Day: May 19, 2017

We are born as eternally living souls

God is Love

The human being by natural birth must necessarily live in a world of time and space. From daily experience on earth we quickly learn that everything has a beginning and an ending. For us, therefore, there is necessarily, A time to be born, and a time to die  [Ecclesiastes 3:2 ESV].  But this is not the whole story, for in many places Scripture teaches us that God cannot be confined or limited by time and space: –

From everlasting to everlasting you are God.
[Psalm 90:2  ESV]

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
[John 8:58  ESV]

With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
[2 Peter 3:8  ESV]

God has neither beginning nor ending. He remains untouched by the passage of time, living in a state of eternal being. Much is revealed by his chosen name, I AM [see also Exodus 3:14]; it is the name of one who is always alive and whom death can never touch. Our own search for immortality will be in vain unless it begins with the God who is, I AM. This God is the same Lord of whom the psalmist writes: –

The Lord has commanded the blessing, life for evermore.
[Psalm 133:3  ESV]

Because the Lord is ever the I AM, he can do no other than look to what is eternal in all things. As a consequence, his view of the human race and its potential is far wider and bigger than our own. It is this bigger picture that Emanuel Swedenborg glimpses when he writes, We are created so that our inner self cannot die [Heavenly Doctrine 223].  God has put within each one of us the spark of eternal life. This promise of eternity is not written into our physical body which, like everything of the natural world, must inevitably die and decay, but rather into our soul or inner self.

If anatomical studies have never found the soul it is because the soul does not reside in the physical body.  Nevertheless this body is closely connected to the soul, drawing life from it in much the same way as a physical book takes its life from the ideas and affections in the author’s mind.  The human body draws its existence and form from the human soul. We might think of the soul as the life source and the body as an effect which comes into being from that source. Furthermore Jesus Christ teaches us that the soul has an enduring life beyond the death of the physical body, Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul [Matthew 10:28  ESV].

Just as the burning of a book cannot destroy the ideas and affections that gave it life, so the soul remains unaffected by the death of the physical body.  In order fully to understand this we need to know that, Human beings have been so created as to be at once in the spiritual world and the natural world [Swedenborg Heavenly Doctrine 36]. Even while the physical body is alive and conscious in the natural world, the soul or inner self dwells in the spiritual world. There it receives life from the Lord. We are not human, nor do we have existence, from the physical body but from the soul which, Is the prior or primary form from which anyone becomes and is a human being … these inward aspects possess no life in themselves but are recipient forms of the Lord’s life [Swedenborg  Arcana Caelestia 1999].

The human soul, residing as it does in the spiritual world, not only survives physical death but also afterwards remains complete in all respects.  It is sustained by God, from whom it receives an unbroken stream of life.  Does this perhaps go some way to explaining why even as people grow physically older they still feel young inside? Despite the ageing and weakening of the physical body, a person’s inner love and faith can, and often does, grow stronger.  The inner soul is not dependent on the body for its life but on God, in whom we live and move and have our being.

Even as we live on earth we are already, in our inward parts at least, in the spiritual world. The deepest experiences of the human soul are first and foremost experiences of the spiritual world.  And when the physical body finally dies we are released from this natural world of time and space to enjoy the fullness of the soul’s life in the heavens. Many have imagined that this will be a rather ghostly kind of life, for what else can there be if our physical body has been cast off and returned to the dust of the earth?

The apostle Paul, however, suggests something rather different. He writes, So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable … It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body [1 Corinthians 15:42,44 ESV].  Paul seems to be saying that after death we are gifted with a new spiritual body within which our soul remains the essential human life. Emanuel Swedenborg writes at some length about this new spiritual body, reassuring us that it is both human and substantial:

After the death of the body a person’s spirit appears in the spiritual world in human shape, exactly as in the world. He also enjoys the faculties of sight, hearing, speech and feeling as in the world. He has to the full his faculties of thinking, willing and doing, as in the world. In short, he is a human being in every detail.
[The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 225]

The spiritual body has all the same organs, limbs, and senses as does the physical body, but is different in that it neither grows old nor sick. This body enables the human being to live a full and active life in the spiritual world, where we continue to enjoy marriage, friendships, work, worship, and play. All this is possible because the Lord, the eternal I AM, continually bestows life upon all human souls. His whole being finds its meaning and joy in creating, loving, and bringing to eternal life, souls other than himself. In him we shall always have life and have it in great abundance.

