Throughout the ages, the afterlife has been pictured in many different ways—more ways than we can possibly list here. Christians alone have pictured heaven as:
- The endless pleasure of intelligent and witty conversation with other angels
- Perpetual feasting with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the twelve Apostles
- Relaxing in the everlasting springtime of garden paradises while breathing in the fragrant odors of beautiful flowers and enjoying the delicate taste of delectable fruits
- Ruling over the masses as fabulously wealthy and powerful kings and queens
- Praising and glorifying God to all eternity in vast, ornate cathedrals, complete with powerful organ music and inspiring hymns sung with thousands of fellow worshipers
In more recent years, under the influence of near-death experiences together with the mystical strains of various eastern religions, conceptions of the afterlife have grown even more fantastic. One account has us flying on the wings of giant psychedelic butterflies through vast Technicolor panoramas. Or, as inhabitants of the astral realms, we may be seen as diaphanous beings of light wafting around and through one another as we engage in mysterious dances that manifest the harmony of the spheres.
Now, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with any of these activities. For the most part, they’re harmless enough—though I’m not so sure about all those kings and queens! And I have it on good authority that whatever our idea of the afterlife may be, we’re given the opportunity to try it out after we die, and see how we like it.
Even for people who have a less fantastical idea of what the afterlife might be like, I suspect that it’s common to think that death will bring about huge changes in our life.
Perhaps it will.
But I’m here to tell you that the afterlife will not be as different as you think. In fact, in the ways that count the most, the afterlife will be a seamless continuation of whatever your life has been here.
That should get us to thinking about just what we’re doing with our life here on earth.
Let’s look at the afterlife based on:
- the Bible,
- rational thought, and
- human experience.
Angels in the Bible
The Bible doesn’t offer much in the way of descriptions of the afterlife—and the descriptions that it does give seem more symbolic and allegorical than literal in their message.
What the Bible does offer is quite a few stories of people on earth encountering angels from heaven. And though those angels may be presented as powerful and even radiant beings, the general sense is that they are just as human as we are, and that they engage in the same sorts of activities as we do.
Consider one of the first angel encounters in the Bible. In Genesis 18, Abraham (whose name was then Abram) encountered three angels, who are variously identified as “men,” “angels,” and “the Lord.” The sense that we get from the story is that these were three angel emissaries through whom the Lord spoke to Abraham.
What did Abraham do when he saw these three men standing near him? He treated them just as he would any earthly travelers who came his way. He offered them water to wash their feet, and food and drink to satisfy their hunger and thirst. He then stood by and waited on them as they ate.
In fact, there’s nothing about the story to indicate that Abraham saw these three guests as anything other than men—human beings—who were visiting him at his tents. No wings, no shining garments, no lightning bolts zapping trees.
Yes, they bore a message from God. But what’s most striking about these three men is how similar they were to any other honored guests Abraham might have encountered in his various encampments. They ate and drank with him, then rose up to engage in conversation with him on important subjects that would change the course of Abraham’s life, and the life of his wife Sarah.
If we turn from Genesis, the first book of the Bible, to Revelation, the last book of the Bible, we find a scene in which an angel is showing the Apostle John visions of future events in the spiritual world.
Not once, but twice (in Revelation 19:9–10 and Revelation 22:8–9) John was so overwhelmed by the experience that he fell at the angel’s feet to worship him. In each case, the angel stopped him. “You must not do that!” he said. “I am a fellow servant with you and your companions, the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!” (John 22:9). The angel places himself the same level as John—a mere human being—and on the level of all of his fellow believers and prophets.
Yes, angels in the Bible are presented as powerful beings. But they are also presented as very human beings, who are simply inhabiting the next world rather than this one.
In fact, the angel speaking to John went on to say something fascinating about this:
Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy. (Revelation 22:10–11)
You would think the angel would say that evildoers should repent, and that those who are filthy should clean up their act. But in the eternal world where he was living, that’s not how it works. There, people continue to live to eternity according to whatever character they have developed here on earth, whether evil or righteous, whether filthy or holy.
It just makes sense
Now let’s look at the afterlife from a rational perspective.
Consider the thought that this temporal world is a training ground and a place of preparation for our life in the eternal world. And consider the thought that God is probably pretty good at designing this world to prepare us for the spiritual world.
Now ask yourself this question: If God wanted this world to train and prepare us effectively for the spiritual world, would God make this world very different from the spiritual world, or very similar to the spiritual world? Which would prepare us better?
To use a human analogy, think of the time-honored practice of apprenticeship—or as it is often called these days, internship. In any practical career that involves skills and experience, the most effective way to prepare neophytes for the job is to immerse them in the job under the supervision of those who are actively engaged in it as a career.
- Physicians don’t go directly from the classroom to their own medical practice, but spend a year or more as interns (or residents) learning the ropes while practicing under regular doctors.
- Students who graduate college with an MBA commonly take entry-level jobs at various financial firms or other business in which they are trained on the job, preparing them to rise up to higher business management positions.
- Airline pilots must put in a certain number of hours flying with experienced pilots before they are licensed to fly airplanes on their own.
If we humans are smart enough to train people for responsible positions by giving them on-the-job training and internships, don’t you think God is at least as smart as we are?
God has, in fact, designed this world to give us practice in all of the same things that we will be doing in heaven.
If you want to get some idea of what heaven will be like, look around you. Once you die, you’ll be doing many of the same things you do here. That’s especially true of activities that involve serving your fellow human beings. Heaven is all about loving and serving one another in useful, practical, and spiritual ways.
What those who have been there say
Now let’s look at heaven and the afterlife based on the experience of those who have been there.
The most plentiful source of such experiences is the increasingly common phenomenon of near-death experiences. And at first glance, the reports of people who have died, visited the spiritual world, and come back to tell us about it may make the spiritual world look very different from this world. Often these brief glimpses into the afterlife leave those who experience them amazed and spellbound by the powerful experience of love and light that they have had in their brief encounters with eternity.
And don’t get me wrong: the spiritual world is a beautiful place, full of powerful experiences.
However, near-death experiencers are something like tourists in the spiritual world. What do tourists flock to see? The magnificent structures and beautiful vistas that the countries they are visiting have to offer.
And yet, while the tourists are oohing and aahing at the country’s greatest wonders, its ordinary citizens are working away at their jobs, taking care of their children, going grocery shopping, and playing a game of tennis or going to a rock concert.
To get a more realistic picture of what the afterlife is like after the initial wonder wears off, we need the experience of someone who has spent a long enough time there to see what life is like once things settle down.
That’s where Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) comes in.
Unlike those who have had a brief glimpse into the spiritual world in the course of a near-death experience or a vision, Swedenborg, according to his own account, spent nearly three decades—from his mid-fifties until his death at age 84—visiting and exploring the spiritual world.
It took him a while to get acclimated. In his earliest writings about the spiritual world, he was still figuring out the lay of the land, how it all worked, and what to call the various regions, spiritual beings, and phenomena that he saw there.
Swedenborg’s most famous book, Heaven and Hell, was published over a decade after his spiritual eyes were opened. By that time, he could write confidently, from extensive experience, about heaven and the daily lives of angels in the various regions of heaven.
And he does describe some wonderful things. For example, in the spiritual world, all you have to do is think about someone that you really want to see, and you will be present with them instantly.
It is also possible to see and hear things over vast distances.
Wait a minute . . . . That’s not very different from what we can do now, is it?
In many ways, our fancy modern telecommunications gadgetry is just our technological way of doing what angels and spirits have been able to do in the spiritual world for thousands of years.
But back to the point, despite the fact that heaven has many wonders, and gives us many capabilities that we don’t have here on earth, perhaps the most striking thing about Swedenborg’s descriptions of everyday life in heaven is how ordinary it all sounds.
Angels get up in the morning, eat, go to work, come back home and enjoy an afternoon or evening of recreation, eat dinner, and go to bed. They have their Sabbath days in which they attend services where they listen to preachers. They have other events and celebrations that they enjoy. And yes, they even play tennis and go to concerts.
If you read through Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, even with all of the wonders described there, the overwhelming sense is that angels and spirits really aren’t all that different from people here on earth. They engage in all of the same activities—though perhaps with a bit more clarity and single-mindedness than many of us do here on earth.
Our life in heaven is a continuation of our life on earth
If there’s anything Swedenborg wants to impress upon us about what our life will be like in the afterlife, it is this: In the afterlife, we will continue to be exactly the same person that we have become through our life here on earth.
I don’t know about you, but I often have thoughts like this: “Yes, life is a pain here, but it’s only temporary. Once my time comes to move on to the next life, all of my struggles will be over, and life will be wonderful.”
Maybe so. At least, I certainly hope that at least some of our struggles will be over. Doesn’t the Bible say that we will have rest from our labors? (Revelation 14:13).
It is really talking there about our inner labors—our mental and emotional struggles over who we will be as a person. By the time we move on to the spiritual world, our general character and course will have been set by our life and choices here on earth.
That character is what we carry with us into the spiritual world. Consider what Swedenborg says in Heaven and Hell #461:
As spirit-people, we enjoy every outer and inner sense we enjoyed in the world. We see the way we used to, we hear and talk the way we used to; we smell and taste and feel things when we touch them the way we used to; we want, wish, crave, think, ponder, are moved, love, and intend the way we used to. Studious types still read and write as before. In a word, when we move from the one life into the other, or from the one world into the other, it is like moving from one place to another; and we take with us everything we owned as persons to the point that it would be inaccurate to say that we have lost anything of our own after death, which is only a death of the earthly body.
In other words, in every way that really counts, we are exactly the same person after we die as we were before. And we will pursue exactly the same sort of life that we pursued in our heart and mind—and through our hands—while we were here on earth.
My final words for you today, then, are short and sweet:
Do you want to have a good, happy, and loving life with your fellow angels in heaven to all eternity?
If so, then start building that life within and around you here on earth. Because whatever life you build here on earth, that’s the life you will carry with you into the spiritual world . . . and that’s the kind of life you will continue living to eternity.
For further reading:
- What Happens To Us When We Die?
- Who Are the Angels and How Do They Live?
- Can we Keep our Friends in the Afterlife?
- Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
- Heaven and Hell, by Emanuel Swedenborg
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Hi Lee,
Last night, I watched a video about angels and the concept of time in heaven: Angels Don’t Know What Time Is | Life After Death
As it’s stated on the video, I also remember Swedenborg claiming that angels in general don’t know what time is, but if they were once humans, how did they simply forget it? Curtis’s explanation makes a little bit of sense to me, but in my opinion it’s not so satisfactory on the comparison of something we learn one time and stop like a mathematic formula, and something we use for almost every day of our lives, like clocks and calendars. They should at least recognized the words and detailed explanations Swedenborg gave to them, since it was an essential part of their lives in earth.
My theory is that, since it’s not stated anywhere what kind of angels he talked, maybe those were ancient humans that died before the modern concept of time was developed?
What is your opinion about that?
Hi Caio,
On your theory, no, most of the people Swedenborg met and talked to in the spiritual world were from his own time and place. He said that the only people he could talk to from previous eras were people known from history, such as Socrates, Plato, or Paul. But usually, the areas of heaven, the world of spirits, and hell that he visited were populated by people from his own era and his own part of the world, which was western Europe.
About angels not knowing what time and space are, it’s not that they “forget” them, but that in the world they are now living in, none of the conditions that produce space and time for us here in the material world exist.
As the video points out, the basic units of time for humans going back thousands of years are years and days. These units are the result of the earth orbiting the sun, and the earth rotating on its own axis, respectively. These just keep right on happening, so they form a framework in which our lives play out.
In the spiritual world, though, we do not live on a planet that orbits a star. The spiritual sun is where God dwells, and it remains in a fixed location in the sky all the time. The land also is not formed into planets, but rather vast expanses. Exactly how heavenly geography works is a tricky subject, but Swedenborg does state explicitly that the regions of the spiritual world where people from different planets live are like the planet flattened out into a plane.
Consider whether we would have any concept of time if the earth did not orbit the sun, and did not rotate on its own axis. Where would any concept of time come from if there weren’t these regular ongoing cyclical motions? How would we measure time if there were nothing to measure it by? We couldn’t talk about years if years didn’t exist. We couldn’t talk about days if days didn’t exist.
That’s how it is for angels and spirits in the spiritual world. They don’t “forget” about time and space. There’s just no reference for time and space in the world in which they live. That world is organized in an entirely different way.
Hi Lee,
That makes much more sense for me now, thank you! 🙂
Hi Lee,
I forget to include it, but is it possible for us to just erase things like that in the afterlife? Time and space, for example, are not things that are strictly necessary to mold us as more spiritually developed, but those concepts also make an important part of our memories, like a park we liked to visit in our childhood or a trip we made with our friends in our adulthood. How can time and space “unstick” from those experiences after we die?
Hi Caio,
In general, our earthly memories fade over time in the spiritual world. But even if we do remember things we experienced in the physical world, our thought will not be so much on the physical details as it will be on the atmosphere and sense those physical details created in our mind. And it won’t be so much on the physical appearance of the people we interacted with, but their character and our relationship with them. It won’t be about seconds, hours, days, or years ticking by, but about the experiences we went through and the changes in our psyche that those experiences brought about in us. It won’t be about another country being very far away from our country, but about how the people and culture in that distant country differed from the people and culture in our own country.
Hi Lee, I have a question.
I remember watching this “spiritual channel” a while ago and these group of people who are “remote viewers” supposedly triple blinded test from the FarSight Institute (they say they work for the government?) all channeled or received the same information about the “afterlife”. But what they all came up with is they said earth is a prison planet and when we die we are forced to reincarnate again for forever called The Death Traps by these intelligent beings. I know this is out there but how do supposedly all these people come to the same conclusion if they’re “triple blinded”. I saw other people on other videos think this way too and promote it. I know Swedenborg says how our Auras influence other auras around us but this was bothering me. I would appreciate to have your guidance on this. Thank you so much Lee.
The video on YT title is – Is Earth a PRISON PLANET? Surprising Answers – Many have postulated the Earth is some type of system that forces people back into reincarnation to serve a malevolent purpose, but what may really be going on?
Hi Sam,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. Unfortunately, it was sent to the spam folder. My apologies if you saw it disappear. I’ve fished it out so that I can respond to it.
About the video, there’s more confusion and fallacy here than I could possibly respond to in a comment.
First, any belief system that is based on bodily reincarnation is mistaken right from the start. Even in the Eastern scriptures, when it mentions being born again it is talking about spiritual rebirth, not physical rebirth. It’s the same thing Jesus was talking about in his conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:1–8. However, people who think materialistically and literally interpret their scriptures literally. That is how the belief in physical reincarnation originated. See also:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
Second, spirit mediums are not reliable sources of information about the spiritual world, or really, about anything. See:
What about Spiritualism? Is it a Good Idea to Contact Spirits?
About remote viewers working for the government, I believe there was some experimentation on this, but it didn’t turn out to be very accurate or useful, so it was not continued. If some people were really able to accurately see physical things from a distance, this ability would be in tremendous demand, and we would all know about it. If something is a shadowy conspiracy, very likely it is not true.
Remote viewing is possible, but this happens with people’s spiritual eyes, not their physical eyes. This means what they see is not an accurate view of the physical world, but a version of the physical world overlaid with spiritual objects and events. However, for the person doing the viewing, the physical and the spiritual are blended together so thoroughly that it is not possible to distinguish what is happening in the physical world from what they are seeing in the spiritual world. This is why remote viewing turns out not to be a particularly good method for seeing what is happening somewhere else in the physical world.
In the Bible, we see examples of this when angels visit people on earth. Angels are spiritual beings, not physical beings. They can be seen only with our spiritual eyes, not with our physical eyes. When people such as Abraham, Gideon, Mary, and the women at Jesus’ tomb saw angels, they were seeing them with their spiritual eyes.
We humans on earth have the ability to see the physical world with our physical eyes and the spiritual world with our spiritual eyes at the same time. When this happens, we see spiritual things superimposed on physical things like a holographic projector projecting 3D images into a physical scene. Except that unlike wispy holographic projections, the spiritual people and scenery we see looks just as solid and real as the ordinary physical people and scenery that surrounds us here in the physical world.
However, since most people have no idea that any of this is possible, when they have visions of things set on this earth, as commonly happens when people have out-of-body experiences, they assume that what they are seeing is how things actually are in the physical world, when in reality it is a blending of physical and spiritual reality—and sometimes it is purely spiritual reality, and not physical reality at all.
I say “spiritual reality,” but I should add that visions, dreams, and even many near-death experiences are more like movies in a spiritual movie theater than they are like walking around in the streets of the spiritual world. They are generated imagery that we see, hear, and feel, but it is a full-immersion spiritual drama rather than a waking experience in the spiritual world.
This is also why many people who have spiritual experiences report things about the spiritual world that aren’t actually true. What they have seen in their spiritual experience is not the spiritual world as it actually is, but a drama played out for them by spirits who are drawing on the contents of the minds of the people having these experiences as a basis for the imagery and experiences presented to them. In the spiritual world, this is very easy to do. And once again, if people aren’t aware of this phenomenon, they will simply assume that what they have experienced is what the spiritual world is actually like, when in fact they have been to a drive-in movie.
As with movies in this world, some spiritual movies are good, and some are not so good. Some of them completely misrepresent reality based on human desires and fallacies. For an example of this in an earthly drama, see:
Charlie Sheen: Man and Myth
How do these people who believe that Earth is a prison planet come up with this? Unfortunately, they’ve been watching some bad spiritual movies, presented to them by spirits who either believe this garbage themselves, or who delight in yanking people’s chains and getting them to believe all sorts of crazy things that aren’t true. Just as on this earth, there are many spirits who get their jollies by fooling people with a load of complete BS. And because they’re in the spiritual world, which is the realm of the human mind, they are much more adept at skillfully misleading people than even the best con artists on this earth.
Is Earth a prison planet?
No.
However, the grain of truth to this may be that according to Swedenborg, our planet is one of the most materialistic planets in the universe. The people on other planets that Swedenborg describes are all more focused on spiritual things than people on this planet are—though those cultures also have their materialistic and evil members. (Swedenborg was wrong about which planets the people he met in the spiritual world came from, though. See: “Aliens vs. Advent: Swedenborg’s 1758 Book on Extraterrestrial Life.”)
We are not living on a prison planet. Reincarnation does not happen as is popularly believed. Each person born represents a brand new soul that had its start at the time of conception, just as we physically have our start at the time of conception. All people on every planet live one life in the material world, and then move on to eternal life (or eternal death) in the spiritual world.
Also, our souls are not a “quantum fluid dynamic” that can be “transposed or removed from the brain” as this YouTuber seems to think. The soul, or spirit, is not physical at all. “Quantum fluid dynamics” are still material and physical dynamics. The soul is not a physical entity. It is a spiritual entity that temporarily inhabits the physical body during its lifetime, and departs from it when it dies. It then continues its life in the spiritual world, in its spiritual body.
The idea that the soul is some sort of wispy ethereal physical thing goes back thousands of years. Since quantum mechanics are a shiny new theory of the fundamental nature of physical reality, the same type of people who used to think that the soul was some sort of breath or ether now think it is some sort of quantum fluid or subatomic wavicle.
One idea is just as materialistic and wrong as the other. The soul is not physical at all. It is 100% spiritual, made of 100% spiritual substance, and 0% physical matter or energy of any kind. All of our life and consciousness is in our spirit. None of it is in our physical body. That’s why when we die, the body ceases to live and begins to decompose, whereas we ourselves continue on with our life, only in the spiritual world, in our spiritual body, instead of in the material world in our physical body. And yet, our spiritual body is just as real, solid, huggable, and lovable as our physical body, if not more so.
On the positive side, this YouTuber at least recognizes that when we contact loved ones in the spiritual world, it is actually them living in the spiritual world.
But this gets fuzzy when reincarnation is thrown into the mix. Once our loved ones have (supposedly) been reincarnated, they are no longer themselves, they no longer have their memories, and we would no longer be able to contact them or have any relationship with them. This also means that in the long term we cannot continue our relationships with the people we have loved, especially with our spouse or soulmate.
Also, people who attempt to contact their loved ones via mediums may or may not actually be talking to their deceased loved ones. But that is covered in the post about contacting spirits that I linked for you above.
I hope this helps you to understand all of these things better. If you have further thoughts or questions, please feel free to continue the conversation.
Hi Lee,
Thank you so kindly for your really super in-depth clarity and wisdom on this subject, I can’t thank you enough and no worries my email does the same!
My general follow up question is like subjects such as, “NDE maps” from various people like Kevin Williams and Dr. Peter Fennick who say they collected NDE data from thousands and come to the conclusion we became these orbs of light that go back to the collective consciousness no form or solidness.
Or some scientists says our consciousness can be reduced to some particles on a quantum level or whatever physical term they want to use. Along with others saying about how our government is be able to transfer our consciousness to another body because they pinpointed the higher dimensional mechanism of consciousness (which I literally heard this from a “government insider named Steven Greer very popular online”). Even from NASA and Harvard scientists saying that our reality is a hologram created by an advanced civilization.
But why do people give such credence and a-pointed authority to these kinds of things like mentioned above, people, and organizations? There is this constant tug o war so to speak within me when I hear stuff like this which gives rise to intense anxiety. But yet the Bible to all those people doesn’t matter and can be tossed out or experiencers like Swedenborg granted from the Lord can be tossed out.
Like even Harvard professors saying “we have to look for smarter kids on the block” meaning “Aliens” since to them they have all the answers to how to beat Death and secrets of the universe and what not. But yet it’s crazy if you express wanting to be lead by the Lord and doing good and excited to see all the people again that you love in the afterlife and continue your relationships with them like my friend who passed loved going on bike rides.
Hi Sam,
That about sums it up.
A whole lot of people are uninterested in any source of real spiritual knowledge and understanding, but they’ll jump all over weird “secret information” and conspiracy theories. People love to think that they’re on the inside track, and know secret things that other people don’t know. Of course, this stuff is blazoned all over the Internet, so it’s really not very “secret.”
It’s also not very plausible.
I’ve read plenty of accounts of near-death experiences. They don’t point to our becoming orbs of light.
As for governments having godlike powers, they can’t even balance their own budget, as millions of ordinary citizens do every month. What gives people the idea that the politicians and bureaucrats are super intelligent and competent people doing incredible things in their secret labs and hideouts? There’s no good evidence for that based on how incompetently they handle the things we know they are doing.
Is the U.S. government keeping REAL ALIENS hidden from us? They can’t even hide the fact that their spy agency has been snooping into Americans’ private lives for decades. The documents released by the whistle-blowers are all over the Internet. But people think that the U.S., Chinese, and Russian governments, who pretty much hate each other, have brilliantly colluded with one another to hide the aliens that are zipping all around their fighter jets and space stations? It’s just plain silly.
Whenever I hear conspiracy theories about amazing secret government programs, I think, “Yeah, they’re just not that smart.” The really smart people are working in the private sector, where they can make a lot more money and get a lot more done.
For just one example, I like to follow rockets and space flight. The U.S. government is currently funding a big moon rocket that takes two years to build and costs somewhere between two and four billion dollars per launch. SpaceX, meanwhile, is building and testing a bigger and more powerful rocket that is estimated to cost about ten million dollars per launch—which is less than one hundredth the cost of the less capable government-built rocket. And once the testing is complete and production is ramped up, SpaceX will be churning out several of these massive rockets per month.
Yet people think the government has secret labs where it can transfer our consciousness from one body to another? Ridiculous!
Remote viewing with the physical world overlaid with spiritual objects and events… Kind of like augmented reality? Except instead of physical reality being augmented with virtual reality, it’s physical reality augmented with spiritual reality…?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes. It would be like a VR headset that instead of blocking out and replacing the person’s surroundings, overlaid virtual reality onto their physical surroundings.
If one connected to the spiritual world, remote viewing or otherwise, a few thousand years into the past, would it reveal Adam, Eve, the Garden of Eden, Noah, and the Flood? As spiritual objects, not physical.
Hi World Questioner,
It’s not possible for humans or angels to directly view the past or the future. It is possible to see the past, but only through stored memories, not by directly viewing it. The future hasn’t happened yet for us humans, so we can extrapolate from the past and the present into the future, but we cannot know the future for sure, because it hasn’t been determined yet.
But to answer your question, no, even if we were to tap into memory records of six thousand years ago, we would not see Adam, Eve, the Garden of Eden, Noah, and the Flood. These are all metaphorical stories, not literal stories.
But aren’t the first 11 chapters of Genesis spiritual stories? Haven’t you said they are spiritual rather than material/physical stores?
