From Caterpillar to Butterfly
“Do you believe in reincarnation?”
I’ve been asked this question many times over the years.
Sometimes it’s a litmus test question. The people asking already either believe in reincarnation or they don’t. If my answer agrees with their view, they’ll see me as enlightened. If not, they’ll see me as unenlightened. So it’s always tempting to answer with a light-hearted, paradoxical non-answer of the type a certain uncle of mine loves: “Not this time around!”
But the question keeps coming. People also want to know what the Bible says about reincarnation. And they want to know whether my favorite theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), says anything about reincarnation. Some are sincerely looking for understanding on this often confusing subject.
For example, here is part of a comment that a reader named Mark left on the article, “If there’s One God, Why All the Different Religions?”
Specifically however, please enlighten those of us who remain confused by reincarnation. As an example, Krishna conciousness teaches an absolutely beautiful and devoted life to God (whom appears in any way he chooses but still only ONE god). The bible seems to teach that we come through this human “life” but once. I understand that this could be once per each human life and I have considered that each human life, even reincarnated, is once. Please provide your take on this. Unless I have misunderstood, according to Krishna teachings, heaven is not the “final” or utmost attainment.
We’ll dig into all of this in a few minutes. But first, for those of you who just want the quick answers so that you can move on:
- I do not believe in reincarnation (though I do think it points to a deeper truth).
- The Bible does not support reincarnation (and it never did).
- Emanuel Swedenborg also does not support reincarnation (but he explains why people think it happens).
There! I’ve said it!
If you still want to learn more, settle in. This is going to take some time. But it will be worth your time if you want a thoughtful, spiritual, non-dogmatic Christian response to the currently popular belief in reincarnation.
There’s more to reincarnation than meets the eye
Before we dig into the specifics, let’s get the general idea in mind.
If understood from a spiritual rather than a materialistic viewpoint, neither the Bible nor the Eastern scriptures teach reincarnation. Instead, they teach spiritual rebirth. And they teach a continual “re-incarnation” of God in an infinite variety of finite (non-God) human beings. Each creation of a new human soul, and the resulting birth of a new human being, is a brand new expression of a unique, never before expressed facet of the infinite reality of God.
In other words, God’s infinite creativity is continually creating brand new expressions in the form of new, eternal human souls that briefly inhabit a material body on earth on their way to an eternal (and very solid and real) life in the spiritual world. Our lifetime here on earth is like our development in the womb before we are born into our true, spiritual and eternal life. Along the way we experience many spiritual rebirths, both during our lifetime here on earth and during our eternal life in the spiritual world.
Reincarnation as popularly believed—souls passing through multiple bodies and lifetimes in the material world—does not actually take place. However, there is a reason under God’s providence that people are allowed to think that it does.
Many people see all the injustice in the world, and they cannot accept that a loving God would allow so much evil and injustice. For people who have difficulty thinking beyond this material world, with its physical and financial rewards and punishments, reincarnation provides a way to think that life is just. And it is better for people to believe in God and spirit, even if their belief is not entirely accurate, than to reject God and spirit altogether because they believe God has created an unjust world.
In other words, a belief in literal, physical reincarnation is an accommodation God makes for people who are focused more on material justice in the physical world than they are on spiritual and eternal justice.
It is similar to some Christian fundamentalists believing that in a future apocalyptic Last Judgment, the world as we know it will be destroyed, God will create a new one, and we will all be reunited with our physical bodies and live in an eternal paradise right here in the physical world.
That’s not going to happen. Those prophecies are about spiritual events. (See “Is the World Coming to an End? What about the Second Coming?”) However, for people who can’t conceive of any solid reality other than material, physical reality, the belief in a literal resurrection of the body allows them to think that there will be a real future life, not just some disembodied, ghostly “spiritual” life.
As a matter of fact, life in the spiritual world is much more solid and real than life here on earth. But that idea is difficult, if not impossible, for many people to grasp.
In the same way, reincarnation does not take place as is popularly believed. But it allows many people who are stuck on physical, material reality to believe that life continues after death, and that there is meaning, purpose, and justice in the way the universe is constructed.
Beyond that, the materialistic idea of physical reincarnation provides an image of a deeper, spiritual truth.
You see, even beliefs and ideas that are fallacious in themselves can serve as stepping stones to a deeper understanding of spiritual reality. When we move beyond the external appearance, we can discover the deeper truth. Eastern scriptures that speak of reincarnation are using material images of life and death to speak about deeper realities of our spiritual rebirth.
That’s also what the Bible means when it speaks about being born again.
Did the Bible ever teach reincarnation?
Let’s dispose of one common rumor right away: the idea that the Bible used to teach reincarnation, but those evil Christian councils changed the text hundreds or thousands of years ago, so that it no longer does.
Hogwash.
There is absolutely no evidence for this.
Now, I have no great love for the so-called Christian councils. Most of them just mucked up Christian doctrine and said nasty things about everyone who disagreed with their particular heresies. But one thing they didn’t do was change the text of the Bible. It wasn’t really possible for them to do that. There were too many manuscripts of the various books of the Bible, going too far back. Any changes they made would have been so obvious that they would have been rejected.
The only thing the councils could do was decide which books would be in the Bible. However, for the books they did include, the text we have is as good as or better than any other text we have from that far back in history. Though a few minor scribal errors made it through, and there were a few sections added to the originals (such as all but the first few words of 1 John 5:7), for the most part we have a fairly reliable text of the entire Bible. And none of the changes that did take place had any effect on what the Bible says about reincarnation.
What does the Bible say about reincarnation?
The word “reincarnation” does not appear in the Bible. However, there are several places in the Bible where the idea of reincarnation comes up.
Let’s be clear about this.
There are many spiritual leaders who claim that the Bible teaches reincarnation. However, the fact that the idea of reincarnation shows up in the Bible does not mean it is true according to the Bible. It only means that in Biblical times there were people who believed in reincarnation. In the few places where it does come up, reincarnation is not affirmed in the Bible. And there are many passages that state clearly that once we die, we go to an eternal afterlife, from which we do not come back.
As we will see, the Bible, especially the Gospels, offers a teaching in place of reincarnation that is much deeper, more spiritual, and in the end, more just and human than reincarnation.
Let’s look at some of the places where the idea of reincarnation is present in the Bible.
Was a man born blind because he sinned in a previous life?
John 9 tells the story of Jesus healing a man born blind, and its aftermath. When Jesus first encountered the man, his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Of course, for the man to have sinned resulting in his being born blind, he would have had to sin in a previous life.
However, Jesus rejected both of the possible explanations that his disciples suggested: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:3). That is a fascinating reply, with a lot of meaning, as explored in the rest of the chapter. But for our purposes at the moment, the point is that Jesus rejected the idea that sins in a supposed previous life were the reason for this man’s blindness from birth. And since the doctrine of reincarnation generally holds that sins in past lives are the reason we suffer in our present life, by extension Jesus rejected the whole idea of reincarnation.
Was Jesus a reincarnation of John the Baptist or one of the prophets?
In Matthew 16:13–20, Jesus asked his disciples who people were saying that he is. They responded, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Jesus was not satisfied with this answer. He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Then Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This answer Jesus heartily approved of. Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” He goes on to say that he will build his church on the “rock” of this truth (not on Peter himself, as the Catholic Church teaches).
Once again, when his disciples present Jesus with popular speculations that he was a reincarnation of John the Baptist (impossible, since John the Baptist and Jesus lived at the same time) or one of the ancient prophets, Jesus did not accept that idea. Instead, he accepted the idea that he is the Christ (the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word “Messiah,” meaning “the anointed one”), and the Son of God.
Incidentally, the Bible also does not say that Jesus was a reincarnation of King David. Like Elijah as a prophet (see below), in the Hebrew scriptures David became a figure representing greatness as a king. In associating Jesus with David, the Bible does not mean that Jesus was a reincarnation of David. It means that he took over from David in spirit as the greatest King of all time.
Was John the Baptist a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah?
There was also a lot of speculation that John the Baptist was a reincarnation of the ancient prophet Elijah. This came about because of a prophecy in the Old Testament:
Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse. (Malachi 4:5–6)
And in fact, in the Gospels, Jesus does identify John the Baptist as Elijah who was to come (see Matthew 11:13–14, 17:10–13). This has been seized upon by those who believe in reincarnation to say that Jesus did, indeed, teach reincarnation. But this idea cannot withstand scrutiny. Neither the prophecy in Malachi nor Jesus’ words identifying John the Baptist with Elijah were meant to be taken literally.
What does this prophecy mean, then? And how was it fulfilled by John?
Essentially, it means that John was to be a great prophet like Elijah, preparing the way for the coming of the Lord. In the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), Elijah had come to be a representative figure of prophets, and of prophecy in general. This is why in the Gospel of Luke, an angel of the Lord told John’s father Zechariah that his yet unborn son would go before the Lord “with the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17, emphasis added). John was not to literally be Elijah, but to “wear the mantle of Elijah” (in Biblical terms) as a great and powerful prophet—the last of the Biblical prophets, leading up to Jesus himself.
We can be assured that John was not literally a reincarnation of Elijah by a later incident recorded in the Gospels. After John’s death, at the time of Jesus’ transfiguration, Jesus’ closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, saw Moses and Elijah with Jesus (Matthew 17:1–13; Mark 9:2–13; Luke 9:28–36). Now, if Elijah had been reincarnated as John the Baptist, he would no longer be Elijah, but John. Yet after John’s death, both Elijah and Moses were still living in the spiritual world as themselves. Many centuries after they had lived and breathed on earth, they had not been reincarnated and become someone else.
In short, according to the Bible story, Elijah could not possibly have been reincarnated as John the Baptist. Elijah was still living in the spiritual world, very much himself, after John the Baptist had already lived and died.
For some other Bible stories in which well-known figures are seen or mentioned as alive and themselves (not some other, reincarnated being) in the spiritual world years or even centuries after their deaths, see 1 Samuel 28:3–25; Matthew 22:31–32; Luke 16:19–31.
The Bible denies reincarnation, and affirms an eternal afterlife
The stories about the man born blind, the question of who Jesus was, and John the Baptist fulfilling the prophecy of Elijah’s return are sometimes pointed to by reincarnation supporters to argue that the Bible teaches reincarnation. But in fact they show just the opposite. Wherever the idea of reincarnation is brought up in the Bible, it is either directly denied or the story itself makes that interpretation impossible.
Meanwhile, there are many passages in the Bible stating either directly or through imagery that once we die, we move on to an eternal state from which we do not return. Here are just a few of them:
As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to Sheol [the grave or the underworld] do not come up; they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them anymore. (Job 7:9–10)
“But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” (2 Samuel 12:23)
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46)
And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched. (Mark 9:47–48)
And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment . . . (Hebrews 9:27)
Yes, there are shadows of reincarnation in the Bible. But the whole story of the Bible is based on the idea that we humans have but one life on earth, and we then we move on to our eternal reward or punishment, never to return.
There is another story in the Bible that relates to reincarnation: Jesus’ nighttime conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:1–21. That story offers the key to understanding the real, deeper meaning behind the popular misconception of individual reincarnation. But before we get to it, let’s look at how people came to believe in reincarnation.
What does Emanuel Swedenborg say about reincarnation?
Long before there was widespread knowledge of near-death experiences, and all of the information and experience about the afterlife from them, there was Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).
As far as I know, no one else in human history has ever even claimed to have the length, depth, and clarity of experience in the spiritual world that Swedenborg did. By his account, for the last twenty-seven years of his life he was able to be fully conscious in the spiritual world while still living in the material world. He didn’t just hear voices like a spirit medium. He lived and moved among angels and spirits as if he were one of them from his mid 50s until the time of his death at age 84.
During those years, he traveled extensively throughout heaven, hell, and the intermediate “world of spirits” (as he called it), fully acclimating himself to the realm that we all pass into after we die. His most popular book, Heaven and Hell offers a verbal map and guided tour of the spiritual world.
While thousands of people have had a brief glimpse of the spiritual world during near-death experiences, and have come back to tell us about it, Swedenborg had several decades to fully experience the other world, and unlock its secrets. From that extensive experience, he made his few brief but illuminating statements about reincarnation.
In most of those statements, he quickly dismisses reincarnation as a mere fantasy. However, in Heaven and Hell #256 he offers more substance about how people came to believe in reincarnation:
No angel or spirit is allowed to talk with one of us from the angel’s or spirit’s own memory, only from that of the individual in question. Angels and spirits actually have memory just as we do. If a spirit were to talk with us from his or her own memory, then it would seem to us entirely as though the thoughts were our own, when they would really belong to the spirit. It is like remembering something that we have never seen or heard. I have been granted knowledge of the truth of this by experience.
This is why some of the ancients were of the opinion that after some thousands of years they would return to their former life and all its deeds, and that they had in fact returned. They gathered this from the fact that sometimes a kind of memory would come up of things that they had never seen or heard. This happened because spirits had flowed from their own memory into the images of these people’s thoughts.
What is Swedenborg saying here?
Short version: when people “experience past lives,” they are indeed experiencing a past life. But it’s not their own. It is the life of someone else who had previously lived and died here on earth, and is now living in the spiritual world.
Spiritual IT
You see, in the spiritual world, what we call “information technology” (IT) is far more advanced than it is here on earth. Here, we require complex electronics to store and transfer data. Large memory banks are required to store databases full of information. Transferring all that information over land lines or via satellite can take a considerable amount of time.
In the spiritual world, information storage is built right into the “operating system.” And transmission, even of massive amounts of data, is almost instantaneous.
For example, even after we die, the memory of every experience we have ever had from pre-birth to death is stored away forever. This is not just a general memory of the high points. It includes every single experience in full detail: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, together with all of the thoughts, feelings, impressions, desires, and reactions associated with it. The record of our life is so detailed that it is possible for us to re-experience any event or time period in our life so fully that it feels as if we were actually there.
That’s a vast amount of information! Yet it is all stored effortlessly and without error in the spiritual “data banks” of our minds, and in the general “data centers” of the spiritual world.
Not only that, but it is possible for that vast amount of information to be transferred almost instantly from mind to mind. In the spiritual world, it is not only possible for us to re-experience events in our own lives from the records of it in our spiritual memory, but for the angels and spirits around us to share in that experience.
For example, Swedenborg describes how angels are able to draw out of the memories of criminals who have died the exact circumstances of their crimes, and display every single detail of each crime, one after another from beginning to end, until they cannot possibly deny what they have done. See Heaven and Hell #462b (scroll down to 462b).
“Experiencing past lives”
Of course, people in the spiritual world don’t walk around all day dumping the contents of their earthly memories into other people’s minds. Usually, once we move on to heaven (or hell), the memory of our earthly life fades away as we build new and much more vivid memories of our new life in the spiritual world.
However, those memories do still exist. And under the right circumstances, it is a simple matter to transfer the entire memory of one person’s life into another person’s mind.
This is the most basic explanation of what is actually happening when people experience “past life regression,” and “remember past lives.”
We have spirits around us all the time, even while we are still living in the material world. They are so tied in with our thinking and feeling that if we were cut off from the spiritual “atmosphere” created by the spirits who surround us in the spiritual world, we would not be able to think or feel anything at all.
The spirits who are with us normally have access only to our minds and memories, not theirs, while they are with us. This is to prevent them from confusing us by transferring into our minds their own memories or the memories of other spirits that they have access to. Instead, they draw out things from our own thoughts and feelings, resulting in our recollecting things we’ve experienced, coming up with new ideas and theories, and evaluating our ideas and beliefs, our loves and feelings, and the meaning of our lives.
Sometimes, though—especially when it is desired by those on both sides of the sensory “veil” that separates the material and spiritual worlds—memories of a departed spirit’s life are transferred into the minds of people who are still living on earth. This can cause feelings of déjà vu. Or, when a more complete set of memories is transferred, it can cause us to “remember” whole life experiences of someone who lived in the past.
This is not necessarily the past life of the actual spirits who are around us. Once a spirit gets access to another spirit’s memories, those, too, can easily be transferred to the mind of someone still living on earth.
It is quite common for people who believe they’ve experienced past lives to think that in a past life they were someone famous from history. In the spiritual world, famous people are the subject of just as much fascination and investigation as they are here on earth. But in the spiritual world, it is possible to get access to “inside information” from memory records that are not available here on earth. Those memories can then be transferred to someone who is still alive on earth, causing the phenomenon of famous people being more likely to have been “reincarnated” than unknown ones. Wouldn’t you rather have been one of the elite few such as Plato or Hypatia, and not just one of the anonymous masses of slaves, serfs, and poor laborers who toiled away for decades and then died in obscurity? Yet statistically, the chances that you were someone famous in a past life are almost nil.
Such memory transfers are not the only mechanism by which people have experiences that convince them that they’ve been reincarnated from previous lives on earth. But they are the explanation for most of the “experiences of past lives” that believers in reincarnation report.
This doesn’t necessarily mean those experiences are evil or demonic, as claimed by many conservative religious opponents of reincarnation. Everything happens under God’s providence. For some people, the belief that they have been here before, and will be here again, gives great meaning to their lives. And the angels and spirits who are with us lead and inspire us according to our own beliefs, whether or not those beliefs are actually true.
This is all part of God’s protection of our freedom to believe and live as we choose. However, this is also one of the reasons why contact with angels and spirits is not a good source of genuine spiritual truth. (See the article, “What about Spiritualism? Is it a Good Idea to Contact Spirits?”)
What’s wrong with reincarnation?
So why shouldn’t people believe in reincarnation?
Practically speaking, it may not matter all that much whether people do or don’t believe in reincarnation. It either happens or it doesn’t, regardless of what we happen to believe. And as long as we love and serve God by loving and serving our fellow human beings (see Matthew 25:31–46 and Romans 2:5–16), it’s not so critical that we have correct beliefs rather than faulty ones.
The fact is, people can believe all sorts of things, including reincarnation, and still be good and loving people who are heading to heaven, not hell. For example, I have no trouble accepting the description of Krishna consciousness as teaching “an absolutely beautiful and devoted life to God.” God has spoken divine truth to people of all races and cultures. Each one hears it in its own unique way. (See “If there’s One God, Why All the Different Religions?”)
If you, dear reader, still want to believe in reincarnation after reading this, I have no problem with that. I won’t argue with you or try to convince you that you are wrong.
But since I’ve been asked the question so many times, I’ll tell you why for me, reincarnation is not an acceptable belief.
Reincarnation robs us of our humanity
It all has to do with our humanity.
And that has to do with our freedom to choose our own life and our own destiny.
What I personally find so troubling about the systems of belief that include reincarnation is precisely what those who do believe in them find so attractive and comforting.
In every form of reincarnation that I’ve encountered so far, there is no eternal hell.
Sooner or later, every soul ends out either re-merged with the Divine or in a state of blissful nirvana that is the Eastern equivalent of the Western heaven.
What’s so bad about that? Isn’t it good that everyone would end out in the highest attainable state?
In a word: No.
Theoretically, God could have created the universe so that it contained no eternal evil, or even so that it contained no evil at all. But the cost of doing so would have been the absence of any created beings who were truly human. If real, eternal evil did not exist in the universe, there could be no beings in the universe (other than God) capable of real, human relationships of love and mutual understanding with God and with one another.
You see, for love to be real human love, it must be freely chosen. God could have created us pre-programmed to love God and love our fellow human beings. But it would have had exactly as much meaning as programming a computer to print “I love you” on the screen. The computer doesn’t actually love you. It’s just mindlessly displaying what it is programmed to display.
What makes us human is the freedom to choose who and what we will love, and the rationality to think for ourselves and make our own decisions about what to believe. Without these capabilities at the core of our being, we would be no more human than a rock or a tree.