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life”.
[John 11:25  ESV]

Jesus said, “That the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him”.
[Luke 20:37,38  ESV]

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In Six Days Jehovah Made Heaven and Earth and the Sea

Lastchurch - The Eternal Purpose

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:  But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11)

For in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth and the sea. That this signifies the regeneration and vivification of those things which are in the internal and in the external man, is evident from the signification of “six days,” as being states of combat, and when predicated of Jehovah, that is, the Lord, they signify His labor with man before he is regenerated; and from the signification of “heaven and earth,” as being the church or kingdom of the Lord in man, “heaven” in the internal man, and “earth” in the external man, thus the regenerate man, that is, one who has found the new life and has thus been made alive; and from the signification of “the sea,” as being the sensuous of man adhering to the corporeal.

In this verse the subject treated of is the hallowing of the seventh day, or the institution of the Sabbath, and it is described by the words, In six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested in the seventh day; wherefore Jehovah blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it. They who do not think beyond the sense of the letter cannot believe otherwise than that the creation which is described in the first and second chapters of Genesis, is the creation of the universe, and that there were six days within which were created the heaven, the earth, the sea and all things which are therein, and finally man in the likeness of God.  But who that takes into consideration the particulars of the description cannot see that the creation of the universe is not there meant; for such things are there described as may be known from common sense not to have been so; as that there were days before the sun and the moon, as well as light and darkness, and that herbage and trees sprang up; and yet that the light was furnished by these luminaries, and a distinction was made between the light and the darkness, and thus days were made.

In what follows in the history there are also like things, which are hardly acknowledged to be possible by anyone who thinks interiorly, as that the woman was built from the rib of the man; also that two trees were set in paradise, of the fruit of one of which it was forbidden to eat; and that a serpent from one of them spoke with the wife of the man who had been the wisest of mortal creatures, and by his speech, which was from the mouth of the serpent, deceived them both; and that the whole human race, composed of so many millions, was in consequence condemned to hell.  The moment that these and other such things in that history are thought of, they must needs appear paradoxical to those who entertain any doubt concerning the holiness of the Word, and must afterward lead them to deny the Divine therein.  Nevertheless be it known that each and all things in that history, down to the smallest iota, are Divine, and contain within them arcana which before the angels in the heavens are plain as in clear day. The reason of this is that the angels do not see the sense of the Word according to the letter, but according to what is within, namely, what is spiritual and celestial, and within these, things Divine.  When the first chapter of Genesis is read, the angels do not perceive any other creation than the new creation of man, which is called regeneration. This regeneration is described in that history; by paradise the wisdom of the man who has been created anew; by the two trees in the midst thereof, the two faculties of that man, namely, the will of good by the tree of life, and the understanding of truth by the tree of knowledge.  And that it was forbidden to eat of this latter tree, was because the man who is regenerated, or created anew, must no longer be led by the understanding of truth, but by the will of good, and if otherwise, the new life within him perishes. Consequently by Adam, or man, and by Eve his wife, was there meant a new church, and by the eating of the tree of knowledge, the fall of that church from good to truth, consequently from love to the Lord and toward the neighbor to faith without these loves, and this by reasoning from their own intellectual, which reasoning is the serpent.

From all this it is evident that the historic narrative of the creation and the first man, and of paradise, is a history so framed as to contain within it heavenly and Divine things, and this according to the received method in the Ancient Churches. This method of writing extended thence also to many who were outside of that Church, who in like manner devised histories and wrapped up arcana within them, as is plain from the writers of the most ancient times. For in the Ancient Churches it was known what such things as are in the world signified in heaven, nor to those people were events of so much importance as to be described; but the things which were of heaven. These latter things occupied their minds, for the reason that they thought more interiorly than men at this day, and thus had communication with angels, and therefore it was delightful to them to connect such things together. But they were led by the Lord to those things which should be held sacred in the churches, consequently such things were composed as were in full correspondence.

From all this it can be seen what is meant by “heaven and earth” in the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, namely, the church internal and external.  That these are signified by “heaven and earth” is evident also from passages in the prophets, where mention is made of “a new heaven and a new earth,” by which a new church is meant.  From all this it is now plain that by, “In six days Jehovah made heaven and earth and the sea,” is signified the regeneration and vivification of those things which are in the internal and in the external man.

(Arcana Coelestia 8891)
May 14, 2017

The Five Churches

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In Swedenborgian theology, the term “church” usually doesn’t refer to a building – like St. Patrick’s Church on 10th Street – or to an organization, e.g. the Roman Catholic Church. Instead, a church is a state of spiritual belief, shared by a group of people, at a given time.

