing to be able to answer these questions? And is this construction your own from where? From which part of your mind: externalizing natural or internalizing rational?

Again you wrote:

"But again, I will not hold this position uncritically, because I am aware of instances, particularly in the later material, where Swedenborg seems to be adapting his experiences to the reading public, and therefore I conclude that SOME of these probably didn^' occur exactly as recorded. I believe they were adapted to make a point or teach a lesson, and it is that lesson I am concerned with."

Yes, I agree, that he wrote them to teach a lesson. Nevertheless, he could not have made them up knowing they were fantasy or fiction but making them out like they were real and that he believed them to be real. There is a personal honesty issue of the man Swedenborg.

You wrote:

"You asked if I'm saying that Swedenborg is sometimes wrong, or that he disagrees or contracts himself. Yes I am saying that because I feel a need to be loyal to Swedenborg's works, and therefore I must acknowledged disagreements and contradictions for what they are. Let this short list demonstrate:"

OK. Let's examine the list. At the same time we need to keep a distinction between the historical and prophetical parts of the Word (the Writings). I seem to be assuming automatically in my mind that the Memorable Relations are historical (including EU--some of which occurred in the natural world, not spiritual!!) As when he saw the physical planetary scenes through the eyes of the couple whose minds were in conjunction with the spirits ES was talking to in a distant planet outside our galaxy). So when he talks about meeting Calvin or Mary or Newton--these are historical names and events in the spiritual world.

You wrote:

"The Apostolic church worshipped one god (TCR 638)
The Apostolic church distinguished the Divinity into three persons (Lord 55:4).

Perhaps you mean Lord 55:2 which says: "[2] In consequence of this feature of the Word in the sense of the letter (that it speaks of as many those who really form a one) Christians, who at first were simple folk, and understood everything in accordance with the literal import of the words discriminated the Divinity into three Persons. On account of their simplicity this was permitted, but in such a manner that they should believe the Son to be Infinite, Uncreate, Almighty, God, and Lord, altogether equal to the Father; and that they should also believe that these are not two, or three; but one in essence, majesty, and glory, and therefore in Divinity."

Quoting from the Writings:

TCR 638. Since the Apostolic church worshipped the Lord God Jesus Christ, together with God the Father in Him, it can be likened to the garden of God. Arius, who arose at that time, can be likened to the serpent sent from hell; and the Council of Nicaea to Adam's wife, who held out the fruit to her husband and persuaded him to eat it; after which they became aware of their nakedness, and covered it with fig leaves. Their nakedness means their previous state of innocence, fig leaves the truths of the natural man, which in the process of time were falsified. That earliest church can also be equated with twilight and dawn, from which the day advanced to the tenth hour*; but then a thick cloud came up, beneath which the day advanced to evening and then to night, when some people saw the moon rise.

Frankly, I see no proof of contradiction here! "The Apostolic Church" is not the same as "Christians who at first..."

You wrote:

"The name of Jesus is so holy that it cannot be named by any devil in hell (TCR 297).

I heard the name of Jesus uttered in hell (SD 228).

SD 228 says: "Moreover, I also wish you to believe, for it is true, since I know because I have perceived it, that many of them have been raised out of hell and torment into heaven, where they are living at this day, and that it seemed to one of them who had suffered the greatest torment, that God Messiah embraced and kissed him."

If you read the whole number it is obvious that these people in hell were in fact to become angels in heaven so that the cries of Jesus he heard from them is understandable and does not contradict the statement in TCR 297.

You wrote:

"John Calvin was honest, and is in heaven (CLJ 54).
John Calvin is an evil spirit shut up in a cave in hell (TCR 798-9)."

But take a look at this from Swedenborg:

Conv. Calvin No.6: CONCERNING THE PERSONALITY OF CALVIN. HIS QUALITY. Afterwards I asked Calvin how he could ascend into heaven with an idea of three gods, and with an idea of the Lord as being two. He answered that he had been admitted into a certain inferior society of heaven, and that he had dwelt there among the hindmost who are not much explored; but that when he had been explored, he had descended, because he could not subsist there; and that he had then betaken himself to Luther in the world of spirits, with whom he had dwelt for a certain period, and this because Luther acknowledged the Human of the Lord as Divine, and he did not seem to himself to be safe anywhere else. With regard to Calvin, the priests said that he was an upright man, but simple; and that he had written according to his own simple thought, not considering whether what he wrote was or was not in agreement with Sacred Scripture, as he had not reflected whether it was in agreement with the Athanasian Creed.

Here it is clearly stated that Calvin was an evil spirit but yet he could spend time in heaven due to his peculiarities that are fully explained. Therefore I see no contradiction.

You wrote:

"The Apostolic word (Coronis 59:5) has no internal sense (AC 10325)

The Apostolic word has an internal sense (Acts 2:3-4; AE 455:22).

Quoting from the Writings at Coronis 59:5 : "It is for these reasons that the Coming of the Lord is so frequently foretold in the Old Prophetic Word, and for the same reasons also the Lord is proclaimed in the New Evangelic and Apostolic Word, and His Second Coming foretold; concerning which in the following passages."

I see nothing in AE 455:22 or in Coronis 59:5 that refers to the Apostolic Word as having or not having an internal sense. I see no contradiction here.

You wrote:

"No one remains in the world of spirits beyond thirty years (HH 426).

No one remains in the world of spirits beyond twenty years (AR 866).

Quoting from the Writings at HH 426 says: "426. In the world of spirits there are vast numbers, because the first meeting of all is there, and all are there explored and prepared. The time of their stay in that world is not fixed; some merely enter it, and are soon either taken into heaven or are cast down into hell; some remain only a few weeks, some several years, but not more than thirty. These differences in the time they remain depend on the correspondence or lack of correspondence of man's internalizings with his exteriors. How man is led in that world from one state into another and prepared shall now be told."

AR 866 says: "[2] It is said in the world of spirits, because all come into that world immediately after their decease, and are there prepared, the good for heaven, and the evil for hell; and some stay there only a month or a year, and others from ten to thirty years; and they to whom it was granted to make as it were heavens to themselves, several centuries; but at this day not longer than twenty years."

As you can see a range of years up to thirty is described in several ways. I do not see a contradiction only a loose way of referring to the range--which may have been variable somewhat over the span of 27 years ES had his experiences in the SW.

You wrote:

"The hells are eternal (AE 383, 1164:2, 1220:3; HH 521).

The hells are not eternal (SD 228, 286,3489, 1742).

AR 383 says: "Moreover, "hell" has the same signification as "death," namely, damnation; but as both are here mentioned, and thus hell is distinguished from death, "hell" signifies eternal damnation, for those who come into hell remain there to eternity; therefore it is also said, "and hell followed with him," "to follow with him" signifying to abide therein, namely, in damnation to eternity. From this it can be seen that "his name was Death, and hell followed with him" signifies eternal damnation."

SD 228 as explained above deals with spirits in hell who later ascended into heaven. This does not mean that hell is not eternal for others who are there. Ditto for SD 286 where it says that some are raised out of hell and some are not. Etc. There is no contradiction.

It is the responsibility of the reader to choose, to the best of his or her ability, guided by the light which the Divine bestows, which statement is genuine, and which is apparent. Just as one who follows Swedenborg's advice must choose between contradictory statements in the Bible. Hence the LNC assertion that the Latin Word must be treated as a Sacred Text."

There are no contradictory statements in the Bible. There may be appearances of contradiction, but these can always be reconciled using Doctrine, as explained in the Writings and in DHL. " Leon James 12 Mar 2001

I received this next answer:

I can see that the issue of Swedenborg¹s intellectual honesty is important to you. You suggest that if Swedenborg¹s visionary experience, as recorded in memorable relations and other places, did not actually occur as recorded, then Swedenborg is lying to us. [I know that you would not actually make such a statement, nor would I, but I exaggerate to illustrate the point, to please bear with me.]

I do not believe the question is that simple, because I can think of several plausible scenarios that could explain otherwise.

My recollection is that the recorded testimonials of Swedenborg¹s character paint him as a gentleman of integrity, with a sincere passion of truth, and I have never encountered any evidence to suggest the contrary, so we will agree that Swedenborg is honest.

However, if something is written "by the command of the Lord," I think it is fair to say that the Lord dictates the final product, and if his amanuensis records the message as delivered, he is honest. That the Divine will use appearances to illustrate spiritual realities is not only apparent from the Bible, but is, in my opinion, absolutely necessary given the inability to accurately record spiritual verities within the confines of natural language.

Also, I do not think that Swedenborg, or his contemporaries, would be too terribly shocked by the idea that one could conceal inner messages within a text. The European spiritual heritage includes the Alchemical-Hermetic and Kabalistic traditions, which I am sure Swedenborg was familiar with, and these traditions produce works with multiple layers of meaning. Incidentally, the use of planets to describe personalities was an acknowledged metaphor within this tradition, and I see it as easily conceivable that -Earths in the Universe- is borrowing this accepted vocabulary to convey its message. This strikes me as well within the parameters of the New Church doctrine of accommodation.

