The Magical Mystery Tour
In our modern materialistic age, people sometimes claim that there is no real information about the spiritual world.
That’s not true! There is a huge amount of information available about the spiritual world.
One of the clearest and most extensive sources of information on the afterlife was first published over 250 years ago: Heaven and Hell, by Emanuel Swedenborg. It offers a guided tour of heaven, hell, and our journey to one or the other after death.
Here’s a short version of that journey:
- Once we lose consciousness in this world, everything is warm and peaceful, because we are attended at death by the wisest and most loving angels.
- We then go on to a life much like we had here on earth—so much so that we may not even realize we have died.
- Sooner or later, our true inner self comes out, and is visible for all to see. We can no longer pretend to be someone we aren’t. It is now clear whether we’re headed for heaven or for hell.
- If we’re headed toward heaven, angels teach us what heaven is like before we actually travel to our own eternal home there.
Who says no one has come back to tell us?
Have you ever heard this one? “We don’t know anything about the afterlife because no one has ever come back to tell us about it.”
Either the people who say this haven’t been paying attention, or they simply don’t want to believe in an afterlife.
Some people used to think that Emanuel Swedenborg was the big exception to that old saying. Then we all found out back in 1975, when Raymond Moody published his book Life After Life, that thousands of people have had the experience of dying and coming back to tell about it. Many of them give vivid descriptions of what it was like to die and enter the spiritual world. And though every story is different, there are common threads running through them all. By now, so many books have been published with descriptions of near-death experiences that there’s really no excuse to keep on repeating that old canard about “no one has ever come back to tell us about it.”
Of course, skeptics say that all those people were just hallucinating because their brains were low on oxygen . . . and so on, and so forth. For those who don’t want to believe, there will always be ways not to believe. Jesus himself said, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from death” (Luke 16:31).
Yes, it’s possible for people to harden their minds against the afterlife so much that they’ll reject and explain away all the evidence pointing to its existence. That is part of our human freedom in spiritual matters, which God always protects for us.
But if you are open to the possibility of an afterlife, there is plenty of information out there. In fact, over 250 years ago the scientist, philosopher, and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) published a detailed tour guide of the spiritual world based on extensive personal experience. What you’ll find in this article is just a small taste of the rich smorgasbord of knowledge about heaven, hell, and the world of spirits that you’ll find in his most popular book: Heaven and Hell.
For now, we’ll just look at what it is like to die, and what steps we then take on our journey toward heaven . . . or toward that other place.
The World of Spirits:
Grand Central Station of the Spiritual World
Some people believe in purgatory, where we pay for our sins before going on to heaven. There is no such place, says Swedenborg.
Instead, there is a halfway station that Swedenborg calls “the world of spirits.” It is called this because it is so vast as to be a world all its own, and it is made up entirely of the spirits of people who have recently died. This is where we get sorted out and routed to our eternal home in a process that may take minutes, days, weeks, months, or years—but at most a few decades.
The world of spirits looks and feels almost exactly like earth. In fact, it looks so much like earth that it is very common for people who have died to think they have not died at all, but are still living in the material world. There are even cities and towns there that match the cities and towns of this earth.
However, even though there is the appearance of permanent human dwellings in the world of spirits, it is by nature a temporary place for everyone living there. It is where we go right after our death because most of us are not quite ready for heaven or hell when we first die. We must go through a period of transition to prepare ourselves for our permanent home.
That period of transition comes in three stages—though the third is only for those who are headed for heaven. Let’s take a closer look at the process of dying and the three stages after death as described by Swedenborg.
What is it Like to Die?
Like most who describe their experiences of dying, Swedenborg says that once we lose consciousness in this world, death is a very peaceful experience. That’s because we are attended on the other side by the most loving and wise angels, who keep us enveloped in a peacefulness and a loving warmth that goes beyond anything we have ever experienced before.
At first we simply sense the angels’ thoughts and feel their love in our minds. But soon our spiritual eyes are opened, and we say goodbye to those warm, heavenly angels and begin our journey into the spiritual world. We are guided by lower angels—first more intellectual ones who answer our questions, then more pragmatic ones who guide us to our (temporary) homes and activities in the world of spirits.
Our First Stage After Death:
The Stage of Outward Life
At that point, we settle into a life very much like the one we had lived on earth. Why? Because that’s where our mind and heart are—and in the spiritual world, our thoughts and feelings determine our surroundings.
In fact, we may or may not even realize that we have died. Perhaps the experience of dying now seems to us like a particularly vivid dream. But everything around us looks pretty much the same, so we put it out of our mind and go about our daily business. We get up and go to work, go home, eat, relax in front of the TV or at the computer, and head to bed when we’re tired.
Maybe it will seem strange to us that we are no longer with the people we had been with here on earth. But it is amazing how the human mind can convince itself of things. And if we have not believed in an afterlife, we will probably convince ourselves that we are still living on earth.
If we have believed in an afterlife, though, we will accept the news when those first angels who guided us through the process of dying tell us that we have died and are now spirits. We then naturally want to see what the spiritual world is like. And of course, we want to see our family members and friends who have died before us.
We do have an opportunity to see and talk with everyone we had known who has gone on to the spiritual world. Just thinking about them brings them close to us—though at first we will probably experience this as their visiting us or our going to visit them in their homes. If we have been married and our spouse had died, we get back together and resume our life together. And of course, we can see children, parents, grandparents, and other friends and relatives who have died.
This existence similar to our life in the world continues for a longer or shorter time, depending on how strongly we cling to our former material existence.
Sooner or later, though, things begin to change.
Our Second Stage After Death:
The Stage of Inward Life
As long as we are living here on earth, we can think and feel one way, but say and do something else. We can hate someone’s guts, but treat them politely. Or we can love them and tell them that we don’t.
During our second stage after death we lose this ability to pretend to be one kind of person when we are different inside. Step by step, any outer masks that we had worn on earth, any false external personas, melt away from us, and our true self is exposed.
By the time we have gone through this second stage after death, we will always say exactly what we think, and we will always express our real feelings about the people and things around us. We may still be able to stop ourselves from saying or doing anything at all. But we can no longer lie, and we can no longer pretend we love what we hate and vice versa.
This is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops” (Luke 12:2–3).
No one in heaven or in hell is allowed to speak and do what they do not think and feel. Any external politeness we have adopted without the internal kindness and consideration that it corresponds to will be stripped away. On the other hand, any external gruffness that conceals a heart of gold will also be stripped away.
By the time we are finished with this stage, each one of us will be a case of “what you see is what you get.” Even our physical appearance will change so that our very features express our inner character. That is why angels appear so beautiful, while devils appear so hideous.
Our Third Stage After Death:
The Stage of Learning
For people who are heading to hell, there is no third stage. They are so full of themselves that they do not believe anyone can teach them anything. So they reject any attempts of angels and good spirits to teach them. Once their inner selves have been fully revealed and they are just the same outwardly as they are inwardly, they rush down to their final homes in hell because that is where they most want to be. Hellish spirits prefer the company of other hellish spirits.
For those heading to heaven, though, there is a third stage. This is where we learn the ways of heaven before we actually go there.
It’s like going to live in a foreign land. Before we go there, it is a good idea to learn the local language and customs so that we’ll be able to get along in our new home.
The fact of the matter is that the churches here on earth have done a poor job of training people about heaven and what it is like. That’s because they have not known much about it—and what they have “known” is mostly mistaken. On the other side of the coin, most people have been so busy just getting along in this world that they haven’t taken advantage of the information that is available about heaven and how to live there. As a result, few people arriving from earth have any real knowledge about the ways of heaven.
So if our heart is good, after we have become outwardly exactly what we are like inwardly, we are taught by angels all the basics that we need to know about what makes heaven, and what we need to do to live there. There is no need to learn any new language because everyone in the spiritual world speaks the same spiritual language. But there is a need to learn such things as the fact that heavenly joy is not sitting on a throne being fanned by scantily clad beauties and having handsome waiters serving us peeled grapes . . . but that real heavenly joy is the joy of serving others, and the satisfaction of doing God’s will.
Of course, we will continue learning more and more about God and heaven to all eternity. But by the time we have gone through this third stage after death, we have the fundamental understanding we need to move into our homes in heaven.
Heading Toward Heaven
Once we are prepared in this way, we see a path open up before us. We eagerly follow it for a longer or shorter distance until we arrive at our own community and our own home in heaven. There, we are greeted with warmth and enthusiasm by those already living there. We instantly feel that we have known them all our lives, and that this is our true home.
And of course, by this time we will have found our true spiritual partner, if we hadn’t already on earth. We will continue living with him or her in a full and rich marriage relationship that becomes closer and deeper to all eternity.
Do we stop learning and growing? Not at all! Are there no more difficult tasks to accomplish? Certainly not! We will still use all of our human capabilities to the fullest, and we will always be challenged to do greater things. But we will do them willingly and with great energy, because these will be the things we love to do, and we will be doing them with the people we love most.
This article is © 2013 by Lee Woofenden
For more on the afterlife, see:
- Near-Death Experiences and the Doctors
- Who Are the Angels and How Do They Live?
- Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
- Can Gang Members Go to Heaven? (Is Life Fair?)
- Heaven and Hell, by Emanuel Swedenborg
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Hi, Lee
About revealing our true self.
How does that works more specifically? Let’s take an example:
You love eating meat because of it’s unique taste and texture but at the same time you also love animals! You know that generally eating meat leads to animal suffering so you stop eating meat to prevent it. While sometimes you really want to eat a delicious beef, you stop yourself from doing it because you convince yourself that it’s a bad thing. How this translates to the second stage of the afterlife? Isn’t the action of not eating the meat more significant than the internal desire / thought since you are taking an action with a truly and lovely motivation yourself?
Blessings!
Hi Caio,
On your last question, the action of not eating meat demonstrates that your internal desire not to eat meat is a real intention, not just a romantic fantasy. If we always intend to do this or that, but somehow we just never get around to doing it even though there is plenty of time and opportunity, then our intention is not real. If it is a real intention, then the intention is more significant than the act because that is where the act comes from.
Consider a person who never eats meat simply because no meat is ever available. The act of not eating meat is the same even though this person is an unintentional vegetarian. But give this person the opportunity to eat meat, and s/he will, while the vegetarian will not. So the intention is greater than the act, and the act makes the intention complete. It is based on our intentions—or in Swedenborgian language, our ruling love—that we will be judged in the spiritual world. That’s because our intentions will always lead to our acting in a certain way if we are not prevented from doing so. In the spiritual world after the first stage is over, being judged by our actions is the same as being judged by our intentions.
On your main question, to continue with the meat-eating example, personally I have been a vegetarian for over forty years. At first I used to miss some of the kinds of meat that had been my favorites. But as the years went by, I lost all interest in meat. A few times over the years I have had a bite of meat either accidentally or out of curiosity, and it didn’t appeal to me at all. I can sit at a whole table full of people eating meat, and while they may think I’m missing the best part of the meal (and some say so), I am enjoying my food, and not missing the meat at all even though it’s being eaten right in front of me. I simply have no interest in meat.
I presume this is how it happens in the spiritual world. As time goes by, we lose all interest in anything that doesn’t come from our ruling love, or from one of the loves that flow from it. Once we are finished with our second stage in the spiritual world, not only all our outward actions, but even our outward desires and enjoyments, are in complete harmony with our ruling love because they flow seamlessly from our ruling love. Anything that conflicts with it feels unpleasant and repugnant to us.
(For the committed carnivores reading in, no, I don’t think you will go to hell for eating meat. Enjoy your meal!)
Hi, Lee
Thank you, great explanation as always 🙂
Hi Caio,
You are most welcome.
I should add that all of this is a process. It does not happen instantly. It requires daily and long-term commitment to whatever new state of being we want to achieve. That is why we are given a lifetime, not just a few minutes, to accomplish our regeneration process.
Even in the spiritual world, these changes don’t happen instantly. It is true that some people go immediately to heaven or to hell as soon as they die. But most people go through a shorter or longer period of time in the world of spirits first. Swedenborg gives various time frames for this, the longest being twenty or thirty years. Of course, that is not literal. In the spiritual world there is no time as we know it here on earth. Rather, it gives an idea of the passage of experience and events that will be required to complete the process of bringing our outward life into full harmony with our inward life, and ultimately with our ruling love.
The same is true on this earth. Yes, we do sometimes have sudden conversion moments in which our whole life changes. But more often, it is a matter of daily work and building of the life that we want to live, and the person that we want to be. A new house doesn’t just instantly appear. There is a step-by-step process, starting with the digging of the foundation, that builders must go through to construct a new house until the day it is finished and becomes a home. The same is true of our spiritual life. It is the daily labor of correcting our wrongs and putting them aside, and learning to think, speak, and act in better and more constructive and useful ways, that builds a strong and livable “home” of spiritual character within us. This is the deeper reality of all our earthy labors day after day.
Hi, Lee
Thank you again! 😌🙏🏻
In your About tab say that you helped with the New Century Editions of Swedenborg’s books. I made a question in Off the Left Eye comment section on YouTube about a possible NCE of Marriage Love and they said that a translation is on the works, are you helping this time too?
Hi Caio,
Yes, I have put hundreds, if not thousands of hours into the upcoming NCE volume of Marriage Love. Over a decade ago I spent a year or two writing and editing notes for it, as well as seeking out other scholars to write notes. Much more recently, I spent another year doing an intensive critical reading of the translation text itself, making many suggestions for fixes and improvements. I do not know when it will be published. I hope it won’t be too much longer.
Hi Lee,
Wow, i didn’t have any idea that it’s that much of work! Congratulations for your effort and time, Lee! 👏🏻
It’s my favorite Swedenborg book.
I have an very old physical copy, translated in Brazilian Portuguese but is a little bit hard to understand in some parts, even in my main language.
Question time! 🙋🏻
Do you think our soul already comes with some sort of inclination to be good or bad? Not that the we already born evil or good, but maybe there are some people that born more vulnerable to evil or good spirits influences? I have zero understand of psychology but there are some rare cases of very young kids that shows psychopath tendencies, even when they have very good parents, so how do you think that happens? Does the soul or it’s parents’s community have any influence on their child? It’s a completely blind question because i don’t know anything about it.
Blessings!
Hi Caio,
Yes, each of those beautiful plum-colored NCE volumes represents thousands of hours of work on the part of many scholars, editors, and others working on the project. My father, who was a Swedenborgian minister, scholar, and seminary professor, long had a vision of an annotated scholarly edition of Swedenborg’s works that could proudly take its place on the shelves of any university library. His scholarly career was over by the time the project got seriously underway, but he did live to see the first volumes come off the press. It has turned out to be a far bigger project than anyone had ever imagined! But the Swedenborg Foundation has remained steadfast in continuing the project and seeing it through.
Your experience with that old Brazilian Portuguese translation of Marriage Love is just one of many examples of why newer and more readable translations are needed. It is very common in many languages around the world for the translations to be old, archaic, and not easy to read even for the local speakers of those languages.
Marriage Love has been translated into English quite a few times. Some of the more recent ones are fairly readable. Many years ago I worked on the one by David Gladish, which is the translation I would currently recommend to anyone who wants to read the book in English. But once the NCE translation is published, it will be the best, especially when the Deluxe Edition comes out with all the notes that explain many arcane and confusing things in the book. Marriage Love is one of the more wide-ranging and complex books that Swedenborg ever wrote.
It has also been his most controversial book right from the beginning. See:
I also love the book. But it is good to keep in mind while reading it that it was written and published in the 18th century, two and a half centuries ago. A lot has changed since then. But when it comes to the book’s presentation on the spiritual nature of marriage, it remains unsurpassed to this day. Every time I read it, I pick up new and fascinating ideas in it.
Hi Caio,
Now for your question, which is a tough one.
Some people certainly do seem to be born with two strikes against them. The example of children who are psychopathic from a young age is a case in point.
However, the general principle is that nothing we are born with, or that comes to us from the outside, or that is from our childhood, will send us to hell. The only way we can go to hell is if, as rational, self-responsible adults, we freely choose an evil path when we had the capacity to choose a good path instead.
I’m no expert in psychology either. But anyone who is psychopathic from a young age will not be judged for hell because of that, since it was not under their control. They do not have the capacity to choose to be otherwise. In the spiritual world, their psychosis will be removed during their time in the world of spirits, and their life will continue without it. If they never had a chance to be rational adults enjoying moral free will, they will in time make their home in heaven, not in hell. The default destination is always heaven. If the onset of their psychosis came in adulthood, in the spiritual world their psychosis will be removed, and their character will be “reset” back to where it was when the psychosis hit. Their life will then continue along whatever path it was on before they became mentally ill.
Here are a couple of related articles that you might find helpful:
It is popular these days to believe that everyone is born good, and that only outside influences during infancy, childhood, and beyond causes people to go bad.
But that’s not really true.
Yes, everyone is born innocent, because there is no intention on the part of an infant or young child to do evil. Therefore everyone who dies before they reach adulthood goes to heaven, not to hell.
But the reality is that everyone is born self-absorbed and self-centered. Infants and children, and even most teens, do not really think about the comfort and happiness of other people. They think about their own comfort and happiness. An infant who is hungry and wet will not think, “I’m miserable at the moment, but it’s the middle of the night, so I’ll let Mommy and Daddy sleep until morning.” No. Infants cry and cry and cry until someone takes care of their needs, even if it’s the wee hours of the morning and they’ve already woken up their parents three or four times that night.
Because we are born self-centered and self-absorbed, we are “born into evils of every kind,” to use Swedenborg’s language. As toddlers, we want the toys, and we’ll take them from the other toddlers if we can. And if we can’t, we’ll look around for someone to hit. Fortunately, we’re small and weak at that age, so our self-centeredness generally doesn’t do much damage. During all the years of early and late childhood, parents must train this self-centeredness out of their children, teach them to think of other people as well as themselves, and discipline them when they persist in doing things they know they are not supposed to do.
This is just the natural state of human beings. We are born self-centered, which is the source of evil, but we are also born innocent, so that we are not condemned for our self-centeredness either by our parents or by God.
However, if we reach adulthood and that self-centeredness hasn’t been trained out of us, and we also don’t make a decision to live for the benefit of others as well as for our own benefit, then the innocent self-centeredness of our childhood becomes real and culpable evil and sin. If we have been brought up indulged and spoiled, and were never trained and disciplined, then we can be excused to some extent as adults. But we still have the responsibility to make something good of our lives. If we were brought up well, but decide to live a selfish and greedy life, then it’s all on us.
It’s a big question. There’s more that could be said. But I’ll leave it at that for now, let you read the linked articles, and wait to see if you still have more thoughts and questions.
What do you think of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK_czO9DTL4? I am turning away from you and Swedenborg and turning to Hope Through Prophecy. I have been told that Dustin Pestlin is a Seventh-Day Adventist. Do you have any articles related to Seventh-Day Adventism?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
It’s a long video. I’m watching it at 2x speed. I’ll make a few comments as I go along.
At around minute 20, he’s talking about the two trees of the Garden of Eden, though he flubs the name of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, calling it “the tree of knowledge of sin and evil” instead. I’m sure he knows what the tree is actually called. But I find people’s verbal slip-ups when they’re quoting the Bible from memory fascinating. It often bends the Bible’s words toward something the speaker believes even though that’s not what the Bible actually says.
But in this case, if we take “death” literally, as this speaker does, then God lied, and the serpent, meaning the Devil, told the truth. Physically, Adam and Eve did not die on the day they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, as God said they would. Ironically, if this speaker’s reading of the Bible is correct, and God was talking about physical death, not spiritual death (as he obviously was), then God is a liar and the Devil tells the truth.
But for the real meaning of the two trees, please see:
Which Tree is in the Middle of Your Garden?
And more specifically on whether God created us to live forever physically on this earth, please see the section “Were Adam and Eve created to never die?” in this article:
Marriage in Heaven: A Response to Tom Wenig
And no, you can’t wriggle out of it by saying, “Well, on the day they ate of the forbidden tree that’s when they became subject to death.” That’s just not what God said. God said, “on the day that you eat of it, you will certainly die.”
There’s no two ways about it. Either God was not talking about physical death, or God is a liar.