World Questioner,
Yes. That’s why if we could look back into the past, we would not see Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden. These are all figurative people and places, not literal, physical ones.
As for “spiritual” vs. “physical/material” stories, isn’t there a difference between “spiritual” and “metaphorical” or “figurative? Or is “physical” and “material” the same as “literal”?
Hi World Questioner,
There are differences in the meanings of these words, but they’re all related. They’re like a Venn diagram that has circles overlapping one another.
While one *normally* cannot directly look across time in the physical, maybe such can still happen under special circumstances.
Hi K,
Of course, “with God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Still, I don’t think it is possible for created beings to have God’s eternal vision. We are not God.
Do people in Heaven normally not work for money anymore, kind of like people in the Star Trek world? I think that is what Swedenborg claimed.
Hi K,
As I understand it, money is not necessary in heaven because everyone there works out of love for the Lord and love for the neighbor, and for the love of the work itself, and the Lord provides for everyone’s needs.
In hell it is different. There people work because if they don’t, they do not get any food or clothing, and would soon be naked and starving. So they are forced to work in exchange for the necessities of life.
Here on earth, there is a mixture of heaven and hell because there is a mix of selfish and unsefish people. So we still do need a money (or barter) economy of some sort, or society and the economy would collapse under the weight of people who only want to receive and do not want to give.
Hopefully copyright, patent, and other forms of intellectual property will not be a thing in Heaven as there is no need for money anymore, there is no dishonesty anymore, and such intellectual property concepts limit the use of information which is not the same as physical property.
Also what would happen if an evil spirit starved for too long?
BTW there used to not be a need for money in the physical before civilization. That only became a thing once complex organization and specialized labor took off after farming was invented.
Hi K,
For the reasons you mention, I can’t imagine there would be any need for copyrights and patents in heaven. There, everyone is happy to share their knowledge, and this can be done easily and quickly. And no one will go hungry because they lost income on their intellectual property. Here on earth, it is different.
One thing that won’t happen to an evil spirit who starved for too long is death. It is not possible for spirits to die. Presumably they would drag themselves back to the workhouse, do some work, and get some food. There are also angels who keep tabs on things in hell. I suppose the worst case scenario would be that an angel would rescue any evil spirits who could no longer walk, or order other evil spirits to take care of them. But I’m not aware that Swedenborg ever mentioned anything like this. Usually the angels are there to quell riots and uprisings, and moderate punishments to keep them from going too far. I think hunger would drive evil spirits to work before they collapsed and became unable to work.
Yes, money only came into use with civilization. Before that it was barter. And before that it was simply tribes and clans working together to gain the necessities of life. Even today in many parts of the world it is common for families and clans to take care of one another’s needs without any money and no barter. It’s something their members just do for one another.
However, money is not necessarily a bad thing. Many of Jesus’ parables are about money. Money is simply a token representing valuable goods and services. Money makes it easier for us to trade with one another in a world in which, unlike heaven, not everyone is motivated by a desire to do good for other people.
Will there be any punching in and out, or will everyone work off the clock? Will people be able to work whenever they want?
Will we have computer servers in Heaven? Because I love Lenovo ThinkSystem, Dell PowerEdge, other server hardware, Windows Server, Ubuntu, and other server operating systems. Will venerable operating systems and CPU architectures make a return?
Hi Word Questioner,
Everyone in heaven loves their work, and there’s no money involved, so there’s no need for time clocks and paychecks. It seems that most people work what we would call a half day, morning to noon, and have the rest of the day available for recreation. But I suspect some people love their work so much that they work more of the day than that.
As for computer servers and operating systems, I see no reason why those couldn’t exist in heaven. But most of the things they do are already possible in heaven without computers. It’s an interesting question. When I arrive there it’s one of the things I plan to look into—whether all the computer infrastructure we have here exists in heaven. I think it probably does. But if it does, it’s probably because people from our era want it to exist, not because it’s really necessary for the functions it provides.
As for earlier operating systems, they still exist here on earth, even if they’re not used much anymore. I suppose they could exist in heaven also. Once again, I’m not sure why anyone would want them, but I suppose if some people do want them, they would be available. Probably as emulations in the heavenly operating system. 😉
Hosting and managing server services doesn’t have to be labor. It can also be fun. Deploying services to allow users to connect remotely.
Hi World Questioner,
That’s the idea behind my statement that angels love their work. When it says in Revelation “they shall have rest from their labors,” it doesn’t mean they won’t work anymore. It means that their work will not be laborious, but enjoyable.
It does seem cruel that God would keep alive a spirit who does not want to be alive, for all eternity, especially in hell. Like the only options for spirits is heaven or hell, and not neither (even though animals may get the latter)?
Then again, maybe spirits in hell live for the evil that is part of their ruling love?
Hi K,
Yes, that death wish goes away before long in the spiritual world. Once people have shed everything that is in conflict with their ruling love, and are completely themselves from inside out, they have a drive to live according to their ruling love, which is what gives them joy in the case of angels, and pleasure in the case of evil spirits.
If people are conditioned to live like prisoners with no mobility and in cramped living conditions (like slaves or medieval peasants), would they be able to freely travel and not live in a cramped place in Heaven, or do they continue to live the prison-like way in the afterlife because that’s what they’re used to?
I think if living conditions suck, people won’t have to endure those forever, even if that’s all they knew in life (or at least I hope so).
Hi K,
Short answer: In the afterlife such people are freed from their prison-like conditions, and can live freely.
In the world of Harry Potter, it is an enchanted realm with all sorts of little magical stuff happening all around all the time. I imagine that’s what it could be like in the afterlife, at least in Heaven, since the spiritual isn’t limited by material physics, and since the afterlife more or less reflects inner thoughts (“externalized inner reality” as David Staume put it).
Hi K,
Yes, many of the things that are described in various fictional magical worlds do occur regularly in heaven. For example, things popping into and out of existence, and people being instantly transported great distances. In many ways, the magical world is the world of the human mind. That is the same as the spiritual world.
What about barbecues and cookouts? You said once that God would not take away hunting, would that mean not taking away the eating of meat?
People have free choice, right? Respect their free choices. That about right?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes. I don’t think everyone automatically becomes vegetarian in heaven. We’re still the same people there that we are here. And lots of people loooove them a barbecue!
Keep in mind that in heaven, it won’t be necessary to kill animals to get meat. Most food simply appears when people get hungry, just as the animals themselves appear when people have the feelings that correspond to them.
I suppose some hunter-gatherer societies may still hunt animals in their regions of heaven because that is a key part of their culture. But most people in modernized societies today never see the animals whose meat they are eating. There is little or no connection in their minds between an animal out in the field and the meat they are eating. They don’t have the experience of killing and butchering animals to get the meat they eat. So it will be all the easier for them to eat the ultimate in “3D printed meat” in heaven without any need to kill animals in the process, or even think about animals at all as they eat the meat.
Having said all that, I think that if people do eat meat in heaven, it will be in the lower heavens, and not in the highest heaven. Here, for your reading pleasure, is the key passage in Swedenborg’s writings about eating meat:
In general, the highest heavens are populated by people from the earliest times, represented by the first chapters of Genesis before the Fall.
Swedenborg’s account of how meat-eating arose is problematic from an evolutionary and anthropological perspective. But the general idea is that people who are very heavenly and spiritual will find eating meat repugnant, whereas people in ordinary post-Fall cultures have no problem with eating meat, and are not condemned for doing so.
And yet today, as we head toward the descent of the New Jerusalem, there is a trend toward vegetarianism and veganism among many thinking, caring people. This, I believe, is because we are moving back toward times in which there will once again be people who make their way to the highest heavens.
Still, like Swedenborg, I don’t condemn anyone for eating meat, nor do I think that anyone who eats meat is savage, cruel, unenlightened, and unspiritual. For most people, eating meat is just something they grew up doing, in a culture that accepts it as normal and natural.
I also don’t think that being vegetarian or vegan automatically makes people more spiritual. Being spiritual is not about what we eat, but about what we desire, think, and do, as Jesus himself said in Matthew 15:10–11, 15–20:
Oh! In Mark 7:19, the parentheses was a later addition, right? The “In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean” was not Mark’s words, but was a post-King-James addition, was it not? But was Mark’s words “purging all meats”?
No. The part in parentheses is in the original Greek. In the KJV it comes out as “purging all meats.”
Even if it is read as part of Jesus’ words and teaching here, it still leans against the idea that certain foods are not to be eaten because they are ritually unclean. Over the centuries Christians have taken this passage as support for the idea that the ritual laws of Moses regarding clean and unclean foods do not apply to Christians—and that in general, what we eat is not a significant part of our religious and spiritual life, and certainly not something critical to our salvation.
Couldn’t God have provided the Israelites with a language that has quotes, commas, parentheses, periods, and such punctuation? Did God not write the Bible with translation in mind? Was the Bible written specifically for the ancients, or was it also meant for modern minds?
Hi World Questioner,
No earthly, human language can ever fully express spiritual things, no matter how much punctuation and how much vocabulary it has. But the Bible does as good a job as any book is ever going to do, as long as we read it with our spiritual eyes open and our heart in the right place.
What is the Biblical basis for spiritual reading of the Bible, and against materialistic reading? Why doesn’t the Bible say something like “Thou shalt read scripture in spirit, not material” or “Scripture is to be read in spirit” or “scripture is to be read spiritually, not materially”? Spirit would be “pneumatikos” in Greek, I don’t know what the Hebrew word is. Is there a Hebrew or Greek word for “material,” and is it used in the original Masoretic text or the Septuagint?
Hi World Questioner,
The Bible gives us plenty of indications that it is to be read spiritually, not literally. But it doesn’t force us to read it spiritually. It leaves it up to us whether to raise our minds higher or keep them in the materialistic sphere. See:
I have made a choice to reject your teachings.
Why does God give us separate physical and spiritual bodies? Why can’t the physical and spiritual be consolidated? Notice how I use the word “consolidate”? What good is a perishable physical body? Couldn’t God do things a less drastic way than us having to die to get to Heaven? I propose that immortal beings who transgressed were cursed to be incarnated as mortals in the physical world with all its pain and suffering, with perishable bodies, and isolated from God/gods (Elohim) and spiritual reality until death. Kind of like some Muslims believe that humans who transgressed were cursed to be reborn as pigs, the proposed reason for the prohibition of eating pork. Almost like reincarnation.
I might as well quit. Still feel free to reply to my comments.
Hi World Questioner,
As I’ve said many times before, you are free to believe whatever you want to believe. We’ve discussed all these questions here before. I can’t think of anything new to say at the moment. But please read this article:
When Death is a Celebration
P.S. if I am wrong, then I am a lost sheep, and God as a Shepherd will find me. I will still be open to the truth.
Hi World Questioner,
If you focus on loving God above all and loving your neighbor as yourself, as Jesus taught, then you will be a sheep in God’s pasture, and God will never forsake you.
Another question, do Hebrew and Greek use the same words for “spirit” and “breath”? Is “pneumatikos” used for both “breath” and “spirit”? Does that mean that, just as with translating “ouranos” into “Heaven” or “sky”, translators have to use judgement when translating “pneumatikos” into “breath” or “spirit”?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, the most common words for “spirit” and “breath” are the same in both Hebrew and Greek. So yes, translators have to use their judgment, based on the context, as to how to translate them. But it’s good to keep in mind that in the original languages of the Bible, it’s the same word.
What do you think of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_KChsVGohg (Unclean Meat: Can Christians eat pork?) and https://manna.amazingfacts.org/amazingfacts/shows/csh/notes/LOP_Storacle_BW_Hor_17-1482203249.pdf? They are both about Babylon’s Buffet. I know, I know, they read the Bible materialistically.
Hi World Questioner,
I generally agree about better and worse diets, and about the biblical progression from purer to less pure diets, including from an original vegetarian state to a carnivorous state. Personally, I have been a vegetarian for over forty years. However, I don’t consider this to be a religious requirement, and even the narrator of the video says that the Bible doesn’t require a vegetarian diet. See also this passage in the Gospels:
Christians are not required to follow dietary laws as a requirement of their religion. However, I do believe that a vegetarian diet is a healthier diet, and that for those who are willing, it is better for both mind and body not to eat meat. But for those who eat meat in good conscience, there is no lasting spiritual harm from it. Swedenborg says the same thing in this passage:
I don’t know that that verse has anything to do with lifting dietary restrictions on eating pork and other unclean meats.
Hi World Questioner,
See my response to your previous question just above, here.
People may eat meat in Heaven or be vegetarian, and people may learn about the physical world from recently deceased newcomers, or not be interested in physical matters… That’s called free will, right?
Hi World Questioner,
Makes sense to me!
If I eat meat on Earth, will I also eat meat in Heaven? Will vegetarians and vegans on Earth also be vegetarians and vegans in Heaven?
Didn’t you say that in the Spiritual World, people are what they developed to be on Earth? They believe what they believed on Earth, whether true or false?
Even in this physical world, vegetarian, vegan, and pescatarian diets are all encouraged lifestyles, but they should be not be forced on anyone. They should be treated as a free choice, right? Vegetarians and vegans should not judge meat-eaters for eating meat, neither do meat-eaters judge vegetarians and vegans for denying themselves meat or other animal products such as dairy and eggs. Correct?
And can people go without eating if they want?
Hi K,
They can, just as people can here on earth. You can fast there just as you can here. But after a while, they’ll get quite hungry, and will want to eat. And I can assure you that in heaven eating is not a “disgusting” experience.
Hi World Questioner,
Most people will live a similar life, and probably eat a similar diet, in heaven as they did on earth. Most vegetarians will probably keep being vegetarians, and most meat-eaters will probably keep eating meat. In the spiritual world, no animal has to die for people to eat meat, because food is provided directly by the Lord. This means that the ethical reasons for not eating meat here on earth no longer apply in the spiritual world.
On this earth, I agree that people should not judge one another based on external things such as diet. As Jesus himself said, it’s not what goes into the mouth that’s important, but what comes out of the mouth, which is what comes from the heart.
I don’t like the idea of _having_ to eat. Sounds limiting (and still kinda gross).
I assume that if a spirit did not eat, they would never die of starvation, but would get ever more agonizing hunger?
Hi K,
No one in heaven has to eat. They want to eat. Once again, eating in heaven is not “disgusting” or “gross.” The food is delicious. Eating it is a pleasant activity. It is usually done together with others, so that there is conversation, laughter, and sharing the table together, just as was traditionally the case here on earth before life got so individualistic and atomized.
Also, food and drink correspond to love and understanding. In heaven, eating feels like gaining more love, and drinking feels like gaining more understanding. This is another element of the pleasure and joy of eating in the spiritual world.
No one in heaven would ever attempt to stop eating altogether. It would be like deciding never to learn anything new ever again, and never to develop any new feelings of love. Life would quickly become empty and dead. Angels would never inflict that kind of physical and emotional pain on themselves.
I still like the idea of an afterlife being both like a so-called energy being with ESP, as well as being solid and corporeal. A realm where where learning can manifest itself in different ways (such as reading instead of eating). Better than being stuck in either one or the other.
Like I said, if it turns out the New Church afterlife is more or less _the_ afterlife (if there is any), hopefully finding being stuck in flesh is not detrimental to finding a place deeper in Heaven, and hopefully a spirit can at least temporarily assume an ethereal form.
PS: By better than being stuck in one or the other, I meant better than being stuck as solid flesh in spirit, or stuck as ethereal and incorporeal in spirit.
Hi K,
Once again, your spiritual body will not be “flesh” as you think of it here in the physical world. It will not be made of heavy physical matter, but of light and responsive spiritual substance. Once again, I think you will be pleasantly surprised by your spiritual body. There will be nothing “gross” about it. And once again, I think you will just have to experience this for yourself.
Even with all the visual and tactile similarity, living in the spiritual world is quite different from living in the physical world. The difference becomes clearer and clearer as we progress through the stages that take place in the world of spirits, and go to our final home in heaven.
In heaven there is not such a radical distinction between solid and ethereal things as there is here on earth. Even solid things are “ethereal” in the sense that they are instantly responsive to the slightest changes in people’s thoughts and feelings. They aren’t “solid” in the physical sense of maintaining their shape and resisting outside influences. They aren’t “heavy” in that sense. They do look, feel, sound, taste, and smell just as solid as things on earth, but intrinsically they are highly changeable and fluid in response to people’s thoughts and feelings.
Any ongoing stability and solidity is based, not on something intrinsic to spiritual things or the spiritual body, but on reflecting stable parts of the character of the individual, and of the character of the people of the community in which the individual lives.
Our physical body rather stubbornly maintains its appearance and structure regardless of our wants and desires or our thoughts and feelings. We can make changes to it, but usually only by sustained effort over a long period of time. Weight doesn’t come off instantly just because we are feeling light. It takes arduous dieting, exercise, and so on—and even then, for those who tend toward obesity genetically, it comes back very easily. That’s not how the spiritual body works at all. It has no distinct, semi-autonomous existence of its own as the physical body does, and no resistance to every thought and feeling that goes through our mind and heart. Whatever is inside of us is instantly expressed in the appearance of our body.
In heaven it is not necessary to be ethereal to have ESP. Angels are able to directly share their thoughts very easily right in their normal spiritual body. Once again, the spiritual body is not like the physical body. It doesn’t make communication slow and imprecise the way our physical body does. It quickly and fully expresses all of our thoughts and feelings, whether in words, in facial expressions, or in direct sharing of thoughts from mind to mind.
As long as you keep thinking of the spiritual body as being just like the physical body, made of physical matter, having its own semi-autonomous existence and solidity, you will not be able to grasp what it is like to live in our spiritual body. It’s just not the same.
A shorter way of saying this is that when you are in your spiritual body, you will be both an energy being and solid at the same time. In the spiritual world, these are not separate things as they are here. (But even here, the solidity that we feel is actually the interaction of atomic and molecular forces. Even physical matter is mostly empty space.)
Maybe that sounds better.
I was getting the impression that the New Church afterlife is sorta like the afterlife of the anime and manga series Bleach, in how spirit bodies work. In Bleach, spirit bodies are solid (in the spiritual realm, not the physical, that is) with the same anatomy as humans in the physical, they can get wounded or injured, they can bleed, they gotta eat, and they can even die (although if a spirit dies in the world of Bleach, they normally reincarnate instead of cease to exist). Such spirits are just about as weak and limited in the spiritual realm as humans are in the physical in real life, aside from any powers and abilities that are so-called magic in the physical. Really evil spirits in the Bleach world are disfigured humanoids (called Hollows), who are subject to the same limitations as non-Hollows (which sounds kinda like evil spirits in the New Church hell).
Hi K,
I’m not familiar with that series. But it sounds like its afterlife is more like the afterlife of the materialist Christians who believe that we will be resurrected in our physical body and live here on earth in the material realm forever.
That is not what Swedenborg taught.
Even if a spirit body is made out of some light and responsive psychic substance, Swedenborg still said it is a familiar body with nothing missing. Swedenborg also described sensations like pain (which is more intense than in the physical and that blows), having to eat, and even certain waste byproducts (implying that the spirit body makes them perhaps). Even if all that is really a magical manifestation of some abstract spiritual stuff, it seems in New Church thought, it manifests as being stuck in a human body, and possibly also stuck in a terrestrial environment, 24-7.
I still think it is not as good as being able to be a pure thought energy being that can assume a so-called avatar form. A human form could be an instinctive one that is easiest to assume and that perfectly reflects the character. But such an avatar form is not necessary.
Being stuck 24-7 in a human body for eternity, even as you describe, still sounds sucky to me. I just cannot get over that now. Even if you say it is like being energy being and solid at the same time, the so-called spirit body still appears solid: Swedenborg even described spirits being unaware that they have passed away. If being trapped a spirit body is so different from being trapped in a physical body, that one spirit would have noticed he was deceased sooner, before Swedenborg pointed out that he was floating.
And being human sucks, at least for ∞. The human body is inherently limited (such as vulnerable to pain even if made of some magical substance), gross (even if made of some magical substance there is still all the gross organs and disgusting functions like toilet stuff), and way too many rules to abide by. Even if it is tolerable for decades while being made of atoms in this life, I doubt it is tolerable for ∞, even if it is some magical psychic substance.
Like I said, I think I would like it if being a so-called soul or spirit works more like being a Q from Star Trek instead of stuck in a so-called glorified and resurrected body (as the LDS AKA Mormons refer to it), even if the latter is sculpted out of some magical psychic substance rather than a lot of atoms.
Also are spirit bodies made of spiritual cells? That also sounds gross.
PS: Or to summarize, I hope that in any afterlife, I can be free from what Arthur C. Clarke described in 3001 prologue as the tyranny of matter. Even if that matter is some mystical psychic substance highly responsive to thought, but appears solid.
Hi K,
I predict that when you die, you will be allowed to try out being a ball of light as your version of heaven. And I predict that after a while of that, you’ll find it very limiting and frustrating because you won’t be able to do much. You’ll get more and more bored just floating around disembodied all the time, until you really hate your life and wish you wouldn’t have to be stuck floating around as a ball of light to ∞.
At that point, you’ll get very depressed, and long to have your body back. And when you finally do get it back, you’ll finally feel truly free, and truly yourself.
But given how stuck you are on the grossness of the body and its functions, I don’t think you’ll take my word for it. I think you’ll have to go through it yourself, and learn it first-hand. 😉
A mere ball of light is not how I envision the ideal for any afterlife. That seems rather limited. Like I said, I envision it as being pure thought without form by default, but still able to sense and influence via ESP. And such a form can freely manifest in an avatar form, as well as transcend the appearance of a 3D terrestrial environment with familiar sights and sounds to those in physical.
Hi K,
Well then, that’s the heaven you’ll be able to try out. And my prediction remains that you will soon tire of it, and will be most anxious to get back to your real, human form.
If there is even an afterlife in the first place and I do not simply cease to be when I pass away, then if what you predict is the case, hopefully I can still have breaks from human form by at least being able to shapeshift, like becoming thought alone without form that can still perceive and act via what would be considered so-called psychic powers in the physical.
But really, it can still be a challenge to believe in the afterlife in the first place, when mind-brain dependence is so evident. Even with house analogy you made.
[
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
] – Hamlet: act 3, scene 1
Hi K,
The mind is dependent on the brain as long as the mind is living in the brain. But once that connection is severed, the dependency ceases. Radio waves depend on a radio to deliver their message to people. But if all radios stopped existing, the radio waves would still have their own independent existence. The don’t depend on the radio for their existence.
On your hope about life in heaven, as I’ve said before, since we have simulations and virtual reality here on earth, I don’t see why we couldn’t do the same thing in heaven, only far better.
If people from a civilization with extreme and reality-denying views make it to Heaven, can they be led out of such extreme and reality denying views?
(not specifying which here to avoid going political here)
Hi K,
In the spiritual world, and especially in heaven, it is a lot harder to deny reality than it is here on earth. There, the light actually is truth. It therefore shows everything for what it truly is. People in hell can still deny reality because they block out the light of heaven. Even in the world of spirits it is possible to continue to deny reality because there people are still in transition from an earth-like state to a spiritual state. But in heaven, it is not possible to deny reality because reality is visibly presented to the eyes of its inhabitants all the time.
As for politics, while there are still governments in some parts of heaven, unlike the vast majority of politicians here on earth, the people running the governments in heaven actually are doing their job for the benefit of the people. Plus, there is no possibility of falsity appearing to be truth. This means there is not the phenomenon of politicians lying or convincing themselves that their policies and actions are for the benefit of the country when in fact their words and actions are all about benefiting themselves and their backers. In heaven, politicians don’t enter office middle class and leave office rich—or quickly become rich after leaving office—as the bulk of politicians do here on earth.
If the sense of empathy and willingness to do good in a person are hindered by lack of energy and social isolation from mental disability (such as autism spectrum disorder), will such wantings remain in eternity, even if they make it to a heaven?
In other words, could such circumstances borne of an issue beyond control consign a person to a lower Heaven than they otherwise could have gone to?
PS: lack of energy from physiological factor can be a symptom of autism spectrum disorder
Hi K,
The disability itself will be removed in the afterlife. It probably will affect where in heaven the person ends out, but perhaps not in the way you might expect. People whose mental development is arrested in childhood by a mental disability severe enough to prevent their achieving full adult self-responsibility will continue their growth process from the childhood level they had gotten to in the physical world. And young children who die go to the higher heavens because of their innocence. So it won’t necessarily mean that the person goes to a lower heaven than they might otherwise have gone to. This could happen, but it won’t necessarily happen.