As to the issue of historicity in a text, I believe it is important to deal with a text itself, and if necessary, deal with it in isolation from known "scientific" fact. For instance, stories in Genesis often refer to camels, and Arcana Coelestia tells us the inner significance of this. However, if my memory serves me correctly, camels were not domesticated at the period of time covered by Genesis. My memory is that the first reliable "historical" mention of camels is in the book of Judges. However, when the Divine instructed that the Old Testament Sacred Scripture be codified as a Divine revelation, camels were the best corresponding natural phenomena to convey the spiritual message. Hence, it is important to read Genesis as having camels and their corresponding spiritual counterpart, and one needs to ignore the fact that the appearance of camels in the letter is anachronistic.

Similarly, I find in Swedenborg mention of "scientific" fact that, to the best of my modern knowledge, is inaccurate. This does not bother me at all, because my hermeneutic practice looks for an "internal sense" to these facts anyway. Again, I state that I believe that "historical accuracy" and "scientific fact" (by modern standards) are one thing, and truth another.

To expound slightly, I understand the objective state of consciousness (the earth, the world, the physical cosmos) to be different from the subjective state of consciousness (heaven, hell, the world of spirits), and to be interrelated solely by the spiritual reality of correspondence. I do not believe I need a Divine revelation to instruct me about the nature of objective reality because my senses, and by extension, human science, make these things apparent to me. One does not need the Bible, and indeed cannot use the Bible, to determine that the earth is in fact round, and orbits its primary star, the sun.

Even though the natural world hides many of its secrets within appearances, science is adequate to uncover these to my senses.

However, the subjective state of consciousness is by no means available to my senses, and I can learn absolutely nothing about it, except through a Divine Revelation. If I wish to gain a better appreciation of the objective state from my study of the subjective state as recorded in a Revelation, I can only do this through a study of correspondences. A statement of objective fact is not the same as a statement of subjective truth. To confuse the two, in my opinion, is to forget about correspondence.

Your reference to an exposition of the story of Abram and Sarah in Egypt in DHL escapes my memory at the moment, and I will need to study this paper at my leisure. For the time being, my memory of the exposition given in the AC is that calling a wife a sister refers to regarding celestial truth as intellectual truth in order for the natural mind (Egypt) to deal with it without profaning it. This strikes me as an important insight into human psychology and proper spiritual growth.

As to the idea that one cannot judge spiritual truth by externalizing rational grounds, I agree, because I understand that to be judging an apple by the standards of an orange, so to speak. However, I believe it is a denial of the fundamental human condition, and thus of reality, and of the doctrines of the New Church, to assert that one cannot evaluate and judge the veracity of a statement, or that one cannot choose the standard whereby one makes these decisions.

The touch-stone or measure of such a judgment is the doctrine of genuine truth, which Swedenborg says is revealed to the individual by the self-evidencing reason of love, or by enlightenment. Hence, the ability to judge what is true and not true is given by the Lord, and cannot be imparted from the Writings, or the Bible, or any other source unless the individual is open to Divine guidance.

This is why I name heaven, hell, the world of spirits, and the internal sense of the Word expressions of the subjective state of consciousness. They are subjective because one's evaluation of these things is completely dependent on the subject or individual and his or her relation to the Divine.

I hope that this helps you to better understand my position on these subjects."  13 Mar 2001

It is evident from this exchange that paradigm shifts in theistic psychology can prevent us from communicating adequately since the same phrases are seen in different light. This phenomenon is also clearly visible in the paradigm shift that separates the two sides in the pages of De Hemelsche Leer.

Heresies in our mind arise when some more internalizing idea that is born to us is processed downward towards the lower degrees of our mind. The Writings have compared the mind to a house with three stories, and a basement, with a staircase that connects the floors. When our consciousness is stuck in the basement, which is the corporeal level of the natural degree, we have little spiritual light or vision or understanding. The light is coming in through a small window high on the wall and as we look up we can see a shadow once in a while darting by. That is the extent of our ability to form a meaningful or real idea of spiritual things like God's omnipresence, heaven in a spiritual world, conjugial love, regeneration, and so on. When our consciousness goes up to the first floor we are in the natural mind with its inherited affections and culturally formed thoughts and activities. We look out from large windows into the surrounding area and we can notice many relations and details about the physical world and we can interact with it successfully to our benefit. But if we try to look up to the second floor, we see nothing but a ceiling, and we hear nothing. It's as if there were no second floor and we can easily lull ourselves into doubts, and at last into the conviction or persuasion that may not be a second floor and even if there is one, what possible difference can it make to us now. This is a heresy, a paradigm shift from theism to agnosticism.

Fortunately for us, Divine Providence sees to it that we quickly look down again and forget about the matter until the next time we happen to be moved to look up and see the ceiling. This is far better than to confirm the false idea that there is no upper floor in the mind. (A diagram of the three floors and related relations are depicted in this article. www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html#Anatomical%20Diagram)

But if we confirm the false idea we begin the retrogressive phase which leads us further to all sorts of other false ideas that seem true. The feeling that they are true becomes a total persuasion and it is then difficult to communicate with more internalizing levels of our mind. Now whenever new internalizing ideas are brought forth we will not see anything true in them. Thus we cut ourselves off from the new line of development in human consciousness. The belief has become a heresy and begins to rule all other ideas in the mind.

The first heresy discussed here is the idea in our mind that the Writings do not have an internalizing sense in the same way as the Old and New Testaments. After all, we argue within ourselves, the Writings are a rational exposition and exegesis of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture and New Testament Sacred Scripture written not by a prophet but by a scientist and a revelator. In this mode of thinking we say, Yes, the Writings are inspired, yes they are Holy, yes we can call them the Word, but they are not the Word in the same sense as the Old and New Testaments. And this is obvious when you read all the passages in the Writings that discuss the Word, that every time without fail, it is referring to either the Old Testament Sacred Scripture or New Testament Sacred Scripture. And it is rationally explaining to us the correspondential senses of Sacred Scripture using the laws of correspondences and comparisons between passages to show their similar meanings.

This rational exposition is Swedenborg's inspired explanations of the meanings revealed to him through his Divine mission as revelator by which he was introduced into a dual state of being fully conscious in the natural world and in the spiritual world simultaneously for 27 years. And so on. Our mind at this level resists abandoning the literal sense of the Writings and we want this to be the spiritual meaning or message. When we are given examples of spiritual meaning extracted from the literal by means of correspondence, one remains unconvinced that it is anything but rewording the literal. There are many such instances that occur in De Hemelsche Leer and I will discuss them in a future article--it takes up hundreds of pages in their articles and correspondence!

The second heresy discussed here is the idea in our mind that the literal of the Writings are not necessarily historically accurate or veridical since they were written in such a style as to best convey the spiritual meaning or lesson. In this frame of mind we feel that it is up to each instance of text for us to carefully examine and judge whether we are dealing here with a real historical event or phenomenon (historicity), or merely an allegory to convey another message related to it only by spiritual correspondence. Maintaining this position makes us feel better because it allows us to disregard those statements in the Writings that appear contrary to current scientific knowledge or belief. One instance that is often debated in New Church circles is Swedenborg's book called Earths in the Universe (EU) in which he describes his travels in the spiritual world and encounters with spirits who originated from the solar system other than our earth--the spirits of Mars, of the moon, of Venus, and so on, as well as the planets of distant stars in the cosmos.

The mind naturally thinks that since these planets in our solar system do not have a human population, obviously these travels must be allegorical stories, or else Swedenborg was sadly misled by these wicked spirits he talked to. The second instance that has been much debated in New Church literature is Swedenborg's statement that the earth is the only female biological part and all plants and seeds are male forms, both the male and the female parts of a plant. Since this is obviously wrong according to what we know from science, we want to dismiss these types of statements in Swedenborg as of little importance because in any event we're always to look for the inner correspondential sense as the actual message. Besides, we can say that Swedenborg was only inspired but not perfect since he was but a man and so he was necessarily bound to the science and beliefs of his culture and times.

By these types of reasonings we lose grip on the central idea that the literal of the Writings is Divine, and not just the inner sense. Can a Divine work not be perfect? Can it contain errors? Not so. I have never found erroneous statements, factual errors, or actual contradictions in any of the Three Testaments. Instead, there are appearances of contradictions, appearances of errors, appearances of mistakes that can and need to be resolved through the Doctrine of the Church (ascending pathway) or through theoretical explanations (descending pathway).

The assertion that earth is the female organ of plants all of which are male parts, is not a "mistake" Swedenborg made. We know from his biography and his scientific publications that Swedenborg was well versed in the knowledge of plant sexuality, anatomy, and the earth sciences (mineralogy, metallurgy, crystallography, etc.). When he wrote about the earth being female and the plants male, he wrote about it in such a way as to show his awareness that he was making a challenging statement. We need to follow the theistic psychology methodology to be able to extract scientific meaning from this new type of assertion or idea about the sexuality of plants. Rather than seeing it as a mistake we need to see it as a revelation about a new phenomenon, that is, a phenomenon at a more internalizing degree. Now we need to realign existing science and new revelation. A new kind of spiritual agronomy has been revealed here. What kind of new concepts do we need to add to our existing science that would give us a truer understanding of the internalizing of nature? I cannot answer this now but future researchers will.

