Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg:
Three Steps in Rational Spirituality
Dr.
Leon James
Professor
of Psychology
First published on the Web: 1999
Updated: 2007
Version 13d
email: leon@hawaii.edu
The Web address of this document,
along with links to other related documents is:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html
For copying or use see the Permissions Note at the end of the document.
**** Before You start: Diagnostic Test Your Rational
Spirituality ****
0.1 A Brief History of
Rational Spirituality
0.3b
Three Steps in Rational Spirituality
1. The
Dawning Age of True Science
1.2 Salvation by Faith Alone vs. Good Works
1.2.a Diagrams of the Human Mind and Divine
Influx
1.2.b Regeneration -- Shunning Evils As Sins
1.3 Truth Is the Appearance of Love
2.
Swedenborg’s Dual Consciousness
3.
Character Reformation By Means of the Threefold Word of God
God’s Intervention in
the Details of Our Lives
Correspondences -- The
Secret Code of Rational Spirituality
4. The
Varieties of Religion Under One Divine Human Person
The Inner
Spiritual Meaning of the Threefold Word
The Growth
of Rational Consciousness of God
5. Phase 1
– Ritual Faith or the Moses-Phase (Sectarianism, Fundamentalism)
6. Phase 2
– Mystical Faith or the Paul-Phase (Personalism, Universalism)
6.2 New Testament Sayings of Jesus and their
Spiritual Meaning
6.3 From Mystifying Faith to Rational
Spirituality
6.4 Sensuous vs. Rational Consciousness
6.5 Anatomical Diagrams of Consciousness
*** Take the Rational Spirituality Test Part 1
7. Phase 3
– Rational Faith or the Swedenborg-Phase (Particularism, Actualism)
8. Sectarianism: The Old Testament State
(Hebrew Word)
9. Personalism: The New Testament State
(Greek Word)
9.1 New Testament Parables– Doorway to
Rational Spirituality
9.1a Rebirth -- Reformation of the
Understanding and Regeneration of the Will
9.1b Why Jesus Spoke Only in Parables
9.1c To Prevent Profanation, Revelation is
Individual and Progressive
9.1d Can There Be a Scientific Proof that the Threefold Word is Divine
9.1e The Secret Code of Correspondences
9.1f The Divine Origin and Power of Correspondences
9.1g The Scientific Status of Correspondences
9.1h Perception of The Spiritual Sense of Scientific Revelations
9.1i Natural vs. Spiritual Understanding of Correspondences
9.1j True Science -- Divine Scientific Revelations of Absolute Truth
10. Particularism: The Third Testament State
(Latin Word)
11.
Spiritual Development is Cyclical and Recursive:
11.1a Comparison of Religious Ideas in the
Three Phases
11.1b The Nine Zones of the Ennead Matrix
12. The Moses Mind: Three States of Sectarianism
13. The Pauline Mind:
Three States of Personalism
14. The Swedenborg Mind: Three Phases
of Particularism
14.1 God, Salvation, Sin, Hell, and Devil in
Phase 2 vs. Phase 3
***
Take the Rational Spirituality Test Part 2 ***
15. The
Three Levels in the Mind -- Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial
15.1 Spirituality That is Natural, Not Yet
Spiritual or Celestial
15. 2 True Science Phase 3 Thinking
15.3 Elevation of Consciousness of the Human
Race
15.4 The Two Layers of True Science –
Theoretical and Applied
15.5 Elevation of Spiritual Consciousness in
Every Day Tasks
15.5.a Sensuous and Rational Consciousness of
the Divine
15.5.b Self-Witnessing One’s Thinking and
Willing
15.6 Chart of Mental Characteristics of
Angels and Spirits
15.7 Diagram Showing the Four Windows of the
Mind.
16. Anatomical Diagrams of the Mind in
Relation to God and Universe
16.1 The Inmost Region: God, Infinite,
Uncreate
16.2 The Middle Region: Mind and the
Spiritual World
16.3 The Outermost Region: The Natural
Mind and Hell
17.
Recapitulation and Study Questions and Exercises
17.1 What does the title mean -- Moses, Paul,
and Swedenborg: --
-- The Three Phases of
Spiritual Consciousness
17.2 What is True Science and what is
dualism?
17.3 Why do scientists oppose dualism and
scientific revelations in
the Word of God?
17.4 Why do religious people oppose the idea
that the Word of God is a
scientific revelation?
17.5 What is the relation between the mind
and the spiritual world?
**** Take the Rational Spirituality Test Part 3 ****
17.7a Why do some people oppose the idea that
hell is forever?
17.7b If God is omnipotent and pure love, why
does he allow evil?
17.8a What are the three phases of
consciousness?
17.8b What is the ennead matrix or the nine
zones of spiritual development?
17.9a What is spiritual enlightenment?
17.9b What is spiritual regeneration?
17.10a What are the laws of space and time in
the spiritual world?
17.10b Are there devils and angels there?
17.11a What’s the difference between
sensuous and rational consciousness?
17.11b Is spirituality closer to mysticism or
to rationality?
17.11c How does True Science view religious
rituals and faith?
17.11d What is the Science of Correspondences?
17.11e Can it be shown that genuine
spirituality is rational and scientific?
The Holy
Spirit -- Rational Consciousness of God’s Co-Presence
Dual
Citizenship -- Horizontal and Vertical Community
As-of Self
– First Fruits of Rational Consciousness
Self-Witnessing
– The Psychology of Cooperation
Forming the
New Church Mind in Ourselves
Characterize the thinking
and feeling levels of every day activities
Explain the level of
thinking in each religious tradition sampled below
18.2.b Charity and Christianity
18.2.f Charity and Secular Humanism
18.2.g Charity and New Christianity (The
Writings)
18.2.a Sample answer for Buddhism
18.2.b Sample Answer for Christianity
18.2.c Sample Answer for Judaism
18.2.e Sample Answer for Hinduism
18.2.f Sample Answer for Secular Humanism
18.2.g Sample Answer for New Christianity (The
Writings)
Use the ennead matrix to
characterize Judaism, Christianity, New Church
**** Take the Rational Spirituality Test Part 4 ****
19.
Selections from the Writings
19.1 On Swedenborg’s Mission as
Scientific Revelator of the Second Coming
19.2 How Everyone is Resuscitated in the
World of Spirits
19.3 Sexual Love, Marriage, Heaven, Hell
19.4 The Threefold Word and Spiritual
Enlightenment Thereby
19.5 On Being Reborn, Sin, Regeneration, and
Forgiveness
19.6 The Vertical Community and Our
association With Spirits
19.7 On Faith Alone, Good Works, and
Meritoriousness
19.8 On Discrete Degrees and Correspondences
19.9 On Materialistic Science vs. True
Science
Abbreviations to Books by Swedenborg
**** Diagnostic Test of Rational Spirituality 100
Items ****
Before You start:
Diagnostic
Test Your Rational Spirituality
It would be helpful to you to compare the distance
between where you are starting from and where you end up when you complete the
study of this book. I created this test to help you estimate that distance.
Each question has three alternatives and you are to pick one of them that best
represents your views on several spiritual topics. I provide an Answer Key and an explanation of how to
interpret your score.
Please page through to the
Appendix at the
end where
the 100 questions are located.
Note:
The expression
“The Writings” is being used throughout to refer to the books
written In Latin by Swedish scientist, Emanuel Swedenborg (1668-1772). These
are available online along with collateral works and search engine:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/abbrev.html
Many public and
academic libraries also carry one or more Swedenborg books. They can also be
ordered from local and online bookstores.
Selections from
the Writings are given in Section 19 and are arranged by topics of relevance to
the discussion.
A
person without religion does not become spiritual, but remains natural
(Swedenborg, CL 149)
We know from the Writings of Swedenborg that the
most ancient civilizations on this earth were pre-industrialized people with
the mental ability of communicating with their departed ancestors. Swedenborg
was given the opportunity to talk to them in their heavens where they live
happily to eternity, as will be fully explained in what follows. While they
lived on earth in a physical body they were able to be in conscious mental
contact with those who had departed and were inhabitants of heaven. This
celestial communication between heaven and earth was the source of their
knowledge about the world, heaven, and God. As a result, their perspective on
reality was objective and realistic, hence dualist and theistic. For them
dualism was not a belief or a religion, but a scientific reality. They did not
have to invent philosophies, theologies, and theories about the source of life,
the immortality of human beings, the existence of heaven and hell, and the laws
by which God operated both worlds, the natural world of earths and the
spiritual world of heavens and hells. This was not mystery to them but science
-- clear understanding based on empirical facts. Whatever information they
needed about reality, they were able to access through the vertical community
of their ancestors. They were celestial people, conscious of the operations in
their celestial mind, which gave them a sensuous consciousness of both this
world and the spiritual world. This dual consciousness was the source of their
science.
And where did the inhabitants of heaven have their
scientific knowledge from?
From God. Such is the character of life in the
heavens, that truth and good streams into the mind from within. Knowledge is
not something that needs to be acquired by learning and discovery. All
knowledge is from God. While attached to the physical body we are compelled to
discover some knowledge on our own. Scientific revelation has the character of
being wrapped in endless layers of appearances of truth. It seems that we have
to exert mental effort to read it and comprehend it. But at some point we are
no longer attached to the physical body and we take over conscious control of
the spirit-body during our resuscitation into the world of spirits. As we enter
the uppermost level of our mind called heaven, there is a radical change in how
knowledge comes to us. In that state our will is in the inmost and our
understanding is on the outside of it. Scientific knowledge or truth streams
into consciousness from the spiritual Sun, which first enters the will with its
spiritual heat or love, and then exits into the understanding with its
spiritual light or truth. This inward source of scientific knowledge is blocked
to consciousness while we are attached to the physical body.
You can see therefore that
the most ancient peoples on this earth did not need an education and a
scientific institution to know the properties and laws of natural events. Whatever
scientific facts they wanted to know came to them from those in the heavens
with whom they were in communication.
An important component of their knowledge was called
the Science of Correspondences. This involved understanding the rational
hierarchy of discrete degrees into which the two worlds were created, and by
which they are maintained in synchronous action. The spiritual world is the
source of all causes while the natural world is the theater of their effects.
Every event or quality in the natural world is an effect of some prior corresponding
spiritual event or quality, the two being linked as effect and cause. Neither
world can survive without the other for they are locked into synchronous
correspondence by pre-established Laws of Divine Providence. A world of causes
(spiritual world) cannot exist without a world of effects (natural world), and
vice versa of course. Further, all events in the spiritual world are from the
same source which is the spiritual Sun. It is the source of all causes in the
spiritual world, and therefore of all effects in the natural world. Hence all
spiritual and natural phenomena are produced by these laws of correspondences by
the spiritual Sun.
[3]
'It would be too tedious to explain how creation progressed from its first
beginning. But while I was in a state of enlightenment I perceived that by
means of the light and heat from the sun of your world, one after another
spiritual atmospheres were created, which are in themselves substantial.
Because there are three of them, and they therefore have three degrees, three
heavens were made, one for angels in the highest degree of love and wisdom, one
for angels in the second degree, and a third for angels in the lowest degree.
But because this spiritual universe could not come into being without a natural
universe, in which the spiritual one might produce its effects and perform its
services, at the same time the sun which is the source of all natural things
was created; and through this in the same way, by means of light and heat, three
atmospheres were created to surround the first three, like a shell round a
kernel or bark round wood; and it was finally through these that the globe with
its lands and seas was created from the earth consisting of soil, stones and
minerals, to be the home of men, animals, fish, trees, shrubs and plants. (TCR
76).
The spiritual Sun is uncreate, which means that it
was not created but always existed. All things that exist were created by means
of the uncreate infinite substances in the spiritual Sun. Its heat and its
light are the foundation substances of all created things. This spiritual heat
is nothing else then Divine Love, and this spiritual light is nothing else than
Divine Truth. To accept this idea you will need to start thinking about love
and truth as substances, and of the will and the understanding as organic
receptor organs of these spiritual substances.
An analogy might be to compare the Science of
Correspondences to the modern day Human Genome Project, which, upon completion,
will yield a database of the identify of all the approximately 30,000 genes in
human DNA. The Science of Correspondences allowed the people of these ancient
civilizations to recognize what spiritual phenomenon was the cause of each
natural phenomenon that was detected by their physical senses. In other words,
they possessed dual sensuous consciousness, at once natural and spiritual.
Since natural phenomena are corresponding effects produced by spiritual causes,
dual consciousness empowered them to sustain a temporary environment of
paradise on earth. Our inability today of living in a paradisal peace is due to
the loss of the science of correspondences so that we sometimes see truth as falsity
and falsity as truth; also, we see good as evil and evil as good. As a result
of this mixed up perception we create an inferno instead of a paradise.
These ancients may be called celestial minds because
the upper portion of their mind was opened, activated, and fully conscious.
This gave them a sensuous celestial consciousness in addition to sensuous natural
consciousness. Their rationality and science was not based on separated
physical observations of correlated effects, such as is the case with
today’s materialistic science. Their science was a True Science. It was a
theistic science because it was true to their empirical observations of both
worlds, not merely the natural world. They could thus observe that the
spiritual world had a spiritual Sun while the natural world had a natural sun.
One Sun was alive, the other dead.
They could empirically observe that the natural world was dead, and that
the life of plants, animals, and humans was not at all in the natural world,
but in the spiritual world. The physical bodies on earth were merely receptor
organs of life streaming forth from the rays of the spiritual Sun. These rays
enter our spirit-body in the world of spirits and thereby descend from the
upper to the lower portions where we become conscious of their corresponding
effects. The corresponding effects consist of a conscious awareness of
spiritual light in the form of natural correspondences or “topics.”.
All natural topics in our awareness all day long are produced by means of such
influx and its correspondences. Our thinking and willing operations would cease
instantly without this continuous influx streaming in from the moment of birth
to eternal immortality.
The most ancient peoples on earth could comprehend
from inner rational enlightenment that the stream of light and heat streaming
out of the spiritual Sun was composed of living uncreate substances identified
as love and truth in infinite quantities and varieties. Plants and animals were
created in an outward physical form, built from within a discrete degree, upon
a framework of rational truth called Divine Wisdom (or Truth). You can see
therefore that uncreate substances of the spiritual Sun form the inmost
discrete framework of created physical organs and objects. Physical organic
forms like plants and animals, are capable of receiving life in various
degrees. The chemical and geological levels receive life in the lowest degree.
Then the plants, which have an organic form that is superior to rocks or
liquids. Then animals, at various levels of receptivity in accordance with
their organic forms. And at last, human beings whose form is an image of God,
can receive life in the highest degreed called angelic or celestial.
The most ancient celestial civilizations on this
earth were able to comprehend that the human mind was the most perfect creation
and the purpose for which all creation existed. They did not feel the need or
motivation to use their knowledge of True Science to create an industrialized
society such as later civilizations have produced. They were wisely content in
a peaceful unhurried environment in which they could mature as young adults and
then make the joyful transition to heaven. They did not experience death as
agony or fear, but as a pleasant transition into a celestial environment that
did not possess the heaviness and fixedness of a material natural world.
Instead, their external environment in heaven was now a spiritual construction,
instantaneously produced, living and changing constantly, reflecting the inner
life of feelings and thoughts of the inhabitants there. There was no need in
heaven to gather stones for their dwelling places and cut down trees, and nail
them together. Their magnificent palaces sprang up instantaneously under the
laws of correspondences, and the amazing objects within, the rich garments, the
delicious foods, the incredible art work, the striking architecture of gardens
and lakes – everything sprang up instantaneously as constructions of the
mind by the power of correspondences.
Swedenborg was able to visit with these earliest
inhabitants of our planet when he visited the heavens where they now live. He
was amazed at the rationality and intelligence they have. Their celestial
consciousness gives them a comprehension of reality that is impossible to
fathom in our natural mind. They are full of innocence, in mutual love, ready
to share what they have, and they live in conjugial love, one husband and his
wife, the two being soul mates, yea, united into one soul so that from two they
became one. Despite their age being thousands of years, the appearance of their
spiritual body was that of the flower of adolescence. When you see a couple
walking at a distance the two actually appear as one angel. They were amazed
and saddened to hear from Swedenborg that the people on earth have strayed so
much from their path that all knowledge of correspondences is lost, and that
almost no one lives in conjugial love. They were unwilling to hear details about
the scortatory and adulterous loves that permeate the race now, as it was too
shocking to their innocence.
What happened in the intervening thousands of years
since they had departed earth? Historically it is known as “the
Fall.” This refers to the decline in innocence, rationality, and
knowledge of correspondences, sad events that were brought about by a gradual
and cumulative turning away from rational spirituality and True Science. At
first only a few people entered upon this nefarious course. They were isolated
on earth, kept away from the inhabitations of the others. When these people
entered the world of spirits at their death, they had to be kept separate from
the heavenly inhabitations to prevent them from causing disturbances in the
peaceful and Divinely obedient life that was part of being in heaven. The
places they were kept in was called the hells. With the course of the
generations entering the world of spirits, more and more people entered the
hells as well as the heavens. There thus evolved two sets of populations in the
spiritual world, celestial and infernal. Those still on earth were now born in
an entirely new condition. First, they had no direct sensuous access to the
spiritual world. The only information they were able to glean from the dual
universe was that which came in through the physical senses. They were now
totally ignorant that they were immortal, that there was an afterlife, a
heaven, and a hell. They had become merely natural minds, thus similar to
animals. This is called the Fall of the human race.
As a result God introduced a new phenomenon in the
evolution of the human race – from sensuous consciousness of Him to rational
consciousness. It was the beginning of rational spirituality in the human race.
Henceforth God would make scientific revelations about Himself, heaven, and
hell through the mind of chosen individuals whom He would put into a state of
trance and produce visions of the spiritual world that they could then describe
and record in writings. These prophetical writings were collected together into
a set known as Sacred Scriptures or the Word of God. Now all the generations
were able to read from a physical book what their dual reality was like. This
was the beginning of a new rationality of the human race. The old spirituality
was based on direct sensuous consciousness of the dual universe. With their
outer physical sensory organs they were able to know the natural order, and
with their inner spiritual sensory organs they were able to know the spiritual
order. When this dual sensuous consciousness ceased with the Fall of the race, knowledge
of the spiritual world and the afterlife was lost. The human race on earth had
become natural. This was reflected by the evolution of a new brain – the
split-brain race.
0.1a The
New Split-brain Race
The early civilizations on this earth were composed
of celestial people, as just discussed. Their mind was unified so that whatever
was in their will, externalized in their understanding, and ultimated in their
physical actions. They were not capable of thinking one thing and saying
another, nor of any deceit or disinformation. This unity of the mind was
reflected by their possessing a single brain. After the Fall, the mind of the
people on this earth was divided. The unity was broken up by God who provided a
new method for the human race to know Him and the journey of joyous immortality
in heaven, which was the purpose God created the dual universe. This new method
was called regeneration of the mind. Now the will and the understanding were no
longer united as they were in the celestial people. Now people were born with a
will filled with tendencies and loves that were opposite to those of the
celestial people. The understanding however was like a blank slate. Nothing
from the spiritual world could enter the consciousness of the mind, and so it
was born totally dark, turned off. This fundamental mental change was reflected
by the action of correspondences as the brain splitting into two parts, the
left brain for the understanding, the right brain for the will.
As the infants of this new split-brain race grew and
became socialized, their understanding was gradually filled with both falsities
and truths. Falsities are opposites and denials of truths, while truths are the
revelations from Sacred Scriptures. These revelations were summarized in every
society and ethnic group in accordance with their specific conditions of life
and culture. Thus arose numerous religions that taught doctrine to the children
and the adults. These were called Doctrines of Life and they were acknowledged
as Divine Commandments to be followed now in order to enjoy a blissful eternity
in the afterlife.
By inheritance the will is filled with natural
motives for acquiring knowledges. When we acquire information about spiritual
topics our will responds to the content, testing it whether it agrees with its
dominant loves. If the spiritual information contradicts what the will wants,
the information is rejected. But if the information is compatible with the
dominant loves, it is adopted and expanded in scope and importance. By this
method we develop a unified mind that is mixed with evils, goods, falsities,
and truths. This is not a stable situation since evil fights with good in the
will, and falsities fight truths in the understanding. God participates in the tremendous
tug of war struggle in our daily affairs as we are pulled and pushed by these
two opposing forces. If God were to leave people to themselves, the outcome is
predetermined. Inherited evil in the will gradually and inexorably banishes all
good from itself, and surrounds itself with falsities manufactured by the
understanding, so that the two can make what’s called an “infernal
marriage,” which is a marriage from hell, taking the people to hell in
the afterlife. The inevitability of this awful outcome meant that the human
race was doomed and creation could not survive.