A couple minutes later it appears that the speaker is not aware that there are two different Creation stories in the Bible that are not compatible with one another if they are taken literally. As is common among literalists, he tries to glom the two stories together as if they were two different versions of the same story. But that is just not possible. The two stories flatly contradict one another not only in their modus operandi, as the speaker mentions, but also in the order in which things are created.
On that, see the section titled “Problems with a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2” in this article:
Man, Woman, and the Two Creation Stories of Genesis
Around the 27 minute mark he’s talking about the Hebrew word ruah meaning both breath and spirit, but he seems to reduce spirit to breath rather than understanding that breath corresponds to spirit. Our breath is not our spirit. Our breath is a physical expression of our spirit, which is spiritual. But this speaker seems not to believe in any spiritual reality at all. He seems to think we are entirely physical beings. That would be consistent with my admittedly rather minimal understanding of Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs as being very physical-minded.
Around the 31 minute mark he’s once again interpreting “death” in a completely physical way. Yes, only God is immortal in the sense that only God has immortality. But God gives us immortality as a gift, so that we may have it as well—not as something that is ours or that we own, but as something that God has given us.
The death that the soul dies is not physical death. It is spiritual death, which is living in evil, sin, hatred, and greed rather than living in love toward God and the neighbor. Since souls are spiritual, this is the sort of death they die, not the physical death that physical bodies die.
Over and over again, the speaker’s physical-minded view of the Bible causes him to reduce its statements down to flat materialistic statements, taking all the spiritual life out of them.
However, for people who cannot think spiritually, but only materially, these literalist readings of the Bible are necessary, or such people would have no faith at all. That’s one of the reasons the Bible uses earthly language to speak of spiritual things. Earthly-minded people read the words in an earthly way, and come to conclusions like the one this speaker has come to. Spiritual-minded people read the words in a spiritual way, and understand the greater things of spiritual life. Each one gets from it what he or she needs, based on his or her own mindset, whether physical or spiritual.
Around the one hour and ten minute mark, the speaker is saying that we don’t know whether the two thieves crucified with Jesus died on Friday, the same day Jesus died. But we do know this:
The whole purpose of breaking the thieves’ legs was to cause them to bleed out and die. The whole point was to remove the bodies at the request of the Jews. So yes, indeed, the thieves did die and were buried that day. It’s a bit of a head-scratcher why the speaker is not aware of this, even though he talks about the legs being broken.
And about Luke 23:43, sure, you could move the comma to make it read “I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise.” But there’s a reason none of the common translations do that. It’s an unnatural reading of the Greek. Obviously Jesus is saying it to him today. That would be a wasted word. And the Bible writers do not waste words. It means exactly what every translator translates it to mean: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Moving the comma is a clever way to get around the obvious meaning of the text. But it’s just that: clever. Not sound.
At any rate, if you find this man’s views and preaching helpful, then that is good. We all need something to hold onto. But from my perspective, it is an earthly-minded and materialistic view of the Bible. As for me, I prefer to read the Bible with my spiritual eyes open.
When I first watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A76EJKrBH6c (Five things we WON’T do in Heaven), I thought for sure I saw “Get married” coming. But Dustin Pestlin doesn’t even have any articles relating to marriage in Heaven. He should have posted “six things we WON’T do in Heaven” including “Get married.” I think Genesis 1:1-2 puts the comma and period at the wrong place. There should be no period between the two verses, but a comma – they are both one sentence. King James Version translated it wrong – sorry King James Only Proponents. It should be more like “In the beginning [when] God created the Heavens and the Earth, the Earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” Source: The True ORIGINS of Genesis Creation Will BLOW Your Mind By MythVision Podcast. Is that accurate?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
About marriage in heaven, Jesus did not say what Christians commonly say he did. See:
Didn’t Jesus Say There’s No Marriage in Heaven?
And no, there is no “when” in Genesis 1. The KJV and similar translations are correct. I don’t know why later translations feel they need to add in words, but those words are not in the Hebrew. I know the Hebrew of the opening verses of Genesis by heart. It is simple and direct, and the KJV translates it correctly.
Tahom is the Hebrew word for deep (Genesis 2), right? Are you sure there was supposed to be a comma after “beginning” in Genesis 1:1? Was there supposed to be a period at the end of Genesis 1, or was there supposed to be a comma? Did you even look up the video I’m referring to that I used as a source?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
There is no need for a comma after “beginning” in today’s trend toward light use of commas. But there is need of a period after “earth.” Then a new sentence begins. Hebrew simply uses the letter vav as a conjunction (“and”), which is the style of Hebrew narrative.
And yes, I watched the video.
What about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmFE-qjoksc (“Have we translated Genesis 1 wrong all this time?” By Dr. Michael S. Heiser)?
Can you respond to my comment? Link to a video. “When God began to create the Heavens and the Earth, the Earth was formless and void…” The matter of vowel markers and definite article. Did you see the video? It’s a recent one.
Can you watch that video and respond to these comments from May 18 and June 9?
Hi World Questioner,
If there are comments or videos you posted that long ago that I haven’t responded to yet, they’ve already gone over the horizon. It would take too long to dig them out. You can post them again if you want to.
Let me give it again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmFE-qjoksc (“Have we translated Genesis 1 wrong all this time?” By Dr. Michael S. Heiser). The video talks about the lack of vowel markers in the Dead Sea Scrolls and how that relates to the definite article in Genesis 1:1. Should it be translated “When God began to create the Heavens and the Earth, the Earth was formless and void…”?
Hi World Questioner,
The speaker in the video is a far, far better Hebraist than I am. I don’t doubt that he knows what he’s talking about. And I have seen that translation before. I know the first few verses of Genesis in Hebrew by heart, and he is quite right that based on the vowel markings we now have, there is no definite article in the very first word in Genesis, בְּרֵאשִׁית (b’reshith), “In beginning.”
From there, I would frame things a little differently than he does.
In his analysis of the traditional translation in which verses 1 and 3 are independent clauses, and verse to is a dependent clause, he says that verse 2 is the result of God’s actions of creating the heavens and the earth in verse 1. I would say, rather, that in the traditional reading verse 2 describes the conditions that existed on the earth after God’s initial creation of them.
If verse 2 were describing the result of verse 1, we would expect it to include descriptions of both the heavens and the earth that God has just created in verse 1. But that’s not it does. Verse 2 speaks only of the condition of the earth. It doesn’t say anything about the heavens.
The speaker does mention that verse 2 describes the conditions that result, but he lays the emphasis on verse 2 as result rather than on verse 2 as condition. It’s a subtle distinction, but I think it is a real and significant one.
Turning to his preferred translatio,n in which the first two clauses are dependent clauses, and the third is an independent clause that the first two lead up to:
He says that verse 3, “And God said, let there be light,” is where “God gets down to business.” And later, he says that verses 1 and 2 describe the conditions that exist before God creates anything, or speaks anything into existence.
The issue I have with this is that even if the first two verses are dependent clauses, verse 1 still refers to God creating the heavens and the earth. Even if we translate it as, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth” instead of, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” it still speaks of God creating the heavens and the earth, and then describes the conditions on the earth when God was doing that.
The question we would have to ask is, in his reading of the first three verses, did or didn’t God create the heavens and the earth? If verses one and two only describe the conditions that existed before God creates anything, this would imply that the heavens and the earth existed before God did any creating. By implication, it would imply that God didn’t actually create the heavens and the earth as referred to in verse 1, no matter which way you translate it.
Another way of saying this is that based on a literal reading of the first three verses of Genesis, I don’t think it matters all that much which way you translate it. Either way, it speaks of God creating the heavens and the earth, the conditions on earth when God did this, and then God speaking light into existence. Otherwise verse 1 would not say, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth,” but “when God began to reshape the heavens and the earth.” I.e., it would speak of the heavens and the earth already existing, and God merely coming along and doing a major renovation on them.
That’s not what these verses say. No matter which way you translate these verses, verse 1 speaks of God creating the heavens and the earth.
However, if we move to the spiritual meaning of these verses as explained by Swedenborg, this speaker’s preferred reading of Genesis 1:1–3 works very well, and really is the preferred reading.
Why?
Because according to Swedenborg, Genesis 1 is not about our initial creation. Rather, it is about the beginning of our “regeneration,” meaning our process of being born again. In Swedenborg’s reading, verse 2 is about what we are like spiritually and psychologically before our regeneration begins. We are spiritually “without form and void, and darkness is on the face of the deep.” In other words, we are spiritually dark and unformed. We exist as people, but we are undeveloped spiritually, and we are in a state of darkness and evil.
In Swedenborg’s reading, verse 3 is indeed where God gets down to business. This is where God says, “Let there be light,” which spiritually represents our first dawning awareness (brought about by God), that there is a higher meaning to life, and a spiritual element to life. This realization is where our process of being spiritually reborn begins.
Moving from an individual exegesis to an anthropological one, this reading of Genesis 1:1–3 suggests that when humans first became human we already existed as a species, but we were as yet mere animals. The act of creation in Genesis 1 was not the act of physically creating us as a species. Rather, it was the act of initially lifting us up to the level of spiritual awareness and becoming a spiritual being.
Again, this reading of the first three verses of Genesis dovetails perfectly with Swedenborg’s interpretation of the Creation story as applied to humanity as a whole. Although Swedenborg could not expand this thought out because the theory of evolution had not yet been proposed and developed in his time, the idea is that humans existed as animals already, but at some point we gained spiritual awareness, after which we were no longer mere animals, but were humans who could live eternally in heaven.
And so, although I do have some quibbles with his exact parsing of the two different versions, ultimately I believe the reading he is advocating is probably more accurate to the Hebrew, and is also more compatible with Swedenborg’s explanation of the various levels of spiritual meaning in those verses.
Hi Lee,
I have a question about one example of a NDE experiencers and so called “NDE researchers”. The name of the NDEr is Anita Morjani, I remember first hearing about her when I was first learning about NDEs but I also remember it was her, and a couple “NDE researchers” like Dr. Peter Fennick from London and Kevin Williams from http://www.near-death.com (if you go onto his site he has a map of the afterlife) they say that they study NDEs and they created both their own “maps of the afterlife” based on “the common factors” of NDEs saying that when we die we get “absorbed into the collective consciousness” or become “pure thought light beings” in a “sea of love and light” so no more form or solidarity like beautiful worlds or seeing our loved ones or anything for that matter so no former relation to our life here and if we want to experience anything physical we must reincarnate.
Kevin Williams talks about how we go through these stages according to his NDE map: earth, earth bound, void, tunnel, receiving station, soul realm, spirit realm, god realm.
When NDErs experience this “oneness or feelings of being absorb / disappearing” or black void experiences or a jolting sensation or tunnel of light what does this mean and why do NDE “researchers” come up with an interpretation like this? I never liked the interpretation that Anita Morjani’s gives her NDE for that reason or these so called “experts”. Dr. Peter Fennicks videos are pushed a lot on YouTube and Kevin Williams website is talked about a lot because they are deemed “experts” but what they promote is very depressing. Even in general I hear stuff like this promoted a lot from people. But I just wanted to ask you.
Thank you kindly Lee
Hi Sam,
It is good to keep in mind that NDEs are very brief experiences. Most last only a few minutes. The longest may seem like a few days. Swedenborg, by contrast, spent about twenty-seven years able to be fully conscious in the spiritual world, as if he were living there.
Near-death experiences are generally taken by surprise. They have no particular background or context by which to judge and evaluate what they are experiencing. It is like being suddenly and briefly thrown into a completely different culture on the opposite side of the world, and attempting to figure out what it is all about based on that brief experience. People are bound to get many things wrong because they just haven’t had enough time and immersion in that culture to gain a real understanding of it.
Personally, I’ve spent the last four years of my life living in Africa, immersed in African culture (not living in the “white” areas), and I feel like I am only beginning to understand the culture here and how it works. I do understand it much better than Westerners who have had only a brief tourist visit or two to Africa. But I certainly would not call myself an expert on African culture and society. It would be sheer hubris, then, to think that I could visit Africa for a few days, and on that basis call myself an expert on Africa. Even Western academics in prestigious universities who study African culture for many years, but never actually live in Africa, do not have a realistic picture of African people and culture. They often have romantic ivory tower notions about Africans and African culture that just don’t match the realities on the ground in Africa itself.
The same could be said about “NDE researchers” who study NDEs from the sidelines, and perhaps had a brief “tourist” visit to the spiritual world of their own. They simply don’t have the basis in experience to declare themselves experts on the spiritual world.
The sheer length and depth of Swedenborg’s experience in the spiritual world makes all the difference in the world. It is clear from the personal journals that he kept mostly during his early travels in the spiritual world after his spiritual eyes were initially opened that in those early days he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. He still had many of the old Lutheran beliefs from his childhood, not to mention other ideas that he had picked up along the way. These colored his understanding of what he was seeing in the spiritual world. It took him several years of near-daily experience in the spiritual world to get oriented there and learn the lay of the land so that he had some context for and understanding of the things he saw, heard, and experienced there. Only then did he begin speaking confidently about the nature and layout of the spiritual world.
Near-death experiencers just don’t have enough time to get that context and understanding of what they experience in the spiritual world. It is therefore very easy for them to misinterpret what they are seeing, especially when they are under the influence of particular religious belief systems here on earth, such as Eastern religion or New Age thought. Since their experience in the spiritual world is brief, and it shatters their usual way of looking at things, they go looking for something to make sense of it. Many of them land in the Eastern/New Age/reincarnationist camp—which, as you mention, has many proponents out there strongly pushing their views, and looking for converts. Once hooked to one of these groups, the NDEers then proceed to interpret everything they have heard, seen, and experienced in the spiritual world according to that worldview.
Multiply this by thousands, and you have the “NDE researchers” that you are talking about. They’re not really “researchers.” That would imply that they come in with an open mind, and are simply looking for the truth of the matter. Rather, they are what would be called in Christian circles “apologists.” They are people who already have a belief system consisting of various doctrines, who then go looking for support for those doctrines in their sacred literature, and in this case, in the various accounts of near-death experiences. They are not neutral observers. They come in with a particular ax to grind. And they do a very thorough job of grinding that ax.
Unfortunately, their confirmation bias causes them not to have an accurate view of the NDEs they study. They are looking for particular elements in those NDEs. If they find them, they emphasize them. But anything that doesn’t fit in with their views they sideline.
It’s been a few decades, but I spent many hours reading NDE accounts as part of my MA thesis project when I was in seminary in the 1990s. (See: “Death and Rebirth: Introduction,” and the rest of the chapters as posted here.) I simply didn’t see in those accounts any of these things that the website you linked is talking about. Where they find these ideas in the NDE literature I really don’t know. I have a hard time believing that NDEs have changed so radically in the thirty years since I delved heavily into them.
Meanwhile, Swedenborg stands in a class by himself in having spent nearly three decades able to be fully conscious in the spiritual world as if he were living there. I am not aware of anyone else in history who has even claimed to have had this type and level of experience in the spiritual world. Most merely hear voices and receive dictation from the spiritual world. Others have brief experiences of having their spiritual senses opened. This is why I give much greater credence to what Swedenborg wrote about the spiritual world, and to his map of it. Unlike all the others who map the spiritual world, he actually spent extensive time exploring it so that he could report first-hand what it is like, and how it is laid out.
For more on this, please see the section titled “2. Swedenborg’s experience in the spiritual world was unique in known history” in this article:
Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?
Hi Lee,
Thank you so much for the guidance on this subject. What you said brought so so much clarity. That is really cool and interesting how you live in the real Africa not the touristy spots and to be able to experience that. But that along with what you said and what you studied it really puts it all into perspective.
People I’ve noticed will put a lot of weight on certain peoples NDEs or certain peoples “maps” of the afterlife which like you said either lands in the Eastern or New Age camp. I remember watching on the Today Show and this doctor named Dr. Sam Parnia came out and pretty much espoused all the Eastern style interpretations of NDEs. He has a study going on called “Project Aware” to see how long consciousness can survive without a body. But how would you study that because you’re off to the spiritual dimension not the physical? That always confused me a lot?
But what you wrote helped so much and I really think that people who makes these maps do so because a lot of people don’t want to experience the consequences of how they lived their lives. I think it gives them an out on working hard being a good neighbor. They can be so mean and rude and selfish because at the end of the day they go “back into the sea of love and light”. Whereas we become even more human and real and able to learn to grow for eternity. A lot of people don’t like that for some reason.
My 2nd follow up question beside the Sam Parnia’s how long will consciousness survive study one is what do you think of “past life regression” by people like Michael Newton where by well known regressionists using deep hypnotic trance in order to lead their subjects into “afterlife states”. Many of the accounts consist of “seeing disembodied orbs of light, specks of awareness without eyes drifting in a sea of hazy mists surrounded by other energies, being pulled by certain currents and conglomerating in hives of souls.” These are super popular especially in the New Age group I think he did this to thousands of people and they all came up with the same accounts?
That’s why I will always go back to Swedenborg’s decades of experience and knowledge like you said there is so much manure out there who have an axe to grind.
Thank you so much again Lee
Hi Sam,
I think you put your finger on it when you said:
It’s the same thing salvation by faith alone does for Christians. There’s no need to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). All you have to do is believe in Jesus, and you’re all set! Easy peasy!
This, I believe, is one of the main reason evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity are very popular, whereas the new church (Swedenborgianism) is not. If you accept the theology that Swedenborg taught—which is the same as what the Bible teaches—then you have no excuses. You have to do the work of salvation. And people prefer the easy way out.
Believing in reincarnation is a variation on the same theme. Don’t want to do the hard work in this life? No problem. You can just put it off to your next life. Or the one after that. Eventually you’ll be good regardless. Why not put your feet up and just enjoy the pleasures of this life? And by the way, if you screw someone over, no problem. They asked for it in a previous life! You’re just fulfilling their karma!
These are the sorts of belief systems that people come up with when they want to be lazy and avoid the hard work of traveling the path toward heaven.
Hi Sam,
About “seeing disembodied orbs of light, specks of awareness without eyes drifting in a sea of hazy mists surrounded by other energies, being pulled by certain currents and conglomerating in hives of souls,” keep in mind that these things are seen under hypnosis, which is not the same as having your spiritual senses opened so that you can see what things are like in the spiritual world.
Things like this do appear in the spiritual world. Swedenborg describes similar things. But these are appearances that hover around the actual people living in the spiritual world. They are not the people themselves. They are imagery representing the thoughts and feelings of the people in the vicinity. What these people are seeing under hypnosis are visual metaphors of the realities of the spiritual world. They are not the realities themselves. Mistaking this imagery for actual spiritual reality is one of the primary sources of misinformation about the nature of the spiritual world.
It’s similar to people thinking that the book of Revelation is a literal description of what’s going to happen at the time of the Last Judgment and Second Coming. Christians who take these descriptions literally come up with all sorts of silly and crazy ideas about the Last Judgment and the afterlife.
In reality, Revelation is written in a prophetic style in which all of the physical imagery is symbolic of spiritual things. Those spiritual things will not look like what is described in the book of revelation, any more than a house looks like the blueprint that it is built from. The blueprint isn’t a literal house. No one thinks the house is going to look like a blueprint. Rather, the blueprint is a sketch representing the eventual reality of the house, which the builders use in building the house. The house itself will be solid and real, not a set of faintly glowing lines on a dark background.
Hi Sam,
Another reason people into near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, and so on drift toward Eastern and New Age beliefs is that they can’t find anything in the materialistic “Christianity” of today to explain these experiences.
According to most Christian churches today, we sleep in our graves until a future Last Judgment. Therefore if someone has an experience of the spiritual world in which people they know are alive and well, and living their lives, this must be falsity and deception—and probably demons doing the deception. So people who have these experiences, and study them, look elsewhere for an explanation of these obviously good and spiritual experiences.
If Swedenborg’s (and the Bible’s) version of Christianity were the popular, well-known version of Christianity, there would be no need to go to Eastern and New Age religion to find some acceptance of and explanation for NDEs, OBEs, and other spiritual experiences.
Hi Sam,
About this:
Sam Parnia is one of a small group of people who are attempting to study NDEs and other spiritual experiences scientifically. I wish them well. However, as you say, these things take place in the spiritual dimension, not the material dimension. They therefore can’t be studied scientifically, because science is the study of the material universe. Its methods do not work for studying spiritual phenomena. It is true that science can study any material effects of spiritual phenomena, such as following up on people who have had NDEs and engaging in research on how it changed their lives. But science cannot study the spiritual phenomena themselves.