In the big picture, there have been 5 main churches in human history:

– The Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam in the Bible. It spanned the time from the dawn of human spirituality until the time represented by Noah, at around the time of the agricultural revolution. It didn’t have a written Word.

– The Ancient Church, represented by Noah in the Bible. It lasted from the rise of civilization until the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Moses mentions books from an Ancient Word from that church – the Book of Annunciations, the Book of Jasher, and the Wars of Jehovah.

– The Israelitish church, which lasted from the time of the Patriarchs until the birth of Jesus Christ. Its main role was to preserve the sacred scriptures that form the Old Testament, and to preserve, by adhering to external rituals, the embers of an internal worship whose real meaning was largely forgotten. The prophets of the Old Testament, through recording the history of the Israelitish people.

– The First Christian Church, which started at the time of the Lord’s ministry on earth. It gradually got corrupted by false understandings of the Trinity, which led to further confusion, and eventually the idea of salvation by faith separate from love.

– The New Christian Church, which has a new set of truths contained in Swedenborg’s works. Starting from 1770, it is restoring and fulfilling Jesus Christ’s original mission. The inner meaning of the Bible has been explained and clarified, and new concepts clear away the misunderstandings that hampered the First Christian Church.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 10248; True Christian Religion 786)

http://newchristianbiblestudy.org/

 

Using Swedenborg to Understand the Quantum World III: Thoughts and Forms

Swedenborg Foundation

By Ian Thompson, PhD, Nuclear Physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

 

In this series of posts, Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences has been shown to have interesting applications for helping us to better understand the quantum world.

In part I, we learned that our mental processes occur at variable finite intervals and that they consist of desire, or love, acting by means of thoughts and intentions to produce physical effects. We in turn came to see the correspondential relationship between these mental events and such physical events that occur on a quantum level: in both cases, there will be time gaps between the events leading up to the physical outcome. So since we find that physical events occur in finite steps rather than continuously, we are led to expect a quantum world rather than a world described by classical physics.

In part II, we saw that the main similarity between desire (mental) and energy (physical) is that they both persist between events, which means that they are substances and therefore have the capability, or disposition, for action or interaction within the time gaps between those events.

Now we come to the question of how it is that these substances persist during the intervals between events. The events are the actual selection of what happens, so after the causing event and before the resultant effect, what occurs is the exploring of “possibilities for what might happen.” With regard to our mental processes, this exploration of possibilities is what we recognize as thinking. Swedenborg explains in detail how this very process of thinking is the way love gets ready to do things (rather than love being a byproduct of the thinking process, as Descartes would require):

Everyone sees that discernment is the vessel of wisdom, but not many see that volition is the vessel of love. This is because our volition does nothing by itself, but acts through our discernment. It first branches off into a desire and vanishes in doing so, and a desire is noticeable only through a kind of unconscious pleasure in thinking, talking, and acting. We can still see that love is the source because we all intend what we love and do not intend what we do not love. (Divine Love and Wisdom §364)

When we realize we want something, the next step is to work out how to do it. We first think of the specific objective and then of all the intermediate steps to be taken in order to achieve it. We may also think about alternative steps and the pros and cons of following those different routes. In short, thinking is the exploration of “possibilities for action.” As all of this thinking speaks very clearly to the specific objective at hand, it can be seen as supporting our motivating love, which is one of the primary functions of thought. A focused thinking process such as this can be seen, simplified, in many kinds of animal activities.

With humans, however, thinking goes beyond that tight role of supporting love and develops a scope of its own. Not only do our thoughts explore possibilities for action, but they also explore the more abstract “possibilities for those possibilities.” Not only do we think about how to get a drink, but we also, for example, think about the size of the container, how much liquid it contains, and how far it is from where we are at that moment! When we get into such details as volume and distance, we discover that mathematics is the exploration of “possibilities of all kinds,” whether they are possibilities for action or not. So taken as a whole, thought is the exploration of all the many possibilities in the world, whether or not they are for action and even whether or not they are for actual things.