God then had to assume the role of a Divine Savior. He
had to intervene in the mental operations of every split-brain individual by a
supernatural intervention. God had to break into the natural consciousness of
human beings on earth by a series of steps which took many millennia and centuries
to accomplish. The Writings describe three fundamental steps in this Divine
intervention process. They can be understood in relation to the Word of God or
Sacred Scripture. The first phase of intervention to raise human consciousness
covers the period of the Old Testament civilizations. Human consciousness is
raised by means of Divine Truth. We can receive Divine truths from revelation
in Sacred Scripture. The Old Testament was written through the minds of dozens
of authors over several centuries. In other words, Divine truths had to descend
and externalize in form so that they may be suitable to the genius of the
people of those civilizations. Divine truths are perfectly rational because
they originate from God’s Divine Rational mind. It is by this mind that
God creates the dual universe and manages it. Divine Truth is the acting arm of
Divine Love. Love by itself cannot act, but it can through truth. Truth is
therefore the outside form of love or good. Everything that was created was
created by love through truth. Therefore every created thing or quality
contains love and truth at its essence. And whether you say love or you say
good, it is the same. And whether you say truth or wisdom, it is the same.
By reading, studying, and reflecting upon Divine
truths, our consciousness is raised. This is how our mind has evolved from
creation. We become enlightened from knowing that there are two worlds, that
the two are connected, that God rules all the details, that we are immortal,
that our blissful eternity in heaven or our miserable fate in hell will be
determined by the choices we make in accordance with the Divine truths in our
understanding. Enlightenment brings us to the edge of salvation. Once again God
has placed the human race on this planet into a position of freedom to choose
between evils and goods, and between falsities and truths. It is called the
edge of salvation because we are first given the rational understanding of our
real condition. We can then actualize that salvation by beginning the mother of
all battles – which is our struggle at character reformation by means of
temptations – first natural, then spiritual, and a t last celestial. The
Divine truths in our enlightened understanding are temporary visions of reality
as it is truly. We see God rationally. We can be filled with rational loves by
acknowledging Him as a Divine Human Person, and loving Him by obeying His Commandments.
He can then intervene in further ways that He could not before. The reason He
could not help us before in this new way is that we were not sufficiently
prepared so that we were unwilling to be helped in this way. Had God insisted
on helping us in this way before our readiness being complete, we would have
lost our spiritual freedom to choose heaven or hell. And without this choice,
we cannot be made human and happy to eternity.
God supervises every detail of our character
reformation or regeneration, or else it would fail. The extent to which He can
intervene in our conscious understanding is limited by our willingness to learn
deeper rational truths than what we start out with. We cannot rest in the
spiritual growth process. We must progress continually, or retrogress. Our
spirituality must become more and more rational in order to become more and
more celestial. Celestial spirituality is the highest form of rational
spirituality that human beings can attain. We begin our rational development
with a natural understanding of spiritual truths (or Divine truths). We read
Sacred Scripture and are instructed in religious doctrine. This initial phase
is a natural understanding of spiritual truths. This is the Old Testament phase
of cultural evolution. We read about who is God and what God wants from us and
why. All our thoughts and feelings in this regard are natural-rational. In
other words we think of God naturally, as a Divine King who wants us to follow
His Commandments and to worship and to give Him glory. We think of heaven as a
place of reward for our good deeds, and for our origin of birth and the inherited
blood we carry. We think of hell as a place of eternal punishment for sins and
misdeeds. We think of these things in a natural way.
For instance we think of heaven as something that
will be created on this earth, or some other planet, after the earth is first destroyed.
Or we think of hell as prison where we are tortured and held against our will.
We think of angels as a separately created race to serve God who wants to be praised
and gloried all day long and all night. And other such characteristics that
natural kings would have and natural societies on earth.
The Old Testament phase brings the mind to a higher
level than the natural level ever could attain by itself. The idea that there
are two worlds, natural and spiritual, is a degree of rationality that the
people of the Old Testament could not yet attain. Those who acknowledged the
Old Testament as Divine Truth were raised above the level of others who had
fallen into natural forms of religion called cults and myths. For example the
ancient Greeks, had a culture that transmitted remnants of truths left over
from the celestial civilizations. These remnants were no longer genuine but
filled with falsities. For instance, instead of one God they had multiple gods.
They were locked into this myth, believing it to be true. As a result they were
not able to develop their rational spirituality having met a dead end in their religious
myths. But when the Old Testament was completed, people were able, if they were
willing, to receive rational and scientific facts about God and the spiritual
world, thereby elevating their mind from primitive superstitions to a rational description
of God, who He was, what He wanted, and what methods we were to use in our
regeneration. By adopting these truths, our spirituality becomes rational, that
is, in accordance with true reality as revealed by God.
But this level of rational spirituality is but an
intermediate step. It is not genuine rational spirituality but a lower from of
it created to allow us to progress further. For instance, the rational mind
rebels against mystery and obscurity. It desires to attain a scientific
understanding of all things, including God and heaven. This rational is
encouraged or empowered by God to begin to see inconsistencies in Sacred
Scripture. For instance, on the one had we are told that God is perfection
itself, omnipotent, and loving. On the other hand we are told that God is
demanding, punishing, and even retaliates out of anger when people sin or break
His Commandments. How can the two facts be reconciled? This creates a strain in
the rational mind. Some people respond to this mental strain by beginning to
doubt that Sacred Scripture is really Divine, and eventually turn themselves
away from the Word, and begin to think with thoughts that deny God, heaven, and
hell.
Others respond to the inconsistencies by turning the
rational mind away from them, and calling them mysteries of God that the human
mind can’t quite comprehend. Or else, it is said that these mysteries
will be understood in the afterlife. In this way, rational spirituality
declines. New doctrines are introduced that give a false interpretation of
Sacred Scripture. Heresies and insanities abound, making it difficult for those
in them to turn back, hence to regenerate their character. More and more people
come into the afterlife with an unregenerate character. They are unwilling to
receive the truths they are given and taught, and sink down into the hells of
their mind from where they are stubbornly unwilling to return.
It is was necessary therefore for God to provide new
revelations in order to raise the rational spirituality of the race. Spiritual
evolution must progress in successive steps. When we are regenerating today,
you and me, we go through the same steps that history went through because
individual biography recapitulates racial history. When the Old Testament phase
of evolution was completed in the human race on this earth, the New Testament
phase was initiated by the Incarnation events, and subsequently by the writings
that are collected as the New Testament. The Divine truths are now cast in a
higher version of rationality than ever before. The Old Testament mentality of
a natural God gives way to a new mentality of a spiritual God. Now for the
first time the human race is capable of thinking about a heaven and a hell that
is not out there on the planet, but in here in the mind. This is a discrete and
fundamental leap in rationality. The human race could not have received this
Divine Truth prior to the Incarnation. The Incarnation was a physical
intervention in the natural world. This has never happened before. In Old
Testament days God appeared as an Angel, as Burning Bush, as a Thunderous
Living Voice, as a sacred place with mighty powers like the Ark, or as the
invisible force of the universe. These methods of appearance, or Epiphany, were
indirect and distant. Where was God in the burning bush? Where was God in the
Ark or Temple? The mind could not form a rational description of God that was
actual and true.
But with the Incarnation, the sensuous-rational mind
had physical proof of God’s existence. He was now a historical figure,
born a citizen of a country, walking about making miracles and teaching
followers, then dying, resurrecting, and ascending to heaven again, where He came
from. Now He was in this world; now He is in the spiritual world. This is
rational proof of the dual universe. Later generations who did not see Him
nevertheless are able just as well to rationally confirm His existence by acknowledging
the events of the New Testament as true. This acknowledgment raises our
rationality to a new high. Now we are able to think about spiritual topics in a
spiritual way, not merely natural way.
For instance, heaven is not a place but a state of
mind. Hell is not a prison but an environment created by the mentality of the
people who are there. God is not like a natural king who punished His subjects
when he gets angry. God never gets angry since He is pure love, yet the people
who turn against Him become insane and now begin to see Him as the opposite of
what He is. This is why God talks and appears in the Old Testament as an
earthly king, not because He is that way, but because the Old Testament
mentality sees Him that way. He permits this distortion of Him for the sake of
establishing a basis for a higher spiritual mentality. When we receive the New
Testament mentality, and acknowledge it, and desire to live by it, we ascend to
a new level of enlightenment far above what was possible before.
For instance, our thoughts and loves become more
rational. When we think of sin, we think of intention, not merely the overt
deed. Breaking the marriage vows is called adultery in Sacred Scripture. In the
higher phase of rational spirituality we can see that if we fantasize adultery,
enjoy it, consider it permissible because it is only in the mind, we are
committing a sin just as much as when we carry it out in deed. This is a higher
level of consciousness since it elevates the significance of mental events to
be equal in importance, or more important, then outward actions. This is more rational
because outward actions are nothing but the automatic expression of inward
thoughts and feelings or intentions. We may hide or inhibit our outward actions
to avoid being punished by norms and laws, but we try to do them secretly if we
think we can get away with them. Thus our character remains inwardly such as it
is, and we are not regenerated. Now with the New Testament mentality we can see
more rationally that heaven cannot be given to us by God as a reward, or else
God would, since He is pure love. But He cannot. God can bring us to heaven
only if we have heaven in our mind, that is, only if our thoughts and feelings
are true and good. Thoughts and feelings must be changed by our struggle to
regenerate or else they remain such as they were. We can also in this new
rational spirituality that the human race is united in God’s eyes and
that entering heaven has nothing to do with the blood of our ancestors or with
our standing in society. God is personal, in addition to being universal.
But this new rational spirituality is itself still
in an intermediary stage as shown by the fact that it contains many obscurities
that are turned into mysteries. For instance, how does our rational mind
explain the Incarnation? If God is omnipresent, how can He now be this Divine
Child, or that Adult Man who died on the Cross and was Resurrected? And how can
God die? The rational mind of the civilizations of the New Testament came up
with various explanations based on the natural understanding, rather than based
on spiritual understanding. One of these was the idea that there were not one,
but two Divine Persons. One was called the Father, the other the Son. Father
God and Son God were in heaven when the Son God decided to descend and
Incarnate so that He might become a Holy Sacrifice that would placate the
Father God and be right again with the human race, so long as the people accept
the idea that their sins are forgiven by Father God solely on account of the
noble and Divine Sacrifice of the Sun God who Incarnated. And after the
Sacrifice, the Son God returned to heaven to be with Father God again. This
explanation fails to satisfy the rational mind.
All sorts of inconsistencies and irrationalities are
detected in the story. First and foremost, how can there be two Divine Persons
“each of whom is God” (according to the Christian Creed). Realizing
this logical impossibility, the intellectuals of the New Testament Mentality
again came up with various explanations. One is that this one of those
mysteries, an answer to which we shall only know in heaven. Another idea was
the that the Son God is Divine but He is not as high as the Father God whose
role is Creation, while the Son God’s role is Redemption. This idea led
to injurious heresies, one called the Arian heresy, which said that the Son God
was the Messiah, and so a lesser god than the Father God since the Son was born
human.
None of these explanations satisfy the rational
mind, and once again the human race was poised to slide back in consciousness
and away from Divine Truth, the only reality and science there is. The slide
backwards was so intense and prolonged that 20 centuries after the Incarnation
and the writing of the New Testament, our public schools teach materialistic
science and are even forbidden by law to teach the true role of God in every
natural phenomenon. The consequences of a backsliding consciousness were
devastating and horrible. The human race on earth turned spiritually insane
since the start of these irrational explanations of reality. Materialistic
science and secular humanism became the mentality that captured the governance
of society.
The new rules that were formed for human
interactions were inhuman and beastly, so that nations turned against nations,
waging war with each other and bringing much suffering. Similarly, neighbor
turned against neighbor as they became competitors to each other in business,
sex partners, politics, sports, traffic, and humor. Hostility became normal and
accepted. Physical, mental, and economic abuse became commonplace.
Entertainment and art became brutal and obscene. People stood in long lines to
get to watch a movie that portrayed violence, adultery, murder, deception,
indecency, pornography, blasphemy – and the more of these things were portrayed,
the more people were willing to pay to see it. The majority of marriages ended
in divorce after much suffering, and it became normal for children to grow up
in single parent homes.
Individual lives and lifestyles reflected the
spiritual insanity within Fallen materialistic humanity. The consciousness of a
spiritual link to heaven died out. As a result the mechanism was turned off by
which goods can be received from God through influx into the spiritual mind. Prior
to materialism, the human mind operated with a consciousness of heaven so that
influx into the spiritual mind may be effective and could descend into the
natural mind where the individual experienced enlightenment. With this
enlightenment in the understanding, God’s influx of good could enter the
will. The Divine good is within truth just as heat is within sunlight. By
retaining a consciousness of Divine Truth in our understanding, we are able to
receive Divine good in the will. This good is what we need to live the heavenly
life. This good is the good of character and is given in endless variety –
the capacity to love, the desire to conjoin, the motivation to persevere, the
love of truth, the attraction to innocence and purity, the capacity to learn,
the strengths and virtues of character – these are the goods we receive
from God that make us genuine human beings in the image of the Divine Human
Person.
Without consciousness of God, or dualism, this venue
of reception for goods is interrupted. If we are not open to receiving these
heavenly goods, there is only one other alternative available – the
reception of evils. There is no in between, only this absolute duality from
creation. No other possibility exists. Every single thing on this earth and in
the spiritual world is either from heaven or from hell. No other possibility
has been created. Therefore every single thought or emotion we have is either
from heaven or from hell. Either heaven or hell is the source of every particle
and content of the mind. Friend, if you learn to keep in mind this one
universal absolute fact, you will be saved for eternity in heaven, and in the
meantime, you will live a joyous life here on earth.
The reception of evil in our character is obvious. We
are mixed bags of a fallen humanity. We live a daily life of mental pollution.
Inwardly we rage against everyone. To our loved ones, we are abusive with
various intensities, some brutal and cruel. Our marriages end in divorce. We
quarrel with one another. We overeat, under-exercise. We make many mistakes. We
are forgetful. We are disobedient and selfish, harmful and arrogant. At the
same time can show loyalty, patriotism, friendship, productivity,
inventiveness, industriousness, and many more. We are thus mixed minds with a
split-brain without the power to purify ourselves. What happens to mixed minds
with split-brains? Some people theorize that the good they have done and
possess in their character will outweigh the bad, and a just and merciful God
will not keep them from heaven.
This is a balance theory of Divine equity in
judgment. But it is a fantasy. The truth, as revealed by God in True Science, is
that evil and good cannot mix for evil destroys good by corrupting it and
changing into evil. Evil is nothing else than good changed in that way. The
mixed character theory cannot save you for the evil you actually love will
destroy the good you think you love. You will then realize that the good you
thought you loved, you actually hate. It was just a kind of a put on. God
allows this mixed mind operation for the sake of the individual’s
reformation and regeneration, for without allowing mixed minds on earth, no one
could be regenerated and saved for heaven. A way had to be provided for
regenerating the mixed mind of the split-brain race on earth.
God had to intervene again, for the third time, and now
at last He was able to give the final revelations of the Threefold Word. This had
been God’s plan since the beginning – to give three collections of revelations
– the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Writings -- to allow the new
split-brain humans to be regenerated and to be made whole again, and single
brained, like the celestial people. This is the meaning of the expression the
“Threefold Word.” The re-elevation of the human race to celestial
status was planned in three steps of rational spirituality, in accordance with
the discrete laws of correspondences revealed in the Writings. The first phase
was the collection of scientific revelations called the “Old
Testament” given in Hebrew, which raised the human mind from
pre-scientific thinking -- idol worship, superstition, and barbarism -- to the
first step of a scientific civilization, a first step in rational spirituality.
It established the rational idea that the universe is operated by a rational
Divine intelligence called Jehovah the Creator who is Omnipresent, Omniscient,
and Omnipotent. The idea of one God in relation to the universe raises the
mind’s consciousness from materialistic and sensuous darkness to rational
consciousness. When people think and feel from a perspective of monotheism,
they are operating rationally. This is obvious since all rationality comes from
Divine Truth in our understanding. God is the source of all rationality and
operates everything of the universe by means of rational rules of operation.
Knowing anything about God is therefore operating at a rational level. Denying
God is evidently thinking insanely and irrationally since in actuality God is
the source of all.
The rational idea of God revealed through the Old
Testament, eliminated the insane and illogical theories that captivated the
minds and lives of most people at the time the Old Testament was given to the human
race. This chief rational idea of one God, became the source of other rational
ideas, like the idea of omniscience. Prior to this, people were captivated by
the idea that they could hide from God, or that they could play one god against
another, or that God was limited in power due to other godly-forces of Destiny.
Another idea was that since we are limited humans, we are always going to be
mixed good and bad, but that what matters is the balance – are we more
good than bad. Under this irrational idea many justifications have been found
for not having to regenerate the character. We can excuse some of the bad with
the good, so that we can keep that bad with us, maybe take it to heaven. Or
even that the bad can be regularly washed away by purification rituals. The
result of all these explanations was to create a culture with arrested
spirituality. A second Divine intervention became necessary. It was time to
give humanity the second portion of the Threefold Word.
The New Testament got rational spirituality going
again by eliminating these irrational justifications of evil in the self, and placing
a brand new focus on the intentions, not the deeds. It was a higher more
logical science. An analogy is represented by the science of linguistics when
considered over the span of my professional career. Prior to the 1960s,
linguistics was in the external behavioral phase, not unlike ritual religion
and superstition. Sentences were analyzed by breaking them up into functional
categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. In this first phase of
linguistic science, there was no consciousness of what caused a sentence to be
what it is. Linguists could only organize sentences in terms of their surface
visible structures like adjectives, nouns, verbs. Then a paradigm shift took
place, largely by means of the ideas of Noam Chomsky at MIT who proposed that
sentences are produced by inward rational operations and that we need to
investigate what they are. “Intentions of the speaker” became a new
scientific concept that led to great new strides in linguistics. It also had a
decisive influence on the course of psychology.
The New Testament presented a new more advanced
paradigm of science. It established scientific dualism, which is the rational
idea that God has created a dual universe, one natural or physical, the other
spiritual or mental. Furthermore, there is a cause-effect relation between
them, so that the spiritual moves the natural, not the other way around. In
other words, the mind moves the physical body, not the other way around. Therefore
when we commit an evil act that is injurious to others, it is the evil intention that is the cause of it.
Similarly, when we commit a good act of use to others, it is the good will or
good intention that is the cause of it. Finally, when we commit a good act of
use to others, it may not have a sincere motive, but a hypocritical one, and in
that case the good act does not count as good, but counts as evil. Similarly
when we commit an evil act, but then repent of it, the intention is changed and
the evil is shunned and avoided. The person is then no longer guilty of the former
evil.
This type of reasoning elevated the scientific
consciousness of the civilizations that were influenced by the New Testament.
For example, people started thinking about the causes of the visible things
they see around them. In this way a cause-effect science in general came to be
established, razing civilization to a new rationality.
This rational approach could have worked in terms of
furthering spiritual development of the race had it not been for the many
heresies and mystical doctrines that obliterated the rational gains in the New
Testament. Therefore the Christian world was warned to expect a Second Coming
of the Lord. This was in everyone’s consciousness for many centuries. All
sorts of new heresies were invented as to how this is going to take place. Absolutely
no knowledge of it was available, only speculation. The Lord prevented any such
knowledge from becoming known. The human race could not receive this last
portion of the Divine Revelation without being harmed by it. When we are exposed
to a Divine truth prior to our ability to comprehend it, we turn the truth into
its opposite, thus harming ourselves. The Lord carefully hid this new knowledge
of the Second Coming until the 18the century when Emanuel Swedenborg began
publishing the Writings. These were completed when the last of about 30 volumes
was published by Swedenborg in 1772. In these volumes the full blown answer is
given about what is the Second Coming and how is it going to take place.
A
redemption has also been accomplished by the Lord at this day, because at this
day is His Second Coming according to prophecy; by which, having been an
eye-witness thereof I have been made certain of the truth of the foregoing
arcana. (Coronis 21)
To-day
the Second Coming of the Lord is taking place, and a new church is to be
established (TCR 115)
At last the Lord has revealed Himself in His Divine
Rational as a True Scientist. We now have the answers to all the puzzles of
mystery and heresy that plagued all the prior civilizations since the celestial
beginning of the race on earth. Now it is permitted to go into these mysteries
of ages in a rational way, so that the rational mind can be fully and perfectly
satisfied that there is nothing that can puzzle us that has not been revealed. It
is this method that the Lord has chosen to conjoin Himself to the human race,
and to permit the human race to reciprocate by clinging to Him with our rational
mind. The Second Coming marks the new evolutionary era of celestial
consciousness by means of the rational spirituality of True Science.