There is also a fascination in certain quarters with trying to use scientific method to prove that NDEs and OBEs are “real,” or even that the spiritual world is scientifically provable as real. These efforts are bound to fail, for the reasons I gave just above. In fact, God has purposely designed the universe so that it is not possible to provide material proof of the reality of God and spirit. These things must be accepted through spiritual experiences, and through accepting the spiritual experiences of others as genuine, not through material and scientific proof. See:
Where is the Proof of the Afterlife?
Sam Parnia is among that small coterie of scientists who are trying to find scientific proof of spiritual reality. Unfortunately for him, his experiments keep on coming out inconclusive. Which is exactly what I predicted would happen when I first heard of his experiments.
Hi Lee,
Also, I’ve never been able to asked this question before but this has always bothered me a bit. I remember reading this person named Edgar Cayce the “famous American sleeping prophet” of the last century. He has a following that has created a whole movement around his teachings about the afterlife (which he says we are these wispy ethereal beings with no form and we must “find the light” when we die) and he has made predictions about the future that is “over 90%” correct of them coming true. I remember reading on that Kevin Williams website how this Edgar Cayce had “hundred of NDEs the most anyone has ever had”. This “Prophet” also talks about ray guns and something to do with the lost city of Atlantis too. But I remember this society saying this is “the” person to follow because of his “predictions coming true” and I also remember them cutting on Swedenborg and others as well.
What are your thoughts on this? Just because some people can predict things doesn’t mean that everything they said is true? I never knew what to make of this.
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I was pastor of a Swedenborgian church in a small New England town, we had a new member join the church who was into Edgar Cayce. She respected our beliefs and didn’t push her Cayce beliefs in the church. But she did find our church compatible enough with what Cayce said that she could attend our services and gain something from them, which was apparently not true of the other churches in town.
As for whether Cayce’s predictions have had a 90% accuracy rate, I have my doubts about that. People into someone who purports to be a prophet have ways of making their prophet’s predictions come out “true” even though they were really rather fuzzy predictions. In fact, the fuzzier, the better, because then it’s much easier to say, “You see, THAT’S what he meant!” Apparently Nostradamus also predicted that Donald Trump would become President of the U.S.A. Amazing!
But even if predictions of material-world things do come true, so what? How does that really help us? It’s all woo-woo and everything, but if I say, “Airplanes are going to crash into the World Trade Center,” and then it happens, have I really benefited humanity in any way?
People are too quick, I think, to give great weight to material-world things and predictions. But the real miracles are miracles of spiritual understanding, enlightenment, salvation, and love. These are the things that continue forever in the spiritual world, whereas material-world prophecies that come true affect only things that are here today and gone tomorrow.
Why does God allow all these “amazing prophecies,” some of which seem to come true? Precisely because so many people are so material-minded. These “amazing wonders” do cause some people to think twice about what our life here on earth is all about. Perhaps it will induce some of them to take their attitudes and actions more seriously, and change themselves for the better.
Really, these material-world “miracles” are just bait on a hook. They are attractive and “taste good,” but the real purpose of the bait is to catch the fish, so that it can then be lifted up into a higher realm. This is why Jesus told his disciples that from now on, they would fish for people (Matthew 4:19).
Hi Lee,
Thank you again for all the wonderful insights.
People like you said think that science can apply to spirituality as well because we just “haven’t figured it out yet” but really what they are promoting is just more materialism. And they apply material terms to a subject that isn’t material at all let alone the same reality. It’s funny how even in Swedenborg’s day there were literally the same people like those today who think that.
And I’ve never thought about that how today materialistic interpretation of the Bible leads people to more New Age/Eastern religions. Which is so true because I remember watching a YouTube video long ago and the whole episode was about literal Bible interpretation Christians trying to “debunk” NDEs because the Bible said that we “sleep until the resurrection”. So it’s funny how Christian’s were siding with Atheist when it comes to spiritual experiences.
But I do wish Swedenborg was more mainstream, I feel like the world would be a better place. Grief wouldn’t be as hard and people around the world would be in harmony regardless of religious beliefs.
And you definitely hit the nail on the head with how people are too quick to give weight to material-world things and predictions. So many I hear in the New Age field give absolutely authority to people like this because they use the line of thinking of “if they’re right with this, they must be right with everything else” so if you come along with another experience that contradicts, you’re automatically “wrong” in their eyes.
But this would be like community of spirits you’re in, so even if your fuzzy “predictions” was “right” the interpretation of it would still be dependent on the community that you and other spirits you are associated with? And meeting someone would be the same as well with similar states coming together with a certain community?
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
Even here on earth, people who agree with each other congregate together. The advent of the Internet has only strengthened this, since it is so easy for people of similar beliefs to get together even if they are physically spread out all around the world. But even before the Internet, you had different churches in the same town, and people sorting themselves out into the different churches based on common attitudes and beliefs. The secular world has many examples of this also, such as liberal vs. conservative universities, and people of particular philosophical beliefs getting together with one another for conventions.
When people of common viewpoints and beliefs get together, they support and strengthen one another in those shared beliefs. And they tend to sideline anything that doesn’t support their beliefs. So they get into the famed “echo chamber” in which even if their ideas are absolutely crazy, they’re all telling each other that those beliefs are true, and this drowns out any contrary beliefs, not to mention any evidence that doesn’t support their beliefs.
The same thing happens in relation to the spiritual world, only the effect is orders of magnitude stronger. Since the spiritual world is the world of the mind, it is much easier there than here to construct whole worlds that support everything people in those worlds believe. Everything around them will reflect their beliefs, because that’s how the spiritual world works. If someone still living on earth visits one of those constructed realities, it will provide “absolute proof” of everything they believe, even if what they believe is completely wrong.
Eventually, those false realities are dispelled as the people living in them go to their final homes in either heaven or hell. But then new ones form from newly arrived crowds of people who hold similar beliefs, and form their own communities and environments that support those beliefs. And so it continues.
This was why it was important for Swedenborg to travel beyond the confines of his own northern European region of the spiritual world. Yes, he spent most of his time in that part of the spiritual world. But angel guides also took him on journeys far beyond that region, so that he could get a sense of what other parts of the spiritual world beyond his own culture’s region were like.
Most people who visit the spiritual world do so very briefly. There just isn’t enough time for them to see anything but the region of the spiritual world (usually in the world of spirits) that they are most closely connected with. And of course, that will be an environment that is congenial to their existing beliefs, because that’s the part of the spiritual world that we are connected with during our lifetime on earth. This is why different people come back from various spiritual experiences, each convinced that their own view of how God and spirit works is correct.
Hi Sam,
I whole-heartedly agree that if Swedenborg were more mainstream, this world would be a much better place. The life goal I set for myself decades ago was to make Swedenborg a household name in the English-speaking world. I’m now expanding beyond the English-speaking world, but since English is the only language I’m fluent in, people still have to at least be able to understand English for me to reach them directly. (But I have also arranged for parts of Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell to be translated into one of the local African languages, and published as a small book. That book has proven so popular that copies are now very hard to get. Based on the success of that first effort, I have plans to get more translation and publishing work done here in the future.)
Unfortunately, I tend to think that the existing so-called Christian churches will have to die out much more than they already have before true Christianity as Swedenborg taught it can become a major force in the world. The existing “Christian” churches have so distorted and falsified the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible that hundreds of millions of people are voting with their feet and abandoning it, carrying with them an intense distaste and disdain for what they think of as Christianity. It is very hard for people to be open to a new and truly Christian perspective when the old false one still has such a grip on people’s minds. It is no coincidence that so many atheists grew up as fundamentalist and evangelical Christians.
Meanwhile, I and some others (such as the OTLE crew) just keep putting the information out there so that anyone who is truly seeking a better understanding of God, the Bible, the spiritual world, and the life that leads to heaven can find it if they go looking for it. And people do find us when they have looked at everything else and found it wanting. I have reached orders of magnitude more people since I began this blog over a decade ago than I ever did during my decade as pastor of a Swedenborgian church. The blog stats are a bit down now, since I have posted very few new articles in the past few years. But it’s still averaging six hundred hits per day. At its peak, when I was still actively posting new articles, it was twice that.
Annette and I do have plans to expand my outreach once we get through our current time of transition. I hope that in 2024 I will be able to get serious about posting new articles here regularly again, writing some of the books I have in mind, starting a real YouTube channel, and so on. (I do have a few old videos on YouTube of me reading some of the blog posts here, but let’s just say they’re not exactly going viral! 😉 )
If nothing else, I hope to build some foundations for Swedenborg’s teachings to become big in the future. Swedenborg lived in the 18th century. Some of the things he wrote were adapted to his own time and culture. There’s a lot of adapting and updating that needs to be done to bring it into our current times. Fortunately, the main body of what he taught has stood the test of time very well. It’s just a matter of giving it a change of clothing so that it fits in better with today’s cultural and intellectual fashions.
I have perhaps twenty, or God willing thirty more years of life in this world to do as much of this work as I can. I hope during that time to see the beginnings of a much greater knowledge of Swedenborg and his teachings taking hold in the world.
But of course, people will come to it when they’re ready for it. It seems that much of the world is still caught up in learning through experience that their own ideas of how things should work just don’t work in reality. We humans are a stubborn lot. Even though all the truth and all the answers are readily available for anyone who searches hard for them, we humans seem to have to try out every false idea first, and learn the hard way that it is false, before we start seriously seeking the truth.
For anyone who has reached that point, we are here, offering the answers they seek. As you are experiencing for yourself, it is the truth that sets the mind and heart free from all their old fears and anxieties.
Hi Lee,
Thank you kindly again for the clarification. I never even thought about that but it’s so true how it happens here in the physical reality of people all over the world meeting up either in person or over the internet because of their shared state of mind. So that makes sense we are both doing that physically and spiritually. I remember hearing a story about someone who had multiple OBE and meeting this woman who revered back to a child and it turn out to be their own. Or other people talking about how they had an OBE were they encounter an intelligent beings who graduated this “system of consciousness” and move on to the “next” and inserted their consciousness into a “holographic body” which they led a full life within seconds supposedly. To meeting your own “past life” that’s living to space ships and stations. To NDEs with voids or backness with nothing but your thoughts. Which like you said this is all dealing with “If someone still living on earth visits one of those constructed realities, it will provide “absolute proof” of everything they believe”. Which makes me feel so much better because these people experiences involving stuff like this would cause me to feel anxious and confused and I feel much clearer headed finally once you explained why people have these kinds of experiences.
Also that is an amazing calling and plans! And I couldn’t agree more with what you said. I only hope one day I can have a plan like that as well because this day and age especially my generation millennial/gen z are mostly lost without any direction. (I’m still lost per say but not as lost as I once was lol) It’s only what’s “fad” or “shocking” sticks and once that’s used up it’s onto the next. Also that’s why I think there is so much materialism out there and people who want to become the next “messiah” to have a following and feel important. Social media is a curse because it fuels all these horrible things. But if people had a foundation rooted in neighborly love and usefulness things like social media or anything for that matter would be a blessing instead. I know I already said this but I’m very blessed to have found this website and along with OTLE. There’s so much crazy stuff out there that I would have no doubt be going insane at this point lol. But It would be cool to have a Swedenborg travel tour like all the spots in Sweden or England that held significants to his spiritual experiences.
Thank you so much again Lee
Hi Sam,
As always, you are most welcome.
Consider also that people who have spiritual experiences, but no framework of spiritual understanding in which to put them, have to come up with some sort of explanation for what they experienced.
For me, and now for you, Swedenborg’s real map of the spiritual world, and of how the relationship between the spiritual world and the material world works, can put all these things into context and give them a solid explanation. But consider the usual person who has no such background of knowledge, but has learned only about this world and how it works. How will that person explain all these strange and new experiences?
The human mind is very ingenious in coming up with plausible explanations for things it doesn’t understand. It’s similar to these new AI chat systems that, if they don’t have the right information on some subject, will confidently state utter nonsense, such as that 67 is a smaller number than 34. (This actually happened.) Once our mind convinces us of something, it looks completely sensible even if it is utter nonsense. So once again, I usually just take all these “explanations” of people’s spiritual experiences with a grain of salt. The experience itself was probably real. But once their spiritually untutored and unmoored mind got hold of it and started working on it, all sorts of nutty things got attached to it, until all they have is confusion and falsity about spiritual things.
Much better to let Swedenborg, who had real, deep, extended, first-person experience with the spiritual world be our guide, so that we can understand all of these “strange phenomena” and put them in their proper place. Which is mostly the wastebasket. 😉
Hi Sam,
There are occasional tours of Swedenborg’s old haunts in Sweden. I’d love to do one of them some day. So far I have not had the opportunity. His house in Stockholm is long gone. But the little summer house that he built at the back end of his garden was preserved, and is now on display in a park in Stockholm. I’d love to see it one day. That’s where he wrote many of his theological works.
He also spent considerable time in London while he was getting those works published (though some were also published in Amsterdam). I don’t know how many of the buildings he frequented are still there. But the streets are still there, and people from the Swedenborg Society in London can take people around to them.
As for your lack of a plan, if you’re still young, you still have time to think about your life and what you want to accomplish with it. Unfortunately, the usual school systems that exist these days waste most of our childhood and teenage years, when we should be exploring who we are, what we love, what we’re interested in, and what we want to do with our life. As a result, many people get out the other end of high school and even college and still have no idea who they are and what they want to accomplish in life. Unfortunately, at that point they have to get a job and support themselves, and the opportunity to spend their days dreaming and exploring is mostly gone.
Personally, I quit college after a couple of years of it and spent the next several years traveling and exploring. Though I didn’t “accomplish anything” during that time, they were some of the most valuable years of my life. Eventually I went back to school, but this time I had a clear purpose and direction so that my time in school wasn’t wasted.
Still, even once you enter the working world it is possible to think about and explore the deeper things in life, and one’s own psyche, in your off hours, and begin to get a sense of who you are and what you want to do with your life. Really, it’s the most exciting adventure possible, if you’re willing to take it. It may lead you in directions that you never thought you’d go, and that are rather inconvenient from a material perspective. But as long as you’re able to engage in some sort of useful work along the way so that you have some roots in reality, and the ability to support yourself rather than being dead weight for someone else to drag along, it’s all good.
Hi Lee,
Thank you again and I am mentally putting all those non Swedenborg experiences in the wastebasket lol. Because there so much info out there it’s a great feeling to know why those things happen and why people report them the way they do. Therefore when stories like that do pop up I finally have the understanding of why which is an amazing feeling.
But that’s super cool how there are locations where Swedenborg was and to be able to walk in his foot steps. And who knows from that experience if the Lord allows it, that will trigger the spiritual eyes to open.
And so true, and that’s what I am going to do, I appreciate the advice. Your experience sounds similar to mine that I took time out before finishing college. I am blessed to have a good career in graphic design in architecture but I would love to apply it and be apart of something more like using what I know to spread Swedenborg. To make an impact and spread true spiritual knowledge beyond just a 9-5 job.
Thank you kindly again Lee
Hi Sam,
This all sounds very good.
Did you know that Swedenborg himself was quite fascinated with architecture? In his early travel journals he commonly wrote about the architecture of various cathedrals and other buildings on the European Continent. His theological writings also include many lovingly described architectural details of buildings in the spiritual world, both magnificent (in heaven) and shoddy (in hell).
In the contemporary world, I think you would enjoy looking up Wayfarers Chapel in California. It was built in the mid-20th century as a memorial to Emanuel Swedenborg. Its unique siting and architecture has made it one of the few Swedenborgian locations in the world that regularly pops up in news and magazine articles.
Hi Lee,
Thank you for sharing that! Very beautifully designed building and garden. Swedenborg was truly a renaissance man, I never knew he was into architecture, I’ll have to definitely check that out as well. But that is very cool to see architecture inspired by what Swedenborg saw. It’s like experiencing a slice of what a community in Heaven is like on Earth. When I look at it, it reminds me something like out of the Lord Of the Rings like in Rivendell. When thinking of new designs or movies or books, I see how whatever spiritual community you’re associated with good or bad you’re drawing inspiration from them. Just like you said regarding spiritual communities.
Thank you again Lee
Hi Lee,
I wanted to ask you a question that I never was able to ask before for years actually (this was one of the first people I got introduced to when learning about the afterlife and it has always remained in the back of my mind and always deeply depressed me), it’s regarding an out of body experiencer and researcher/scientist named Tom Campbell he is really super popular online with millions of views and followers he wrote a book called “My Big T.O.E (Theory of Everything)” which from a science background, he offers models of reality constructed as a blue print to “makes it easier for the rational mind to grasp the mystery of reality.” He used to be a NASA physicist but now he talks about consciousness which he says he’s been doing for over 60 years.
This is his background: Tom Campbell was about 5 years old when he started getting paranormal experiences of “wishing” things and seeing their fulfillment, and then getting out-of-body experiences where he looked like a young man when he was actually a boy, having conversations about lots of things with entities/spirits. Later he “grew up” and stopped having those experiences, but later connected with an author who had written about out-of-body experiences, and they discussed the science behind their spirituality. Tom Campbell as a graduate student had even been able to figure out the problems in computer data by going into meditative states and seeing the problems visually. He had “secret knowledge and abilities” and the ability to interact with other spirits in these meditative visions or states. What does that mean?? And can we do that?
His philosophy, encapsulated in those videos: The universe is an impersonal machine. Humanity has illusionary free will and needs to learn to perfect itself. And that there really isn’t any “God”, which is an outdated concept or “daddy figure” to solve our problems, we are not relying on ourselves, and thus not growing up. It happens because that’s just the way nature works.
Here is how his philosophy comes together: He is a humanist who does not believe in a personal God. He believes there is an organization to the universe which is based on scientific and mathematical principles/laws (cosmic computer program), and that the out-of-body experiences and spirits he has experienced are explained as a “consciousness imprint” of people in the quantum world. What are you thoughts on this Lee?? This has always have me anxiety for a long time.
He believes based on those experiences that this is not our only life, but we end up as data being destroyed after our life or may be reincarnated as something else for the cosmic computer program to grow.
He’s a humanistic philosopher who is trying to fuse paranormal experiences with atheistic materialistic science. Being immersed in the world of NASA, which “does not entertain even the idea of God”, he doesn’t believe in a “creator”, just an impersonal creative organization that recycles all the conscious energy in the universe. What does that mean? We are just used up and then “recycled” ? No greater purpose to grow for eternity?
He explains consciousness as a virtual reality, the manifestation, evolution and representation of the larger consciousness system. He says that once we die our “avatar” which is us gets eliminated or becomes extinct. He says the data set of the avatar transitions into “free will awareness unit” where it is maintained as a universal dataset. And how the vast majority of people, programmed by their conditioning eventually “get bored” and succumb to a kind of unconscious sleep that takes place where the avatar is no longer maintained, abandoned and the individual realigned for a new incarnation.
There a sudden disappearance of the avatar into oblivion. And that there is a powerful yet subtle evolutionary process at play, which is bypassed by those people lacking awareness during the consciousness realignment precipitating the reincarnation process (like going to sleep). Moving on inhabiting a completely different avatar to gather new experiences in order to provide “the soul” or the “independent awareness unit” with powerful options to grow, expand and evolve, benefitting the greater consciousness in its evolutionary path. Which again we are gone forever, just an empty dataset in the cosmic computer program.?
We are therefore cut up into pieces, where one piece, called the avatar which is us, vanishes for good, never to be seen again except as a data entry, a byte size part of information data inside a cosmic computer. Tom refers to as the individual free will awareness unit which is our soul? What? So when we die we are just a byte sized unit of information, sitting lifeless inside a cold giant cosmic computer.?
So any spiritual experiences like mediumship, after death contact, etc. is just an illusion from a data set to ease our pain of losing love ones or easing our pain of the dying process by the cosmic computer program which we then become non-existent. Just brief consciousness and then the “sweet embrace of nothingness”? What is this I hear this a lot?
This is the a FB article of another OBEr addressing how they don’t agree with that idea. And three YouTube videos which this is what I used for my information above.
But millions of people support and purpose these same ideas as well. Along with holding Tom Campbell as “the” afterlife / reality expert.