Beyond that, even people in the lowest heavens have a level of happiness that goes beyond anything even the best and most spiritual people experience here on earth. Even if someone did end out in a lower heaven due to physical circumstances beyond his or her control, that person will still be happier than any of us can imagine here on earth.
What about people who have only mild mental disability, but still suffer from social isolation and lack of motivation because of symptoms of the condition?
Also the lowest level of Heaven doesn’t sound so great, as one can get temporarily ejected from it now and then (IIRC). Does that cycle ever stop, or does one living in the lowest Heaven keep getting ejected throughout eternity?
Hi K,
When people get temporarily ejected from heaven because their ego rears up, it is a learning experience. Over time, after having this happen a number of times, they will learn that no, they’re not good by themselves, and yes, everything good comes from God, and no, we can’t take credit for it, and yes, a big ego is a big problem. So over time, these episodes will become less and less frequent, and most likely will eventually cease altogether.
And it’s not as though this is happening every day, even in the beginning. These are good people. They’re in heaven, not in hell. Their day-to-day life is very bright and happy. And even the occasional episode of falling out of heaven because they got pumped up in their own ego becomes a lesson in contrast. Seeing how their life could have been if they’d made the opposite choice, and put their own ego first in their life, makes them appreciate the happy life they have even more, and appreciate God for giving them that life.
It’s like life here on earth, where the bright times in life seem all the brighter by contrast with the dark times we’ve been through.
Once again, the people who make their homes in the lowest levels of heaven are still far happier than just about anyone who is still living on this earth. God gives them exactly as much happiness and joy as they can handle. Any more would blow their circuits. They are as happy as they can possibly imagine being. It’s the same thing Jesus was referring to when he said:
Hi K,
But to answer your first question more directly:
People who have a mild mental disability that causes social isolation and lack of motivation will have that disability removed in the other life. If they were able to function as self-responsible adults, then the same rules will apply to them as to everyone else. Whatever sort of motivation and life they have chosen, that’s what will guide them either to heaven or to hell. Either way, it is 100% their choice. Their mental disability will have no part in determining whether they go to heaven or to hell.
Those who go to heaven will find the place in heaven that perfectly fits their character, minus the mental disability. There, they will live the happiest life they can possibly imagine. Unlike the peddlers of envy and division here on earth, they will not be obsessed with some other people having more than they have. They will have exactly what they want, and exactly as much of it as they want. They won’t want to live someone else’s life.
Even if they were to visit the highest heavens, they would soon have a strong desire to go back to their own home, where they are happiest. Swedenborg describes this happening to people who rise up to higher heavens than the one that fits them.
It is very unfortunate that certain parts of the political spectrum have fired people up with envy and resentment over other people having more money or power or beauty or social status than they have. This is highly toxic. It makes it impossible for people to enjoy and improve the life they do have, because they’re so focused on the life they don’t have.
I’ve lived among very poor people who were a lot happier than the middle-class people that I’ve also lived among. They didn’t spend their days envious of people who had more than they did. They enjoyed their life of love and camaraderie with family and friends in their own community and neighborhood. Firing them up with envy over people who have more than they do would only destroy their happy life. It’s a crime.
In heaven, no one is envious or worried about what other people have. No one frets about whether someone else is in a higher heaven than they are, and might be happier than they are. Everyone is as happy as he or she can possibly imagine being because everyone is living exactly the life he or she wants to live.
I should add that by “motivation” in the above comment I mean what goals and purposes they have chosen to put first in their life, not what level of motivation they have.
By “lack of motivation”, I meant lack of energy. Can a person who has a mild disability causing lack of empathy and lack of a drive to work hard (because of lack of energy) have that removed with the disability after death?
Hi K,
Yes. There will be no lack of motivation or energy after death. That disability will be removed.
As for empathy, not everyone is an empathic type. Some people are more focused on their own projects, and are very good at blocking out the world. And for certain jobs, that is a very useful and necessary character trait. Even in heaven, there will be people who won’t be gushing with empathy for other people. However, they will still focus on their work not for their own benefit, but because it is helpful to other people.
Another issue: even if the spiritual substance that makes a spirit body up is “higher resolution” than atoms, wouldn’t spirit brain cells still be the same proportional size to a spirit body, and thus there would be a proportionally finite brain size for connections and number of neurons, which does not quite work with having a huge amount of memory and knowledge after the spiritual equivalent of aeons?
Then again, maybe there is some other solution, since it is a realm beyond space and time.
Hi K,
The human brain is not just a fancy computer. It works in much more complex ways than our computers. It doesn’t store memories in bits and bytes that pile up in quantity, taking up more and more space.
Consider the vast banks of servers that provide memory storage for individuals and companies around the world. More and more of them are always getting built and installed as the need for data storage doubles and quadruples. But the human brain just stays the same size, even though it is storing more information than whole banks of data servers.
How exactly this works I don’t claim to know. But by analogy to how the physical brain works compared to our computer technology, I’m confident that the spiritual brain will not run out of memory space. Keep in mind that although God is infinite, we are not. And keep in mind that even if we live to eternity, there is still no ratio to the infinite, because we will never actually reach eternity. We will always have lived for a finite amount of time—or a finite amount of progressive states, to use more spiritually correct terms. The spiritual brain does not need space for infinite knowledge because its knowledge and experience will always be finite, not infinite. And I have got to believe that God as designer made sure that the spiritual brain would have enough capacity and more to handle any amount of knowledge and experience we can possibly accumulate.
Perhaps the people who talk about the Akashic records and similar spiritual memory-storage schemes are correct, and we don’t have to store all of our memories within our own spiritual brains. Our computer server farms do provide an analogy for how it could work in the spiritual world. Except that spiritual things are eternal. There would be no possibility of servers crashing or getting corrupted, and their stored data lost.
Whether our memories continue to be stored in our spiritual brain to eternity or whether after a while they move to cloud storage to save space in the brain, I don’t think this is an insuperable problem. God is at least as smart and technical as our best computer programmers here on earth. Obviously much more so, since the human body and brain still have capabilities that we can only aspire to with our computers and robots.
However, I lean away from the idea that we offload our memories onto spiritual server farms to make room for more experience and knowledge. I believe our memories continue to be stored within our own spiritual mind and body forever.
Computers are agnostic about what particular data is stored in them. You can take a data server, erase its memory banks, reformat them, and fill them with entirely different data, and the server will continue to operate in exactly the same way it did before.
That’s not how human experience and memory works. Who we are today is the sum total of everything we have experienced, and all the choices we have made, and all the things we have done, from the time of our conception right up to the present. We are not data agnostic. If our memory were purged, and completely different memories were implanted in us, we would become an entirely different person than we are.
But that’s not possible, precisely because our memories are not stored the same way computer memories are stored.
How exactly it works I don’t claim to know. But when we have experiences and learn things, they become part of who we are. They aren’t just stored information. They are part of the fabric of our character. Some experiences and ideas take more central locations, and some take more peripheral locations in our character, but all of them are part of us. This includes the ones we can’t consciously recall. Our experiences in the womb and in our first few years of life have a profound effect on our character even though we remember hardly any of them. They are written on our character.
The analogy in the brain is that, from what I’ve gathered (and I make no claim to be any kind of expert in the physiology of the brain), memories are stored through the building of connections between neurons, not by encoding bits and bytes into cells. In other words, the very fabric of our brain is constructed based on our experiences, and the knowledge and memory we gain from them. Memory storage is not arbitrary, but organic. It actually changes the structure of the brain.
This, I believe, is how our memories are stored spiritually as well. It’s not just growing banks of information. It is structural changes in our character, which is reflected in the structure of our spiritual body and brain. We actually are the sum total of our experiences, memories, choices, actions, and so on. We don’t store our memories. We are our memories. Memories are not like water stored in a cistern made of bricks. The memories are the bricks. The analogy is faulty, of course, because once again, we’re not building up more and more bulk of memories like data servers. It’s more like the particular configuration of bricks is the memory. The continually new interconnections of neurons is a better analogy.
Further, there is “data compression” in that our memories don’t consist of isolated discrete bits of information piled one on top of another. Rather, our memories are all cross-referenced and related to one another. Each time we go for a swim, we don’t “store” brand new memories of that swim. Rather, we add that swim to the mental and emotional structure of all the other times we’ve gone swimming, not to mention all the related experiences such as the people we swam with, the weather that day, how cold the water was, what conversations we had while swimming with companions, and on and on. These are not just discrete, disconnected bits of information. They are a complex, interconnected web of experience that is tightly bound together so that each memory is shaped and textured by every other memory we have ever had.
I’m not sure there is an adequate analogy for how our memory and fund of knowledge and experience work. Every new experience isn’t “stored.” Rather, every new experience becomes an integral part of who we are. It becomes a part of our very structure.
Angels, Swedenborg says, can tell everything about a person’s character and history just from looking at his or her hand. It’s all written there. And yet, our spiritual hands don’t get bigger and bigger the more experience we have. Rather, the very structure and texture of our spiritual hands expresses exactly who we are, in full detail.
This, I hope, gives some indication of how different or “memory storage” is compared to all our current computer data storage techniques that involve adding more and more memory banks to store more and more data. That’s just not how it works with human experience and memory. Our experiences don’t add bulk to our spiritual body and brain. They become part of its structure.
Thanks for the reply. I guess if spirits can change into orbs of light or other non-humanoid forms, the storage issue wouldn’t really be an issue somehow anyway.
And I still think it’s possible that spirit bodies are not _the_ core essence of a spirit, but expressions of them, so if that is correct, then that also helps.
Hi K,
Sorry about some of your recent messages disappearing. Legitimate messages keep getting erroneously put into the spam folder. I don’t always notice it right away.
And no, spirit bodies are not the core essence of a spirit, but expressions of it. The core essence of a spirit, just like the core essence of God, is love, and its form is wisdom. And yet, these are human love and wisdom, which is why they express themselves outwardly in a human body.
Hi Lee. I was reading about how true things we love are transformed into correspondence. Does Swedenborg ever say what they are transformed into or give an example. Do they change into something different than what we knew them well alive.
Can people in the afterlife make art by just having thoughts manifest directly to art, or do they have to use the same cumbersome, tedious processes as in this life: of using art supplies (or maybe computers and software) with the hands? Hopefully the former is the case, making the latter a novelty.
Hi K,
Given that we’re almost at the point where we can do this here through our technology, it wouldn’t surprise me if the ability to do it in the spiritual world already exists.
This may sound crazy, but what if there is a so-called afterafterlife, outside of that so-called grand human that represents the afterlife, and is more alien to the physical than the afterlife?
Purely speculation here, of course.
Hi K,
I doubt it. The universal human is universal, meaning that it encompasses all of heaven. This includes any people who may come from other planets.
There is, of course, the world of spirits, which is not part of heaven proper. And there is also hell, which is obviously outside of the universal human of heaven. It forms its own upside down, disfigured “universal inhuman,” to coin a term that Swedenborg doesn’t use.
But if by “afterlife” you mean heaven, or the good afterlife that God created us for, then from my perspective, no, there is not any afterlife outside of the universal human of heaven. Even aliens are human, in Swedenborg’s accounting, because they have human will and understanding, and human ability to have a conscious relationship with God. Whether they all look human is another question, but Swedenborg certainly believed that they did, with only minor variations.
The afterlife as Swedenborg describes it seems to be what I describe as “human stasis”: forever stuck in a world like this one (albeit maybe better), living sort of like in this world.
A somewhat New Age-y afterlife without reincarnation sounds vastly better: maybe it is like this world at first, but it gets ever more incomprehensibly wonderful as the equivalent of eons goes on. So by the equivalent of 3↑↑↑↑3 years (3↑↑↑↑3 is g1 of Graham’s number BTW), it would be some kind of existence that could not even be grasped by the mind now.
Meanwhile in the New Church afterlife and after the equivalent of 3↑↑↑↑3 years, that prince and his royal court who are described in Conjugial Love are still playing royal court after all those incomprehensible eons, still as relatively ordinary humans. That guy in hell who is convinced he is somehow still living in the physical and denies the Divine still does not get the hint that maybe he is not in the physical anymore after all those uncountable eons. And God makes sure it stays that way, with the equivalent of ∞ years to go.
No offense, but I hope any afterlife is better than the New Church afterlife. The New Church afterlife kind of sounds like hell to me. All of it: Heaven, the World of Spirits, and of course hell.
PS: by “God makes sure it stays that way”, I meant that the way the spiritual in New Church works keeps them that way.
And like I said, the New Church afterlife makes me feel uneasy. Again, no offense intended here.
Hi K,
I don’t know where your highly negative view of human life comes from. I’m sure there’s some reason for it. But I think you will be pleasantly surprised when you get to the other side. The new church afterlife is far greater than you are conceiving of it. But you’ll just have to experience it for yourself to realize that.
Beyond that, as I’ve said before, no one in heaven is forced to be or do anything he or she doesn’t want to. There is complete freedom there. Everything is a seamless expression of the angels’ own character, which, in turn, is an expression of what they love most, at the conscious core of their being.
The vast bulk of humans on this earth will be ecstatic to be able to continue their human lives, but without all the struggles and pain of this world. Most people build a life for themselves that they generally like, and will want to continue in the other life, except without all the confining negatives of this earthly, physical life, which also has much human selfishness and greed casting a pall over it. Once they get to the other side, they’ll be able to live the pain-free, poverty-free, evil-free life that they dream of.
You, too, will be able to live your ideal life, whatever that may be, assuming you do the work of regeneration during your lifetime here on earth.
If the body of a spirit in the afterlife _is_ the spirit, and nothing is missing as Swedenborg wrote, then it really does seem to imply mortality.
Spirit digestive system: implies that spirit nutrients are needed to maintain spirit metabolism (staying alive in the afterlife).
Spirit respiratory system: implies some kind of spirit gas is needed along with the spirit nutrients to maintain spirit metabolism.
Spirit circulatory system: implies that those spiritual nutrients and gases need to be circulated or spiritual death happens.
Spirit skeleton: implies that spirit organs need protection from various spiritual threats that can be lethal.
Spirit reproductive system: If spirit women cannot have babies, then why are there spirit ovaries, spirit fallopian tubes, and a spirit womb? And with guys, why are there the spirit organs needed for making sperm (are there spirit sperm cells?), which need to be outside the spirit body (implying different spirit temperature is needed than what is inside the spirit body)?
Spirit brain: can only grow so many neurons and neural connections, even if spirit matter is this magical stuff that is somehow finer than physical matter. What happens after a spirit obtains the equivalent of TREE(3) years of memories? And a spirit brain being protected by a spirit skull and being able to lose consciousness (as Swedenborg seems to describe happening to spirits IIRC) implies that there can be spirit brain damage or even death.
Even if all the above corresponds to various spiritual concepts, they take the form of the various described functions, which seems to imply spiritual mortality. BTW I guess this may at least partly explain why I have an aversion to being stuck in a corporeal form in the afterlife.
Now if a human spirit body is merely an avatar, all of those problems vanish. An avatar body can be a novelty, a relic of a bygone time of spacetime and mass-energy and entropy driving natural selection and adaptation to a terrestrial environment around a yellow dwarf sun, but is not necessary for survival in an eternal existence.
PS: And if it is possible for a spirit to die, yet God holds it off through constant providence, then that sounds like a very precarious and crappy situation to me.
But if a spirit being is a so-called energy being of pure thought who can take on human form as an avatar in the spiritual realm? In that case, again, that issue vanishes.
PPS: Anyway, to summarize, I guess my main issue with the New Church afterlife is how similar it sounds to the natural world, especially with how people seem to be: how mortality seems to be an issue even there, even if God can somehow stave it off.
PPPS: Or to put it another way, I do not want to reincarnate, and the New Church afterlife seems too much like another physical life. There is even forgetting of mortal life to a degree in the New Church afterlife, mentioned in H&H.
Hi K,
For human beings in the spiritual world there is no mortality, and no danger or possibility of mortality, due to three factors:
Factor 1
God is continually maintaining the existence and function of both the spiritual universe and the material universe. If God were to withdraw even for one nanosecond, both of them would instantly vanish. This is not a danger, however, because God is infinite, eternal, omnipotent, and all-loving. God does not and cannot change. Withdrawing even for a nanosecond would mean God becoming no longer infinite, eternal, omnipotent, and all-loving. This would mean that God would cease to be God. That cannot happen, because God is being and existence in itself, from which all other being and existence comes. Self-existent being cannot cease to be, and it cannot cease to be itself.
God’s providence is constant. It is never withdrawn from any part of the physical or spiritual universe even for a nanosecond. It is present not just overall, but in every single part and detail of everything that exists, right down to the tiniest subatomic particle and quantum flux, and their spiritual equivalents. Nothing at all can exist without God’s constant presence in it. It is precisely because God’s providence is constant that we can continue our day-to-day existence, and everything we see around us can continue to exist in a stable fashion. If nothing else, quantum mechanics suggests that reality is very diaphanous and illusory. But it is solid because God keeps it that way.
Yes, God “holds off mortality through constant providence.” But since God’s providence is constant, there is no danger or possibility of mortality for humans in the spiritual world.
Our entire being depends on God every moment. That would be “a very precarious and crappy situation” if God were the capricious, angry god that traditional Christians worship. But God is not that capricious, angry being. God is infinite love, wisdom, and power that never changes, and is always constant. It is precisely because of this that we are not in “a very precarious and crappy situation” to eternity.
Factor 2
Human beings, unlike animals, have an inmost soul that is above our conscious awareness and ability to affect or change, into which God flows directly, maintaining our being and our life. This inmost soul is the “mechanism” through which we have eternal life.
This inmost soul is a human soul, meaning it has the fundamental human capacities of human love, wisdom, and action. Human love, wisdom, and action are the ability to love unselfishly, the ability to think about and guide our lives by God and spirit, and the ability to act in our life based on that love and wisdom. Because we have these human capacities at our inmost level, where they cannot be destroyed, we have the eternal ability to be in loving, mutual relationship with God. This is true even if we choose not to exercise that ability, as is the case with evil spirits in hell.
The existence of this human inmost soul into which God flows directly, maintaining our being and our life, makes it impossible for us ever to die in the spiritual world.
Keep in mind that our physical body is not really part of our essential being. It is simply an extra added “tool” that we use to interact with the material world while we are living here. It can die precisely because it is not an essential part of our being. When we leave it behind, we are just as much ourselves as we were before. Nothing at all is missing.
That’s not the case with our spiritual body, which is an essential part of our being, and which therefore cannot die, as cemented by the third factor.
Factor 3
While the material universe does correspond to the spiritual universe, it also has its own semi-autonomous existence. It operates under its own set of laws, which do correspond to spiritual laws, but they are physical, not spiritual, versions of those laws.
One of those physical laws is that everything in the physical world has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Nothing is infinite or eternal, because the physical world is bounded by time and space.
Applied to living beings, this means that every living being in the physical universe has a beginning, a lifespan, and an end. All living beings on earth are mortal. They all eventually die. This is independent of any spiritual symbolism the physical thing may have. Once it dies, the correspondence ceases.
That’s not the case for spiritual beings. In the spiritual world, everything is immediately responsive to spiritual forces and vectors (which are love and wisdom, or good and truth). There is no semi-autonomy from spiritual inflow because things there are spiritual.
For everything but humans in the spiritual world, this means that their existence may be and usually is temporary. Plants and animals in the spiritual world do not live forever. They don’t die either. They simply appear and disappear according to the thoughts and feelings of the people in the vicinity. That’s because they are correspondential representations of those thoughts and feelings.
If any non-human thing in the spiritual world has permanence, it’s because it reflects a basic, settled aspect of the character of the person or people that it reflects. For example, people’s houses don’t appear and disappear, because a house is a reflection (correspondence) of the person’s character. Their houses will change here and there over time as their character develops, but they do not disappear altogether any more than the person’s character disappears altogether.
For humans, though, due to the aforementioned inmost soul that God flows into directly, there is a constant source of love, wisdom, and power that expresses itself in the life of the individual spirit, including in his or her spiritual body.
Because of the constancy of the inmost soul, and the fact that spiritual things exist through correspondences, a spirit’s mind and body can never go out of existence, even for the spiritual equivalent of a nanosecond. The spirit’s life is constant because everything in the spiritual world exists through the highly responsive flow of correspondences from inmost to outmost.
Of course, the love, wisdom, and power of God that flows into the inmost soul becomes modified as it moves down into the angel’s or spirit’s conscious awareness and life, based on the particular character and life that the individual angel or spirit has built for himself or herself. But that flow never stops. It continues to eternity, keeping the angel or spirit in constant existence to eternity.
All of this is why angels and spirits are not mortal. They can never die.
As for the various spiritual commodities required for continued life, such as air, food, and water, there is no possibility of these ever failing because of God’s infinity, eternity, omnipotence, and love. God is our shepherd. The shepherd never fails to feed the flock. Even if some human shepherd did, God never does. God’s love and provision for us is constant to all eternity.
Even evil spirits do not die of starvation. They do get hungry, sometimes desperately so. But there is always work available for them to do so that they can earn food, clothing, housing, and so on. When they get hungry enough, they go to the local workhouse and do some useful work (which they hate to do), and they get food and clothing. Then they go on about their business until they get hungry again.
For angels, there is no shortage or scarcity ever. There is constant abundance, because angels love to serve their fellow angels and spirits. That love, and its accompanying wisdom, corresponds to a constant supply of the basic needs of life, such as spiritual air, food, water, clothing, and housing.
Again, when you get to the spiritual world, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. If the mortality of physical flesh is your issue with the New Church heaven, you will quickly discover that there is no possibility of death in heaven, or even in hell. It’s just not possible due to the three factors I explained above. Mortality is part and parcel of physical life. It is not part of spiritual life.
Thanks for reply. Even if mortality is not an issue after all, I have other issues with the New Church afterlife. Such as (but not limited to) limitations of spiritual flesh (I hope that if there is an afterlife, I do not _have_ to constantly breathe or eat to be comfortable), the grossness of flesh to me (when stuck in such for eternity), and the eternity of hell (even if that last one is explained by free will, I still do not like it). And of course I also do not like how the only way pets can be in Heaven is some recreation or facsimile as you described.
An example of something that just rubbed me the wrong way is that in Marriage Love, Swedenborg describes at least one or two communities in Heaven (I think) where courts gave orders to kick people out, and they sent messengers to literally run over to deliver the orders. First, why not just telepathically beam the message over? Second, why need a court or government in the first place? Finally, why not just make it so someone who is not welcome just simply cannot abide there, like the atmosphere being hostile to them or something? Of course, there is the possibility that those stories are how the spirits who got kicked out saw it. But then there is also that one community where that prince and that royal court will seemingly be playing those roles forever. I doubt I would want to be a chamberlain in a human body for the spiritual equivalent of a googol number of years (the time it takes a supermassive black hole to evaporate via Hawking radiation), with eternity left to go.
I doubt the New Church view is true anyway, what with a bunch of other issues with what Swedenborg wrote which would be too long to discuss here.
But on the plus side, at least the New Church afterlife sounds better to me than the Jehovah’s Witnesses afterlife which consists of literally being a physical being forever (aside from the lucky few 144,000 who get to go to a spiritual afterlife). It is also better than being stuck in a shadowy underworld forever, reincarnation, and eternal recurrence (where one repeats one physical life over and over and over forever because time is cyclical then).
Anyway, thanks again for the replies.
PS: One other question for now: what passages in Swedenborg writings does he claim that the spirit body _is_ the spirit (or at least an essential part of such)?
Hi K,
Swedenborg does make a distinction between the soul and the body even in the spiritual world. Even there, the body is the expression of the soul or mind. However, they are not separate entities from one another as the physical body is from the mind. One flows seamlessly into the other, and cannot function without it. Even the inmost soul, which is beyond human consciousness, depends upon having a (spiritual) mind and body to express it. And even the inmost soul is not “simple” in the traditional Christian philosophical sense of being an undifferentiated entity. It, too, has structure, and its structure is a human structure.
Swedenborg’s statements on these subjects are scattered around his writings rather than being gathered into one book or chapter where he lays them out topically and sequentially. But here is the most relevant part of one fairly clear explanation of this subject. You can click the section number link at the end to read the full section, which provides illustrations from human anatomy and from nature.
Here is another relevant passage:
Putting various passages such as these together, it becomes clear that our spirit, like our physical body, requires complex organized forms in order to function. Our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings aren’t separate from these spiritual forms. They take place within them.