This book is about the journey every individual is
embarked on, the journey to heaven or hell. It is about how to avoid hell and
end up in heaven by developing our rational consciousness of Divine Truth.
Since
therefore I was desirous of knowing whether there were other inhabited worlds,
and what they and their inhabitants were like, I was allowed by the Lord to
talk and mix with spirits and angels from other worlds. (Swedenborg, EU 1)
Yes, because it meets all the standards of science,
which is that a scientific explanation must be rational, must fit in
with what’s already known, and must be verifiable by empirical
observation and capable of being disconfirmed by data gathered by others. Any explanation
that meets these criteria is a scientific explanation.
The explanations in the
Writings are rational. I have gone through the nearly 30 volumes and have been
impressed and delighted at its extraordinary rationality and consistency. There
is a substantial literature on Swedenborg, as you can expect, and it is
generally recognized that he was an unusual genius with vast knowledge of the
sciences and the classics. The Writings have been admired for their strict
rationality, sometimes criticized for it by those who would prefer seeing the
expression of more fuzzy passion. The Writings are a model of rationality for
science, theology, and philosophy.
The explanations in the Writings fit in with
everything that’s been known and understood in Western Christian
literature, science, and history. The Writings are a continuation of the Old
and New Testaments, and complete the collection of Divine revelations called
the Threefold Word. The Writings analyze the major theories of theology,
philosophy, and science from Aristotle to
CONCERNING
THE RESUSCITATION OF MAN FROM THE DEAD, AND HIS ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
Being
permitted to describe in connected order how man passes from the life of the
body into the life of eternity, in order that the way in which he is
resuscitated might be known, this has been shown me, not by hearing, but by
actual experience. (AC 168)
I
was reduced into a state of insensibility as to the bodily senses, thus almost
into the state of dying persons, retaining however my interior life unimpaired,
attended with the power of thinking, and with sufficient breathing for life,
and finally with a tacit breathing, that I might perceive and remember what
happens to those who have died and are being resuscitated. (AC 169)
Celestial
angels were present who occupied the region of the heart, so that as to the
heart I seemed united with them, and so that at length scarcely anything was
left to me except thought, and the consequent perception, and this for some
hours. (AC 170)
The
angels who sat at my head were perfectly silent, merely communicating their
thoughts by the face, so that I could perceive that another face was as it were
induced upon me; indeed two, because there were two angels. When the angels
perceive that their faces are received, they know that the man is dead. (AC
173)
An
aromatic odor was perceived, like that of an embalmed corpse, for when the
celestial angels are present, the cadaverous odor is perceived as if it were
aromatic, which when perceived by evil spirits prevents their approach. (AC
175)
As
soon as the internal parts of the body grow cold, the vital substances are
separated from the man, wherever they may be, even if enclosed in a thousand
labyrinthine interlacings, for such is the efficacy of the Lord's mercy (which
I had previously perceived as a living and mighty attraction), that nothing
vital can remain behind. (AC 179)
When
the celestial angels are with a resuscitated person, they do not leave him, for
they love everyone; but when the soul is of such a character that he can no
longer be in the company of the celestial angels, he is eager to depart from
them; and when this takes place the spiritual angels arrive, and give him the
use of light, for previously he had seen nothing, but had only thought. (AC 182)
Afterwards
there seems to be something gently unrolled from the face, and perception is
communicated to him, the angels being especially cautious to prevent any idea
coming from him but such as is of a soft and tender nature, as of love; and it
is now given him to know that he is a spirit. (AC 185)
He
then commences his life. This at first is happy and glad, for he seems to
himself to have come into eternal life, which is represented by a bright white
light that becomes of a beautiful golden tinge, by which is signified his first
life, to wit, that it is celestial as well as spiritual. (AC 186)
One of the most dramatic empirical demonstrations in
the Writings is the proof that the Old and New Testaments are written in the
code of correspondences, the same code that relates spiritual phenomena to
natural phenomena generally. This is most impressive because the dozens of
authors of the Old and New Testaments wrote independently over many centuries.
Unbeknownst to them, what they wrote down was in a code, the same code!!
Isn’t this impressive? Most impressive? Does
it not stand as a historical and scientific proof of God’s existence and
intervention in the minutest details of the world and the mind?
Finally, verification. Are the explanations and
facts reported in the Writings verifiable? Yes, they are, and they will be, by
every individual approximately 36 hours after death. Swedenborg interviewed
many “novitiate spirits” who are the people who have just gone
through resuscitation and are beginning to figure out where they are. When told
by the attending nurses that they are now in the world of spirits, some are
joyous, whether they knew in advance, or are happily surprised. Others are
disbelieving, making up other explanations, for example, that they have been
transported, they don’t know how, to another place or island, and they
need to find their way back home. But soon everyone is compelled by the events
to acknowledge that they are now spirits in the afterlife of heaven and hell.
Some scientists reading the above verifiability test
would not be impressed, this I know full well. They want verifiability now, not
when they depart forever. But here is the news straight from heaven: They are
not going to get it. There is no verifiability of the spiritual world while
connected to the physical body. The reasons for this are medical and will be
explained in the book. Now the only question left is this: Is a rational explanation
disqualified from science when it is not verifiable prior to death? Some
scientists might say yes, but some might say no. I’ve been a career
scientist for forty years and am still on the job, and my answer is No, the
rational explanation is not disqualified even though it is verifiable only at
the death of each scientist.
The Writings do not merely give us a grand theory of
heaven and hell. Swedenborg has been admired by many famous authors in the 19th
century and some people consider his writings as important works of literature
and philosophy. This is also true no doubt. But more than that, the Writings
make it fit in with what’s known in history and science, and with
pragmatism and behaviorism. And, as I mentioned, there is the demonstration of
the code of correspondences in which the Old and New Testaments were written
in. This alone makes the Writings completely unique in the history of ideas.
The human mind has the capacity to operate at
different levels. Lower levels of operation are called “animal” while
higher levels are called rational, spiritual, and celestial. Each of the three discrete
levels of the mind – animal (corporeal, sensuous), rational, and
spiritual-celestial – gives us a different perspective and insight on
life and reality. Our perspective of reality is known as “consciousness”
or “conscious awareness.” Human beings have an innate striving to
elevate their consciousness. This is a genetic built in feature of every human
mind. Consciousness is elevated when our perspective on reality jumps to the
next level of operation. The entire course of human history has been marked by
a sequence of civilizations that rise in human consciousness, from animal, to
rational, to spiritual, to celestial. Individual development recapitulates
historical evolution. Every human being is created with the same human mind
marked by a collection of unique qualities. We are born into the animal level
of consciousness. We develop our mental capacities as we mature, rising as
adults to the level of rational consciousness. As we advance in maturity, our
rational consciousness leaps to a new level of thinking and feeling called celestial-rational
consciousness or rational spirituality.
The link between animal consciousness and rational
spirituality is the rational mind. This spiritual organic form characterizes
humans and distinguishes them from animals. Animals have a natural mind similar
to our natural mind, but only in its lower portions. The upper portion of the
human natural mind is far more evolved than the highest portion of the minds of
animals. This upper portion of the human natural mind possesses an internal
structure that is not formed from the natural world but from the spiritual
world. It is called the natural-spiritual mind. We thus have access to two
orders of information, one natural, the other spiritual. It is our dual mind
that allows this dual access.
Access to spiritual information is only possible by
knowing and understanding Divine revelations. Divine revelations are given in
Sacred Scripture by means of the mind of individuals who have been prepared by
God to fulfill this role. These Divine revelations cannot be understood by
means of thinking and feeling at the natural level below the rational. By
acknowledging and comprehending these Divine revelations we are elevated in
consciousness from the natural level to the spiritual level. We begin with
natural-rational thinking and feeling, then we rise to spiritual-rational
thinking and feeling when we take in the Divine Truth into our understanding. The
Divine Truth in our understanding is what elevates our consciousness to the enlightened
level. We then become aware of two synchronous orders of reality, natural and
spiritual. Natural-rational thinking reflects the information from our physical
senses. This order of reality denies the existence of something that is not
physical. Therefore when it hears rumors of the spiritual world, it denies it, or
else, reinterprets it in natural terms. On the other hand, spiritual-rational
thinking understands and perceives the spiritual within the natural.
Rational spirituality is a biological developmental
process of closer access to God. Studying it allows us to elevate our
consciousness all the way to the top of the human mind called
“heaven.” This book provides information and explanations on how we
can avoid the bottom of our mind, called “hell,” and rise to
heaven. All the information and its explanations, are obtained from the
Writings of Swedenborg (approximately 30 volumes).
This is a basic anatomical chart of the human mind.
You can see that it has three discrete levels – natural, rational,
spiritual. Looking at the bottom half, you can see from the arrows that
information from the natural world is captured by the sensory organs of the
physical body and transmitted by corresponding effects to the natural mind. The
natural mind has three sub-levels, to be shown later – corporeal,
sensuous, and rational. The sensuous information is transmitted upward to the
rational mind, or more accurately, the rational mind perceives the activity in
the sensuous mind and creates an abstract representation of it called
natural-rational correspondences.
Looking at the upper half of the chart, you can see
that information from the spiritual world is captured by the spirit-body,
located in the spiritual world. The spirit-body houses the mind. Information
entering the spiritual mind is called celestial-rational correspondences and
spiritual-rational correspondences. These are ways of thinking about Divine
Truth. Note that the rational mind is pivotal and plays an intermediary role.
It receives information from both the natural world in the form of natural-rational
correspondences, and it receives information from the spiritual world in the
form of spiritual-rational correspondences. Our enlightenment occurs when these
three types of rational correspondences operate synchronously or simultaneously
in our mind. This involves the celestial-rational correspondences to resonate
with the spiritual- rational correspondences and the natural- rational
correspondences all at once.
The Threefold Word is the source of natural-rational,
spiritual-rational, and celestial-rational correspondences.
Without knowing and comprehending this fundamental
duality between the natural and the spiritual-celestial, one cannot elevate
one’s consciousness beyond the natural-rational level of atheistic
science (monism or physicalism). One’s level of understanding, of
thinking, and of feeling, remain at the natural level. One is incapable of
comprehending the reality of the spiritual world, hence the reality of human
beings. Despite this inability, God intervenes in the minds of every individual
and implants rational ideas that the individual believes is from self. This
illusion is necessary to maintain the motivation for learning and survival
while we are still in animal consciousness. It also insures that society can
survive, for it would not, if it were left to the human natural mind to run it.
The unconscious tutelage by the Divine, just
discussed, ceases or changes in operation in the afterlife, which starts
immediately after the physical body becomes a corpse. We begin our life in the
spiritual world with a spirit-body, the same we had all along
“within” the physical body, which now drops off, leaving the
immortal spirit-body intact and free to live its new life in the spiritual
world. This new life is of two separate forms, heavenly and hellish. It is
necessary therefore to raise our consciousness above the natural level so that
we may be prepared to live a heavenly life to eternity. If we do not, our
thinking and feeling remains at the natural level of operation. Upon awakening
in the other life we will find that we are incapable of living a heavenly
existence. Instead, we sink into the hells of our mind from which few are
willing to return, where we lose any good and truth we once may have had, and
begin an endless progression of evil and falsity, insanity and unimaginable misery.
The stakes are therefore could not be higher – eternal heavenly happiness
and wisdom vs. eternal hellish misery and insanity. Only if we rise above the
natural level of thinking and feeling can our consciousness comprehend the stark
reality of heaven and hell, as it has been revealed by God.
While the outside portion of the rational mind is
natural, the inside of it is spiritual. This is the form and function of the
human organic mind. It is created with an outside rational portion that gets
its information from the physical world. Within this natural-rational mind there is formed a spiritual-rational mind that gets its information from the
spiritual world through Divine revelations. In other words, we are created and
born into a dual existence, natural and spiritual. This dual existence must be
based in organic forms and structures, or else it would be nothing. The organ
of the natural mind and the organ of the spiritual mind are both constructed
physiologically out of spiritual substances from the spiritual Sun, just like
the organs of the physical body are constructed physiologically out of physical
substances from the natural sun. When we comprehend this dual reality and
assimilate it into our normal thinking, we enjoy a new consciousness of reality
that may be called rational spirituality.
We can better control our individual spiritual
development by knowing how rational spirituality has developed in the history
of Western civilizations since individual biography recapitulates racial
evolution. The Old Testament civilizations have elevated human consciousness
above the animal level by assimilating the Divine spiritual message given
through Moses into their everyday thinking and feeling. The natural-rational mind is a discrete
level above the natural-animal mind because
of the abstract idea of God which can be formed only by means of rational
thinking. Animals cannot have the idea of God since their cognitive abilities
are restricted to the physical order of the natural world. God is not part of
this physical order. God is absent from the physical detection systems that
have been created for the animal mind. It is not possible to discover
God’s presence physically or by concepts based on physical order. Such
concepts are called “materialistic” and “monist”
because they cannot incorporate the fundamental duality. God is an idea that
originates from the spiritual world, hence any human mind that assimilates this
idea into every day reality, is raised to a higher consciousness of reality, a
higher understanding, a higher operational level of thinking and feeling.
Spiritual-rational thoughts from revelation and spiritual-rational loves from
influx, constitute the content of operation of spiritual rationality.
These spiritual-rational loves from influx enter the
mind of every human being but they cannot survive in the mind without
spiritual-rational truths from revelations. First we must acquire
spiritual-rational truths from revelations, then we can retain
spiritual-rational loves from influx. In this way we become angelic beings.
Following the civilizations of the Moses revelations
came the Christian civilizations of the New Testament revelations. These
elevated human consciousness to a new level of thinking and feeling. The Moses
revelations were cast in a local, sectarian frame that was hostile to
strangers. The New Testament revelations were cast in a universal, personalized
frame that was inclusive of the entire human race. The intellectual
justification of the New Testament in the form of Pauline doctrine, dissolved the
earlier sectarian forms of spirituality, beginning a new life of universality
and Divine personalism. God is not only Divine but Human. It is impossible to
have a relationship of love with an infinite Divine force. Divine love is
essentially Human, as revealed and demonstrated in the Incarnation. A giant
leap forward in understanding reality takes place when the infinite God is
conceptualized as a Divine Human Person. This new idea of God cannot be formed
in the natural-rational mind, but only in the spiritual mind within it. The
spiritual mind is an organic form that responds to spiritual ideas from the
spiritual world. By assimilating this new spiritual idea of God into our
everyday thinking and feeling, we begin a new order of life immersed in rational
spirituality.
But there is one more step to ascend. The intellectual
justification that Paul forged out of the New Testament revelations, were
contaminated with ideas from lower civilizations. Similarly, when individuals
enter this phase of their spiritual development, their consciousness will
remain somewhat general rather than particular, and may thus retain elements
that are not genuine, leading to false ideas, even heresies that become a
stumbling block to further spiritual development. Our understanding of reality
takes its final step of escalation when we particularize the Divine Human
Person by knowing how and where He operates in our mind.
This ultimate level of spiritual rationality has
been provided for by means of new scientific revelations given through the
Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a renowned and respected scientist
in Sweden. The Divine Human Person wants a reciprocal relationship with each
individual in order to become a conscious co-participant in our thinking and
feeling. In order to achieve this possibility, God had make new scientific
revelations never before given. These new revelations are given in the form of
True Science. This makes sense since materialistic science is the ultimate
achievement of the natural-rational mind. With the beginning of the modern mind
in the 17th and 18th century, the rational understanding
of civilization rose to its most abstract level so that it became capable of
incorporating the new scientific revelations of God’s immediate
involvement and co-participation in our thinking and willing.
Christian spirituality has undergone three phases of
evolution – spiritual-natural, spiritual-rational, and celestial-rational.
These three phases of spiritual rationality are embedded in the Christian view
of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Third Testament (or Writings
of Swedenborg). The revelations of the Writings thus complete the creation of
the human race. Now God has at last revealed all the details of His Rational
Mind by which He creates and manages every detail of the universe. All the
mysteries of Christian spirituality that have been invented by the human
intellect can now be enlightened by the objective and clear facts of theistic
science. Mysticism and spirituality have been connected in the earlier phases
of the race’s spiritual development. Attempts have been made to connect
materialistic science and mystical religion. This attempt was unable to elevate
consciousness into its next higher level. Other attempts involve connecting
Eastern philosophies with Christian mysticism. This too yields no elevation.
What is fully effective however, is connecting science with scientific
revelations. This transforms atheistic science into True Science, theistic
science, the science of God.
The mind is elevated in consciousness by means of
Divine revelations. The human mind is created to operate in this way. These
genuine spiritual ideas can be understood rationally because all spiritual
ideas are from God’s Rational Mind. Christianity has received the
scientific truth that God created the universe by means of Truth. Those outside
of the Christian faith, like Gandhi of India, have also received this new
scientific perspective and have incorporated it into their own religion and
culture, as demonstrated by the life of Mahatma Gandhi who identified God with
Truth. Since the universe is created out of Divine Truth in its infinite
variety, it is clear that only a rational spirituality, that is, theistic
science, can be the vehicle for forging our individual spiritual development. The
level of our thinking and feeling can be raised to the celestial level by means
of rational spirituality.
This book presents the three phases of rational
spirituality that every individual needs to understand in order to elevate the consciousness
to the angelic level. This is the true human level of thinking and feeling.
People of all religions and philosophies can use this understanding to advance
themselves in their consciousness within their culture and lifestyle. Religious
traditions and practices are no barrier to consciousness raising by means of
True Science. The Writings of Swedenborg appear sectarian when viewed from the
surface since all Divine revelations reflect the culture and era of the
revelator. But neither Jews nor Christians have an automatic entry pass to
heavenly life and consciousness just because they acknowledge the Word of God
as a Divine revelation. They must extract from it principles and doctrines for
life and they must overcome the enormous resistance all people experience to
the growth of spiritual rationality in their mind.
To the extent that these doctrines are applied to
our daily thinking and feeling, they become systematic and effective techniques
of self-change. God regenerates every individual through daily efforts of
cooperation with Him. He provides us with specific experiences and challenges
every day that are tailored to every unique individual in the form of
temptations of conscience. God provides us with a conscience and doctrines of
revelation, God provides the daily temptations, God provides the power for
overcoming them, but we must provide the free choices by which we deny
ourselves to love evil and its falsities, and compel ourselves to love good and
its truths. The power is God’s but the choice is ours. He participates in
setting up that choice in our mind and through the events in our environment.
He gives us the power to think truth and choose good moment by moment, day by
day.
This intimate and close cooperation and co-acting
between God and every unique human being, has been fully revealed by God
through the Writings of Swedenborg. This is the dawning of the age of True
Science when all mystery is banished and rational spirituality furnishes
humankind with rational loves and rational truths.
I am educated
with a Ph.D. (which I obtained in 1962) and am experienced in the behavioral
sciences. I am a successful, practicing, academic scientist, and you can
see my list of publications (www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonpublish.html)
and some of my current activities in the public eye as a noted expert on
aggressive driving issues--see a list of my media interviews during the past
few years (www.DrDriving.org/about
). I am well trained to make a scientific and professional presentation on many
subjects--see
a list
of articles and book chapters you can read online (www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonarticles.html
). My purpose in the present article is to connect with your mind long enough
to describe a satisfying rational answer to the all important questions of
“Where am I going?” The answer is rational, scientific, practical,
useful, satisfying, pan-human, non-sectarian, good, wise, loving, and perfect in
all ways. This answer is not from me, which is why I can use these superlative
terms to describe it. It is the answer God gives in a new Divine scientific
revelation that has been made available to the human race through the
Writings
of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).
Access to all
the books of the Writings and collateral works is available on the Web:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/abbrev.html
In summary, my
presentation tries to establish the following six points--see how many of them
you're interested in:
(1) The mind
and the spiritual world (afterlife, heaven, hell) are one and the same, yet
with a difference. They both have the same overlapping three-layered levels of
structure – natural, spiritual, and celestial. These are in discrete
degrees and relate to each other by the pre-established Divine Laws of
Correspondences revealed in the Writings.
(2) Our
thoughts and feelings are spiritual substances in action within spiritual
organs called the understanding and the will. They are not
"emergent" phenomena or non-entities in so called “pure”
consciousness. These substances stream out of the spiritual Sun, in the
midst of which the Lord can be seen by the inhabitants of the heavens. This
infinite Divine influx enters every created thing and forms its inmost
framework.