Here are the sources that I used:
These videos are between 10, 14, and the longest 17 min long.
How out of body experiences shaped my view of consciousness:
The TRUTH About LIFE After
DEATH – Does The SOUL Live After DEATH? | Tom Campbell [2020]:
The Problem of Suffering – Tom and Erik:
FB article:
https://www.facebook.com/share/ydXRPSQ83cvbjTps/?mibextid=K8Wfd2
Hi Sam,
I finally have an opportunity to watch the videos you posted. The first one is mostly autobiographical, so I won’t comment on it except to say that he apparently grew up in a traditional Christian environment, which means that traditional Christian views of the afterlife are what he had to draw on as background or counterpoint to what he was discovering.
Unfortunately, those ideas are rather childish, as he covers in the second video. So of course as a serious scientist, he couldn’t take them seriously. That led him on a path to something completely different, which seems to be a fusion of reincarnation and the universe being a computer simulation.
It’s sort of the worst of both worlds: science and religion. 😀
Scientifically, he thinks everything is just lines of code in a computer. There is no actual humanity. We’re all just programs. He doesn’t say who wrote the program, or why there should even be a program.
Religiously, everything we do here in our earthly lifetime just gets erased from active memory and stored away in a database somewhere, and we start all over again. So nothing we do here really makes any difference, except maybe to the cosmic computer, which gets more data to put in its memory bank.
No wonder it’s so depressing! 😦
What do I think about all this?
I think it’s the result when someone grows up having spiritual experiences, but he’s immersed in today’s false “Christianity,” which can’t explain these things and is far too simplistic for a scientifically trained mind, so he falls back on the aforementioned mix of materialism and Eastern religion.
He is missing many concepts that Swedenborg presents and expands upon, which would deal much better with the problems he is trying to solve without an adequate understanding of how God and spirit work.
For example, heaven is not an empty place where we sit on clouds and play harps. It is a full-featured world even more vast and complex than our physical world and our physical universe. And hell is not a place where people spend eternity roasting in flames. It also is a complex world full of everything we have here on earth and more, only the negative side of it, in which people live out their daily lives.
If he had that concept about the spiritual universe, he would not have to reject the very idea of a spiritual world as far too simplistic and boring for a thinking person.
Another thing he is missing is the idea that God is infinite, and this means that there is never an end to learning and growing. Life will never get boring, because no matter how much we’ve experienced and learned, there is always infinitely more to experience and learn. That’s because we’re finite, whereas God is infinite. Finite beings can never actually reach infinity. Rather, we continue to move toward it forever, while always having infinitely farther to go.
Another thing he’s missing is the idea of our “ruling love” that forms the core of our character, and makes it so that we do have a permanent and enduring character even as we continue to learn and grow. “Uncle Joe” does not just get absorbed back into the computer database because it’s done everything it can do. Rather, Uncle Joe is on a path that continues moving forward in the direction he loves to go based on his ruling love. It is a path that never ends, and that also never gets tedious because it is the path of his love.
Another thing he’s missing is the difference between physical reality and spiritual reality. I doubt that even physical reality can be reduced to computer code. Plants and animals are not machines. They are living, breathing beings. They cannot be reduced to “probabilities.” Computers are machines. Plants and animals are living beings. It is a fundamental error to think that people are just like computers.
Another thing he’s missing, related to that one, is that because our minds are spiritual, not physical, we actually do have free will. We are not deterministic, and we are not even probability sets. We can make choices about which way we want to go, and those choices are not just the result of spinning a roulette wheel to see which of the probabilities will become the actuality. Our choices are real, made in our heart as guided by our mind. We decide which way we love the most, and that’s the way we take.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
This is probably the best that Mr. Campbell can do based on his rather limited and fallacious religious background in the false Christianity that took over the Western world for many centuries. But it is certainly not the best we can do! 🙂
Hi Sam,
I just watched the third video, and believe it or not, I actually agreed with most of what he said! Imagine that! 😀
On the main points, I agree that most of the pain and suffering in the world is because of us humans and our choices, not because of the way God (from my point of view) created the universe.
I also agree that we have free will, and God can’t just bulldoze over it. Having free will means being free to make bad choices and then experience the painful consequences of those bad choices. Unfortunately, our bad choices hurt other people as well as ourselves.
And I agree that, to paraphrase a bit, life here isn’t meant to be soft and easy. We must face painful situations and hard choices, or we will not develop into strong and capable adult human beings.
So far, so good! 🙂
Where I depart from him is in thinking this means there isn’t a “big daddy God.” What it means, rather, is that God is not a helicopter parent! 😉 God lets us grow up to adulthood, make our own choices, learn from them, and grow as a result. And then, although God is still our divine Parent, God is also our divine Friend, as Jesus himself said:
On a less important matter, I don’t agree that it’s because we have a money economy that we don’t take care of each other. Money is simply a medium of exchange. It is neither good nor evil. Only humans are good or evil. It’s when we humans begin to think that money (which is a measure of possessions) is the most important thing that the problems start. It is the love of money that is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10), not money itself.
But that’s more of a quibble compared to the big issue of what sort of Father/Mother/Parent God is. Mr. Campbell was raised on the old idea of God as an old bearded man on a throne ruling over us like a king. That idea is metaphorical, not literal. Once we begin to understand who God really is, we can have a much more grow-up understanding of God and God’s relationship with us.
But in the main, I actually enjoyed this video! 🙂
Hi Sam,
About the FB response to Campbell by Jurgen Ziewe:
First, perhaps because of video games, perhaps because of Hindu concepts, there is an idea that our body is just an arbitrarily shaped container into which our soul pours itself to inhabit for a time. But our body is not arbitrary in its form. It is actually built by the soul to express the soul. The soul can’t infuse itself into just any old body. That would be possession, not habitation. The specific body expresses the specific soul. A different body would not express that soul as well, if at all.
Does this mean that our spiritual body looks exactly like our physical body? At first, yes. You wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference yourself, and neither would your spouse or lover. But over time, it does change to more perfectly express the person you are. For one thing, it either grows up (if the person died in infancy or childhood) or grows young again (if the person died in middle to old age).
But also, our physical body is affected not only by our soul from within, but by our environment from outside, so the physical body can get pushed out of phase with the spirit. Our spiritual body will, before long, perfectly reflect our spirit, meaning our true inner character.
But pouring a soul into just any old body? That would not work.
For one big example, we are male and female not just physically, but spiritually as well. It is common for people to say that they are the reincarnation of someone who was a different gender in an earlier life. This is not possible. With the exception of people who have gender dysphoria, which is a complicated issue, people are either male or female. If their spirit is male, their body is male. If their spirit is female, their body is female. You can’t just mix and match, no matter how much many people these days want that to be the case.
This means that we are not really in an “avatar.” We are in a body that is somewhere between a partial and a full expression of our exact character. So no, we don’t just arbitrarily get reincarnated into a completely different body. That would not work. It would be like trying to put the engine from a train into the chassis of a car. It just wouldn’t fit, and wouldn’t work.
About people gradually fading away, what is really happening, from a Swedenborgian point of view, is that the more time that goes by, the less people are still connected to their former earthly life, and the more they are fully immersed in their life in either heaven or hell. From an earthly and material viewpoint, this might look like the person is disappearing. But what’s really happening is that they are sailing over the horizon, beyond where we can see from our material mind.
When we enter the spiritual world, though, we can still see the people we knew, and they will still be the same person as they were at their core here on earth. And to the extent that they expressed outwardly what they thought and felt inwardly, rather than wearing masks and heavy make-up to hide their real inner thoughts and feelings, they will even look and act like the same person we knew here on earth.
Hi Lee,
I can’t thank you enough, I really appreciate you taking your time out and really going above and beyond and giving in depth reasons why his ideas really look ridiculous and limited / fundamentalist and things where you even agreed on.
What you said has helped so much ever since someone telling me that my after death contact wasn’t real but a data representation of my brother. It literally crushed me and always stayed with me. I wonder why people get a trill off of telling someone who is grieving that. But you can carry on with life but something’s always stick on the back of your mind and it’s like having old wounds addressed and healed finally than still having what ifs and lingering questions.
When materialist come up with these ideas, they always compare what makes us human, our, consciousness, spirit, to even plants like you said and whatever else to computers and machines that all things can be reduced to numbers, matter or whatever. This is a common theme I hear across materialist. Like for example I even heard this from Google “ethicist” Tristan Harris. Why is that? And like you said, how he regards spiritual reality would you say it would be like having tinted glasses on where only things that he sees that “works” in his worldview is accepted while other things that are not according to his worldview are either not even perceived or even considered or to them “wrong”?
Also if I may ask, These people like Tom Campbell and those who espouse the same ideas say,
“This is true, and, this has been a proven absolute fact.” And how we’re right back to “life itself having no real purpose, meaning, or value except for the greater consciousness accumulation of data.”
And That “either nihilism or hedonism is equally acceptable philosophies.”
Because the way that these people talk and present it, they make it sounds like it’s already “in the bag proven” and that we “shouldn’t even question them.”
All these quotes are exactly what these people said word for word. What would you make of these statements?
And would these statements about dreams,
Would these too considered in the same boat regarding what you said?
Of how “That there is a creator, there are creators and they are creating spaces through learning and these spaces are mental in an orientation but to us when we’re immersed in them they are real.” And
“This is a simulated reality but it’s a simulated Spiritual reality. It’s a reality that is created by beings who can be can be very interconnected, are aware of the interconnected nature of that reality and they create these form based realities where they then set the “physics” in motion to say OK these environments has these physical properties and this is what physical feels like.”
And
“These are meant to sort of make us think okay we’re suddenly robots or whatever else you know because it can get like that.”
And
“Al to me is like a storm in a teacup on the next level up because it’s already reality there.”
With what you said, would it apply to this as well?
This is the full video where I got the info from.
But again, thank you so much. And it’s amazing how Swedenborg addresses all these topics that are hard for materialist to deal with and therefore that further reinforces their materialism. I know I said it already but the world would be so much better if Swedenborg was more known because these damaging worldviews would not be as widespread. And what you said about the FB article makes so much sense and really clarified things that I never understood. And just sometimes you just need someone to tell you that you don’t have to worry about it as well! lol
Thank you so kindly again Lee
Hi Sam,
What strikes me about all these videos and theories is that they are attempts to explain the universe and human consciousness based on the current state of science and technology.
Today it all sounds very advanced. Fifty or a hundred years from now it will sound very old-fashioned.
In 1948, a woman named Signe Toksvig published a biography of Swedenborg titled Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic. It was, I believe, her doctoral thesis project. And it was written from the perspective that Swedenborg did not really visit the spiritual world. Instead, everything he thought was the spiritual world was actually a production of his own mind, but it was so real to him that he thought it was a different world.
This sounds very much like what many materialists today are saying about our consciousness and our spiritual experiences.
If you read Toksvig’s biography of Swedenborg today, the first part of the book, about his earlier scientific work, is excellent. But the second part of the book, about his spiritual experiences, is full of stuff that now sounds hopelessly outdated. She’s always going on about “psychons,” which were the concept of a then-popular thinker or psychologist, and which form the bedrock of Toksvig’s analysis of Swedenborg’s spiritual experiences as being simply projections of his own psyche.
In another fifty or one hundred years, all of these theories and videos about the universe as a virtual reality created by artificial intelligence will strike people exactly the same as Toksvig’s theories strike readers today. They will seem quaint and old-fashioned.
The thing is, science is always progressing. We are always learning new things. And when we learn new things, we realize that some of the things we knew before were wrong, whereas others were right, but limited in their scope. Newton’s theories, for example, were not wrong. But they were limited to the scales that we ordinarily perceive things on. Once we go to the very tiny subatomic level, or to the very large cosmic level, we need quantum mechanics and relativity, respectively, to understand what’s going on.
The laws of physics that Newton presented do work, but only on scales of about our own physical size do they work perfectly. Anything much bigger or much smaller, and they no longer work. For example, if we tried to send a rocket to the Moon based only on Newton’s laws, it would miss. To land on the Moon, we must use Einstein’s relativity-based mathematical formulas to calculate the proper trajectory.
One of the amazing things about Swedenborg’s writings is that two and a half centuries later, most of what he wrote still sounds sensible and reasonable. And what do you know? Most what doesn’t sound sensible and reasonable is precisely the parts that drew on the scientific knowledge of his day! He was wrong about men on the Moon. Today that sounds very outdated. It is old science. But when we read what he said about God and the spiritual world, it continues to stand the test of time to this day.
The same will not be true for all these theories that we are living in a virtual reality created by artificial intelligence. This will all sound like thinking based on the latest theories and crazes of the day.
VR and AI are currently the big sexy new things in the world of science and technology. Everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. They are going to fundamentally change the nature and understanding of our existence! So the modern-day gurus base all their woo-woo spiritual-ish theories on virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
But like all scientific and technological revolutions, these will eventually reach maturity and become an ordinary part of our life. Then we will move on to the next big thing.
And when we do, people will look back on how excited we were in the 21st century about virtual reality and artificial intelligence and say, “How quaint!” Then they’ll walk into their holographic office and get on with their day’s work.
In Star Trek, the characters aren’t constantly mind-blown about how incredibly wonderfully amazing the holodeck is. They just load a program, walk in, and enjoy it. It’s become ordinary to them. The same will happen with virtual reality and artificial intelligence. People fifty or a hundred years from now will take it for granted as part of their daily life, just as we take cars, airplanes, and cellphones for granted even though a century or two ago these things were unknown.
Then all of today’s breathless articles and videos about how we live in a virtual reality simulated by artificial intelligence will seem . . . very cute. It will be like kids today watching videos about the 1960s and thinking, “That’s how old granddad and grandmom used to live way back then.” 🙂
And my following up to this question is, there are people including Tom Campbell who are using “science” to back up and to prove and explain their spiritual experiences and the sprit world and even God. Like Tom he applies his physics and traditional scientific protocols to come up with and support like what is mentioned above and in his books. So again “He believes there is an organization to the universe which is based on scientific and mathematical principles/laws, and that the out-of-body experiences and spirits he has experienced are explained as a “consciousness imprint” of people in the quantum world. Again how would he even come up with this statement ?
He believes based on those experiences that this is not our only life, but we may end up as one of those spirits after our life or may be reincarnated as something else.” And “connecting with others who had written about out-of-body experiences, and they discussed science behind their spirituality.” ???
So this quote “that the out-of-body experiences and spirits that are experienced are explained as a “consciousness imprint” of people in the quantum world.” What does that even mean?and our souls beings reduced to some quantum thing makes me feel like I’m on a materialist journey again of
“an impersonal creative organization that recycles all the conscious energy in the universe”.
So there’s no continuation in our lives just being recycled So just a loop of life we don’t remember no growing or anything it’s like recycling a plastic cup and it becomes a straw which is like us essentially? and how there isnt any souls like us or our loved ones just some quantum impressions being pulled from the cosmic computer? Thats super depressing thinking that way.
So he has “quantum science backing him up”
that our energy or data is immortal but we don’t have a lasting identity because those are destroyed. He points to in quantum science scholder’s cat (sorry for the misspelling the name).
There are others as well like Rupert Sheldrake who refers the soul or spirit as the “Morphic Field”. And how our avatar is a constituent part of the morphic field which surrounds it
accompanied by an inner morphic adjustment to completely new energy levels which we are part of a wholistic morphic field of a universal consciousness. He uses material science to explain our spirit as this morphic field along with everything else. How can our soul be a so called Morphoc field?
There others like neuroscientist professor Todd Murphy and Dr. Michael Persinger, the inventor of the “God Helmet” wrote a book about how they are coming from a strictly traditional materialist angle in search of discovering the limitations and trying to find irrefutable evidence in the Brain’s Role in Religious and Mystic Experiences. And another person named Anthony Peake who uses quantum physics to say we live are same lives over and over again like groundhogs day movie with Bill Murray. He quotes Quantum physics, David Bloom and others relating to Consciousness?
And a list of others like Sir Oliver Lodge in linking After death with sub atomic physics, to Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D bridging science & spirit. Stem cell biologist, author of The Biology of Belief, to a professor at the University of Arizona that see how mediums and electrons in the room change when spirits are in it, to the professors at the University of Virginia and more. ?
There is for example another person who supposedly does “real in-depth research and data breakdown” to show how theories like “digital physics,” the “holographic universe”, and quantum mechanics are true and that they point to “true intelligence” that underlies our whole reality.
Again assigning material physics/science to the afterlife.
But what all these people are doing are using material reality science to prove or debunk the afterlife and to reduce all spiritual things like our spirit and the afterlife to something material like quantum physics?. So they say x,y,z particle or whatever quantum mechanics, field, or X in science that’s the soul, spirit world or God. And the opposite argument is made to debunk? Or putting the most depressing nihilistic interpretation on spiritual experience? What do you make of this as well?
But like you said the spirit world and God is not made out of material matter that exists in universe somewhere but of spiritual substance and Divine substance for God. But what do you make of these claims by these people? And how do people come up with this stuff and come to a conclusion like this?
And what even if they did find “something” it would be a correspondence? Because what these people are seeing is the correspondence at work? Because like spirit / god is not material reality?
But overall what do you make of these things in the part 1 and part 2 of the submission? Is he and all these things credible and have proof? I know a lot of people including me get super depressed after hearing Tom Campbell and others on here.
Sorry for the long 2 part question! I just really really would appreciate your guidance and clarity and help on these subjects.
Thank you so kindly Lee
Hi Sam,
I’ll respond more fully when I’ve had a chance to watch the videos. It’s getting late here, and I have a lot of work to do in the next few days. But just quickly, this is what happens when people’s minds are stuck on the material level, and do not accept or understand that there is a spiritual and a divine level of reality as well.
As Swedenborg says, the material world is ultimately dead. It has life only from the spiritual world. Therefore any philosophy that accepts only material reality will ultimately end in the death of our consciousness, if for no other reason than the law of entropy (not its technical name), which says that everything moves toward a state of maximum disorder and minimal energy. Another word for that is death.
So really, you just have to decide whether you will believe only in material reality, in which case you will expect that your life will end in death and nonexistence, or whether you will believe in spiritual and divine reality as well, in which case you can look forward to eternal life.
If you decide to believe in spiritual and divine reality (and atheists and agnostics to the contrary notwithstanding, there is plenty of evidence for these), then you don’t have to worry about what all these quantum gurus say.
Hi Lee,
Sounds good and totally understandable! I appreciate the quick response. And what you just wrote already makes so much more sense than like you said these quantum gurus. I can only imagine the rest.
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
You’re welcome. To add a little more:
Trying to make sense of human consciousness, self-consciousness, and spiritual experiences generally while believing that the material world is the only thing that exists is like trying to make sense of the earth, sun, moon, and stars while believing that the earth is a flat disk in the center of the universe that everything else revolves around.
It just doesn’t work. The earth isn’t flat, it’s not at the center of the universe, end everything else does not revolve around it. But if you feel that you must believe these things for religious reasons, you’re going to try your darnedest to make the things we see in the universe around us make sense based on that idea. And so, flat-earthers come up with a lot of crazy, unscientific, and irrational stuff that sounds perfectly sane and sensible to them.
Similarly, if you try to make sense of human psychology and spiritual experience while denying that God and spirit exist, you’re going to come up with all sorts of outlandish, unscientific, and irrational stuff that will sound perfectly sensible and rational to you. That’s because the reality is that the material universe is not the only thing that exists. There is a spiritual universe, and there is a God. These are non-material, they are a daily part of our lives whether we realize it or not, and they cannot be sensibly explained while denying that they exist.
The analogy is sound. People who try to explain consciousness and spiritual experience while accepting the reality only of the material universe have flattened existence down into one plane of existence—the material plane—when there is much more depth to it than that.
Swedenborg describes the totality of existence metaphorically as a multi-layered sphere that has God at its center. It is similar to cutaway diagrams of the earth that show its various layers right down to the core. Once again, the analogy is sound.
When you encounter these quantum gurus, my suggestion would be to think, “Oh yeah. Flat-earthers. Of course their stuff is crazy.”
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the additional clarity and the analogy. When you explain it that way and lay out the information it really does make their ideas look really simple minded and even ridiculous just like the flat earth movement. To have all of reality be apart of the material plane only as these people see it then reality can’t really be infinite because how could it if all there is, is just material reality? You can have as many dimensions or multiverses as you want but it’s still all confined to one material plane at the end of the day.