For physical things (material objects), this exploration of possibilities is spreading over the possible places and times for interactions or selections. Here, quantum physics has done a whole lot of work already. Physicists have discovered that the possibilities for physical interactions are best described by the wave function of quantum mechanics. The wave function describes all the events that are possible, as well as all the propensities and probabilities for those events to happen. According to German physicist Max Born, the probability of an event in a particular region can be determined by an integral property of the wave function over that region. Energy is the substance that persists between physical events, and all physical processes are driven by energy. In quantum mechanics, this energy is what is responsible for making the wave function change through time, as formulated by the Schrödinger equation, which is the fundamental equation of quantum physics.[1]

Returning now to Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences, we recognize that the something physical like thoughts in the mind are the shapes of wave functions in quantum physics. In Swedenborg’s own words:

When I have been thinking, the material ideas in my thought have presented themselves so to speak in the middle of a wave-like motion. I have noticed that the wave was made up of nothing other than such ideas as had become attached to the particular matter in my memory that I was thinking about, and that a person’s entire thought is seen by spirits in this way. But nothing else enters that person’s awareness then apart from what is in the middle which has presented itself as a material idea. I have likened that wave round about to spiritual wings which serve to raise the particular matter the person is thinking about up out of his memory. And in this way the person becomes aware of that matter. The surrounding material in which the wave-like motion takes place contained countless things that harmonized with the matter I was thinking about. (Arcana Coelestia §6200)[2]

Many people who have tried to understand the significance of quantum physics have noted that the wave function could be described as behaving like a non-spatial realm of consciousness. Some of these people have even wanted to say that the quantum wave function is a realm of consciousness, that physics has revealed the role of consciousness in the world, or that physics has discovered quantum consciousness.[3] However, using Swedenborg’s ideas to guide us, we can see that the wave function in physics corresponds to the thoughts in our consciousness. They have similar roles in the making of events: both thoughts and wave functions explore the “possibilities, propensities, and probabilities for action.” They are not the same, but they instead follow similar patterns and have similar functions within their respective realms. Thoughts are the way that desire explores the possibilities for the making of intentions and their related physical outcomes, and wave functions are the way that energy explores the possibilities for the making of physical events on a quantum level.

The philosophers of physics have been puzzled for a long time about the substance of physical things,[4] especially that of things in the quantum realm. From our discussion here, we see that energy (or propensity) is also the substance of physical things in the quantum realm and that the wave function, then, is the form that such a quantum substance takes. The wave function describes the shape of energy (or propensity) in space and time. We can recognize, as Aristotle first did, that a substantial change has occurred when a substance comes into existence by virtue of the matter of that substance acquiring some form.[5] That still applies to quantum mechanics, we now find, even though many philosophers have been desperately constructing more extreme ideas to try to understand quantum objects, such as relationalism[6] or the many-worlds interpretation.[7]

So what, then, is this matter of energy (desire, or love)? Is it from the Divine? Swedenborg would say as much:

It is because the very essence of the Divine is love and wisdom that we have two abilities of life. From the one we get our discernment, and from the other volition. Our discernment is supplied entirely by an inflow of wisdom from God, while our volition is supplied entirely by an inflow of love from God. Our failures to be appropriately wise and appropriately loving do not take these abilities away from us. They only close them off; and as long as they do, while we may call our discernment “discernment” and our volition “volition,” essentially they are not. So if these abilities really were taken away from us, everything human about us would be destroyed—our thinking and the speech that results from thought, and our purposing and the actions that result from purpose. We can see from this that the divine nature within us dwells in these two abilities, in our ability to be wise and our ability to love. (Divine Love and Wisdom §30)

When seeing things as made from substance—from the energy (or desire) that endures between events and thereby creates further events—we note that people will tend to speculate about “pure love” or “pure energy”: a love or energy without form that has no particular objective but can be used for anything. But this cannot be. In physics, there never exists any such pure energy but only energy in specific forms, such as the quantum particles described by a wave function. Any existing physical energy must be the propensity for specific kinds of interactions, since it must exist in some form. Similarly, there never exists a thing called “pure love.” The expression “pure love” makes sense only with respect to the idea of innocent, or undefiled, love, not to love without an object. Remember that “our volition [which is the vessel of love] does nothing by itself, but acts through our discernment.”

Ian Thompson is also the author of Starting Science from God, as well as Nuclear Reactions in Astrophysics (Univ. of Cambridge Press) and more than two hundred refereed professional articles in nuclear physics.

[1] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation.

[2] Secrets of Heaven is the New Century Edition translation of Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia.
[3] See, for example, http://quantum-mind.co.uk.
[4] Howard Robinson, “Substance,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance.
[5] Thomas Ainsworth, “Form vs. Matter,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/form-matter/.
[6] Michael Epperson, “Quantum Mechanics and Relational Realism: Logical Causality and Wave Function Collapse,” Process Studies 38.2 (2009): 339–366.
[7] J. A. Barrett, “Quantum Worlds,” Principia 20.1 (2016): 45–60.

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Violence: How to respond to it ethically?

Spiritual Questions & Answers

Discovering inner health and transformation

violenceThroughout history human beings have been fighting, maiming and killing each other. If you wish to think about an ethical response to violence then the Viking invasion of Britain over 1000 years ago is as relevant a period in history as any for consideration.