(3) The inner
character we build up by the way we live is actually the spiritual body
in which we live forever in the afterlife. This spirit-body is not material and
temporary, but substantive and eternal. It is the body people have in heaven
or in hell.
(4) Our
condition or fate in the afterlife is completely determined by the inner
character we bring with us, which thus completely determines the level or
quality of our life in eternity (from varieties of the heavenly to
varieties of the hellish).
(5) If we take conscious, voluntary, and
dedicated daily charge of our character reformation, to make it grow
good and right, it is guaranteed to grow into a well formed and healthy
character, that is, a well formed and healthy spirit-body, which then
lives in a blessed and productive state of life forever called
"heaven." Character reformation is by means of victories in temptations.
(6) If we don't
take conscious, voluntary, and dedicated charge of our character, to make it
grow good and right, it inevitably grows into a deformed and sick character,
that is, deformed spirit-body, which then lives in a miserable state of
life forever called "hell."
(7) Character
reformation, called “regeneration,” is a lifelong struggle
in preparation for heavenly life. It is the only condition we must meet in
order to enter heaven to eternity. Regeneration requires (a) rational consciousness
or understanding of the scientific revelations in the Threefold Word;
and (b) rearranging our thinking and willing in accordance with this new understanding.
(8) Our
progression in regeneration goes through three levels of thinking and willing
– ritual, faith, and True Science. In the ritual phase, our
consciousness of God is natural, our salvation is sectarian, and our view of
the world is materialistic. In the faith phase, our consciousness of God
becomes personal and universalist, and our view of the world is dualist. In the
True Science phase, our consciousness of God takes a final step and becomes particularistic
and scientific.
(9) Each of
these three phases has three successive states, yielding nine zones of
rational spirituality, as represented in the “ennead matrix.”
The words that are underlined in these
nine items refer to concepts that are repeatedly discussed in this book. Look
our for them. They constitute the semantic skeleton you’ll need to build
up in your mind to become spiritually enlightened. Here they are again:
(1) mind and
the spiritual world; discrete degrees; Laws of Correspondences
(2) substances
in action within spiritual organs; spiritual Sun
(3) inner
character; spiritual body; heaven; hell
(4) our fate in
the afterlife
(5) character reformation; healthy
spirit-body; temptations
(6) deformed
spirit-body
(7)
regeneration; rational consciousness; Threefold Word
(8) ritual, faith,
True Science
(9) nine zones
of rational spirituality; ennead matrix
If you're interested in one of these, you
will be interested in all nine because they form a logical set. You can also
see why I said that the subject of this book is important and vital, don't you
agree? What can be more vital? You'll find my e-mail address at the beginning
and end of the text. But before you write me, I ask that you read on some more,
so you can react to what I say in a deeper sense than your immediate reaction to
the introductory remarks. Thanks.
1. The Dawning
Age of True Science
This surpasses all the
revelations that have hitherto been made from the creation of the world.
(Swedenborg, INV 44)
This
book is about the most important and vital question every one needs to answer in a rational way. It's the
question of “Where am I going?”
-- in the sense of my life, my future, my
death, my afterlife, my immortality, my heaven or hell, my God. These are endless
versions of saying simply: “Where am I going?” Why is this question
so important and vital to you, to me, to every human being? After all, this is some
philosophical stuff, isn't? Actually, this subject matter is not philosophical,
not evangelical, not spiritistic, or cultist. Neither is it entertainment,
fiction, poetry, or fantasy. This subject is about what is reality, or what is “my”
actuality. So it is practical and scientific. People
acquire the biased thinking that science is not about God, heaven and hell, and
other supernatural things. This bias belongs to materialist science which
denies that the study of the natural world has anything to do with God or
supernatural things. But this is obviously a mistaken view if God intervenes in
natural phenomena, and if our mind is immortal so that heaven and hell are a continuation
of our temporary life of experience and physical phenomena on earth. The
natural and the spiritual are part of one reality or one dual universe, and to
deny this is irrational and harmful to our discovery and understanding of
reality. Hence also our ability to cope and live effective lives.
I'm going to
provide you with a presentation that contains a rational description of an
unbiased science that is capable of investigating and understanding the cause-effect
relation that exists between natural phenomena and spiritual phenomena. These
two are interrelated like cause and effect. Of course, to be acceptable in a
rational way, the presentation cannot rely on persuasiveness or dogmatism, or
technicalism, these being barriers to the immediate apprehension of truth. My
presentation will stick to the rational and empirical, so that the only
requirement you have as a reader is to keep going until the end. At that point,
expect to have become an enlightened human being -- to some degree. At least in
vision or understanding. To actually become the truth that we understand, it is
necessary that we live accordingly. The moment we start living according to the
truth, as we understand it, we become spiritually enlightened. This is because
the inner light of understanding that we call spiritual enlightenment, flows in
from within into our spiritual mind at the very instant we execute an act in
accordance with and for the sake of the truth that we know. This decision or act
according to truth as rationally understood, is called “doing good
works.” Heavenly good flows into every good work and gives spiritual
enlightenment. And along with spiritual enlightenment comes wisdom, love, celestial
bliss, full confidence, and the power and might of angels.
Our
modernistic society and permissive social life provide a laissez faire agnosticism
and a relativistic moral norm for every individual to endorse and internalize.
We are content to remain in a lukewarm attitude towards heaven and hell. A
common point of view is to say: “Well, maybe there is a God, maybe there
isn’t. Why do I have to worry about the afterlife now -- whether there is
one or there isn’t one. When I die, I get to find out anyway. If there is
nothing, that’s it, there is nothing. If there is something, a heaven or a
hell or whatever, I’ll see it. That’s all there is to it. Who is
there who has ever come back to tell us? Let’s just see. For now, we have
all of this. Let’s enjoy it. It won’t last forever.”
What
is this attitude but pure foolishness and reckless self-destructiveness? Here
is why.
The
only reason such a non-argument is kept in the mind is that internally, in
one’s private cognitive chamber, one believes nothing about the
supernatural and one is ignorant of everything spiritual. Just consider what we
would do if we were given notice that we must vacate our home, our city, and be
taken to a distant island where we will have to survive on our own. What would
we do in the few days we are given as warning? We would prepare for our
impending departure. We would try to find out information about the destination
and bring with us whatever we might need to survive—clothes, money,
utensils, a gun, rope, a fishing rod and tackle, a dictionary of the language
used on that island, a map, etc. Do you see what I’m trying to point out?
The only people who would not do preparations are the people who do not believe
that they will be transported to that island in a few days. Similarly with the
afterlife and its condition of life called heaven or hell to eternity. You can
be lukewarm about it if you do not actually believe that you are being taken
there in just a few years, or unpredictably sooner.
Such
disbelief is the most costly mistake one can ever make. For if you are wrong
and there is a heaven and a hell, and you arrive in the afterlife unprepared
for heaven, your lot will be far more miserable than you can imagine now in
your worst fears, and this state of misery is to last with you forever! Is it
possible to make a more costly or injurious mistake?
What
then is the rational response to the idea that there is a heaven and a hell?
What would a scientist or engineer do? What would a wise person do? An
intelligent and adaptive response to the question “Where am I
going?” is to investigate and become informed.
We
obtain information about the supernatural from religion, theology, philosophy, and
popular writing and culture -- all offer information and opinion on this vital
subject. There is a convergence of thinking that people who are good, end up in
heaven, but people who are evil end up in hell. There is also general agreement
as to what is good vs. evil. For instance, a good person is engaged in some
useful work or activity, can be counted on to be loyal to duties and
obligations, normally obeys laws and social norms, respects others, owns up to
responsibility, is a decent person, and refrains from hurting others or
damaging their property. But an evil person is selfish, takes advantage of
others, doesn’t mind hurting them for gain and convenience, misleads and
abuses people, loves to corrupt innocence, ignores the laws when inconvenient
for self, doesn’t respect social norms, deceives and plots against others
for personal gain, and cannot be counted on to be loyal or honest. When the physical
body dies, people awaken in a spiritual body and continue life in either heaven
or hell, depending on what their mind or character is like. Those who have a
good character are capable of living in heaven and those who have an evil
character are only capable of living in hell. Heaven and hell merely reflect
the two sides of the immortal human character.
Sometimes
we like to argue that good and evil is in everyone and people are generally
mixed, possessing good traits and motives, and evil traits and motives. People
sometimes like to quote the New Testament story where the “teachers of
the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. And instead of
punishing the woman, He said to them: "If any one of you is without sin,
let him be the first to throw a stone at her." (John 8:7). This passage is
sometimes used to justify the idea that in the eyes of God everyone is guilty
of sin, and that we ought to forgive sins instead of holding against anyone. This
interpretations and justification is not in the original passage. What is the
Lord teaching us through that passage in the New Testament Word? The Lord has
revealed it in His Second Coming in the Writings. And it is this. Heaven and
hell are within the human mind but separated, just like heaven and hell are in
the spiritual world, but separated by the world of spirits. No one can migrate
from heaven to hell or from hell to heaven. Once a person enters either heaven
or hell, it is permanent, forever, to eternity. This vastly important scientific
fact has been revealed.
We
therefore have a choice whether we are going to love the hell in us or the
heaven in us. Everybody is mixed in the sense that we have loves that are from
our heaven and we have loves that are from hell, the two types of loves never
mixing in our mind, kept separate by the Lord. In other words, while we desire
to love something from hell, we must descend to our hell by lowering our
consciousness, lowering our level of operation in thinking and feeling. But
when we desire to love something from our heaven, we must elevate our
consciousness to heaven, and this can be done through the Threefold Word or
from its influence in our socialization environment. All societies encourage a
life of virtue and health, sometimes hypocritically, but always officially and
idealistically. There are no societies that advocate vice and ill health, again
often hypocritically, by condoning and practicing social evils.
Entry
into heaven is not something we do externally, by credentials and achievements.
It is not an external reward for certain deeds. Heaven is your own mind, the
top of it, where your consciousness operates with celestial-spiritual
correspondences of God, that is, of Divine Good and Truth. We acquire this operational
capability by rational spirituality, which is the ordering of one’s
thinking and willing according to the Doctrine of Life that we extract from the
Threefold Word by understanding it rationally and scientifically. Entry into
heaven is a medical decision: Is your mind prepared to handle the environment
of heaven? Can you survive when you’re cut off completely from any evil
love? All the people in hell, which is a very large number, are incapable of
feeling alive if you surgically remove the evil loves in their consciousness. Hell
is a sort of spiritual insane asylum for people who are unwilling to live in
heaven by giving up their evil loves.
When
I first reflected on this idea from the Writings, I felt relieved – O,
good. If I end up in hell I can always give up my evils for the sake of living
in heaven. This was a dangerous thought for it has the potential to lull me
into thinking that I do not need to struggle desperately to get rid of all my
evils, and that it’s enough if I get rid of most of them, or some of them
that are really bad, etc. This kind of merit economy is deadly, that is,
leading to hell forever. Later I read in the Writings that all those who end up
in hell are given the opportunity to visit heaven, and some do. When they are
elevated into the heaven in their mind, they respond by swooning and feeling
agony and life leaving them, and they instantly cast themselves back into their
abode in hell where they are revived by the evil loves they can enjoy there as
their very life.
In
many circles today, both outside and inside the various religious and Church
organizations, it is not fashionable to talk about hell, and even less so,
about hell forever. The idea goes against the grain of liberalism, universalism,
permissiveness, tolerance, ecumenism. But I will show that this is a mistaken
orientation and ignores what has been revealed in Sacred Scripture. For
instance, the Bible explicitly teaches about hell and it makes no sense to
doubt the existence of hell just because it is politically incorrect to think
that many people, maybe the majority of people, are in hell rather than in
heaven. It may not be politically correct or philosophically convenient to keep
the idea of hell around, but the consequence of ignoring the revelations of God
is to cut oneself off from the knowledge of truth and consequently, the power
to be regenerated in preparation for heaven. Regeneration is the lifelong
progressive process of character reformation, from evil to good, and involves
our daily effort to fight our evils by means of the Divine Truth from revelation.
The scientific rationale of this position is given in this book. I agree that
one can have a knee-jerk reaction to the distasteful notion of hell, and
especially, a hell that is forever. But the distaste comes from not knowing what
it really means scientifically to say that there is a hell, and how the system
works so that some people end up in heaven while others in hell. When we are
told by a priest, minister, teacher, or parent “Stop doing that or
you’ll go to hell,” we learn to ignore this and later, we evolve
the notion that there is no hell.
But
I will show that there is a hell, and also, what you need to do to get there
– not much, for we are born with all sorts of tendencies and preferences
that take us to hell unless we reform our character. So this is the purpose of
this presentation and why it is worthwhile for me to write this, and for you to
figure it out: We are on our way to hell, each one of us, from birth, and
therefore we need to change something to avoid that place, so that we can end
up in heaven instead. “A firebrand snatched from the fire.”
That’s what this brief life on earth is for, namely, to give God the
opportunity to snatch each one of us from this easy downward slide to hell
forever. Why the situation is like this, and why God let it go this far, and
many other puzzles, will be explained rationally in what follows. Read on.
Every
person has a conscience and will power to refrain from doing evil, and
thereafter, to learn to do good. This is called regeneration or character
reformation. That’s all that is required for preparation for the life of
heaven. Those who have reformed their character then start an eternity of
happiness as angel couples in heaven, blissfully in love and growing in higher
knowledge daily to eternity. Those who have not reformed their character then
start an eternity of misery as devils, satans, genii, and sirens in the many
hells provided for the endless exploration of the fantasies and insanities of
the deformed human mind. This is then the clear choice. Nothing could be more
clear. And yet, complications have arisen, false beliefs that oppose the simple
truth of salvation and immortality.
For
centuries now, in the Western mind and consciousness, there has been a
religious suspicion cast upon “doing good works.” Generation after
generation learns the idea that religious life consists of “faith
alone” and that our salvation has been “bought” by the sacrificial
death of the Son of God on the cross. By this act of redemption we have been
reconciled to God the Father in whose eyes we are clean once more, despite our evil
character and evil loves. All that needs to be done, according to this view, is
to believe that Christ died for you on the cross. This doctrine becomes
ingrained in the mind while we are still children and unable to judge
rationally whether such an idea makes sense. Those who question the rationality
of such an idea are thrown back on another idea, namely that “faith is
blind” and that we shall not fully understand the mystery of redemption
until we live with the Lord in heaven. Afterwards, as we become young adults,
we begin to wonder at this doctrine of sacrifice and salvation by the blood of Christ.
It
appears to the developing rational mind that God would not have the same
sentiments and attitudes as a feudal lord, angry at his citizens, depriving
them of life’s necessities and comforts, having no pity or compassion for
them, keeping them away from himself, his face turned away, removing his
spiritual heat, his love, his truth from us, keeping us in the pit of darkness
and need. Then, all of a sudden, He can turn His face to us again, He can see
us in pristine innocence, ignoring our love of evil and our arrogance and
cruelty to one another, reconciled to us once more, as before. And what causes
this radical and sudden switch? The willingness of the Son of God to suffer the
agony of death by torture, to spill His innocent blood like a sacrificial lamb,
for no other reason than His passionate desire to save us, to have us be
reconciled to His Father, as before.
This
rational reaction against the mystery of the doctrine of sacrifice, is
described in the Writings of Swedenborg from both sides of the great spiritual
divide. Swedenborg was well versed with Christian Reformed Theology, being the
son of a Lutheran Bishop and receiving a classic education. At age 57, at the
height of his brilliant scientific career, he was granted dual consciousness,
as will be explained below, so that he became able to speak with the departed spirits
living in the spiritual world. He discovered that every individual is
resuscitated a few hours after the physical body is dead. One awakens in the
spiritual world in a spirit-body with the same feeling of “me” that
one knew in the physical body—all the memories and all the affections and
loves are intact. One then continues life to eternity. With his dual
consciousness, which lasted for 27 years until his passing on at age 84,
Swedenborg had the opportunity to observe and talk to thousands of people in
the spiritual world who were being resuscitated, and many others who had been
in the spiritual world for thousands of years and could still remember and
discuss their life on earth. Swedenborg was particularly interested in talking
to Christians about their faith, and their belief in “faith alone without
good works.” He studied their reasoning process as to how they justified
the idea that good works are not counted for one’s salvation, but blind
faith in the doctrine of salvation by sacrifice.
Following
the initial phase of life in the world of spirits, which may last up to a few
months, one grows more and more inward. Our consciousness and understanding is
now determined not by what we had in our external personality, but what we had
in our interior mind or character. Our interior motives or loves govern our
life but we learn to hide them when we discover ourselves to be selfish, evil,
and inclined to irrational judgments and savage actions. We therefore put on a
surface personality that acts as our agent in the outside world. Our interior
self that pulls all the strings and supplies all the motives, stays hidden,
feeling free to be arrogant, contemptuous, self-righteous, cruel, and stupid. This
interior self is the real self, and not the external personality we put on for
show and is just an agent that will eventually be silenced and laid aside in
the world of spirits. Now our real self emerges to the surface. The external appearance
of our spirit-body reflects this new interior self now come to the fore.
Swedenborg observed two types of loves in these interior places of the
mind—heavenly and hellish. In the spiritual world this becomes easily
visible since the outside is forced to reflect the inside and can no longer be
hidden.
1.2.a Diagrams of the Human Mind and Divine
Influx
The
diagram below depicts the relation between God as the Divine Human Person, and
human consciousness.
As
depicted in the diagram above, human consciousness has its origin in what
proceeds from God as the Divine Human Person. Every individual human being is
human (rather than animal or plant) solely from this cause, namely, the influx
of humanness into every individual’s mind. This influx of humanness is by
means of substances streaming forth from the spiritual Sun and into individual
minds. This spiritual influx of living Divine substances is received by organs
created for their reception. These organs of reception for Divine influx holed
together into a whole which we call the mind of the person, and also, the
spirit of the person. The spirit-body is the essential human anatomy and
physiology and contains the mind and its organs. The physical body with its
brain is an exact replica of the spirit-body and its mind or spirit. The shape
and physiology of the physical body is determined by the shape and physiology
of the spirit-body, and the two are connected by the synchronous action of
correspondences.
The
mind is built into three layers or levels of operation. Each layer or level has
an organ called the will, on the interior, and another organ around it on the
exterior, called the understanding. These two organs operate together by
synchronous correspondences. The operation of the understanding organ is by
means of the influx of Divine Truth, which is an infinite spiritual substance
streaming forth endlessly from the spiritual Sun and proceeding into the
created universe, including the minds of human beings. The reception of this
spiritual substance called Divine Truth is in the understanding of human minds,
but not so for animals, plants, and physical objects or energies. In human
minds the reception of truth is called “mediate influx” and results
in human consciousness. But there is no mediate influx of truth into other
created things, but only immediate influx, and this influx does not result in
the phenomenon of consciousness.
Consider
the following chart that describes the course of influx from God.
Divine Human Person
|
||||
|
↓ |
||||
Spiritual Sun
Good and Truth
|
||||
IMMEDIATE INFLUX
OF GOOD
(unconscious) |
|
MEDIATE INFLUX
OF TRUTH
(conscious) |
||
|
↓ |
|
↓ |
||
|
celestial
will |
(3)
↔ |
celestial understanding |
||
|
↓ |
|
↓ |
||
|
spiritual
will |
(2)
↔ |
spiritual
understanding |
||
|
↓ |
|
↓ |
||
|
natural
will |
(1)
↔ |
natural
understanding |
||
|
↓ |
|
↓ |
||
|
========filtering mechanism======== |
||||
|
infernal natural
will |
(-1)
↔ |
infernal natural
understanding |
||
|
↓ |
|
↓ |
||
|
infernal sensuous
will |
(-2)
↔ |
infernal sensuous
understanding |
||
|
↓ |
|
↓ |
||
|
infernal corporeal
will |
(-3)
↔ |
infernal corporeal
understanding |
||
Influx
originates in the Divine Human Person who is in the midst of the spiritual Sun.
The two infinite substances streaming out of the spiritual Sun are called good
and truth. The heat of the stream is good, and the light of the stream is
truth. These two infinite substances are one in God, but as they emerge from
the spiritual Sun and enter the human sphere, they separate into the
unconscious immediate influx of good and the conscious mediate influx of truth.
The immediate influx of good is received unconsciously by the organ of the will
in the mind, while the mediate influx of truth is received consciously by the
organ of the understanding in the mind. Note that influx enters the highest
portion of the mind called celestial, then descends into the next lower
discrete portion called the spiritual mind, and then into the lowest portion
called the natural mind. Prior to regeneration, we are conscious of only the
natural mind, so that the mediate influx into the celestial and spiritual mind,
is not yet conscious, but it has the potential of becoming conscious with
advancing regeneration. The opening of the spiritual and celestial mind is by
means of revelation which contains celestial truths, spiritual truths, and
natural truths.