As for running out of space for memories in the spiritual brain after the equivalent of trillions of years have gone by in the spiritual world, this is based on our natural tendency to think in terms of space and time. But there is no space and time in the spiritual world. The spiritual brain doesn’t have a certain amount of space, after which it reaches its maximum capacity. That’s just not how spiritual things work.
The spiritual structures of the mind consist, not of physical fibers, but of interconnected truths all in relationship to one another. Truth does not take up space as physical fibers do.
It is hard for us, living as we do in the material world, to conceptualize objects and structures that are not based on and organized in space and time. Nevertheless, to understand how spiritual things work, we must remove concepts of space and time from our thinking. Only after our death and entry into the spiritual world will we be able to do this easily and continuously, because then we will be living in a realm where time and space do not exist.
PPS: (like the spirit brain being the mind of a spirit)
Hi K,
As I’ve said a number of times already, spiritual flesh is not heavy and gross like physical flesh. But at this point, I think you’ll just have to experience it for yourself.
I’m aware that my view on pets in the afterlife isn’t popular with many pet owners, who want the actual pets that they had on earth to go to heaven. But animals don’t have the ability to think or feel spiritually as humans do. This means that the consciousness they have on earth wouldn’t transfer to the spiritual world, where everything is spiritual.
I can assure you that you won’t be in a community of heaven where there is a prince, courtiers, and chamberlains. Swedenborg saw those things because the parts of heaven he regularly visited came from his own culture and times, in which monarchies and royal courts was the norm. Everything he saw in those parts of heaven exactly mirrors the European culture of the day, except it’s a purified version of it, without the evil parts. (He also saw other types of heavens, but nowhere near as often.)
The only really interesting thing is that Swedenborg was quite explicit that there are no kings there, only princes, and that these princes are the heads of one community only, not of whole kingdoms. The Lord, he said, is the only “king” of heaven, and even that is metaphorical rather than literal. Really, even the parts of Swedenborg’s heaven that have government (not all of them do) have very minimal government. So although today it sounds like he was saying that heaven is exactly like an 18th century European monarchical society, to people who lived in those societies, Swedenborg’s heavenly version of those societies might sound quite counter-cultural.
Very few people from Earth today would go to heavens that have a monarchical form of government, because very few countries in the world today have real monarchy, and of the countries that do, many of their citizens would prefer not to live in a monarchy, but would prefer a democratic style of government.
As far as sending actual human beings to kick out intruders, this could be done through spiritual power alone. And for the most part, intruders are repelled by the atmosphere of the heavens they are attempting to infiltrate, which conflicts with their own character. However, even in the spiritual world some spirits, especially newly arrived ones, still manage to put on an outward appearance that doesn’t match their inward state by putting themselves in a mental state like that of heaven, because this matches their false self-image. These people are sometimes able to enter communities of heaven. Apparently local officials are therefore dispatched to deal with them before they can cause any problems.
Why send an actual human being to do it? Because even in heaven, people have jobs, and do things. If it were all just mental ray beams doing everything, and everybody just sat around in their chair directing reality virtually, it wouldn’t be much of a human community. In heaven, people live the kind of lives they like to live. For most people, this means being actively involved in the community and its relationships and events. Without that, they wouldn’t be happy at all. Nobody is a chamberlain in heaven unless he or she really enjoys being a chamberlain.
Even though Swedenborg makes it quite clear in his writings that monarchies and nations are generally not a good state of human affairs, since many generations of people lived in that type of system, are used to it, and think of it as good and normal, they are allowed to recreate that type of society in heaven. But the oldest and highest heavens have no such monarchical system. Neither will the vast bulk of heavens that come from today’s world.
So If I read that right, a spirit has an innermost nature that is formless, but such is linked to a form that appears corporeal in the spiritual? Sorta like how God has an innermost form that is incomprehensible, but is linked to Christ in humanoid form?
Hi K,
No. Nothing is formless. For anything to exist, it must have both substance and form. This is true no matter what level it exists on: divine, spiritual, or material.
God’s innermost form is incomprehensible to us because our minds are finite, and therefore cannot comprehend the infinite form of God. Incomprehensible does not mean formless. Only that its form is beyond our comprehension.
Further, God’s form is human to the core. Christ is in human form because that human form is an expression of the inmost human form of God. We are in human form because our finite humanity is a reflection of the infinite humanity of God.
PS: Or in other words, the mind of a spirit is a living entity that’s linked to a spirit brain, in a spirit body?
And I still do not like the pets thing. It would be nice if all conscious entities could go to an afterlife they like, even if they do not have human thinking. So hopefully Swedenborg was wrong about that.
Hi K,
No. The mind of a spirit is not “linked to” a spirit brain. It is located in the spiritual brain. The spiritual brain is the living entity in which consciousness resides, and without which it cannot exist.
What do you mean by “conscious entities”? Animals are not like humans. They are not self-reflective. They don’t think about their future. And they certainly don’t think about God and spirit. The things they like are in this world: food, water, tastes, smells, mating, interaction with other living beings, especially their own species, and so on. They do not think about truth, love, morality, God, the afterlife, or any of the things that constitute spiritual life. These types of thoughts are all unique to humans.
In short, animals are already in their heaven here on earth.
If God has a form to the innermost level, then how can such a being be omnipresent?
And a finite spirit is somehow in a humanoid form on the innermost level?
It is confusing.
And by conscious, I mean sentient. People are both sentient and sapient, while animals (at least most of them) are merely sentient: conscious, with the level of sentience varying depending on how complex the brain is: from really basic (like in bugs) to almost human-like (like in cats).
Hi K,
God can be omnipresent because God’s form is infinite, not finite like ours. We can’t really understand that precisely because our mind is finite. But it is a logical conclusion based on our knowledge from revelation that God is infinite.
I wouldn’t say “humanoid form.” That implies a physical form. It is a human form, which is, for us, essentially a spiritual form, and for God is a divine form. It’s not made of physical matter. It’s made of spiritual substance and divine substance, respectively, both of which are love, not atoms.
The essential human form is a human will and understanding, capable of unselfish love and spiritual thought. These are not simple, but complex, structured entities, and they are one in that will and understanding cannot be separated. Will is the substance; understanding is the form. Neither one exists or can exist without the other.
Whether these have a human shape is an entirely different issue. But when they express themselves in a visible shape, that shape is what we know as human.
As for cats, they live in the present, and have no concept or consciousness of the past or the future. It is true that their past experiences affect them, but not by their reflecting on past experiences, as with humans. Rather, their experiences get engraved on the structure of their mind/brain, and their subsequent behavior takes place through those structures. (This does also happen for humans as well, but humans in addition have the ability to reflect upon past experiences and change their understanding and interpretation of them, which in turn changes the effect that those experiences have on the person’s life.)
Cats are also entirely self-centered. They may appear to be affectionate and so on, but they do not “love” their owners in the way their owners think they do. That is anthropomorphizing cats. Pet owners do this quite regularly with their pets because it is how humans feel they can have a relationship with their animals. But animals do not think and feel the way humans do. They’re not thinking about the happiness of their human owners, as their human owner are thinking about their happiness. They receive food, water, attention, play, and so on from their human owners, and therefore become attached to them because of the pleasure they feel in those activities and associations.
Cats, in particular, will abandon their owners and form new connections if some other humans give them a better deal, or if their owners abandon them. They do not have long-term loyalty the way dogs do. When they cease to get what they want from their human owners, they drift away and follow whatever path gives them what they want.
As a simple example, one of our cats will come to me for petting and affection, but he’ll stay only as long as I keep petting him. If I stop petting him, he’ll soon walk away. He’s not coming to me because he loves me. He’s coming because he wants attention and affection from me, and he stays only as long as he’s getting it.
Dogs are loyal, not because it is a personality trait, still less a virtue, but because dogs are pack animals, and imprint upon their pack. Their human owners become the leaders of their pack. Their instinct is to remain loyal to their pack because that is how they have evolved to survive: as a member of their pack.
Animals aren’t capable of human will and understanding. They are not capable of unselfish love, although their sense of self may extend to the group rather than being limited to themselves as individuals. They are also not capable of moral and ethical thought, of modifying their own behavior based on concepts of right and wrong, and so on. They can be trained to behave this way and not to behave that way. But they cannot make a decision to change their own character and behavior, as humans can.
No matter how much animal-lovers athropomorphize their pets and other animals, animals are not humans. They do not think and feel the way humans think and feel. They don’t have the higher spiritual levels that humans have that give us the ability to think rationally, be self-aware, contemplate God, spirit, and our future life, and make decisions about what sort of character they want to have now and in the future. They simply respond to outside influences based on the animal desires and instincts that drive them.
Even if animals did move on to the spiritual world, they would have no idea that anything had changed. They would not be aware that they are in a different world now. Like here on earth, they would be living in the present moment, without any awareness of any past or any future. It therefore doesn’t really matter if their individual consciousness moves on to the spiritual world after death. Humans may be concerned about this, but animals are not. It is entirely beyond their mental capabilities.
Swedenborg doesn’t say anything about pets continuing in heaven as “facsimiles” of the same pets here on earth. That is my idea based on how Swedenborg describes the human mind/spirit and its surroundings in the spiritual world. But even if I am right and God recreates our beloved pets for us in the spiritual world rather than our actual pets’ consciousness moving on to the spiritual world, it really makes no difference. Either way, the pet will have no conception of ever having lived anywhere else in the past.
When it comes to those pet owners who meet their pets in heaven, I won’t bother arguing with them about whether animals have eternal souls. It won’t make any difference for them either. They’ll have their beloved pets, and they’ll be happy.
PS: Not just omnipresent in the physical, but in the spiritual.
Hi K,
If you’re talking about God, then yes, God is omnipresent both in the physical realm and in the spiritual realm. Not one atom or element of either could exist without God’s presence in it.
So according to Swedenborg, God the Father and a finite spirit himself is not necessarily in human shape in the realm(s) beyond the physical, but the former is within human shape in the Son, and the latter is within human shape in a spirit body that looks like a physical body, yet all are human?
If that is not how it is, then how Swedenborg saw it is really confusing to me now.
Hi K,
First, you can’t separate the Father from the Son, nor can you separate the spirit from the (spiritual) body.
God the Father is not a separate Person, as traditional Christians teach and conceptualize, so that He could exist as some distinct being from the Son. That’s not how it works. Neither is God the Father some disembodied divine spirit that has the Son as an avatar that He inhabits, giving him a human shape and appearance.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all one being. They are all one person. The Father is the soul, the Son is the body, and the Holy Spirit is the words and actions. More abstractly, the Father is the love, the Son is the wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is the power. These cannot be separated from each other, nor are they distinct entities. They are “essentials,” or fundamental aspects/parts, of one God, just as our soul, body, and actions make one person, and cannot be separated from one another because together they make us a human being.
If you are thinking that the Father, and the finite human spirit, are some separate or distinctly existing entities that then express themselves in the shape of a human body, that’s not how it works. The Father by itself would be a substance without a form, which cannot exist. The spirit by itself without the body would also be a substance without a form, which cannot exist. The substance must have a form, and that form is the Son, or the body.
Does the Father, and the spirit, have a form? Yes, that form is the Son, or the body. These are one and the same being. They are simply words for two different aspects of that one being.
Does the Father have form apart from the Son? No. The Father does not exist apart from the Son. If the Father were by itself, it would be a formless being, and therefore could not exist. Nothing can exist without a form. So any “formless essence” of anything is nothing. It doesn’t exist. Ditto for the human soul/spirit and body. The soul does not exist by itself. It exists only in the body, which is its form.
By the same token, without the Father, the Son does not exist, and without the soul, the body does not exist. Form without substance is also impossible.
Still, to get closer to your question, on the divine and spiritual level, the essence of being human is not “shape,” but form. Shape is the outward appearance of the form, as it expresses itself in solid fashion. Structure is how the different parts of the form relate to each other and function together.
An example is the universal human (traditionally “Grand Man”) of heaven. Swedenborg says that heaven as a whole makes a single human being in largest form, that each community of heaven makes a human being in smaller form, and that each individual angel is a human being, and a heaven, in the smallest form.
However, if you visit a region of heaven that corresponds, say, to the heart or the liver, it doesn’t look like you’re visiting the heart or the liver in “Fantastic Voyage.” Rather, it looks like landscapes, cities, towns, villages, houses, and so on, and communities where people are living. It isn’t shaped like a human heart or liver. But it is a heart or a liver in form, meaning it functions like a heart or a liver in the overall social structure of heaven.
Still, if you were to step far enough back from it to see the region as a whole, it might indeed take the shape of a heart or a liver visually because that’s how that part of the human form expresses itself when it takes a shape.
Yes, it’s difficult to get a clear mental grasp of this because we’re used to thinking of humans as being human-shaped. But if you think of the human mind, it is not human-shaped, but it is human in form and function. It has human love, human understanding, human emotions, human rationality, and so on. These are all highly structured things that together form the human mind. When they take a physical or spiritual shape, they make a human body, complete with all its parts, organs, vessels, and fibers right down to the sub-cellular level.
And they do take a human shape.
The main point is that you cannot separate the form of the human spirit from the shape of the human body. One must be within the other, and express itself in the other, or it is human only in abstraction, and not in reality. It is not possible to have a human form without it expressing itself in a human shape.
That’s why even God came to earth as a human being, and still appears as a human being when appearing personally to people in heaven, not to mention in visions of Christ among people on earth. If we don’t think of God as human-shaped, we can have no real concept of God at all. We have only an abstraction—and an abstraction is not something we can have a personal, human relationship with.
Ditto for our relationships with other people. If none of our family or friends appeared in any shape that we could see, hear, touch, and so on, we couldn’t have any real relationship with them. Even in virtual reality, people appear in avatars, which are meant to express their character in some visual shape. But virtual relationship are not full relationships. Even people who meet in video games, if they become close to each other, commonly want to meet in person. Only then can the relationship become a fully human one.
In the spiritual world, could you appear as a ball of light, and inhabit that form? Yes, it does happen. But it is not possible to have a fully human life, and fully human relationships, while stuck in that form. It will always be a heady, intellectual type of relationship rather than a full-sensory relationship that especially includes touch and physical closeness. Humans touching one another is the physical expression of human love for one another. Only in a human-shaped body can we have full human relationships with one another, and with God.
PS: I also think animals can still be capable of at least some love, even if they lack a spiritual life. And in any case, at least the ones with brains still experience consciousness, so animal cruelty is still bad.
Hi K,
Yes, of course animal cruelty is terrible. Even if animals don’t have human loves and emotions, they do have feelings, and they do feel pain. Causing pain to other sentient beings without a very good reason, such as providing medical treatment that necessarily involves some pain, is callous and cruel.
And yes, you can say that animals are capable of at least some love. But it is not human love as we think of it. It is not loving another being for the other being’s sake. It is a sense of desire and attraction to that other being because it feels good to the animal itself.
Humans also have this sort of “love,” and we do call it “love,” but it is animal love, not human love. For example, a man “loves” a woman, but what it really means for that man is that she is sexually attractive to him and it is very pleasurable for him to have sex with her. He’s not thinking of her happiness or well-being, but of his own.
This is true even if he may become “skilled” in “lovemaking” and “give her a good time,” so that she also has pleasure. Yes, heterosexual women also enjoy having sex with men who have good “technique.” But if he is just using “moves” and “technique” to get her to want to have sex with him so that he can enjoy sex with a beautiful and sexy woman, and she is also in it for her own pleasure and/or her own purposes, then that is animal “love,” not human love. (See: “The Red Pill Movement (PUA): Men Waking Up as Animals.”)
In short, the love of animals, and of humans that are acting like animals, is not really love, but desire.
“Does the Father have form apart from the Son? No.”
I thought that is how it was before Christ was born. Even if the Father is beyond time, there is still parts of spacetime (and maybe the spiritual equivalent of time) that the Father is not in.
And about animals and love, I still doubt the way they love is entirely selfish as there are stories and even videos of animals putting themselves at risk to save others, or approaching people to get help for their young.
PS: Where in Swedenborg writings can I read more about how animals differ from people?
Hi K,
There are no parts of spacetime that the Father is not in. But it is true that the Son was born in time, not from eternity. This means that from a human time-bound perspective there was a time when the Son did not exist. However, since God is outside of time, from God’s perspective, the Son simply exists in God’s eternal present.
For humans, though, since the Son didn’t exist before the Incarnation, God took visible human form by using the human forms of angels, filling the angels with God’s presence in order to speak to humans on earth—but via the spiritual senses of the humans on earth, since angels’ bodies are spiritual, not physical.
Still looking at it from a human time-bound perspective, God did have a “trine” before the Christian Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit existed. That “trine” was the divine love, the divine wisdom, and the divine proceeding, meaning divine power flowing out. These were the source and pattern for the Christian Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Son being the expression of the divine wisdom.
The pre-Incarnation divine love, divine wisdom, and divine proceeding were also in human form, but not in a human shape as we understand it, meaning not as a human body. One of the two key purposes of the Incarnation was for God to take on a human outward nature and make it divine, completing God on all levels. (The other was to defeat the power of the Devil, meaning hell, over humans and angels.)
This might seem to be a change in God, who is supposed to be changeless. But once again, God is not limited by time. For God, the entire process of Incarnation is an eternally present reality. See:
Does God Change?
And:
Does God Grow and Develop? What about Open Theism?
I realize this is brain-bending for us time-bound humans. Much of the false doctrine in traditional Christianity comes out of an inability to think of God as existing above and beyond time. It conceives of God as existing within the arrow of time, which leads to many contradictions that theologians then attempt to deal with by coming up with various false doctrines. Only when we understand that God is in all time without being time-bound, and in all space without being spatial, can we begin to gain a true understanding of the nature of God.
Hi K,
In response to this:
There is a series of “Continuations” about the life of animals and plants in Swedenborg’s posthumous work Apocalypse Explained, #1196–1215. To get to the continuations, scroll down past the section of biblical exegesis in each section.
This material has also been extracted and published separately by the Swedenborg Society (London) in a thin paperback book titled Life in Animals and Plants. The link is to the book’s page on the Swedenborg Society’s webpage. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available as a PDF or e-book.
PS: Also there was the time a cat in the family cheered me up when I was feeling ill. So I’m still convinced animals can have at least some unselfish love, even if they’re not able to be spiritual and love like people can.
“Even if the Father is beyond time, there is still parts of spacetime (and maybe the spiritual equivalent of time) that the Father is not in.”
correction: “Father” should be “Son” in that section.
Hi K,
Okay, that makes more sense.
Lemme see if I understand the New Church view of the spiritual right:
1: The non-physical realms (spiritual and Divine) are, relative to the physical, abstract realms that are not spacetime nor mass-energy: relative to the physical, such non-physical realms are somehow within? Or alternatively, and like New Agers claim, such non-physical realms are realms or so-called planes that are all around here, but at a higher level of so-called vibration or something like that?
2: God the Father may be human, but is not in human shape (as a human shape in either the spiritual or the physical cannot be omnipresent in either), while the Son can be in human shape (at first as a physical being and then as some kind of special case resurrection)?
3: A finite person, being in the image of God, has a human innermost being that is not necessarily in human shape (like the Father), but normally appears as or is, in the spiritual realm, a more or less humanoid spirit body (like the Son, but not some kind of special case resurrection)? This form is not as so-called solid as a physical form, as there are stories of that angel boy looking like a dove, innermost Heaven angels looking like babies from a distance, and spirits of hell looking like grotesque monsters in the light of Heaven? Finally, a finite person corresponds to a certain kind of love for good or evil?
Hi K,
1: The non-physical realms have no spacetime and no mass/energy. These apply only to material things. However, the non-physical realms are not abstract, even relative to the physical realm. They are concrete, having both substance and form. It’s just that their substance and form are spiritual and divine in the spiritual and divine realms, respectively.
They do have a higher “vibration,” but that is not the essential difference between them and the physical realm. Theoretically, material and spiritual vibrational frequencies could overlap, and yet they would still be entirely distinct realms from one another. For one thing, the usual concept of vibrational frequency doesn’t apply on the spiritual level because there is no space or time there. This means that spiritual vibrations cannot be measured temporally or spatially as physical vibrations can. What exists in the spiritual realm is not physical vibrations, but something that physical vibrations correspond to.
And yet, New Agers are correct that the spiritual realm is all around us, and within us. The spiritual realm pervades the physical realm. It is present everywhere in the physical realm. It is only necessary for our spiritual senses to be opened for us to see the things that are all around us all the time in the spiritual realm. If both our physical senses and our spiritual senses are open at the same time, we may see spiritual things superimposed on physical things, such that they are difficult to distinguish from one another. This, I believe, is what was happening when angels visited people in the various accounts in the Old and New Testaments.
A physical analogy to this is that light can travel through water, but it is not made of the substance of water. Light is photons that travel through water even as the water remains water. Light can be shining through water in all directions, illuminating it, but it is entirely distinct from the water. It pervades the water while not being water in any way, shape, or form. And yet, light is not abstract. It is a real, embodied entity that has substance (photons). It’s just that its substance is of a different type or order than the (molecular) substance of water. This illustrates how the spiritual realm can pervade the physical realm without being physical.
2: Once again, the Father and the Son are not two distinct entities. They are not “Persons.” They are two different parts of the same entity. Intellectually we can make a distinction between the Father and the Son, just as we can intellectually make a distinction between our soul and our body. But in reality, a soul cannot exist without a body, and a body cannot exist without a soul. When we’re talking about “the Father” and “the Son,” we’re not talking about two different beings, but about two different aspects of the same being.
Seen in this light, the Son is the Father’s body.
Looked at from a temporal perspective, God did not have a body until God was born as Jesus. This is another way of saying that the Son was born in time, not from eternity as Nicene Christians believe.
In other words, what we’re really talking about here is God before the Incarnation vs. God after the Incarnation.
Swedenborg does not use the word “shape” in contrast to the word “form” as I’ve been using them. What I mean by “shape” is “a form extended in space in the physical realm, or a form extended in the appearance of space in the spiritual realm.” This is what our body is. Our physical body is an expression of the human form arranged in physical space (and time). Our spiritual body is an expression of the human form arranged in the spiritual analog of space (and time). This is the visible appearance of the human form.
As I understand it, in the terms I have been using, before the incarnation God had form, but not shape. God was in human form, but that form was not expressed in a human body. In the Incarnation, God took on a human body, so that now God had a shape. The human body he received initially from Mary was a physical body made of physical matter. The resurrection body contained none of that physical matter, but was fully divine, meaning it is made of divine substance, not physical matter. The physical had been completely replaced by the divine. (I have come to believe that Jesus also received a human spiritual level from Mary, which was also completely replaced with divinity in the course of the Lord’s glorification process.)
However, even though it is made of divine substance, it is an actual body, and God can appear as a body in the spiritual world. Theoretically God could appear as a body in the physical world also, but that doesn’t seem to happen anymore. When people have visions of Christ, I think they are seeing Christ with their spiritual eyes, not with their physical eyes. After the resurrection, God’s divine body apparently did appear even to people’s physical eyes, and was able to eat physical food. This is why I think God could theoretically appear in a body in the physical realm also.
It is also possible that after the resurrection Jesus was seen with people’s spiritual eyes, not with their physical eyes. However, after the resurrection Jesus made a point of assuring his disciples that he was not a “spirit,” which suggests to me that he appeared in a way that was tangible to people’s physical senses.
Swedenborg does say that the Lord sometimes appears as a human being to people in heaven.
I’m not sure what you mean by “special case resurrection.” If you mean different from our resurrection, then yes, it was different, because we never appear in the physical realm again after our death, but only in the spiritual realm, whereas the Lord did appear in the physical realm for forty days after the Resurrection. Also, after our resurrection we are made of spiritual substance, but after the Lord’s resurrection the Lord was made entirely of divine substance.
To sum up, it’s not that the Father is not in human shape but the Son can be. It’s that the Son is the human shape of the Father.
As I understand it, God now has that human shape permanently, but people don’t always see it. It’s not that it comes into and goes out of existence. It’s that it sometimes appears to us, and sometimes doesn’t appear to us. People who are somewhere else so that we can’t see them don’t cease to have a human shape just because we can’t see them.
How exactly this works with God’s divine humanity (which is what Swedenborg calls it), I’m not really sure. But Swedenborg is clear that the divine humanity that God took on in the Incarnation is now a permanent part of God.
(In connection with God, I am using the word “shape” as a simplistic expression of what Swedenborg means by “the divine humanity.”)
3: The human spirit is in human form. The spiritual body is the shape of that form. The form itself is complex and functional. That form expresses itself in the complex shape, structure, and functionality of the spiritual body. The two cannot be separated.