As a matter of sound methodology in theistic psychology we need to avoid externalizing rational reasonings about the literal of Sacred Scripture, by which we are lead to reject the idea that the literal of the Writings are Divine, that is, that they are the infinite Word in its full sense described in Swedenborg's book  ABB Sacred Scripture (SS). Doubting the literal of the Writings opens our mind to all sorts of false ideas and heresies from which it may be difficult to recover if we persist in them in a conscious and rationalized way. The contributors to De Hemelsche Leer were able to perceive a new idea that belonged to a new degree in the internalizing rational mind of humankind. This degree had not been opened in the New Church mentality from 1771, the year the last of the Writings was published, to the late 1920s and early 1930s when the Dutch Group began its studies. It was given them to discover that a paradigm shift occurs in their perception when they read the Writings and come across the expression "the Word." At that point they mentally substitute for it the phrase "the Writings" and continue to read. Then this powerful new perception arrives that allows the consciousness of the mind to ascend one degree. Then all of a sudden new ideas, new thoughts, new insights, new understandings start flooding the mind. They described these in plentiful instances throughout the hundreds of pages of De Hemelsche Leer.

When I read this for the first time in 1985 I was lead to try it immediately, and lo! those new ideas suddenly started tumbling in. I was able to confirm from my own understanding and reasoning abilities that this method is indeed functional and true. The various articles in this Swedenborg Glossary constitute my attempt to lay before the reader the internalizing ideas that have come to the surface when reading the Writings with this new methodology.

The literal of the Writings must be viewed as the Divine Rational of the Divine Human, as explained in the Writings.  During the Incarnation "the Word became flesh" and for the very first time provided humankind with a natural sensual proof of God. This major evolutionary step in the development of the human race came during the end of the adolescence of humankind and the beginning of the young adulthood, as shown in the various matrices discussed in this article. The Descending Pathway (Zones 1 through 9) was described as the phases of sensual consciousness, while the Ascending Pathway (Zones 10 through 18) as the phases of rational consciousness. In between is the Inversion.

As we progress in our human selfhood or consciousness (Zones 1 through 18), we do not leave behind and forget the earlier phases. Rather, the earlier phases are rearranged and reformed, even reborn in a new form, so that they can now accommodate the higher form. This is absolutely necessary because all higher forms develop within the lower forms that must first be prepared for it. If you take away the lower form, or if you do not reform them to prepare them, the new higher forms have nowhere to reside or enter the self as part of our consciousness. This means that the externalizing sensual consciousness must form itself into a basis and containant for the internalizing rational consciousness. If we deny the Divinity of the literal of the Writings as the Divine Rational itself (the second heresy), we weaken or destroy our sensual consciousness of the Divine Human (Holy Spirit). The only sensual consciousness we now can have of the Divine Human is the literal of the Writings called the Third Testament.

The literal of the Threefold Word has a different relationship to God and the human race. In the literal of the Old Testament our sensual consciousness is tied to the Human Divine and the reception of Good immediately, but not yet the reception of internalizing truth. Initially, God appeared to the race through the intermediary of angels such as the angels seen by Abraham, Hagar, Jacob, Moses, and others. No direct consciousness of the Divine was possible since this rests on a rational consciousness. The literal of the New Testament written after the Incarnation and Resurrection, rests on the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God. This sensual consciousness is internalizing natural (young adulthood in earlier matrices above). After the Resurrection, our consciousness of the Divine rested on the rational perception of the Holy Spirit, and this ability was to remain restricted until the Second Coming, as made clear in the New Testament. With the Second Coming in the Third Testament, our brand new consciousness, or New Church mentality, rests on the literal of the Writings as the Divine Human's Rational. While the Old Testament Sacred Scripture contains historical and prophetical parts, the New Testament Sacred Scripture contains historical parts, from both the natural world (the miracles of Jesus and the events of His ministry) and the spiritual world (the Book of Revelations), as well as doctrinal parts (Sermon on the Mount and other lessons). The Writings Sacred Scripture contains historical parts and doctrinal parts, but does not contain prophetical parts.

Since the literal of the Writings Sacred Scripture is itself Divine there can be no question about its validity and historicity. The literal must serve as a representation of our sensual consciousness when regenerated. The literal of the Writings Sacred Scripture in heaven is not the same literal as what we have since angelic language differs greatly from ours and from each other in the three heavens. But each literal must serve that degree of the mind so that the spiritual and celestial can be contained in them. Since the literal is as Divine as the spiritual and the celestial, all the details mentioned and described in the literal must be true in the literal. When we adopt this methodology we will be lead to resolve apparent contradictions and facts that appear contrary to scientific fact. If science assumes this methodology it will be reshaped to align its theories with the rational truths in the literal of the Writings.

Here from the pages of De Hemelsche Leer is a fascinating explanation of the internal sense of a well known Memorable Relation in Swedenborg's work called Conjugial Love:

From De Hemelsche Leer Fascicle IV Pp.33-35 by H. D. G. Groeneweld

"That the conjunction of the Church with the Lord takes place when it prepares itself as a bride and that »it then represents wisdom, appears from the work on Conjugial Love, where in n. 21 the signification of a wedding in Heaven is described.

We read there as follows: "And one out of the men of the wedding, a wise one, said: Do you understand what the things which you have seen signify? They said it was little; and then they asked him why the bridegroom, now a husband, was in such a dress? He answered that the bridegroom, now a husband, represented the Lord, and the bride, now a wife, represented the Church, because a wedding in Heaven represents the marriage of the Lord with the Church. Hence it is that on his head there was a miter and that he was dressed in a cloak, a tunic, and an ephod, like Aaron; and that on the head of the bride, now a wife, there was a crown, and that she was dressed with a robe like a queen; but to-morrow they will be clothed differently, because this representation lasts only to-day.

They asked again: Since he represented the Lord, and she the Church, why did she sit at his right hand? The wise one replied: Because there are two things which make the marriage of the Lord and the Church, love and wisdom; the Lord is love and the Church is wisdom; and wisdom is at the right hand of love. For the man of the Church is wise as from himself, and in proportion as he is wise he takes up love from the Lord. The right hand also signifies power; and love has power through wisdom. But as has been said, after the wedding the representation is changed; for then the husband represents wisdom, and -the wife the love of his wisdom. This love, however, is not the prior love, but it is a secondary love, which the wife has from the Lord through the wisdom of the husband. The love of the Lord, which is the prior love, is the love of being wise with the husband; wherefore after the wedding, both together, the husband and his wife, represent the Church".

The Church therefore is in the state of the bride when it takes up wisdom from the Lord. It is the state in -which the essence of the Doctrine of the Church as the spiritual out of celestial origin, is revealed to it. After the fullness of the state in which this spiritual out of celestial origin is given to it, the Church is no longer the bride or the wisdom of the Lord. Husband and wife, or wisdom and love, or understanding and will, together form the Church, and the conjunction of the Church with the Lord is now dependent on the marriage of those two. It is the husband or the love for the truth of the wisdom of the Third Testament, given to the Church, which is now the prior love and the wife or the love for the spiritual truth the secondary love. It is the state in which the wisdom given to the Church must be brought into the will.

The Lord operates from firsts through lasts. The conjunction with the Lord thus is only possible and therefore is entirely determined by the application of the new truths of the Third Testament in the outermost of our natural life or in our sensual life. All our thoughts and all our acts must have the new things of the Church as their essence. All lusts of the proprium. in which we live must be put aside and the things in the natural world by themselves, and the desires for them, must come to be regarded as not of essential use. All things in the outermost of our natural life from love to the Lord should be put into order by our will, in order that thus we form a foundation on which with the new truths the life in the Lord can be built up. It is in the affection for bringing the spiritual things into our will in the outermost of our natural life that the conjugial sphere flows in from the Lord. It is in this life alone that conjugial love is present and only there lie the peace, the blessedness, and the delight of a life in the things of the Lord. Ever greater will these gifts of the Lord become, the more, and the more internalizingly the spiritual things are present in the outermost of our natural life.

Conjugial love is the love for one of the sex. It is the love for that spiritual truth only which alone fits our will as our own property, by which wisdom and love or understanding and will become one man and thus one flesh. Love for the sex, that is love for the truths in the natural, is a natural love. This love should not enter into the will or the body but only into the understanding. It is meant to be followed by conjugial love which is a spiritual love and which is the desire for conjunction into one in the will. The bringing of the truths in the natural into the will, together with a delight in those truths, results not only in a strengthening of the proprium. but also in a falsification of truth and a violation of good. The taking up of these truths without a desire for conjugial love, thus without a desire for that spiritual truth that fits our will, makes us see in fullness the evils and the falsities of the proprium. in which we live. As strength is lacking, a combat against these evils and falsities appears to us as not possible, wherefore redemption is expected from the taking up of more truths in the natural. The germ of faith alone would then receive its existence.