Further, if we are to be truly free, we must be able to choose what we will believe, what we will love, and how we will live permanently, not just temporarily.
That’s the problem with the doctrine of reincarnation. Eventually, no matter what choices we make, we will all end out in the same place: either as part of the Divine or in the blissful state of nirvana. In fact, under the doctrine of reincarnation, we will be forced to undergo endless lifetimes until we make the choices, and reach the enlightenment, that we are supposed to make. Choosing anything other than pure love and enlightenment will only send us back for another lifetime . . . and another . . . and another, until we get it “right.” Only one choice is acceptable: the choice for divinity and enlightenment.
What this really means is that under the doctrine of reincarnation, we are not human at all. We are like rats in a maze, forced to keep running the circles of continual reincarnations until our behavior, our thoughts, and our loves conform to the way the designer of the maze wants us to think, feel, and act. Only then are we released from the wheel of reincarnation.
“Karma” as taught in the doctrine of reincarnation is not only cause and effect—which in itself is a perfectly true and reasonable idea. It is also a deterministic and behavioristic training mechanism that gradually and inexorably forces all souls to make the same “choice” (which is really a non-choice), and end out in the same place.
Eternal heaven + eternal hell = true humanity
People who believe in reincarnation often say that it’s not fair to have just one lifetime to make an eternal choice between good and evil.
However, if we look at it objectively, it really doesn’t matter whether our choice is made in seventy seconds, seventy years, or seventy centuries. There is no ratio between eternity and any finite time period. Once a period of seventy billion years is over, it will still be like nothing compared to eternity. And if every choice we make except the choice to re-merge with the Divine or enter a blissful nirvana is only temporary, then those “choices” are not real, no matter how long they take to make. They are only a temporary illusion.
Only what is eternal is truly real.
This means that for our humanity to be real, we must be able to make choices that last forever.
And for our freedom of choice to be real, we must be free to choose not to do what God designed us to do. So we must be free to choose not to love God and not to love our fellow human beings. We must be free to reject the light of truth that God offers us, and cling to our own particular darkness and falsity.
This is why God allows (not creates) evil and falsity, and allows (not creates) an eternal hell. Without it, none of our choices are real. Without it, we are not humans, but rats in a maze or pre-programmed robots who merely do what we are trained or programmed to do.
The fact that we can choose not to go to heaven, but choose instead to go to hell forever, means that our choices are real, what we choose really matters, and we are truly human. As free and rational human beings, we can choose our own life and determine our own eternal fate.
Hell is a choice
Yes, the existence of an eternal hell is a choice. And it is our choice.
Why would anyone ever choose to live in the eternal punishment and torture of hell?
It helps to understand that although there certainly are painful and devastating punishments in hell, that’s not the primary purpose of hell. In fact, the primary purpose of hell is to provide a place where people who choose hatred over love, greed over generosity, domination over cooperation, and falsity over truth can experience as much of their particular pleasure as possible given the self-limiting and self-punishing character of evil and falsity.
Hell has many other purposes as well, such as protecting angels and good spirits from the destructive influence of evil spirits and providing a balance between good and evil so that people on earth can remain in spiritual freedom. (For more on why there is a hell and what it is really like, see the article, “Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?”)
In short, the only way we can be truly human is if we have a choice between good and evil . . . and that choice is permanent. Our life on earth is our opportunity to make that choice. God could have made our life last a single day, which is the life span of some insects, or it could have lasted fourteen billion years, which is the estimated age of the universe so far. It really doesn’t matter. Seventy to one hundred years is as good a number as any.
What does matter is that God doesn’t force us to do it God’s way. As human beings, God offers us the choice between good and evil, lets us make that choice for ourselves, and then respects the choice we have made.
A conversation with some inhabitants of hell
Believe it or not, the people who go to hell choose to be there. As terrible and disgusting as their life may seem to us, they wouldn’t have it any other way. Swedenborg was once present for a conversation in the spiritual world in which a spirit newly arrived from earth, together with some angel guides, encountered some evil spirits from hell. Here’s what happened:
The ground suddenly yawned wide at some distance from them. Up through the chasm came three devils, who were visibly lit up by the delight that comes from what they love. The angels who were accompanying the newly arrived spirit perceived that it was not by coincidence that the three devils had come up just then. The angels called out to the devils, “Don’t come any closer, but from where you are, tell us something about what delights you.”
“It is important to know,” they replied, “that all people, whether labeled good or evil, have their own delight. The so-called good people have theirs and the so-called evil people have theirs.”
“What do you take delight in?” the angels asked.
“What is delightful to us,” they replied, “is whoring, taking revenge, cheating, and speaking blasphemy.”
“What are those delights like for you, exactly?” the angels asked.
The devils replied that their delights were sensed by others as resembling the stench of excrement, the reek of dead bodies, and the smell of stagnant urine.
“Are those things actually delightful to you?” the angels asked.
“Very much so,” the devils replied.
“Then you are like the filthy little creatures that live in those substances,” said the angels.
“If we are, we are,” the devils said, “but those things give our noses intense pleasure.”
“Do you have anything further to add?” the angels asked.
“Yes,” they replied. “Everyone is allowed to have her or his delight, even if it is of the ‘most unclean’ kind, as others call it, provided she or he does not attack good spirits and angels; but because our delight makes it absolutely impossible to resist attacking them, we are thrown into workhouses where we suffer many hard things. Being restrained and withdrawn from our delights causes the so-called torment of hell, which is profound inner pain.”
“Why do you attack people who are good?” the angels asked.
“We can’t help it,” the devils said. “A kind of rage comes over us every time we see any angel and sense the Lord’s divine sphere around that angel.”
“Then you are also like animals,” we said.
Soon afterward, when they noticed the newly arrived spirit with the angels, a diabolical rage came over them, which looked like a burning fire of hate. Therefore to prevent their doing any harm, they were thrown back into hell. (True Christianity #570:7)
During this brief time of withdrawal from their usual life in hell, these evil spirits were quite rational. They had a clear understanding of their own life and pleasures. And they assured their listeners that although others may find their pleasures revolting, to them they are intensely pleasurable.
Outside of hell, they could not indulge those pleasures. So although their pleasures are inextricably linked with pain, they choose to be in hell, where at least some of the time they can enjoy the types of pleasures they have chosen, and no one can force them to be someone they do not want to be. In other places, Swedenborg describes evil spirits jeering at those who feel love and kindness for others, and rejecting such feelings as idiotic and unreal.
As inhuman as this may seem, having the choice to live this way is part of what it means to be human. It means having the freedom to choose what sort of person we want to be, even if that involves rejecting the life for which God designed us.
In the doctrine of reincarnation, we are not given that freedom—which means that ultimately, we are not really human.
Why does reincarnation appear in so many ancient writings?
Why, then, do so many scriptures—especially Eastern scriptures—talk about reincarnation?
That’s a very good question, and it deserves an answer.
First, the idea of reincarnation has been ingrained in many cultures for thousands of years. As we’ve already seen, it shows up in the Bible. It also shows up in the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. And of course, it shows up in many ancient Eastern scriptures. It is present in the ancient writings of many cultures.
However, the purpose of scriptures is not really to set us right intellectually. It is to lead us toward a life of loving God and our fellow human beings (see Matthew 22:34–40). In order to accomplish this, the various scriptures of humankind commonly accept beliefs and practices already ingrained in the cultures in which the scriptures are written, and use them to lead the people of those cultures toward more kind and loving ways of life.
The simplest answer to the question of why reincarnation appears in many ancient writings is that the people of those cultures already believed in reincarnation. Those sacred writings simply used that belief to inculcate in them a life of caring and concern for their fellow human beings.
In the case of reincarnation, the basic message conveyed by the ancient Eastern scriptures is this:
If you engage in evil practices such as lying, stealing, adultery, fraud, and so on, you will be punished for it in a future life. For example, if you are wealthy but corrupt and oppressive in this life, in your next life you will experience the same poverty and oppression that you now inflict on others. On the other hand, if you are poor and lowborn, but you live a kind and virtuous life, in your next life you will be rewarded by being born into a privileged, well-to-do family, and enjoying the finer pleasures of life.
This is just an example of how the already existing belief in reincarnation is used in ancient Eastern scriptures to encourage people to choose love and kindness over greed and selfishness. It doesn’t matter very much whether the belief in reincarnation is true or false. What matters is that the people who believe in it see reincarnation as a reason to live good lives rather than evil ones.
What is the deeper meaning of reincarnation?
But there is a more profound reason reincarnation appears in many of the great scriptures of humankind.
Reincarnation in itself is a rather materialistic and physical-minded belief. Like the doctrine of bodily resurrection held to by many conservative Christians, the doctrine of reincarnation is well-adapted to the minds of people who are focused on material rewards and punishments.
However, it also plants the seeds of a deeper understanding of the meaning of life, death, and rebirth. That’s because if we look deeper, the real meaning of reincarnation is not physical rebirth, but spiritual rebirth. It points to the same spiritual reality that the Christian Gospels express through their teachings about being “born again.”
Let’s go back to the Bible, and read part of Jesus’ nighttime conversation with Nicodemus:
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.” (John 3:1–8)
Here Jesus makes it clear that the rebirth he is talking about is not re-entering the womb and being born again physically, as in the doctrine of reincarnation. Instead, the rebirth he is talking about is being “born of the spirit.”
In plain words, what Jesus is talking about is becoming new people in our minds and hearts. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, the apostle Paul is referring to the same thing when he speaks of our becoming “new creations” in Christ. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna means the same thing when he tells his student, “Arjuna, both you and I were born many times in the past. You do not remember those births, but I remember them all.”
In each case, the scriptures are not talking about physical rebirth, but spiritual rebirth.
In accordance with Krishna’s words, this takes place many times in the course of our lives. Each time we turn over a new leaf in any of our habitual thoughts, feelings, or actions, we are being born again. We can easily forget about these spiritual rebirths, just as Arjuna did. But if we look back on our lives and reflect on the changes we have been through, we can identify many of the inner rebirths we have experienced from our earliest childhood right up to the present.
For more on this deeper meaning of being born again, see:
- What does Jesus Mean when He Says we Must be Born Again?
- Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
This is not to deny that many Eastern scriptures and mystical writings do teach a literal, bodily reincarnation. However, that belief is present in those scriptures because it was already a part of the popularly accepted belief system of the people to whom they were addressed.
Even though physical reincarnation does not actually happen, and is in itself a false belief, under God’s providence it was allowed to appear in various ancient scriptures and philosophies because it points toward the deeper truth of spiritual rebirth.
For those whose minds are focused on physical punishments and rewards, reincarnation provides something to hold onto as a reason to live a good and virtuous life. But for those whose minds are able to move beyond material things to spiritual realities, behind the appearance of bodily reincarnation is the deeper reality of the ongoing cycle of rebirth and renewal of our heart, mind, and life. The longer we continue on this cycle of spiritual rebirths, the higher we go on our journey toward God and heaven.
Rebirth does not stop at death
One of the attractive features of reincarnation is that it provides a way for us to continue growing and developing spiritually even after we die. If we don’t get it right in this life, or we don’t attain the level of personal and spiritual growth we are capable of, we will be given another lifetime in which to continue our spiritual journey.
To many people, this looks like a major advantage over beliefs such as those in Christianity, in which we have only one life on earth, and then we go on to our final home in heaven. If we see heaven as “the final or utmost attainment,” then the afterlife looks static, and even stagnant. Who wants to sit on clouds to eternity, playing harps and praising God all day? We humans want to live and learn and grow and experience new things!
So let me ask you a question: When, after many months in your mother’s womb, you were born into the world, did your physical growth stop there? Certainly you went through many amazing transformations while you were in the womb. But after you were born, you continued right on growing to adulthood. And even once you reached adulthood, you did not stop growing intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Each new day brings new things to learn, new things to do, new ways to grow. Even here on earth, the day we stop learning and growing is the day we start dying.
Don’t you think this would be even truer when we are “born” from this material world into the spiritual world through the process known as death? Does our intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth stop just because we have moved from one world to another?
According to Swedenborg, it does not. In fact, he describes a heaven in which the angels are continually learning and growing to eternity! For example, in Secrets of Heaven #4803, he writes:
It is worth mentioning something completely unknown in the world: Good spirits and angels are continually changing and developing as human beings. As this happens, they move into more and more central locations in the areas where they live, and they move up to higher and more responsible jobs. You see, heaven is a place of constant purification—and as the saying goes, of “new creation” [see 2 Corinthians 5:17]. Here’s how it is there: No angel can ever achieve absolute perfection—not to all eternity. Only the Lord is perfect, and all perfection is in and from the Lord.
Just because we die and go to heaven, that doesn’t mean we stop learning and growing. In fact, because we are then in a spiritual world, without the physical limitations of the material world, we have far greater opportunities for growth than we do here on earth!
Consider Nicodemus’s question to Jesus: Now that you’ve grown up, would you even want to go back into the womb? As beautiful and comfortable a place as it is, when we are in utero we are confined to a small, dark space—and our possibilities for growth are very limited. There comes a time when we must leave the womb. If we don’t, there will be no more room for growth, and both we and our mother will die.
In the same way, there comes a time when we have done all the growing we can do in the rather dark and restrictive “womb” of the material world. Not only Swedenborg, but practically everyone who has ever had a brief glimpse of the spiritual world through a vision or a near-death experience describes it as incredibly more real and alive than the material world, and as positively vibrating with love, light, and activity. In that greatly enhanced environment, our ability to learn and grow intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually vastly surpasses what is possible for us here.
If that is so, what would be the purpose of coming back to earth?
It would make no more sense than returning to the womb after we have already been born.
There is absolutely no need for us to return to earth once we have completed the initial process of development as human beings that the material world is designed to provide for us. Any return to the material world would not be a step forward in our spiritual evolution, but a huge step backward.
Reincarnation is unnecessary
There is a very good reason that the Bible does not teach reincarnation.
There is a very good reason that Swedenborg, who is the one human being in all of history who has had the most extensive first-hand experience in the spiritual world, says that reincarnation simply doesn’t happen.
Reincarnation is unnecessary.
Believing in reincarnation isn’t the worst thing in the world. Yes, the popular Hindu belief in reincarnation did serve as a justification for the brutal caste system in India for many centuries. But a belief in reincarnation also helps many people to feel that there is ultimate justice in the universe, and that it is worth avoiding evil actions and doing what is good and right in their own lives.
However, a belief in reincarnation becomes unnecessary when we realize that:
- Heaven and hell are a choice.
- The ability to make that eternal choice is what makes us human.
- Whatever choice we make, we can pursue and experience our own pleasures.
- This is true even if other people think our choice of pleasures is wrong and disgusting.
- The material world is an environment in which we are prepared for the spiritual world.
- If we choose heaven, we can continue to learn and grow to eternity.
- Our ability to learn and grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually is vastly greater in heaven than it is on earth.
When we realize and understand these things, then we will understand what Nicodemus realized: that once we have grown old, we cannot possibly return into the womb and be born again physically. We have already done that, and we don’t need to do it again. Instead, we are born from the womb of the material world into the wide open vistas of the spiritual world.
There, we will continue to learn and grow and face new challenges every day to eternity. Life will never get old, because we will be continually renewed and reborn in our heart, mind, and life.
For further reading:
- 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?)
- If God is Love, Why all the Pain and Suffering?
- What about Spiritualism? Is it a Good Idea to Contact Spirits?
- What Happens To Us When We Die?
- What does Jesus Mean when He Says we Must be Born Again?
- Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
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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. You said this:
“Usually, once we move on to heaven (or hell), the memory of our earthly life fades away as we build new and much more vivid memories of our new life in the spiritual world.”
But, it sounds like from other things you have written, we take a lot or our Earthly life with us into the spirit world. So why would we forget about our time on Earth?
Hi Ray,
We also take our life in the womb and in our first two or three years with us into our adult life. But we remember little or none of it. It has just became part of the underlying fabric of who we are.
So, what you are saying is that in Heaven or Hell, who we are and what we like just becomes a part of our every day life in the Spirit World, so we have no reason to remember what it was like to have those pleasures on Earth? Am I understanding you correctly?
Hi Ray,
The pleasures we have here on earth continue in the spiritual world. We can still eat, drink, play sports, make love, argue and debate, go sailing, engage in politics, or whatever it is we enjoy doing here. If we go to heaven, those pleasures only become greater, such that our enjoyment of them during our lifetime on earth feels dim and shadowy compared to our enjoyments there. It would be like remembering being cooped up in the darkness of the womb, unable to stretch our limbs, compared to being able to run, jump, and play in a grassy field on a sunny day. Our memories from earth tend to fade away because they are so much less vivid and intense than the new memories we are making in the spiritual world.
Our earthly memories are not erased. They’re still there within us. If we want to access them for some reason, we can. But why would we want to? Life is so much better now! This doesn’t even necessarily mean that our life on earth was bad. But life in the spiritual world is immeasurably better.
So if you m like to write fiction, you can write fiction in the spirit world. If you enjoy watching TV, you dan watch tv in the spirit world, or are those not possible?
Hi Ray,
Yes, in the spiritual world people can write books, both fiction and non-fiction. TV would certainly possible, but it seems that even when Swedenborg visited in the 18th century, there were means of presenting stories and ideas with full 3D visuals more advanced than today’s TV technology. Still, no reason people can’t have TV if they just like the TV experience.
Basically, every technology or other development that we have on earth already exists in more advanced form in the spiritual world, because the spiritual world is where new ideas come from.
Does that include those in Hell? They can watch tv, write fiction etc?
Also, how would it work for those that like watching sports or the news since those happen in real time and are scripted?
Hi Ray,
Swedenborg does describe a (corrupt) clergyman in hell continuing to write books about his favorite theological falsities and errors. So yes, people in hell can write books. I don’t see why they couldn’t do the other things as well, though their lives tend to be reduced to a very low level over time.
In the spiritual world, things still happen one after another. There are social and political events, sporting events, and so on, just as there are here on earth. There would be no shortage of material to cover on the heavenly equivalent of TV news and sports.
I see. Seems a little odd as death in fiction is a good way to move the story along, change characters and dynamics etc. i can’t imagine watching an action movie, show, or reading a book where no one dies. Even in kids shows, other things happen that equal death.
Hi Ray,
Certainly death is a necessary part of life here on earth. And it is an archetypal event that is bound to suffuse earthly fiction and non-fiction alike.
In the spiritual world, the things of this earth, including death, are changed into corresponding spiritual things. As I said in my previous reply, I presume this would lead to novels written in the spiritual world being somewhat different from novels written here on earth.
What about the fiction that already exists on Earth? Is there no way to have access to it in the spirit world, so anything you read, or watch was created in the spirit world?
Hi Ray,
That is a very interesting question. It seems that all literature on earth also exists in the spiritual world, right down to the very words. On the other hand, things in the spiritual world get “converted” into their corresponding spiritual versions. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure how this works. One possibility is that it does seem to be possible for people to revert to their earthly state of mind even when they are living in the spiritual world. But I wouldn’t think people would want to have to do that every time they read Moby Dick or Pride and Prejudice.
And these social, political and sporting events can happen in Hell as well as Heaven. Also, what do you mean the lives of people in Hell tend to be reduced to a low level overtime?
Hi Ray,
To really answer that question, it’s necessary to understand that there are three levels of hell just as there are three levels of heaven, only they are a twisted and upside-down reflection of the levels of heaven.