This means that even in the spiritual realm, angels and spirits do have bodies that are solid and constant, because those bodies are a full correspondential expression of their entire character. What they appear like from a distance (a dove, an infant, a monster) is a correspondential representation of a key trait of their character, or of their current thoughts and feelings, in symbolic form. This is how they look from a distance. Close-up, they look like human beings, beautiful in the case of angels, and ugly in the case of evil spirits.
Even if particular spirits want to appear as something other than a human body, that is only an appearance. They can live in that appearance for a time if they want to, but since it is not a full correspondential expression of their entire character right down to its details, they will return to their natural form after a while. This has been their true form all along even while they were living in a “virtual reality” of being an orb of light, or a scroll, or some such thing. It is very much like people playing video games and getting completely absorbed in their in-game avatar while they are playing, but then getting up and getting themselves some lunch in the real world.
As with God, it’s not that the spirit is not in human shape but the spiritual body can be. It’s that the spiritual body is the human shape of the spirit. Angels are always in a human shape, because that shape is the expression of the human form of their mind. One cannot exist without the other.
With God, this is somewhat more complicated because having a human shape apparently requires entering into the spiritual and physical realms, whereas God is entirely divine, and not spiritual or physical at all. Humans, Swedenborg says, must first be born in the physical realm, or they cannot exist at all. Apparently even God cannot exist in human “shape,” or in a divine humanity, without being born into the physical realm. At least, that’s how God actually acquired a divine humanity (“a human shape”).
This might imply that unlike humans, God can exist without a human shape, because God existed without a human shape before the Incarnation.
The fallacy in this way of thinking is that unlike humans, God exists outside of time altogether, including existing outside even of the analog of time that exists in the spiritual world. For God, “before” and “after” have no meaning, because they don’t exist. Only in the human mind (and body) do time and space exist.
Seen from God’s perspective, God also cannot exist without a human shape. What to us looks like a before-and-after thing for God has nothing to do with before and after. From God’s perspective, God didn’t take on a human shape; God takes a human shape. For God, this is something that is happening in the eternal present in which God lives.
Swedenborg doesn’t say this explicitly, but he does implicitly. For example, he talks about how the reason Christ’s glorification process could be represented in the highest internal meaning of the Old Testament—which was written before the Incarnation—was that for God all things are present, so that the events of Christ’s life were not in the future for God as they are for us. (I may not be saying this exactly the way Swedenborg does, but that’s the idea.)
In other words, just as we humans take on a human body in the process of gestation and birth, so God took on a human body in the process of the Incarnation, which involved gestation and birth even on the physical level. For God, this is something that is never in the future or in the past, but always in the present. Once again, please see:
Does God Grow and Develop? What about Open Theism?
In a sense, for us there is also no such thing as “before” our conception and birth, because before that we do not exist, so for us there is no time before we came into being. There is never a time that we are not embodied, having a human shape.
These are very deep and complex concepts that push at the edges of our ability to comprehend, because they deal with the interface between the infinite and the finite. My explanation of them may not be perfect in every respect. These are simply the best approximations of the truth about God’s nature that I have been able to gather and understand based on decades of studying and contemplating these concepts. I hope it at least throws a little more light on these things for you.
As for why God had to take become an embodied human being, having a human shape as well as a human form, that has to do with the nature of God’s love, which is a love that will come in person to the ones God loves—who are us. See:
The Logic of Love: Why God became Jesus
There is no possibility that God could be a human form only, without a human shape.
The world just keeps getting more and more alien (and arguably worse, to me anyway) than what I got used to: the late 20th century and maybe the 00s. Seems much of what I got used to is just nostalgia now, replaced with a world that seemingly runs on social media and smartphones.
Can the New Church afterlife have realms that preserve the good of older modern ways in a much better place, despite how fast things are changing in the single lifetimes of people around now (who seem to always adapt to how it is now)?
Or could at least people from this world as it is now change the ways they follow for the better in the New Church afterlife, at least if such ways are not too ingrained? Like them no longer being social media-addicted smartphone zombies, who believe or at least push demoralizing lies about human nature?
If the only places in Heaven with other people are either really incompatible alien realms from extrasolar worlds, incompatible and alien ways from the past of this world (like from before industrialization or Victorian times), and crappy ways of this current world (even if sans evil intents), that does not sound like an appealing afterlife to me.
Hi K,
Based on Swedenborg’s travels to various parts of heaven, people live very similarly to the way they did on earth. He met some angels who came from early nomadic tribes, and who still lived in tents thousands of years later. Others lived in simple wooden houses reminiscent of people from early villages. Most of the angels he met in his ordinary visits to the spiritual world lived like 18th century Europeans because those were the angels closest in character to himself, so they were the ones he naturally fraternized with the most.
In other words, there are heavens for people of every era, culture, and lifestyle.
If a life like the late 20th century and early aughts is most congenial to you and your character, that’s the sort of heaven you’ll live in. Plenty of people from that era will have lived and died to make up a well-populated and active region of heaven.
As for technology, most of what we do with technology here on earth can be done without technology in heaven anyway. If people want to use smartphones there because that’s what they’re used to and they’ve built their culture around it, they certainly can. But even in the 18th century, before any such thing existed, Swedenborg said that angels could communicate with each other instantly over vast distances if they thought of each other and wanted to see each other. And it’s not just talking, but an actual presence with one another, even if they are each still back at their home. It’s something like solid holographic projection that our technology today still can’t do.
In other words, if you don’t want to live in a community of heaven that has smartphones, that is perfectly possible, and you’ll still be able to make “long-distance calls” to your friends in other communities if you want to. That capability is built right into the operating system of heaven.
Or if you just want to live undisturbed in your own home and village—or whatever style of community or solitude you prefer—you can also do that.
Your heaven will be exactly what you want it to be because it will be a reflection of your own personality and character.
I guess if people can stop using money (or clothes in the innermost Heaven), they could stop using smartphones all the time as well. Especially if they are no longer needed, like someone who can walk again no longer needing crutches or a wheelchair.
Hi K,
Right. It is perfectly possible for someone from our times to live in heaven without smartphones, in a community where smartphones don’t exist.
Is there any way a denizen of the New Church afterlife could experience the appearance of more than 3 spatial dimensions? I take it that Swedenborg describes the afterlife realm as appearing to have 3 spatial dimensions, like normal macroscopic spacetime does in the physical.
For example, here’s a shape in 4D:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract
PS: Just as vision of 3D is like a 2D plane that is seen from the inside out and all at once, so to speak, vision in 4D could be like a 3D volume of vision that is seen from the inside out and all at once.
BTW I think there are accounts of NDEs that describe more dimensions of sight, but I dunno if they are speaking of spatial dimensions.
Hi K,
Certainly people in heaven can conceptualize more than three dimensions just as we can on earth. Whether they can actually see things in more than three dimensions, I don’t claim to know.
Of course, in the spiritual world the dimensions themselves are not spatial. In place of the physical dimensions length, breadth, and height there are the spiritual dimensions of goodness, truth, and spiritual “depth” or level, as explained in this passage:
Perhaps there are additional spiritual “dimensions” that things in the spiritual world can have. But just as here there seem to be only three, plus time, even though we can abstractly conceive of more, I suspect it’s the same in the spiritual world. Those three dimensions are pretty basic and inclusive.
However, I haven’t actually been there and tried it out, so I don’t know for sure. Maybe angels can see things in more than three dimensions.
I think I am still confused on what so-called spirit is according to New Church theology.
Is the spirit realm a so-called thought realm: that is, a realm where what is so-called abstract in the physical manifests in forms that are more real there (than stuff made of mass-energy is in the physical)?
In other words, in the physical, “CIRCLE (0,0),100,10” is just an abstract code. But in the realm of the screen, that’s a circle of bright green. Is the spirit realm sort of like that: where something like love interacting with truth in a certain way manifests as some kind of flame interacting with water in the spirit realm?
So in other words, spirits could be thought of as so-called energy beings in that relative to the physical they are the so-caleld abstract, but in spiritual reality they naturally manifest as you described them earlier?
PS: for all of the flaws, at least New Age seems sorta easier to understand: IIRC, a person is a being of pure thought that is in a so-called astral body that is like the physical but at a higher level of vibration (whatever that means). But again, that is New Age-y beliefs on the subject.
Hi K,
I suppose you could describe the spiritual realm in that way if you wanted to. But you could also describe the physical realm that way. Even in the physical realm, nothing is actually “solid.” It’s all force fields (“energy”) interacting with each other on the atomic and molecular level, not to mention on the quantum level. Nothing solid actually touches something else that’s solid. But to us, it does manifest that way when we hit our thumb with a hammer. So I’m not sure how that sort of description would distinguish the spiritual realm from the physical realm.
The difference is that the physical world has an independent existence from thought and does not readily respond to it (aside from any so-called psychic powers or ESP), and there is entropy and decay.
Did Swedenborg describe the spiritual as being immediately responsive to thought and a manifestation of thought or something like?
PS: Or to put it another way, is the spiritual a so-called manifestation realm, while the physical is not (or at least not so much)?
Hi K,
Both are “manifestation realms.” But the spiritual world is more immediately responsive to spiritual changes than the physical world is. One purpose served by the physical world is precisely to provide a more firmly fixed foundation for higher things to rest on. If the foundation of a house were always changing, the house would be unstable. You can renovate or redecorate the house without having much effect on its foundation, but if you did major foundation work while the house was sitting on it, the whole house could collapse.
PPS: Or another way, the physical is more arbitrary, while spiritual is not?
Hi K,
I wouldn’t say that the physical word is more arbitrary. Just that it’s less responsive to the human mind than the spiritual world is. Even the material world is a precise representation, or manifestation, of specific spiritual things. There’s nothing arbitrary about it.
Hi K,
Philosophical idealists would disagree that the physical world has an existence independent from thought.
Swedenborg was not an idealist, but he did take something of a middle ground between idealism and materialism. He said that the material world does originate in spiritual forces, aka thought and feeling, but that once created it does not respond instantaneously to changes on the spiritual level, but takes on its own semi-autonomous existence. Really, it’s still responding to spiritual forces, but it remains aligned with the specific spiritual thing that its specific material nature corresponds to. This is possible because spiritual things are outside of time and space, so they can manifest themselves anywhere in time and space without limitation.
It’s different in the spiritual world, where time and space do not exist. There, “time” is a direct correlation to the thinking mind, aka what we experience and learn, and “space” is a direct correlation to love and feeling. We “move through time” in the spiritual world when we grow in knowledge, understanding, and experience. We “move through space” in the spiritual world when our loves and feelings change from one state to another.
Since there is no fixity of time and space in the spiritual world, everything in the environment around us responds immediately to the changes within us, in our heart and mind. (Yes, Swedenborg does say that the things around us in the spiritual world are immediately responsive to our thoughts and feelings.)
So yes, this is a real difference between the material world and the spiritual world, although the difference is not quite as fundamental as one might think because even the material world exists moment-to-moment by correspondence with spiritual things, which are things of love and understanding. It’s just that once created, material things take on a semi-permanent existence and remain in alignment with whatever they correspond to, whereas spiritual things can instantaneously come into and out of existence, and also change rapidly, in correspondence with the changing thoughts and feelings of whatever angels or evil spirits are in the vicinity. If something in the spiritual world has ongoing, steady existence, it’s because it corresponds to a stable element of the character of the angels or spirits in the community and in the area.
I think I got even more confused what the spiritual realm is even supposed to be if both physical and spiritual are so-called manifestation realms, and people are stuck in forms like physical bodies. Is the spiritual realm made of particles, waves, and something like spacetime fabric as well? If it is just another physical realm that happens to be more magical and responsive to thought, then why even have a separate spiritual realm (as opposed to just different realms in the physical for heaven, hell, the intermediate realm, and the mortal realm)?
Hi K,
I don’t know if the spiritual world is made of particles, waves, and something like spacetime fabric. But I do know that it is made of something that those things correspond to. Perhaps a spiritual “particle” would be an individual item of information, a “wave” would be active transmission of information from one mind or community to another, and “spacetime fabric” would be the mental and emotional world in which angels and spirits live, expressed in the solid reality around them.
Since there is no actual space and time in the spiritual world, everything that exists there is not the same as what exists here because everything in the physical world exists within the “spacetime fabric.” So in heaven we’re not going to be looking at molecules using an electron microscope. But we may be minutely examining the nature of one particular piece of information that we are interested in, or of some love or emotion that we’ve become fascinated with. Love and wisdom, or goodness and truth, is what constitutes the fabric of spiritual reality. That fabric is intrinsically alive, in comparison to the fabric of the physical universe, which is intrinsically dead.
Both the spiritual realm and the physical real are manifestation realms because they are both manifestations of the nature of God, which is the only self-existing reality.
Why are there separate spiritual and material realms? Presumably because the large-scale structure of Creation reflects the nature of God, and God consists of distinct elements or levels of reality. There is an inherent duality to God, which is the duality of love and wisdom. These are not separate or opposing elements, but two essential features of the reality of God. Love is the substance and force of God. Wisdom is the form and structure of God. And the third element is action, which is love and wisdom flowing out and accomplishing things.
This threeness of God is expressed in everything in the universe, including in the three distinct levels of reality that exist: God, spirit, and matter. There have to be three main levels because that expresses the threefold nature of God.
However, those three levels aren’t arbitrary. Each one has its own function and role in the whole. Overall, the first has the function of love, the second has the function of wisdom (or truth), and the third has the function of action.
Action is where things come to rest in outward form. That’s the function of the physical realm in relation to the spiritual realm, and in relation to God. If something doesn’t become an actual existing object, or structure, then it is only theoretical. It’s not real. The physical universe is where all the higher levels come to rest, and it is the foundation upon which they rest. Even God became physical in the form of Jesus Christ, and only then did God become complete on all levels.
The physical world also serves as the seedbed of heaven. This is where humans are born and grow into human beings who can become angels. It is like a womb for the spiritual world. We all start in the womb, and are born when we have developed sufficiently to live semi-independently outside the womb. All human beings in the spiritual world, both angels and spirits, start out as human beings on earth because that’s where we can go through our initial phase of creation and development. Once we have completed that initial phase, we are “born” into the spiritual world and live our lives there from then on, just as we are born into the physical world when our period of gestation in the womb is over, and we go on to live the rest of our life in the world outside the womb.
Finally, for now, the two worlds that we humans inhabit reflect one another in general appearance and function because they do reflect each other correspondentially. The physical world is an expression of the spiritual world, which, in turn, is an expression of God. We should therefore not expect that they will be completely different from one another, but quite similar to each other, each within the relative complexity and capabilities of its own level. The spiritual world is far more complex and capable, and is therefore much higher functioning than the physical world. But the basic functions are the same, because they correspond to one another.
Again, it’s like a three-dimensional cube being projected onto a two-dimensional surface. Only in three dimensions can the cube be fully itself. But even in flat drawings and diagrams it functions as a cube within the limitations of two-dimensional space. Just so, humans can be fully human only in the spiritual world, which is the world of the human mind and heart. But we can engage in all the basic functions of a human being here on earth even though they are limited by the lower “resolution” of the physical universe, and by the constraints of time and space.
These, of course, are huge questions. I can hardly do justice to them here. But I hope this gives you at least some inkling. Really, the best and most complete answers available to us here on earth are in Swedenborg’s book Divine Love and Wisdom, which I strongly recommend that you read if you haven’t already, or read again if you already have. It’s not a book that can be adequately grasped from only one reading.
Thanks for reply.
For the sake of simplicity though, could one think of the physical as this more arbitrary external realm, and the spiritual as a so-called manifestation realm where the so-called abstract (from the perspective of the physical) appears in form and activity over there, and still have an accurate view of the New Church idea of the spiritual?
Hi K,
Again, there’s nothing “arbitrary” about the physical realm. I would say, rather, that it is less responsive and more resistive to the human mind than is the spiritual realm.
The spiritual realm is highly and immediately responsive to the minds and hearts of the people in the vicinity. It instantly presents an exact “manifestation” of everything in the hearts and minds of the angels and spirits in the area.
As the transcendentalists especially recognized, the world of nature is also a manifestation of human thoughts and motives. But it is much less immediately responsive to them than the “natural” part of the spiritual world.
For example, a lion does represent the power to command others, but it doesn’t spontaneously appear in the material world when powerful people are around. Even though it does exist by virtue of its correspondence with that particular human character trait, here in this world, unlike in the spiritual world, it exists independently of the thoughts and feelings of the people around it. It has a certain material fixity about it that doesn’t allow it to be so responsive to human thoughts and feelings.
Having said that, anyone who has pets such as cats and dogs has no doubt noticed that their pets do respond to the emotional atmosphere around them. Pets can sense when their owners are upset, and they become agitated as well. And so on. Even nature here on earth does respond to human thoughts and feelings to some extent. But nowhere near to the extend that it does in the spiritual world.
In other words, “arbitrary” isn’t the right word to describe physical things. “Fixed” and “resistive” would be more accurate descriptions along those lines. But material things still do represent the human mind just as the objects in the spiritual world do.
PS: And with spiritual, that is appearing (more) directly.
However any afterlife works, I hope spirits can at least shapeshift, if they are their bodies rather than their bodies being avatars of pure mind.
Hi Lee. When you say the afterlife is not as different as we think, that’s only when we initially arrive correct? Once we move to our final home, our life will have drastically changed from the one we had when we were alive.
Hi Ray,
When we initially arrive we may not even be able to tell the difference. Many people will believe that they just had a strange dream, and that they’re still living on earth. But before long it becomes obvious to most people that they are now in the spiritual world.
However, even after we reach our final home, our life is still very much like the life we live here, only without the bad stuff and without having to struggle to survive, make money, and so on. We’ll still live in houses in a neighborhood the way we did here, only nicer. We’ll still be married and live with our wife or husband. We’ll still have a job, though it will be one we really enjoy doing, not one we do just for the money. We’ll still listen to music, play sports, go for a swim, ride a bike, and so on.
Of course, if we were poor and struggling here on earth and lived in a shack, we’ll now live in a nice house, and we won’t have to worry about food and clothes and other things we need. This means that many people will be living a much nicer life than they were living on earth. But it will be the sort of life they had hoped and dreamed of during their life on earth, not something completely different.
I hope this answers your question.
but that’s only if you go to heaven. If you choose hell, then you’re life will be drastically different than the one on Earth correct?
Hi Ray,
Perhaps not as much as you would think. It all depends on just how evil you are (by choice), and what part of hell you go to. The milder hells are a lot like run-down places on earth, where people live in shabby houses and are always fighting with each other. In other places Swedenborg says that hell consists of endless workhouses where people have to go to work so that they can get food and clothes. But in general, the milder hells aren’t all that different from poor and wretched communities here on earth, only they’re full of selfish and greedy people that hate each other. The people living there think their life is pretty normal.
In the deeper hells, yes, it gets a lot worse.
I have another question.
Will there be conquests in Heaven? It wouldn’t have to involve weapons or physical harm. I’m talking competition. I don’t know how to explain it better.
Hi World Questioner,
Competitive sports, yes. Combat, no.
That’s what I meant, combat is not fit for Heaven. Heaven is supposed to be peaceful.
No physical harm, not destruction to property.
It’s like seeing who is best.
Hi World Questioner,
Right, Swedenborg does describe competitive sports for young people growing up in heaven. For example:
Like a friendly competition, rather than war.
Hi World Questioner,
Yes!
What about empires and capital cities? Maybe empires wouldn’t have to arise by military conquest, but instead form by confederation
Hi World Questioner,
There aren’t empires. But there are two “kingdoms,” though they’re more like the animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom than like human kingdoms. They are whole regions of heaven. There are also “organs,” analogous to the organs of the human body, consisting of many communities of angels that cooperate with each other to provide similar services to the body as a whole, and to the body of people on earth.
There aren’t empires because an empire presumes an emperor. But the Lord is the ruler of all of heaven, and does all the coordination between its different parts. The largest unit that any one human being leads is the level of one village, town, or city. And even though Swedenborg lived in the age of kings, he never calls any of these leaders “kings.” Instead, he calls them “princes,” reserving the title of “King” for the Lord.
So no, there aren’t any empires in heaven. But there are large-scale structures consisting of many communities of heaven working together to achieve common goals.
You got it.
Princes… Or chieftains.
What about capital cities? I guess the New Jerusalem is not meant to be taken literally.
Hi World Questioner,
Swedenborg does mention spiritual-world versions of earth cities such as London and Paris that are capitals of their respective countries. However, since there aren’t countries in the spiritual world, there would be no particular need for capital cities.
And no, the New Jerusalem isn’t meant to be taken literally. But even if we did take it literally, it would not be a capital city. It would be the entire world. See:
How Big is the New Jerusalem?
By “empires” I am also talking about corporate empires. Like PepsiCo has a fast-food “empire” consisting of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut.
Hi World Questioner,
Calling those things “empires” is more metaphorical than literal. Empires are formed by force of arms.
But in general, the production and distribution of food and drink seems to be more localized in the spiritual world than it is in the material world of today. Perhaps that has changed since Swedenborg visited the spiritual world in the 18th century. But I doubt it. Most of the food and drink in heaven seems to be provided directly by the Lord. It would be hard for a profit-making corporation to compete with that sort of competition! 😀
But now you know what I really mean. I don’t like to be silly.
Hi World Questioner,
There’s nothing silly about it. These are all valid thoughts and questions that many people who think about these things wonder about.
When I said “conquest,” I didn’t mean military conquest. Maybe an empire wouldn’t have to arise by military conquest, but more like acquisitions. Also petitions, like a larger company petitioning an acquisition of a smaller company.
Or expansion of a culture, like the Bantu expansion or Altaic expansion.
As for friendly competition like you mentioned, competition could either mean friendly competition, or it could mean corporate competition in a market.
But empires are usually temporary, rather than permanent like kingdoms. They expand and then decline rather than remain a fixed size. An empire could develop into a kingdom or a set of kingdoms.
Just wanted to clarify.
Hi World Questioner,
Kingdoms are also temporary. There is no longer a Kingdom of Israel. And so on. These days there are fewer and fewer kingdoms, and of those that remain, in most of them the king or queen is more of a figurehead head of state, and not a real king or queen with the powers of a king or queen.
Anyway, in heaven, things just don’t work that way. There are neither empires nor kingdoms, and that applies not only to political affairs, but to business affairs. In heaven there are not profit-making enterprises, and no economy powered largely by self-interest, as there is here on earth.
I mean, kingdoms remain a fixed area, while empires expand and decline for their whole existence.
What about a combination of competition and cooperation? Two parties can both cooperate and compete at the same time, like in Terraforming Mars. Even competing businesses can sometimes cooperate.
Hi World Questioner,
Kingdoms also expand and contract for various reasons, primary of which is winning or losing wars with neighboring kingdoms. Even today, the borders of nations change from time to time due to civil or international wars.
But as far as cooperation and competition on projects, including big ones such as terraforming Mars, this likely happens in the first (natural) and second (spiritual) heaven, but not in the third (heavenly) heaven, where love reigns.
An empire continually expands until it begins to decline, rather than remaining a fixed size for any period of time. A kingdom remains a fixed size for some time until it falls or loses territory.
Third Heaven? I thought the first and second Heavens were the physical sky and space respectively, while the spiritual world is the Third Heaven. But what does Paul really mean by “Third Heaven”?
Hi World Questioner,
Paul would not have had today’s concept of “space.” I don’t know for sure what idea was in his mind when he mentioned the “third heaven.” He also may have thought that “heaven” was literally up in the sky. At any rate, from a Swedenborgian perspective, the third heaven is the highest of the three heavens, or levels of heaven.
Also, I read a story about a carefully-built circus empire that fell because of a man’s pride. I don’t remember everything in the story, like the fate of the man.
Hi World Questioner,
That’s how empires generally fall. Its leaders get carried away by pride and self-interest, resulting in corruption and the corrosion of the empire until it collapses.
What do you think would happen to a follower of Hindu or Buddhism who seeks liberation from samsara in the New Church afterlife?
The Hindu seeking liberation seeks moksha, which IIRC is awakening from the dream of Brahma that is this physical reality and merging with Brahma.
The Buddhist seeking liberation seeks nirvana, which literally translates to blowing out. Buddhism sees this mortal life or samsara as suffering, the cause of suffering as desire, and to achieve nirvana is to have the flame of desire put out. Nirvana itself, IIRC, is not extinction, but some kind of merging with some universal mind (so like moksha of Hindu).
Both moksha and nirvana involve the extinction of the self or at least the ego, IIRC.