The chaste love of the sex is only there where conjugial love is; for the spiritual love of truth loves the truths in the natural for the sake of the spiritual. Conjugial love is in the fullness of the true love of the sex when the spiritual truth in the will is conjoined into one as into one man or into one flesh.

All our love for the truths of the wisdom of the Third Testament, given to the Church, must therefore contain in it the desire for conjugial love, in order that the man of the Church may become a husband and the woman of the Church may become a wife. For Heaven is one marriage and life there is only possible in conjugial love. Now it is given to those who are in the New Church to possess the true conjugial love, as appears from the work on CONJUGIAL LOVE, where in n. 43 the following is written: "

After these things an Angel appeared to me out of that [the third] Heaven, holding in his hand a parchment, which he unrolled, saying: I saw that you were meditating about conjugial love. In this parchment there are arcana of wisdom concerning that love, which have never yet been uncovered in the world. They must now be uncovered, because it is of importance. Those arcana in our Heaven are more than in the rest, because we are in the marriage of love and wisdom; but I foretell that no others will appropriate that love to themselves but those who are received by the Lord into the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem"

Another demonstration:

From De Hemelsche Leer Fascicle III Pp.106-7 by Ernest Pfeiffer:

By the Second Coming of the Lord in the Third Testament therefore the conjunction of the Lord with the human race has become immediate and independent of the Heavens also with regard to truth. On this rests the imperishableness of the New Church; for every conjunction which is dependent on the Heavens is also dependent on the human race, out of which the Heavens are made; and every conjunction which is dependent on the human race is exposed to the danger of destruction. Here it now clearly appears in a rational way that the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg are the Truth of the Divine Human and therefore the proper Word of God itself. The proper proof is given by the application of the words: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word, to the Coming and to the Second Coming of the Lord. Before the Coming of the Lord the conjunction of the Lord with the human race with regard to good was mediate through the Heavens; the Word thus was with God. By the Incarnation the Lord became that Word itself; thus God was the Word. Before the Second Coming of the Lord the conjunction with regard to truth was mediate through the Heavens; the Word thus was with God. By the Second Coming the Lord in the Third Testament became that Word itself; thus God was the Word."

Our ability to perceive the Divine truths contained within the letter of the Three Testaments is proportional to the level of consciousness at the time we read or study Sacred Scripture. As we progress from sensual to rational consciousness we make the largest single step in our growth process as human beings in a physical body. Now our sensual consciousness suddenly is much much brighter because it is illumined from within by the new rational consciousness. This rational consciousness (see matrix 3 above), is itself developing in its levels or degrees. Our sensual consciousness of the Divine truths in Sacred Scripture thus becomes brighter and brighter. Now we have the actual perception of how the literal of Sacred Scripture embodies the spiritual truths and how the literal has no relation to these spiritual truths except by extraction through knowledge of correspondences and reception of illustration (enlightenment).

A particular internalizing truth cannot be perceived until its referent is something about ourselves, our own lives and experiences.

Until then we can recognize that there is a truth there, we can lecture and write about it, but we cannot understand it. A particular internalizing truth becomes visible, lights up, the moment we are experiencing or reliving the correspondential things the truth is about. Every internalizing truth refers to something particular in us.

As our consciousness level develops we can perceive ever more internalizing truths in Sacred Scripture. This is not because we are accumulating knowledge and sagacity in doctrines and Sacred Scripture. During all this accumulation process, the truth itself remains outside our self, outside our consciousness until each particular truth is applied and focused on our self--our struggle in the regeneration process, our resistances, our temptations, fears, victories, and happinesses. These are the actual referents--or topics, of Sacred Scripture. When a particular truth coincides or corresponds to some such referent in our life, then we can see and perceive that truth--but not before that, and sometimes not after that because our focus changes and things earlier may no longer be accessible. Nevertheless Divine Providence that supervises and manages these coincidences or correspondences, insures that the process of truth acquisition is recursive within levels over and over again. We have many opportunities indeed.

Much progress in consciousness growth can take place during temptations which is why the Divine Therapist is so intimately involved in these struggles. In temptations our prejudices, fears, and lusts are active in our sensual consciousness. We see them. The Divine makes an exhibit for us to witness about ourselves. At the same time we are given the perception that these injurious forms within our self are contrary and dead set against the earlier truths we already confirmed to ourselves as Divine truths. Now is our big choice, our moment of destiny. If we choose life and heaven we grow into that; if we choose against the truths we already know, we choose death and hell, growing into that. Sacred Scripture refers to the hells in our mind as "death" and when our consciousness is lowered into that state and immersed in it, we are called "dead." This is because we are not human in that state. Our human is dead in that state. Our human begins much higher in our consciousness, namely the internalizing rational (Zones 14 through 18), as already discussed above.

Temptations have this regenerative power because they allow the coincidence or correspondence between experience and truth. Since all particular truths point to a referent in our experiencing or behaving, we can perceive more internalizing truths when there is an alignment between truth and experiencing. The experiencing in temptations is carefully monitored and guided by God, our Divine Therapist. As we recognize our ongoing falsity, fear, or lust, God can raise our consciousness to a more internalizing level that matches the temptation. In this way there is a recursive spiraling upward--the Ascending Pathway --toward internalizing celestial consciousness. Temptations can be natural, spiritual, or celestial--see this article: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html#The%20Role%20of%20Temptations

                                    9.1.13    What About the Dangers of Literalism

We reviewed above the first heresy discussed by De Hemelsche Leer as the idea that the Writings do not have a hidden internalizing meaning that needs to be extracted by correspondences and illustration. In this state of mind we are open to the dangers of literalism, which is the temptation of using the literal of Sacred Scripture to confirm one or another pet falsity we cherish. We cherish these falsities because they are in accord with our lusts. We can retain these lusts and still feel righteous about it, if we can find scriptural verses and sentences that allow it. This is the practice of literalism in Sacred Scripture. It is extremely dangerous spiritually because it can arrest the growth of our consciousness by limiting temptations to non-internalizing truths. Natural temptations can be used for the development of our externalizing rational consciousness. But spiritual and celestial temptations must be used for the development of our internalizing rational consciousness. The Writings in many places warn against literalism, as summarized in this number:

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

HD 257. The Word cannot be understood but by means of doctrine from the Word. The doctrine of the church must be from the Word (n. 3464, 5402, 6832, 10763, 10765). The Word without doctrine is not understood (n. 9025, 9409, 9424, 9430, 10324, 10431, 10582). True doctrine is a lamp to those who read the Word (n. 10400). Genuine doctrine must be formed by those who are in enlightenment from the Lord (n. 2510, 2516, 2519, 9424, 10105). The Word is understood by means of doctrine formed by one who is enlightened (n. 10324). They who are in enlightenment form doctrine for themselves from the Word (n. 9382, 10659). The difference between those who teach and learn from the doctrine of the church, and those who teach and learn only from the sense of the letter, their quality (n. 9025). They who are in the sense of the letter without doctrine, come into no understanding of Divine truths (n. 9409, 9410, 10582). They fall into many errors (n. 10431). They who are in the affection of truth for the sake of truth, when they arrive at adult age, and can see from their own understanding, do not simply abide in the doctrinals of their own church, but examine from the Word whether they are truths (n. 5402, 5432, 6047). Otherwise every man's truth would be derived from others, and from his native soil, whether he was born a Jew or a Greek (n. 6047). Nevertheless such things as are become of faith from the literal sense of the Word, ought not to be extinguished till after a full view (n. 9039). (The numbers above refer to Arcana Coelestia )

In other words, the literal of Sacred Scripture can be searched by anyone who then finds a sentence here and a phrase there that can be used to support some false belief or evil practice. The history of religions is replete with selfish and cruel leaders who led their followers to extreme savagery and inhumanness in the name of Sacred Scripture. This week (March 2001) newspaper and television headlines across the nation report the story of how law enforcement agents took into protective custody several children from a home after neighbors reported cruel punishment by the parents. In an interview with reporters, the pastor of the Church the family belonged to, defended the practice of corporeal punishment by invoking the scripture "spare the rod and you spoil the child."  He said that it is scripture that gives him and the parents the authority to impose corporeal punishment. According to police reports the children had welts and other bruises on the body from being tied, hung, and beaten with a belt "whenever they needed it for behaving very badly." I present this as an instance of the dangers of literalism when Sacred Scripture is used without Doctrine. To those who obtain Doctrine for themselves from Sacred Scripture it is easy to see that it is not good for parents to treat children this way and that it is an abomination to God to have children harmed this way. Doctrine would teach them that God is good, God is pure love, and cannot be used as an excuse for being cruel.