This reminds me what the worldview of Scientism and New Atheism states “that science does not have any boundaries and that all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor, with due time, will be dealt with and solved by science alone. This idea has also been termed the Myth of Progress.” And how “Intellectual historian T.J. Jackson Lears argued there has been a recent reemergence of “nineteenth-century positivist faith that a reified ‘science’ has discovered (or is about to discover) all the important truths about human life. Precise measurement and rigorous calculation, in this view, are the basis for finally settling enduring metaphysical and moral controversies. Lears specifically identifies Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s work as falling in this category. Philosophers John N. Gray and Thomas Nagel have made similar criticisms against popular works by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, atheist author Sam Harris, and writer Malcolm Gladwell.”
But then you have plenty of opposition of that worldview saying, “E. F. Schumacher, in his A Guide for the Perplexed, criticized scientism as an impoverished world view confined solely to what can be counted, measured and weighed. “The architects of the modern worldview, notably Galileo and Descartes, assumed that those things that could be weighed, measured, and counted were more true than those that could not be quantified. If it couldn’t be counted, in other words, it didn’t count.” And how “Science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality.
— Paul Feyerabend, Against Method”
If you go on Wikipedia and type in “New Atheism” and “Scientism” that is where I read about these.
But what do you make of these people and their worldview of New Atheism and Scientism? Because like you said these people can be compared to flat earthers basically of trying to fit an elephant into a jar the best way they can and make it “look good”.
But even if they did find something wouldn’t it be a correspondent and not the actually soul or afterlife or whatever else they conjure up? Material reality is dead so we are just seeing all the effects on this plane. So it’s like using a paintbrush and saying that the hand is what is creating everything and not seeing that the hand is just a tool as well and that the spirit is the one doing it all?
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
From my point of view, believing only in material reality is a fundamental error that limits people to learning only about material reality. And since human consciousness, morality, and so on are not material things, this precludes materialists from learning anything significant about them. They can learn about the effects of consciousness and morality, such as human behavior, and study that. But they cannot learn anything about consciousness and morality itself.
They think they can. They believe they can derive morality from the material world alone. But they are fooling themselves. In fact, morality was developed in a religious framework, and atheists have simply adopted and modified the morality that religion handed down to us.
Animals do not have morality. Only humans do. And even our pre-human ancestors did not have morality. Morality developed along with an awareness of God and spirit, which is the real meaning of the Creation stories in Genesis. Those stories are about our early ancestors first developing spiritual awareness. When exactly that happened is hard to tell, but we get clues from when they started burying their dead. Animals don’t bury their dead. They leave them to be eaten by hyenas and vultures. Humans bury their dead because they have a sense that there is something after death. That’s why funerals regularly talk about resurrection and the afterlife.
Yes, there is a correspondential reflection of morality in the animal kingdom. Pack animals, for example, treat each other decently, in a quasi-moral way. But it’s not from actual morality. It’s because their lives depend upon the group, not upon themselves individually. So they develop what looks like a “group morality,” but it’s really just their survival instinct working itself out in a group context.
Moral people will do the right thing even if it is deleterious to their own life and health, and even if it is deleterious to their own group’s life and health. Where there is a conflict between biology and morality, moral people will choose morality over biology. Animals will never do that. Their “morality” is simply biology working itself out on a group level rather than on an individual level. The purpose is to perpetuate the species. Morality has a higher purpose. Its purpose is to perpetuate people’s spiritual life, not their biological life. In other words, the purpose of morality is to prepare us for eternal life in heaven. This is something not present in the animal kingdom (outside of humans) because animals are created to live on this earth, not in heaven.
All of this is completely lost on scientists and New Atheists because they don’t believe there is a spiritual world, which means they believe humans, like animals, are made for life in this world, not for life in the spiritual world.
But this is why they also have not come up with any convincing reason why, from a purely materialistic perspective, people should be moral. Why shouldn’t individuals and groups do things that are damaging to others but beneficial to themselves, as animals regularly do? From a scientific, biological, and evolutionary perspective, there’s no really good argument against this. It’s survival of the fittest, and the fittest are the ones that can maintain and expand their own niche in the environment, commonly by edging out other species that are not as fit for those conditions. This is how evolution works. This is how evolution continually produces stronger and more complex and more specialized species.
But it’s not how human societies work. Or at least, it’s not how human societies should work. If we operated by nature’s law, we would not take care of mentally and physically disabled people. We would allow them to die, because they are not contributing to our success as a species. If a few of them do find a niche where they can contribute, then we would keep them alive. But any that can’t pull their own weight would be seen as a drag on humanity, and would be left to die.
Some people believe this is how we should actually conduct our affairs. But that is the difference between biology and morality. A moral society doesn’t do that. A moral society values the individual because that individual is also a future resident of heaven, where all his or her physical and mental handicaps will be gone, and s/he will become a full and valued member of heavenly society.
From a biological perspective, that makes no sense. From a spiritual perspective, it makes all kinds of sense.
As for science solving all the big problems, it has so far failed to solve any of the really big problems, which are problems of human morality, relationships, and so on. Science is happy to provide more powerful weapons for war. It is also happy to provide more powerful technologies that can improve our physical well-being. It is entirely unable to guide us in whether to use its knowledge and technology for good or for evil. That requires morality, which is a spiritual thing, not a material thing. In other words, it requires religion.
So let the scientists and New Atheists dream their dreams that they will be able to solve all of humanity’s problems without God and spirit. In the real world, they will always fail to do so, because science is the study of material reality, whereas the big human problems are all spiritual problems.
Hi Lee,
What you wrote really hits the nail on the head. And really why people like Tom Campbell and these other scientists think the way they do. If you’re going to think that material reality is the only reality then of course you’re going to be confined to only those limited things. And of course if that’s your worldview having an OBE just like here it’s only going to reinforce that idea with attracting you to similar people who share that belief like you said. And for all the other scientists (quantum gurus) they look at what’s happening physically and say that’s the spirit or that’s the afterlife but really it’s just a fundamental error that limits reality just like them assigning and explaining away morality as a material plane origin.
Hopefully I articulated that correctly.
Thank you kindly Lee
Hi Sam,
Sounds right to me! 🙂
Hi Lee,
I just remembered something that popped into mind, I remember reading I forgot where at like the Smithsonian or something but they where talking about how they found apes (and I think they mentioned other species) burying their families bodies. I don’t remember if they were talking about the past or they presently found it.
Like they found stones and leaves surrounding the body that was buried. But even if they did, it’s probably for some biological benefit and not like a spiritual one? It’s not like they’re holding a vigil for their deceased members. But then again everything is alive because of God so if God wanted to give them that instinct to do that then the Divine can. Then it still wouldn’t prove that morality came from the material plane? Since we are just seeing the effects of it?
And I was thinking as well, like that Tom Campbell claims to have 60 years of OBE and afterlife experience but just because you have all those years that doesn’t mean you’re getting the full scoop. Like how Swedenborg had to go through these shattering experiences (I think I’m saying that right) of getting used to the afterlife. Whereas this person their experiences just confirm and further reinforces the materialist narrative of the afterlife. It’s like exploring the materialist section of the world of spirits and say that’s the whole thing. Swedenborg had 29 years (I think) but he would still have a greater knowledge than someone like that. At least he was able to see a much broader view and that was even the tip of the iceberg of the infinite communities there are. What are you thoughts on that as well?
Thank you Lee
Hi Sam,
I’ve now had a chance to watch the video you linked titled “Digital Physics Argument for God’s Existence” (the one that has “Is Our World an Illusion?” on its thumbnail image). It uses all the woo-woo language that the simulation people like to use, but in the end, it comes to a sound conclusion: that thinking we’re living in a computer simulation doesn’t make much sense; instead we are in a “simulation” in the mind of God.
I put “simulation” in quotes there because it really isn’t a simulation at all. At least, not in the sense that it’s not real, and consists of something that’s entirely different from what we sense around us (i.e., lines of computer code rather than actual objects and events). Rather, as the Bible says, it is a creation. It is something new that God created, and which therefore is not a simulation, but is real.
What this video seems to be groping toward, and what the “simulationists” (to coin a word) don’t see, is that the entire created universe, and everything in it, is an expression of the mind of God.
Unfortunately, traditional so-called Christian doctrine holds that God created the universe out of nothing. The Bible never says this. It is a human invention. But it has come to be the accepted “Christian” view of how God created the universe.
Not only is the idea of creation from nothing irrational and silly, but it also makes the act of creation entirely arbitrary. God could create whatever sort of universe God wanted to create, based on a whim. Since it comes from nowhere, there are no criteria for it whatsoever. This leads to all sorts of irrational thinking about how God “could have created it differently” if God had just decided to do something different. And so, there is no sound basis for understanding the highly ordered, law-abiding, and intricate universe we actually see out there.
This, I believe, is why many scientific and rational thinkers have moved away from the idea of God altogether. They’ve been presented a God who is illogical, irrational, and whimsical, and who makes no sense to them whatsoever. And so they become atheists, or they adopt some materialistic view of God being the sum total of nature, or the deepest essence of nature. Swedenborg talked about this hundreds of years ago.
But if instead God is a highly ordered, rational, logical being, and in fact is the source of and pattern for the incredibly intricate law-abiding nature of the universe around us, then a completely different picture emerges.
If that is true, then instead of the universe being some arbitrary creation of God, which could have had completely different laws, we can see the laws of the physical universe as expressions of the mind of God. God then becomes the direct source of all those laws, and of all the physical objects and structures that follow them.
That’s what this video is driving at. We’re not living in a simulation or an illusion. Rather, we are living expressions of the mind of God. And though we are “in God,” or “in the mind of God,” we are also distinct from God precisely because we are created and finite rather than uncreated and infinite. We are not God, nor do we exist merely virtually in the mind of God. We are expressions of God, and we live in a real world that is distinct from the mind of God, even if it is entirely dependent upon the mind of God from one nanosecond to the next.
This, I believe, is why physicists who are taking a deep look at the nature of reality as covered in the video often come to the conclusion that there is something more behind what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears and touch with our hands. A natural tendency in these days of video games and computer simulations is to think that our world is very much like the virtual worlds that we ourselves are creating.
But the reality behind it is that we are expressions of God’s mind, not of human minds. And as expressions of God’s mind, we are not virtual, but real.
All of this underlines for me once more how destructive the false doctrines of the traditional Christian church are, and how critical it is to learn, know, and understand how God, spirit, and nature really work.
The result of false doctrine is the confusion about God and spirit that we see all around is in the world today, and the resulting skepticism, and atheism among so many thinking people. This is the confusion that has been threatening to swallow up your mind and heart for so many years.
The result of true doctrine is clarity, understanding, and appreciation of the wonders of God’s love, wisdom, and power. This is the solid rock of understanding and assurance that your feet are now finding.
Hi Lee,
Thank you again very much for all the clarity on these topics. People like Tom Campbell and others like you said that these are theories that are the most fashionable trends at the moment and soon all these will go out of fashion. That’s refreshing to hear because the way these people talk and act like this is completely proven. I think Swedenborg says something about that regarding latching your identity onto something that isn’t you?
But also like you said that these people because of video games and these new technologies are creating mixtures of spirituality mixed with materialism using woo woo phrases like VR, simulation, lines of code and the works. That these are all human interpretations that are finite. Which is also refreshing to hear. And like you said in the next 50 to 100 years people like this and Tom Campbell will look silly.
But experiencing it as we are part of God’s mind and that our lives here are real that is important for our eternal spiritual growth, that has a natural resonance like instinctual feeling that that’s right. And that doesn’t take away our realness here in the physical world. How Swedenborg talks about God it’s so much more infinite and dynamic than what the quantum gurus come up with and think about.
And would you say like what people are seeing in physical reality are actually correspondence like Swedenborg says in Heaven and Hell 107 because how everything scientific is dealing with nature and the natural mind not the spiritual mind and for sure not the Divine mind – Arcana Coelestia 19 like you have said? But instead they interpret it as coding which is a limited human interpretation because they are closing their mind off to the spiritual reality and interpreting it through naturalistic thinking?
And Like “His visions / OBEs helped him with finding errors in computer codes.” And how “He has quantum science backing him up that our energy is immortal but we don’t have a lasting identity.” So therefore “everyone’s else’s experiences are irrelevant.”
I just wanted to ask that just because you can use visions to find things but that doesn’t mean that how you are experiencing those OBEs or visions make it the only way in seeing things? Like you could have visions of things that come true but still see those things according to your spiritual community? And the phrase “quantum science backing him” I feel like that’s another way these people force fit these ideas down people throats by using persuasive language?
Also I wanted to add real quick, it’s funny how in parapsychologist groups how they came up with the same concept as “psychons” it’s not your loved ones but some materialistic reason that we are creating the projection of our loved ones. And this even further shows how materialism is really an outdated way of thinking as well!
Sorry if this sounds kind of jumbled lol
Thank you so much again Lee
Hi Sam,
Perhaps the quickest way to cut through all of these things is to say that things can be both metaphorical/correspondential and real.
Consider: Jesus told a famous parable about a sower going forth to sow, then interpreted it metaphorically. Does this mean that sowers—i.e., farmers—don’t really exist? That they are just “projections” or “psychons” or “virtual reality”?
No. Farmers do exist. They go out and sow seeds all the time—these days with sophisticated farm machinery, but it some places, still by hand. Many ordinary people garden by hand not just to grow food, but because of the sense of relaxation and inspiration and closeness to nature that it provides.
Farmers and farming are also correspondences of deeper spiritual things. Of sowing ideas in people’s minds, from which grow plants of knowledge that provide our minds with sustenance and nourishment.
In short, it’s not an either/or situation. It’s a both/and situation. Everything we see around us is real on the physical level. It is also an expression of at least two layers of deeper reality: spiritual reality and divine reality (God).
Hi Sam,
It is quite possible to be completely convinced that we have the absolute truth, and be completely wrong. In fact, the more fallacious a belief is, the more likely those who hold to it will insist that it is absolutely rock-solid. Witness 1,700 years of Christians believing that God is three Persons, and insisting that this is the one and only correct belief about God, without which one is not a Christian, when in fact it is completely unbiblical and an absolute falsehood. And now we have people insisting that the earth is flat, when we have known for at least two thousand years that the earth is spherical.
If someone says, “I know this for an absolute fact, and everyone else’s experiences are irrelevant,” I consider that to be a red flag that this person is living in his or her own fantasy world or constructed reality. Appeals to authority, especially one’s own authority, as a reason for someone to believe something are inherently weak. If something is true, then there should be broad evidence for it from many different people, in many different disciplines and cultures. If one guy says, “This is true because I say so,” that’s a very good reason not to believe it.
As an example, Swedenborg’s descriptions of the afterlife have now been supported by thousands of accounts of near-death experiences that describe the spiritual world in a way very similar to how Swedenborg did. (It was only later that people started imposing their own beliefs, such as reincarnation, on NDEs.) People have also described experiences of the spiritual world going back thousands of years, and they generally agree very well with what Swedenborg described. Swedenborg himself quotes various passages from the Bible, which is the primary spiritual literature of Western religion, to support his statements about the nature of the spiritual world.
If we had to believe something only on Swedenborg’s authority, that would be a very weak belief. He himself says not to accept something just because someone else says so, but to test it out against the Bible, rational thought, and human experience in deciding whether or not to believe it. When we have tested our beliefs in this way, they become much stronger than if we just accept them because some authority figure said so.
As for Tom Campebell saying that he received answers to scientific and technical questions during OBEs, this is simply another variation on a common experience of many scientists and engineers over the centuries: They’ll be struggling with some problem, and then the answer will come in a dream or a vision or a sudden inspiration. This is actually very common. Just because it came in an OBE, that doesn’t really make it any different. Inspiration does not come from this world, but from the other world, which is the world of our mind. Ultimately it comes from God. So there’s not really anything special about Campbell claiming that he’s right because he heard about it in an OBE.
Hi Sam,
I should also mention that actual scientists who study things such as quantum mechanics often get very annoyed with guru types who take their work and turn it into some sort of spiritual mumbo-jumbo. It makes their own work seem flimsy and ethereal, when in reality these scientists are simply studying the nature of physical reality and coming up with theories about how it works based on their observations and experiments.
There’s no problem in my mind with using physical reality as a metaphor for spiritual things. But Swedenborg himself says that it is a mistake to base our beliefs on correspondences. He insists that the teachings of the church should be drawn from the literal sense of the Bible, and supported by it, and not from correspondences. He also says that the Christian doctrines he taught did not come from angels or spirits, but from God, while he was reading the Bible. (See True Christian Religion #225–233, 779–780.)
If our spiritual beliefs are derived from physical science, those are weak beliefs. As Swedenborg himself says, it is easy for us to deceive ourselves about the deeper meaning of various physical objects and events, and draw all sorts of false conclusions based on our own preconceived notions of what we think the meaning of life is. This is what Tom Campbell and others like him are doing when they insist that their spiritual beliefs are true because of this or that scientific idea.
The job of science is to tell us about material reality. Using it to learn about spiritual reality is misusing it, which is why even some scientists who are themselves believers get annoyed when guru types use their scientific work to draw all sorts of spiritual conclusions. It’s the wrong tool for the job. It’s like using a hammer to pound in a screw. That screw is going to fall out because it wasn’t put in properly.
The proper source of spiritual knowledge is not science, but revelation. Spiritual experiences are a form of personal revelation: they are direct experiences of God and the spiritual world.
The Bible is a written revelation, which Christians think of as the Word of God. That is where God speaks to us to convey to us the information about spiritual living that God wants us to know.
Personal revelation is good for the person who has it. It can also be good for that person’s family and friends when the one who had it tells them about it. And it can be good for a wider circle of people. But it is not divine revelation. It is personal revelation.
The Bible is a divine revelation. It is meant to be good for all people everywhere in the world. Of course, we still have to sift the human from the divine in the Bible. See:
How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
But even in the plain literal meaning of the Bible the basics of Christian belief are stated plainly for anyone who has basic reading comprehension. See:
Christian Beliefs that the Bible Does Teach
It’s fine to use science as a support for spiritual beliefs. Correspondences make that possible. But using science as a source for spiritual beliefs is a mistake. It’s using a hammer to drive screws.
Personally, I like using an impact driver…best of both worlds and removes all doubt! ;-p
Hi Richard,
Haha!
And sorry, your comment got sent to the spam folder for some reason. I just now fished it out. Maybe there’s been a lot of spam about impact drivers lately? 😀
Hi Lee,
Thank you so much again. I really appreciate the further clarifications on these topics like with correspondences, physical sciences and spiritual substances and the rest. And what you said is so true regarding how using science for spiritual practice really does make it weak which that’s what a lot of these people do. I never realized that until you explained it which really opened my eyes and puts things into perspective and understanding. And the analogy of using a hammer for screws really gets to the point as well! Also it’s amazing how the Bible is filled with so much spiritual knowledge and truth that brings so much clarity to these topics when reading it correctly and like you said holding it up as the standard.
But I just want to double check with one follow up, I’m sure this phrase variation regarding “running on from an Advanced Civilization’s VR or AI”? applies to what you’ve talked about? Just want to make sure and clarify! I remember hearing that phrase so called “Advanced Civilization” I’m assuming he’s talking about Aliens because he brought up Drake’s equation (hopefully that’s right) saying that there’s billions of “Advanced Civilization” from generation 1 and 2 stars (our star is apparently generation 3) and that these technologies could already be billions of years old so we can be living in the “smart phone in a pocket of a child” from the next dimension above or whoever created it? This was from the Falcon Acamesis videos regarding lucid dreams? I was always confused by this saying and just wanted to ask.
Thank you so much again Lee
Hi Sam,
As always, you are most welcome!
Now about those billions of years and advanced civilizations . . .
There’s just a teensy-weensy little flaw in that argument . . .
If our universe is just a simulation, who’s to say that it’s fourteen billion years old, and there have already been billions of years for advanced civilizations to develop? It’s all a simulation, right? Maybe that kid just bought his phone yesterday, started it up, and it came pre-loaded with a fully populated universe simulator. If this is all a simulation, maybe it started yesterday, and everything we think of as the past, including all our memories, are just the default universe that the simulator comes pre-loaded with out of the factory.