In that highest level of hell, life is probably a lot like ordinary life on earth, except instead of there being some good and thoughtful people in the mix, everyone is out only for himself or herself, so they’re always getting into conflicts and fights with each other. These people probably do most of the things we do here on earth, but for example, if they were to play football, they’d always be cheating and fouling each other and ignoring the rules of the game as much as they could get away with. Stand-clearing brawls would likely be quite common.
I think you’ll get the idea.
In the middle and lower hells, things get much worse, to the point that some evil spirits burn out most of their own life, and there’s not much left for them. They’ve destroyed and blackened their heart and/or mind so much that their life ends out being very barren. They couldn’t play football at all. If they tried to, very soon they would ignore the ball altogether, and just go for each other’s throats.
Wow. And in Heaven, how would people okay sports compared to on Earth theoretically.
Also, if you wanted to write about conflict or stories inspired by our time on Earth that has things like death, wouldn’t you need to be able to remember death exists?
Hi Ray,
From the way Swedenborg describes it, it sounds like sports in heaven are played in the same way as sports on earth. But I would hope without some of the over-developed ego that exists among some people who engage in sports here on earth.
I presume that novels in heaven will be a bit different from novels on earth precisely because, to use your example, death as we know in here on earth does not exist. However, angels and spirits do know about death, because every time a person here dies, that person is “born,” as it were, into the spiritual world. Angels and spirits are not unaware of how things work on earth.
Also, there is the spiritual analog of death, which is the death of the spirit. This is not the cessation of the spirit, but the moral and spiritual twisting and destruction of the spirit from its intended human form into something less than fully human. In other words, it is choosing hell over heaven. People in heaven have already made that choice, as have people in hell. But I presume it is still a topic of conversation among angels and spirits.
Well I have some theories about that. Maybe, in the lower levels of Heaven and the Higher levels of Hell, it’s easier to still feel connected to whatever fiction you enjoyed on Earth, and take it as it is.
We know death isn’t the end, but in terms of the character in the story, it is, or it is just a way to remove them, advance the story, show how threatening the villain is etc.
Sometimes, I wonder if people are in Hell because they can’t accept that things might change in the spirit world, and cling to what they enjoyed on Earth.
Hi Ray,
That’s possible. Angels of the lowest heaven, and spirits of the lowest hell, are closer to earth (represented by the world of spirits) than the other heavens and hells.
People are in hell because they have chosen to put themselves ahead of everyone else in their priorities. Having said that, evil spirits do often wish they were back on earth. There, at least they could get away with some of their evil schemes. Also, their minds are very unspiritual and earthly, which gives them an affinity for physical things.
See, i was wondering of people in the lowest possible Heaven and Hell might still have some lingering attachments to this world. Glad to see I am learning lol. Spirtual discernment has always been hard for me, and even when i prayed for it, i would try to force it. I thought the lowest Heavens equaled the highest hell due to it being the opposite. Also, I think i recall you mentioning the outer Heavens at one point, how do those relate to the levels of Hell and I assume Hell also has an outer Hell.
Hi Ray,
Yes, the lowest heaven and highest hell are closer to the earth than the others. But just to be clear, they are still on a whole different level than earth. Mars is closer to Earth than Jupiter, but it’s still a whole separate planet from Earth. The similarity of the lowest heaven and the highest hell to earth is that in both, people are more focused on outward behavior than on the inward matters of the mind and heart.
And yes, Swedenborg’s different terms for the different levels of heaven can be a bit confusing at first. In general, highest = inmost and lowest = outmost. In True Christianity #214, in a slightly different context, he offers the analogy of “a column with levels that form steps from top to bottom.” If that column were to collapse down into a flat plane, the highest level would become the center, the middle level would become a ring around it, and the lowest level would become an outermost ring.
Hell has a similar arrangement, except the column would be upside down compared to the “column” of heaven.
Regarding my last comment, I meant: How does the outer heavens relate to the levels of Heaven.
Based on everything we have discussed, my personal assessment is there is a a part of Heaven and Hell where everyone feels comfortable and can live their life the way they want, except if they want to hurt others because they will get hurt by those same people in return. Of course, that would only happen in Hell. The worst that would happen in Heaven is some minor disagreement. Would that be an accurate assessment?
So based on what we have talked about, my perosnal assessment is that we all go to a Heaven or a Hell where we can do what we want with limits in Hell, but those only apply if out hellish desires seek to hurt others cause then they will hurt us back in return.
Hi Ray,
Yes, everyone either goes to a part of heaven where they can live their life the way they want, or to a part of hell where they can do that as much as is possible.
For those who go to heaven, the only limits on how they live are their own internal limits as human beings. They can do anything they want to do within their capabilities as a person. That’s because what they want to do is good, meaning constructive and helpful and loving for and toward other people. In heaven, everyone loves to make everyone else happy, which all adds together to make the human community there much greater than any one member of it could possibly contribute.
For those who go to hell, however, there are limits because what one person wants conflicts with what another person wants, so there will be clashes and vying for superiority in possessions or power. What people in hell want is power over other people, and possession of what other people own. So every individual’s goals are in conflict with every other individual’s goals. As a result, they are continually stymieing one another in achieving their goals and getting what they want.
And yes, it’s possible for there to be minor conflict in heaven, primarily in the lower heavens, where the residents aren’t quite as enlightened and loving as in the higher heavens. But because even in the lowest heaven they do care about the well-being of their neighbors, these conflicts will be resolved relatively easily, and to everyone’s satisfaction.
The conflicts might be because everyone is still learning, and different people might have different ideas about how to go about this or that project or process. So they’ll have to work out among themselves how they’re going to proceed. Think about a cutting-edge technology company in which various young hotshots each think they have the best idea. Somehow they have to put it all out on the table, hash it out, and decide what they’re going to do as a group. Having different viewpoints isn’t necessarily bad. It gives more possibilities to choose from, and the possibility that different elements will come from different people and their different ideas. However, the process of working it all out can involve some conflict as each person pushes forward his or her own great idea.
Wait. So, as long as you don’t desire to hurt others, or rule over others, or steal from others; you go to Heaven? I thought people who are selfish but keep to themselves would also go to hell? They are selfish, but they don’t desire to hurt others or interfere in the lives of others. They just want to be left to their own devices as long as they aren’t hurting anyone but themselves arguably.
Hi Ray,
Selfish and self-contained are not the same thing. People don’t go to hell because they’re introverts. They don’t even go to hell because they’re agoraphobics. Here is Swedenborg’s definition of selfishness, in my own contemporary translation:
And here is his definition of “materialism” (traditionally “love of the world”) in the same translation:
These are the two loves that, when they rule our heart, carry us to hell. Just wanting to be left alone doesn’t carry us to hell.
Yeah, but aren’t introverts kinf of self involved? They don’t get out a lot or keep to themselves so they don’t really go out of their way to help others. Also, are people sometimes a little selfish in Heaven or not at all?
Hi Ray,
Does the introvert have a job? If so, s/he is helping other people.
For most people, the primary service to their fellow human beings is through their paid employment. Introverts, in particular, are commonly able to do highly technical jobs that require close and sustained concentration. A lot of computer programmers are introverts, not to mention plenty of engineers, scientists, and so on. Without introverts, it would be hard to run today’s economy.
And . . . people in heaven aren’t perfect. All of us have at least a little bit of selfishness in us. It’s our “ruling love,” or primary motivation, that determines whether we’re in heaven or in hell. Some parts of heaven have some rather crusty characters, who are needed for certain types of jobs.
What do you mean by crusty characters? I always assumed that you would only want to be in Heaven if you helped others without any financial gain. When you are employed, your primary goal is making money to live.
Hi Ray,
There is nothing wrong with getting paid for the useful work that we do. Jesus himself said, “The laborer deserves to be paid” (Luke 10:7). And this was to his disciples as he sent them out to preach the Gospel.
Further, while some people’s primary goal in their work may be to make money to live, I don’t think that’s people’s only goal, and for many people I don’t think it’s even their primary goal, especially as they get older and more mature. Why did they choose that particular career? Why do some people choose careers that don’t make as much money as other careers they could have chosen? It’s not only that that’s what they enjoy doing. Often it’s feeling that they can do more good in that career. And many people, if they reach the point where they don’t think they’re actually helping people in their current job, will quit and look for something else that’s more “fulfilling”—which often means more constructive and helpful to other people.
Of course, if the only reason a particular person works is to get paid, and s/he doesn’t care at all whether the job is actually useful or helpful to anyone, and doesn’t feel any particular motivation to do a good job any more than is necessary to keep the job, then that’s not going to be a road to heaven. But I would say that most people do actually want to be useful to other people through their job, and they do dedicate themselves to doing a good job for whoever they are serving in their particular position. This does provide a pathway to heaven.
Why would God arrange it so that getting to heaven is something we do in our spare time? That wouldn’t be a very efficient plan.
About crusty characters in heaven, and the jobs they do, here’s one:
He’s talking about girls who have died and gone on to the spiritual world. And “girls” here literally means girls, not adult women. “Vastated” means having their mind and heart purged of any desire for that sort of promiscuous life.
There are other passages about very strict spirits whose job is to punish misbehaving people who have arrived from the material world as part of those new arrivals’ process of preparation for their final home in either heaven or hell. These spirits are actually angels of the lowest parts of heaven, who do their work in the world of spirits. Apparently they do get some pleasure out of meting out these punishments. But they always do it in an effort to reform the person being punished, never out of any desire to inflict real harm on them.
Clearly these are not the highest grade of human being in existence. Anyone who would pick inflicting punishment on people as a career path over other possible jobs has, let’s just say, one or two screws missing. But their job is a necessary one, and they are not evil people.
I should add that in hell, punishments are generally meted out by other evil spirits, not by angels. And of course, those evil spirits get intense pleasure out of hurting other people. Any angels present are there to moderate the punishment so that the ones doing the punishing don’t get carried away and go out of bounds.
Yeah, I kind of figured that people in Hell are only harmed as much as they harm others. I believe a few passages talk about people getting back what they give, so that probably refers to Hell and possibly Heaven.
Hi Ray,
Yes, punishments are not allowed to go farther than the evil action deserved, nor beyond what is necessary to get them to stop doing what they were doing. Of course, they love doing the evil thing they were doing, so they eventually do it again anyway.
This, of course, is in reference to hell. People in heaven aren’t punished. But if they start thinking selfish thoughts, and so on, they will temporarily fall out of heaven until they come to their senses. Then they rise back up to their place in heaven.
Oh forgot to ask why people need to be punished in the world of spirits?
Hi Ray,
The punishment is to see if they can be pulled away from their evil desires and actions—if there is enough good in them that they can be reformed. If they cannot be reformed by punishment, then their heart is evil and they are headed for hell. If they can be reformed, that means there is still some good in them, and they may find their way to heaven. However, if they have gotten into the habit of doing evil and destructive things even though they have a good heart underneath it all, they have to be broken of those evil behaviors and the desires behind them before they can go to heaven. That’s what the punishment is for.
I should add that in the spiritual world, people aren’t punished for anything they did on earth. People who have done bad things, but then regretted them and stopped doing them during their earthly life, are not punished at all in the spiritual world. Only people who keep on doing evil things in the spiritual world are punished, and only for the evil things they actually do there.
Even here in this world, torture is seen as wrong in civilized places, and corporal punishment is being increasingly banned. Hopefully punishments of that sort in any afterlife are only in hell, inflicted by evil spirits on eachother.
(Of course, not being stuck in a body would render corporal punishment useless, although evil could still find ways to do psychological torment.)
Hi K,
Yes, in the spiritual world punishment is only in hell, not in heaven. In heaven no one does anything that’s punishable, and even if they did, an appeal to conscience would be sufficient to get them to see the error of their ways and cease. People in hell have no conscience, so punishment is the only way to restrain them from continuing and escalating their bad behavior.
The world of spirits is a gray area, since there’s a mix of good and evil there. I presume that punishment can happen there for people who refuse to hear reason, but this is a temporary state anyway. No one stays in the world of spirits long-term.
Hi Lee. How do we fall out of Heaven when we become selfish? Where do we go?
Hi Ray,
First, I should say that angels don’t “becomes selfish.” Rather, some of them may start thinking too much of themselves, and in particular, think that they themselves are good, and not at all evil, rather than recognizing that they are good only from the Lord’s presence in them, and are continually kept away from their own evil by the Lord. Colloquially, we might say that they get a little too full of themselves. This is what then happens, in Swedenborg’s own description:
And in another place:
Neither of these passages explicitly says where they go to. But in the second account of it, it would be to a place of instruction in the world of spirits. In the first account, it would likely also be to the world of spirits, but it could even be to hell, which is where human evil resides. However, I think it’s more likely that they would go to the lower parts of the world of spirits, where there is a mixture of evil and good.
What’s the New Church explanation for people recalling “life between lives” from “regression sessions”, like in “Journey of Souls” by Michael Newton?
I think it can be at least somewhat explained with more mundane explanations, like “leading questions” and subconscious memories from this life.
Hi K,
States of hypnosis can access spiritual phenomena. But that doesn’t mean the experiences that happen under hypnosis are an accurate depiction of the spiritual world, and of how our spiritual life works.
For one thing, there are all kinds of spirits all around us, influencing our thoughts and feelings all the time. Not all of those spirits are good spirits. And even if they are good spirits, if they are in the early stages of their time in the world of spirits, they can still have many misconceptions, which they will pass on to whomever they’re in contact with.
Beyond that, spiritual experiences in general are more about symbol and metaphor than they are about literal reality. If people under hypnosis experience themselves as orbs of light, that doesn’t mean their spirit is literally an orb of light. It means that the spirit experiences a kind of spiritual light that goes beyond the light that we experience here on earth. It is spiritual light, which is understanding and wisdom. Spiritually, we are understanding and wisdom (and also love, motivation, action, and so on). People may have a spiritual experience of being an orb of light because that is a metaphor for the “light” of understanding and wisdom that is an integral part of who we are.
But spirits are not orbs of light. Once again, that is a metaphor, or correspondence. Spirits are in the human form just as people on earth are, only their bodies are made of spiritual substance rather than of physical matter.
All of these misconceptions about spiritual life and reality are a result not only of the shysters who use faux spirituality to get a following and make a buck, but also sincere people who actually believe the “information” they have received from one or another form of contact with the spiritual world, but have no reasonable framework by which to interpret that information.
Swedenborg’s writings provide such a framework, based on his unique and extensive first-person, full-sensory travels in the spiritual world. I am not aware of anyone else who has even claimed to have that type and extent of experience in the spiritual world.
I forget if I’ve asked this before, but what of the experiences some have of “lives between lives” or even the process of going from a spiritual existence to being born?
Hi K,
This all falls under the category of ideas and experiences being infused into a person’s mind and memory from the spiritual world. As covered in the above article, transferring memories, knowledge, and experience from one person to another is quite easy to do in the spiritual world. And if a spirit gets access to the spirit of a person who is still living on earth, the same thing can happen quite easily.
This is why spirits and people on earth are not normally allowed to be aware of one another’s presence, even though everyone on earth is surrounded by spirits all the time, and couldn’t think a single thought or feel a single feeling without that presence and community of spirits.
However, life is complicated. Sometimes the veil that separates them from us and us from them becomes thin, or is pierced altogether. This happens especially for people who seek out spiritual experiences, even if if they are doing it in an attempt to support already existing beliefs, true or false. When the veil becomes diaphanous or is pierced, these transfers of memory and experience can take place—not to mention the experience of “representations,” or constructed spiritual movies, of things that have never actually taken place.
An example of the latter would be the experience of going from a spiritual existence to being born. This doesn’t happen in reality. But just as we humans on earth can make movies of things that have never happened and cannot possibly happen, so spirits can make spiritual movies of things that have never happened and cannot possibly happen. Except spiritual movies are not flat-screen, obviously not-real experiences, but full-sensory, highly realistic experiences. This is why people who have these experiences become so convinced that what they are experiencing is real. It feels intensely real, and there is no comparable earthly experience by which they can know and understand that it’s just a movie. It’s like being in a highly realistic dream from which the person’s mind never wakes up and realizes that it was just a dream.
Thanks for the reply.
When one passes on and becomes fully aware of the spiritual world, I imagine they no longer experience NDEs of false religions or spiritualities (such as “spirit guides” trying to convince people to reincarnate) as really real?
Hi K,
NDE’s no, because they are already dead.
However, when people pass on to the spiritual world they are exactly the same person, with exactly the same beliefs, as they had before. If they believed in reincarnation, they will still believe in reincarnation. If they had other false religious beliefs, they will still have the same false religious beliefs. Further, they will gather together with others who had the same beliefs, and may even come to believe them more strongly than they did in the world.
Over time, those whose heart is good will gradually learn the truth, and let go of their old false ideas. However, those who are stuck on their own ego and rightness will stubbornly cling to their favorite falsities indefinitely.
Meanwhile evil and deceptive spirits will be happy to “prove” all sorts of false things to those open to them. For this, they have a whole arsenal of tricks that can make a susceptible person believe that whatever false thing they say is absolute truth. This is also why “information” from contact with spirits is not a reliable source of truth. See:
What about Spiritualism? Is it a Good Idea to Contact Spirits?
So if one has false religious beliefs, it’s not a sure thing they’ll stick forever, and any spiritual experiences of a false afterlife like in some NDEs go away once one fully wakes up in the spiritual world – when one may experience what Swedenborg described in Heaven and Hell?
Hi K,
Right. People with false religious beliefs will cling to them if those beliefs serve their ego, and they are motivated by their own ego. But people who are motivated by love for the Lord and love for the neighbor will let go of false religious beliefs more or less easily in the afterlife when they are taught the truth by angel instructors.
And yes, NDEs don’t generally represent a regular, day-to-day experience in the spiritual world. They are more like visions. People who have NDEs have not gone through the full process of transitioning into the spiritual world. An analogy I like to use is that they have an experience in a spiritual movie theater, but they wake up before they have a chance to leave the theater and walk around in the streets of the spiritual world.
Once they die for good, they will pass through the initial transitional experiences and move on to a settled life in the spiritual world. Then, assuming their heart is good, they will let go of any false beliefs they may have previously held, including any that may have held innocently based on not fully understanding what was going on in an NDE, and learn what the spiritual world is really like.
I think that in Buddhism, the cause of suffering (and clinging to the wheel of death and rebirth) is craving, and that Nirvana (“blowing out”) is the cessation of craving – even craving for eternal life.
I take it that according to what Swedenborg learned, not all craving is inherently bad, such as craving for love in marriage or eternal life.
(And I think Nirvana is said not to be nonexistence nor a personal soul existence either.)
Hi K,
Yes, that is a difference between Buddhism and Christianity generally. Bhuddism seeks the cessation of all wants and desires. Christianity seeks the cessation of evil wants and desires, but seeks the increase of good loves and desires.
Of course, Christianity also denies reincarnation, and affirms a personal, conscious afterlife.
There’s also the Buddhist claim of “Anatta” – that there’s no real center to consciousness, and that even the mind is subject to impermanence like the world around the mind.
(Buddhism also teaches that clinging to impermanence as if it were permanent is a source of suffering.)
Hi K,
Much of the point of these Buddhist beliefs is to break people of focus on and attachment to the material world, material things, and material thinking. People naturally think of this world as the most real, solid, and permanent thing, and anything else, especially including God and spirit, as wispy, ethereal, evanescent, and relatively unreal. When Buddhism seeks to break people of “attachments” and such, for most people that means attachments to material-world things and ideas because people’s minds are inhabiting the material world, and therefore their thinking and awareness is material.
Given Nicene Christianity’s long descent into materialism and literalism, this focus of Buddhism on breaking attachments to material things is a needed balance in the world.