The sentence "spare the rod and spoil the child" must be interpreted within the framework of such a God. Similarly with all the other cruel things we read in the Bible that God is said to have ordered, such as the extermination of all the inhabitants of Canaan--men, women, children, and cattle, when the Jews at last entered the land promised to their ancestors. Doctrine within a framework of an omnipotent and purely loving God, teaches that these sad historical practices were not ordered by God because He is a non-loving God, but instead, reflect the cruel nature of the people of that generation who waged wars in that barbaric fashion. God allowed them these evils because He could not remove them from these evils without destroying them, and thus halting the progress of human creation. Doctrine teaches us an understanding of how Divine Providence operates the universe through Laws that are good and rational. These Laws of Divine Providence involve things that God wills or chooses, and also things that God allows or permits, thought He would not choose them. God's character and personality is reflected in what He wills and chooses; our fallen character and personality is reflected in what He allows or permits. God must allow the hells in our mind and rules them by their contrariness or resistances to the heavens in our mind. In this way, through the process of regeneration, our consciousness can ascend and descend again through the experiences He gives us, and especially, temptations, as discussed above.

A more subtle example of literalism, but devastating nevertheless, concerns what the Writings say about gender differences. The psychobiology of conjugial love often identifies women as representing love and men as representing wisdom. Also, that women are created to be "the love of their husband's wisdom." Our male chauvinism quickly grabs hold of these literal statements and explanations in the Writings and we use them to continue our rational domination of women. Similarly the statements that it is proper for women to be engaged in domestic concerns (house and children) while it is proper for men to have a career outside the home. When this male obsession is thus confirmed with the literal of Sacred Scripture, we cease to be able to understand the internalizing truths of conjugial love, and thus put a stop to our regeneration. Moreover, a social environment is fostered that can be detrimental to the socialization and education of children, and can engender political conflicts within the community and between married partners. The Letters to the Editor in New Church Life, official publication of the General Church in Bryn Athyn Pennsylvania, demonstrate how this conflict leads to women expressing feelings of discrimination and alienation, as well as frustration. I've also observed similar negative views expressed on the online Swedenborg Discussion Forum by women who were raised in the Bryn Athyn community. I've also witnessed it in face to face encounters with individuals from the same community.

(An analysis of literalism and its relation to sectarianism is presented in this article. See also the dangers of fundamentalism in the self given in this article.)

Of course discrimination against women by men is worldwide and universal across this globe. It has been since the beginning of the Fall, which refers to the point of full consummation of our consciousness within a particular level or degree of the mind. In the charts discussed above,  this period or phase is called consummation. What needs to happen then is the Inversion from sensual to rational consciousness, so that the period of adolescence may end at its consummation, and young adulthood may begin. This is the great jump of humankind when we first actualize our born potential of becoming human. Our evidence for our behavior and morality is no longer based on anything from the externalizing natural world but on evidence exclusively from the spiritual world. Henceforth our new consciousness is rational, which is above the ideas and feelings based on natural facts and experiences (science, culture, and sensory experience). These earlier natural ideas and reasonings can now be seen by us from our upper floor--which is the rational degrees of the mind.

At first this new rational consciousness is not totally pure as it partakes of ideas still based in the natural world. This is the internalizing natural degree. It is a rational and spiritual degree, and yet it still acts sluggishly as if it were weighted down by natural ideas of time and space that still cling to the rational ideas. In this state of young adulthood, when applied to our New Church mentality, we are vulnerable to literalism, fundamentalism, sectarianism. Even when we acknowledge and believe that the Writings are Sacred Scripture in the full sense, and thus have an internalizing meaning to be extracted by correspondences and illustration. Nevertheless, when it comes to some deep seated issues like conjugial love, a host of resistances experienced by men become visible, uncovering false beliefs and selfish feelings that were lying hidden and unknown. Then our wife in particular, and women in general, are treated as less than ourselves in our own estimation. To men in that phase of not yet purified spirituality, women's views are discounted in their mind and are worth nothing in comparison to their own views. This amazing arrogance of men is deeply hidden from their actual everyday mode of consciousness, but it is very visible and totally obvious to their wives.

When we resist the inversion from sensual to rational consciousness, and then again, from internalizing natural to rational spiritual, we men practice our opposition to conjugial love. This is because our vertical community is associated with spiritual societies that hate conjugial love and desire nothing more than to denigrate women. This influence on our mind is then hidden since the ideas it fosters are contrary to the ideas that we uphold in our life philosophy and official reputation. This is our work for our spiritual temptations, without which we cannot move on to the internalizing spiritual degree, the beginning of true humanity.

I have tried to make an inventory of the many ways we men behave towards our wife that are anti-conjugial. See this collection of confessions by husbands who have put off the literalism of the Writings for the sake of a more internalizing truth about husbands and wives. When our mind is in the grips of literalism we read the Writings selectively to find confirmations of our beliefs and we ignore other passages that reverse the representations, when women are wisdoms and men are loves. Doctrine must be developed from the literal that gives us an understanding why at one time women represent affections and loves and another time wisdom and truths. These comparisons should not be viewed as "contradictions" for Sacred Scripture contains no contradictions or errors. The literal of the Writings is the sensual basis we have for the Divine Human's Rational. No contradictions or errors can be allowed in our mind about the literal of the Writings, but instead, we need to form Doctrines for ourselves that explain why what is there is there, and what it means spiritually. In this connection, see what I have formulated by the name of The Doctrine of the Wife.

In theistic psychology, both the Descending Pathway (science) and the Ascending Pathway (Doctrine of the Church),  see diagram above,   have a methodology for extracting truths from the literal of the Writings. For the Doctrine of the Church I would recommend this methodology regarding community issues such as gender roles, worship style, management and administration, education, qualifications for the priestly occupation, and so on:

Literal passages from the Writings are not to be used to justify a position on any of these issues. Instead, it is the Doctrine of the Church that must be used as a justification for all things of life.

This rule is extremely important because it save us from many heresies that are injurious to ourselves and the community. It's amazing to me how deeply these forces are implanted in us and occur at every level or degree of our development. I can cite a particularly significant case for this article. The contributors to the De Hemelsche Leer, despite the amazing new insights they brought forth from their rational consciousness, have yet fallen into this trap, which is a trap we all are tempted with in celestial temptations. After they were expelled by the mother Church in Bryn Athyn, the promptly formed themselves into a priesthood exclusively of men, with a doctrinal school or "Gezelshap" exclusively for men called Social Suppers, on which occasion they would present to each other the most recent of their new insights. Neither were women's voices or views allowed in the chief governing councils of the priesthood. They were acting as if the internalizing spiritual truths of the Church and Life were to be born in their minds and not in any woman's mind, or in their male mind alone and not  in conjunction with their wife. This mindset was justified and reinforced, not by the Doctrine of the Church appropriately extracted, but by literalism. Passages were cited indicating that priests are male on account of the representations in the Writings and in Heaven. But other passages were deliberately kept away even though they are connected, such as the passages that teach that the inmost celestial wisdom is in the internalizing of women, while the wisdom of men is more externalizing. Also the passages saying that the husband and wife together make the consciousness of the Church and not the men on their own. These passages and the former should be reconciled by forming new Doctrine that can reconcile them.  This I tried to do in The Doctrine of the Wife.

In the long run it is conceivable to me that the end result will be the same and that women will not serve as priests, to take up one of the issues. But this result will be achieved by an internal process through the Doctrine of the Church, rather than through an externalizing politicized and coercive process such as literalism and fundamentalism. To arrive at this happy result the men willingly must submit to the spiritual and celestial temptations that remain in their relation to their wives. This includes voluntary submission to the more internalizing wisdom that wives receive from celestial angels. Men must defer to the wisdom of their wives. Then they can be enlightened and thereby father the new Doctrine in a state of love, not faith alone. This new Doctrine will be loved by their wives and since they are modest and inwardly wise, they will hardly desire to compete with men in occupations that are open to them through their male representations.

Once more I would like to emphasize that merely quoting passages that appear to justify male decision-making as more weighty than female, is the practice of literalism. Even if many passages are collected, each one indicating a similar appearance, this collection does not constitute Doctrine. Doctrine must be extracted from the literal and confirmed by the literal, but it must not be the same as the literal. De Hemelsche Leer serves as a textbook on how to extract genuine Doctrine from the literal. Hence this document must be studied in order to gain an understanding of the process and method. But it is not the study of this document alone that can give birth to genuine conjugial love in our consciousness, but to the genuine understanding of it as applied to one's relation to the wife. This understanding can occur only to the extent of one's regeneration. Hence the importance of our temptations--see the "husbands confess here" article.

Quoting from From the Writings Sacred Scripture:

SS 1. Doctrine of Holy Scripture

THE HOLY SCRIPTURE OR WORD IS DIVINE TRUTH

It is in everybody's mouth that the Word is from God, is Divinely inspired, and is therefore holy; and yet hitherto no one has known wherein it is Divine. For in the letter the Word appears like a common writing, in a style that is strange, and neither so sublime nor so brilliant as apparently are the writings of the day. For this reason a man who worships nature as God, or in preference to God, and who consequently thinks from himself and what is proper to himself, and not from heaven from the Lord, may easily fall into error in respect to the Word, and into contempt for it, and while reading it may say to himself, What is this? What is that? Can this be Divine? Could God, whose wisdom is infinite, speak in this manner? Wherein consists its holiness, and whence comes its holiness, except from religious feeling and its consequent persuasion?