If it’s all a simulation, we can’t draw any conclusions at all about the age of the universe and how many cycles of star creation there have been. All of that is irrelevant, because none of it is real. The programming could have been anything at all. We could have been Candy Crush or Mario Kart or Grand Theft Auto, but we just happened to be Earth Saga. Maybe that kid will take a look at the game, say “Nah, that looks too complicated,” and play Tetris instead. We wouldn’t even know it because we’d be turned off. Then if he decides to run it again, we would pick up where we left of without even being aware that two years went by before he said, “I’m bored. I guess I’ll try that Earth Saga game. It did look pretty cool!”
The irony is that the simulationists are assuming that our universe is real in order to draw the conclusion that it’s a simulation! 😀
Hi Lee,
Haha! What you said really exposes their ideas and makes them look really ridiculous! When people espouse these ideas I don’t think they want free thinkers, they want people who just agree! Would the saying “putting your own foot in your mouth” be right? That’s what first came to mind. And isn’t there like a Latin word for that like where you discredit what you draw your conclusions from or something? It’s like a logical fallacy like circular reasoning? It just seems like it would be one at least lol. But basically they have to say the universe is real in order to back up their idea? But by saying it’s real that makes their idea wrong? lol 🥴
And I wonder why people are actually attracted to the idea of simulations? Is it like video games like you said or the fad or what not because I even hear a lot of out of body explorers use this language to describe their experiences. Why is that? It is because they experience spiritual reality they assume this reality is fake?
Like this reminds me of another really popular author Robert Monroe who founded the Monroe institute in Virginia and they call the afterlife “focus levels” like “focus level 27 has the most free will” and Robert Monroe which a lot of people take his word in really high regard they call him the “godfather of OBEs” said that the human species is regarded as the prime and most productive farm animal.
All our sufferings and joys produce emotional energy which is syphoned off by the aliens or inter dimensional beings as a product and taken away to “somewhere” for their selfish use. This is known as “Loosh harvesters” or “Archons” or “soul traps”. That’s why NDErs shouldn’t “go to the light”. He even claims that military personnel have tech to go out of body and that he met military personnel along with the president at the time JFK and that the moon and mars is already populated by the US military (QAnon people say the same thing as well). I’ve also heard that the Monroe institute has “contracts with the US Government and other agencies”. And this ties in that we’re living in a simulation! OBEr Robert Bruce who says reality looks like an energy grid like on the movie Tron and Bruce Moen and crowds of others say the same things. Just because there’s an “institute” or whatever doesn’t make it any more legit? And when I was in the New Age field these types of stories are very common. It’s always the most extreme, depressing, fearful ideas you can possibly come up with, that’s the New Age community summed up. lol that’s probably why simulationist fit so well in there as well because it all smooshes together that creates an abomination! But if you type in Robert Monroe, Monroe Institute or anything else mentioned it will all come up.
But this video talks about it a little bit
Thank you Lee!
Hi Sam,
Mr. Acamesis seems to assume that the guards he and others have met on their attempted OBEs to U.S. military installations were actual U.S. military personnel that were doing their own OBEs to guard their installations from OBEers. It seems much more likely to me that if these experiences are real at all, the guards they’re meeting are spirits who are impersonating U.S. military guards.
I find it highly unlikely that the U.S. military and other countries’ militaries are spending billions on OBEs and such. From what I’ve read, they did give it a try, but it turned out not to be very accurate, and not worth their time and money. We have satellites and drones that can see almost everywhere, not to mention spies and moles and all that. If OBEs were a better source of reliable intel on the enemy, I’m sure the military would be all over it. But it isn’t. If it were, there would be no secrets at all. Everyone would be sending their OBEers to spy on their enemies’ secret meetings, and everyone would know everything.
However, secret government programs will always be great grist for the conspiracy theory mills precisely because it’s secret, so you can say they’re doing whatever you want, and even if the U.S. military says, “No, we’re not doing that,” those who want to believe it will just say they’re lying to protect the secret. It’s a perfect cover for all sorts of outlandish theories!
Over time secrets are revealed, and everyone knows what’s going on. If they were actually doing all this OBE stuff, it would have been published in the mainstream media by now. Same for if they had discovered aliens, or if there were military bases on the Moon and Mars, and on and on. All of these things are hogwash. But since they’re presented as “secrets that few people know,” there are always people ready to swallow them as absolutely true.
I don’t think these people are necessarily badly motivated. This Todd Acamesis guy seems like a very nice and sincere person. It’s just that they’re traveling in spheres that they don’t really know much about, and being led around by spirits who are willing to assure them that all sorts of ridiculous things are absolutely true.
And it’s not all bad. I actually liked some of the things Acamesis said in the video. Maybe it will help some people who are into having “secret knowledge” actually live a better life. If so, then it’s not a complete waste.
But as for believing all this stuff, I simply don’t. There’s no reason to believe it.
Really, I think they’re groping around in the dark for the truth, but they have some preconceived ideas about what it is or isn’t, and that leads them along on paths that don’t lead to the truth.
Besides, so what if someone could do an OBE and visit JFK and learn some incredible government secret? What would that really do for anyone’s spiritual and eternal life? What would it do for anyone’s life in this world? Would it really make anyone’s life better?
It’s cool to be in on the secret and all, but what if the secret is just some silly government plan that probably won’t work anyway? Most of what governments do isn’t really all that brilliant. Most of it doesn’t actually fix the problems it was supposed to fix. After many decades of war on poverty, we still have poverty. After many decades of war on drugs, we still have drugs. After thousands of years of wars to accomplish this or that, we’re still fighting wars and people are still dying in those wars for no good reason. Why are people so convinced that governments are these ultra-powerful, ultra-brilliant organizations, so that if we could just infiltrate them and find out what they’re really doing, we’d all be ultra-powerful, ultra-brilliant beings, and all our problems would go away?
In short, even if these things were true, which they aren’t, and even if they did work, which they don’t, they wouldn’t make our lives, either on this world or in the afterlife, any better than they are now. So why waste all this time and mental energy running after them?
Hi Lee,
Thank you kindly again for the clarification on these subjects. When you lay them out like that it makes so much sense and really exposes the narrative these people like to push, and really exposing the illogical thinking like you said regarding governments having godlike powers and tech and the rest mentioned. And why people have these kinds of experiences and interpret the way they do. I’ve notice when I started to understand true spiritual knowledge it makes reality and everything else a whole more loving and friendly but also puts the responsibility in our hands of how our life here in material reality and how our life in spiritual reality will be. And not in the hands of governments or “inter dimensional beings” or whatever else they can think of.
Thank you so much again Lee
Hi Sam,
As Jesus said, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free!
Hello Lee and thank you for your writings and teachings.
I think that a mention of Jesus and the true fact that we cannot go to Heaven without a true belief in Him should be added to this article. Otherwise, it seems that as long as you do well in your “training” all will be well: “So if our heart is good…”
God bless you.
Hi lauranburrell,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. For Christians, this is very true. For non-Christians, it is different. Please see:
Is Jesus Christ the Only Way to Heaven?
Here are some videos you and K might like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK3btTCaFqY (Afterlife tier list) and a response to it, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bJ40es2MXc. I would like replies from both you (Lee) and K.
Hi World Questioner,
Neither one of these YouTubers really understands what heaven is all about—as each one basically admits. The second one is closer to understanding the nature of heaven than the first, but he’s still pretty far away from what heaven is actually like for the people who live there. It’s all pretty indefinite and speculative.
For a definite view of heaven, just as I recommended it to Anton, I will recommend that you read Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell. That’s where you can learn, based on extensive first-hand experience, what heaven is actually like, and what really makes heaven heaven.
Here are some specific reactions to the videos:
Heaven is not eternal worship of God. People who believe this do get to try it out after they die, but they don’t last anywhere near as long as the first YouTuber thinks they might. At most, they last a day or two in this “eternal worship of God” before they can’t stand it anymore, and rush the doors to the cathedral to force their way out. You can read all about it here. The illustrations and examples of the second YouTuber seem to fall for this heaven-as-eternal-worship-service concept of heaven. If that’s what he thinks heaven is, after he dies he’ll get to try it out like everyone else. And he won’t last any longer than they do before he realizes how wrong he was about heaven.
The first YouTuber does not appreciate or understand the concept of infinity. He thinks we will eventually have done every possible thing, and will run out of things to do in heaven. That is impossible, precisely because God is infinite. This means that no matter how many things we have done, there will always be infinitely more to do. This does not mean just doing finer and finer variations of the things we do now. No matter how many different types of things we have done, there are always infinitely more types of things that we haven’t done at all. There will always be things to discover that are completely new to us, and that we couldn’t even conceive of before.
The second YouTuber gets this, but illustrates it badly by saying that moving toward perfection is like an asymptotic line that gets closer and closer to the ideal, but never quite reaches it. That would imply that the longer we live, the tinier and more incremental will be the advances we are making toward perfection. That’s not how it works at all. We are finite. God is infinite. That means we are always infinitely far away from perfection. No matter how far we have advanced, we always have infinitely more that we can advance. I realize this may be hard for our material mind to imagine, but it is the truth. We do not eventually get to a point where we are making only tiny advancements towards our perfect self. No. To all eternity, we can continue to make major advances toward our best self, because there is always infinitely more “space” for us to move forward in.
The second YouTuber thinks that heaven will be something completely different than what we experience here on earth. In other parts of the video, he waffles on this, wondering if he will be a super athletic and muscular guy in heaven. But he thinks there will be no marriage in heaven, so what’s the point of being buff and beautiful anyway? You’re just a celibate monk who can have no deep connection with another person. In reality, God has designed this life to be a preparation and apprenticeship for heaven. Here, we gain some of the basic experiences and skills we need to live the life of heaven. There, we will continue the same kind of life, but at a higher level. It will be like completing our apprenticeship and beginning to practice the trade that we’ve been learning all this time.
And speaking of trades, what neither YouTuber is aware of is that the greatest joy of heaven is not “experiences” or “bliss” or even eternally worshiping God, but spending our lives loving and serving our fellow human beings in good and useful ways. Just as people on earth can gain their greatest satisfaction from engaging in some sort of useful work that they believe in, whether it is in business and industry or raising their children at home, so angels (who are all people who have gone on to heaven) gain their greatest satisfaction from the daily work that they do because they love other people and the love the particular type of work and service they provide to other people. Yes, there is also recreation and pleasure of all kinds in heaven, but that is not the main joy of heaven any more than it is the main joy of good people here on earth.
As for hell, both YouTubers have the same basic misconception about what hell is, although the second YouTuber expresses it more philosophically than the first. Hell is not eternal conscious torment, nor is it the pain of separation from God. It is the life people build for themselves and among themselves when all they care about is their own power, possessions, and pleasure.
Oh, and the second YouTuber keeps talking about heaven as “infinite.” Heaven is not infinite. Only God is infinite. Heaven is always moving toward God, but no matter how close it gets to God, it has infinitely more distance to cover before it would reach God. That’s precisely because heaven is finite, not infinite, since it is made up of people who are finite, not infinite
.
There’s plenty more I could say, but that’s enough for now. Once again, if you want to leave behind all these wispy and speculative theories about heaven and hell, and learn what they’re actually like, please do yourself a favor and read Swedenborg’s book Heaven and Hell.
According to Swedenborg, what is heaven? A nice place to live? Nice caring relationships, endless joy and happiness, or maybe no more death and sin?
Hi tammi85,
Heaven is all of those things, but they are more like fringe benefits than key features—though caring relationships is pretty close.
Fundamentally, what makes heaven heaven is the Lord’s presence there. Heaven is heaven because the people there accept God’s love, wisdom, and power into their lives and relationships. Without this, it would not be heaven, because everything good comes from God.
Next, what makes heaven heaven is people engaging in active, loving service to one another. Heaven, Swedenborg says, is a realm of useful service, and engaging in useful service is what gives angels their greatest joy and satisfaction.
This also means that heaven is a community, or more accurately, a whole vast collection of communities that are all mutually harmonious with one another. People there live in communities just as we do here on earth, within wider regions full of communities just as we do on earth, and in connection with all of heaven just as our earth has become a global community. But mostly, people live in a web of relationships with the people of their own community, all of whom share common motives and goals and understandings, so that they all work together to accomplish the services and good deeds their community provides.
In heaven, the two Great Commandments reign everywhere: love for God and love for our fellow human beings. That’s what makes heaven heaven.
Everything else you mention, and many more things such as good food and drink, music, sports and recreation, friendship, love, sex, and marriage, nature, and everything else we enjoy rounds out the joy and happiness of heaven. As Jesus said:
The Two Great Commandments summarize the entirety of God’s law, right?
613 laws were given, right? More and more laws were needed, because the Israelites’ hearts were hard. If their hearts were not so hard, only the Ten Commandments would have been necessary, would they not?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, that’s what Jesus said. The Ten Commandments themselves are based on them. The commandments on the first tablet are about loving God, and the commandments on the second tablet are about loving the neighbor.
Of course, we’ll always need more than the Ten Commandments at least as explanations, because life is complicated. But yes, most of the laws in the Old Testament wouldn’t have been necessary if the ancient Israelites weren’t so stiff-necked and hard-hearted. Then again, that was pretty much par for the course for people in those days. None of the surrounding nations were any better, and many of them were quite a bit worse.
I have a story I just learned about today, my father passed away from brain cancer last month, he was an Antiochian Orthodox priest and always told me he loved serving at the alter.
Well this is the strange part, the Sunday after he died a church parishioner said he had a vision of my dad at the alter arms upright worshiping god. what do you make of that?
It makes me think maybe the Orthodox church is the true church and Swedenborg was wrong about all the Christian church’s being corrupt.
Also before he died I asked him to visit me after his passing, he said he will if he can, but has yet to do so. Do you think there something wrong with me that he still hasn’t visited me, He was my best friend and I would love to talk to him again.
My father was and is a good man, he loved his family, the Orthodox church(all thou he recognized that some in the leadership were corrupt, just as many people in the world with power are Easily corruptible) He always said he loved Jesus Christ above all.
I don’t know if Swedenborg was right or the Orthodox church and its doctrines. If Swedenborg was right why is god allowing him to worship in a corrupt church?
I know my fathers heart, he was a good godly man that almost everyone that knew him loved him, he’s not in hell.
Hi tammi85,
Sorry, this comment of yours was put into the spam folder. I noticed it only yesterday. I’ll add some more to what I said in response to your next comment, which didn’t go into the spam folder.
Again, I’m sorry to hear about your father’s death. From what you say of him, he was a good man, who will be going to heaven, not hell. People who innocently believe in their church, and live a good life based on its teachings, will go to heaven, not hell, even if the church itself is corrupt. Even your father was aware of the corruption in his church. But he didn’t let that dissuade him from leading people in the worship of God, from a good heart. The people are sheep who look to their shepherds.
About that parishioner’s vision, I have no trouble at all believing that your father is still lifting his arms up at the altar in the spiritual world. After all, there will be Antiochan Orthodox Christians there also, and they will still look to their priests for spiritual leadership and guidance.
Swedenborg actually said very little about Orthodox Christianity. He was aware of it, and he did mention it. But he lived in Western Europe, which was heavily Protestant and Catholic. He mostly talks about the corruption of the Catholic and Protestant churches. Of course, Orthodox Christian churches also accept the Trinity of Persons, which Swedenborg rejected as a false doctrine. But other than that, he didn’t say much about the errors of Orthodox Christianity.
Historically, Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity split from Western (Catholic, and later Protestant) Christianity in the Great Schism of 1054. It was not long after this split that the terribly unbiblical and false satisfaction theory of atonement, and its later Protestant penal substitution variant, were originated and developed within Western Christianity. These false doctrines were therefore never part of Orthodox Christian theology.
Like Swedenborg, I don’t know a lot about Orthodox Christianity, because I grew up among Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. However, I have long had a sense that Orthodox Christianity did not go as far astray doctrinally as Catholic and Protestant Christianity did, precisely because it never accepted the (Catholic) satisfaction theory of atonement, and the Protestant dogmas of justification by faith alone and penal substitution. Still, as I said, it accepts the Trinity of Persons, which is the foul wellspring from which all the false and corrupt doctrines of corrupted Christianity have flowed.
I know that the Russian Orthodox church is a highly corrupt church that is little more than an arm of the repressive Russian government. Its head is a former KGB agent. But I have heard good things about some other branches of Orthodox Christianity. There is even one small branch of it whose head seems to like Swedenborg’s teachings about God and the Incarnation very much. So I wouldn’t want to make any generalizations, except to say that no Christian Church can avoid having false doctrines if it accepts the Trinity of Persons.
But once again, this doesn’t mean everyone in those churches is corrupt. Most people, and even most clergy, in those churches are good people for whom this church just happens to be their church, usually because it is the church of their family and culture. Even though not everything the church teaches them is correct, the clergy and laypeople who have good hearts turn it all toward good in the form of following Jesus’ two Great Commandments to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Anyone, of any church or religion, who does this will spend eternity in heaven, not hell.
I’ve heard that Swedenborg was mistaken about Islamic beliefs about Jesus, My question is how could he be wrong about these basic tenets of Islam if he was talking to these people in the afterlife, why would god tell him these un-true things?
He was also wrong about human life on the planets of our solar system. As well as something about Black Africans.
How could he be so wrong about these things and still be believed when it came to his spiritual experience and theology? Didn’t he mention that he received all this information from god and not any angel or spirit? Why do you still believe his experiences when he’s wrong on all these points. Did he get anything right that has been proven since his time on earth?
Hi tammi85,
It’s a good question—and a common one. Really, it’s the same question atheists and fundamentalist Christians ask about the Bible: If the Bible is wrong about the world being created in six days, how can we believe anything it says? As a result, fundamentalists continue to believe that the world was created is six days when it obviously wasn’t, and atheists reject the Bible entirely.
Both of them are missing the point. God didn’t give us the Bible to teach us about earthly things that we can figure out for ourselves. God gave us the Bible to teach us about spiritual and heavenly things that we could never figure out on our own. Specifically, God gave us the Bible to guide us and motivate us to walk the path that leads to eternal life in heaven. There are many things in the Bible that are historically and scientifically inaccurate. That doesn’t matter at all, because God didn’t give us the Bible to teach us about history and science.
The same principle applies to Swedenborg’s writings.
Swedenborg was mistaken about quite a few matters of history, science, culture, and even the religious beliefs of various cultures—such as his mistaken idea that Muslims could accept Jesus as the Son of God. These mistaken ideas didn’t come from God, nor are they relevant to the main purpose of his theological writings, which is to teach us about God, the spiritual world, the true beliefs of Christianity, and how to walk the path that leads to eternal life.
Swedenborg did not say God told him everything he wrote in his books. Rather, he said that when it came to genuine Christian doctrine, he did not receive any of it from any angel, but from the Lord alone, while he was reading the Bible.
His mistaken views about Islam probably came from ideas about Islam that were floating around 18th century northern Europe, where there were hardly any Muslims to correct the record. Swedenborg also mostly spoke with European Christians in the spiritual world, and only occasionally interacted with people from other religions there. He often had theological discussions and debates with Christians in the spiritual world. He never mentions having any similar theological discussions and debates with Muslims.
He does, however, say that in the spiritual world, Muslims who renounce polygamy and accept Jesus as the Son of God are able to move to a higher heaven than those who don’t. That’s not beyond the realm of possibility even on this earth, where there are Muslims who have converted to Christianity. And in the spiritual world, they don’t have to accept the unbiblical and false Trinity of Persons dogma, which is a major stumbling block preventing Muslims from accepting Christianity here on earth.
Swedenborg also never said that God told him there were people on other planets. He offered rational arguments to support the idea that every planet is inhabited. But planetary science was rudimentary in his day, so there was an awful lot of scientific information he just didn’t have.
He also did not say that God told him that this or that group of aliens in the spiritual world came from Mercury or Jupiter. He does sometimes say that this was “told to him from heaven.” In other words, angels told him. But angels aren’t infallible. They said a number of things to Swedenborg that have turned out not to be true, such as that the various species of animals on earth were originally created directly by God, and given the ability to reproduce from there. We now know that the various species evolved from one another over time. Angels live in the spiritual world, not the material world. Their knowledge of earthly science is no more advanced that the science that exists on earth, because they get all of their information about it from people who die and go to the spiritual world.