So what do you think would happen to a Hindu or Buddhist who seek liberation from existence as themselves in samsara, only to find they are in the New Church afterlife which not only is not as different as you think, but can also be seen as a sort of eternal samsara?
Hi K,
I think there is a lot of misunderstanding of the underlying realities that are expressed in common Hindu and Buddhist ideas. “Samsara,” if it means anything, is about the cycle of physical drives and desires, especially if they take precedence over spiritual loves and motives. The idea that we will be liberated from all love, desire, and emotion is an illusion.
Buddhists who enter the spiritual world will learn this, if they don’t already know it. If they are people of good heart, they will indeed be liberated from samsara in the sense of being liberated from ongoing physical drives and desires, because they will no longer have a physical body.
Here is an example to illustrate the illusion of the common view that we will be liberated from all desires:
In Swedenborg’s book Marriage Love he talks about two kinds of sexual/marital love. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll call them physical love and spiritual love. Physical love is basically our biological sex drive. Spiritual love is the deep longing for oneness with another person.
Sex can flow from either one. Our biological sex drive obviously motivates us to mate and reproduce, so that even if we don’t care about the other person at all, we’ll still have sex. Our spiritual love, however, looks first toward oneness of mind and heart with the other person, and this inner sense of oneness expresses itself in the oneness of physical lovemaking.
A Buddhist who believes that liberation from samsara means the end of all desires will find that indeed, physical drives such as our biological sex drive no longer exist in the spiritual world. And so there will indeed be a “liberation from samsara.”
What will surprise the Buddhist is that even though there is no more physical sex drive, people still marry and make love, and even in hell people still have sex, although there it is driven by a desire for profit or power, not by a longing for oneness with another person. What it’s not driven by is sex drive, as in a biological instinct and drive to mate and bear children.
In other words, the Buddhist’s conception of nirvana won’t be totally wrong, because there will be a liberation from the cycle of physical and worldly drives and desires. But our spiritual loves, drives, and desires will still continue, and those will be what move and drive our life in the spiritual world.
As for the extinction of the self, that won’t happen. We retain our individuality to eternity. What we gain, though, is a sense of oneness with the people in our community of heaven. It will not be a oneness of being merged into an undifferentiated mass of spiritual awareness, but a oneness of distinct individuals living in loving and mutual community with one another, each one contributing his or her own unique character, skills, love, and understanding to the whole, making it greater than the sum of its parts.
Again, the idea that we lose our individuality and merge into a common consciousness is an illusion. But the grain of truth behind it is that we do become an integral part of the community of heaven, such that we feel a oneness with the people around us even while continuing to exist as a distinct individual. In other words, again, the Hindus and Buddhists will be partly right, but partly wrong.
Finally, if all love and desire were taken away, there would be nothing left of us, and we would cease to exist altogether. That can never happen.
All this Hindus and Buddhists learn for themselves once they die and move on to the spiritual world. Their own sacred writings teach these things if they’re read spiritually and not literally. They won’t have to renounce their religion. But before moving on to heaven, they’ll see the true meaning of their own scriptures, and will leave behind materialistic ideas and interpretations such as reincarnation and the loss of all individuality and desire—which is based on confusing physical desire with all desire.
In this world, entropy is constantly trying to drag everything into nothing (like towards “Heat Death” where the universe is just sparse elementary particles in the void). Digital data can be subject to “bit rot” from magnetic interference (magnetic media) or fading away if overworked or not loaded (flash). On traditional media, ink fades in sunlight and paper can rot after decades or centuries. Machines can break down (VCRs stop working, etc). People wishing to preserve media in this world may worry and have to work to hold decay at bay.
However, in the New Church afterlife, could it be different? Could media and the means of accessing media be immortal in a way? For example, could a media and/or the means to access such be summoned from some kind of memory, go away when not needed to avoid clutter, and recalled later exactly as such were before? In New Age there is the concept of the so-called Akashic records, is there a similar concept in the New Church afterlife?
Hi K,
The material world is intrinsically dead. It therefore tends toward death and disarray—or in scientific terms, toward maximum entropy.
The spiritual world is intrinsically alive. It therefore tends toward more and more life, order, and organization, exactly the opposite of the case in the material world.
About memory, Swedenborg says that we have an outer or earthly memory and an inner or spiritual memory. Everything we have ever said, done, thought, felt, or experienced is recorded in these two memories. The outward details of sensory impressions of physical things are recorded in the earthly memory, and the inner spiritual details of thought and feeling are recorded in the inner memory. Not a single detail is missing—even things we didn’t notice or pay attention to at the time, although things we love and focus on are more deeply engraved in our memory.
In his most detailed treatment of this subject, he says that we retain the full contents of both our outer and our inner memory, right down to the smallest details, forever. However, after death our outer memory goes quiescent unless there is some particular need to draw material out of it. An example of this is in “trials” in the world of spirits in which criminals and evildoers attempt to deny their evil actions, but their actions are drawn out of their memory and presented to themselves and everyone around them in full living detail, in such a way that they can no longer deny it. However, once people settle into their permanent homes in the spiritual world, their earthly memory goes quiescent, and they no longer have access to it, even though it is all still there, fully recorded, in a way that can never be erased.
Instead, people in the spiritual world now draw on and use their inner or spiritual memory, which contains all the spiritual elements (ideas, principles, thoughts, feelings, loves, desires, and so on) of everything they have experienced. This memory does also include the sensory experience of things they have experienced in the spiritual world. In other words, it functions just like earthy memory in the spiritual world, only far finer and more detailed.
In short, yes, everything we have ever felt, thought, said, done, or experienced with our senses is fully recorded in complete detail in a way that can never be erased, and that continues to be part of our self and character forever. However, the parts that were contrary to the ruling love that we eventually chose on earth are sidelined, and have only a muted “historical” effect on our character, whereas the parts that were and are in accord with our ruling love remain a living, active part of our character.
If you want to read more about our inner and outer memory, and about their state after death, here are Swedenborg’s two most detailed treatments of the subject. The links are to the first section of each.
It’s all quite fascinating!
So if I were in the New Church afterlife, and I got a sheet of paper and made a doodle on it, I could then access that same doodle the equivalent of 1 million years later, and it’d still look just as when I drew it? Even if I left it out in the sun there for eons? Or if I saved some data to a so-called spirit floppy disk on the other side, and wanted it preserved, it could still be there intact after the equivalent of millennia later?
Hi K,
Yes, it would still be there, as distinct as it was on the day you doodled it.
Why you would want to recall your doodle a million years later, I have to idea, but if that’s what floats you boat . . . 😉
In so-called virtual reality, there is no decay (unless programmed in otherwise), provided that the hardware and software the VR is running on holds. In a realm that is a manifestation of thought (like in a dream or daydream), there does not have to be decay either (unless such is specifically being simulated).
So the spiritual realm in New Church theology is something like that then, rather than being more or less than some sort of alternate physical world (yet beyond the physical and also spacetime)?
Hi K,
Right. In the spiritual world our surroundings reflect our inner thoughts and feelings. And since we live forever, and our mind never deteriorates as it does here, but remains young and sharp no matter how long we’ve lived, our surroundings remain crisp and renewed and alive forever.
However, it’s not just a virtual reality. The things in our surroundings are solid and real. We can touch, taste, and smell them, not just see and hear them as in our current version of virtual reality. It’s just that they exist to reflect our thoughts and feelings rather than having a semi-fixed and independent existence of their own as our material surroundings do.
I should add that this does not mean we literally “create our own reality.” It is God, not us, who creates everything in the spiritual world just as God, not us, created everything in the material world. It’s just that God creates our surroundings in the spiritual world to directly and instantly reflect our character and our current thoughts and feelings. It’s as if the creative power from God shines through the prism of our character and our changing thoughts and moods, and creates our surroundings through that ever-shifting prism.
IIRC, in the New Church afterlife, the spiritual is a manifestation of the so-called abstract (like truth as water or light, love as flame or warmth, etc.). Truth and love are timeless and cannot decay.
So, a certain abstract can manifest as a doodle, and so that’s how such a doodle can, one way or another, always be able to appear as fresh as when it was drawn, as the so-called abstract concept that doodle corresponds to is a timeless concept?
Hi K,
Yes, I’d say that’s a fair explanation. The doodle, even if it may seem random, represents something in your mind and heart. Even if you’ve since moved on, the state of mind from which you drew the doodle still exists in you.
If you have ever seen Star Trek TNG, you can see that a Q can seemingly conjure stuff out of thin air, and make stuff disappear into thin air. And in Harry Potter, there’s a “spell” that can repair stuff instantly.
Could similar abilities manifest in the New Church afterlife with the equivalent of inanimate stuff?
BTW, I recall reading in some New Age-y book that one can conjure up art from thought, but there are also people who still paint the old-fashioned way for the fun of it. Maybe it could work the same way in New Church afterlife.
Hi K,
The sense I get from Swedenborg’s descriptions of how things work in the afterlife is not that people conjure things up out of thin air, but that things appear spontaneously in response to people’s thoughts and desires. The distinction may seem subtle, but it is real and significant.
Q snaps his fingers, and things appear or disappear. Swedenborg never describes anything like that happening in heaven. Rather, he describes people, say, getting interested in discussing and debating a certain topic, and suddenly there is a gymnasium in the classical sense of a debating hall, and people enter it from various directions and begin the discussion and debate.
What’s happening, as I understand it, is that God is creating and disappearing things based on the changing thoughts and feelings of the people in the vicinity. It is not people “manifesting” things. It is God creating things, but based on what people think and want.
And of course, it happens via correspondences. Which also means that what appears is not random or arbitrary. Rather, what appears is a direct and detailed representation of the specific thoughts and feelings people are having at that time.
However, Swedenborg does also describe people building things and engaging in artistic endeavors, as that New Agey book described. So people can create things. But they do it in the usual way, by putting one brick on top of another or painting a canvas one stroke at a time, expressing their own thoughts and feelings one element at a time.
Angels can also exert divine power, such as routing hordes of evil spirits with a look or a shake of the fist. They can do this as long as they recognize that the power is from the Lord, and not from themselves. If they fall into thinking that they have any power of their own, they become as weak and helpless as babies. And of course, the things they do with divine power must be good, not evil.
All of this is what I gather based on Swedenborg’s descriptions of events in the spiritual world.
Do any animals in the New Church afterlife (even if they are just representations of some spiritual concepts) have consciousness or awareness?
Or are they so-called philosophical zombies who act like they are conscious but not really are?
And can New Church afterlife animals have at least some form of immortality where they can reappear after and if they disappear?
Hi K,
Animals do not have immortal souls. However, as an expression of some settled thought or emotion in the mind of an individual angel or a community of angels (or evil spirits) they can have a sort of immortality, in that they express something constant and long-lived in a human spirit or group of human spirits. I think it would be possible, for example, for an angel to have a pet that continued on forever and never went away permanently because that pet has an ongoing place in the angel’s heart.
However, truth be told, I think it would be more likely that just as people go through various pets here on earth because pets usually have a shorter lifespan than humans, that if people have pets in heaven, they would change over time as the person continues to grow and develop spiritually. But that’s just a theory. Annette believes that in heaven she will have all the pets she has loved and lost over the years. I just hope it’s not all at the same time. 😉
Hi K,
I think they must. If, as seems to be the case, they are fully functional animals, complete with all their internal organs, including their brain, all of which work as designed, then those organs, including the brain, must be able to function as their material counterparts do. So I believe animals in heaven will have the same sort of consciousness they do on earth. This means they will still be focused on external things such as food and water, and will still not have any concept of God and spirit. Their consciousness will be just like the consciousness of animals on earth, only they will be living in the spiritual world instead.
So no, I don’t think they are philosophical zombies. I think they are real living breathing animals. But they do not think about the future or about higher things. When they cease to exist because they no longer correspond to the thoughts and feelings of the angels in the vicinity, it is no different than when animals die here on earth. Their consciousness simply ceases at that point.
If a spirit animal goes away, that is not dying like how animals here do with death and decay, and there is still the possibility of that critter reappearing later? So for example, angels are not going to stumble on dead birds while in Heaven?
Hi K,
There will be no dead birds in heaven. But there will be in hell, because life in hell is like a living death. When I said that animals disappearing in heaven is similar to their dying on earth, I was talking about their consciousness, not about their bodies.
About critters reappearing later, back to my wife’s dozens of pets over the years, I think what will probably happen in heaven is that when she thinks of a particular pet, it will appear, and when she stops thinking about it, it will disappear. That’s not very different from cats on earth, which come and go. But it will happen entirely in response to her thinking or not thinking about them, and when they “go” they will simply fade away, only to reappear later when she thinks about them again.
This, at any rate, is how I think it will work, not just with cats, but with all sorts of animals, plants, and even scenery.
Do you think that if a conscious spirit animal disappears and then reappears later, he will recall what went on the last time he was around, in the in the New Church afterlife?
Hi K,
I don’t think animals on this earth recall what went on even ten minutes ago. It does get recorded in their brains, and it affects their behavior going forward, but they don’t have the power of conscious reflection and recall that humans have. And if animals here don’t have that kind of consciously available memory recall, animals in the spiritual world won’t have it either.
I think animals do have long term memories: there are a pair of cats in the family who can recall me and the layout of where I live even after being away for months. So hopefully any spirit animals can have a resuming of consciousness from where such left off if and after they disappeared and then reappeared.
Hi K,
Yes, animals have long-term memory, but I think they experience in more instinctual ways than we do. When they see a house or apartment they are familiar with, or a person that they’ve had a relationship with, they know it, and they act based on all their previous experience of the place or the person. But when they are taken to a different place, they don’t think about and picture the place they’ve left. They’re now fully present in the place where they are now. Similarly, when a human they have a relationship with is gone, they don’t think about that person, though they may feel sad if their relationship with that person is very close. Dogs, especially, get very attached to their human owners, and can become very despondent when their human owners are gone. But they don’t think “I miss my human.” They just feel sad because something is missing. If their human comes back, they are instantly happy, because now the missing thing is there again.
When we had a dog, which was Annette’s dog before she met me, the sun set for that dog when Annette left, and rose when she came back. If she was gone for a few days or a week, I could take him out and throw a ball for him to chase, which was his all-time favorite activity. But if she wasn’t there, his heart just wasn’t in it. He’d still chase the ball, but there was no enthusiasm or joy in it. But once she came back, if we went out to the park and I threw the ball for him, he was prancing and lively and racing around and living in his heaven! When she was gone, if he’d been able to speak, I don’t think he could have said, “I’m sad because she’s gone.” He was just sad, sad, sad until she returned. Even though he was with me also most of his life, he had imprinted on her as a puppy, and there was no replacement for her.
Although one (or at least I) may get the impression that Heaven as Swedenborg describes it is rather mundane or pretty much like the physical but with so-called magic being real (like so-called psychic powers, stuff being conjured, etc), is even the outermost Heaven still vastly more beautiful and mostly incomprehensible to mortal minds?
Hi K,
In a word: Yes.
IIRC, a contemporary criticism of Swedenborg (by at least one theologian at the time) was that the way he wrote about Heaven made it seem “too earthly” or something like that. Or in other words, similar to how I was seeing there via the writings of Swedenborg. But good that’s not the case, and 1 Corinthians 2:9 is the case, even in the outermost Heaven.
Hi K,
Yes, there are definitely things in heaven that no one has ever seen here on earth. But all of our familiar things from here on earth will be there, too.
That theologian probably believed that heaven would be one vast eternal worship service, based on a literal reading of scenes from the book of Revelation. By now he’s long since been able to try that out and discover that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. So will all the others who object to an afterlife that’s realistic rather than being a fantasy land.
Really, the main differences will be internal rather than external. Here is an abridged version of Heaven and Hell #401 that I was translating yesterday for one of my paid jobs. This is the Dole NCE translation:
In the spiritual world, what is around us simply expresses what is within us. It is the inner experience and inner sense of connection to God and other people that is the real joy of heaven. And as Swedenborg says here, that joy is far greater than anything we can possibly feel while here on earth clothed in our physical body and “stuck” (to use one of your favorite words) in the material world.
When I was a little kid, the world seemed like a magical place where anything was possible. Now that I have grown and learned, the world seems like a very mundane and cynical place with extremely limiting laws of physics, and the spiritual is seemingly challenged if not outright debunked by science and skepticism. And of course there seems to be a dark side to just about anything and everything.
In any afterlife, can that sense of wonder and magic return to anyone who makes it to Heaven? Of course Heaven would lack evil being Heaven.
Hi K,
Yes, that sense of wonder can and does return in heaven for those whose minds are open to it, and even a considerable amount for more practical-minded people. Heaven is a place where things impossible on earth happen all the time, such as flying through the air without the benefit of wings or an airplane. And it is a place where all the good thoughts and feelings inside people are present in real-life all around them. Living in one’s dream home, regardless of how much it would cost on earth, is only the beginning. Plus, the whole environment in heaven, animal, plant, and mineral, is alive in a way that can’t be replicated on earth due to the heaviness of physical matter.
So yes, that childlike sense of wonder will return for those who make their way to heaven through living a good and caring life here on earth. After all, Jesus did say that we must become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Limited experience in mortal life does not necessarily mean limited experience in the afterlife, does it?
For example, if all I know is the mundane modern world, does that mean I would be stuck in a re-creation of the mundane modern world forever? Or if a guy has deformity from infancy (natural or induced like with circumcision or accident), would the spiritual body of that guy be stuck with said deformity for eternity?
Hopefully not, as if one was stuck in only what one knows, people who never knew love in this lifetime could never have marriage in any afterlife, as all they know is being single.
PS: In other words, dreams can be limited to mimicking real life experience. Like flying dreams where one cannot fly above 2 or 3 stories high (when that height is never exceeded IRL). Hopefully any afterlife does not work the same way.
Hi K,
As I’ve said to you many times before, in heaven nobody is stuck with anything. Everyone is living the best and happiest life he or she can possibly imagine. This is the general principle that applies to all questions of this type.
Deformities in this life are physical deformities, meaning they affect the physical body. When we die, we leave behind the physical body together with all its imperfections. There may be a lingering psychological effect in some people’s minds. If so, this will dissipate during that person’s time in the world of spirits, and will be long gone by the time he or she moves on to heaven. There, everyone has a young, healthy, beautiful, fully functional body. See:
The next general principle is that the afterlife is a real world—more real than this one—where we live a real life.
Just as here, in heaven we are always doing and learning new things. If we haven’t been higher than two or three stories of a building, we can go five or ten or twenty or a hundred stories high, and have that experience if we want to. We can even dream of flying to the top of a 1,000 story building if that would be interesting and evocative for us. Our experiences in heaven are not limited to what we have experienced on earth.
The “limitation” on us is the character we built during this life, or more precisely, the ruling love we chose for ourselves. This is what will determine the direction and nature of our life to eternity.
But note that this is something we choose, so it really shouldn’t be called a limitation. It is something we chose for ourselves in full freedom because that was the person we most wanted to be. Rather than being a limitation, it is what gives our life shape, reality, character, and individuality. And though we’ll never become a whole different person, there is no limit to how far we can go as the person we’ve chosen to become.
There is also a sense in which what we learn here puts determinations on our life in heaven, because one of the key things shaping our character and ruling love is the type of knowledge and understanding we have focused on and developed in this life. It’s a “limitation” in a sense, because we’re likely to continue enjoying learning and thinking about the same things in heaven that we do on earth, albeit it will be changed into the corresponding spiritual versions of the earth-level things we like to think and learn about here.
And once again, “limitation” is not really the right word. A better word would be “direction.” What we focus our mind on here sets the direction for our thinking that we will continue to follow in the afterlife, because those are the things we’re interested in and like to think and learn about. People who are into computers and AI aren’t suddenly going to decide that they’d rather be into makeup and hair styling after they die. It’s just not their character and personality. But they can continue to geek out about the heavenly equivalents of computers and AI forever, and never get bored of it.
This doesn’t mean we can’t take up new things in heaven. But they’ll be things that accord with our general character. There are many things I’d love to do that I have no time for here, such as returning to singing in a choir and playing an instrument in a small ensemble or in a concert band. None of us is monotonic in character. There are many facets to our character and personality. In heaven, we’ll have eternity to explore and develop the various parts of our character without limit.
About lifelong bachelors and their female equivalent, as long as the person wants to be in a relationship and get married, this can and will happen in the afterlife. See:
Can you Fall in Love in Heaven if you Haven’t Found Someone on Earth?
No one who wants a partner to love will be stuck being single to eternity. The only people who remain single in heaven are those who want to be single, and prefer to be single. But the vast bulk of people in heaven are married. That includes the hopeless awkward misfits who can’t even begin to attract a woman here on earth.
Even if, in the New Church afterlife, I am forever stuck in Homo sapiens form, hopefully the afterlife is not an eternity of Homo sapiens BS: excessive rules, overconformist society, demonizing that which is not morally wrong, trying to pass of what is wrong as good, etc.
Hi K,
Nope, there’s none of that in heaven. Otherwise it wouldn’t be heaven.
I dunno about that as some things seem way to ingrained. Like thinking copying itself is the same as theft even when there is no sale replaced. Or thinking of sexuality as inherently dirty or wrong, especially the straight male kind. Or the way younger generations are seeming always so-called smartphone zombies who let so-called social media have too much influence over them. Or how modern dating is being ruined by dating apps on said smartphones. Or how extreme political correctness that is toxic to human nature seems to permeate just about every aspect of the modern world. But if using money and even wearing clothes can go away after death, maybe all that crap can as well?
And meanwhile, if Swedenborg is right, it seems the rest of the universe is home to people who live like native tribes on this planet, but far more spiritually. In other words, way too alien for the average person from this modern world to join a community from in the afterlife.
So it seems that when it comes to afterlife communities, the only 2 choices are people from this world in the past and any from other worlds which may be too alien, or people from this world of excessive political correctness and social media.
Hi K,
It’s only in the highest heaven that people from different planets mix. In the lower heavens, people remain in the company of others from their own planet.
However, there are a lot of people on this earth, both male and female, who are similarly unable to find a partner during their earthly lifetime. Considering that the gender balance on earth is close to 50-50, and that most of the world is now monogamous, for every lonely single old guy, there’s some lonely single old gal as well.
I.e., there won’t be any problem finding someone to marry in the spiritual world even if the eligible people come entirely from this planet.
Hi K,
A lot of that stuff will go away in the spiritual world simply because it is no longer necessary.
For example, theft of food or intellectual property will no longer be necessary because all the necessities of life, both bodily and mental, are supplied gratis. This is primarily true in heaven. In hell people do have to work for their food. But in heaven it’s not a quid-pro-quo. Food and clothing are not a wage for work. The work is done for its own sake, and the food and clothing are freely supplied as wanted and needed. No one is worrying about property rights, either physical or intellectual, because everyone has everything they want and need.
But the real answer to your question is that whereas here on earth good and evil are mixed together, in the spiritual world, at least in our ultimate destination of heaven or hell, they are not. Yes, in the world of spirits there is still a mix of good and evil. But this is a temporary situation. For those going to heaven, remaining significant evil is removed during the process that takes place in the world of spirits. For those going to hell, remaining significant good is removed. By the time we arrive in heaven, it’s all good. And by the time we arrive in hell, it’s all evil.
So the short answer to your question is that all these annoying and damaging attitudes, ideas, and behaviors will drop away during people’s time in the world of spirits if they are headed to heaven. You can’t be an annoying jerk in heaven. If you insist upon being a jerk, and are unwilling to give up your jerky attitudes and behaviors, you’ll be going to the other place, where you can be as jerky and annoying as you want. But you’ll have no access to the good and contented people who are living in heaven, and they will no longer have to deal with you.
I do not agree that so called intellectual property can be so-called stolen just by copying, but hopefully that mentality will go away anyway in any afterlife. The idea that information or content itself can be stolen can lead to insane thinking like so-called cultural appropriation, and so-called intellectual property thinking is relatively new in human history. But I digress. What I was getting at is that if the next life is just like this one but for all eternity, I think I would rather cease to exist like the metaphysical naturalist atheist asserts happens after death.
And I still think being stuck in a human body forever is hellish (I would like it if one can be like a Q from Star Trek with the ability to assume human form but not be stuck in it), but we have already discussed that. Hopefully I can have some sort of solution if there is indeed an afterlife.
Hi K,
Fortunately, the next life is not just like this one, but for all eternity.
I mentioned the Q from Star Trek earlier. One thing the Q can do is make their realm, normally incomprehensible to beings of matter from 3D space, comprehensible with a metaphor. Like in the Death Wish episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the continuum is presented as a desert roadhouse (which in real life is the Club Ed Movie Set). Various people and things there represent various aspects of the Q Continuum.