 

                                  9.1.14    What is Theistic Psychology

Theistic psychology is the activity of extracting knowledge from the literal of the Writings of Swedenborg (see Section xx). The subject matter of the literal of Sacred Scripture is the regeneration of the human race through the regeneration of individuals. Regeneration is the process of gradually opening or activating all the degrees of the human mind. This is a growth process and proceeds in orderly ways, as described in Part 1 of this article. There are six discrete degrees to open or activate in their order. This is the same series of six degrees for the evolution of the consciousness in human history and in individual biography. In human history the developmental steps have reference to epochs in civilization marked by the quality of their intellectual understandings and consequent morality by which they lived and governed themselves as a society. In the Writings of Swedenborg each of these epochs is called a Church. The word "church" also refers to the intellectual development of an individual, especially the degree of unity between our understanding and our will, in other words the degree to which we live the life dictated by our knowledge, understanding, and faith.

All Sacred Scripture is written in a spiritual style. This is entirely different than the natural style of all our other books. The spiritual style of writing is only possible through Divine intervention. It is a style specifically designed for our regeneration. No other style can achieve this. The style of Sacred Scripture of the Old and New Testaments is explained in the Third Testament, which is the name used for the Writings of Swedenborg used by those who acknowledge them as Sacred Scripture. The style of the Third Testament is discussed and explained in De Hemelsche Leer. The extraction process can be pure, genuine, and comprehensible to the extent that the internalizing degrees of the mind have been opened. In other words it depends on illustration and regeneration. Illustration or enlightenment is the process of insight given by the Divine since Sacred Scripture is a Divine Writing that embodies this special property.

Non-spiritual styles of writing do not have this property of being able to open one's internalizing consciousness. This is because the content or meaning of non-spiritual writings refers to physical phenomena and information, as processed by the natural sensual degrees of the mind. Spiritual writings, that is Sacred Scripture or the Word, is written by Divine guidance and determination, literally a dictation. The content and meaning of the spiritual writing style is not the physical world but the spiritual world or the mind. non-theistic psychology is based on our self-intelligence and relies on our natural mind while theistic psychology is based on our enlightened as-of-self from the Divine. The referents of spiritual writing is the mind and the events in it.

Quoting from De Hemelsche Leer Fascicle 5:36 by Theodore Pitcairn

"When man first reads the Word, particularly the Latin Word, it appears to him as truth. It is only afterwards that a man can come to see that internally the Word is the good which is inwardly in man from the Lord, and that the truths of the Word which are apparently from without by means of the senses, are only genuine truths with the man in so far as they are a form of this good."

As-of-self enlightenment or illustration is the process of direct communion and communication with the Divine. It is through this organic or substantive process that we become conjoined to the Divine. Only through this reciprocal conjunction between God and the individual, is regeneration possible, hence eternal life in heaven. Without this regeneration and reciprocal conjunction the celestial mind cannot be opened or activated. When we pass on by leaving the physical body and assume life in our spiritual body, the quality of our life henceforth is entirely determined by the degree of the mind that has been opened in us while still in the physical body. From then on the mind can be opened further only in the degree already opened. When we have only the lowest degrees opened we live in a state called hell; when the highest degree is opened we live in a state called heaven. There are also levels within each of these states of mind. It becomes extremely important therefore that we cooperate actively with the Divine in our regeneration process so that the highest degree of the mind in us can be opened. A principal way that we achieve this cooperation is through living a life according to the degree opened in us and the opening of the degrees is accomplished through knowledge extraction from the Word or Sacred Scriptures. The Divine has provided therefore that there be Sacred Scriptures in every religion by which individuals can be regenerated.

                    9.1.15  Spiritual Styles of Writing

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

SE 1989 THAT externalizing SENSES DISAPPEAR IN THE HEAVENS.

It was represented by a spiritual idea that externalizing senses perish in order [or one after the other] as they penetrate internalizings, or, which is the same, as they ascend towards superiors, insomuch that if a style is filled with mere poetical names, as Parnassus, its fountain, Pegasus, and the like, those who employ those terms in writing know that they signify things pertaining to scientifics, which sense when it passes away, then comes the sense of the letter, which sense also perishes, and is succeeded by a higher, and when this disappears then comes one still more internalizing, and so on. Such is the penetration and ascension of senses while they penetrate or ascend towards internalizings, until at length nothing remains but the pure, true, and good in the inmost heaven, originating from the Lord, who is the essence of all things.--1748, May 18.

Properties of the spiritual writing style are described in the work titled Sacred Scripture and many other parts of the Writings of Swedenborg. The writers who by Divine process are in the role of prophet or revelator, are only aware of the meaning of the literal of their sentences while the internal meanings that are hidden are not known to them except in some small measure that is dependent on the degree of consciousness opened in their mind. The prophets of the Old Testament could not be aware of the inner sense of what they wrote because the rational degree of consciousness was not opened in humankind until after the Inversion (see discussion below). Swedenborg's mind was opened all the way to the internalizing celestial degree so that he could communicate with the inhabitants of the highest heaven, but he and the angels are human finite minds and no one can become aware of the infinite meanings contained in the Divine writing style even though they cumulate their knowledge and understanding to eternity. Swedenborg reports that the inhabitants of all the heavens--Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial, use their version of Sacred Scripture for knowledge extraction and communion and communication with the Divine. This is the method by which their regeneration continues to eternity.

Part 1 of this article described the developmental steps in human consciousness viewed historically as the evolution of the race and ontologically as the growth of the human mind. Six discrete degrees were identified in an embedded recursive dynamic so that each degree undergoes all six steps in recapitulation of the entire series. At the end of the sixth step within each degree there is a state of consummation at which point one either transfers to the next highest degree, or else there is a decline or devolution with no further progress possible, putting an end to regeneration. Not until the consummation of the internalizing spiritual (or externalizingizing rational) do we enter the last and fully human state called the internalizing rational or celestial (old age). During each degree of development we are associated with the angels of the three heavens, natural, spiritual, and celestial. The next chart (matrix 7) portrays these steps again but in addition you can see the various styles of spiritual writing in which Sacred Scripture and its Doctrine were written in the historical evolution of the Churches. These steps are collated with the development of our consciousness in our own growth by identifying the representative sensory modality that corresponds to each developmental phase.

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

CL 210. (1) The special sense of conjugial love is the sense of touch. Every love has its own special sense. The love of seeing, arising from a love of understanding, has the sense of sight; and the things that give it pleasure are symmetries and qualities of beauty. The love of hearing, arising from a love of listening and complying, has the sense of hearing; and the things that give it pleasure are harmonies. The love of identifying odors floating about in the air, arising from a love of perceiving, has the sense of smell; and the things that give it pleasure are fragrances. The love of nourishing oneself, arising from a love of filling oneself with good qualities and truths, has the sense of taste; and the things that give it pleasure are fine foods. The love of identifying objects, arising from a love of looking out and protecting oneself, has the sense of touch; and the things that give it pleasure are sensations that tickle and tingle. The love of joining oneself with one's partner, arising from a love of uniting goodness and truth, also has the sense of touch, and that is because this sense is the common one of all the senses and so draws contributions from the rest. People know that this love brings all the aforementioned senses into confederation with it and appropriates their pleasures to itself. The fact that the sense of touch is dedicated to conjugial love and is special to it is apparent from its every sport, and from the exaltation of its subtle sensations to the most highly exquisite. But to extend this discussion further is left to lovers.

The race's infancy is described in the Writings of Swedenborg as an externalizing celestial state that starts the Descending Pathway. Swedenborg was able to visit with people in the heavens who were from this period of history on this earth. The consciousness that formed the basis of their thinking was a psychic sensual awareness or perception of the spiritual things within the natural world around them. They had direct communication with their ancestors who passed on and were in the heavens. This formed the basis of their socialization and knowledge. The sensory modality of touch represents the celestial angels because they are in conjugial love. When this consciousness phase of humanity was consummated, it was replaced with the next descending degree or the Noachic Church (see matrix 2 in Part 1). Their consciousness was spiritual sensual and well adapted for the Science of Correspondences. Their Word called the Ancient Word was written in pure correspondences; there were no actual historicals involved and they sound to us like some of the visionary language in the Old Testament. Swedenborg tells us that Moses and other Old Testament Sacred Scripture writers had a knowledge of this Word and small parts from it are quoted in various places. Here is a relevant Number from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

TCR 265. That there was a Word among the ancient people, is evident from Moses, who mentions it and took certain things from it (Num. 21:14, 15, 27-30); its historical parts were called "the Wars of Jehovah," and its prophetical parts "Enunciations." From the historical parts of that Word the following is quoted by Moses: Wherefore it is said in the Book of the Wars of Jehovah, Vaheb in Suphah and in the streams of Arnon, and the valley of water-courses that goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, and leaneth upon the border of Moab (Num. 21:14, 15).