In other words, there is a lot of material in Swedenborg’s theological writings that does not come from God, but from angels, spirits, and people on earth, and from Swedenborg’s own scientific, historical, and cultural knowledge. He does not claim divine inspiration for any of this. Only for the “doctrines,” or teachings, that are for the new church that is represented by the New Jerusalem in the last two chapters of the book of Revelation. Everything else is illustrations, examples, experience, and rational arguments that Swedenborg supplies to support those teachings.
The teachings themselves are like a precious diamond found in a mine. Everything else is like the rocky matrix in which the diamond is embedded. Our job is to sort out the diamond from the matrix. But we still need the matrix to deliver the diamond to us.
For more on the character of Swedenborg’s inspiration and writings, please see:
Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?
About Swedenborg’s belief that there are people the Moon, Mars, and so on, please see:
Aliens vs. Advent: Swedenborg’s 1758 Book on Extraterrestrial Life
In the end, you’ll have to make up your own mind what to believe. But it’s not reasonable to expect Swedenborg to be right about every single thing he ever wrote on every subject. What other writer do we expect to be infallible? Do we reject Newton or Einstein because they were wrong about some things?
Swedenborg himself said that we should not believe anything just because someone else said so. We should consider it in our own mind, compare it to other belief and ideas, test whether it makes sense and is supported by our own experience, and only then, if it still makes sense to us, accept it as the truth. This applies to Swedenborg’s teachings just as much as it does to everything else.
My suggestion, then, is that you not accept anything just because I say so or Swedenborg says so or anybody else says so. Accept only what makes sense to you, fits with your experience—and of course, from a Christian perspective, is supported by the plain teachings of the Bible.
Last month my father passed away of brain cancer, He was an Antiochian Orthodox Christian priest who loved serving at the alter. I just learned from a parishioner that the Sunday after his passing he had a vision in the church of him at the alter arms upright worshiping god. My father was a good man that loved his family, church and above all Jesus Christ. I know he’s not in hell.
If Swedenborg is right, that the Orthodox church is a corrupt institution, why allow my father to serve at the alter of a corrupt church?
I asked him prior to his passing to visit me but he has yet to do so. He told me he will if he can. Do you think there’s something wrong with me preventing him from visiting?
I don’t see why the man that told me of this vision would lie to me.
Hi tammi85,
I’m sorry to hear about your father’s death. It sounds like he was a good man who lived a good life. There is no reason he would be in hell. He can even continue to be a priest on the other side. But he’ll have to unlearn some of the doctrines he believed in, and learn the truth in their place.
Just because the church is corrupt, that doesn’t mean everyone in it is. Most people in the various churches innocently believe what their church teaches. Whether or not it is actually true, it serves them as truth. If they are faithful and live as their church teaches them to live, then they will go to heaven, not to hell. Also, regardless of the doctrines of their church, most clergy teach and guide their people to love God and love their neighbor, as Jesus taught. Once again, anyone who does that will go to heaven, not to hell.
I’m sure your father is learning many new things in the spiritual world, and teaching them to his new congregation there. And of course, he’ll continue to lead the people in their worship of God.
Hi tammi85,
About why priests are allowed to serve at the altar of a corrupt church, and also why God even allows these churches to continue existing:
Jesus said about the Pharisees, who were the self-righteous religious elite of the day:
This illustrates the situation regarding the corrupt church, its false doctrines, and its often corrupt leadership as compared to ordinary people (including ordinary clergy) in the church. The church itself is dead. That is what Jesus means when he likens the Pharisees to “graves.” But the people are unaware that the church is dead, so they “walk over those graves unknowingly.”
In other words, the people and the ordinary clergy look to the church for their spiritual life and guidance, unaware that the teachings of the church are false and the institution of the church is corrupt. And because the church and its ordinary clergy still have the Bible, especially the Gospels, and still teach the people from the Bible, the church continues to play its role for the people, even though it is corrupt.
This is why God allows ordinary priests to serve at the altars of these churches, and why God allows these churches to continue to exist and engage in their services and activities. Without them, the people would be like sheep without shepherds. And since the people, and many of the ordinary clergy, innocently believe in their church, “walking unknowingly” over its “buried graves,” the church can continue to serve their needs even though its doctrines are false and its institutions are corrupt.
Based on what you say, your father was one of these ordinary clergy who did the work of being a shepherd to the sheep in his congregation. He will not be condemned because the doctrines of the church he belonged to are false. Rather, angels will teach him the truth, and he will gladly receive it—though not until after he has gone through the initial stages of having any outer parts of his life that don’t match his true inner self removed. At that point, he will see the falsity of those teachings for himself, he will be happy to learn the truth, and he will teach it to the people, and lead them in worship of the true God, who is the Lord God Jesus Christ in whom is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
So don’t fear. Your father was a good man, and he is now on his way to heaven.
Hi tammi85,
About all the different religions, and which one is “the true church,” please see:
If there’s One God, Why All the Different Religions?
And:
Is There a Common Theme in All Religions?
I have a question about a passage in one of Swedenborg’s books about one spouse waiting for the other to pass, are they waiting in the world of spirits? because Swedenborg made a comment a that the maximum time you spend in that realm is thirty years. what would happen if one spouse dies early say in their twenties or thirties and the other lives to their ninety’s? Does the one that died early pass on to heaven or hell and then travel to this world of spirits to great the other to see if the two are still compatible?
My grandfather died in 1977, but my grandmother lived till 2023 and never remarried. Was he forced to move on without her to heaven because he surpassed the thirty years rule?
What about people who never find a partner in life but the one most their compatible with deceased four or five decades prior?
Hi tammi85,
Swedenborg doesn’t present the thirty-year thing as a “rule,” but as how it works these days. God would not be so arbitrary as to force people to move on when they’re still waiting for their beloved husband or wife who has yet to come over.
Some people would want to continue waiting in the world of spirits for their husband or wife to join them. Others might move on to heaven when they have completed their own process in the world of spirits, and wait there instead. They wouldn’t be able to fully settle in, because half of them is missing, so to speak. But nobody’s going to say to them, “Hey! You’re not married! You can’t be here!” In fact, they are married. They’re just separated from the one they’re married to.
There are exceptions to every rule. God is aware of our various “situations,” and makes provisions for them. Each person, and each couple, is different. But the spiritual world is a human world. It accommodates itself to the character, situation, and needs of the people who are living there.
The same goes for people who were not married and did not know each other in life. No amount of time, whether it is years or decades, is going to separate them permanently. Again, God is loving, merciful, and wise. God will make sure that the two of them meet whenever they have both passed over into the other world.
Hi Lee,
I recently came across this video (like 20 min ago) it was supposedly trending online that’s why the algorithm put it in my next to watch for some reason. But the video is called DMT Entities Explained | What are they? – Autonomous DMT Entities Explained and explored | The Unseen Psychedelic world. #DMT
who or what are these entities? Let’s find out and explore the nature of DMT and the 12 main DMT entities commonly encountered.
I didn’t mean to click on it, the video started playing after watching an OTLE videos which right now I feel super bad and now really anxious because of it.
This is the video here:https://youtu.be/9nZxBYTwvtc?si=v2KvP2jpHsLJIGDO
If you look in the description of the video these are the chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:57 DMT Phenomenology
2:36 The EGO and The Psychedelic Experience 8:05 Common DMT Patterns
9:01 How DMT Entities Communicate (5 Levels) 10:39 My DMT / Ayahuasca Experiences
13:42 The 12 Main DMT Entities
14:11 Jesters / Tricksters
16:25 Machine Elves
18:30 Reptilians
19:35 Insectoids
20:41 Humanoids
21:46 Angelic Beings
22:51 Therapeutic Entities
24:37 Animal Hybrids
25:16 Plant Spirits
26:59 Mythological Deities
29:07 Demonic Entities
34:55 Return From Hyperspace
The YouTuber has other videos as well talking about muSHROOM Documentary, AYAHUASCA: Into The Dark Abyss | Documentary, Ayahuasca Trip Simulation, My Trip to Infinity (5-MeO Documentary), What Shrooms Feel Like, and Magic Mushroom Documentary, along with Extra Resources: journals.sagep…, imperial.a.., m.psychonautwi… (5 communication styles) (the links are in the videos description along with everything else).
I know you talked about DMT before but I just wanted to ask for your guidance on this as well. Like how can there be these “common experiences”? And how are these entities autonomous? And what do you make of these so called 12 entities like Jesters / Tricksters, Machine Elves, Reptilians, Insectoids, Humanoids, Angelic Beings, Therapeutic Entities
Animal Hybrids, Plant Spirits, Mythological Deities, Demonic Entities? I hear some of these entities common in New Age and conspiracy crowds like the Reptilians for instance? And what does level 5 communication even mean?
This of course gave me super anxiety because this is all really over my head and how people say this is how reality works “peaking behind the curtains of reality” and this is what our afterlife is like as well? Since there are commonly encountered? But I just wanted to get your guidances on these topics.
Thank you very kindly Lee
Hi Sam,
First, if you want to stop another video from autoplaying after you finish watching a YouTube video, there’s an “autoplay” slider button right next to the Closed Caption [CC] button at the bottom of each video. I keep autoplay off, but sometimes it turns itself back on, and I have to click the button to disable it.
And no need to feel “super bad” and “really anxious” after watching the video. Clearly these things still have some negative hold on your mind. That’s only natural. We don’t get rid of the bad in us all at once—and it never totally goes away. It’s a process that takes time, and there will always be some remaining shadows of it in us. But as you face these things and push them aside over time, they will gradually lose their hold on you, and your anxiety about them will subside.
Overall, I didn’t have a lot of problems with the video. The guy seems to be a decent sort. He did talk about the need to actually be a good person and live a good life (not in those exact words), or none of these “trips” mean anything at all. He said that they are even a negative for people who think they’re all enlightened because they’ve had these experiences, but their actual life is a wreck. So I didn’t think the message of the video was all bad. The guy seems to have a fairly grounded and practical-minded view of these things.
I would, however, quibble with his use of the term “autonomous entities” to refer to the beings encountered in DMT and other trips. Even here, the guy provided some balance. He presented three views of these experiences, and never really stated definitively which one he thought was right. He sort of slid back and forth between them in his narration. For reference, the three views were:
At one point he said he has a more Jungian perspective, but then at other times he referred to the beings encountered as “autonomous entities,” which leans more toward the “alien intelligences within an external reality” perspective. So it’s hard to tell exactly what he thinks they are, except that he seems not to accept the idea that they are mere hallucinations.
On this, I agree with him. I don’t think these experiences are being generated within the brain through chemical processes affecting brain chemistry, as the materialists believe. I agree with him that what’s happening (in my own words) is that these substances are pulling aside the veil that normally hangs between our conscious mind and the spiritual realms. I believe that these experiences represent a partial opening of our spiritual senses, so that we are seeing spiritual things with the senses of our spiritual body.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the beings encountered are “autonomous entities,” as if they have some separate, permanent existence and consciousness of their own. More likely, most of them are symbolic or representative beings similar to the beings we encounter in dreams. They don’t have their own separate existence. Rather, they are reflections and representations of something in our own mind, and in the area of the spiritual world in which we are currently located.
This isn’t exactly the “Jungian perspective,” which would hold that these entities are simply expressions of our own unconscious mind, or perhaps of the “collective unconscious.” In the spiritual world, plants, animals, trees, monsters, and so on do come into actual existence as a reflection of the thoughts and feelings of the people in that area of the spiritual world. They are both real and expressions of the thoughts and feelings of the people there. But they are not “autonomous entities.” They don’t have any independent existence of their own, as the angels and spirits there do. Once the angels and spirits in a particular area of the spiritual world stop thinking and feeling the things that correspond to these plants, animals, landscapes, and so on, they fade away and cease to exist externally as well.
In other words, in the spiritual world the external world around us is a real, solid expression of the internal world within us, whose various elements come, go, and change according to the comings, goings, and changes of the minds and hearts of the people there.
I should add that some things in the spiritual world do stay fairly constant over long periods of time, and even eternally, because they reflect stable, settled parts of our character.
For example, our house in the spiritual world won’t be flipping in and out of existence, or having its staircases changing around all the time like a Harry Potter movie. Our house represents our character. Our fundamental character is formed in this world. It doesn’t change after we die. We do grow and develop as a person, but we do so within our basic character. So our house might go through some changes and renovations now and then, but it’s not going to suddenly disappear and be replaced with something completely different, in a completely different landscape.
However, even in the material world living things such as plants and animals come and go. Each one has a lifespan, and when that lifespan is over, it dies, and subsequent generations replace it. In the spiritual world, there is no biological birth or death. Rather, plants and animals come and go according to the changes and seasons of the human mind and heart.
What, then, are these entities that people encounter in DMT trips? Some of them may be actual angels, spirits, or demons, appearing in the usual beautiful or horrible form they have in the spiritual world. But most of them, I would suggest, are representative creatures that correspond to some aspect of the human mind, heart, and experience.
In the Bible there are visitations from angels, who always appear as men, and are referred to as men. But there are also fantastical celestial beings of various sorts, such as “cherubim” and “seraphim,” that have wheels within wheels and eyes all around, or that have six wings and four faces. These are not “autonomous entities” that have an independent existence and consciousness of their own, as traditional Christians erroneously believe. They are not “angels” and “archangels.” Rather, they are representative creatures that correspond to various elements of the human mind, heart, and experience. They are seen, not because they are conscious beings who inhabit the spiritual world, but because they represent some spiritual force or concept or idea or desire.
Most of the beings encountered in DMT and other drug-induced trips are, I believe, the same type of representative, symbolic creature that does not exist on its own, but represents something about the human psyche, either individual or collective.
It would take too long to go through all twelve of the different types of beings this YouTuber covers. If you keep reading Secrets of Heaven, you’ll come across explanations of various plants and animals in the Bible that will help you to understand what some of them mean. For now, let’s take up just one of them: reptilian beings.
There are not actual reptilian angels or spirits. Everyone who lives in the spiritual world is a human being, not an animal. But in the Bible, reptiles—usually translated “creeping things” in the traditional Bible translations—do have a specific spiritual meaning.
Since reptiles are cold-blooded creatures that crawl on the ground, they represent outward, sensory desires and experiences, and the ideas that come from them. For example, the purely physical pleasures of eating, drinking, bathing, grooming ourselves, having sex, and so on might be represented by a snake or a crocodile, both if which crawl on the ground and are cold-blooded, and therefore represent the lowest, sensory part of us.
Why do reptilian beings appear so regularly in the Bible (think of the serpent in the Garden of Eden) and in our dreams, visions, and drug trips? Because they represent a very basic and powerful part of our experience as human beings: all of our sensory experience, which can be either good or bad or a mixture of both.
Sometimes reptiles have a good symbolism, such as the bronze snake that Moses made and put on a pole, at God’s command, to save people from the poisonous snakes that were biting them in the desert (see Numbers 21:4–9).
Other times, as with the snake in the Garden of Eden, reptiles have a negative meaning.
This is true of everything in the Bible, and in nature: each thing has both a positive and a negative correspondence, depending on how it functions in relation to other things in the story, or in the world.
Accordingly, sometimes people have positive experiences of reptiles in dreams and visions, whereas other times people have negative experiences. Either way, it represents something about the power of sensory experience in their life, whether positive or negative.
There would be similar explanations for the other common types of beings people encounter in DMT trips. Some of them, such as insects, are also in the Bible, and would therefore be easy to pull out of Swedenborg’s writings. Others, such as gnomes and dwarves, are not biblical. Figuring out their meaning would require some extrapolation and some knowledge of the cultures in whose lore those beings appear.
What it doesn’t mean is that there are gnomes, dwarves, reptiles, giant spiders, and so on crawling all over the spiritual world as “autonomous entities” having their own separate existence.
Whether it is a materialistic explanation (hallucination), or a Jungian explanation (collective unconscious) or alien intelligences explanation (spiritual), the actual intelligences involved are human intelligences. Each of these creatures, if they are not particular angels or evil spirits, represent something about the human psyche and human experience. If gnomes or dwarves or reptiles or giant spiders are seen in the spiritual world, or in dreams and visions, they are a reflection of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the people in that area of the spiritual world, and/or of the people having those dreams and visions.
This, I would say, is a more spiritual perspective than the “alien intelligences explanation.”
I hope this helps.
Hi Lee,
Thank you very kindly I really appreciate the in depth understanding on these subjects and having a more clearer logical grounded explanation. And I will definitely double check the settings when watching YouTube about the autoplay! It usually goes to more OTLE content but this time it went to some New Age or materialist drug using site and totally freaked me out and then the guilt set in on how I could of prevented this. I have been very consciously making sure not clicking on anything or avoiding content from other people but sometimes I definitely feel like there is always a shadow trying to trip me up or point my eyes in a direction to purposely cause harm but looking back to when I first found your website and OTLE I have made tremendous progress when learning true spiritual knowledge that has positively impacted my entire life for the better.
And that’s really interesting how these figures like reptiles or insects or plants how these symbols are nothing new and have pervaded throughout history and I’m sure even the ones not mentioned in the Bible or things that would be considered new like “Machine Elves” are part of the present human way of “reflection of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the people in that area of the spiritual world, and/or of the people having those dreams and visions.” I just assume all these concepts are new and how people interpret it is based on “the latest understanding” but in actuality it’s nothing new and people are interpreting it based on the latest fads in pop culture.
But wouldn’t the “alien intelligences explanation” (I’m assuming it means like ET alien than foreign alien definition) be like what you said Spiritual experiences are what trigger reports of alien encounters not the other way around because if it’s the other way around it’s not really spiritual it would be just another extension of materialism like hallucinations since it’s “within an external reality”? And “Collective unconscious structures (Jungian perspective)” I’ve never could understand that I’ve heard it being like the “Akashic Records” of all souls and past present future being in this so called “library”? But I feel like Jung was wrong and being influenced by a particular community of spirits who think like this and it represent something about the human psyche and human experience as an individual or collective?
And also like for example some people who take LSD experience common things versus someone taking psychedelic mushrooms might commonly experience other things would that also happen because of correspondences and as well? Like a certain mushroom or LSD would correspond to a certain part of humanity? And of course what you talked about would be the explanation for experiencing such things as well.
Thank you kindly again Lee for taking something frightening and explaining it where it not only makes even more complete sense but how this fits into the way the Lord created the physical and spiritual realities and us as humans.
Hi Sam,
When the guy mentioned the “alien intelligences explanation,” I wasn’t thinking of aliens as it is popularly used, meaning extraterrestrials, or people from other planets. I didn’t get the sense that’s what he meant, though maybe he did. I thought he was talking about “intelligences” from other realms (i.e., spiritual realms) rather than “intelligences” from other planets. That’s how I was interpreting what he said about them. But he didn’t really explain his exact meaning, so I don’t know for sure what he meant.
I don’t think Jung was wrong. In fact, I’ve heard (but don’t quote me on it) that Jung read Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia, and got a lot of his ideas about archetypes from it. What he didn’t do is say that these are spiritual entities. Rather, he posited them as reflections of our own individual and collective psyche. That’s not wrong. It’s just that there’s a whole spiritual dimension to it that Jung, who was writing for an earthly scholarly audience, didn’t delve into in his writings.
It’s not even that Jung was an atheist. He was a believer. But I don’t think he wanted to mix otherworldly things into his psychological writings. This would only have caused them to be rejected by the psychoanalytic community, whereas in fact they have given rise to one of the major respected branches of psychoanalysis. And given that his theories are at least harmonious in their own way with Swedenborg’s teachings about the human mind and correspondences, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Having said that, I am no expert on Jungian thought. It’s possible I’m a bit off on some of this. But I do know there are quite a few Swedenborgian thinkers who like Jung a lot.
Hi Lee,
That makes more sense because then if it’s from other planets then it’s just material reality still and not spiritual.
And really interesting I never knew that about Jung, even though I never read his work or anything but it will occasionally come up in spiritual circles. I remember some groups interpreting his work saying we get readsorbed back into the collective consciousness and if we want to experience being an individual again we must reincarnate as a new person but after reading what you wrote and how even Jung was inspired by Swedenborg I’m sure they where taking his writings and twisting them for their own narrative or not thinking from a Swedenborgian perspective but a more literal perspective.