The
activity of the celestial and spiritual mind becomes conscious in the natural
mind by correspondences. To accomplish this, God creates an interior portion of
the natural mind. This interior organ is spiritual so that it can reflect by correspondence
the ongoing activity in the spiritual and celestial mind. When we pass into the
afterlife, we gain full conscious awareness of the spiritual and celestial mind
that had been gradually opened by means of regeneration.
Note
also that the influx continues into the lowest portion of the natural mind but
goes through a receptor filter that inverts the influx into its opposites
– good into evil, and truth into falsity. The natural mind has its
opposite in the infernal natural mind. The spiritual mind has its opposite in
the infernal spiritual mind. The celestial mind has its opposite in the
infernal celestial mind. This is because every heavenly good and truth is
turned into its opposites, and since there are three discrete degrees of heaven
there must be three discrete degrees of hell.
It
is the spiritual organ of the understanding that gives us the power of
experiencing living consciousness. What is consciousness? Few people even have
an opinion, let alone any knowledge of what it is. I’ve been in the field
of Psychology for 40 years and though there are books and articles on the
subject of consciousness, there is no knowledge of it. People write about
theories and speculative, imaginative, and abstract accounts of what
consciousness might be. But now True Science gives us a full scientific
revelation from God the Creator and Manager of every individual’s
consciousness.
So
we now know, as just explained, two fundamental things about consciousness.
First, we know that it is a spiritual substance originating in the infinite
spiritual Sun and streaming out into the created universe, both the spiritual
world and the natural world, both into humans and into animals, plants, and
physical objects and energies. Second, we also know that the quality of this
Divine influx exists in two discretely different modalities, called mediate and
immediate influx. Only the mediate influx creates the phenomenon of
consciousness and it is operative only in a particular created organ of
reception called the human understanding.
True
Science gives us many more details of this fundamental process of creation and
existence. Creation is out of the substance of consciousness streaming forth
from the spiritual Sun as spiritual light or Divine Truth itself. Divine Truth
is the substance that makes up the inner framework of every created object or
quality. What a tremendous scientific revelation! It is scientific because it
is about the mechanism by which physical objects are created. Every physical
object or quality is brought into existence by a successive sequence of steps
called its “successive order.” This causative chain of being
remains in “simultaneous order.” If you take any object or quality
and analyze its constituent structure of discrete degrees, you are identifying
its simultaneous order. This simultaneous order is an exact replica of the
object’s successive order. Hence we can say that all successive order in
creation is replicated in all simultaneous order after creation. An analogy
might be the rings we can notice on a slice of a tree trunk. Counting the rings
gives an accurate estimate of the tree’s age. The tree’s successive
order of growth produced each ring with advancing age, and this successive
order is replicated in the slice of the trunk that shows us the rings.
This
scientific revelation to the human race globally, will facilitate new theories
in physics in which consciousness becomes the basis of all matter. True Science
as we know it today from the Writings is much more advanced any current notions
in physics which is still weighed down by materialistic compunctions. One can
expect that the early proposals of this new paradigm in physics will not be
dualist and will redefine consciousness in abstract natural terms, rather than
spiritual, as in True Science, where it is recognized that the consciousness is
not abstracted matter but concretized spirit. Consciousness is a substance
which is far superior to matter in that matter is temporary while substance is
permanent or eternal. Matter exists in finited space-time limits while
substance exists in infinite and uncreate states. Substance is the underlying
framework of matter. Every physical object, from sub-atomic particle-wave to
galaxy, has an underlying substantive framework that gives it body. The outward
object is natural while the inward substantive framework is spiritual. This
dual character of all objects is a tremendously useful scientific revelation.
Now we know that the source of all substances is the spiritual Sun.
Consider
the fact that every tree, stone, water molecule, or protein cell is made of a
piece of the sun. Earth is a piece of the sun and so everything on this earth
must be a piece of the sun. You can say therefore that the sun is the
underlying physical framework of every object on the planet. Now we can another
step. Consider the fact that the natural sun also has to have an underlying
framework. Logic tells us that the underlying framework can’t be the same
as the thing itself, or else it is not an underlying framework. So if the sun is the underlying framework of every
thing on the planet, what is the underlying framework of the sun? Fair
question, but the answer is not known unless we turn to scientific revelations.
True Science describes the spiritual Sun as the underlying framework of the
natural sun. Skipping for now all the details, we can nevertheless rationally
conclude that the spiritual Sun is therefore the underlying framework of every
physical object on the planet.
And
what is this underlying framework from the spiritual Sun? It consists of the
spiritual light and spiritual heat that is carried inside the light. Spiritual
light from the spiritual Sun streams out into creation and begins it as the
first step in a successive order by which this spiritual substance proceeds
from the spiritual Sun and creates by successive steps of layering itself with
more and more limits, until it reaches an outer layer called natural limits.
Every object of this outer natural layer will therefore contain, like the rings
of a tree, a replica in simultaneous order of its steps of creation. Therefore
the initiating substance from the spiritual Sun will be in the inmost or central
ring of the object. And what is this inmost constitutive substance of every
physical object or quality? It is spiritual light within which is spiritual
heat. And spiritual light is called Divine Truth and spiritual heat is called
Divine Love. This proves then that every thing in its inmost is Divine Truth
and Love. And Divine Truth is nothing else then Consciousness Itself, the
source of all human consciousness in the mind. We now have a scientific
explanation of why it can be accurately said that this is fundamentally a Human
Universe made of Truth and Love at its core.
The
diagram and chart above depict some of these details. Note that the Divine
Human Person, who can be seen by angels in the midst of the spiritual Sun, is
the origin of influx. Whatever is streaming out of the spiritual Sun is the
Divine Truth and the Divine Love of the Divine Human Person. This is because
that’s what the Divine Human Person is in Constitution or Essence. In His
essence or inmost being, He is infinite Divine Love, and in His outward
existence, He is the infinite Divine Truth. These are the two substances --
celestial and spiritual -- streaming out of Him into the created universe. Love
is a celestial substance while truth is a spiritual substance. Both come in
infinite and inexhaustible varieties. These two infinite substances are uncreate
and have the capability of transforming themselves into created things by a
process of exteriorization, or self-limitation. The light of the stream of
influx is nothing else than actual Divine Truth, and the heat within this light
stream is nothing else than actual Divine Love.
Substance
contrasts with matter. All things in the natural world are constructed out of
material elements and compounds. But all things in the spiritual world are
constructed out of the two substances, celestial (=love) and spiritual
(=truth). Substances are not in time and space, while matter is. For example, a
house in the natural world is constructed of materials like stone and wood,
while a house in your dream is constructed out of substances (thoughts and
images). Feelings and thoughts are constructed out of celestial and spiritual
substances (love and truth) streaming into the mind. A house in heaven is
constructed out of celestial and spiritual substances from the spiritual Sun.
Clearly, the house in your dream is more like the house in your heaven than
your house on earth. In the spiritual world a house is maintained in existence
as long as your feelings and thoughts are conscious and connected to it. There
is no time limit or spatial restrictions to your house in heaven, as there is
to your house on earth. In the spiritual world, whatever thoughts and feelings
you have exteriorize by correspondence to create the specific appearances of
the sensory environment. On earth this is not so. Your house remains fixed as
is, no matter what your thoughts and feelings are. Material houses are
partially independent of your mind, but substantive houses are completely
dependent on your mind. Those who are in hell have thoughts and feelings that
exteriorize as dark caverns and huts rather than magnificent houses or palaces.
It
takes a high level of abstraction to be able to comprehend the idea that truth
and love are substances. The mental effort it takes to understand how truth and
love can be substances, produces a more abstract and rational intelligence or
wisdom. Our consciousness operates from influx at three discrete levels, and
the resultant conscious awareness and perception is different at each level, so
different, that a lower level can never comprehend a higher level no matter how
much it improves at its own level. It is like a staircase having three steps
separated from each other by several hundred feet. How are you going to get to
the top? No matter how much you walk and shuffle at one step, you will never
get to the next step. The only way is to find a way of being transported up by
some entirely new method that is radically different from walking and shuffling.
Similarly with consciousness, which is like walking and being transported.
The
three discrete levels of the organic physiological mind are called natural or
natural-rational (lowest), spiritual or spiritual-rational (intermediate), and celestial
or celestial-rational (uppermost). Consequently we experience the phenomenon of
consciousness at these three steps or discrete levels of operation. The
thoughts and feelings we have when the natural consciousness alone is operative,
are at the level of animals, though at a more advanced stage. In other words
the physiology of the natural mind is more advanced with humans than it is with
animals. This is the reason that humans use a natural language for communicating
at a distance and for abstract thinking, while animals have only crude
signaling systems in comparison. But in addition to having a more advanced
natural mind, humans also have two additional organs of a higher construction
which animals do not possess and can never possess from creation. These two
higher organs are called the spiritual mind and the celestial mind.
The state of a person's
mind in the natural world determines its state in the spiritual world.
(Swedenborg, TCR 816)
When
we are born, our physical body is born in the physical world and our
spirit-body is born in the world of spirits. The two are connected by the laws
of synchronous correspondences. When the physical body is disconnected by its
death, the spirit-body continues its immortal life in heaven or hell. This
spirit-body is what houses the natural mind, the spiritual mind, and the
celestial mind. Therefore when we appear to ourselves to “awaken” in
the world of spirits, our consciousness of self and our memories are all
present because they were located all along in the natural mind, which was born
in the spirit-body and remains there forever. The natural mind is formed by the
information we obtain from sensory input through the physical body. The
physical body and the natural world are therefore necessary to form the natural
mind, but this formation is not in the physical world but in the world of
spirits where the spirit-body is.
As
the natural mind develops and grows, so does our natural consciousness. Meanwhile,
unbeknownst to us influx is reaching the natural mind by correspondence with
the operations that go on in the spiritual and celestial mind. These operations
of influx in our higher mind are unconscious. We become conscious of them only
when they reach the natural mind. What reaches the natural mind is not the
influx itself, which is spiritual, but the action of synchronous correspondence
of the spiritual upon the natural. Our natural consciousness is therefore the
result of the activity of the natural mind. This activity is nothing but a
correspondential effect of the activity in the higher mind (spiritual and
celestial). Of course the natural mind cannot see or be aware of the higher mind
and when we read in scientific revelation of the existence of the higher mind,
we do not comprehend it except in a natural way. Natural level consciousness
consists of thoughts and feelings that reflect the order of the natural world.
Everything in this order is different from the order of the spiritual world. The
lower cannot comprehend the higher consciousness.
Clearly
then, the natural mind is capable of replicating representatively and
consciously, the activity of the spiritual mind, which is unconscious while we
are earthlings. The natural mind has therefore the capacity to grow into more
advanced phases that can represent the higher stages in a conscious mode. This
is accomplished physiologically by the growth of a new organ in the interior of
the natural mind. This new interior portion of the natural mind is called the
interior-natural mind or the natural-spiritual mind. This interior-natural mind
is a discrete degree within the natural mind proper, which is why it has the capacity
to represent consciously the spiritual and celestial operations of the higher
mind. The opening and growth of the interior-natural mind is effected by God in
proportion to our willingness to be regenerated, that is, our willingness to
undergo spiritual and celestial temptations.
The
diagram above shows the proceeding of influx as it descends into human
consciousness. Note the line of descent or exteriorization from the Divine.
First reception is heaven. After going through the three discrete layers of
heaven, in sequential order, the influx of Divine Truth has been changed by the
minds of the people in the three heavens. By the time Divine influx has
filtered through the lowest heaven, it is discretely different from what it was
on its descent, because a lower heaven cannot recognize anything directly from
an upper heaven, but only indirectly
by means of correspondential reaction. Finally, when the mediate influx
exits the lowest heaven, it enters the world of spirits. This is where are
located the spirit-bodies of all the humanity alive on the many earths in the
natural world. They are all on their way to eternal life in the same spiritual
world. Now the course of mediate influx as it enters each sprit-body,
replicates the course of influx across the heavens because the structure of the
human mind is the same as the structure of the spiritual world, and in fact,
overlaps with it completely since there is no extension or spatial location in
the spiritual world.
The
influx from the highest or celestial heaven enters the highest or celestial
portion of the mind in the spirit-body. Of course we have no consciousness of
this operation or action. Next, influx enters the middle heaven below (called
the spiritual heaven) at the same time that it enters the mid-level mind called
the spiritual mind. Next, mediate influx from the Divine enters the lowest
heaven (called the natural heaven) at the same time that it enters into the
lowest mind, called the natural mind. At this point the influx becomes
conscious by means of the correspondences to it in our natural mind. These
correspondences are the conscious thoughts and feelings in our natural mind.
Note
from the diagram above that the beginnings of Divine mediate influx with humans
are in the heavens, and this is called human higher consciousness. The content
of this influx is truth and good, which are the substances of the spiritual
Sun. These substances make up the stream of influx that is received by the
organs of the mind. Influx therefore is a physiological process of the mental organs
which are created as organs of reception for spiritual and celestial influx. The
organ of the understanding receives the light of the stream, which is actually
nothing else than Divine Truth, and the organ of the will receives the heat of
the stream, which is actually nothing else than Divine Love. The reception of
this stream creates the phenomenon of consciousness, or conscious experience,
in every individual. The content of this consciousness is therefore fixed, embedded,
and recorded by physiological synapses that are made of spiritual fibers in the
spirit-body. Since spiritual fibers or substances are uncreate and immortal,
the form and character of the mind is permanent and immortal, indestructible.
Whatever we once felt or thought, remains part of us to eternity.
As
portrayed in the diagram above, the good and truth substances stream into the
world of spirits from the lowest heavens. From this the influx enters the
lowest or natural mind. Since the Fall of the human race on this earth, the
natural mind automatically filters the influx of good and truth and converts it
into evil and falsity, as portrayed in the diagram above. The content of evils
and falsities are opposite to the content of goods and truths, hence the
consciousness of evils and falsities is called lower consciousness. The lowest
form of consciousness is the content of thoughts and feelings in the corporeal
mind when separated from all upper portions of the mind above it. That is
called the hells.
You
can see from these True Science revelations that spiritual development is no
less physiological than physical development. Also, that consciousness raising
is the process of receiving truths and loves from influx without distorting
them or changing them into the opposites. By changing inflowing Divine truths
and loves into their opposites, we keep our consciousness at the animal level,
trapped in the natural mind of understanding and willing. When, at the death of
the physical body, we make the consciousness transition into the spirit-body,
our quality of experience and life is determined by how high our mind is
operative. If we arrive with the celestial mind operative, we experience the
life of eternal heaven, but if we arrive with only the natural mind operative,
we experience the life of eternal hell. What determines how high our mind
becomes operative, is the process of regeneration. This refers to the lifelong
struggle to change our inherited character into a new one arranged in the order
of heaven by means of revelations which we study, take to heart, and use to guide
our daily thinking and willing.
1.2.b Regeneration -- Shunning Evils As Sins
In
the spiritual world there is perfect correlation between beauty and wisdom,
between good and truth. Those whose interior self is filled with good loves and
true ideas appear beautiful as angels. But those whose interior self is filled
with evil loves and false ideas appear ugly and monstrous as devils. Angels and
devils cannot be together in the same sphere because the good and truth in the
angels obliterates and destroys the evil and falsity in the devils. As a
result, the spiritual world is divided into heaven and hell, where people have
their permanent abode, and there is an impassable barrier between these two.
Swedenborg
discovered that many who believed themselves to be devout believers with a
strong faith, found themselves with an interior self that was the opposite of
what they believed on the outside of their conscious awareness. They now
laughed at their former faith and believed nothing. They saw their own evil
loves, their own hatreds, their own arrogance, their own cruelty, their own
hatred of monogamy and charity, their own disdain for the very idea of Lord and
God—when they saw all this in themselves, they did not judge it and
condemn it. Instead, they defended these things and they associated with others
who were like minded, who loved gossip and slander, who were amused by the
misfortune of others, who were openly envious, scortatory, adulterous,
blasphemous. These things are the things they loved in their interior self.
The
Writings are the revealed Divine Truth that the Lord has given humanity in His
Second Coming. He wants to open the eyes of humanity, to raise our
consciousness and loves to the heavenly state of bliss. He has provided this
new revelation to open our eyes of understanding so that we are able to
understand in a rational and scientific way, what it takes to get to heaven.
Not the sacrifice of someone else, not even God, can change the interior self,
and its loves and ideas. If God were to change our interior self without our
awareness, what would happen? Our annihilation as human beings forever. This is
too much of a fate to endure or to impose. Even life in hell is better than
annihilation. If we are annihilated, we can no longer be human, but if we are
devils, we still can become angels, the moment we want to. All it takes is the
willingness to abandon evil loves and to acquire good loves. That’s all
it takes to change a devil into an angel. It is not an act of God that can do
this, for this would result in annihilation. Clearly then, we must change our
character voluntarily here on earth, or else we cannot be saved for eternal
happiness in heaven.
The
Writings use the expression “doing good works” to refer to the work
of uses in life. This means that we must live our life for the sake of others
at least as much as for the sake of self. In other words, all the daily choices
we make could be either for self or for others as well as for self. For
example, we can let the television or music blare from our room, or we can
think of the room mates and neighbors. We can drive dangerously and think of
ourselves, or we can drive carefully and think of other drivers and
pedestrians. We can let ourselves go and be overweight, or we can reign in the
appetite and increase our physical workout. Etc. There is no mystery here, no
great complication. Everyone can understand this. Everyone knows what is good
or bad, decent or selfish, and we all have ideas about God from culture and
education. God gives us all a conscience as well. You can see therefore that
every human being, regardless of background, can work at becoming a good person
according to the truth one possesses. That’s all it takes to develop an
interior self that is filled with good loves and true ideas. And with these, we
can enter heaven and grow in intelligence and love endlessly, in company with
others, but especially with one’s soul mate or spouse.
Note this
very important fact: only those people who tried to be good on account of God
or the afterlife, had a good interior self, one that is capable of heavenly
life. All those who tried to be good on account of some other reason, did not
have a good interior self, but an evil one. What were these other reasons? Some
put on a good personality for reputation and honor, others for gain or
influence. Others did it out of fear or shyness. But with these motives only
the external behavior and personality are good, that is, appear to be good, but
the interior self is not changed. It is filled with contempt for others and
religion. The interior self can be totally insane spiritually, but show none of
this externally, while maintaining an appearance of sanity and normalcy.
External motives cannot change interior loves and ideas, but interior loves can
change external ones. The motive to be good on account of God, the afterlife,
heaven and hell, is an interior motive, and in fact, it is the highest motive
in the human mind, as explained in the Writings. This motive has the power to
change the interior self, to transform it from loves that concern only the
self, with which we are born, for loves that concern others, thus mutual love
for the sake of unity with God.
The
idea that we are saved by faith alone rather than by character change for the
sake of faith, has therefore become a major stumbling block in the mind that
opposes the new truths revealed by the Lord in His Second Coming. Nevertheless,
every individual can see from reason that blind faith without character change
is not a realistic or true idea of religion, but a distortion and
misunderstanding of Scripture. And every individual has a reason by which to be
able to inspect these new truths that the Lord has now revealed through the
Writings of Swedenborg. Since they are completely rational revelations,
everyone can judge for themselves. There is no persuasion involved. No mystery.
No data that we do not have access to ourselves.
The truth I discuss is not my
truth but God's truth. God's truth is beamed into every mind from
within, yet few can see it or understand it. This is because few listen to it and
value it. The only truth there is, is God's truth. No truth exists that is not
God's truth, which is the truth given to us by God. When you begin to see God's
truth, or simply, truth, you will experience an extraordinary desire, even
compulsion, to tell others of this truth. This compelling feeling of sharing
truth is built into the truth we receive. The reason is that genuine truth can
only be received within good. In other words, when we strive to be good by
doing the right thing, truth is implanted by God in this striving to be good.
The effort we exert is called a motive, purpose, love, or affection. When we
act right from the desire to be good, God then strengthens and extends this
desire for good within our character. The desire to be good has tremendous
power in it. And one of its powers is to receive truth from God as the earth
receives a gestating seed. There is no other way of receiving spiritual truth from
God but in the effort of being good or acting right.