By the wars of Jehovah in that Word, as in ours, the conflicts of the Lord with the hells, and His victories over them when He was about to come into the world are meant and described. The same conflicts are meant and described in many places in the historical portions of our Word, as in what is said of the wars of Joshua with the nations of the land of Canaan, and the wars of the judges and the kings of Israel.

[2] From the prophetical portions of that Word the following passages were taken: Wherefore the Enunciators say, Come ye to Heshbon; let the city of Sihon be built and established; for a fire is gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon; it hath devoured Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon. Woe to thee, Moab thou hast perished, O people of Chemosh; he hath given his sons as fugitives, and his daughters into captivity unto Sihon king of the Amorites. We have destroyed them with weapons; Heshbon is perished even unto Dibon, and we have laid them waste even unto Nophah, which reacheth unto Medeba (Num. 21:27-30). Translators render this "composers of proverbs" [or "they that speak in proverbs"]; but the rendering ought to be "Enunciators," or "Prophetic Enunciations," as can be seen from the signification of the word Meschalim in the Hebrew tongue, which means both proverbs and prophetic enunciations (as in Num. 23:7, 18; 24:3, 15), where it is said that Balaam "uttered his enunciation," which was a prophecy that also referred to the Lord. This enunciation is called Maschal in the singular. Moreover, what Moses quotes therefrom is not a proverb but a prophecy.

[3] That this Word was in like manner Divinely inspired is evident from Jeremiah, where almost the same things are said: A fire is gone forth out of Heshbon, and a flame from the midst of Sihon, and hath devoured the comer of Moab, and the crown of the head of the sons of tumult. Woe be unto thee, Moab: the people of Chemosh have perished; for thy sons are taken away captive, and thy daughters into captivity (Jer. 48:45, 46).

In addition to all this a prophetic book of the ancient Word, called the Book of Jasher or the book of the Upright, is mentioned by David and Joshua; by David as follows: David lamented over Saul and over Jonathan; and he wrote, To teach the sons of Judah the bow. Behold, it is written in the Book of Jasher (2 Sam. 1:17, 18). And by Joshua: Joshua said Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon. Is not this written in the Book of Jasher? (Josh. 10:12, 13).

When this consciousness phase was consummated, the Ancient Word was lost to history and the laws of correspondences survived only in a few instances like the Egyptian hieroglyphics and fables passed on to each generation. We read in the Writings Sacred Scripture:

DE VERBO 7. VII. THE correspondential sense OF THE WORD. CORRESPONDENCES. Each and all things which are in nature, correspond to spiritual things; similarly each and all things which are in the human body, as may be seen in two articles in the work on Heaven and Hell. But it is not known at this day what correspondence is, but in the most ancient times the science of correspondences was the science of sciences, thus the universal science, so that the most ancient people wrote all their manuscripts and books by correspondences. The fables of the most ancient times and the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians are nothing else: the book of Job, which is a book of the Ancient Church, is full of correspondences.

[2] All the ancient churches were churches representative of heavenly things; all their rites and also their statutes, according to which their worship was instituted, consisted of nothing but correspondences. Similarly the church with the sons of Jacob; the burnt offerings and sacrifices with all their particulars, were correspondences; likewise the tabernacle with the single things therein, as also their feasts, such as the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of tabernacles, and the feast of first fruits, and also all their statutes and judgments; and because correspondences are such things as exist in the ultimates of nature, and because all things of nature correspond, and the things which correspond also signify, therefore the sense of the letter of the Word consists of nothing but correspondences.

The Lord also, because He spoke from His Divine, and spoke the Word, spoke therefore also by correspondences. What is from the Divine, and in itself is Divine, in the ultimate falls into such things as correspond to Divine, celestial and spiritual things, thus such as in their bosom conceal and signify celestial and spiritual things. What, further, correspondences are, may be seen in the Arcana Coelestia, in which the correspondences which are in Genesis and in Exodus are explained. And again a collection of citations from that work concerning correspondences, may be seen in the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem and in the treatise on Heaven and Hell. The spiritual or internal sense of the Word is nothing else than the sense of the letter unfolded according to correspondences; for it teaches the spiritual which is perceived by angels in the heavens, while man in the world is thinking in a natural way of that which he reads in the Word.

[3] I have heard and perceived from heaven that the men of the Most Ancient Church, who are those meant in the correspondential sense of the first chapters of Genesis by Adam and Eve, were so consociated with the angels of heaven, that they could speak with them by correspondences, and hence the state of their wisdom was such that whatever they saw on earth, they perceived at the same time spiritually, thus conjointly with the angels. It was told me that Enoch, of whom mention is made in Genesis (Chap. 5:21-24), with his associates, collected correspondences from the mouth of those people, and transmitted the knowledge of them to posterity. From this it came to pass, that the science of correspondences not only was known, but was also cultivated, in many kingdoms of Asia, and especially in Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and also in Canaan. From thence it was carried over to Greece, but was there turned into fables, as may be sufficiently evident from what is told of Olympus, Helicon and Pindus near Athens, and also of the winged horse called Pegasus, as, that with the hoof he broke open a fountain, by which the nine virgins [the Muses], established their seats.

For a mountain, and thus Helicon, from correspondence signifies the higher heaven; the hill under the mountain, which was Pindus, signifies the heaven below it; the winged horse, or Pegasus, signifies the understanding enlightened by the spiritual; the fountain signifies intelligence and learning, and the nine virgins signify the knowledges of truth and the sciences. Similar were the rest of the things which are called fabulous, which were written by the most ancient writers in Greece, and which were collected together and described by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.

[4] But when the representatives of the church in the course of time were turned into idolatries, then by the Divine Providence of the Lord that science was successively obliterated, and with the Israelitish and Jewish nation it was altogether destroyed and extinguished. The worship of that nation was indeed altogether representative, but still they did not know what any representative thing signified. For they were altogether natural men, and hence they were neither able nor willing to know anything about the spiritual man and about his faith and love, consequently nothing about correspondences.

The new Word that was given to the Israelitish Church through Moses and the Jewish prophets was mostly written in historical narrative but visionary passages are common to many of the prophets. These passages are called "figurative speech" by Bible scholars but it was entirely unknown that this was not figurative or poetic speech but sentences written in pure correspondences, until the Writings made that revelation. It is still unknown to Bible scholars today since they do not make use of the Writings of Swedenborg. During the Lord's Presence on earth as a historical individual, and before His Ascension, the consciousness of the human race was undergoing a momentous change noted in all the matrices as the Inversion (see matrix 7 above). It appears to me that the Gospel of Matthew is written in an externalizing natural style as a transition vehicle across the Inversion. I therefore place that Gospel in the adolescence phase along with the Old Testament historical narratives and laws, thus still dependent on the sensual phase (externalizing natural presence of the angels of the first heaven, making possible the miracles of that period). But after the Ascension, the Inversion was completed and humankind entered the new rational consciousness in the  internalizing natural presence with the angels of the natural heaven. It is in this state of mind that the other Gospels were written--Mark, Luke, and John, each representing a more internalizing phase of the internalizing natural (or natural rational). I place the Epistles of Paul and the other Apostles in this phase of consciousness (natural rational).

It appears to me that the The Book of Revelations written by John later than the Gospels, was intended for the development of the next highest degree, the internalizing spiritual (or externalizing rational)--consult matrix 7 above. John's visions in that Book are similar to the Old Testament visionary and prophetical passages, including the first 11 chapters of Genesis, that Swedenborg shows are also written by correspondences. This phase of consciousness--the spiritual rational (which is still an externalizing rational), was quickly consummated lasting only two or three centuries until the Council of Nice in 325 AD, according to Swedenborg. That Council introduced the heresy of "three Divine Persons in the Trinity" leading to the devolution of the Christian religion, according to Swedenborg's careful analysis. That phase went on for a long time, until 1771 when the Second Coming was completed in the Writings of Swedenborg. A new Word was thus given for the highest degree of human consciousness, ending the recursive cycle. In this full blown human phase our consciousness is established in all the degrees in an orderly series. The new degree of the celestial rational is the true internalizing rational consciousness and is never consummated. It develops continuously in an ever more internalizing rational and this to eternity. This is why the New Church, called the Church of the New Jerusalem, is referred to in the Third Testament as the Crown of Churches.