Thank you Lee for the further clarification
This video had me thinking Why would there be morgues in a world where there’s no longer any need to store and collect dead bodies. if people who are already dead are bent toward revenge, how can they congregate to a location that shouldn’t exist in the realm they currently occupy?
Hi tammi85,
Good question! The basic answer is that in the spiritual world, things appear according to their correspondence, not according to their utility. In plainer language, they appear because of their symbolism, not necessarily because they’re actually needed.
Having said that, Swedenborg doesn’t actually mention morgues in his writings. In this video Curtis is presumably drawing on Secrets of Heaven #814, where Swedenborg says:
It is their love of killing and the death of their enemies—which is the ultimate aim of people who burn with a desire for revenge—that is represented by the stench of dead bodies that these people love.
Even though people can’t actually die in the spiritual world, including in hell, death still has meaning there. Rather than physical death, it is spiritual death, which is the death of everything good and true in a person because the person loves evil and falsity instead. Once again in plainer language, because these people love getting revenge on other people, they live in an atmosphere that stinks of death.
Why weren’t these famous atheist experiencing the same thing Swedenborg experienced such as the death process being peaceful? One of them mentioned being in flames but according to Swedenborg the fire of hell isn’t literal fire.
Hi tammi85,
Of course, all these things were written or spoken before these people died. We don’t know what happened after they died. Many NDEers describe having intense pain and fear as they approached the event that caused their (temporary) death, but then complete peace as soon as they lost consciousness in this world.
Beyond that, as the saying goes, “There’s an exception to every rule.” Swedenborg described what might be called a typical experience of dying. But he didn’t insist that this is what happens to every single person who ever dies. He just stated generally that this is what it’s like when people die. Just as this world is full of people who are exceptions to the rule in one way or another, I’m sure there are people who are an exception to the general rule of what happens to us when we die.
What won’t be an exception is that whether the death was peaceful or traumatic, and whether the people who are dying think they are in flames and going to hell, or are in ecstasy and are going to heaven, for quite some time after death there is a whole process of sorting out that happens in the world of spirits, which is the area of the spiritual world between heaven and hell.
Even if some atheists had fearful death experiences, they will not go straight to hell. Rather, they will go through the same sorting out process as everyone else. If, underneath their intellectual atheism, they had a good heart, and they have lived a life of being decent and good to other people, they will come to accept the reality, love, and wisdom of God, and will make their way to heaven. Only those who were atheists because they were selfish and evil people will make their bed in hell.
Ditto for believers who think, as they approach death, that they are climbing into the chariot that will carry them to heaven. Some of these will have a rude awakening when they find out that even though they had a “faith” that they thought would save them, because they did not live by that faith, but used it as an excuse to live however they desired, they will find themselves heading down to hell rather than up to heaven.
In particular, Philip Melanchthon, who is mentioned in the video as a believer who was “about to see his God,” was one of the greatest exponents and explainers of Lutheran theology, including its fundamental falsity of justification by faith alone. If he thought that this “faith” of his was going to carry him to heaven, he would have had a rude awakening when he passed over to the other life. There, no one cares what you faith was. They care about what was in your heart, and how you lived. That is how Melanchthon and every other Christian will be judged, regardless of the “faith” that they spent their lives expounding.
Some of the ones who believed and wrote, before they died, that they would be in heaven because of their “love of the truth” will learn the hard way that that’s not how it works in the afterlife. If the truth you loved is actually falsity, then you will be explored as to why you believed and preached that falsity, and whether you are willing to let go of it in the greater light of heaven. If Melanchthon was unwilling to let go of the falsities he preached, then he would ultimately make his bed in hell, not in heaven. Swedenborg describes several such preachers and theologians still writing books about their false doctrines in dark caverns in hell centuries after they had died.
In short, what people experience on their deathbed does not necessarily indicate whether they are going to heaven or to hell. It might, or it might not. Very few people go straight to heaven or straight to hell as soon as they die. Most spend a longer or shorter time in the world of spirits before moving on to either heaven or hell.
In the end, it’s what’s in people’s heart, not what’s in their head, and it’s how they have lived, not what they have believed, that will determine whether they will go to heaven or to hell. This is true for Christians, for atheists, and for everyone else on God’s green earth.
Hey Lee,
Just wanna ask something, In heaven are we forced to be happy?
I heard that in the beginning God intended to make negative emotions such as anger and sadness not apart of his plan with humans that those emotions are caused by satans sins. So are we forced to smile or be happy there? If i wanted to be serious or just chill would i be able too? Hypothetically thinking if i thought about something that annoyed me or upsetted me would i be able to feel those actions being sad and annoyed? or would our memories of negative emotions be “wiped out” by God in heaven?
Hi Max,
In heaven we are not forced to be, or do, anything. We are completely free to do whatever we want, feel however we want, think whatever we want, and so on. There is no coercion at all in heaven.
Negative emotions won’t be a major part of our life in heaven, not because we’re not allowed to have them, but because there won’t be a lot of reasons to have them. There we can live exactly the kind of life we want to live every day of our lives. What’s to be unhappy about?
Still, even people in heaven do have “negative emotions” such as sadness and anger from time to time. But it’s not because of “Satan’s sins.” It’s because of their own remaining faults, not to mention the sad state of humanity as a whole on earth, which angels do lament when they think about it.
Also, being happy doesn’t necessarily mean walking around with a great big smile on our face all the time. People who love their work and are absorbed in it don’t necessarily spend their whole day wearing a great big smile. They may be seriously focused on their work, and have a serious look on their face, but that’s when they’re most enjoying themselves because they’re doing something they love to do.
The full range of emotions is available to angels in heaven. But the positive ones heavily predominate because heaven is quite literally the answer to all our dreams.
hey lee,
i’m sorry if this question isn’t for this article but i was curious, In heaven would we still like the same i know we would have a different glorified body but i mean as in face features wise nose eyes mouth ears facial hair and hair itself, im scared i won’t be recognized by my looks or recognize anyone. But then why would God remove something that’s makes us look/be us. I don’t know 😦
Hi Max,
It’s a good question. At first, you’ll look exactly the same as you do here. Everyone who knew you will be able to recognize you by your looks. However, as time goes on, and your true inner self comes out (if it’s been hidden behind false external masks), your appearance will change to perfectly express your true character as a person.
Does this mean that nobody will recognize you anymore? Not exactly. People who knew you only superficially, and didn’t know who you really are underneath, will no longer recognize you. But people who knew you as a person—your real character, what you love and don’t love, how you think, and so on—will still recognize you because they’ll see the personality they know and love expressed in your whole face and body.
Does it mean you’ll look completely different than you did on earth? I doubt it. I think even our physical body and facial features here on earth do express something of our inner character. However, here there are also biological and environmental factors that affect our appearance, such as a child growing up malnourished or having a genetic disease. Those external factors will be taken away, so that a person who had stunted growth due to malnutrition, but was a good, solid, and thoughtful person mentally, will no longer be short and stunted, but tall and good-looking.
How much your spiritual face and body will look like your physical face and body is hard to know. I think there will still be a general resemblance to your earthly face and body, but a much more handsome or beautiful version of it. However, it’s also possible that you will look very different because your earthly body didn’t express your real character very well.
Either way, your friends and family, and anyone else who knows you and cares about you, will be able to recognize you very easily because your character will shine through in your face and body. You’ll look more like you than you ever did on earth.
Hey lee
last to were we were off, so in heaven i won’t have like my hairstyle of choice facial hair? piercings? muscles? i always thought our glorious bodies would be like jesus when he was resurrected, and well the disciples recognized him assuming he looks as his old physical body, so in staging wouldn’t we look like our old self just in a “more glorious body type”?
Hi Max,
Presumably you can style and adorn your body in heaven just as you can here. After all, when people style their hair, clothing, and so on here on earth, they do it to express something about their character and mood. As for more “organic” things such as muscles, that will depend more on your ongoing character. Are you a strong person mentally? If so, you’ll be a strong person physically.
In general, your spiritual body will perfectly express who you are as a person. There’s no chance it will be a mismatch to your feelings about yourself because you will have an accurate (not self-deceptive) view of yourself, and your body and its styling and adornment will match that. Further, people’s mood changes from day to day there just as here, and they do change their clothing and such to match their moods.
hi lee
i was saying i mean the only real closure it says in the bible that we would recognize others in heaven and when jesus was resurrected didn’t he look somewhat the same so we might look the same in heaven with our new body? and one mor question in heaven since we can’t sin do our memories be wiped of sinning?
Hi Max,
Actually, some of Jesus’ followers didn’t recognize him at first after the resurrection. In one of the Gospels the women who go to his tomb to tend to his body at first think he is the gardener. In another, he walks along the road with two of his followers, talking to them about the “recent events” (his own crucifixion), and they don’t recognize him until they arrive at their destination ond he sits down and breaks bread with them. Other times his followers recognized him immediately. Clearly there was a difference in his body compared to the physical body that he had before his crucifixion.
Still, people who knew you, especially if they knew what kind of person you are, will recognize you after death.
About your other question, the memory of our earthly life tends to fade over time in the afterlife, though we can still remember things from our earthly life if we want to. But angels live in the present, not in the past. They aren’t always looking back over their previous life. Not that they can’t. But their current life is far more interesting and engaging.
Past sins will especially fade from memory because they are behind us now. They’re not an active part of our life anymore. The memory of them will come back only if we start to get a little too full of ourselves and start thinking “I’m a really great person, aren’t I?!” Then the memories of what a jerk we’ve been, and would still be if God weren’t keeping us focused on other people instead of on ourselves, may come flooding back to take us down a peg or two. But once we get the message, we can leave those memories in deep storage again.
wait so thinking “I’m a really great person, aren’t?” is bad or since we’re getting a “little too full of ourselves”?
Hi Max,
No one is really good except God.
There’s a popular myth floating around that people are basically good.
It’s not true.
We’re basically self-centered and greedy. Just watch little kids playing. They want the toys for themselves. They fight and argue about who gets to have the best toy. And so on. Adults aren’t all that different, but are better at putting on a good face socially so that people will think they’re good.
Only by being reborn can we be good. But even then, it’s really God who is good in us. God is continually feeding us what is good and true, and keeping us focused on it. Otherwise we’d rush right back into our old selfish and greedy ways.
If we say, “I’m a really great person!” it’s just pride and ego. It’s taking credit for what is really God’s in us. Better to be humble, do what is good and right, and give the glory to God.
Hi lee
to when we were talking about looks, im curious would we be able to change our hair with haircuts? would i be able to wear jeans and shirts basic designs if i request from God? i’ve seen there’s many things imply we might wear white in heaven peferably a white robe in heaven? and i ask if we can change our style of hair and do a slit on our eyebrows since it’s natural to express oursleves with those things and well yeah!
what do you think?
Hi Max,
Short version: I don’t see why not. People in heaven are free to live the way they want to live. If you want to change your hair and clothes to reflect your character and style, that’s right in line with how heaven works anyway. I also don’t take it too literally about everyone in heaven wearing white robes.
if you don’t mine me asking why don’t you take literal?
Hi Max,
Because I don’t think people from our era who are used to wearing the clothes that our cultures wear these days are suddenly going to switch to robes in the afterlife. Robes were what wealthy and learned people in Bible times wore, but they’re not what fashionable people wear these days. Plus, when Swedenborg describes the clothing of the people he sees in heaven, it’s not always robes.
Of course, if you want to wear robes in heaven, you’re perfectly free to do so. Do you want to wear robes in heaven?
well to be fair i imagine us being in heaven then poof we have robes but well i prefer wearing the clothes we wear now but why do you think we can wear what we want?
Hi Max,
I think we can wear what we want in heaven because in heaven everyone is free. People live the way they want to live. There are no rules and regulations saying what you have to do and can’t do. People can wear what they want to wear. And like here, they’ll wear clothes that express their personality and their moods. And I really doubt that for most people from today’s Western culture robes will be what expresses their personality and their moods.
Of course, people who believe that in heaven everyone wears robes might wear robes, especially at first, because that’s what they’re expecting. So if some fundamentalist Christian dies and realizes he’s in the spiritual world, then maybe Poof! he’ll be wearing robes. But it won’t be because everyone in heaven actually does wear robes. It will be because he’s got it in his head that in heaven people wear robes, so his own beliefs about that will cause him to wear robes, and to hang out with other people who are wearing robes. And they’ll all think that this is the real heaven, just as they believed all along!
Back to the question of why I don’t take the wearing robes thing literally:
In Bible times, robes were the garb of the wealthy and educated classes. Ordinary poor people didn’t wear robes. They wore working clothes of various kinds, and in hot climates, especially if they were very poor or were slaves, they might not wear much more than a loincloth. In those cultures, “robes” meant “the finest clothing that rich people wear.” It would be like poor people today dreaming of wearing Prada and Gucci (or whatever the current high fashion brands are).
In other words, in the Bible, “robes” means “the finest clothes.” That’s what people in heaven will be wearing. Not robes literally, but their own concept of the finest, most desirable clothing. For some people from today’s cultures, that will probably be ripped jeans. Go figger. 😉
In the New Church afterlife, even though the so-called ruling love cannot be altered, can people still be led out of misconceptions? Or would an atheist always be forever stuck denying the existence of God, and the feminist always forever stuck thinking that healthy male sexuality is so-called objectification, be it the spiritual equivalent of 3↑↑↑↑3 years from now or ∞ years from now?
PS: Are spirits stuck with whatever knowledge they had had of the physical forever? Like is a spirit from ancient Israel stuck with the notion that the world is a flat place under a firmament dome with an underworld and water surrounding it all, and a spirit from the 19th century forever ignorant of other galaxies?
Hopefully spirits can at least learn more about how the afterlife realm works, instead of being forever stuck with a certain amount of knowledge of how things work. And do angels of the innermost Heaven not learn at all, and only speak in yes or no (beyond that is considered evil)?
Hi K,
Yes, people can and do learn new things in the afterlife. However, the knowledge and understanding we gain on earth does form a foundation for what we learn in heaven. The more we devote ourselves to learning here, the broader that foundation will be, and the more latitude we’ll have for learning in heaven. That’s also because if we aren’t that interested in learning here, we won’t be all that interested in learning in heaven, either. Some people are more action-oriented, or more heart-centered, and learning isn’t a major focus for them.
As for spirits from ancient Israel learning today’s cosmology, I suppose they could, but why? They’re now living in the spiritual world, which is organized and arranged in a completely different way than the physical world. Plus, in general, people in the spiritual world are not all that interested in material-world science. And finally, if their life was a simple agrarian or nomadic one on earth, it will likely continue in the same general pattern in heaven. Bronze-age nomads are not suddenly going to become 21st century scientists. They will continue to live the kind of life they are used to and enjoy, but raised to a spiritual level.
Angels of the innermost heaven certainly do learn. They even attend services and listen to sermons, all preached by preachers from the spiritual heaven or kingdom, and they immediately grasp and understand everything the preacher says even better than the preacher does. They just don’t discuss and debate it the way spiritual angels do, because they have an immediate perception and understanding of the truth as soon as they hear or see it. That’s why everything for them is “yes” or “no.” There’s no uncertainty or doubt. They have a clear vision and understanding of everything they see and hear. And so they learn far more quickly and deeply than angels of the lower heavens.
So are innermost Heaven angels only able to say yes or no, like that bit character in Tron?
Hi K,
No, angels of the innermost/highest heaven can talk normally, as seen in Marriage Love #75, which I quoted from in the current most recent post, “The War Between Men and Women?” In that story, Swedenborg has a whole conversation about marriage love with a couple from the highest heaven.
For context, the original statement of Jesus about “yes, no” was in the context of swearing oaths:
It’s not about literally saying only “yes” or “no.” It’s about saying what you mean and meaning what you say. If it’s necessary to swear oaths, make promises, and so on, this suggests that there is a possibility you do not mean what you say, and will not do it, meaning your words may be false. That’s what “comes from the evil one.”
However, only angels of the highest heaven have reached the level where they are so seamless and clear-minded that everything they say is exactly what they mean. Angels of the lower heaven are still “working on it.” They may have debates with themselves and each other about what’s true and what’s false, what’s good and what’s evil, before following and acting upon the good and true path. Their “yes” isn’t always “yes,” and their “no” isn’t always “no,” because they don’t always have a clear picture of what’s good and true, whereas angels of the highest heaven immediately perceive and know whether something is good and true or evil and false. They have no need for discussion and debate about it.
About the clothing, I also meant to mention that among themselves, angels of the highest heaven wear little or no clothing. It is only when they are outside their own heaven or talking with visitors that they wear clothing for the sake of others who do not have the level of innocence that they have. Swedenborg describes the clothing of the couple of the highest heaven, but that clothing was probably for the benefit of Swedenborg and his angel guide. Though their clothing does represent something about them, its appearance likely has as much to do with ancient clothing conventions as anything else. Hence the “classical” sounding names for the clothing they are wearing (“cloak,” “tunic,” “robe,” etc.)
Hi K,
For those going to heaven, it happens a lot faster than that. In fact, the basics are taken care of before the person even goes on to heaven, in the third stage after death, which is a stage specifically devoted to instruction. Angel teachers teach them the truth about all the basics of God and heaven before they move on to heaven. At this point, atheists who are good-hearted will have accepted the reality of God, and anti-man feminists will have at least softened their stance, and perhaps even begun to form a relationship with a man. People do not enter heaven believing blatantly false things, because heaven is a realm of truth, where falsity cannot enter.
Of course, for people who go to hell, it is different. They do not go through the stage of instruction because they can’t be taught. They believe that they already have the truth, and won’t listen to any correction. So they continue into hell still holding onto their misconceptions, and even confirm themselves even more strongly in those misconceptions. In fact, the truth can’t even enter hell in the minds of people who go there to live, because hell is a realm of falsity that corresponds to the evil ruling love of the spirits there.
Back to the atheists, I think that most atheists today are atheists because of the awful ideas about God that were put into their head in their churches growing up. Once they realize that God is not the bastard they were taught God was, they’ll happily and willingly accept God’s existence and reality, and will begin to form a conscious relationship with God.
wait so in heaven i know we can’t lie but we can’t keep things to ourselves then? i can’t just stay quiet about something i literally say something that’s in my head i’m thinking about? and also why as to wife and husband keep the same relationship but not with mother and son and it changes to brother and sister? i would at least still wanna love my mom as my mother and her love me still for her son.
Hi Max,
Yes, in the spiritual world you can just not say anything. You don’t have to blurt everything out. People may still be able to get an idea of what you’re thinking from your facial expressions and your body language, but that’s true here on earth also. You can also just leave. Just like here, you’re free to move around and go where you want to go. You don’t have to hang around people you don’t want to be around.
About mother/son relationships, you can keep them as long as you want and need them. But really, once you’ve both been living 500 or 1,000 years, and you’re both full adults living your own life, how much difference will it make that she was born thirty years or so before you? Even if you continue to live near each other, the relationship will be different.
But I know this is troubling to many young people especially, who still need a parental figure in their life. That’s why I say you can have that relationship with her as long as you need it. But good parents want to see their children become adults and live their own lives. Speaking for myself, I love my children, but they’re adults now, and I don’t get all up in their business, even if sometimes I don’t agree with some of the things they’re doing. And when they’re 60 or 70 years old, and have plenty of experience in life, will they really need their old man looking over their shoulder?
http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx6WtJJPm3PP_d2ZUTI3ZkawDxSnKLaIAi?si=FpUMtLKVbrLCNzCy
How does this make sense? if our spirit is in the body and is shed from the body at death according to Swedenborg?
Hi tammi85,
First, it is not the spirit that is shed from the body at death, but the body that is shed from the spirit, according to Swedenborg. When we die, our spirit leaves our physical body behind in the physical world, “shedding” it, and we continue to live in our spiritual body in the spiritual world.
Second, the “location” of our spiritual body in the spiritual world is independent of the position of our physical body in the physical world. Consider that while you are sitting at home, you can be thinking about Australia or Africa or the South Pole. Your mind, which is the same as your spirit, will be in those places even while your body is sitting on a chair on your back porch. That’s how it is with your spirit in the spiritual world.