Good
and truth do not exist separately but act only in unison, just like the lungs
and the heart act together for the body’s survival and well being. When
we discuss truth, we do not yet possess actual truth. The truth is then only in
our memory, which is external to our actual self of feeling and existing. The
actual self is our life of love and feeling, while thinking and knowing truth
is merely a reflection of our love and feeling. But acting or behaving according
to the truth in our understanding, is our life, for it is love that acts by
means of truth. Truth therefore is not within us until it is in our will to act
right. Once truth is implanted by God as a seed in our understanding, it begins
to multiply astronomically as we continue to strive to be good and to act
according to the truth we understand. Good is the origin of all love, and truth
is the origin for all wisdom. Love and wisdom are inseparable since good and
truth are inseparable. Truth is the outside form of love. Love appears in the
world by means of truth. Love does not act by itself but my means of truth.
Truth does not act from itself but from love. Love is the Divine Essence and
truth is the Divine Existere. In the Divine Human Person, love and truth are
united as one. Love is His Divine Essence while truth is His Human Essence.
These verities sound abstract before we fully comprehend them. The better we
comprehend them, the higher our consciousness is elevated. When we operate from
a higher consciousness of truth, our thinking and feeling about everything is
raised to a new operational level.
God
also gives us the power to transform or distort good into evil, and at the same
time, to change truth into falsity. Similarly, we can transform love into
hatred and other infernal lusts, and at the same time, we can distort wisdom
and intelligence into insanity and foolishness. The same good and truth, or
love and wisdom, flows in from God into every person, and it is the individual
who then has the spiritual freedom to filter and transform them into either something
that is compatible with love and wisdom, or into something that is contrary to
them. If we change truth to its opposite we become spiritually insane and
forfeit the capability of heavenly life.
The
desire to share the truth is not present when we seek truth as part of our
strategy to get ahead of others or to compete with them. Spiritual truth can be
seen only by those who desire to see it for the purpose of becoming a better
person, because as we improve our character we grow closer to God from whom we
can then receive love and wisdom, or what is the same, genuine good and genuine
truth. To be a good person and to act right according to truth, is not possible
from ourselves but only from God. From our own self we can only remain an evil
person filled with falsities that we believe to be truths. This is how we are
born, namely, spiritually inverted and morally perverted, so that when Divine
good and truth flow into us from within through the soul, we disperse them and
transfix them into their opposite. If we do not love God but ignore or deny
Him, we cannot be genuinely good, because good is from God only, along with
genuine truth. We may act as if we are good, but this is only an outward put
on. We may even believe that we are good, but this is only a convenient
persuasion or self-serving fantasy. Neither is truth from any person, but from
God alone. Both truth and good are from God alone and an individual can have
truth and good only from God, that is, when we acknowledge God and affirm our
love for Him out of free choice. Therefore, to receive good and truth, we must first
acknowledge God.
Every
individual who possesses genuine truth, possesses God's truth received from
Him. Truth is received by the mind in accordance with one's ability to
understand rational ideas. There are simple truths that are rationally simple,
and they can be understood by all, even the uneducated. These simple truths are
enough in themselves to allow one to love God and to live a life of conscience
that prepares the mind for heaven, to the extent that one uses the truth to
shun inherited evils. There are also more complex truths that demand a mind
trained in rational thinking. This training can be intellectual, artistic, or
scientific. Truth in itself, as it flows down from God, is absolute and Divine,
but it is received with variation depending on each individual's mental state and
preparation. The more we shun our known evils as sins against God, the further
we are regenerated by God from within, as a result of which we also grow in
understanding and enlightenment.
One day I had been
meditating on the creation of the universe. This was noticed by the angels
above me to the right, where there were some who had several times meditated
and reasoned about the same matter; so one of them came down and invited me to
join them. I passed into the spirit and accompanied him; on my arrival I was
brought to the prince, in whose hall I saw as many as a hundred assembled with
the prince in their midst. . (Swedenborg, TCR 76).
2. Swedenborg’s
Dual Consciousness
The
name I use for the approach in this book is “True Science,” and
also “theistic science”
and “ scientific dualism”
(see the articles available from this directory: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss.html
I have
included only rational concepts and scientific or empirical methods.
By
"scientific" I mean any rational explanatory account that is tied to
empirical facts verifiable through observation by anyone under the appropriate
test conditions.
It is known that rational is universal, and
is a property of the human mind with which we are born and which we can
exercise as part of our racial evolution. Societal activities are governed by
the rational to the extent that they are effective. We have lawyers,
accountants, legislators, and judges to see to it that rational methods of
evidence presentation and conclusion are followed. We have engineers and
economists who plan our environment and are required to write rational reports
and justifications for their planning. In science, every method and approach,
every school of thought and specialization, is governed by rational steps of
operation and evaluation. Architecture and art are based on rational principles
of harmony and interrelationships. Survival is a function of adaptation, and in
humans, adaptation is the outcome of rational principles.
I
have been trained as a practicing scientist for several decades to learn what
is rational reasoning and how to operate within its scope to give meaning to
facts, data, evidence, logic, inner consistency, outer harmony, specificity,
and unitary coherence. This is possible for me only because Emanuel Swedenborg
(1688-1771) was a superb and honest scientist and the Writings he left us are
thoroughly and consistently rational, empirical and scientific. He is the only
writer in all of human history that has been able to retain this high quality
of scientific standards on this topic of "What is real? Where am I
going?", and includes scientific explanations of the afterlife, the mind, Sacred
Scripture, heaven, hell, and God.
Quoting
Swedenborg at the beginning of the book titled Heaven and Hell:
The arcana revealed in
the following pages relate to heaven and hell, and also to the life of man
after death. The man of the church at this date knows scarcely anything about
heaven and hell or about his life after death, although all these matters are
set forth and described in the Word; and yet many of those born within the
church refuse to believe in them, saying in their hearts, "Who has come
from that world and told us?" Lest, therefore, such a spirit of denial,
which especially prevails with those who have much worldly wisdom, should also
infect and corrupt the simple in heart and the simple in faith, it has been
granted me to associate with angels and to talk with them as man with man, also
to see what is in the heavens and what is in the hells, and this for thirteen
years; so now from what I have seen and heard it has been granted me to
describe these, in the hope that ignorance may thus be enlightened and unbelief
dissipated. Such immediate revelation is granted at this day because this is
what is meant by the Coming of the Lord. (HH 1)
The
principal reason why Swedenborg is absolutely unique is that he was given
access to the spiritual world in full wakefulness for 27 years. His Writings
are empirical in that they are based on this daily experience, which included
various experiments he was allowed to conduct to investigate various phenomena
and properties of the spiritual world. His contemporaries were well aware of
Swedenborg's intellectual commitment to science in all matters of human
understanding, including the understanding of the spiritual. He wrote only as a
scientist about phenomena and observations no other individual in human history
has had access to. Though Swedenborg was well known to many key writers of the
18th and 19th centuries, he has been systematically kept out of the history of
science literature in the 20th century. This is why he is not known among
scientists today. And the fact is that most scientists today would still vote
to keep his writings out of the scientific literature. No one in science today
is allowed to talk to Aristotle or Newton in the spiritual world, and to angels
and devils, and call it part of science. No one in science today is allowed to
cite Swedenborg’s Writings and call them science, as I have done. I am
therefore defying science as it is today, attempting to stimulate change
towards what will be called the True Science.
Sometimes
as scientists we are troubled when we must evaluate an experiment for which we
have inadequate equipment to verify the observations that have been reported to
prove the hypothesis. We rely in that case on reputation of the researcher and
the publication venue, which is often a scientific journal containing only
articles that have been peer reviewed and approved as meeting the usual
standards of scientific method. In the case of Swedenborg’s observations
of the spiritual world, the verifiability issue becomes even more difficult
since no one has the equipment he possessed, namely dual consciousness, or the
ability to observe the phenomena of the spiritual world.
Nevertheless,
this is not an absolute caveat since there is the certainty that everyone will
possess this equipment when passing from this world to the spiritual world.
Swedenborg only did what everyone can do, except in a special order, not given
to anyone else. He was given sensuous consciousness of the spiritual world
while he was still a man in a physical body on earth. But what he reports is
verifiable by anyone who reaches that world. The experimental conditions to be
met to verify Swedenborg’s observations are available to anyone who
attains that condition. An analogy might be to consider the special insight
that mature people have compared to their earlier years. Younger people cannot
verify the insights of the mature people, yet they will be able to verify those
observations when they meet the conditions of maturity. What Swedenborg reports
is not secret or subjective, but public and objective. More people can verify
Swedenborg’s observations than people who cannot, because more people
live in the spiritual world than on this earth.
Furthermore,
copies of Swedenborg’s Writings exist in heaven, are read by angels as
Divine Truth. They do not associate the Writings with Swedenborg, whom they
have no knowledge of. When they read it they are not conscious of the literal
meanings and descriptions in the sentences. They are conscious only of the
inner spiritual sense of the Threefold Word, which deals with celestial ideas
only, ideas incomprehensible to us while still on earth.
(See
this article on Overcoming Objections to Swedenborg's Writings Through the
Development of Scientific Dualism.
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/np98.html
)
Note
that my presentation of “true science” (which is theistic) is not a
response to a wish to unify science and religion, as this has been attempted
many times from many fields of scholarship and persuasion. Instead, I ask rational
questions about the mind, God, heaven, and hell, as a scientist or lawyer might
ask when investigating an event or claim: Is the mind something real? If yes,
then it is part of science and rational inquiry. Is God real? If yes, then it
is part of science and rational inquiry. Is the afterlife real? Then it too is
part of what science wants to investigate. Science, through rationality and
empiricism, investigates whatever has reality. Just because we want to
investigate the reality of God or heaven doesn't mean that we are into
religion--we are still in science, investigating something real. No one has
ever convinced me that science has any limitations in the rational and
empirical investigation of real things. Nevertheless, given that science has
been distinctly atheistic and monistic for a couple of centuries, it may be
less confusing for now to use the expression "theistic science" by
which I mean the scientific and rational inquiry of God's reality and
relationship to humans, including afterlife, heaven, hell, and Sacred Scripture
or Divine revelations.
There
are two ways of approaching God as a scientific issue, one negative, the other
affirmative. Both involve making a premise that cannot be independently proven.
The negative approach allows scientists to remain materialistic, monistic, and
atheistic by saying: “We start with the premise of atheism and monism. We
will give up this premise if there is proof of God’s reality. The proof
must be by means of materialistic methods.” You can see that this
position insures the retention of the atheistic premise, which itself is not
provable. On the other hand, the affirmative approach allows scientists to
abandon the unproven and unprovable atheistic premise. This is what I did.
First, I had to realize that the atheistic premise of science is not provable.
This reduced its persuasive hold on my mind. Second, I had to find out from
Divine revelation, or Sacred Scripture, the rational explanation of why God
does not appear in the physical world and put an end to the mistaken premise of
atheistic science. This question can only be considered or investigated from
the affirmative approach. One must first grant that God exists and manages the
universe by means of rational principles. Then one is in a position to
investigate these rational laws or principles of reality.
The
Writings of Swedenborg are a Divine revelation about reality, about God, the
human mind, heaven, and hell. The Writings present a full and coherent rational
explanation of the interaction between the natural and spiritual world, and the
laws by means of which phenomena in both worlds can be understood and
interrelated. It is revealed that God has created the human mind to consist of
several levels or layers of functioning, the lowest being called hell, and the
highest being called heaven. In the lower regions we function at the corporeal
and sensuous level of operation. This level is similar to that of animals. At
the next higher level in our mind, we function at the natural-rational level,
which marks the progress of civilized life on earth. At the next higher level,
we function at the spiritual-rational level, and at the highest level possible,
we function at the celestial-rational level of operation, consciousness, and
understanding. We are born at the lowest level with the capacity to reach the
highest level.
The
journey for becoming human, then angelic, is the journey of our loves and their
quality. Our animal loves are corporeal and pre-civilized, not yet rational and
human. Next, our natural-rational loves take us to feelings of community and
thoughts of science and art. Next, our spiritual-rational loves take us to
feelings of mutual love, love of God, and understanding of Divine Truth.
Finally, our celestial-rational loves take us to feelings of unity and oneness
with God and with each other, and the interior perception of Divine Truth. Note
that this journey of elevation and evolution of the human mind is achieved by
means of the rational—at first in a natural version, next in a spiritual
version, and at last in a celestial version.
The
celestial-rational is the highest and inmost of the mind where the true human
begins. Not until then do we have truly human feelings and perceptions. When we
are separated from the corpse, we awaken in our spirit-body in the world of
spirits. Our fate to eternity is then determined by this spirit-body, that is,
the feelings and thoughts it contains. Remember that feelings and thoughts are
immortal organic substances that gradually build up our spirit body as we live
our life in the physical body. Such as are the loves we bring with us, such is
our fate in eternity. If we arrive with feelings and thoughts below the rational
level, we sink down into the corporeal level of the mind, and life there is
called hell. But if we arrive with rational feelings and thoughts, we rise to
the spiritual and celestial levels of the mind, and life there is called
heaven.
God
cannot appear in the physical world today to settle the matter of His existence
for science. Why not? Because, as the Writings reveal, such an event would
destroy science, and society, and will result in preventing anyone from
acquiring spiritual-rational and celestial-rational loves. This would condemn
the entire future human race to hell. This terrible result would obtain because
God’s appearance in the physical world violates and tears apart the
fabric of the natural world as it is conjoined to the spiritual world. The
details of this explanation are rationally and fully justified in the Writings.
It makes complete sense to me, and would to anyone who is motivated to read it
with rational understanding and consistency. The human mind as two modalities
or organic venues for consciousness: sensuous and rational. Understanding this
difference is the key to understanding why God cannot physically appear to science
to settle the matter of His existence.
God
has appeared twice to the consciousness of the human race on earth. The first,
at the Incarnation, when God appeared as a Divine Child in a physical body, and
grew to adulthood, then exited the natural world to dwell in the spiritual
world where He can be seen by the inhabitants of heaven. While God was on
earth, He had a dual role, called Father and Son. The Father role did not
change and continued to manage the details of the universe. But the Son role
was new in human evolution. It was a new creation of God in relation to
humanity. Whereas before God in the Father role was invisible in His infinity,
now in His newly created Son role, He was visible to all humanity, both on
earth and in heaven. This new visibility allowed the human race to evolve much
further and higher in the human mind since God’s visibility enhances
contact, communication, and conjunction. God in the Son role can therefore
bestow on every individual the celestial-rational loves that make us truly
human, truly like God, because more from God. God’s appearance again in
the physical world would reverse this evolution, so that from rational
consciousness the human race would slip back into sensuous consciousness of an
earlier and lower phase or level of operation.
The
way science can progress now is not by obtaining physical proof of God’s
existence, but by strengthening the rational consciousness of God through
theistic science. Science can now accept God by rational understanding, not by
sensuous demonstrations. God’s infinity and omnipresence cannot be
understood sensually, but only rationally. From the sensual perspective,
omnipresence is impossible, but from the rational perspective, it is clear and
comprehensible. The Writings are a Divine revelation given for the building up
the rational consciousness of humanity. Hence it is that God made a Second
Appearance on earth to the rational mind within the pages of the Writings of
Swedenborg. Now the human race can have a clear view of God, and science can
become the True Science, theistic and rational, through and through. Now
science can lay hold on true and genuine reality, on benign control of the
environment, on human happiness, knowledge, and mutual love, on the present and
the future. This is the new age of the Second Coming which marks the
evolutionary completion of the human race, the human mind, human consciousness.
No mystery has been left about God, the universe, life, and the afterlife. The
final and last revelation has been given. Within the literal meaning of the
Writings there is hidden an infinite amount of new knowledge for humanity. The
Writings give us the methods we are to apply to extract this vast knowledge for
all time to come. Though this is not yet known generally, a few people already
know it, and I am one of them. You can be too. Quoting from Swedenborg:
Once, when the interior
heaven was opened to me, and I was conversing with the angels there, I was
permitted to observe the following phenomena. Be it known that although I was
in heaven, I was nevertheless not out of myself, but in the body, for heaven is
within man, wherever he may be, so that when it pleases the Lord, a man may be
in heaven and yet not be withdrawn from the body. In this way it was given me
to perceive the general workings of heaven as plainly as an object is perceived
by any of the senses. (AC 3884)
True
Science based on the scientific revelations in the Writings is not divisive,
sectarian, or limited by history or culture. God as a subject of discussion is divisive only in
the outward form of religion and politics, since religion has an animated
externalized life at the edge of culture and nationalism.
Divisive
sectarian religion is based on corporeal and sensuous feelings and thoughts.
These are in the lowest portion of the mind’s operation. Sectarianism is
not yet fully human because it is based on exclusion and division, while the
genuine human is based on acceptance and unity. Within all external natural
religious behaviors and beliefs, there lives an internal. This internal is the
rational mind, and it operates at the three levels mentioned above: natural-rational
feelings and thoughts, spiritual-rational feelings and thoughts, and
ultimately, celestial-rational feelings and thoughts, which is the genuine
human that leads to mutual and unity.
When
you bypass external forms of religious behavior, and go to what is within it,
you find the levels of the rational mind. This is the same mind that studies
universal laws of reality, thus science. Science is a universal explanation of
all events, including religious behavior. Science is at a higher rationality in
the human mind than external religions. If external religion looks at science,
it sees nothing except something below itself. But if science looks at
religion, it sees religion and politics below itself as cultural phenomena. What
is below cannot look at what is above, for it sees nothing, but what is above
in the mind can look at what is below, and see everything in detail. Religion
cannot explain science, but science can explain religion. Note well: atheistic
science such as we have today cannot explain religion because religion is above
it in the mind. Religion is the understanding of rational concepts like God and
mutual love, while atheistic science is so low in rationality that it cannot
give a meaning for rational concepts like God and the spiritual world. But True
Science is based on Divine revelations, therefore it is in the highest portions
of the human mind called spiritual-rational and celestial-rational. Knowledge
of God based on True Science is higher in the mind than knowledge of God based
on religion. The religious knowledge one possesses may be entirely true, yet
this truth is at a lower level than the truth of True Science.
3. Character Reformation By Means of the Threefold Word of God
Understanding
the ideas in True Science, as based in the Divine revelations of the Writings, gives
us a closer position from which to view God and our relationship to Him. This
greater closeness is due to the more interior rational understanding that is
provided by Divine revelation. God is the highest rational from whom all other
rational comes from and is embedded in. God has two infinite substances within
Himself that is His very life, namely, love and wisdom. From this Divine Love
and Wisdom God creates a universal aura called the Spiritual Sun. Infinite
amounts of spiritual heat and spiritual light emanate from this Sun. This
Divine emanation goes forth from the Spiritual Sun, and as it does, it creates
distance between God and the emanations. These distances are fixed by means of
atmospheres or levels of division and separation in the emanations. Each fixed atmosphere
has particular properties and creates specific phenomena according to these
properties. As the atmospheres multiply and create more and more distance from
the Spiritual Sun, the properties, events, and phenomena become less and less
rational, more and more physicalized or materialized. At last, in the ultimate
of atmospheres emanating from the Spiritual Sun, is the physical universe or
the natural world.
Human
beings are born with dual existence. Their mind is in the rational atmospheres called
the spiritual world, while their physical body is in the lowest atmosphere
called earth or planet. Our mind, which is in the spiritual world, is still
asleep to the spiritual environment and is not receptive to incoming spiritual
phenomena. In this first phase, the mind is conscious only of what comes from
the sensory information streaming in from the physical body. The mind is
unconscious of the spiritual world that surrounds it as long as it is tied to a
physical body. When this body becomes a corpse and can no longer transmit
sensations, the mind is separated and suddenly becomes receptive to the
spiritual environment where it had been all along. Subjectively this feels like
an awakening. Hence it is said that novitiate spirits, or new arrivals in the
afterlife, appear to themselves to be awakened from a sleep.
Since
the fabric of the universe is made of the emanations and atmospheres of the
Spiritual Sun, and since the Spiritual Sun is Divine Love and Divine Truth,
therefore everything in the universe has a rational basis. Truth is the
rational substance out of which the emanations from the Spiritual Sun are
created. At the ultimate atmosphere furthest removed from the Spiritual Sun, is
the material world of atoms, electrons, protein, and minerals. An atom is
therefore a piece of truth. A physical law or number is therefore a piece of
truth. A rose, a rock, a river, a planet, the mind of a human being, heaven and
hell, all are pieces of truth. Nothing else exists except pieces of truth from
the Spiritual Sun. You can see from this the supreme importance of the rational
at its various levels. In fact the human mind is an exact map of the spiritual
world, so that all the layers of the universe created by the emanations are
exactly reproduced and imaged in the human mind. Hence we can say that the
journey from birth on earth to eternity in heaven is a journey from the lower
portions of the mind to its highest portion. This journey is made by truth,
within which is love, for truth is nothing but the outside form of love. Love
and truth are the constituent blocks of reality.