From a Swedenborgian Christian perspective, however, both Nicene Christianity and that form of philosophical Buddhism (as compared to the popular Buddhism practiced by ordinary people in Buddhist countries) are too far out on opposite poles. Nicene Christianity is much too materialistic, whereas Buddhism is much too otherworldly. The ideal, from a Swedenborgian perspective, is that our mind be focused on spiritual things, and that we express those spiritual things physically in the material world as long as we inhabit our physical body.
Yes, the “flesh,” to use the biblical term, naturally fights against the spirit. But our task is not to deny and negate the flesh altogether. Contrary to popular belief, asceticism is not the most spiritual path. Rather, our task is to bring the flesh under the control of the spirit, like a man taming and bridling a wild horse and training it to accept a human rider and being directed by that human rider. When the flesh is under the direction and control of the spirit, then both the spirit and the flesh are good.
Of course, accomplishing that is harder than it sounds. That’s why we have a whole lifetime to work on it.
As for “Anatta” as you describe it here, as long as that is understood as there being no permanent, self-subsistent material or even spiritual center of consciousness, it is not wrong. There is only one entity that has any intrinsic permanence stable consciousness, and that is God. If we think that we have some kind of permanence of our own, then we are seriously mistaken.
Still, from a Swedenborgian perspective, God gives us a sense of permanence in ourselves and our identity, and God maintains that permanence to eternity based on the ruling love that we have chosen to center our life upon during our earthly lifetime.
Although our sense of independence and self-subsisting permanence could be called an illusion, as it would be in Buddhism, in Swedenborgian terms it is, rather, an “appearance of truth.” And it is a real appearance of truth because it is given to us on a permanent basis by God. So we can operate as if we were self-subsisting and independent, having our own separate identity, as long as we recognize that this is simply an appearance, and that the deeper reality is that everything we have and are has only a “lent” permanence, meaning it is lent to us continually by God. If it were withdrawn even for an instant, we would instantly cease to exist.
So yes, accept that we humans do not have any real center of consciousness or permanence of our own. But the other side of the polarity is that God continually, moment-by-moment, gives us these things as if they were our own so that we can enjoy them and live as human beings rather than as puppets or robots.
For a related article, please see:
Containers for God
Before a mind exists (and if a mind were to cease to exist), would the “point of awareness” be that of the Almighty (specifically “The Father” aspect of Him)?
Hi K,
Before a mind exists, there is no point of awareness for that mind, precisely because it does not exist. And if a mind ceased to exist, the awareness would cease to exist as well. You can’t have awareness without a mind.
Doesn’t God impart separate awareness, so before He did that, there’s just God’s awareness though?
Hi K,
First, when something, such as a human being, is created, it is a new thing. It didn’t pre-exist. This includes human souls, where our conscious awareness is located.
Second, God doesn’t exist in time. There is no such thing as “before creation,” because time began along with creation. Even now that time exists, God doesn’t create from past to present to future, but from above and within outward, from outside of time.
I thought that it worked like this: there’s God’s awareness, and part of that kind of breaks away to become a separate finite awareness from some point in physical spacetime, but is still a “recipient vessel” – and that if someone were to cease to exist, all that’s left is God’s awareness, so the “point of awareness” to that person would go back to God’s awareness?
Is there a part of Swedenborg’s writings that best explains how individual awareness is said to relate to Divine awareness?
Hi K,
Just yesterday I came across this fascinating passage in Divine Providence. It even has the reference you are looking for! 🙂
Notice especially this sentence toward the end: “Conversely, too, the finite cannot come from the infinite: that too would be a contradiction. The finite can be produced by the infinite, but that is not ‘coming from,’ it is creating.”
Here Swedenborg makes a distinction between “coming from” (Latin: procedere) and “creating” (Latin: creare). Swedenborg regularly talks about the Holy Spirit as “the divine proceeding.” But this is not the same thing as the process of creating something that is not God. The Holy Spirit is part of God: the part that flows out, or “comes from” (in this translation) God. Creation is not part of God, nor does it proceed from God in a continuous way. Rather, it is created by God in such a way that it is distinct and discontinuous from God, even though God resides within it.
The book you want that explains all of this is indeed Divine Love and Wisdom. However, it is in True Christianity that Swedenborg gives his most concise summary of the process:
Notice that Swedenborg does not say that God “proceeded” or “went out,” but that he made his infinity finite in the form of substances put out from himself (Latin: ex Ipso emissas). Once God “emits,” or “puts out” those substances from himself, they are no longer God. They therefore do not “proceed” from God as an extension of God, but are made distinct and as if separate from God, so that they are no longer God. This is true even though their continued existence depends upon God’s being continually flowing into them and maintaining them in existence. Creation is an ongoing process, not something that happened once in the past and continued on its own from there.
The thing is, nothing “broke away” from God in the sense that now part of God has become something else. The infinite cannot be divided or subtracted from. Even after God put out substances from himself, all of God was still there. This is the grain of truth behind the fallacy of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) held to in traditional Christianity. It seems as if Creation came from nothing, because God is still there in God’s totality. There is no broken off piece of God from which Creation was formed.
Rather, the Infinite “emitted” substances from itself by putting boundaries or limits around, and thereby forming or creating, substances that came from God’s infinite being. So the universe was created from God without subtracting anything from God. Only an infinite being can do that.
How, exactly, God did this I don’t pretend to know. That’s above the pay grade of my finite brain. But the relevant point is that we are not a broken off chunk of God, but rather something put out from God and made distinct from God so that it could have its own existence as a non-God entity.
If that created entity ceases to exist, then, it does not “go back to God.” God is already infinite and complete. Nothing can go back to or augment what God already is. Rather, the created entity, and any consciousness it had, simply ceases to exist.
However, this cannot happen with human spirits. Human spirits are created so that they can and do continue to eternity. Even someone who earnestly desires to cease to exist altogether cannot do so. In other words, our consciousness will never cease, such that it would “go back to God” if that were possible.
Even animal consciousness, which does cease at death (according to Swedenborg) does not “go back to God.” It simply ceases to exist, because animals do not have the higher spiritual level of consciousness that humans do. They have only the earthly level of consciousness that is inextricably tied to their physical body and brain, and to their material environment. I think of animal consciousness as being reabsorbed into the spiritual environment just as their physical bodies are reabsorbed into the physical environment. Their consciousness, like their bodies (and unlike human spiritual consciousness) simply ceases to exist.
All of this is also why Jesus Christ (in the Swedenborgian Christian conception) is distinctly different from every other human being that has ever existed upon the earth. We humans are 100% created, both body and spirit, so that we are eternally distinct from God. Jesus Christ, by contrast, did have a created physical body (and, I believe, earthly mind) that came from his mother Mary during his lifetime on earth. But unlike us, he also had a divine soul, which was not from God, but was God. So his inner self was God even while his outer self was not. And during his lifetime on earth, he put off everything of the finite, created humanity, and replaced it with a divine humanity that was not created, but that was God, and also proceeded from God in the form of the Holy Spirit. See:
What Does it Mean that Jesus was “Glorified”?
Now if all of that doesn’t bend your brain, then I invite you to write all the blog posts here from now on! 😀
Thanks again for the comprehensive reply.
A problem with ceasing to exist after death (which you say Swedenborg claims happens to animals) is that from the perspective of the one who ceased to be, an infinity of unconsciousness would pass in an instant of unawareness, as they aren’t experiencing time anymore because they are no more. But then what comes after that instant from that lack of perspective?
It’d be like when one is under anesthetic for surgery and wakes up an instant later, but instead there’s no waking up and an instant later is the year ∞ (or the spiritual equivalent).
Hi K,
I’ve read speculations of materialists that there might be an infinity of perceived time dilation, like a hyperbolic curve that never actually reaches the boundary line, in the last moments of a person’s consciousness, accounting for the experience of the afterlife that many people have reported.
I don’t buy it.
I don’t see why this phenomenon would happen, nor do I see the usefulness of it.
I don’t think animals experience some “infinity of unconsciousness” at the time of death. They simply cease to be conscious. Meanwhile, humans cease to be conscious in this world, but their higher spiritual consciousness continues on where their earthly consciousness left off.
If animals simply lose consciousness after death (or if a person were to stop existing somehow), there’s still the question of what happens after infinity from their lack of perspective, as they wouldn’t be aware of passing time (or the spiritual equivalent).
Before birth is easier to comprehend: the vast or even infinite time (or spiritual equivalent of time) of unconsciousness before birth pass in an instant and then there’s the awareness. But infinite after a cessation of consciousness from the perspective of that consciousness is less easy to grasp.
Hi K,
From the perspective of a consciousness that begins and ends, all that exists is what happens between the beginning and end of that consciousness. What happens before or after is simply not part of its experience.
All that exists is Consciousness.
Hi Anirudh,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. I can’t say that I entirely agree. But I do think that consciousness is a much greater part of reality than it seems to be from a material and superficial perspective.
Hi Lee,
In some of your responses you give the benefit of doubt for those who are learning about Swedenborg, recognizing that there is an small possibility that everything that he described in his books being a hoax.
Since you are a Swedenborg expert with basically an entire life worth of knowledge and a very good communicator, this, correct me if I’m wrong, seems more of a friendly way of not trying to somehow make the person you are talking think you are forcing that your doctrine is the best one to follow to than really considering seriously the possibility that Swedenborg lied. Because of course, you believe in Swedenborg with a certainty, otherwise wouldn’t make so much sense to teach and gave hope to so many people everyday for more years and years. I think some people forget about it when they come here trying to convert or make you abandon your beliefs. You much better than me, knows that what he taught just harmonizes so well with what the Bible says and how life works spiritually in general that doubting him seems pointless.
For me, those things are what validated him as the correct and definitive doctrine that I hope more people learn and adopt to their lives too.
Of course also learn to not take him as infallible, in material and scientifically terms, but I haven’t seem yet anything that he taught in spiritual terms that made me doubt or question about his validation and authenticity.
Earths in the universe used to bother me a little bit, but understanding it deeper with another perspective made things better. 🙂
Blessings!
Hi Caio,
Yes, I have a high level of confidence in Swedenborg’s spiritual teachings. I do disagree with some of the things he says, but these things are usually derivable from human ideas. The main teachings about God, the Bible, the life that leads to heaven, the spiritual world, and so on I am very comfortable with, and have no real doubts about. Of course, it’s possible that I’m living in a fantasy world. But I don’t think so.
However, such confidence is not transferable to other people. People will have to make up their own minds whether they agree with and believe what Swedenborg taught. I recognize this, and that trying to force my doctrine on people is not only pointless, but counterproductive. I simply present information here from my understanding of things, and answer people’s questions based on what I know and have learned, and let them make up their own mind whether it is true, and more importantly, whether it is helpful to them in their own lives.
Sorry Lee about the repeated question about my concern regarding NDEs. It’s been a while since I was last on here and I forgot I asked that question years earlier. NDEs have always frightened me, even the “positive” ones because the entities in them frequently blame victims for their own abuse and imply that nobody can do anything wrong.
I have been reading these new notifications supporting reincarnation and I couldn’t help but to respond again. After reading these many comments supporting the idea of reincarnation I have noticed many contradictions. One person here stated we are only extensions of some higher self that’s using us for its own pleasure (which I find sickening). How many times does this higher self need to experience cancer or abuse? This simply doesn’t make any sense to me.
Another user here stated that according to Jergen Zeiwe (whose books I read and they disgusted me) that rather then choosing and planning a life before birth, we simply fall asleep if we don’t let go of the ego or attachments.
We then have other people claiming that we choose and plan our lives before we are born, which contradicts Jurgen’s claims. I have read the Newton and Bowman books, where they claim once the choice is made, the spirit then jumps into a melds into a physical body that can either be an infant in the womb, a toddler or even a child as old as six. If we are all born with our own soul then this simply doesn’t make any sense. This sounds like spirit possession, not reincarnation.
We also have people claiming we have to pay back karma, which makes even less sense. The notion of karma means criminality has to be preplanned. This also means a different entity is paying for the sins of another since when that person is born they’d likely be decent. This create a perpetual cycle of misery. Looking at the world today, I see nothing where reincarnation has made many people better.
Robert Schwartz, author of “Courageous Souls”, has written an especially despicable book that’s sugar-coated with butterflies and flowers. He claims that “good” spirits from the afterlife band together and deliberately create wars, famine, disease, natural disasters, crime, etc – because it leads to an outpouring of love for the victims.
I know my writing style is quite polemic but I can’t help it. I simply do not understand how any decent person in their right mind could be comforted by any belief in reincarnation. There are so many contradictions with this alleged phenomenon that I think the ball should be in their court to make their case that their system is better than what Swedenborg teaches. They can’t get their stories straight; one moment reincarnation is forced; next moment it’s not. They can’t even get the reasons why it’d happen and our purpose straight. There are flaws with their spiritual paradigms too.
Hi sparky480,
Good to hear from you again, my friend. Apologies for the delay in responding. Your comment was dragged unwillingly into the netherworld of the spam folder. I have now re-incarnated it in the land of the living so that I can respond to it. 😉
As for repeated questions and a polemical writing style, I’ll take that any day over people quickly and gullibly believing and repeating errant falsehoods sugar-coated with butterflies and flowers. For most ordinary mortals who don’t have a direct line to the highest heavens, it is best to question and examine ideas thoroughly before accepting them and incorporating them into our structure of belief. This ensures that we won’t easily accept all sorts of things that sound plausible on first blush, but are in fact ugly fallacies all dressed up in pretty clothes and alluring makeup.
But on to the substance of your comment.
I entirely agree with you that the idea of physical reincarnation is riddled with contradictions and fallacies. Worse, it leads to some very disgusting conclusions, such as that when a woman gets raped, it’s because she “asked for it” through her “karma” from a previous life. It is the ultimate in victim-blaming. And there are many other horrendous ideas that inevitably result from a belief in reincarnation.
To get the true measure of the idea of physical reincarnation, it is necessary to understand that it is a literalistic, materialistic, and physical-minded interpretation of passages in the various spiritual texts of humanity that were never meant to be taken literally. Jesus also talks about being born again in John 3:1–8. And he is very clear that he is not talking about being born again physically, but about being born again spiritually. If we read the Eastern scriptures with this same understanding, they take on an entirely different, and much deeper, meaning.
It was physical-minded people who read those scriptures literally, and gave rise to an entire vast doctrine that is appealing primarily to people whose minds are stuck on the physical level, and cannot understand the deeper spirit behind the literal words and imagery of their scriptures.
Of course, relatively few people know about Swedenborg, which means that they can’t even make the comparison between reincarnationist belief and what Swedenborg presents. However, the very fact that few people know about Swedenborg suggests that the great mass of people are not looking for real, spiritual answers to the great questions of life. It’s not as though Swedenborg’s writings are hidden away in some secret vault somewhere that require an Indiana Jones level of swashbuckling skullduggery to access. Anyone who is truly seeking spiritual answers will come across Swedenborg sooner or later.
About the reality of evil, please see:
Evil Is Real, and it Does Harm the Innocent
As for karma, it is true that any evil we do tends to boomerang back on us. But during our life in the material world, that is only a tendency, not at absolute rule. Many people on this earth do many evil things and do not face the consequences of their actions. It is only in the spiritual world that any evil thing we do inevitably carries its own punishment with it.
Further, evil things we have done that we later regret, repent of, and no longer engage in do not come back to haunt us spiritually at all, even if we may still have to live with some of their consequences here in the physical world. A serial killer who genuinely repents and dedicates himself to living a good life from then onward will still have to serve out his life sentence.
But spiritually, we are punished only for the things we continue to do, not for the things we have done in the past but are no longer doing. This is in accordance with the principle laid out in Ezekiel 18:
(See also: “Ezekiel 18: God’s Message of Hope . . . If You Think there’s No Hope for You.”)
As for spirits planning their lives ahead of time, I have a hard time seeing how anyone would plan to have the kind of life that many people have on this earth, full of pain and sorrow. If we were to plan out our own lives, we would leave that part out.
As for the idea of a soul entering into a body some time along the way in the womb, or when the child is a toddler, or even as late as age six, that is not possible. Without a soul, we are dead flesh. Without a soul, we could never develop in the womb in the first place. Our soul, or spirit, is the life in us. Without it we are dead. It would not be possible to get to the stage of being a fetus, a toddler, or a six-year-old without a soul already within us.
Exactly how this happens is just as complex a question as exactly how a new human being is produced biologically. But if we do look at the biological process, we see that each new conception produces a brand new, unique being that did not exist prior to conception and its unique melding of two unique half-sets of DNA from the mother and the father. I believe that new souls are produced on the spiritual plane in the very same way, and that the process of biological reproduction is a physical correspondence or expression of the spiritual process of producing new human beings.
Of course, at conception there is only the blueprint for a human being. It doesn’t become an actual human being until a body has been built based on that blueprint, just as a house isn’t a house when it is only a blueprint drawn by an architect, but only when construction workers have actually built the house according to the blueprint. Once again, this is a complex question, which I hope to take up in a future blog post.
Bottom line: Anyone who thinks that the soul enters the body at some point after conception simply doesn’t understand how souls and bodies work. Without a soul, a body cannot exist. Our consciousness is also in our soul. If the soul entered some time later, toddlers and even six-year-olds would be mindless zombies until they finally got a soul. The whole idea is preposterous. It betrays a vast ignorance of spiritual and physical reality.
Ditto the idea that good spirits create wars, famine, disease, natural disasters, crime, and so on. These things do not come from the angels of heaven, but from the evil spirits in hell. God allows them (not causes them to happen) because without them we could never be led out of our selfishness and greediness and into a life of love for God and our fellow human beings. For just one of many articles here on this subject, please see:
How does God Govern Humankind? Is God Actively Involved in our Lives?
Evil does not come from good spirits, but from evil spirits, and from the evil within each one of us, which is mainly putting ourselves and our own pleasure, possessions, and power first in our goals and in our life. If we were not allowed to experience the inevitable results of that inner evil, we would never recognize it and do the hard work of expelling it from ourselves and our communities. This is explained much more fully in the above-linked article and various others here. And once again, here on earth we suffer not only for our own evil, but for the evil of other people and its effect upon us. Many bad things that happen to us here are not our own fault at all.
I may not have covered everything in your comment, but I hope these responses give you some things to think about. Feel free to continue the conversation if you have further thoughts or questions. You might also be interested in another recent comment, and my response, here, which takes up some related issues.
I have read that post of yours about evil back in 2014. I unsubscribed to Victor Zammit’s Friday Afterlife Report when Zammit claimed in his March 18th, 2022 edition that Ukrainian victims of Russia’s vicious attack and atrocities “choose to have those experiences by making an agreement to do so before physical birth”. And then he’s peddling all of these conspiracy theories about 911 being an “inside job” while promoting people who support Putin. This is a very disgusting crowd and most reincarnation proponents are only interested in experiencing physical and worldly activities again, not spiritual growth. Zammit also promotes many fraudulent mediums too, such as John Edward (McGee) who obviously uses cold and hot reading tactics. I have been following The Left Eye on YouTube, a Swedenborg channel. He says much of what you say too. James Padgett’s teachings sound somewhat similar to Swedenborg as well after reading his material. To be honest I don’t want to read about near-death experiences anymore because they both depress and anger me, since if they’re true I see nothing but manipulation, like blaming victims for their own abuse and anger – so I unsubscribed to those channels. I also threw all of my reincarnation and New Age books away before moved in 2020. I’ll check out more of your other posts. My advice to these New Age jerks: instead of telling people to “let go”, tell people to stop treating others so horribly.
Hi sparky480,
Yes, I find the blaming the victim aspect of reincarnation theory particularly disgusting.