For their story is one of pillage and slaughter, destruction and extortion. The country was devastated. The raiders were cruel and treacherous. Should the response to this terror have been one of violence?

Pacifism and violence

In Western religion, Jesus Christ’s injunction to “love thy enemy” and his asking for forgiveness for his crucifiers “for they know not what they do” have been interpreted as calling for pacifism. For example George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, utterly rejected war as being incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Doing no harm is also a core philosophy in Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism.

King Ethelred I of Wessex inclined to a religious view that held that faith and prayer were prime agencies by which the invader would be overcome.

Another response of the English was to buy off the Vikings with money rather than continue the armed struggle. This practice of paying a ‘tribute’ was common by local inhabitants throughout Europe where the Vikings had used violence to invade foreign lands.

However it seems that these payments encouraged further threat of violence and further extortion so that over 100 tonnes of silver were eventually shipped back to Scandinavia from England. And so another response was to stand and fight. This tough attitude is expressed in Kipling’s verse.

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!” (Rudyard Kipling)

Alfred’s military action

Ethelred’s younger brother Alfred, although also devout, laid the emphasis upon policy and arms. At the battle of Ashdown, Alfred led his forces boldly against the army of the enemy and the fight was long and hard until at last the invaders gave way and fled. If the West Saxons had been beaten at this battle, all England would have sunk into uncivilised anarchy.

Many battles with the Vikings were lost. However, a second crucial battle later took place at Eddington: on this everything was at stake. For several hours the men on each side fought with sword and axe and many were killed. Eventually the Vikings fled only to be surrounded. They were hungry cold and fearful and Alfred had them in his power. He could have slaughtered them to a man.

Ethical limits to violence

But even if you are a non-pacifist are there not important ethical limits on how one should use violence? The way Americans waged war in Vietnam in the 1960s has been criticized. Their express desire was to ‘incapacitate’ as many civilians as possible and by so doing put intolerable pressure on hospital and health facilities. Rather than bury her, it takes time, resources and energy to attend to a 12-year-old Vietnamese child with napalm burns all over her body.

Many have questioned, too, the ethics of the huge bombing raids of the Second World War, when British and American bombers rained down fire and destruction on millions of German women and children, and also the use of atomic bombs in Japan.

Today the problem is even greater, as nuclear, biological and chemical warfare are capable of eliminating not just combatants but the entire human race.

Some guidance from a ethical perspective is provided by a Christian writer of the 13th century, St Thomas Aquinas, in his idea of a ‘just war’. He laid down certain conditions. His view was that violence should only be used where peace and justice is restored afterwards and where the war must be the last resort. In addition he said there must be proportionality in the way war is fought. For example innocent civilians should not be killed: only enough force may be used to achieve goals, not more.

Emanuel Swedenborg on violence

The 18th-century spiritual philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg suggested that wars which are intended to protect one’s country are not necessarily contrary to the notion of ‘loving one’s enemy’. To him it depended on the purpose for which the violence is undertaken. For example he maintained it is unethical to use violence in order to seek glory for the sake of glory, for this springs from a love of self that rules all motivation. Likewise the use of force is said to be unethical where there is a vicious disposition of mind where soldiers even after a battle want to “terrorise the … defenceless and in their fury murder and rob them.”

Alfred in victory

After the battle of Eddington, instead of taking revenge on the foe, Alfred took the longer view and in a time of much uneasiness and disturbance he prioritised a hoped for peace so that all might live together with reasonable relations rather than mutual hostility. So, on grounds of humanity, instead of destroying the opposition fighters he worked towards dividing the land between the two sides. The anarchic conditions of the times were likely to continue to produce murders and physical injuries and so later he negotiated a truce with the invading forces defining a political boundary dividing Mercia from Wessex. Nothing would stop the Danes from killing and robbing the English and vice versa and so he got agreement between the two sides about a system of equal financial compensation should any lives be lost as a way of creating a disincentive for violence.

He applied a version of the Golden Rule. Instead of “do to others as you would that they should do to you”, he adopted the less ambitious principle, “what you will that other men should not do to you, that do you not to other men”: this law of Alfred continually amplified by his successors became the common law of the country.

No wonder he was called Alfred the Great. He was both a great warrior and a great forger of peace.

Copyright 2014 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of  Heart, Head & Hands  Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems

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Posted on5th February 2014AuthorEditorCategoriesEthics, Ethics & PoliticsTags,, , , ,  Leave a comment