Religion
is the first step for opening the human mind and starting the journey upward,
back to God where our soul is. As you read on, you will come across diagrams
and tables that will help you to visualize the patterned observations I make
about our religious life. Religious life has an external cultural aspect that
might feel threatened by my presentation. But if you're willing to go deeper
into the foundations of your religion, you will find mutual agreement between
all of us. This is the value of theistic science. It leaves the surface
culture-based disagreements behind, and constructs a scientific platform of
agreement and pan-human understanding. You will not have to leave your religion
behind, only enrich it with inner meaning in your own life and future.
To
say that atheistic science can validate or enhance religion is not true since
atheistic science is below the rational while religion has rational ideas from
revelations. But it is accurate to say that theistic science, or True Science,
validates and enhances religion because both are based on revelations. True
Science is the most specific and advanced of the Divine revelations ever given
to humanity. The Writings of Swedenborg are this Divine revelation called the
Second Coming, which opens the new evolutionary age of celestial-rational understanding
and consciousness, the final frontier in human creation that leaves behind
ignorance and mystery.
True
theistic science can also be
called “scientific dualism,” an expression that
contrasts with “scientific monism.” Atheism and monism are central
elements of nonduality, which is the philosophical perspective that all
dualities or categorical contrasts are illusions of the human mind. Nonduality
sees a unity between material and spiritual substance, between human and
Divine, between evil and good.
(See
Volume 3 of A Man of the Field: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v1ch1-nonduality.html
)
Nonduality
is based on the negative principle and the denial of every duality. Atheistic
science denies that there is a spiritual world, denies that there is a God who
creates and manages the details of the universe, denies that the building
blocks of the world are spiritual and celestial—namely, love and truth.
In contrast, theistic science is a scientific dualism because it bases itself
on the Divine revelations given in the Writings, and every concept so given is
a duality, never a nonduality. Divine rational truth is presented in the form
of dualities, and therefore also, every detail of the universe. Scientific
dualism is rational while monism is pre-rational. Every human mind develops by
an orderly process and monism is the first phase of self-intelligence by which
we develop our rational mind, first the lower external rational, but later, the
upper internal rational that is of spiritual and celestial origin, hence from
God’s Intelligence and not from self. The Writings declare that
scientific dualism is spiritually sane while monism is spiritually insane. We
begin our young adulthood in a state of mind that is spiritually insane because
we rely on self-intelligence or on the intelligence of other human beings more
than on God’s Intelligence given to us in revelations. Atheistic science,
being based on monism and nonduality, is a phase of pre-rational thinking that
is replaced later in development, by rational thinking based on dualism found
in the Divine scientific revelations of the Writings.
In
the dualism of True Science, God is real, and both the natural and the
spiritual worlds are real. The external natural mind gets its data from the
natural world, while the internal rational or spiritual mind gets its data from
the spiritual world. We are thus born dual citizens--our
natural mind connected to the physical body in the natural world, and our spiritual
mind within a spirit-body in the spiritual world. The natural mind and the
spiritual mind are interconnected and operate together though we are only aware
of things within our natural mind. The physical body and its natural mind are
connected to the spirit-body and its spiritual mind by the laws of correspondence.
At the death of the physical body, the spirit-body along with its rational mind
becomes conscious of itself, and we awaken in full conscious life in the
spiritual world. This process of awakening, or resuscitation, has been
described in detail by Swedenborg who was able to observe the process hundreds
of times (see especially his work titled Arcana Coelestia,
Volume 1).
There
is an additional puzzle that must be cleared up before going along with the
ideas I’m presenting. One may wonder how atheistic science could be
responsible for modern civilization, which would not be possible without the
advances of science and engineering over the centuries of evolving knowledge
and industry. If atheistic science is based on a false premise about the
universe, so that its explanations are spiritually insane, how could scientists
continue to cumulate scientific discoveries and theories able to bring about
and maintain the modern world we live in? The answer from the perspective of
theistic science is that modern civilization is brought about by God, not by
the scientists. While we operate within the premises of atheistic science, we
are immersed in spiritual insanity in our lower mind—the natural-rational
level of operation. The upper portions of the mind are not spiritually insane. This
spiritual rationality is unconscious and protected by God from being influenced
by the lower natural mind built on self-intelligence. The rationality of
scientific operations and experiments is to be attributed to the unconscious
spiritual-rational mind and not to the conscious natural-rational mind. The
conscious portion is spiritually insane, because from self-intelligence, but
the unconscious portion is spiritually sane, because from the spiritual world
and God. With True Science, the conscious natural-rational mind and the
unconscious spiritual-rational mind are realigned in harmony with each other.
You
can see from many facts in our society that there is an obvious discrepancy
between the general rationality of civilization and science, on the one hand,
and on the other hand, the irrationality that is rampant with individuals.
Crime and abuse are rampant and the divorce rate is over fifty percent. Current
surveys indicate the majority of people are depressed at least once a day, that
their daily round of activities is full of negativity and unpleasant emotions,
that they are overweight, constipated, addicted to pain killers and sex
performance drugs, and beset with anxieties, hostilities, resentment, and
unfulfilled lives. Surely this is not the syndrome that goes with rational
people and rational communities. Most evidently, people are not yet at the
human rational level of operation where the peace of heaven is sensed, where
rational loves arrange things in harmonious order, and where Divine Truth is
understood and loved. The conclusion therefore must be that the apparent
rational progression of civilized societies and science, is to be attributed
entirely to God’s rationality at work within the unconscious portions of
the human mind, and nothing of it can be attributed to the rationality of humans.
One
important question must be answered here, if the discussion is to satisfy the rational
mind that reads this and reflects on it: “If God can exert his omnipotence to keep civilization progressing in a rational
direction, as just said, what keeps Him from exerting that same power to keep
individuals rational and positive in their daily lives, instead of the opposite?”
Consider
this quote from the Writings:
CONCERNING PROVIDENCE AND FATE.
I spoke
with spirits concerning Providence, and some also were present who believed
somewhat in fate; and it was shown them how the case stood. They supposed that
all things were accomplished out of absolute necessity; and, thus, that the
whole life was the unavoidable force of circumstance; consequently, that the
Lord was bound by necessity; therefore, that there was nothing except this to
keep things in existence; and that this is the Divine. But they were shown that
they have entire freedom; and if freedom, then there is not necessity, because
there are so many contingencies which bear man, in freedom, to opposites. This
was exhibited by means of pebbles, which were so placed as to form a certain
figure: then, if necessity required that one pebble should be placed in order
after another, and thus that man [should arrange them] from necessity, nothing
further would follow; but [it was shown] that the case is this: that the
pebbles are put, now here, now there, so as to appear dispersedly; and this
according to freedom; and the Lord foresees the form, namely, that in which
man, from freedom, wills [to arrange his life]; but He determines for him, from
other considerations, and so foresees the form, and permits him to go hither
and thither, so that the moments of his life appear like scattered pebbles. But
the Lord then sees whether he fills up that space between them; He sees what is
lacking and where; and, then, continually, what is next in order, after a
hundred or a thousand years; and so forth.) (SEM 4692)
The
answer, found in the Writings, is that God does all things necessary and
loving, and withholds Himself from doing certain other things that humans can
imagine could be done. God avoids doing things which are detrimental to our
preparation for heaven. This goal is the highest in God’s Mind. He
creates each individual soul on some earth in the physical universe, and this
soul has the capacity to live in conjugial bliss increasing daily to eternity.
Conjugial bliss is what a husband and a wife feel in heaven as they live in
such perfect unity that it is unimaginable. This is the marvelous goal, almost
beyond belief, that God has with each individual. It is now revealed to
humanity that God created the physical universe to fill it with planets, and to
increase their number at an explosive rate to endless time. Each planet is
created to be the birthplace of immortal spirits, temporarily clothed in a
mortal physical body. After a few decades of preparation, the
individual’s mind is ready to abandon the physical body, to assume the
spirit-body and to continue heavenly life to eternity. God’s Divine
loving purpose is therefore to increase the population of the vast heavens from
numberless planets with spirits and angels who are capable of receiving
God’s love and truth in purity and innocence. What an amazing revelation!
It is full of warmth and love, wisdom and power. How reassuring it is to find
out that God is so close and so involved in the minutest detail of our day, of
our thinking and reasoning, and of our loves and attractions. Moment by moment
God not only knows about these micro-details of every human being, but
participates in a determinative way, interferes with its course and progress,
keeping things from being remembered while bringing other things to the fore,
and so on. God is more intimate with each of us than any two beings can be,
even soul mates in heaven.
It
is therefore puzzling to rational reflection why God doesn’t intervene to
get rid of the plagues of evil and falsity that has gotten hold of the fallen
human psyche. Generation after generation these evils and falsities are
transmitted by heredity and by culture. The Writings explain that God ceaselessly
strives to bend the thinking of the human race, to guide people’s
involvements with good things, and to withhold them from much worse evil than
they already are in. God already does everything that is Divinely possible. So
there is only rational conclusion: human beings have been given by God the
capacity to resist Him. Humans have zero power, and whatever they do is powered
entirely by a cooperating God who knows what the individual is attempting to do
and supplies the power in the background. This is a necessary conclusion if you
want to remain rational. The assertion “God is omnipotent” has this
necessary meaning. “Omni” means all, and “omnipotent”
means all power. Logic tells you therefore that we have zero power, or that
nature has zero power, etc. All power is God’s power and ceases instantly
when God ceases to apply that power, whether it is the power of a whirling
electron in an atom, the power of a heartbeat, or the power of the mind to have
a rational thought or to remember some information. God also gives us the power
to resist Him, to oppose Him, to turn His truth into its opposite falsity, and
to adulterate His good into its opposite evil.
The Writings explain that
God gives us the power to deny and reject Him in order to give us the power to
acknowledge Him and to love Him.
This
is a rational idea that needs to be thought through carefully and studied for
full understanding. But you can already see no doubt that these two things must
go together. If we are given the power to acknowledge God we must also have the
power to deny God. To acknowledge God means that we do so voluntarily, as of self
and in complete freedom. Freedom means that we can choose either way, or else
it is not freedom. The nature of love is such that it only exists in freedom.
Not so hatred, which exists in slavishness or spiritual slavery, also called in
the Writings “infernal freedom,” such as devils have in hell. But
good spirits and angels have freedom to love God and acknowledge Him, His
Divine Truth, His omnipotence in their lives. Swedenborg talked to many angels
in their heavens and they declared to him that their greatest experience of
freedom is when they recall that they have zero power and the Lord has all
power in their willing, thinking, and doing moment by moment. And so the
inhabitants of heaven have no worries or negative emotions of any kind ever,
because they live in “the peace of truth,” in the “current of
Divine Providence,” in which moment by moment their thoughts and feelings
are formed by the Lord’s Proprium or Persona, whom they love with the
greatest intensity.
Since
the heavens are formed by love and truth from the Lord, the hells are formed by
people who destroy the love that flows in from God and falsify the truth that
also flows in. Therefore every heaven has a counterpart hell in which the same
loves and truths that forms that particular, are adulterated and falsified to
form that particular hell. While we are on earth our mind is an image of heaven
and hell, containing both, so that we have the freedom of choice at every
moment to follow heaven or to follow hell. There is no other choice that God
allows. It is obvious that today in our society people choose hell over heaven
the majority of time. God cannot prevent this and still maintain spiritual
freedom in every person. Therefore God creates for every individual all sorts
of opportunities to reverse the trend in oneself, to reject hellish things and
to choose heavenly things. This is called regeneration or character
reformation. The Threefold Word has been given by God to insure than humans
have the Divine Truth to choose in their lives. This Divine Truth has been
revealed in infinite plenitude in the Threefold Word, hidden in its exterior
meanings but available for extraction by means of the methods prescribed in the
Writings.
Correspondences have all
force, so that what is done on earth according to correspondences has power in
heaven; for correspondences are from the Divine. Those who are in the good of
love and of faith are in correspondences, and the Divine effects all things with
them... All miracles in the Word were effected through correspondences. The
Word is so written that every minute thing therein corresponds to the things in
heaven; hence the Word has Divine force, and conjoins heaven and earth. (AC
8615)
Therefore in order to
remove all doubt as to such being the character of the Word, the Lord has
revealed to me the Word's internal sense. In its essence this sense is
spiritual, and in relation to the external sense, which is natural, is as soul
is to body. This sense is the spirit which gives life to the letter; it can
therefore bear witness to the divinity and holiness of the Word, and convince
even the natural man, if he is willing to be convinced. (SS 4)
My presentation relies on three sets
of scientific revelations: the Old Testament (Hebrew Word), the New Testament
(Greek Word), and the Third Testament (Latin Word), which refers to the
Writings of Swedenborg. Together, the Three Testaments are called the Threefold
Word, and constitute a direct open line of communication between God and the
individual who is reading the Word with the acknowledgement and belief that it
is the Word of God given by means of human minds as intermediaries. Such were
the prophets of Israel, the Gospel writers, and Swedenborg. The Hebrew Word was
a revelation for the natural-corporeal mind and is written at that level of
reception, relying on physical demonstrations of God’s presence. The
Greek Word was a revelation for the natural-sensuous mind, relying on the
sensuous existence of the Incarnation. The Latin Word is a revelation for the natural-rational
mind, relying on the modern scientific level of thinking. What is most
unexpected and almost incredible to the natural mind, is what the Writings
reveal about the Old and New Testaments.
This is the revelation that the
literal sentences of the Old and New Testaments are written in a secret code
not known to the writers themselves who had their attention focused the
historical and descriptive account they were giving, which was interpreted by commentators
as visionary and poetic language, by no means always clear, and containing
strange metaphors and seeming repetitions and exaggerations, especially in the
Old Testament. What is marvelous is that Swedenborg goes through a verse by
verse and word by word analysis of the Books of Genesis, Exodus, and
Revelations, along with thousands of passages from the rest of the Bible. This
word by word and phrase by phrase analysis proves beyond the shadow of any
doubt, that the Threefold Word is written in a Divine language that no other
human writings compare to. The literal meaning of the Threefold Word can be
decoded by applying the knowledge of correspondences. This translation changes
the message from the literal-historical to the spiritual-rational. The spiritual-rational
meaning contained within the literal meaning can be understood only at the
spiritual-rational level of thinking (zone 6 and above). Examples will be given
in what follows. If you read Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia, you will have a full knowledge of these
correspondences and of the spiritual topics that the Word addresses and teaches
in its “internal sense” (or “spiritual sense”).
Section 19.8 below presents several passages
from the Writings relevant to correspondences.
Note: The Writings are available
online along with collateral books at this Web address:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/abbrev.html
When
these facts become known to scientists and scholars generally, it is bound to
be seen as a proof of God’s direct intervention in the smallest details
of individuals and nations. The historical events, names, places, objects, and
numbers discussed in the Word were written independently by dozens of authors
over hundreds of years who had no idea of the fact that they were writing in a
code. Every historical event and detail described in the Bible is accurate,
according to the Writings, and yet it is not the reason the details have been
recorded. Only those details are recorded that add up to a coherent sequence of
the spiritual-rational things being discussed in the underlying or inner sense
of every verse and chapter. For instance, when details of the journeyings of
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are decoded through the knowledge of
correspondences, what emerges is a scientific treatise on the human mind, how
it must go through stages of development from the corporeal-sensuous level, to
the natural-rational level, and at last to the spiritual-rational and
celestial-rational levels. The details of the adventures of the patriarchs and
other characters mentioned, add up to an internal spiritual series that is rational
and descriptive of the human mind, of our relation to God, of heaven and hell,
of angels and devils, of love and wisdom, good and truth. These are the topics
of the Word when the literal is decoded.
Anyone who does not know
that the Word has an internal sense which is not visible in the letter will be
utterly astonished by the idea that spiritual realities too are meant by the
numbers used in the Word. The specific reason for his astonishment is his
inability to use numbers to give shape to any spiritual idea, when yet the
spiritual ideas known to angels present themselves as numbers, see AC 5265. The
identity of those ideas or spiritual realities to which numbers correspond can,
it is true, be known; but the origin of such correspondence remains hidden, such
as the origin of the correspondence of 'twelve' to all aspects of faith, the
correspondence of 'seven' to things that are holy, as well as that of 'ten' and
also 'five' to forms of good and truth stored up by the Lord within the
interior man, and so on. Even so, it is enough if people know simply that such
a correspondence does exist and that by virtue of that correspondence each
number used in the Word denotes something present in the spiritual world,
consequently that what is Divine has been inspired into them and so lies
concealed within them. (AC 5291)
And
equally amazing is one more detail. The correspondences between the literal
meaning of the Word and its coded inner spiritual meaning, are not arbitrary
like some human code but generic to reality. Correspondences reflect the
universal laws that cause spiritual and natural events to occur in synchronous relation
to each other. Every natural event or quality exists by means of a
corresponding spiritual event or quality. Neither can exist alone. For instance,
a horse in the Word is a coded term for intelligence. Different types of horses
are mentioned, as well as donkeys, assess, camels, and other animals that carry
riders. Each type of horse refers to some aspect of human intelligence and the
level of thinking operations in the human mind. Further, Swedenborg observed
this thousands of times, that whenever he was discussing human intelligence
with someone in the spiritual world, horses of various types appeared in the
environment. Similarly with other correspondences that decode the Word. When he
was talking to evil spirits, the environment turned into deserts or swamps, and
noxious animals could be seen like snakes, dragons, and scorpions, while foul
smells reached his nose. In other words, there is close connection between the
secret code of the Word and the external phenomena that are routinely observed
in the spiritual world. Quoting Swedenborg:
In hell every lust of
evil when visually represented appears like a noxious creature, as a dragon, or
a cockatrice, or a viper, or a bird of night, or an owl, and so on; and
similarly do the lusts of evil appear in a wicked man when he is viewed by
angels.
All these forms of lusts
must be changed one by one; and the man himself, who with respect to his spirit
appears as a human monster or devil, must be changed to become like a beautiful
angel; and every lust of evil must be changed to appear like a lamb, or a
sheep, or a pigeon, or a turtle dove, as the affections of good in the angels
appear in heaven when visually represented; and to change a dragon into a lamb,
a cockatrice into a sheep, and an owl into a dove can only be effected step by
step, by rooting out evil from its very seed and implanting good seed in its
stead. (DP 296)
The
natural meaning of the Word and its corresponding spiritual meaning show
exactly the same relation as there is between the spiritual world and the
natural. There is therefore objective evidence that the knowledge of
correspondences unveiled in the Writings are actual laws of interconnection
between the spiritual and the natural. Quoting Swedenborg:
A knowledge of degrees
is like a key for opening the causes of things, and for entering into them.
Without that knowledge, scarcely anything of cause can be known. For without
it, the objects and subjects of both worlds appear so simple as though there
were nothing in them beyond that which meets the eye, when yet the things that
appear are as one to thousands, indeed, to myriads, compared with the things
which lie hidden within. The interiors which do not lie open can by no means be
disclosed except by a knowledge of degrees. (DLW 184)
Miracles have not been
done from causes sought out from nature ... Miracles related in the Word were
done by means of influx from that prior world into this posterior one, ... by
means of bringing such things as are in the spiritual world, into corresponding
things in the natural world, so that the things which come forth actually in
the spiritual world are actually brought into such things in the natural world
as correspond. (Invitation 60)
Correspondences have all
power ... what is done on earth according to correspondence, avails in heaven,
because they are from the Divine. All miracles recorded in the Word were done
by means of correspondences. (AC 8615.3)
There is a
correspondence of sensuous with natural things, a correspondence of natural
with spiritual things, a correspondence of spiritual with celestial things, and
finally a correspondence of celestial things with the Divine of the Lord; thus
there is a succession of correspondences from the Divine down to the ultimate
natural.
[2] But as an idea of
the nature of correspondences can with difficulty be formed by those who have
never thought about them before, it may be well to say a few words on the
subject. It is known from philosophy that the end is the first of the cause,
and that the cause is the first of the effect. That the end, the cause, and the
effect may follow in order, and act as a one, it is needful that the effect
should correspond to the cause, and the cause to the end. But still the end
does not appear as the cause, nor the cause as the effect; for in order that
the end may produce the cause, it must take to itself administrant means from
the region where the cause is, by which means the end may produce the cause;
and in order that the cause may produce the effect, it also must take to itself
administrant means from the region where the effect is, by which means the
cause may produce the effect. These administrant means are what correspond; and
because they correspond, the end can be in the cause and can actuate the cause,
and the cause can be in the effect and can actuate the effect; consequently the
end through the cause can actuate the effect. It is otherwise when there is no
correspondence; for then the end has no cause in which it may be, still less an
effect in which it may be, but is changed and varied in the cause, and finally
in the effect, according to the form made by the administrant means. (AC 5131)
From
all this, once you spend the effort of studying it, you gain a complete
rational understanding of reality, the connection between the spiritual and the
natural, the Laws of Divine Providence by which the universe is managed, and
the regeneration and evolution of the mind, the spirit-body, and eternity.