I also think that NDEs have been hijacked by the reincarnationists and made to support reincarnation, when they don’t really. But if there’s an NDE speaker or channel that promotes reincarnation, you know you’re not going to get good information from that channel.
OffTheLeftEye is sponsored by the Swedenborg Foundation. It does have a lot of good content.
Hi sparky480,
One more thing in response to this statement of yours:
Aside from appealing to people who have a physical-minded and materialistic view of life, reincarnation also appeals to people who want to feel that they are in control of their own life.
It is hard for people who are victims of this or that outrage, such as incurable disease or the murder of a loved one or rape or being terrorized by criminal gangs to feel that their life is out of their control, and that they are helpless in the hands of evil forces. Lacking a better explanation, some people take comfort in the idea that they are not victims, but rather chose to have these things happen to them for some spiritual purpose.
Unfortunately, this leads to all sorts of false conclusions, including the victim-blaming and denial of the reality of evil mentioned in your original comment and my reply. But for some people, it’s all they’ve got.
The reality is that evil is real, and many people are the innocent victims of it.
However, the greater reality is that spiritually we do control our own fate. When bad things happen to us, we can become bitter, or vindictive, or hopeless. Or we can take them as challenges to rise above, and resistance against which to develop our spiritual strength and compassion. We may not be able to choose and control all of our physical circumstances. But we can choose how to respond to them, and what their long-term effect on our spirit will be.
Beyond that, I believe that we are ultimately meant to recognize that we don’t control our own life and fate. Rather, we are meant to recognize that God is the one who is in control of everything, and that if we yield our will to God’s will, then even if we must walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we need fear no evil, because God will lead us through it to greater things.
We still must act as though our life is in our own hands. Otherwise we won’t keep putting one foot in front of another on the path of life.
But inwardly, if we recognize that everything we have, and everything we are, is really a gift from God, including the very freedom and rationality that gives us the ability to make these choices about how to direct our life, then we can gain an inner peace that reincarnation and other materialistic beliefs can never give us. We can know that all things are in God’s hands, and that if we do our best to follow God in our life, God will indeed show us the path of life.
See also the last section in this article:
God, Forgiveness, Freedom, and Hell – Part 1
Hi Lee,
I found your article very interesting and thought- provoking. However I don’t think it addresses two important issues, which in my opinion are not addressed by the Swedenborgian view.
1-if this life Is a one and only chance to make a choice between good and evil, it does not seem fair that people are born with such different inborn proclivities to make the choice. Although we are all born with selfish tendencies, it Is clear that people differ widely in this respect (There are children who seem More ‘good-natured’ than others.)
2-the empirical, scientific evidence giving support to the reincarnation hypothesis is not only based on having alleged memories of a previous life.There Is now a masssive body of research of children who in addition to providing verifiable statements regarding the life of a particular deceased individual, exhibit birth-marks or even body deformities which seem to correspond with the location of injuries which caused the death of the person the child remembers having been (please refer to the extensive research of Dr. Ian Stevenson, and Dr. Jim Tucker at Virginia University). I would love to hear your views on this kind of body-based evidence suggestive of reincarnation.
Hi Mauricio,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and the points you raise in it. I’m glad you enjoyed the article!
About your first point, as it turns out, this was the main subject of one of the earliest articles on this blog, which I wrote in response to a reader’s question:
Can Gang Members Go to Heaven? (Is Life Fair?)
I invite you to read the entire article for the full version. Here is the short version of the relevant points:
In short, no one has any better or worse shot at heaven than anyone else. Perhaps our earthly situation might influence what part of heaven we’ll live in. But as to whether we’ll end up in heaven or in hell, that is entirely based on our own freely made choices within whatever conditions and constraints we may be living with. And no matter where we make our home in heaven, we will have a very happy life there—as happy as we can possibly imagine.
For a much fuller explanation of these points, please do read the linked article.
Hi Mauricio,
About birth marks and reincarnation, I’m no expert, but I’ve read articles on both sides of that question. Some say it’s incontrovertible evidence of reincarnation. Others say it’s a weak and flimsy argument that doesn’t stand up to real scientific analysis. So it appears to me that the jury is still out on this.
However, even if there are correlations between birth marks and deformities of newly born infants and the accidents or injuries of people who lived in the past, the principle still holds that correlation does not imply causation.
Supporters of reincarnation take such correlations (if they are real) as proof of reincarnation.
However, an equally plausible explanation would be that the spirits of people who had particular injuries are drawn to infants who have corresponding birthmarks, and vice versa. After all, from a Swedenborgian point of view, we are associated with angels and spirits who have something in common with us. Perhaps correlated physical injuries and marks are enough to draw two spirits together—the spirit of the infant and the spirit of the deceased person.
From a Swedenborgian perspective, it is jumping to conclusions to say that since there is some connection between our soul and the soul of a person who lived long ago, that must mean that we are a reincarnation of that person. If two people in this world are drawn together by common experiences or common injuries, we wouldn’t say that they are reincarnations of each other. So why should we conclude that two spirits, one still living in a physical body and one living in the spiritual realm, that are drawn together by some such commonality means that one is the reincarnation of the other?
In short, even if there is a correlation between birth marks and the injuries of deceased persons (which I doubt), this still does not prove that reincarnation is real. It only shows that there is some spiritual connection between the two different spirits, just as connections and friendships here on earth are connections between two different spirits that are currently inhabiting physical bodies.
I think there’s a New Age-ish belief that one must endure every form of suffering there is (via reincarnation) to “learn life’s lessons”, or otherwise one is “weaker” or something like that.
I think that is BS. I think real growth comes from moral development, and one does not always have to suffer to achieve that.
(also such a belief sounds horrific)
Hi K,
I agree. It’s a horrendous and very depressing belief. Fortunately, it is a false belief.
We did not get “sent here” to “learn things.” God did not send out souls from God’s being in order to gain experiences. God is omniscient. That means God already knows everything, and has no need to learn anything.
Though learning is part of what we do here on earth, our primary purpose is not leaning, but love. We are beings God created so that God would have someone to love, who could love God in return. In relation to each other, our job is to learn to love one another as God has loved us. This is why Jesus put love for God and love for the neighbor at the top of the list of God’s messages to us in the Bible.
We are not little flakes chipped off of God that will eventually go back into the crusher and be recycled into God again. Yes, we are expressions of God. But each one of us is a brand new expression of God from our conception. God is infinite. There is no limit to the number of souls that can be expressive of one or another aspect of God.
We are also not God, but beings distinct from God. God is infinite. We are finite. This means that even though we do come from God, we are not God, and we will never become God. We will always be beings distinct from God, who can be in a relationship with God, and with one another.
Neither God nor we have some inbuilt need to experience suffering in order to “gain full experience” or “become tough.” Suffering has a specific function, which is to break us from our attachments to our evil desires and our false beliefs.
Evil and falsity inevitably lead to pain and suffering. Evil is evil precisely because it hurts people (not to mention animals, plants, and the rest of Creation). When we indulge in our evil desires, guided by our false beliefs, the hurtful and painful consequences of our actions will inevitably come back to hurt both ourselves and others. That is the primary source of our suffering.
If we notice that our actions and beliefs are leading to pain and suffering rather than to happiness and joy, that can clue us in that something is wrong with our desires and beliefs. Then it becomes our job to fix those faulty desires and beliefs—or more accurately, to replace them with good desires and true beliefs, and the good actions that flow from them.
We are free not to do that, of course. But if, through the experience of suffering, we turn our life around to face toward God instead of away from God during our lifetime on earth, then the suffering will have done its job, and we can leave it behind forever.
An argument in favor of reincarnation put forward by a so-called past life regression therapist goes like this:
“Going to Heaven or Hell for ETERNITY does not make any sense to me – how would a soul learn and expand its experience if it is only allowed to have one human life and judged on the basis of this one take only?”
I think that implies that Heaven is static with no opportunity for growth or learning there, which is not the case in New Church Heaven. And to me, learning in the reincarnationist worldview seems to be doublespeak for suffering.
PS: source of quote:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-more-realistic-reincarnation-or-going-to-heaven
Hi K,
Right. This idea seems to be based on the belief that heaven is an empty, wispy place where you can’t “experience” anything. This is a common belief among people who think materialistically. And as I have said many times, reincarnation is a materialistic corruption of the concept of spiritual rebirth. It is adapted to the minds of people who think materialistically. These are the very same people who think that the spiritual realms are an empty place where you just float around in the ether.
In reality, the spiritual world is far more vivid, real, varied, and detailed than the physical world. In reality, we learn much more rapidly and deeply in the spiritual world than we do here on earth. Reincarnation would actually slow down our learning process. It would send us back into a much darker, dimmer world. Yes, we would experience more suffering. But suffering is not learning. Suffering is a result of human evil, and a means by which we can be led to embrace a more spiritual focus.
Reincarnationists such as this one completely miss the point of our lifetime on earth. Yes, we do learn things here. But the primary purpose of a physical lifetime is not learning. Just as the purpose of our time in the womb before birth is to form us into a physical being capable of living in the world, the purpose of our lifetime on earth is to form our character as a human being, meaning forming our spiritual self, so that we are capable of living in the spiritual world.
Once our character is formed and we move on to the spiritual world, assuming we have chosen heaven, we will immediately became far wiser than we ever were on earth. We will also learn new things more rapidly and fully than we ever could on earth. This will then continue to eternity. Since God is infinite, and is the source of everything, there will be no end to the new things we can learn, no matter how many thousands or millions or trillions of years we may live.
In short, the idea that we must come back to earth to experience and learn new things is the exact opposite of the truth.
Somewhere in the previous comments, you ask “Which life would you prefer?” (ethereal or tangible). I think I would like an afterlife that can offer both: being in an ethereal state sometimes, and tangible otherwise.
But whatever any afterlife holds, I really hope there is no reincarnation either way. Reincarnating is almost as bad as the Protestant and Catholic idea of hell.
Hi K,
Reincarnation does not happen. Full stop.
About being in an ethereal state, I presume you’ve had times when you are lost in contemplation or in a daydream, and the world around you, not to mention your own body, ceased to exist for you while you were in that state of mind. This could be considered an “ethereal state.” And it is just as possible for angels as it is for us here on earth, if not more so.
Hi Lee,
I remember watching a video it was probably my first ever video being introduced to afterlife info, it was a panel discussion from the University of Virginia (I think, but they even have their own Youtube Channel as well) something like International Study for Near Death Experiences conferences. I remember watching back in like 2018 (there was also a clip regarding NDEs and reincarnation from Sam Parnia on the Today Show with Megan Kelly at the time), but they have these conferences every year and with panels like from the University of Virginia with Dr Ian Stevenson, Dr Bruce Greyson and others talking on the subject along with the host was an actor named John Cleese. But they pretty much unanimously agree that reincarnation is an absolute fact (of course along with New Age) along with some pretty wispy concepts and even materialistic concepts and debunking for instance personality disorders. Like for example how Dr. Stevenson studies reincarnation in the United States from people and children that grow up either in a Christian environment or have no prior knowledge of reincarnation like in a rural southern town and he says how people have birthmarks from past lives and have all the correct memories that no one else could have known or have a personality of someone else and the info is all correct like for example two siblings share a birthmark and memories of sharing a past life together as bank robbers and got shot and now share the same markings and memories along with personality which they decided to now be brother and sister in this lifetime where before they were husband and wife? (I guess this happens like mothers and daughters or friends or anyone switch rolls and visa versa with other people and roles) Like I remember reading how the case that stood out to him most was a case in India where a girl died and she said she was just free floating consciousness and she saw where her family buried her body by a tree and she describes the reincarnation process and when growing up I guess she had the same personality as her past life and correctly described the scene she saw when floating around and the location of the body. There are others as well like Doctors who study Spiritual Transformation Experienced like people under hypnosis the person hypnotizing them can say you have a burn mark on your leg and suddenly it starts to appear showing how it’s all in the brain? Or studies on NDEs say that people have to go in front of elders or a “control room” like with TV screens to watch their life review or get permission to go on “further” along with “machines that can take you back to anytime time period and experience it like it’s happening in realtime” this NDE experiencer John Davis (the video is an OTLE video entitled What Happens When We Die? What Is Heaven Like? NDE Interview With John Davis Off The Left Eye, he may not say it in this one but he does). But there are other associations as well like TCCHE conference, NDERF, ISANDS (something like that) like with Dr. P.M.H Atwater in which her research along with the others say we become orbs and disappear. Or so called “Akashic Records” of all souls and past present future being in this so called “library” and saying we get readsorbed back into the collective consciousness and if we want to experience being an individual again or relationships with our loved ones we must reincarnate as a new person wiped of our past.” There is another professor/doctor from London I forgot his name but he has a whole following and does TED talks about NDEs and the map he created from them and how we basically become orbs and have to reincarnate if we want physicality again because we get the reabsorbed back into the universe.
But I also want to include these statements as well of how, “He’s growing up so fast. He’s only a few years away from the age I first saw him a couple years ago, just months before he was born, during an out-of-body experience, if that makes any sense lol …existence transcends linear, human-understood temporal boundaries”
“PS I bumped into my unborn son during another astral projection experience yesterday morning, where I met his guardian; think Cylon model Number Six from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series and you’ll have a good read on what she looked like…”
“After initially dowsing the four corners of the UK, Norfolk kept coming up the strongest. I then started searching properties, and the first property I loved had a full size labyrinth dug into it’s garden. This was a very significant sign for me, because we first met in the middle of a labyrinth in the countryside.
We then went to view a few properties in the area, and the home we both instantly fell in love with, had a bit of story.
The estate agent told us that the property had been sitting empty since the beginning of lockdown in March. And that two other couples had viewed and submitted applications to rent the property in that time, but for various reasons, both couples pulled out last minute. We both looked at each other knowingly. In our hearts we knew the Universe had held this house in grace for us.
It’s a beautiful 5 bedroom farmhouse with 3 acres of land covered by woods, two large ornamental ponds, no neighbours within a quarter mile, and only a half mile walk to the sea.
And for anyone who does not yet know the news, Sky is almost 7-months pregnant with a baby boy for which there’s a story there too, and not one that involves birds and bees lol…
Two months before we learned the news, I was talking on the phone to a friend, who is an amazing psychic. As we were hanging up, he said, “btw, your young son says hello from the astral”. I was like, “my son is 21 and lives on the earth plane lol”. I then laughed it off and forgot all about it. Then, a month later, I was consciously out-of-body on the astral planes, in a beautiful garden, when a young boy of around 5 walked over to me. He said, “hi daddy, my name is **** I’ll see you and mummy soon”.
But because we had agreed not to have any kids, I again brushed it off. It was then one month later when we found out the news.
I’ve since met the lad in another astral projection experience, as well as having him come to me in a dream, where he indicated that he shared a connection with my 21-year old son.
I’m in total awe of any brave souls coming into the earth plane at this point in time, but I have no doubt they come with great purpose. I also have no doubt that those of us currently on the earth plane, will continue to stand up in love to ensure they have a world worth growing up in, so thank you my dear friends.”
I just wanted to ask you about these subjects. I have a few other questions as well but I’ll just start with these for now lol. But like you said in your article above it makes so much more sense that spirits are sharing their information and thoughts and memories in us since after all, all thought is spiritual! But what about birthmarks? And what you said really hits the nail on the head as well (along with everything else) about how it robs us from our eternal humanity to freely choose and continue our one life in the afterlife with our loved ones. It just doesn’t feel right, when hearing stuff like this it makes me anxious and depressed that we are forced on this so called reincarnation path than anything. I wonder why people are so pushy with stuff like this.
Thank you kindly Lee
Hi Sam,
Well . . . now that you’ve gone all the way back to the beginning, will that be the end of it? 😀
But seriously. You know, when Raymond Moody’s Life After Life first came out in the 1970s, it wasn’t all about reincarnation. Unfortunately, most Christians rejected NDEs because they didn’t fit their theology about some future Last Judgment and all that, whereas the New Agers embraced NDEs, and started pulling the whole thing in their direction, including injecting reincarnation into it, as they do with everything they touch. This, I think, is how NDEs got so strongly connected to reincarnation. But that’s not how it was from the beginning.
I’m not sure I have a lot more to say in response to these quotes than I’ve already said before. I’m skeptical of the birthmarks thing. But even if there is something to it, it could still simply be the influence of other people’s spirits on a person while in utero. However, I suspect it’s just a lot of urban legends that have gotten turned into “evidence.” Or just coincidences that happen from time to time.
And once again, experiences in the spiritual world are not reliable sources of information, especially when those experiences are brief ones that don’t give the person time to really get oriented and figure out how the spiritual world works. Swedenborg is the only person who really had sufficient time in the spiritual world while still living in this one to get fully oriented there, and bring back reliable reports.
Plus, Swedenborg was called by the Lord himself, commissioned to provide a new revelation of spiritual truth to the world, and guided by the Lord all along the way. This protected him from much of the human error and infection from existing religious beliefs that tend to cloud the experiences of NDEers, astral travelers, and so on who have brief experiences in the spiritual world.
For me, the bottom line is that I trust Swedenborg’s extensive experience in the spiritual world, having not just angels but the Lord as his guide, far more than I trust the reports of random people who have had brief experiences in the spiritual world.
This is not to say that the reports of NDEers are useless. They do confirm many of the things Swedenborg wrote about the spiritual world—such as the NDEer in the OTLE video you linked. But when it comes to interpreting the meaning of what people see there, Swedenborg is so far ahead of everyone else that there’s just no comparison.
Oh, and no one needs to be a “brave soul” to come into the world at this time.
There’s a myth floating around, fed and watered by the clickbait ambulance-chasing media, that we’re living in terrible, chaotic, dangerous times. The reality is that overall, people today are living far better, happier, and more physically and financially secure lives than any generation of people ever has at any time in the past, going all the way back to the beginnings of human history. Sure, there are still areas of extreme poverty in the world, and there are still wars and rumors of war. But if I believed that reincarnation is real, and I were given the choice to be born into any time up to the present, hands-down I would choose the present over any past time in history.
It’s just that we get so used to our comfortable lives that we take it all for granted. We don’t realize that if we were living even 100 years ago, we would not be anywhere near as well-off as we are today. And if it were 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, life truly would have been brutish and short compared to what we enjoy today.
This business of having to be a “brave soul” to be born into today’s world just shows that this person really doesn’t know much about human history, where we’ve been as a race, and how much progress we’ve made.
Hi Lee,
Full circle moment! lol I try to read and reference the resources that I have first but sometimes I’m curious and just like to ask lol.
But it’s really true through we are living in a much better time than any in the past regarding hardships. And it’s interesting to think that if more Christians from the begging had Swedenborg’s books that todays “studies” would be much different than today given how the New Agers took the whole spiritual experiences by the reins and ran with it that it has infected everything, even to professors at universities. Incidentally, that’s how I got into New Age was because looking up things about the afterlife majority of the Christian websites said we sleep until the resurrection or that all spiritual experiences are the devil. Glad to have found Swedenborg and true spiritual knowledge!
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
The New Age movement has moved into the vacuum created by the corrupted and destroyed Christian Church. Unfortunately, it has substituted other false ideas for the false ideas of so-called Christianity. But it’s a more recent movement than Christianity, so it touches on some of the popular attitudes and ideas of people today, and is hence more attractive to many ordinary people today.