As you can see in matrix 7 above I have collated the "six senses" that appear to me to be representative of the six evolutionary phases of consciousness and forms their basis of thinking. The Most Ancient Word is written in a sensual celestial style that is based on the psychic ability to receive conscious influx from angels. This is a "sixth sense" that Swedenborg had as an infant and we can conclude that each of us has this sense during some parts of our infancy as we are then in the company of celestial angels. This state of consciousness is represented by the sense of touch. As we enter childhood our vertical community switches to the spiritual angels and we receive a sensual spiritual influx from them. This corresponds to the sense of taste. The next sense is smell which corresponds to the adolescence phase which is externalizing natural (or natural sensual). As we move across the Inversion the sensory mechanisms become "distal" in comparison to the three prior senses that are "proximal." Distal vs. proximal sensory functions is a distinction known to psychologists. The distal senses are hearing, sight, and rational illustration, since they allow us to collect information from parts of the environment that are not in direct contact with our body.

Hearing corresponds to the basis of thinking in young adulthood, which is internalizing natural (or natural rational). Sight is more distal than hearing and corresponds to the spiritual rational (or externalizing rational). Rational illustration of truths when reading or hearing Sacred Scripture is the most distal and corresponds to old age consciousness, which is internalizing rational (or celestial rational). Our sensual consciousness (infancy to adolescence) is based on proximal contact; our rational consciousness, on distal contact. The two together, that is, the rational consciousness within the sensual consciousness, make up the full human functioning. Temptations involve thoughts and feelings we are aware of. When spiritual and celestial, temptations give us a sensual basis for our consciousness of the Divine presence within us. The rational consciousness must rest on the sensual consciousness and must be developed according to the order of growth provided.

Quoting From the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AC 1766. There are in the Word, in general, four different styles. The first is that of the Most Ancient Church. Their mode of expression was such that when they mentioned terrestrial and worldly things they thought of the spiritual and celestial things which these represented. They therefore not only expressed themselves by representatives, but also formed these into a kind of historical series, in order to give them more life; and this was to them delightful in the very highest degree. This is the style of which Hannah prophesied, saying: Speak what is high! high! Let what is ancient come out of your mouth (1 Sam. 2:3). Such representatives are called in David, "Dark sayings of old" (Ps. 78:2-4). These particulars concerning the creation, the garden of Eden, etc., down to the time of Abram, Moses had from the descendants of the Most Ancient Church. [2] The second style is historical, which is found in the books of Moses from the time of Abram onward, and in those of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and the Kings. In these books the historical facts are just as they appear in the sense of the letter; and yet they all contain, in both general and particular, quite other things in the internal sense, of which, by the Lord's Divine mercy, in their order in the following pages. The third style is the prophetical one, which was born of that which was so highly venerated in the Most Ancient Church. This style however is not in connected and historical form like the most ancient style, but is broken, and is scarcely ever intelligible except in the internal sense, wherein are deepest arcana, which follow in beautiful connected order, and relate to the externalizing and the internal man; to the many states of the church; to heaven itself; and in the inmost sense to the Lord. The fourth style is that of the Psalms of David, which is intermediate between the prophetical style and that of common speech. The Lord is there treated of in the internal sense, under the person of David as a king.

(...)

All these matters presented above are those which in general are embodied in the internal sense of this chapter; but the whole train of thought, and its beauty, cannot be seen when every single thing is explained according to the meaning of the words, as they would be if they were comprehended in a single idea. When all are comprehended in a single idea those things which hitherto have lain scattered now appear beautifully joined and linked together. The situation is as with someone who listens to another speaking but pays attention solely to the words he uses. In this case he does not grasp the speaker's idea nearly so well as he would if he paid no attention to the words and their particular shades of meaning; for the internal sense of the Word in relation to the externalizing or literal sense is very similar to speech in relation to the actual words used when these are scarcely listened to, still less paid attention to, as when the mind is intent on the sense alone of the things meant by the words used by the speaker.

[2] The most ancient manner of writing represented real things by the use of persons and of expressions which they employed to mean things entirely different from those persons or expressions. Secular authors of those times compiled their historical narratives in this way, including those things which had to do with public life and private life. Indeed they compiled them in such a way that nothing at all was to be taken literally as written, but something other was to be understood beneath the literal narrative. They even went so far as to present affections of every kind as gods and goddesses, to whom the heathen subsequently offered up divine worship, as every well-educated person may know, for ancient books of that kind are still extant. This manner of writing they derived from the most ancient people who lived before the Flood, who used to represent heavenly and Divine things to themselves by means of visible objects on earth and in the world, and in so doing filled their minds and souls with joys and delights when they beheld the objects in the universe, especially those that were beautiful on account of their form and order. This is why all the books of the Church in those times were written in the same style. Job is one such book; and Solomon's Song of Songs is an imitation of them too. Both the books mentioned by Moses in Num. 21:14, 27, were of this nature, in addition to many that have perished.

[3] Because it had come down from antiquity this style was later venerated both among the gentiles and among the descendants of Jacob, so much so that whatever was not written in this style was not venerated as Divine. This is why when they were moved by the prophetic spirit- as were Jacob, Gen. 49:3-27; Moses, Exod. 15:1-21; Deut. 33:2-end; Balaam, who was one of the sons of the east in Syria, where the Ancient Church continued to exist, Num. 23:7-10, 19 24; 24:5-9, 17-24; Deborah and Barak, Judg. 5:2-end; Hannah, 1 Sam. 2:2-10; and many others - they spoke in that same manner, and for many hidden reasons. And although, with very few exceptions, they neither understood nor knew that their utterances meant the heavenly things of the Lord's kingdom and Church, they were nevertheless struck and filled with awe and wonder, and sensed that those utterances carried what was Divine and Holy within them.

[4] But that the historical narratives of the Word are of a similar nature, that is to say, that the particular names and particular expressions used represent and mean the celestial and spiritual things of the Lord's kingdom, the learned world has not yet come to know, except that the Word is inspired right down to the tiniest jot, and that every single detail has heavenly arcana within it.

                9.1.16  Intellectual Content in Relation to Degrees of Consciousness

9.1.17   Religious Phases of Behavior in Relation to Consciousness

Religious phases of behavior are explored in a separate article here.

                           9.1.18   Rational Consciousness is within Sensual Consciousness

The diagram below (matrix 10) shows that the Ascending Pathway is related to the Descending Pathway by being within it.

The zones were discussed in the earlier matrices in Part 1 Rational consciousness is within sensual consciousness and the discrete degrees communicate with each other not directly but indirectly through the laws of correspondence. It's important to realize that subsequent discrete degrees in the evolution of consciousness are born and grow within earlier discrete degrees. It is tempting to think that one "leaves behind" the former ages as one advances to the superior ages. But this is not the truth. Instead, the former ages or states must be activated and regenerated and kept pure and prepared for the reception or growth of the next highest degree by correspondence. Sensual consciousness must first be cleansed and purified and matured in its three representative degrees of our mind while we are still in the body and thus, natural people, not yet spiritual people or spirits and angels. Then, when this occurs by means of struggles with appropriate temptations, we reach the point of Inversion to the Ascending Pathway, and begin the opening process of the three degrees of rational consciousness. When all six degrees are opened, the mind can be portrayed as in the next diagram (matrix 11).

The diagram in matrix 11 portrays the rational within the sensual. That which is the containant (the sensual) is called externalizing and that which is contained within this externalizing is the rational and it is called the internal. The rational is the internal, while the sensual is the externalizing. The internal is contained within the externalizing. The internal is always higher and richer and more perfect than the externalizing. In the same way, the Divine which is infinite and perfect is contained within the natural, which is finite and imperfect. What is prior is more perfect than what is posterior. The internalizing forms itself within the externalizing and not the other way round. An idea of this may be had when we reflect on analogies in the physical world. The inmost and finest of nature are formed within the seed. The externalizing covering of the seed is corporeal and coarse but the internal gene that directs the development is finer and spiritual. Similarly, love or affection is within wisdom or cognition for love is the inner celestial essence while truth is the outward spiritual form. The celestial is within the spiritual and the two are within the natural.

                    9.1.19   Embedded Progression of the Six Degrees

The above diagram (matrix 11) corresponds to the zones defined in earlier matrices in Part 1. The Ascending Pathway (Zones 10 through 18) is within the Descending Pathway (Zones 1 through 9). The six discrete degrees of the growth of consciousness in human minds are nested or embedded within each other. The higher degrees are always within the lower degrees. The highest degree (called Old Age) is an internalizing celestial degree and it is the proper human degree. Not until this inmost or highest degree of consciousness is activated do we become fully human, in the image and likeness of God. Such are all the inhabitants of the Third Heaven called Celestial Angels. The beginning of the growth of the human mind is called Infancy and this is a celestial state (like Old Age) but it is an externalizing celestial state of sensual consciousness while Odd Age is an internalizing rational state of celestial consciousness. Between these two celestial states are all the other states of the mind. Further exploration of the states may be achieved by comparing this diagram with the earlier matrices in Part 1.

These six states also reccur within each state. This is the Law of Recursiveness of States, which I discuss in the earlier article under the topic of synechdoche.

Additional exploration of these types of "graphic concepts" is given in this article on comprehensive discourse analysis (see also "discourse analysis" entries in the Swedenborg Encyclopedia of Theistic Psychology).

                     9.1.20   The Four Ages of Ancient History