If
you are still thinking, “But where is the proof?” you need to
continue reading this book and it will become clear to you that no other
explanation can be given for the facts presented, namely, that the code of
correspondences in which the Threefold Word was written is the same code by
which natural phenomena on the planet are effects produced by spiritual causes.
The cause-effect relation in the universe follows the same code as that which
relates the natural meaning of the Threefold Word to its spiritual meaning. And
finally, that Swedenborg visually observed the natural appearances as effects
produced by spiritual loves as causes (e.g., evil and hostile intentions of a
spirit in the world of spirits, produce or project an environmental appearance
of caves, deserts, and noxious animals and stenches).
4.
The Varieties
of Religion Under One Divine Human Person
Rational
spirituality tends away from religious sectarianism, prejudice, or irreverence
for other religions who have their own form of Sacred Scripture, handed down
from their ancestors. The rational approach of True Science insures that
sectarianism and fundamentalism are understood in terms of their mental
mechanism in relation to spirituality and salvation. Most readers will not be
familiar with all Three Testaments of the Threefold Word, and some may not be
familiar with any. This is not a necessary stumbling block to acquiring
knowledge from True Science. Just translate the ethnic names like Moses, David,
Jehovah, Jesus, Adam, Jacob, Jerusalem, and so forth, to your own historical
events. These names are local names for global concepts. All people, nations,
or races each have their own religious history, and their own prophets and
leaders. They all have a name for God. These are external names. Internally,
there is one true name that is revealed to all at some point.
The Threefold
Word was given for all of humanity and will last endlessly in the natural world.
To people in the modern age, the literal of the Old and New Testaments appear
sectarian and exclusionary rather than universal and inclusive like the
Writings. But this is only an external, historical appearance. When the literal
meaning of the Three Testaments is decoded, what is left is the spiritual sense,
and this sense is devoid of historical names, places, and nations. These names
and events are given not for their own sake but for the sake of their
representative meaning in relation to correspondences. The referents that are
signified by these representative names and events – what are they?
They are
mental states of the human mind being regenerated. Every human being must be
regenerated to enter heaven. Therefore the inner spiritual meaning of the
Threefold Word has been given by God to assist us in regeneration. Regeneration
is a spiritual medical process performed by God on every human being.
God’s performance is limited by our willing cooperation expressed as
willingness to struggle as-of self in temptations. There is no other way for
any human being born on this planet to reach heaven but by this process of
regeneration. This is a question of spiritual medics, not theology or religion.
True Science has now been given to humankind which details this crucial process
of spiritual medics in regeneration. These crucial scientific revelations
clearly appear in the Threefold Word when one applies the Laws of
Correspondences to the words and concepts in which the Three Testaments are
composed. When this process of extraction or “scrutation” is
applied, the names of people and places, and the natural events in the
narrations, all disappear in consciousness, and what is perceived is the mental
state that the representatives designate.
This is how
the inhabitants of the heavens perceive the Threefold Word when they read it
there. They see nothing of the natural things being mentioned such as names,
places, numbers, battles, time, possessions, weddings, garments, floods, animals,
harvesting, journeying, eating, sleeping, dying, being born, being sick, getting
old, etc. These details about the natural things in the Threefold Word are not
seen by spiritual eyes. Instead, they see the “representatives,
significatives, and correspondences” that these natural things have
within them, in their spiritual plane or degree. This spiritual plane contains
only what is Divine since the inmost framework of every physical object is the
spiritual Sun, as already discussed.
There exists
a crucial difference between the literal meaning of the Threefold Word and its
spiritual meaning. The literal meaning appears culture-bound and time-bound
rather than universal and all inclusive. This is why the literal meaning of the
Threefold Word is claimed by three different incompatible religions – the
Old Testament by Judaism, the New Testament by Christianity, and the Writings
by the New Church or New Christianity. But the spiritual meaning of the
Threefold Word does not have this external appearance tied to cultures and
times. The spiritual meaning of the Threefold Word is pan-human, on this earth,
on the other earths, and in the heavens of all the humanity from the distant galaxies.
The societies of the heavens do not have religion as part of their identity.
But the have True Science based on their reading of the Threefold Word in its
inner spiritual meaning. The Threefold Word is an instrument of consciousness
for all humanity because, in its inner spiritual meaning, it is Divine Truth
Itself in infinite and endless variety prepared from creation to be the vehicle
of rational spirituality upon which the human mind is carried to endless and eternally
increasing joy.
Clearly then,
the inner spiritual meaning of the Threefold Word is for all humanity, and when
it is acknowledged and recognized as the revelations of True Science,
sectarianism of religion will no longer interfere. Then at last the Threefold Word
will be for all peoples and cultures. What the literal took away due to human
cultural divisions, the spiritual restores to rational humanity, taking the Threefold
Word out of its historical and cultural context, and placing into a pan-human scientific
application.
And
so the divisions of religion disappear when we enter inward into the spiritual-rational.
Few are those, today or in the past, who realize that God is rational, that the
created universe is rational, that the underlying framework of the physical world
is a rational substance called “truth within which is love.” Another
way of referring to this is “rational loves.” Few people know that love
is nothing without truth and truth is nothing without love. Love must be within
truth, driving it, animating it, giving truth life and purpose, goal and
intentionality. Many philosophers would argue that the notion of a
“rational love” is a contradiction in terms. It is popular to see
love as mythical, mystical, ineffable, and experiential, and thus opposed to
“logos” which is rational conceptual discourse. But True Science
now shows that love is the underlying framework of truth, just like wood is the
underlying framework of a particular chair, or heat is the underlying framework
of cooked meat. You can’t have one without the other. Love is within,
invisible, truth covers it, visible. Clearly then, if we think of the
“rational” in our mind, which is truth in our understanding, we
must also think of the “love” in our will that is united to that
truth as its underlying framework. Hence the phrase “rational
loves” is perfectly suitable as a scientific reference for one process.
The uniting of love with its truth is called “the Heavenly
Marriage.” When this marriage is in our celestial mind, we are in heaven.
We
are born in the Fallen civilization of the split-brain race, as discussed
above. Instead of the Heavenly Marriage we are born with the “infernal
marriage” in us. This refers to selfish loves, which are hatreds, and
distorted truths, which are falsities. The union between hatreds in our will
and falsities in our understanding, is called the infernal marriage.
Regeneration is the medical process of surgically removing this infernal
marriage and replacing it with the heavenly marriage. This is done by God in
the mind of every human being, but effectiveness is limited by the
individual’s willingness to reject evil delights one has come to like. We
can use the expression “irrational loves” or “insane
loves” to refer to these evil delights prior to regeneration. All human
beings are born filled to the max with these spiritually insane loves,
regardless of civilization, culture, religion, or intellectual ability. Hence a
new revelation, to be acknowledged as True Science, was given to humankind to
address that part of the mind that is above religion, culture, and ancestry.
These lower things are not removed or hindered in any way. True Science is
within these lower things.
The
same True Science is hidden within all religious ideas, regardless of cultures
and times. This was not known before, so surface differences acted as dividers
and separators between religions. These will remain, but only on the surface.
All those from each religion who are willing to enter in the spiritual ideas of
their religion will find there True Science, the same True Science that is in
the Threefold Word. True Science cannot be detected by the Old Testament alone.
It cannot be detected by the New Testament along with the Old Testament. True
Science can only be detected by putting the Three Testaments together as one
unit called the Threefold Word.
Few
realize that love and truth are rational substances out of which the universe
is constructed. Most people have an idea of truth as something abstract, mental
or logical, not substantial like rocks, clouds, and the brain. And yet
Swedenborg shows from revelation and empirical observation that truth is the
substantial light that streams from the spiritual Sun, establishing atmospheres
at further and further distances, until the ultimate external distance is
reached in the natural world with its suns of physical matter and energy. So
the origin of the natural suns and stars with their associated planets and
nebulae is this substantive light of truth streaming from the Spiritual Sun.
Truth is not abstract, but a spiritual substance out of which matter and mind
are formed.
The manifestation of the
Lord, and intromission into the spiritual world, surpass all miracles. This has
not been granted to anyone since the creation, as it has been to me.
(Swedenborg, INV 52)
Swedenborg's
revelation is the mightiest and greatest of all revelations because they come
through the rational mind of a modern well-placed and respected Swedish
scientist in the 18th century. There is no precedent for it anywhere in
human history. There is no equal event in the history of the
universe. Swedenborg at age 57, at the height of his renowned and professional
career, had an apparition from Jesus Christ, of whom he had thought of as “God
Man” since early childhood when he is reported to have talked to
angels--his father was the Lutheran Bishop to the royal family. The Lord
announced to him that he had been prepared for a special task which He expected
Swedenborg to now fulfill. It was a very very touching moment, and he
describes it in the Journal of Dreams (JD) he kept in those days (1740
onward). Over the next few months he was given trance like experiences,
following which he was able to recall communicating with departed
spirits. However, these experiences were completely tied to his reading
Bible verses, each verse tying him to a different experience. He noticed
that there was a clear relationship between the content of the verse, and the
experience he witnessed in the spiritual world through his spiritual mind which
had now been rendered conscious to allow him to accomplish his Divinely
appointed mission of revelator.
He
started an extensive set of notes in which he described the empirical
relationship between verse content in the Bible and events in the spiritual
world that he became involved in. Soon he discovered a pattern which he
called "spiritual-natural correspondences” according to the name the
most ancient peoples used for their spiritual perceptions. At that time, the
human race on this earth was directly connected to the departed spirits who
lived in heaven as angels. Subsequently this direct sensuous consciousness of
the spiritual world ceased, so that rational consciousness was henceforth going
to be the only means of knowing and perceiving the spiritual. Swedenborg then
realizing that the Bible was written in verses that had a double layered
meaning, and that he had been given the Divine assignment to expose and
describe these empirical relationships.
Is
there any way of explaining away this relationship as some coincidence or
exaggeration or mistake? There is no other way to explain Swedenborg’s
discovery than that it is the work of God that has been revealed to humankind.
Think of it, my friend. Historical and biographical events happen to these
ancient peoples and individuals. Details get recorded by scribes and prophets
over many centuries from about 1300 BC to 100 AD, the period during which the
Hebrew and Greek Word were written by dozens of individuals. And yet, as
Swedenborg is able to prove, every detail fits perfectly in its position in an
overall message of awesome proportions. The writers did not know that the words
and verses they are writing down have a universal code encrypted in them, so
that an uninterrupted rational series of underlying topics is being treated of
in excruciating detail. How could this happen by coincidence? This would be a
foolish conclusion.
You
can see rationally that this is a Divine Work. God made sure that the dozens of
writers over hundreds of years wrote down only those words and sentences which
formed an accurate underlying meaning. That underlying meaning, hidden by the
code of correspondences, was the real, the actual message the Divine wanted to
reveal to humanity. There is no other rational explanation. If you reject it,
you reject rationality and condemn yourself to spiritual insanity and
foolishness, as well as to evil and ultimately to life in hell in eternity.
What a way NOT to go! Therefore think and live. If you accept the rationality
of this long hidden message, you accept its Divine authority, and you are
beginning to be saved for heavenly life by ordering your mind into a rational
system that is capable of receiving heavenly life.
Therefore in order to
remove all doubt as to such being the character of the Word, the Lord has
revealed to me the Word's internal sense. In its essence this sense is
spiritual, and in relation to the external sense, which is natural, is as soul
is to body. This sense is the spirit which gives life to the letter; it can
therefore bear witness to the divinity and holiness of the Word, and convince
even the natural man, if he is willing to be convinced. (Swedenborg, SS 4)
Why
did God hide this knowledge for all these centuries, and why is God now
revealing it?
The
answers are revealed in the Writings. These are God’s answers to
humanity. God desired to reveal the spiritual knowledge hidden in His Word
because this knowledge elevates the human mind to heaven. Therefore God was
preparing the human race for this revelation. The Threefold Word took 31
centuries to write out—from the fourteenth century BC to the seventeenth
century AD. And there were prior versions of God’s Word that were
revealed to the ancient peoples prior to known historical age. The human mind
is constructed in such a way that it acquires rational and spiritual
consciousness by means of knowledge of Divine truths. Natural consciousness is
acquired first, from self-intelligence and the physical environment. This is
the animal level of life, and for us, it is the pre-human or quasi-human level
of life. It appears on the outside that we are rational human beings capable of
evolving a civilization that is rational and viable. But the fact is that it is
God who is managing things so that they turn out viable and rational. If it
were actually left to human self-intelligence, everything would quickly
collapse into chaos and insanity, thus not capable of survival and evolution.
We
are so constructed that we have the capacity to operate at a human level, thus
far above the animal level as supervised by God. We take the journey upward by
developing our rational capacities to think and understand rational concepts
that are removed from the sensory observations and organization. The sensory
organization is a lower form of operation for the human mind. We develop a
higher organization in the regions of the mind above the corporeal and sensual.
The natural mind thus evolves in layers as we grow—corporeal layer of
thinking and feeling, sensuous layer of thinking and feeling, natural-rational
layer of thinking and feeling, spiritual-rational layer of thinking and
feeling, and at last, celestial-rational layer of thinking and feeling. These
are the gradations of human consciousness by creation. Only in the upper
regions of operation, that is, the spiritual-rational and celestial rational
levels, do we enter the genuine human life. This life is called heaven, and it
awaits every individual immediately upon resuscitation from death,
approximately 30 hours after we are separated from the corpse. But only the
individual whose mind can be opened to that degree. The others sink down into
the lower regions of their mind where they eek out a sad and hellish existence
to eternity, full of willfulness and insane fantasies they are unwilling to
give up.
Should
any one of them decide to give them up, they would be instantly taken up to
their heavenly sites in their mind. But when they experience what it is like,
they feel that none of their affections or loves can have an life there. They
thus fall into a swoon or unconsciousness or feel the searing burning touch of
truth and love, which they cannot support because it is against what they
desire. They therefore throw themselves back into hell, into the bottom regions
of their minds, where they feel somewhat revived, capable of expressing their
insane and cruel fantasies, and cruel practices on each other, taking turns in
torture, living for the moment it is their turn to torture someone else, even
as they are tortured. Such is their insanity and willfulness.
Rational
consciousness is the only method provided by creation to open the heavenly
regions of the human mind. This consciousness is acquired from acknowledging
and understanding Divine revelation given to the human race over the course of
its history. In the Judaeo-Christian history, God’s spiritual-rational
ideas are hidden in the Letter of the Threefold Word – the Old Testament,
the New Testament, and the Writings. Knowing and understanding the ideas and principles
given in the Threefold Word, arranges the mind in a heavenly form so that one
can feel and think in a way that is heavenly. This then becomes our life to
eternity. The power to elevate consciousness and open the spiritual levels of
the mind resides in the spiritual-rational ideas that are contained in the spiritual
messages of the Threefold Word. One can read the Threefold Word without
acknowledging that there is a hidden message to be extracted by applying the
code of correspondences.
But
those who are willing to acknowledge such a possibility can discover it for
themselves by studying the code of correspondences given in the Writings, and
applying it to each sentence in the Threefold Word. The moment one starts doing
this, one is enlightened from within. Such is the power of the spiritual-rational
correspondences. These are actually forms of higher truth that descend from
heaven and enter the mind from within. There they meet up with the Letter of
the verse, or its literal meaning. The instant these two meet up in our
conscious mind, we experience enlightenment. This occurs because the
spiritual-rational truth hidden within the literal meaning, is now perceived
within the natural-rational truth of the literal meaning. To consciously see
the spiritual meaning within the natural meaning, is called enlightenment.
Enlightenment
is the resultant effect in consciousness of the Lord’s Co-presence. God
is present within the spiritual meaning because this is from Him, and what is
from God, remains Divine in our consciousness. The Co-presence of God in our
conscious awareness, moment by moment, and hour by hour, all day long, is
called the angelic life. God’s Co-presence causes us to be lifted up to
Him. This lifting up process of consciousness takes place by an opening of the
uppermost portions of the human mind. The mind at birth contains all the levels
and portions it is capable of from creation. But only the lowest part, called
the corporeal and sensual mind, are opened with the developing child and young
adult. In mature adulthood, the next level of the mind can be opened or made
operational. This occurs when we acquire intelligence by study, education, practice,
and experience.
Once
the natural-rational mind is opened, which is the middle layer, the adult can
begin reformation of character, which is called regeneration. The
self-modification efforts are empowered and made to succeed when we appeal to
God for help, knowing that God wants to give it, is ready to give it, and gives
it. Our appeal to God brings us closer to Him, especially if we are sincere.
This means that we teach ourselves to love Him, to respect Him in our mind, to
strive to know His revelations, and to follow them as guide. We thus
incorporate the Divine truth from without, from the literal meaning of His
revelations. We apply this truth to our life, to our moment by moment choices,
emotions, and intentions. This application is done in the Co-presence of God.
It is accompanied with shame, remorse, fear, and repentance. We compel
ourselves to shun the evil thought or delight, to judge it in the light of
truth, to condemn it, to banish it, to withhold ourselves from doing it. We do
this over and over again until God puts an end to it by removing that evil
tendency in us. We are born with innumerable such evil tendencies that must be removed
by this process of regeneration.
To
the extent that we do this, and at the rate that we do it, we become more and
more enlightened, which means that our conscious awareness is raised to the
uppermost portion of our mind called heaven. This is where God resides in our
mind. God cannot descend below this level in our mind. Instead, at the lower
levels, God exists only in appearances of truth called correspondences. The
lowest portion of the mind called corporeal-sensual is filled with sensuous
correspondences such as order, pattern, beauty, variety, harmony, contrast,
reciprocity, and many others. These can be turned by the mind into opposites
such as disorder, randomness, ugliness, sameness, disharmony, confusion,
isolation, and many others. You can see that natural-rational correspondences
in our mind are based on sensory input. Therefore, natural-rational
correspondences cannot open the higher portions of the mind, which require a
different input, not from the natural world through the physical senses, but
from the spiritual world through the rational senses called the inner sense, or
the inner eye, or spiritual understanding. This spiritual understanding
requires the opening of the middle level of the mind, which is called the
rational level of thinking and feeling. This level of consciousness is above
the natural order of things. It is a closer level to God and His Co-presence in
our mind at that level is holier, closer, and more loving. That is, we can
accept or receive more intense loving from Him.
This
more intense loving is made possible by the presence of spiritual-rational
correspondences. These appearances of Divine Truth are more genuine, less
distorted by the natural mind. Hence our consciousness rises to a new level of
inner spirituality, though not yet to the celestial level. With the conscious
awareness and perception of spiritual-rational correspondences we are empowered
to a higher degree so that God can reveal to us our deeper faults and
weaknesses, those that oppose and resist the development of our celestial mind,
or heaven. Now we begin a new higher phase of our regeneration through this
higher enlightenment. Now we attack these new more subtle evils in our
tendencies, over and over again, until God can remove them. As they are removed,
He can also open and operationalize the heaven within us. We have now at last
begun our new state of life as a genuine human being, as intended and crated by
God. This now begins an endless of progression of further development to
eternity.
You
can see from these considerations that God could not reveal the spiritual-rational
truths to the minds of the generations that were not yet prepared for it. Had
He revealed it to them, they would have rejected it, and profaned it, that is,
used for evil or selfish purposes. This would have destroyed their capacity to
be rational, hence to be human and exist in their heavenly state. Clearly God
could not do this. Therefore the spiritual-rational ideas were hidden in a
code, to be revealed later, when the generations can understand it and accept
it. This age has now come—since the 18th century when the
books of the Writings were written and published by Swedenborg. Since then, the
Writings are gradually spreading around the world, having been translated in
many languages, a work that continues today by the few who have found and
recognized this priceless human treasure. So it happened with me, when I came
across the Writings in 1981 while browsing the shelves in our university
library. My mind had been adequately prepared by science and an interest in
spirituality. I was able to understand the Writings and from then on my mind
has been rearranged and reformed in harmony with this knowledge. This
rearrangement was produced not merely by my understanding the Writings, but by
applying this understanding to my life – thinking, willing, intending, and
feeling. Any human being, regardless of cultural background, can now read the
Writings and rearrange the mind into a heavenly form. By this means we
guarantee our eternal happiness. Nothing in this world can be more important
than that task.