Hi Lee,
That makes a lot of sense regarding on how it touches on some of the popular attitudes and ideas of people today which is why there is so much quantum computer and reincarnation woo woo and such. But it also reminds me how in the New Age field all the books and experiences in general are taken very literally which is the same exact as false Christianity whereas the Bible as its suppose to be understood and as Swedenborg explains it how it’s suppose to be understood spiritually with correspondence which is entirely missing from both the literal Christians and the New Age field. So like for example if someone saw a three headed dragon during their spiritual experience, in the New Age field they take that literally and will say that there are dragons in the afterlife when in actuality that is a reflection of our spiritual state that’s why we are seeing that the dragon is a correspondence not an actual dragon. So New Age is literally just a repackaged form of false literal Christianity using today’s words instead of ancient times words.
I even remember someone in the New Age field who does OBEs who was criticizing Swedenborg and those who like Swedenborg because they said Swedenborg was obviously wrong because he said there are holes in the ground and that’s how you can get to Hell or where devils live, something along those lines which is completely wrong and again taken literally. Which seems like a major problem that there isn’t enough knowledge on correspondence.
Hopefully that makes sense lol.
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
It’s a good insight about New Age thought. It takes a lot of things literally that should be taken spiritually, and vice versa.
Overall, there isn’t any real core structure of doctrine, or spiritual understanding, in the New Age movement. It’s an eclectic collection of mostly Eastern ideas pulled from here and there, and thrown together in a way that makes sense to particular New Age teachers. This creates a smorgasbord of different beliefs that is appealing to some people who don’t have a sense of the universe being a clear, structured, law-abiding place. But it comes up short when it comes to gaining a real, solid, and practical grasp of how things work for us humans, both materially and spiritually. A lot of it is just fuzzy, mushy thinking that sounds good but isn’t very helpful when the going gets tough.
About the holes in the ground leading to hell, was this New Age person interpreting it as actual, physical holes in the physical ground here on this physical planet earth? If so, then yes, he’s completely missed the point. The holes in the ground are in the spiritual world. They are like cave entrances here on earth, and they are real in the spiritual world, but they are also correspondential representations of an evil person’s descent into darkness and evil because of the evil in his or her own heart.
As for dragons being real in the spiritual world, yes, they are, but again, they are not “objectively” real, but rather, are real expressions of the horrendously false ideas of people who believe false doctrines such as justification by faith alone because it serves as an excuse not to live a good, loving, and useful life, or in biblical terms, not to “do good works.” The dragons in hell are real. If they breathe fire on you, it will burn you. But they are real because they express the real desires and thoughts of the people in hell, which are evil and false.
It is also good to be careful even about the idea that we are to understand the Bible spiritually, not literally. In general, this is true, in that we are to look for spiritual truth in the Bible, not for truth about physical and historical things such as how the earth was created and how old it is. However, Swedenborg is also careful to say that basic Christian teachings are to be taken from the literal sense of the Bible, and supported by it.
The key, essential teachings of Christianity are stated plainly in the literal meaning, or words, of the Bible so that anyone who reads the Bible who is truly looking for understanding of how to live a life that leads to salvation and heaven, and whose mind is not full of false doctrines from the false Christianity of today, can find plain words there that teach what we are to believe, do, and not do in order to be saved and go to heaven.
A simple way to think of it is that the whole Bible has a spiritual meaning, but some of it is meant to be taken literally also. It’s not always easy to tell which is which. But certainly Jesus meant us to take the two Great Commandments literally, not just spiritually. These are spiritual teachings expressed in the plain literal words of the Bible. And there are many others, such as that if we want to be saved, we must repent from our sins and do good deeds instead of evil ones. And so on.
I could say more, but that’s enough for now. What Swedenborg offers us, unlike the New Age, is a clear and consistent way of understanding God, the Bible, the afterlife, and how we are to believe and live in order to live a good life that leads to an eternity in the joyful community of heaven with God and our neighbors.
Hi Lee,
Very well summed up and really hits all the major points and other points I missed regarding how there are things that are taken literally as well. But just as the false Christianity needs to be broken up for real Christianity to bloom, I think the same about the New Age community as well since the negatives out weights any pros they brought along just like the wrong teachings of reincarnation and the many people banking on “I’ll just come back and try again if I screw up” type of mentality instead of thinking our actions have consequences that will be a part of our lives journey for eternity.
And regarding holes in the ground that they cut on Swedenborg about, they said about holes around physical earth. (Even though some woo woo people actually used Swedenborg’s writings to say there are “wormholes” around earth that you can go “to and from” other “dimensions” lol no joke!
But regarding that same person they said regarding how Swedenborg’s experiences are wrong because what we see in the afterlife are all projections so nothing is real it’s just our mind “overlaying”. This is the full quote:
“Suddenly, I came to this spot there was this cave entrance leading to this subterranean world but there was something strange about this cave entrance and I clocked it I thought that’s not really a cave at all it’s just my mind is interpreting there’s actually a vortex energy, taking place. It’s one of those sort of energy tunnels that are reported in near death experiences. These energy tunnels sort of open up between these different dimensional layers to drop you into other points of reality. I was witnessing one of these energy tunnels, forming but my mind didn’t like it very much that it was a vortex on the ground so it again as we were talking about earlier about the projection that takes place while out of body the dream type
elements I was creating my mind was creating the overlay that was a cave entrance but yet it was a vortex.
So I thought ok I’m going to go with my mind and I started walking down into it and then suddenly I shifted and I was on another level I can sense I just dropped down some frequencies I was now standing in what seemed like a counterpart for the worst ghetto on physical earth.”
But like you said and Swedenborg the afterlife is real especially Heaven and not some place where it’s some binary code of ones and zeros and we are just projecting “physicality” (which people said physicality is a set of equations that quantum science supports that they’re able to create physicality) which there is another guy named Robert Bruce which has books filled with thousands and thousands of pages it’s crazy which says exactly that how everything is like a “grid” sorta reminds me like the movie “Tron”. Which then snowballs out that our loved ones aren’t real and on and on.
Thank you Lee
[…] 来源：https://leewoof.org/2014/03/07/the-bible-emanuel-swedenborg-and-reincarnation/ […]
A recurring theme in so-called New Age is that people are told from so-called spirit guides and even God that life is about “learning life’s lessons” and reincarnating to “learn life’s lessons” and that one is duped (or in their words, helped) by “spirit guides” to plan another life in the “school of hard knocks” that is an Earth life. Assuming they are not just making stuff up and such “revelations” are supernatural, where do they come from in the New Church view? Evil spirits? Misguided inhabitants of the World of Spirits?’
PS: Happy New Year!
Hi K,
Happy New Year!
These spirit guides aren’t necessarily nefarious, lying beings, as fundamentalist Christians say. They might be, especially if they are leading people toward bad and destructive actions. But if it’s about beliefs, another possibility is that angels or good spirits are connecting to people’s already existing beliefs, or to beliefs that they incline to, and using them to guide the person toward good motives and actions.
As for those specific beliefs, reincarnation is false, but many people believe it. And in people who have good hearts, or are at least amenable to going in a good direction, a belief in reincarnation can be used to lead them in a good direction. For example, the desire to avoid yet another incarnation and move on to nirvana, or whatever is believed to come once the cycle of incarnation is broken, can be used to motivate people to live a good and enlightened life in this incarnation (as they see it). And that’s precisely what angels and good spirits will do, if they can, with people who hold to the common but mistaken belief in reincarnation.
And learning life’s lessons is certainly not a bad thing. If people are learning lessons from life, and their heart is good, then they will be applying those lessons to making themselves into better, more thoughtful, and more loving people. That’s a good thing. Learning life’s lessons isn’t the ultimate purpose of life. But it is a stepping stone along the way. It is very amenable to being used by angels and good spirits to lead people toward good motives and actions, which are much closer to the actual purpose of life. In general, the purpose of this life is to grow into an angel of heaven. Learning life’s lessons is an essential part of doing that.
According to Swedenborg, angels don’t try to change people’s beliefs, even if those beliefs are mistaken. In fact, they will even defend mistaken beliefs if those beliefs are sincerely held and are part of a person’s faith and guide to life. It’s not so much that they’re defending the false beliefs themselves. They are defending the integrity of the person who holds them against bad people or evil spirits who desire to use the person’s false beliefs to tear him or her down. Angels, by contrast, will use those same false beliefs to lead a person toward good motives and good actions of love and service to God and their fellow human beings.
Another relevant principle Swedenborg states is that there is falsity that comes from evil, and there is falsity that does not come from evil. Falsity that comes from evil consists of false ideas that we adopt in order to excuse and justify our evil desires and actions. This type of falsity is truly destructive, and cannot be bent toward good.
By contrast, falsity that does not come from evil consists of false ideas that people innocently believe, thinking them to be true because that’s what they’ve been taught is the truth. This falsity can be bent toward good because it is not the person’s intent to believe false things, nor is the person using those false things to justify bad motives and selfish and greedy actions. For such a person, this falsity serves as truth. And angels treat it as truth, even though they know it is false, because it is part of the “toolbox” of that person’s beliefs that can be used to lead him or her toward what is good.
So when “spirit guides” tell people things that are partial or lower-level truth, or that are actually false, it’s not necessarily from a desire to deceive and mislead.
It could be that. There certainly are people who believe they are being guided by the Holy Spirit, or by “spirit guides,” who do horrendous things from motives of greed and a desire to dominate people. Just because someone says something came from the Holy Spirit, or from a spirit guide, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is true, or that it came from heaven or from God. As Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20).
But it could also be angels or good spirits using people’s existing beliefs, or beliefs that they tend toward due to their character, culture, and environment, to lead them toward good motives and a good life of love and service to their fellow human beings. If that is the case, then fighting against their beliefs and trying to convince them that they’re wrong is actually working against God and the angels.
That’s why, if I’m in conversation with someone who has beliefs that I know are false, but it’s clear that they sincerely believe them, and that for them, they are part of the faith that keeps them on the strait and narrow path, if I have my wits about me I’ll back off and politely end the conversation. In that instance, no good, but only harm, will come from attempting to convince them that their beliefs are mistaken. Better to wait until people are questioning their own beliefs, and their faith is faltering, to offer them a better and truer understanding of God, spirit, and life.
People must be left free in mind and spirit for the sake of their spiritual rebirth and eternal life. Mistaken beliefs can and will be corrected in the afterlife before people move on to heaven, in the third stage after death—the stage of instruction—if not before. Bad ideas can be corrected later. A bad life flowing from a bad heart cannot. That’s why angels focus, not on the truth or falsity of people’s beliefs, but on the state of their heart, meaning on their motives and desires, and on their actions.
What about the experiences (such as NDEs or OBEs or so-called past life regression therapy) where people experience “life between lives” and the process of beginning a new life? Assuming such are not just made up or hallucinations, how do they arise in New Church thought?
As for “life lessons” in New Age reincarnationist thought, to me such seems more like endless suffering to “pay” for past actions (with a BS karmic debt), usually with no memory of what one even did in any imaginary past lives. Suffering over and over while trapped in a meat prison.
For example, I have heard of the horrifying belief that if someone commits suicide to escape a crappy life, they are then forced back into a life that is just as miserable (or even worse), to “learn the life lesson”. And such a belief also claims there can be a “suicide trap” or “suicide loop” where if they suicide again, the cycle repeats, possibly for many, many lives.
And every time a life is lived in reincarnationist New Age thought, there is more “karmic debt” and “life lessons”, meaning that reincarnation could never end in New Age reincarnationist thought. I even read the belief that the so-called nirvana state is temporary, and like being in a hot tub, one will tire of it eventually and “want” to go back to reincarnating (yes that was the analogy used).
PS: I think in the “Journey of Souls” series of books by Micheal Newton (IIRC), there is a so-called council of elders described who interview and judge souls (even the clothing and medallions they wear are described). And in the “between-life” described in those books, people are manipulated into being reincarnated. Supposedly, such experiences came from so-called past life regression hypnosis.
By the way, that New Age reincarnationist worldview also fits with Gnostic beliefs: all the reincarnation and manipulation into reincarnation being a trap by the forces of the demiurge to feed off of the suffering of those trapped in the illusion of the physical, preventing them from returning to pleroma and the Monad.
Hi K,
There’s a general system of belief that expresses itself in particular forms. Gnosticism is a parallel to the Eastern strain of thought in which this life is about learning lessons and gaining enlightenment as a means of escape from the physical realm, which is seen as a realm of illusion. This view fits generally into the “faith alone” framework in which “faith,” or belief, is the important thing. If you have faith, or correct belief, or enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it, then you are “saved,” in whatever form “salvation” takes.
This is in contrast to the overall Christian framework, including Swedenborgian Christianity, in which the physical world is not an illusion, but a realm of choice and preparation for eternal life. The challenges, pain, and suffering we experience here are not punishment for our wrongs (though there is an element of that), nor are they the work of some bumbling or malevolent entity such as the Demiurge. Rather, they are the means by which, if we choose to do so, we leave behind the evil, false, selfish, and greedy parts of ourselves and become a being who loves God and the neighbor, aka an angel of heaven.
Hi K,
Of course, if taken literally, all of that stuff is false. There is no reincarnation at all, let alone an endless loop or a suicide trap. And “nirvana” (AKA heaven) is not temporary, but permanent for those who go there.
Really, all of this is about our spiritual states and stages, not about literal bodily reincarnation. Psychologically and spiritually, we certainly can get into negative feedback loops that just keep going and going for a long time. But that is within this life. And if we choose hell, then it is an endless loop because our selfish and greedy desires keep on bringing pain and suffering upon us in the form of retribution and punishment by other evil spirits in hell. In that case, though, it is chosen, because we love indulging in our evil desires, and consider the blowback an acceptable price to pay for the pleasure we get from indulging those desires, to the extent that it’s possible to indulge them in hell (such as, we can’t do any harm to angels, as we would love to do).
But back to the point, all those awful scenarios serve the same purpose in Eastern and New Age belief that eternal conscious torment in hell serves in low-level fundamentalist Christian belief: it’s meant to scare sinners into repentance. And for people at that low level, it can be effective. That’s why such beliefs are allowed, even though they’re false.
In reality, we do not have to pay for any of our past sins, except in the form of their repercussions in our life. After death, the slate is wiped clean. But if we keep on doing the same things, we’ll keep bringing their consequences down upon our own head.
As far as where those experiences of life regression and life between lives, if they’re not entirely fabricated spiritual experiences, which is perfectly possible, then, as Swedenborg says, they involve other spirits’ memories being infused into ours so that we think their life on earth was our own past life, when really it’s the other spirit’s life on earth. And life between lives can be easily generated simply by creating or giving an experience of living for a time in the world of spirits, which has a vast landscape and can provide any kind of environment and mood you please.
Again, this isn’t necessarily some nefarious thing—though it could be in particular cases. But in many cases, it may well be good spirits or even angels giving people experiences that affirm their existing beliefs so that they will continue on a spiritual path that is likely to carry them toward a good heart and a good life.
Hi K,
Oh, and about “life lessons,” it’s not about payback for past misdeeds. It’s about learning from our mistakes. And also, in a positive sense, about gaining new insights and putting them into practice in our life.
So where do NDEs and regression therapy and maybe OBEs come from, if they show life between lives as well as the process of beginning reincarnation from the other side, if such experiences are not mere hallucinations or made up, in New Church belief?
Hi K,
As I think you afterwards noticed, I responded to that question a little farther down in this comment.
PS: I didn’t read that small part where you answered the question already there. So it would be the same kind of simulation like Swedenborg describes people going to ideal Heavens experienced?
Hi K,
Yes, probably similar. It’s very easy to stage experiences in the spiritual world. Again, it’s not necessarily for nefarious purposes. In the case of people being allowed to try out their conception of heaven, the purpose is to teach through experience. In the case of past life regressions, life between life experiences, and so on, it may be to strengthen the beliefs people have that are what they have available to turn to in moving forward on their path of spiritual rebirth.
About the suicide trap or loop thing, the claim I read was that if someone with mental illness kills themself, they’re penalized with living the same sort of life with mental illness or an even worse life with worse mental illness, which can result in endless lives of unbearable mental illness that the victim keeps trying to suicide to get out of, not knowing of the loop in each life because people in mortality cannot remember any past lives.
So for example, if that claim were true, if someone is on the autism spectrum and lives a life that is miserable to them, and if they off themselves to escape it, they are punished by karmic forces or that council of elders by being reborn as autistic, maybe even lower functioning and worse off than in the previous life.
Aside from such a belief being rather insulting to those with mental disabilities, it is rather punitive and makes life seem like a prison, rather than a school.
PS: I think I read from the same source that people who suicide are also penalized by losing the ability to be sensitive to the supernatural.
Hi K,
It’s a horrible belief. Fortunately, it’s not true.
Hello,
I have been reading about Swedenborg recently and enjoyed your post very much, however I have a few questions.
In an earlier response you said how animal consciousness can cease to exist however human souls are eternal, whether the human likes it or doesn’t. Like many I also detest the idea of reincarnation, but I also detest the idea of spending an eternity in a Heaven or Hell that is even more enhanced than this one. My dream or ideal afterlife would be permanent cessation of consciousness, basically annihilation or cessation of mental activity. I understand that it would be up to God whether or not I can cease to exist, but it is something I truly desired and asked him, if I could, would He grant it? As a form of mercy maybe?
I also understand based on your other posts that you can spend the afterlife with loved ones, writing books, playing sports, etc. and you technically never get bored. But even if boredom is out of the question and it really is an idyllic paradise, I think I still prefer eternal cessation of being.
What are your thoughts? Thank you for this wonderful read!
Hi L,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and question. Sorry about the disappearing message. It got put into the spam folder. I had to fish it out from there.
The short answer to your question is: Yes, you could ask God to end your existence, but if you do, the answer will be “No.”
However, by the time you get to heaven (assuming that’s what you choose here on earth), you’ll be enjoying yourself so much that you won’t even ask the question, because you won’t want to cease to exist. Even if you choose hell, you’ll still have your enjoyments, and you won’t want to stop having them.
As I said to you in our discussion elsewhere, we don’t “live forever” in a temporal sense of time just going on and on and on forever. In the spiritual world, there is no time. Yes, there is a passage of events. But angels (and evil spirits) live in an eternal present. Though the Bible does use the term “live forever,” it also talks about “eternal life,” which is more exactly what angels experience. They are living in eternity, always in the present moment, always doing and experiencing exactly what they most love and want to do and experience in that present moment.
If you think of life in heaven (or hell) as just more of the same thing that you’re experiencing here, then I can see that you might not want that to go on forever. This life can get boring and tedious. But that’s not how it is in the spiritual world. Yes, you go on doing things that are similar to what you did here, talking to friends, going out for a run, working at a job, making love with your partner in marriage, and so on. But the experience of it is at a whole different level than it is here. There is no way you could find it tedious and boring. It is all tremendously enjoyable from your inmost soul right out to your physical senses. The idea of not experiencing that anymore would feel horrendous to you.
I know that might be hard to believe during you life here in the material world. Probably you will just have to experience the spiritual world for yourself before you will really know and understand what I am saying to you here. But you will experience it, and all thoughts of wanting your existence to come to an end will themselves come to an end.
If you really do manage to hold onto that desire even into the spiritual world, then yes, of course you could ask God. But God already sees your entire life from its beginning to eternity. If God had not known that you would have a life that you love and enjoy, God wouldn’t have created you in the first place.
It’s not reasonable to think that in your particular case, God made a mistake, and your eternal life will be a real drag. No, God knows and sees the tremendously joyful and exciting life you will have in heaven, and God will not take that away from you because you, in your limited experience and vision, think that you would not enjoy eternity.
So once again, the answer is no, you can’t cease to exist. That’s not because God is going to force you to exist against your will. It’s because God already knows the kind of happiness you will have in heaven, and God is not going to take that away from you due to your own short-sightedness and lack of understanding of what heaven is really like.