So I take it the New Church afterlife works in sort of a similar way: various concepts such as love or truth appear as various subjects? Of course I imagine that Heaven is not a lazy desert roadhouse.
Q Continuum Road Metaphor
PS: Oh yeah, and from what I gather, unlike that Q Continuum road metaphor, New Church Heaven is definitely not a place of stagnation where one eventually runs out of stuff to do and say BTW.
Hi K,
(FYI, the YouTube video was not showing up on my end, so I edited the comment to insert a working link to embed the video.)
I remember watching that episode when it first aired, and getting excited by the desert roadhouse scene for exactly the reason you mention: it’s a great depiction of the way correspondence works. Things on a higher level, such as love and truth, appear on a lower level as objects, animals, people, scenes, and so on that represent them on that level.
But no, heaven is not a lazy desert roadhouse—though I’m sure there are plenty of lazy desert roadhouses in the rural areas of heaven. Heaven is vast, and has all the variations we’re used to here of urban, suburban, and rural areas, not to mention huge areas that are entirely uninhabited and unexplored. It has plenty of space for cities of millions of people, sprawling suburbs, rural towns and villages, and expansive wilderness areas.
Whatever environment an angel wants to live in or experience will, almost by definition, be there, because all the inhabited environments of heaven are expressions of the thoughts and desires of the angels inhabiting them, and the uninhabited areas are manifestations of the unexplored parts of the human psyche, not to mention the unexplored areas of God’s mind, which is infinite—though I don’t think heaven itself is infinite.
I also don’t think the physical universe is infinite. I think only God can be infinite, whereas everything else must be finite. And therein lies the Q Continuum’s problem as illustrated in the “Death Wish” episode: The physical universe, which is where the Q reside, is finite, and the Q have now explored it all.
The premise is not entirely believable. The original Q played by John de Lancie seems to still be finding new activities to amuse himself with, as presented in the earlier Star Trek episodes in which he appears. Still, it’s not impossible precisely because, if I am correct, the physical universe is not only finite, but finite on its own terms: it doesn’t care if we want something new to explore. What it’s got is what it’s got, and there ain’t no more.
However, the spiritual world is not like that. Its “rules” are spiritual, not material, which means that they are instantly and fully responsive to the human psyche and its thoughts and desires. There is no “edge” to it (queue The Truman Show) limiting our explorations. It expands as our thinking expands.
The other element missing from the Q’s situation is that even if both the material world and the spiritual world are finite, God is infinite. And if even one infinite thing exists, then for finite beings, there is never any “edge.” No matter how much we have experienced so far, there is always infinitely more to explore and experience. And it’s not like an asymptote, in which a curved line is continually approaching a fixed line, but never quite reaching it. It’s like a straight line that can keep going forever. Or more like an object moving at a finite speed through infinite space, which, no matter how fast it’s moving, and no matter how much it keeps accelerating, will never run out of space to keep moving.
In heaven, we will never run out of new things to discover and experience. And it won’t be a law of diminishing returns, in which we’ve already experienced most of it, and there are just a few little details here and there left. It will be, if anything, a continually increasing field of increasingly big new discoveries, similar to the progress of science so far, in which every time we think we have a handle on how the universe works, we make new discoveries that require us to rethink our models, because our current models can’t explain these new discoveries.
Science today has far more questions than it had a century, two centuries, or three centuries ago. And no matter how many scientists and specialists we throw at it, there just keep being more and more and more things to investigate and figure out. The issue in science is not a lack of subject matter. It’s a lack of people, funding, equipment, and so on to investigate all the questions we have.
I don’t think that will ever change even here in this physical universe. And the spiritual universe is orders of magnitude bigger than the physical universe. And above it all, there’s God, who is infinite, and who can and does provide a never-ending supply of new things to discover and new ways to grow in heart and mind.
That’s why we will never get bored and suicidal in heaven, as Quinn did in the “Death Wish” episode of Star Trek Voyager.
Hopefully the denizens of at least Heaven can learn new skills and perfect learned ones. For example, for someone who wants to write, it would suck to be stuck writing laughably bad fanfiction if the aspiring author passed away while still sucking at telling stories.
Hi K,
You’re really stuck on being stuck! 😉
In heaven, no one is stuck in anything, as I’ve said many times before. In hell, yes, people are stuck in many things, but that’s because, as Jesus said, those who sin are slaves to sin. Their own choice for evil over good brings undesirable consequences upon them. But in heaven, everyone is entirely free, as Jesus also said, in his own words, in that same verse.
At any rate, yes, people in heaven can learn new skills and perfect old ones. They’re people. People are people. People learn and grow, and do new things. Otherwise heaven would be the complete bore that is represented in, for example, that “Death Wish” Star Trek episode.
This doesn’t mean everyone will become good at everything. Someone who just isn’t interested in writing, but is more interested in physical action, is not going to magically become a good writer. People follow the interests that their character leads them toward, and develop those, while leaving other potential skills undeveloped not because they couldn’t do it if they wanted to, but because they have no interest in doing it.
But yes, someone who wants to develop fiction-writing abilities can do that in heaven, and continue to perfect his or her skill at writing. Personally, I have a lot of non-fiction titles I want to write, and I doubt I’ll have time to write even the ones I have in mind during my remaining lifetime on earth. Fortunately, I’ll be able to continue writing in the afterlife.
I am somewhat stuck on being stuck, but that is because Swedenborg says the ruling love never changes, people he encounters from certain historical periods of this planet still live like they did in this life, and he describes meeting historical figures that are still as described in the history books, in H&H. So it is easy to think that God made a faulty design with the afterlife where people are forever eternally stuck with whatever ways they chose in this life. Never advancing to a higher Heaven, never getting out of hell, eternal stagnation! Or so it seems.
So if I get set in certain ways, I cannot ever take up arts I was not interested in in this life? That does not help to dissuade fear of being stuck in a rut in the New Church afterlife, if such is real.
PS: BTW, in LDS (AKA Mormon) beliefs, what makes the lower 2 kingdoms (Telestial, Terrestrial) undesirable is eternal stagnation (or at least it is such with the Telestial), IIRC. Of course in LDS, one is literally physical for all eternity, making that even less appealing than being in some kind of semi-corporeal spirit body forever in New Church belief.
Hi K,
First, don’t forget that your ruling love is something you freely choose during an entire lifetime full of various possibilities. Whatever you choose is the one you think is best and most enjoyable for you. It’s not something you will feel “stuck” in. It’s something you wanted more than anything else. And in heaven, you get to live it out, without anything getting in the way or holding you back. That’s what makes heaven heaven.
Second, it is not “eternal stagnation” because whatever love you choose can continue to grow and develop to eternity. People who choose to devote their life to astronomy never run out of new things to discover and learn. They continue on, fascinated with every new discovery, always with more questions to answer. They die still with unanswered questions on their minds that they did not have time or ability to research. There is no end to the new possibilities for learning and growth in the field.
Yes, they could switch to another field. But that would just mean starting all over, and leaving behind all the fascinating new developments in the field they have chosen. What, really, would be the advantage of making such a switch? Presumably it would be to something they are less interested in than astronomy, because that is the field they chose out of all the possible fields they could have entered.
In more general terms, no matter what direction we choose in life, we can continue to travel in that direction to eternity, never running out of room to go farther, learn and discover new things, and increase the skill and proficiency in the chosen life path.
Also, angels aren’t just uselessly learning new things. They are continually using their knowledge in service of their fellow angels, of spirits arriving in the world of spirits, of people on earth, and even of evil spirits in hell. No knowledge is purely theoretical. It all gets put to practical use. So the enjoyment is even greater, because angels’ greatest joy is to love and serve God and the neighbor.
Even so, you are not stuck doing only one thing to eternity. Here on earth we engage in various activities, both occupational and recreational. If we like surf sailing, that doesn’t mean we can’t give downhill skiing a try. If our primary job is plumbing, we can still do some electrical on the side if we want. There’s nothing here on earth preventing us from branching out into different areas that aren’t in our primary line, and there’s nothing in heaven preventing that either.
Personally, I doubt I’ll ever be an artist. It’s not my greatest aptitude and skill. But I’ve done a few artistic things in the course of my life, and they weren’t bad. If I wanted to dabble in watercolor in the afterlife, there’d be nothing to prevent me from doing so, even if I’ll never come close to the great masters in the art.
Anything you’re interested in doing in heaven, you can do. There is no rule saying, “Sorry, you chose child care, so you can’t go to the library and read adult books.” There is just as much freedom there to do whatever you want, and far more, not to mention no time limit after which it’s too late and you missed your chance.
Really, this is a non-issue. Much of the time you’ll be doing what you love most, which is expressive of the ruling love you chose here on earth. But there’s plenty of time to do other things, too, as you wish, in complete freedom, with no limitations other than your own interests and aptitudes.
As far as people in heaven still living the way they did on earth, yes, of course they do, because that’s the type of life that formed their character, and that’s the type of life they’re familiar with and enjoy. It’s a better version of it than existed on earth, but it’s still their comfortable, enjoyable life, fitting to their character. They’re not “stuck.” They’re living the life they enjoy. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
As far as never advancing to a higher heaven or getting out of hell, that’s because angels and spirits have already chosen the kind of life they want to live, and they have no interest in living a different life. Angels of the lowest heaven don’t wake up thinking, “Gee, I wish I’d regenerated to the celestial level so that I could have a better life!” No. They get up in the morning looking forward to the great day ahead of them, and all the good and enjoyable things their going to do and learn in it, not to mention all the people they’re going to see, and so on.
Every angel, at every level, is living his or her chosen, best life. They have no desire whatsoever to be someone else, at some other level. Even in hell, where there are limitations and “stuckness,” it’s because of the evil spirits’ own choices, and they have no desire to change and become someone else. They’re living the life they’ve chosen; it’s just that choosing to live an evil and selfish life brings about its own pains, frustrations, and limitations. But they still don’t want to change. At least they get to do some of the dirty, evil, destructive things they love to do!
Meanwhile, everyone in heaven is absolutely happy exactly where they are. Why would they want to change a life that for them is absolute perfection?
I got the impression that since the New Church afterlife is like, as David Staume put it, an externalized inner reality, that it sorta works like dreams. And my dreams follow the principle of “write what you know”, so my dreams are limited to my knowledge and experience. So I got the fear that the afterlife has one stuck in whatever their mortal knowledge and experience is for all eternity, because God does not allow one to change character after death via the way the afterlife is designed.
But then again, if someone who has 0 experience in love or relationships can somehow experience all of that in any afterlife, then maybe the New Church afterlife is not so limiting.
And at least with no afterlife, I would not be around to experience nothing.
Hi K,
The afterlife is not like dreams. Dreams are flow-of consciousness visions of symbolic people, places, and things that signify or reflect something particular about the psyche or experience of the person having them. The afterlife is a landscape reflecting the totality of the psyche (both mind and heart) of all the people in the vicinity. It is far more stable and real than dreams because it reflects the settled character of the people in the area, not just their fleeting thoughts and feelings. Yes, it’s an externalized internal reality. But our internal reality has roots and foundations. It’s not just birds and bees flitting around in the air.
The spiritual world is also a real world, not a virtual or visionary one. It may reflect the psyches of the people in the vicinity, but it also has solidity and substance, unlike dreams. The landscape around you is real, even if it’s not as fixed as the landscapes on earth. The mountains are made of rocks and dirt. They aren’t just visual surfaces, like movie sets. They’re actual objects made of spiritual substance. They can be examined, dug into, pulled apart, and so on, just like earthly objects, only they’re made of spiritual substance, not physical matter.
As for our earthly knowledge, that does form a foundation for our spiritual knowledge, but a house is not just a foundation. Once you’ve built the foundation, you’re not stuck with just a foundation forevermore. Now you can build a house on top of the foundation, and while the house’s footprint is set, it can have many different configurations, heights, and so on on top of that foundation. The foundation does set some parameters for the house, but it doesn’t deterministically force the house to be a certain specific house.
And once more, in the spiritual world we are people just the way we are here. We have the capacity to learn new things, to learn new skills, to try new activities, to grow in love, to do whatever we want to do. The only “limitation” is our interests and desires. And those are “limited” only because a) we are human, and b) we have a certain character that we built up during our lifetime on earth.
Think of yourself right now. Are you limited to a few specific thoughts, feelings, and activities? If you want to jump on a bike, can you do that, even if you’ve never ridden a bike before? If you want to go hang gliding, can you do that, even though you’ve never gone hang gliding before? If you want to learn calculus, can you do that, even though you only got as far as high school algebra?
Yes, you need a certain amount of physical ability and/or brain capacity to do some of these things. But the real limitation is your interest. If you have no interest in calculus, you’re not going to bother learning it. If you have no interest in hang gliding, you’re not going to try it out. Personally, I had the opportunity to go water skiing at one point, but at the time I just wasn’t interested, so I didn’t do it. Another time I had an opportunity to go on a hot-air balloon ride, and I did do it, because it sounded like fun!
Heaven is a real world, and the people there are real people. They’re not deterministic beings limited by their earthly lifetime to forever tread the same ground they did on earth. They are free, thinking, feeling human beings who have changing thoughts and desires from day to day just like people on earth. And they can do whatever they want to do.
It’s not that “God does not allow one to change character after death via the way the afterlife is designed.” It’s that God gives people full freedom to live exactly the way they want to live, forever.
But in this life, my interests can change and evolve. I can do stuff that was previously uninteresting to me. But it seems that in the New Church afterlife, interests are locked permanently (along with no more chance to repent of evil), so no new interests can be added.
And is the New Church afterlife only a reflection of thought? No objective reality independent of the thinking of anyone?
Hi K,
You’re really intent upon turning the afterlife into something “locked” and “fixed” and “stuck.” The reality is exactly the opposite. Compared to life in heaven, life on this earth is “locked” and “fixed” and “stuck.”
The fact is, here on earth, the quality and direction of your life is determined primarily by what you love and desire. This isn’t a “limitation.” It’s what drives you. It’s what gives you your motivation and your enjoyment of life. Without it, your life would be dead. Without it you would be dead.
The afterlife is exactly the same, except without all the external limitations that slow down and impede your pursuit of the things you love and find interesting and enjoyable. Precisely because the New Church afterlife is a reflection, not just of our thoughts, but of our thoughts and feelings, or our will and understanding, or our motives and beliefs, there is nothing to stop us from fully doing and experiencing everything we love and want to do, and everything we find interesting and enjoyable from moment to moment and from day to day.
Further, you are exactly the same person in the afterlife as you are here, except without the external factors that get in the way of expressing your actual self. If your interests change and evolve here, they will also change and evolve there. There is no difference whatsoever in you and your character in the afterlife compared to what it is like here. You will be, once again exactly the same person you are here. Far from extra limitations on your interests and desires being imposed, you will be freed from all the limitations and “stuckness” that you experience here.
Really, I think all your fears about being “stuck” in the afterlife are probably about being stuck here on earth, and fearing that the same will be true in the afterlife. Whatever it is that’s keeping you stuck in one place (if I am correct), then assuming it’s not an internal limitation that you have imposed upon yourself, that limitation will be removed in the afterlife, and you will finally be unstuck to follow all your interests and dreams.
I don’t know how many times I have to say it: The afterlife is the exact opposite of being stuck. Heaven is complete freedom to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, forever!
It is the supposed eternity of hell or the eternity of being in one kingdom of Heaven (along with Swedenborg accounts of people from the past forever retaining their way of life from mortality) that, along with any personal fears or issues as you suggest, suggest the possibility of being stuck in eternity. For example, if a person from ancient Rome were to be granted immortality in this life, then aside from the horror of being in a flesh body for endless eons, he could at least get with the times and drop the toga and the laurel leaves. But in the New Church afterlife, it sounds like he would likely be a senator in some re-creation of ancient Rome for all eternity. That is why I have seen getting stuck and being limited to mortal experience as a possibility. Even if one can choose whatever and whenever to do, it still seems to be limited by the foundation of mortality, like that Rome example.
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Whatever it is that’s keeping you stuck in one place (if I am correct), then assuming it’s not an internal limitation that you have imposed upon yourself, that limitation will be removed in the afterlife, and you will finally be unstuck to follow all your interests and dreams.
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But what if they are internal, assuming there is such an issue?
And also, a realm that is purely a mind realm: that is, purely externalized inner reality (as Staume put it) with no objective external reality sounds unsettling to me.
Hi K,
The Roman senator isn’t going to think of it as a limitation, nor is he going to feel horror at having a spiritual body (not “flesh and blood” in the earthly sense, which implies a physical body). And he’s not going to be anxious to ditch the toga and laurel leaves either. All of these are part of his life, expressive of his character, and enjoyable to him. Once again, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I do think that the real problem is that you’re stuck here. And if it’s a self-imposed limitation, then I would highly recommend that you get to work and remove that limitation from yourself. Assuming you live a generally decent life here on earth, you’ll have an enjoyable life in heaven. But this life is indeed critical for building a foundation for your best possible life in heaven. Don’t waste it! Don’t assume you can “do it later.” Do the work you need to do to get rid of your self-imposed limitations here on earth, and don’t put it off. If you do the hard work here, then you won’t have to worry about being stuck, because you’ll have unstuck yourself.
About “no objective external reality,” that’s not quite how it works. There is an objective inner reality in that each person has a definite ruling love, which is not just subjective, but is an objective fact about that person. And each person has a definite set of experiences, choices, and so on that make that person a definite, specific character, not just some subjective, shifting thing.
External reality in the spiritual world has objective reality because it reflects an objective inner reality. We’re not just floating balls of energy. We’re specific people who have specific loves, desires, ideas, beliefs, and so on. These are settled parts of ourselves, even if they also continue to grow and develop. The foundation is set during our lifetime on this earth. It doesn’t change. And that gives a staying power and sense of fixity even in the spiritual world.
In the spiritual world, we don’t live in an ever-changing flow-of-consciousness dreamscape. We live in a city, town, village, or remote cabin that fits our character. Yes, cities, towns, villages, and cabins change over time. But New York has been New York for several centuries now, and it doesn’t show any signs of becoming something else any time soon. Things don’t just flit around here and there in the spiritual world. Not the basics anyway.
Your house will not be like Hogwarts, with staircases moving around all the time. It will be a settled place that fits your character and tastes. You can make changes to it if you want. But it’s in a settled location (assuming you’re not a nomadic type), and it’s not going to be sliding around here and there, because its place reflects the settled nature of you ruling love.
If I personally have a limitation that keeps me stuck in this life, does that mean I will be stuck with being stuck forever, if I make it to the New Church Heaven?
About the Roman example, the point I was making is that if the Roman guy was in the New Church afterlife, he would likely play senator forever. The Roman spirit may not see it as being stuck, but I dol. However, if he is immortal in this life (where the horror of being flesh I mentioned can come into play), he would have a chance to change and ditch the toga and laurel leaves, because it seems one has more freedom in this life than in the next. Of course nature is extremely limiting, but a person can evolve their character as long as they are living in this life. Seems in the New Church afterlife, God freezes that, and you are stuck with a certain pattern forever, and somehow magically like it.
Finally, if angels can learn and develop, how come they stay in one level of Heaven forever? Should not the angels in the lowest Heaven eventually learn to move beyond mere obedience and into the way the medium Heaven people think? And why cannot the medium Heaven people move onto thinking the way innermost Heaven people think? Still sounds an awful lot like being stuck to me.
Hi K,
If you personally have a limitation that keeps you stuck in this life, then I would suggest focusing your energy on overcoming, or at least working around, that limitation rather than worrying about whether it will keep you stuck in the next life. Really, I think this whole “stuck” thing is not about the next life at all. It’s about this life. This life is your time to overcome blockages, grow spiritually, and form a life and character for yourself that you like.
I’m well aware that this life imposes limitations on us. Nobody ever said that this regeneration thing is easy. In fact, it’s damn hard. But it is what we must do if we want to form our best life both here and in the afterlife.
As far as OCD thinking, there might be some vestiges of that in the afterlife due to its general imprint on a person’s character. But negative things like that will largely fade away during a person’s time in the world of spirits, before entering heaven. For one thing, as time goes on, there will be less and less to worry about because all our needs are taken care of there, especially in heaven. It may take a little while to make the adjustment, but once people realize they have nothing to worry about and nothing to fear anymore, these negative patterns of thinking will naturally subside, and people will settle into a happy and contented life. OCD thinking will likely resolve into attention to detail, which is a good trait to have for certain occupations.
As for the rest, I think this is all a matter of perspective, and of projecting your own thoughts, feelings, and fears onto others.
Annette and I have reached a stage of life where we no longer follow the trends of young people. It’s not that we’re unaware of them. It’s that we’re uninterested in them when it comes to how we live our own life. We’ve settled into a general pattern of life that works for us. We’re not looking for the newest, latest, greatest thing because we’re happy with the life we have. This doesn’t mean that everything is easy for us. We still have our struggles and our triumphs in life. And it doesn’t mean that we’re not still learning and growing as people. But we have those struggles and triumphs, and engage in that learning and growth, on the foundation of character and lifestyle that we’ve already built for ourselves.
Personally, I am very glad that I am no longer a teen or twenty-something or thirty-something still trying to figure out who I am and what I’m going to do with my life. That issue is largely settled. I can simply move forward on the path that I chose for myself back then. I have no desire whatsoever for a do-over. Why go back to the womb when you’ve already been born and can now live your life?
That Roman senator is not thinking, “Gee, I wish I could have the life that K has, with so many possibilities ahead of me!” He’s enjoying the fruits of his labors and struggles during his lifetime on earth, when he had to build himself into the person he is. Does he want to go back and do it all over again, and become someone else? Why? What would be the point? He’s got a good life.
And he’s not “playing” senator. He is a senator. The afterlife is not a play or a drama. It is real life. It is actual people living out their lives, making their decisions, and executing them. It is actual people having relationships, living in communities, and doing all the things people do here on earth.
Your life isn’t a play or a drama. You’re not just acting K. You’re being K, and doing what K does. The same is true for that Roman senator in heaven. When he goes to the senate with his colleagues, he’s hashing out community issues with them, working out the best way to deal with them, and then communicating the resolutions arrived at to the community as a whole. Obviously a Roman senate in heaven will not be making stupid and oppressive laws and imposing them on the community whether they like it or not. They will be dealing with issues that have arisen in the community, and coming up with ideas and solutions that make life better for everyone in the community.
They’re not just acting out a play. They’re living life in a human community of people who are not perfect, and who therefore have issues that need to be dealt with and resolved, just as even good people here on earth have issues with one another that need to be dealt with and resolved.
Heaven is not some alien life in which everybody becomes someone completely different than they were on earth. It is a living, breathing human community with a heartbeat and things to accomplish. It is all the same people who lived out a lifetime here on earth, except with the serious negatives removed, all living together and working together in their communities.
As far as the Phoenix suburbs and strip malls, maybe you turn up your nose at that, but for the people who live there, it’s a good and enjoyable life. The strip malls conveniently provide them with the things they need for their daily lives. The suburbs provide a safe and comfortable environment with neighbors to share a back yard barbecue with. There is nothing inherently wrong with suburbia. For many people, it’s the ideal life. And if that’s the life they enjoy, why shouldn’t they be able to live that way just because you find it undesirable?
You don’t have to live forever in the suburbs of Phoenix surrounded by cookie cutter houses and strip malls. You can live forever however you want. You can be as far away from suburban Phoenix as you want. You can be way out in the middle of nowhere living by yourself in a cabin, or in a digital man cave, or however you want to live. You don’t have to see or deal with people if you don’t want to. But it’s not for you to say that people who enjoy suburban life shouldn’t be able to live that way.
Yes, to you living like that might feel like being stuck. But for the people who are living that way in heaven, it is the perfect life. And why change perfection?
Do we really have to keep starting all over again, throwing away everything we’ve built over a lifetime on earth, because you think we should not be “stuck”? Excuse me, but that’s like the do-gooders who are always trying to get people to be “better” because they think everyone should be as “enlightened” as they are, thus driving everybody crazy and making them wish that that annoying person would just go away and let them live their life in peace.
As I’ve now said approximately a thousand times, the people in heaven are not “stuck” in anything. They are living their perfect life. They have no desire whatsoever to change and be someone else. That’s true whether they’re living in the lowest, obedience- and behavior-based heaven, or the middle intellect- and principle-based heaven, or in the highest love- and innocence-based heaven. The people living in those heavens are who they are. They aren’t trying to be someone else.