That would be like a father seeing his teenage son struggling and wanting to end his life, and saying, “Go ahead and do it!” or even killing his son himself, when he knows that his son is a good and talented person who will have a good adult life if he can just make it through this rough patch. No decent father would kill his own son who is having a rough time and doesn’t see the good life that awaits beyond the current dark section on his path of life.
Hi Lee,
As per our prior communications, I am moving my basic question to this thread for response as it is on this topic.
Also, as previously noted, I could describe myself as a recovering reincarnationist. However, I am first and foremost a Christian. I became a Christian reincarnationist as a means of overcoming the seeming horror and cruelty (as it seemed to me) of much of Christian eschatology.
However, though I started to write a book on the topic, I was not myself totally convinced. What belief I had has been steadily eroded by (1) some of my initial readings in Spiritualism, and (2) even more so by my more recent readings in the Swedenborgian context. Plus, my project was (admittedly) always an uphill battle against the entire history of Christianity as well as the Biblical witness.
Nonetheless, I find one author difficult to deal with, and hope to tempt you into reading his first book on reincarnation and providing a Swedenborgian perspective on what he reports. The author is Dr. Brian Weiss, MD, who has treated and cured many via Past Life therapy. The story of how he stumbled into this area, contrary to all of his prior materialistic beliefs, and cured his first patient suffering from “PL” trauma is set forth in his first book–“Many Lives, Many Masters”. He is definitely an extremely intelligent and humane man. His position is that these cures could not be accomplished if the reported trauma was merely a fantasy or delusion. However, he ignores the possibility that he is in some manner actually treating or perhaps releasing the obsessions of a spirit or spirit community (which is my current neophyte theory on the matter).
In any case, I would dearly like to get your take on the matter. The book is, btw, a quick and painless one to read and is one that I actually found to be quite engrossing = “a good read” IMO.
Cordially,
Steve S.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for re-posting this here. Have you had a chance to read the above article? Did it help at all?
Hi Steve,
I mistakenly continued the conversation back on our About page, so I’m now replying here instead, to get the conversation into an on-topic forum.
Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for you, our ISP messed up a service change order and turned off our home Internet access, and it took three days to get them to restore it. During that time, I took the time to read Brian Weiss’s book Many Lives, Many Masters. So now I can respond about it. You didn’t ask any specific questions about the book, so I’ll just give my overall impressions and some specific responses.
Overall, Weiss seems to be a good and well-intentioned person, albeit slightly full of his own importance. His “past-life regression” does seem to help people, although I think not for the reasons he thinks it’s helping. And in general, recognizing that we are embedded in spiritual reality, and that this is the source of much of our mental disorder and dysfunction, is a good thing.
Materialistic psychology and psychiatry can get you only so far. And as Weiss says, the tendency is just to drug people, which only controls symptoms; it does not cure them. Stop the drugs, and the symptoms come roaring back. That means the person is not cured. Meanwhile the drugs themselves inflict various kinds of damage, including a loss of mental acuity.
Some mental illnesses do result from physical or cellular damage to the brain and nervous system. But much mental illness is not physical at all; it is the result of traumatic life experiences, yes, but mainly the result of evil spirits assailing people from the spiritual realm. I am well aware that this is rejected as superstitious and wrong by secular psychologists and psychiatrists. Nevertheless, Weiss’s success using spiritual methods—even if I don’t agree with the reincarnationist interpretation he puts on them—achieved a full healing for a patient that was not responding to traditional psychiatric treatment. And that is far from the only case in which recognizing the reality of spiritual influences has brought about a “cure” (i.e., brought people to mental and emotional health) when traditional psychiatric and pharmaceutical methods failed. One of my former parishioners who was bipolar found reasonable (though not full) relief only when she came across Swedenborg and began focusing her life on love service to other people. That got her out of focusing on her own problems, and kept her grounded and happy with a sense of purpose in her life.
But that is a big topic, and a tangent from your main question, which is about reincarnation. To keep this from getting too long, I’ll start a new comment, and probably respond in multiple comments.
But overall, although I disagree with Weiss about reincarnation, and think he’s mistaken in his interpretation of “Catherine’s” experiences as being her past lives, I do appreciate his willingness to open his mind to methods of treatment that go beyond the strictly material and biological, and explore spiritual realities behind people’s mental and emotional struggles.
Hi Lee,
My working theory is that she was possibly tuned into, in tune with and/or a member of one or more different afterlife communities, and was somehow tapping into the memories of spirits in these communities. How/why she is in tune with these spirits/memories I do not know, but (as far as I can tell from a reading many years ago) most or all seem to have had difficult deaths. That is about as far as I can go with the concept. However, it does present an interesting puzzle: I.e., was Weiss somehow treating these spirits through her, treating her obsession by these spirits, or simply soothing and calming her in terms of these memories by the usual means of “talk therapy” engaged in by counselors in this field? Whatever was going on, it apparently worked. And, as I also seem to recall, after resolving her issues, she continued on as a devout Catholic without taking a deep plunge into alternative beliefs involving reincarnation. Which to me, after reading the book, seemed even more difficult to understand. (Of course, this was back when I was enamored with reincarnation myself).
That case was a bit of a warm-up. A more difficult case for me is presented in another Weiss book, “Only Love is Real”. Both cases present interesting scenarios that require some thought (IMO) to unwind and understand from a Swedenborgian viewpoint.
Cordially,
Steve S.
Hi Steve,
Okay, my first impression as I began to read Chapter 1 of Many Lives, Many Masters was that the setup was just too perfect:
And a couple paragraphs later:
Sex-appeal? Check! Complete with a stunning breathless blonde in a bright red dress, and then in a bathing suit! If it had been written in Victorian times, her ample bosom would have been heaving! 😉 I had to flip to the copyright page to see when the book was published. Turns out it was published in 1988. Of course. Start with the “extraordinarily beautiful” woman to draw people into your book. Then let your readers to picture the gorgeous blonde throughout the book:
It had to be a woman, and she had to be a blonde bombshell in a red dress, with a bikini shot thrown in for good measure. If it had been a guy in jeans and a T-shirt, or some plump middle-aged brown-haired woman in a dowdy day dress, it just wouldn’t make the books fly off the shelves!
So, honestly, I started out skeptical. The book looked like the 1980s version of clickbait.
And in the Preface, Weiss had spent considerable time bragging about how brilliant he was and how great his life was and how effortless everything was to him. Clearly, however well-intentioned he might be, this guy thought he was hot stuff. Throughout the book, he comes out as “the teacher”—some ancient sage who was always the “wise one” who “helped” people, even though in reality he was groping his way into this spiritual stuff against all sorts of intellectual resistance from his secular psychiatric training. And honestly, most of the stuff that “The Masters” said was pretty ordinary, even trite, stuff in the field of spiritual understanding. The fact that he thought this was amazingly deep and inspired stuff only shows that he had very little prior knowledge of God and spirit. Regardless, the idea that he was some sort of spiritual “wise one” just didn’t fit his actual background and training. Basically, the book was dripping with ego. That didn’t sit well with me, either.
I don’t think Weiss recognized the “transference” that his patient was placing on him, casting him in the role of the sage teacher who is “helping” her. This, in my view, is a psychiatric fail on his part. He apparently uncritically accepted a character that was really a role his patient was projecting onto him as part of her healing process. It’s easy to do, but it leads to conceptual errors. And I believe this is exactly what happened in Weiss’s case. He did help the woman heal from her anxieties and neuroses. And that is good. But it was at the cost of the Doctor himself having his concepts of reality, and of his own self and character, pulled in an unreal and illusory direction. Specifically, he came to believe in reincarnation, and saw himself as some ancient wise one passing through many lifetimes to teach people and help people in grand cosmic fashion.
Still, despite these negative first impressions, I chalked it up to 80s kitsch and medical types thinking they’re gods, and kept reading. And I did read the entire book. I’ll go on to more substantive reactions in my next comment.
Just to be clear, I don’t think Weiss is a bad person. I just think he’s been led down a garden path about reincarnation via the hook of his outsized ego. It’s an occupational hazard of people in the helping professions.
Hi Lee,
Your observations are interesting. I didn’t really ascribe his description of the patient to anything other than imaging her for the reader (something that–as you point out–he certainly seemed to enjoy doing). And, you are correct in terms of his tendency to tout his own background and achievements. At the time, I saw that as part of a defense against potential critics = laying out his background and qualifications to show that he was not a crack-pot and was not just trying to make money or acquire fame. I.e., he already had “made it” in his field and certainly didn’t seem to need anything more in terms of money or success. OTOH, I lack the background necessary to evaluate your other criticisms in terms of his approach to treating the patient, though I trust your knowledge and honesty in making them. However, as I observed in another post, one of the things that startled me about the whole matter was that he was the one whose whole life and religious viewpoint was revolutionized, while she walked away “cured” but otherwise seemingly with no real changes to her to life, religious beliefs, etc. Her solid Catholicism certainly seemed stronger and more resilient than his secular (and seemingly shallow) religious background. I suppose the old adage may hold true here, though I can’t remember exactly how it goes. Here is an approximation: Those who believe in nothing will believe in anything. However, I do not wish to be unkind towards him. He is a very accomplished and, I think, good person. However, it seems obvious that there was a yawning void in his life in terms of non-material realities that was just waiting to be filled.
Cordially,
Steve S.
Hi Steve,
First, I’ll deal with something Weiss just flat out got wrong, which jumped out of the page at me in Chapter 3:
These ideas are popularly bandied about in New Age and reincarnationist circles, having been popularized by various theosophical authors such as Helene Blavatsky going all the way back to the 19th century. The only problem is, they are completely wrong. They were made up by theosophists and New Agers to try to make everything, including the Bible, support reincarnation. But the simple fact of the matter, as covered in the above article, is that the Bible does not support reincarnation, and it never has.
The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD was called to deal with the Arian controversy about the nature of the Father and the Son, and their relationship to each other. It had nothing to do with the canon or text of the Bible. We have manuscripts of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament, that come from before the Council of Nicaea, and there are no supposedly “removed” references to reincarnation in them. The idea that the Bible used to teach reincarnation, but corrupt, power-hungry Christian leaders expunged them to consolidate their power, is utter nonsense. It never happened. But to this day it still gets repeated over and over again in New Age circles.
Further, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Saint Jerome were not gnostics. In fact, they condemned both gnosticism and reincarnation (known then as “metempsychosis”). Origen and some other early Christian writers believed in the pre-existence of souls, but that is not the same as reincarnation. It is the idea that souls were created by God from the beginning, and were infused into our body at conception or birth or at some other point along the way in our development. It does not involve a soul passing from one body to another. The Second Council of Constantinople in AD 553 did not condemn the concept of reincarnation. It condemned the concept of the pre-existence of souls.
The fact that Weiss uncritically repeated these New Age urban legends without verifying them shows that he was sucked in by reincarnationist ideas without subjecting them to proper scrutiny. It would have taken only a quick consultation with standard sources on Christian history for him to learn that none of this is true. He is not coming at this from the “scientific” stance that he claims throughout the book. He is coming at it from a position of credulity without doing due diligence to verify his information and sources.
I don’t know what “textbook” from his comparative religion class he “reviewed,” but if all these pseudo-facts were actually in it, that “textbook” deserves a quick trip to the circular file.
And in general, though Weiss talks throughout the book as if Catherine’s “past-life memories” were real historical people, not once in the entire book does he ever provide any historical evidence that any of these people actually existed. And in fact, there are many anomalies, such as the people in her past lives not even knowing the name of the king at the time, which would have been universal knowledge, and the fact that someone who supposedly lived in ancient Egypt identified the date as “1863 B.C.” which comes from a calendar system thousands of years in the future. People at that time identified the year as the year of the reign of the current king or Pharaoh. They had no concept of “B.C.” and “A.D.” because Christ’s birth was far in the future.
The entire book struck me as an example of credulity without real historical research. I kept expecting that Weiss would confirm or verify the historical “facts” being presented in Catherine’s “past-file memories” with actual history, but he never did.
There’s a reason for that: When people actually do check the history on these “past-life regressions,” what usually comes out is that the “past lives” are based on popular conceptions, movies, or novels of what that time period was like rather than on what it was actually like historically. They are not memories of past lives. They are reconstructions and dramatizations based on contemporary concepts of what the past was like.
Weiss was continually pressing for “verifiable” details such as names and dates. Catherine was continually not giving them to him. This should have rung alarm bells in Weiss’s mind. Instead, he continued on credulously believing that these were real past lives taking place in the past all over the world. Again, only a little bit of research could have shown that these were reconstructions, not actual past lives. But apparently Weiss never did any such research. He was already hooked into the idea of reincarnation, and he interpreted everything Catherine said through that lens.
But there is an entirely different way of looking at them which resolves all these problems, and makes much more sense. That’s for my next reply.
Hi Lee,
I found out the same myself when trying to find a way to fit reincarnation into Christianity = the oft quoted truisms you repeat are very easily disproved by just going on the internet and doing a bit of research. None of them hold up to scrutiny. However, since the book came out in 1988, I am not sure how much of the foregoing was subject to easy research via the internet in terms of validity. Nonetheless, his scholarship on these issues is definitely a bit slipshod despite the lack of online resources that far back. (Also, there is no excuse for not doing more research and making corrections in subsequent editions since 1988).
It is also true that he is not rigorous in researching what she says. However, at the time I think he would have been more concerned with curing the patient and/or alleviating her symptoms than concentrating on ancient dates. That brings us back to what is the main point here: how and why was the patient cured by the type of therapeutic techniques he employed? If I am remembering correctly, he seems to come to the conclusion that these were her past lives as they were causing her symptoms and she was cured by dealing with their traumas as if they were her own individual traumas. Once again, if I am remembering correctly, I believe that he observes that one cannot effect a cure by treating the patient’s delusions as if they are realities.
So, I will look forward to your next reply.
Cordially,
Steve S.
Hi Steve,
Naturally, people who believe in reincarnation will read all the stories of Catherine’s “past-life regressions” as real accounts of past lives and as amazing evidence of the reality of reincarnation. That’s clearly how Dr. Weiss interpreted them—even though as a trained psychiatrist, he could have read them as elements of Catherine’s subconscious mind constructing stories that deal with her anxieties and neuroses. Weiss is continually talking about how she couldn’t have known the things she was narrating. But this presumes that they actually happened. If they are seen as reconstructions, the picture becomes much more complex.
In Chapter 1, Weiss mentions in passing that Catherine “had read sparingly about the Hindus.” He goes on to emphasize that “she had never read any metaphysical or occult literature, having had no interest in it.” But you don’t have to read metaphysical or occult literature for your mind to have the material to construct “past lives.” You only have to read or watch movies or hear about earlier times in distant lands. If Catherine’s reading was broad enough to have read something about the Hindus, presumably she had read other books about different cultures and religions as well. And indeed, in Chapter 2, he mentions that she had an interest in Egypt. It seems likely that Catherine had read books about various historical times, cultures, and religions, and had seen movies set in various times and cultures. Her mind was probably not as empty of ideas and objects from or representing those time periods as Weiss thought. And the human mind has a marvelous ability to pull together material and construct vivid scenes, as seen in our dreams.
In fact, to me, coming from a non-reincarnationist point of view, the tone and content of Catherine’s “past-life experiences” read more like dream sequences than memories. They had a dreamy, indefinite quality about them, in which the characters and events represented various elements of Catherine’s mind and experience, right down to identifying various characters with people who were known to her in this life. It is common in dreams for people we know to be present, but in a different form than their usual form in the waking world.
Her “past-life experiences” read to me as dreams, visions, and narratives constructed to represent various parts of her psyche and relationships. And like dreams, which commonly have an integrating and healing effect on people, these constructed narratives that Weiss interpreted as “past lives” could very well have a healing effect. They are Catherine’s subconscious mind seeking understanding and healing from her waking reality of anxieties and fears. As such, there were recurring themes and scenes that held particular meaning to her. And Dr. Weiss, who was still, after all, a psychiatrist treating a patient, was continually seeking to mine these stories for explanatory and healing material to help his patient. Which, indeed, he did. His error was in thinking that these were actual past lives that Catherine had lived rather than being scenes constructed in Catherine’s mind to face and deal with the very fears and anxieties that had brought her to Dr. Weiss’s office in the first place.
Thus far I have been talking from a perspective that any secular psychologist who has some knowledge of Freud and Jung could take. (Jung, by the way, read a lot of Swedenborg, and that was likely a major source for his archetypal theory.) Weiss, of course, is well aware of this viewpoint. That’s why he is continually stating and emphasizing that this or that is something Catherine couldn’t have known. In many cases I think she very well could have known it based on reading, movies, and so on. Her subconscious mind was using material that she herself did not have conscious recollection of during her waking hours.
However, in some cases he is almost certainly right that she conveyed information she could not have known by normal means. For example, in Chapter 4, she relays details about Weiss’s deceased father and son that she would have had no material-world way of knowing. And less conclusively for the reader, since we were not there, in Chapter 2 he speaks of her correcting the guide at an Egyptian exhibit about some of the artifacts in the exhibit, and being right. Whether or not skeptical readers will be convinced, these and a few other incidents of Catherine “revealing” information she could not have known by normal channels were highly convincing to Dr. Weiss, because they went beyond the ability of the above-mentioned psychological mechanisms’ to produce.
Weiss soon jumped to reincarnation as a solution to this problem that his mind could not solve from its secular perspective. But knowledge coming from paranormal sources does not automatically point to reincarnation. Rather, it points to the reality of the paranormal. Or in more traditional terms, it points to the reality of the spiritual realm. If there truly is a spiritual world, and there are angels and spirits around us unseen, and if all people who have died before us are in that realm, then there is a boundless source of information about things people could not know from “normal,” i.e. material, sources.
And indeed, as covered in the above article, this is precisely what Swedenborg says about “information” that comes from “past lives.” It is not coming from past lives—except perhaps in the sense of someone else’s life in a previous time and a different land, the memory of which still exists in that person’s mind in the spiritual world. Even if some life described in a “past-life regression” were to withstand historical scrutiny and come out accurate and verifiable, it still wouldn’t mean that it was the memory of a past life of the person undergoing past-life regression. It could simply be the memory of a person who lived in the past being infused into the mind of the person undergoing past-life regression as if it were his or her own memory, when in fact it is someone else’s memory.
This kind of memory transference is very easy to accomplish in the spiritual world. Swedenborg describes instances in which certain spirits rapidly sifted through his entire memory, evaluating the truth or falsity of everything he knew. And he speaks of criminals who continued to deny their crimes having them played out in front of everyone present in full detail, together with every thought and feeling the person was having while committing the crime, to the point where the criminal had to admit what he or she had done.
In general, Swedenborg says that infusing other people’s memories into people is not allowed. However, he then goes on to say that the experience of having this happen is what led to the idea of reincarnation. And he himself describes instances in which someone else’s memories were infused into his memory so that he thought they were memories of his own experiences. So apparently it is discouraged, not entirely banned and disallowed.
Meanwhile, since Weiss’s deceased father and brother would be in the spiritual world, the details Catherine recounted about them would be readily available there, and easily communicated to her. Her father and brother wouldn’t even have had to be present with her. Memories and information are commonly shared widely in the spiritual world. It could have been Weiss’s father present as Catherine said, or it could have been another spirit who had knowledge of Weiss’s father using it to pose as Weiss’s father. It can be very hard to tell from this side, which is why it’s best not to put too much credence in the things spirit mediums say. See:
What about Spiritualism? Is it a Good Idea to Contact Spirits?
Swedenborg also talks here and there about the angels and spirits around us flowing into our mind while we are asleep and drawing on the contents of our memory to create our dreams.
All of this together is what I believe was happening in Catherine’s “past-life regressions.” They read to me, not like memories, but like dream sequences, which are dramatic scenes illustrating metaphorically elements of our own mind, experience, and character, as well as our relationships. Most of what was in them was likely drawn from Catherine’s own memory, based on books, movies, and so on. That’s why people who take the time to analyze and research these “past-life experiences” commonly find that rather than representing the actual historical time period, they represent present-day books, movies, and ideas about what that time period was like.
However, especially when there is conscious awareness of the presence of spiritual beings, as there was during Catherine’s “past-life regressions,” spirits can also convey information from their own memories to the person who is under hypnosis. And so, although most of what Catherine experienced was probably drawn out of her own memory, that could be supplemented with things she could not have known from her reading and such. It is possible, for example, that memories from someone else’s life on earth could be infused into her mind, so that she would “remember” things someone else had done and experienced.
However, in Catherine’s case, I suspect that most of what she experienced were narrative constructions, not actual past lives. And that might be the case for most “past-life regressions.” Catherine’s experiences just seem too evocative and personalized for them to be someone’s actual past life. For example, in Chapter 9 she talks about being a German pilot during WWI who spoke about the evil and futility of war. Though I suppose that’s possible, it sounds more like a present-day imagining of how a young WWI pilot must have felt, given how horrible we think war is these days. But in those days, war was considered glorious, not horrible. And young pilots and soldiers commonly believed fervently in the rightness of their country and cause. The whole sequence reads more like a projection of Catherine’s own negative views about war back into a past scene than like something an actual German WWI pilot would have said.
Other scenes and sequences also read to me more like dramatizations and reconstructions designed to express Catherine’s own mind and fears in dramatic form, similar to horror movies making people’s fears “real” in dramatic form. These scenes and sequences mostly aren’t things that happened in real life. They are stories constructed from human experience and ordered into a narrative that expresses something about the human psyche and experience in general, and about the specific psyche and experience of the person going through the “past-life regressions.” They have a healing effect for the same reason dreams and visions often have a healing effect: in them our mind confronts its fears and anxieties, and through confronting them, overcomes them.
I could say more, but I hope this much will give you some useful ways to approach books such as Many Lives, Many Masters, and deal with your own doubts about reincarnation vs. Swedenborg’s (and Christianity’s) view of this life as a one-time birth and preparation for eternal life in the spiritual world.
If there are any specific incidents or issues from the book that I haven’t taken up here and you’d like my response to, or if you have further thoughts or questions, please feel free to continue the conversation.
PS–I seem to have been signed a random name by the system. It is certainly not one I would have chosen for myself, but I have no idea how to change it (being merely a user rather than a skilled user of modern technology). /Steve S./
Hi Steve,
Sorry about the weird username. I don’t have any control over that. I’m just using the WordPress platform. I don’t administer usernames and such. And I’m not a tech-type, either. Those weird names started showing up a few years ago. So I’m not much help on that.
Hi Lee,
I read through your initial article, which was very good, and have been gradually working my way through the avalanche of responses that followed. It appears obvious that many folks are interested in this topic, and that a great number of those folks are not inclined to waiver in their support for reincarnation (no matter what you say). I do not really blame them. I also find reincarnation attractive in its more modern form (which is generally sans karma in the old-fashioned reward/punishment sense). Instead of karma we now have a system adapted to personal growth with the ultimate goal of sanctification. I.e., moderns have re-made reincarnation to suit current beliefs and goals. This would also be OK with me, if true. However, my ultimate guide to truth is Scripture, and more particularly, the words and actions of Jesus Christ. And, I do not find reincarnation taught there. . . sadly. My own unwillingness to accept this fact has led to some soul searching on my part, as it is clear that whatever God (who is Love) has ordained is the best, and most Loving alternative. My reluctance to embrace this alternative means that I am, as has been true on many other occasions, the one who is on the wrong side of Truth and Goodness
Cordially,
Steve S.
Hi Steve,
Glad you’re finding the article and comments helpful as you sort through the issue of reincarnation in your mind. Reincarnation does have a powerfully attractive air about it. Many people from the Christian world have gravitated towards it because it seems more balanced and fair than the traditional Christian view, which is quite harsh if you happen to be born in the wrong place among the wrong people (i.e., among non-Christians). Fortunately, Swedenborg offers a much broader view of salvation and the afterlife, which in my mind renders reincarnation unnecessary. But you will have to work these things out in your own mind.
I would only add that being on the wrong side of truth doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on the wrong side of goodness. People of good heart can sincerely believe things that are untrue, and yet still live a life of love and service to God and the neighbor.
This is what Swedenborg calls “falsity that does not come from evil,” whereas clinging to things that are not true because they excuse and justify our bad behavior is “falsity that comes from evil.” Falsity that comes from evil is fatal to our spiritual life, but not falsity that does not come from evil. That can be sorted out over time in this life, or in the afterlife, whereas if the falsity comes from evil desires and justifies evil behavior, there is no cure for it except repentance.
Still, it is better to have the truth than to have untruth, because it provides a clearer light to our spiritual path.
On the subject of reincarnation, having the truth that reincarnation doesn’t happen underlines the importance of making full use of this life, because there are no do-overs. For those who believe in reincarnation, it’s too easy to get complacent and think, “Well, I don’t really need to do the hard work now, because I can always do it in my next life.” So it tends to induce lethargy, complacency, and fatalism, which is a serious problem in cultures where reincarnation is the dominant belief.
Hi Lee,
Thanks for your kind words, and your wise words. I appreciate the distinction made by Swedenborg between Falsity that leads to Evil and Falsity that does not. And, in truth, my attraction to reincarnation is derived from both of the causes you mention. First, an abhorrence for the typical understanding of judgment and damnation following death, which seems to have become even less compassionate after the Reformation. This doesn’t mean that I am soft on evil, but the idea of infinite and everlasting punishment for finite deeds and/or not receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior for those who never knew him doesn’t strike me as just or loving. Second, your reference to a “do-over” hit the nail on the head as well. I once read somewhere that approaching a certain mountain range could be very deceptive, as the mountains seem enormous from a great distance and it is hard to tell whether they are just hours away or a day’s drive ahead. I am not particularly morbid about death, but the end is now in sight, whether this year of 20+ years from now. There is so much I didn’t do, become, etc. and probably never will. So YES, the idea of a do-over is very attractive to me. And, even the idea of Heaven does not assuage the longings I still possess in this area. That doesn’t mean that I will hang back and sulk rather than enter through the “Pearly Gates”, it probably just means that I haven’t finished going through the various Stages of Grief. As you know, Disbelief/Denial is one of those stages, and my attraction to reincarnation could certainly be seen in that light. But then, I expect that a lot of modern believers in reincarnation may be rowing the same boat that I am.
Cordially,
Steve S.
PS–I have tried to find out if there are any Swedenborgians in NE Florida in the Gainesville to Jacksonville zone, but no luck so far. There are some farther South, but none seem to be near where I live. Do you know of any resources for locating others near my area?
Hi Steve,
About this:
Something brand new for this is just rolling out at the New Christian Bible Study website, on their map app, here:
World Map of New Christian Groups, Publishers, Churches and Schools
This map has always had Swedenborgian churches and schools and such, but now individuals can add themselves to the map showing a general location, so that others can click on their pin and contact them via the NCBS system (your exact location, email, and other details are not shown publicly). There’s nothing in northeastern Florida yet, but you could add yourself (you’d have to set up an account on NCBS first), and see if anyone contacts you.
Hi David,
Now about the substance of your comment:
That’s not how hell works. Nobody in hell is punished for anything they did on earth. Only for things they do there. Death forms a “statute of limitations”: the things we did here are canceled out. However, because we carry our character with us, if we enjoy doing evil, we’ll keep doing it there—and that’s what we’ll get punished for, not for things we did on earth.
On the other hand, if our heart is good, we’ll never get punished for anything we did here, and because we have no desire to do anything evil there, either, we never suffer any punishment at all.
I.e. both Protestant “eternal conscious torment” and Catholic purgatory are fictions. For more on what hell is actually all about, and what it is like, see:
Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
Oh, and not knowing Jesus Christ does not keep a person out of heaven. See:
Is Jesus Christ the Only Way to Heaven?
The thing is, after you die, you’re still the same person, and life goes on! You can keep doing the things you want to do, and get around to the things you were hoping to do, because everything we have here exists in the spiritual world as well. Just because you didn’t do something on earth, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it in heaven. In fact, most of what we do, we’ll do in heaven, because that’s where we’re designed to live—and there, we’re not limited to a few short decades, as we are here. Plus, we have a young, capable body there even while keeping the knowledge, experience, and wisdom we’ve developed over our lifetime.
Heaven is not a static state. We continue to learn and grow and experience new things forever.
This world is not where we have all our experiences, and then sit around on clouds doing nothing for the rest of eternity. This world is where we develop into the person we will be in eternity. And our real life starts at death.
So don’t despair. Anything you didn’t get done here, you’ll have an opportunity to do in the spiritual world. Our job here is to develop into a good, loving, thoughtful, and morally strong person as a foundation for the life we will live in heaven.
Another way of looking at it is that our life on earth is like our time in the womb. Just as the womb is where we develop into the physical person we will be once we are born, so the material world is where we develop into the spiritual person we will be once we go through the portal of death, which is really birth into the spiritual world. See:
When Death is a Celebration
Once you begin to grasp and internalize what the real afterlife is like, and what it is about, the need for reincarnation becomes less and less. Swedenborg’s afterlife already solves most of the problems that people look to reincarnation to solve.
Hi Lee,
Thanks for the come-back (though you seem to have morphed my name to “David” ; – )).
Anyhow, I find nothing to object to in what you have said, especially as I am on a similar track. In that regard, I can’t help but mention the Beatitudes. I recently memorized these for my own edification, to meditate on as part of my daily devotional life. They have been very useful from that standpoint, which is not really a surprise as they stand (in the Gospel of Matthew at least) in a place similar to the Decalogue given to Moses in the OT. However, one thing I noticed immediately, was that the blessings promised, up until the last one, did not appear to be dependent on personal faith in Jesus Christ. (And, just to clarify, I count 9 uses of the term “Blessed”–not 8 as many seem to do).
The foregoing is true for all of the first eight Beatitudes, some of which promise results and rewards that seem very heavenly in nature to me without specifically mentioning Jesus. This does not mean that he does not underly the first eight, but it is in a more hidden manner.
As to the 9th, the only one that specifically names Jesus, it appears to me to exceed and include the blessings of all the others. So, I do believe that Faith and Love for Jesus Christ, and specifically faith that is strong enough and, if tried, WILL stand through persecution and abuse is put forth as the ultimate, and entitled to the highest blessings among those named.
So, to my mind a righteousness that is not explicitly based on faith in Jesus can achieve great blessings, and even heavenly blessings, but the highest blessings (and perhaps the highest levels of Heaven) are reserved to those who are believing in him and are willing to suffer for his sake.
Best,
Steve S.
PS–I also have come to consider the Beatitudes as an embodiment, as clearly as anything I have seen, of the “narrow path” that Jesus refers to in Scripture. There may be other was to describe that path, but the Beatitudes certainly seem to be a very good way of doing so.
Hi Steve,
Sorry about the name mixup. At the same time I was responding to your comment, I was in communication with the webmaster of the New Christian Bible Study site, whose name is Steve David. So you can see the source of the mixup! 😀
Very nice observations about the Beatitudes. He doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who have faith in me and are poor in spirit . . . .” The blessings are universal for all, not just believers. But yes, in the end, it returns to our relationship with Jesus, and I agree that this is where the highest blessings come from.
Hi Lee,
This is not on the topic, but I can’t help but wish that I had found Swedenborg’s writings at an earlier time in my life. I am sure I must have come across his name a few times, but not in a way that motivated me to do further research. Now, after a relatively short and shallow acquaintance I am finding myself drawn almost inexorably in this direction, even when I would (in some respects) prefer not to be so drawn. Still, I do not consider myself to be a Swedenborgian–there are too many books to read before I reach that point! However, it probably would not be incorrect to consider myself to be Swedenborgian “adjacent” (to use some very recently coined terminology). My interest only turned his way after I found out that he had been, apparently, an influence in the life and writings of Sadhu Sundar Singh, whose writings I came across a few years ago and whose descriptions of afterlife realms are very similar to Swedenborg’s. This leads me to wonder whether you have had any discussions of Singh and his writings on leewolf.org? Could you start one?
Best,
Steve S.
PS–Are there any Swedenborgians handing out tracts? John Chapman set a precedent for something of that type in the early years of the Republic. I wonder where Swedenborgianism would be if more “tracts” had been handed out in the ensuing years? It goes without saying that failure to sow = failure to reap. I certainly would have become familiar with Swedenborg and more likely looked him up many years ago if someone had put a tract in my hand sometime in the last 50+ years.
Hi Steve,
We are attracted to things when we’re ready for them. If you came across Swedenborg earlier in your life, but didn’t pursue it, that’s likely because you weren’t yet in a state of mind to grasp and appreciate what he wrote. Now you’ve had more experience in life and you’re in a different state of mind, so you’re attracted to what Swedenborg offers.
Don’t worry about being a “Swedenborgian.” The identification does have significance, but really, it’s about whether these beliefs and understandings help you in your day-to-day life, and guide and motivate you to be a better human being. Also, it’s better to wade into the water, get acclimated, and adjust gradually rather than jumping immediately into the depths. This gives your mind and heart the time they need to make the transition.
I don’t have an article here about Sadhu Sundar Singh, in part because I don’t know much about him. But there are a couple brief comment threads that discuss him starting here and here.
About tracts, over the past 2+ centuries Swedenborgians have published and distributed mountains of tracts, not to mention libraries of books. If nothing else, we Swedenborgians have followed our guy Swedenborg by publishing up a storm! Plenty of seeds have been sown. The stubborn reality is that most people on this earth just aren’t ready for Swedenborg. The seed is mostly falling among birds, rocks, and thorns. That’s why this is a tiny little movement while the religious “big boys” still sweep up the masses. But the “big boys” are declining now. Swedenborg will have his day.
Today, as print publishing gets displaced by electronic publishing and the Internet, much of the outreach effort of Swedenborgians is online. This very website is a case in point. But there is still a lot of publishing going on, too. Not as much as when we were at our membership peak, but still quite a lot for such a small group of people.
Bottom line: Swedenborgians have made monumental outreach efforts over the years, but the results have been meager, because the bulk of the people are still in the old religious mindset, or they’re still reacting against it.
Hi Lee,
OK, now you have piqued my curiosity to the max. Where can I find copies of the Swedenborgian tracts you mention? I’d love to read them, whether in print or out of print.
I find tracts to be one of the best ways to learn more about the underlying beliefs of particular types of Christians, especially as lack of space necessitates an abbreviated and to-the-point presentation on whatever topic is being covered. I like illustrated tracts best, as I generally enjoy the illustrations and think they are more likely to be read than non-illustrated tracts.
BTW–I have a small collection of Vic Lockman tracts (which are pretty good in a straightforward, straightlaced Reformed sort of way). Also, his art work is fairly humorous most of the time as he used to be an illustrator for Donald Duck Comics (going back to my childhood) and similar Disney properties. On the other hand, “Chic Tracts” are pretty obnoxious, illustrated in many different styles by many different folks, and mostly seem to concentrate lovingly on all the ways one can go to Hell and the fiery torment to be experienced there.
Somehow I doubt I am going to find an illustrated Swedenborgian tract, though I would love to see something of that type. There are lots of possibilities! Anyhow, any links you have to Swedenborgian tract examples would be appreciated.
Best,
Steve S.
Hi Steve,
Since they are print media, and mostly not digitized, to find any significant collection of Swedenborgian tracts you’d have to go to one of the major Swedenborg library collections, such as in Berkeley, Bryn Athyn, or London. Some of the Swedenborgian churches might also have some old pamphlets and tracts lying around. They’re not as popular now, but there is a huge backlist of them. When I was in seminary, the library and archives had whole shelves full of magazine files and archive boxes stuffed with pamphlets and tracts going all the way back to the 1800s. I presume that archival collection would now be at the library of the Center for Swedenborgian Studies in Berkeley, CA.
I personally have a small collection of Swedenborgian pamphlets, but most of my library is still in storage in South Africa. However, I am holding in my hand a small favorite called “Words of Wisdom,” which is a 2.25″ x 3″ 32 page saddle stitched booklet of short quotes from Swedenborg’s writings. It was published in 1965 by the Swedenborg Foundation when it was still in New York, and it was very popular in its day. I grew up seeing it here and there.
As far as “illustrated,” although most of the pamphlets were not illustrated, a few were. However, one real gem, and still one of the oddest things Swedenborgians have ever published, is a graphic novel style mini-biography of Swedenborg published in 1982 by the British New Church, and carried by the Swedenborg Society in London, called “The Strange One.” And believe it or not, it’s still available for purchase at their website! I’ve put a link to its page there.
I should also mention that there is an extensive periodical literature published throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. That has dropped off considerably now as the church declines in membership and things move from print to digital. But there is a tremendous treasury of articles, poetry, and short stories published in New Church (Swedenborgian) magazines and periodicals over the past two hundred years.
A few years ago I also reprinted a few booklets of stories and poems for children originally published in the mid-19th century that I could link you to on Amazon if you’re interested. As I said, over the years, New Church people have published a virtual storm of literature of all types.
Oh, and I’m also currently working on a project of the Basil Lazer Trust in Australia producing collections of quotes from Swedenborg translated into contemporary English to be published in print and Kindle form, but also put on the Internet on YouTube and social media. It’s not quite launched yet. When the launch happens, I’ll put a post about it here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life. Meanwhile the first two of seven planned books are in print. I could link you to them on Amazon if you’re interested. This is a modern version of “tracts” meant to reach people in the popular media channels of today. The work is ongoing.
Hi Lee,
Thanks for the links and info! I wish I could find “Words of Wisdom” in PDF form online, but certainly enjoyed going through “The Strange One”. The latter is very dense, both in terms of its style of illustration and in terms of the amount of information presented. In both respects I would consider it more useful for instructing young Swedenborgians and those who are already interested in finding out more about Swedenborg rather than attracting the attention of non-Christians and non-Swedenborgians and motivating them to find out more about Christ or Swedenborgian. The former is, indeed, a very important mission, but the latter is what I am more interested in at this point in time. From that standpoint, I think that the artwork and explanations provided online at the Swedenborg Foundation are excellent, as is the “Off the Left Eye” Youtube channel. However, IMO, tracts can be very useful in terms of reaching people who would never look for, or find in their ordinary life, any reference to Swedenborg, etc. whether online or elsewhere. (BTW–You also fill a valuable niche and provide an extremely valuable service with leewoof.org.–thanks for what you do!)
Best,
Steve S.
PS–Interestingly, Sadhu Sundar Singh is illustrated and included on p. 31 of “The Strange One” along with the other greats endorsing Swedenborg.
PPS–You might find Singh’s “Visions of the Spiritual World” interesting. With just 18 pages of text, it is a very quick read:
Vision of the Spiritual World
PPPS–Actually, I have done much of my “reading” of both Singh and Swedenborg by listening to Youtube audiobooks during daily walks (when I was able to take them)).
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your kind words.
And yes, “The Strange One” is not a tract, and I don’t believe it was intended primarily for outreach. But since you mentioned that you like illustrations, I figured you’d enjoy it. Did you find a digital version online?
Believe me, Swedenborgians have produced plenty of tracts and pamphlets over the years intended for outreach.
I believe I did read Sadhu Sundar Singh’s Vision of the Spiritual World a few years ago when the subject came up.