Further, just like the economy on earth, heaven requires people of all different types, and all different interests and skills, for the whole to work. If everyone were the heart, that would sort of defeat the purpose of having a heart, wouldn’t it? There would be no body for the heart to pump its blood to. Someone has to be the arms, legs, fingers, and toes. And the people who are the arms, legs, fingers, and toes love their life.
As I cycle around the city where I live, everywhere I go I see men out building things and fixing things. Sometimes they’re solo, sometimes they’re in crews.
Do those men wish they were doing something else? Perhaps some do. But for the most part, they seem happy to be able to build something, whether it’s a house or a business or an apartment building. They’re proficient at their work, and they have a sense of accomplishment in it. Perhaps some want a different life. But most are living a good and decent life, and don’t aspire to anything else for themselves, even if they may aspire for something else for their children. They’ve settled into a life that works for them, and gives them a sense of satisfaction in accomplishment.
What if K were to come along and say to them, “All you guys are just stuck in a low-level life! You should want something else! You should all become doctors and lawyers instead!” Will they appreciate your advice? No, they’ll think you’re a disrespectful and annoying person who doesn’t honor or appreciate them for the hard work they do.
For my part, I have great respect for people who do an honest day’s work building things and keeping things running. It’s not what I want to do with my life. But it’s what they want to do with theirs. And I’m glad that everyone is not like me. If everyone were like me, the entire community and economy would quickly collapse. Those blue collar guys are the ones that keep everything running. Instead of thinking that they should rise up to higher things, I believe we should honor and respect the work they do.
It’s not for you to decide how other people should live their lives. It’s for you to decide how you want to live your life, and what sort of person you want to be. I would suggest focusing on that, and getting yourself unstuck, rather than worrying about a Roman senator who’s living the life he loves, and wearing the clothing he enjoys, and isn’t interested in your opinions about it.
PS: And Swedenborg describing ancient people as still living as they did in life millennia later is why I worry that one will stick with what they know forever in the New Church afterlife. Like a resident of Phoenix, AZ that is nothing but strip malls and suburbs being stuck in an afterlife replica of Phoenix, AZ for all eternity. Or someone who only knows OCD thinking being stuck with OCD thinking forever (even if cured) because that is all the person knows.
Hi K,
My response to this ended out in the comment just above.
I did not intend to look down on people or come across as haughty in that post. What I fear is that someone who only knows a suburban and strip mall city will be stuck in such if he does not like it, because he knows nothing else. In other words, the fear is that the afterlife only has what you know to work with.
And I am not looking down on people stuck in certain levels of Heaven, but it does not make sense how one in a lower level of Heaven can learn and develop forever, yet still never advance on their own. Again, I did not mean to sound condescending or looking down.
And while people of the past still live the way they do of their own choice, it does suggest that once you make certain choices or get a certain character, God freezes it (via how the afterlife is designed), so you cannot change it like you can in this life.
As for OCD, would someone who had OCD be able to live without a single new intrusive thought in NC eternity?
Finally, one of my biggest fears of the afterlife is reincarnation, because it is living in the human world with human BS all over again, in a human body. The New Church afterlife sounds almost as unappealing: living in a body that is fairly corporeal (even if it is supposedly more responsive and a perfect expression and not made of atoms), in a world where people live the way they did in this life, but forever (but at least with no more evil if it is Heaven). And should I wind up in hell, there may be no hope and no end (even if I somehow like it).
PS: If my fear of stagnation in the afterlife comes from some personal issue, and I cannot resolve it or even identify it, could it still end anyway? If not, that makes the NC afterlife sound even more hellish.
Hi K,
The point is, it doesn’t matter if you think the Roman senator is stuck. What matters is whether he thinks he’s stuck. News flash: he doesn’t. He’s living his best life, exactly as he wants to live it.
And of course if someone doesn’t want to live in the heavenly version of a Phoenix suburb, he doesn’t have to. Even Phoenix suburb-dwellers are aware that there’s a world outside the Phoenix suburbs. Perhaps he’s stuck there because he has no money, or has family there, or whatever. In heaven, all of that stuckness goes away. He can live wherever he wants. Once again, being in heaven is the exact opposite of being stuck.
Chorus: In heaven, no one is stuck in anything, ever. Everyone is living the best, happiest, most fulfilling life that he or she can possibly imagine. That’s why it’s heaven.
Now consider—really consider—what it would mean if we had the same freedom to change and become a different person in the afterlife that we have here. This would mean that to eternity, we would have to worry that we might at some point in the future make an idiotic evil choice to throw away all the wonderful beauty and happiness we have in our life right now, and become dirty rotten criminal type instead. In other words, we could never feel safe and secure in our heaven. We would have to worry to eternity that we might at some point throw it all away and go to hell instead.
And that truly would be hell, even while living in heaven.
God doesn’t “freeze” us in our ruling love at death. God gives us the eternal gift of never having to worry again about losing the good life we’ve made for ourselves through our choices here on earth.
Here on earth, there is always some worry that we’re going to lose all or part of what we have, because as Jesus says, earth is “where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19). Heaven is “where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:20). In heaven, we never have to worry about moths, rust, and thieves breaking down and stealing the good life we have, which itself is a gift from God. And we don’t have to worry about we ourselves going bad one day and throwing it all away. We can enjoy every day without fear or worry, knowing that God has given us this life forever, and we can continue to live safely and securely in our happiness and enjoyment forever.
If we had the same kind of choice we have here on earth, that would not be the case. We could never be safe and secure. We would always have to worry and fear about the spiritual equivalent of moth, rust, and thieves destroying the good life we have.
In designing things so that our ruling love becomes fixed at death, God was not “freezing” us. God was giving us a tremendous gift. Whatever decision we make about the kind of life we want to live, from that time onward we can simply live that life in perfect safety and security, with no fear and no worry. A lack of any fear or concern about the future is precisely the reason for angels’ sense of complete happiness, satisfaction, and contentment in their lives.
If you’re worried about being “stuck,” then you have a lifetime here on earth to do something about it. And to answer your last question, even if you never entirely identify or deal with what’s holding you back here, assuming you live a good and moral life in which you have concern for the well-being of others, and devote your life to some sort of service to others, even if it’s from an isolated man cave somewhere, then you will in the afterlife live in an extremely happy and contented state in which you can live exactly as you want to live, regardless of any limitations there may have been on you here.
As far as intrusive thoughts, they come from hell. Here on earth, evil spirits must have access to us to keep us in a balance between good and evil so that we can make a free choice about which way we want to go. In heaven, that choice has already been made. Evil spirits’ access to us is therefore cut off. Evil spirits are not allowed to harass people in heaven. So the source of intrusive thoughts is cut off there.
This is another reason why continuing to have the kind of freedom of choice that we have here on earth forever would be a very bad thing. It would mean that evil spirits would still have to be given access to us. As a result, we could never get away from intrusive thoughts and other annoying and damaging things that come from hell, to all eternity. Once again, that truly would be hell, even in heaven.
Here on earth, our primary freedom is the freedom to choose what sort of person we want to be and what sort of life we want to live. Our freedom to actually live that life is secondary, and not always available. Not everyone can live their ideal life here on earth. Practicalities of earthly life get in the way, and our ongoing process of regeneration gets in the way. Even if we choose to live a certain way, we may be able to achieve that life only partially, or perhaps not at all, during our earthly lifetime.
In heaven, it is reversed. Our primary freedom is the freedom to live the way we have chosen. And that freedom is complete and unlimited. All of the earthly practicalities and limitation are taken away. We don’t have to worry about food, clothing, housing, or any of that. We don’t have to worry about moths, rust, and thieves. We don’t have to engage in the battle of regeneration. We don’t have to worry about doing something insanely stupid and throwing away every good thing we have. We have complete freedom to live exactly the way we want to live, and do exactly what we want to do, every day, and every moment.
Meanwhile, in heaven, the freedom to choose becomes secondary. We do still have freedom to choose what we will and won’t do today, or even what our plan for the next “year” will be. But we no longer have the choice to become evil instead of good. And we no longer have the choice to live in a whole different region or level of heaven. Our choices will be within the “cone of probability” of the big choice we made during our lifetime on earth about what sort of person we want to be, and in black-and-white terms, whether we want to live in heaven or in hell. That choice has already been made.
And once again, that’s a good thing. Now we can just live the life we have chosen, in complete freedom, with no external curbs and limitations and blockages to hold us back, and no do-gooders nagging us and saying we should have chosen to live in the celestial heaven instead of the natural heaven.
We can also continue to work on removing remaining blockages within ourselves. The “mop-up operation” after our earthly battle of regeneration can continue to eternity. So if there is some limitation within yourself that you were never able to identify or deal with during your earthly lifetime, you can become aware of it in the spiritual world, and if it is at odds with your ruling love, you can clear that limitation and blockage away, and move beyond it.
In heaven, the only thing that is truly unchanging is your ruling love. As your life moves on, anything that conflicts with your ruling love will be moved farther and farther to the side, where it will have less and less influence on your daily life and experience.
Also, your ruling love is not your only love. People love and enjoy many different things. As long as they don’t conflict with your ruling love, that will be just as true in heaven as here on earth. Maybe the study of astronomy is someone’s ruling love here on earth. But that person can also enjoy rock concerts and ice cream and surf sailing and video games. None of these conflict with a life whose primary effort is devoted to the study of astronomy (or its spiritual equivalent).
In other words, you’re not “stuck” with a monotonous life of doing nothing but what your ruling love drives you to do. You are just as complex and varied a person there as you are here, and even more so. You can decide to develop a new skill if you want to, and devote the equivalent of years, decades, or centuries to perfecting it if you want. And then, if you get tired of that, or feel you’ve gone as far as you’re going to go on that, you can leave it behind, and move on to some other skill or activity that now strikes your interest.
Chorus: In heaven, no one is stuck in anything, ever. Everyone is living the best, happiest, most fulfilling life that he or she can possibly imagine. That’s why it’s heaven.
This includes being able to do all sorts of different things, including things you never did on earth, and even things you never heard of on earth. In heaven, there are plants and animals that don’t exist on earth, and couldn’t exist on earth. But in heaven, they can exist, because heaven operates by a different set of laws than earth does. Just because people have never seen any of these things on earth, that doesn’t mean they can’t see them in heaven.
In heaven, you can experience and do brand new things that you never even knew existed on earth. You are not “stuck” with what you’ve done or thought of on earth.
About reincarnation: It doesn’t happen. Full stop. See:
The Bible, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Reincarnation
Chorus: In heaven, no one is stuck in anything, ever. Everyone is living the best, happiest, most fulfilling life that he or she can possibly imagine. That’s why it’s heaven.
PS: Oh yes, and like reincarnation, the New Church afterlife not only potentially has human issues and problems, but there also seems to be amnesia about this life, as Swedenborg describes. The memories do not go away, but they become inactive.
BTW, do angels have to constantly ask God permission to do anything? There are stories of magical birds or something showing up as signs that a group of angels cannot speak anymore (a story in Conjugal Love), and Swedenborg has to ask to go somewhere and have an angel guide (another story in CL).
Hi K,
No, angels don’t constantly have to ask God permission to do anything. They are in complete freedom to do whatever they want to do. But if it’s some extraordinary thing that they don’t usually do or have never done before, they may need God’s help to get it done. So they’ll ask God, and assuming it’s a good thing (which it normally would be), then they will ask for, and receive, the help they need from God. It’s not so much “permission” as it is ability and guidance that they are asking from God.
As far as those birds showing up in the window as a sign to say no more, I have never particularly thought of them as being sent by God, beyond the general principle that everything in heaven comes from God. Rather, I think of it as a sign and indication that that’s enough for now. They even tell Swedenborg to come back later, and they might be able to tell him more.
It’s not really because they’re not “allowed” to say more. Rather, it’s that this is enough for Swedenborg to digest and wrap his mind around for now.
When someone is learning a new subject, a good teacher doesn’t do a huge data dump of the entire subject matter all at once. Rather, the teacher gives the information little by little, allowing the students to get a handle on the material in today’s class—to “digest” it, so to speak—before coming back for more tomorrow or next week.
That’s the same thing that was happening in Swedenborg’s conversation with the angel wives about marriage love. The birds in the window were an indication that that’s enough for today.
I recall reading something in Arcana Coelestia about how newly arrived spirits make their way en masse through some valley. Rather than coming across as a transcendent afterlife, it felt rather corporeal, like something out of Divina Commedia. Other Swedenborg accounts of the afterlife also feel like something out of Divina Commedia as well, especially the tales of hell.
Hi K,
Valleys correspond to lower levels of the mind. If someone is passing through a valley, it’s not because of “corporeality,” but because they are passing through a lower mental state, and that is being expressed outwardly as passing through a valley.
But it seems the rather mundane and earthly scene of the valley kinda clashes with the transcendent experiences people have in NDEs.
And hopefully having to shuffle through a valley on foot in a dense crowd is not how _everyone_ experiences the transition to the NC afterlife.
Hi K,
No. Different people experience it quite differently, as is clear not only from Swedenborg’s descriptions, but also from the many and varied accounts of near-death experiences that we now have.
Hi K,
The spiritual world is a highly varied place, just like the physical world. There’s everything from low-level valleys to high-level mountains spiritually.
So with the repeated 「chorus」 of people are not stuck, I take it that the NC afterlife is not limited by what you know from this mortal life? So a person who lived their whole life in a gulag or dungeon and knew nothing else could experience not dungeon in the afterlife? Or a person who was born deaf is not limited to an afterlife of eternal silence?
PS: And that is even if the ruling love cannot be altered?
Hi K,
I’m not sure what you’re responding to here. The ruling love provides a baseline and general direction for a person’s life in the spiritual world. It does not prevent people from going different places and experiencing different things. It’s just that afterwards, they’ll always return to their own home, which is where their love is.
Hi K,
Yes. The afterlife is not a mere dream world. It is a real world that has generally stable geography and topography that you can travel around in and go to new places just as you can here. Even if you’ve never been to South America or Antarctica or Australia, you can go to their spiritual equivalents in your lifetime after death, and see the sights there, meet the people there, and so on.
Swedenborg never went to the Middle East or China or Africa during his lifetime, but in the spiritual world he saw spirits from those places, and even visited heavens or parts of the spiritual world inhabited by people who came from the Middle East, either the then-current Muslim world or the ancient Middle East where the early “churches,” or spiritual cultures, were located. His lack of earthly experience of those places did not prevent him from accessing their spiritual equivalents, meaning the parts of the spiritual world where the people from those parts of the world live after death.
And no one who is born or lived with a physical defect such as hearing loss will be stuck with that physical defect in the afterlife. They will leave it behind along with their physical body. There might be some residual effects due to the psychological effects upon that person of having lived with that physical handicap for many years or for an entire lifetime, but these will also be left behind over time. In heaven, everyone has a fully healthy, young, and functional spiritual body, with no defects or handicaps, and can enjoy the full use of that body and all its faculties.
So to make sure I understand you right, that the afterlife is not limited by mortal experience, here is a hypothetical scenario.
Some guy is born onboard a solar sail interstellar ark, sailing through the interstellar sea at a mere 0.1 c towards TRAPPIST-1, a red dwarf sun with at least one earth-like planet, over 40 light years away, making the voyage over 400 years long. This guy never marries, is unfamiliar with what life is like back on that one 3rd planet the ship came from, and is completely colorblind (seeing the scene in greyscale). This guy then passes away during the long voyage, the only nature he ever saw being the interstellar void through any small window the ark had.
Assuming the New Church afterlife and this scenario were both reality, then after he passed away, that guy could see in color, fall in love, and live in a community in an earth-like environment consisting of people from that one 3rd planet he never knew, at least or especially if he thought his shipbound life was not ideal?
Hi K,
The short answer to your question is: Yes.
Even though his experience in the material universe was limited, and he had physical limitations as well, he is still a human being who has all these potentials and capabilities. In the spiritual world, any physical limitations such as colorblindness will no longer exist for him because he is no longer living in his physical body, but in a fully functional and healthy spiritual body. He is also living in a real, human world, which he is free to move around in, explore, and engage in, both with the surrounding environment and with the people there. So yes, he would see in full color, could fall in love, and he could live in a community in an earth-like environment if that’s what he wanted to do.
Consider that infants and young children who die and go to heaven—some of whom died so soon after birth that they barely experienced anything at all of life on earth outside the womb—grow up in heaven in a fully real elevated spiritual equivalent of the earth environment, become adults, fall in love, get married, and live an adult life immersed in the community and people of heaven. If we were limited by mortal experience, all of this would be impossible. Infants who die in childbirth would be doomed to remain feeble little beings with fuzzy, undeveloped eyesight, unable to understand language, and on and on.
That’s not at all how it works. They all grow up, become adults, and live a full life in their homes and communities in heaven.
The same would be true of your hypothetical man who had very little experience of the richness of human life and the Earth environment.
Now I’m going to push back on your hypothetical.
Since, as you say, the trip from Earth to Trappist-1 would take a little over 400 years at 1/10th the speed of light, the ship that this man is traveling in would have to be a generational ship—that is, assuming, as you seem to be doing, that he is awake and conscious during the trip rather than being put into some form of hibernation or cryosleep for the duration of the journey.
Since your hypothetical man has never seen Earth, he must have been conceived on the ship, by a couple from the previous generation living on the ship, and raised by them. And since a generation ship requires a fairly large contingent of genetically diverse individuals to maintain a healthy population over multiple generations (for this 400 year trip, sixteen or seventeen generations), he would be far from alone. He would be living in a whole community of humans traveling together on the ship. The absolute minimum genetically viable community on such a ship is estimated to be about 100 individuals, but most estimates suggest 200–500 as a minimum, and some go up into the tens of thousands.
This means that he would certainly have the experience of living in human community. He would also have the opportunity to fall in love, get married, and have children. In fact, given the nature and purpose of a generational ship, he would live in a cultural setting that highly encourages these things. The community on the ship would look askance at him if he didn’t fall in love, get married, and have children with his wife. Even from a purely pragmatic and biological perspective, they would not want to lose the genetic diversity that he could contribute to their relatively small contingent of humanity.
Further, it’s inconceivable that such a ship, which would require technology far more advanced than what we have today, would not carry with it a full database of all, or at least a significant percentage, of earth information of all kinds, including literature, movies, nature documentaries, and so on that the inhabitants of the ship would have access to, likely with the capability to provide immersive virtual reality experience of all the natural and human-inhabited areas of Earth. In other words, in such an advanced technological culture, on a highly advanced generational ship, it’s highly unlikely that he would have no experience whatsoever of nature and what it’s like to live on Earth.
Future humans making such a journey would most likely carry with them as much of Earth as they could, both for the psychological and emotional well-being of the many generations that would live and die aboard the ship, never living on terra firma, and because once they reached their destination, they would most likely want to replicate as much of their ancestors’ earthly life as they could on their new planet, just as cultural groups here on Earth that move to other countries and continents tend to recreate much of the culture and life of their old world in their new world.
The point is, while we can make up hypotheticals, for them to be good hypotheticals, they must take into account physical and human realities such that they are believable hypotheticals. In this case, your hypothetical of a lone man living out his entire life, then dying, on a tiny, cramped interstellar ship is not believable. Due to the necessities of the trip itself, he would have a far richer life, immersed in human community.
If, alternatively, he was put into cryosleep, and made the journey from Earth to the Trappist-1 system while unconscious, he would have grown up on Earth and experienced it, and the journey itself, from the time he went into cryosleep to the time he woke up at the destination, would not be part of his conscious experience. He would move almost seamlessly from life on earth to life on a habitable planet in the Trappist-1 system.
Oh, and I think these technologically advanced humans would construct their generational ships with more than a “small window” to peer out of. If nothing else, they’d have their own version of Ten Forward, where they can relax and have a drink and a plate of food with their friends, and enjoy the view out into the universe through its spacious windows.
Big windows on interstellar ships are a bad idea, but I didn’t say that the generation ship was cramped. Though they probably would have records of the homeworld on board.
Anyway, the baby is a much better example of the afterlife not limited by mortal experience. A baby who only lives one day in a hospital (or worse, aborted while conscious before birth), would only know the womb and maybe the hospital. An afterlife of eternal womb or hospital does not sound that appealing.
PS: That’s if the afterlife were limited to mortal experience, that is, which of course seems to not be the case.
Hi K,
It is definitely not the case. Swedenborg states clearly and repeatedly that infants and children who die grow up in heaven and become full adults, get married, and so on.
Bottom line: We are not limited to what we have experienced here on earth. We can experience brand new things in heaven that we couldn’t even possibly have experienced on earth.
And I take it that as long as it does not clash with the ruling love, one could ditch erroneous or delusional beliefs or views that were held until death in the NC afterlife as well? Like going from thinking of male sexuality as inherently creepy and rape-y to acknowledging it is not always bad, or going from seeing money as a necessity to seeing it as no longer needed?
Hi K,
Yes, as I mentioned before, in the third stage after death in the world of spirits, for people who are heading toward heaven, there is a period of instruction where the incipient inhabitants of heaven are taught what they need to know to live there. Erroneous and delusional beliefs will be discarded at this time, if they haven’t already been during the person’s previous time in the world of spirits.
This includes ditching erroneous ideas about gender and sexuality (such as men being inherently evil as compared to women), getting oriented to no longer living in a money economy, and so on. A lot of this will take place during the person’s ongoing time in the world of spirits. But any erroneous ideas that still remain will be taken care of during that third stage after death, before the person moves on to heaven.
Falsity can’t enter heaven. It clashes with the heavenly atmosphere of truth and light. That’s why good spirits have to jettison or at least sideline false beliefs before entering heaven. And they are willing to leave their former mistaken beliefs behind, because their hearts are good (otherwise they’d be going to hell, not to heaven), and truth, not falsity, goes with goodness.
Hi K,
I should add that if a person’s ruling love is good, then erroneous and delusional beliefs will clash with it. Falsity goes with evil, not with good.
Good people can have erroneous beliefs though. Like a good guy in Victorian England who thinks masturbation is “self abuse” and “almost as bad as murder”, for example. Or someone in modern times who thinks that merely copying in and of itself is the same as physical theft, or that a “culture” itself can be “appropriated”, etc.
Hi K,
Yes, people here on earth can have good hearts and erroneous beliefs. But not in heaven. There, a good heart goes with true (correct) beliefs. Erroneous beliefs are left behind before the person enters heaven, and replaced with correct beliefs.
In Japan, people often (if not usually) wear face masks: to avoid disease and pollen, as well as for privacy. Mask wearing was not as common before COVID, and was even rarer before the 21st century.
In the afterlife, could such a practice go away normally, since it is not exactly psychologically (or physically) good, even though Japanese people in this life may be used to such?
Hi K,
Even if there is a valid reason to wear masks on this earth (which, in most reasonably non-polluted areas, I doubt), there will be no need for masks in heaven. There, health is not dependent upon outward influences, but on the state of a person’s own heart and mind. Plus, the air there is pure and clean. As for privacy, people in heaven live among people they see as family and friends, not among strangers. There will be no need for masks for privacy, either.
Now, if angels in the course of their work interact with hell, or even travel to hell to, for example, restore order there, they might want some sort of protective gear. However, as Swedenborg describes it, the Lord protects them there, so even then it’s unlikely that they would have to wear masks.
Even if one cannot be purely incorporeal in the afterlife, hopefully one can at least turn pain off. Pain is BS, even if there is a need for it. Especially since Swedenborg writes that tactile sensations are enhanced, which makes pain worse.
By turn pain off, I mean block it. One can block the sense of smell in this life by not breathing through the nose, which comes in handy when there is a really bad stench.
So hopefully other senses can be temporarily turned off in any afterlife to block unwanted stimuli. It is BS that I _have_ to endure unpleasant sensations and my body will not disable them in this life, and an eternity of not being able to do so is really BS.
(I have a really bad leg cramp that inspired this post.)
Hi K,
Sorry about your leg cramp. Not fun.
Here’s what the Bible says about the future New Jerusalem era:
While this is spoken about a future time, it also applies to heaven, which is the “New Jerusalem” that we all go to after death. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, because the old order of things (life on earth) has passed away.
Swedenborg naturally interprets this as being about spiritual—i.e., psychological—death, mourning, crying, and pain. However, since in the spiritual world everything external reflects everything internal, it applies to the spiritual body as well. Everyone in heaven is perfectly healthy and free of physical pain—which is, after all, brought about by malfunctioning of or injury to the body.
Still, I tend to think that people who love adventure and testing the limits may still experience some temporary pain in the course of their adventurous and risk-taking activities. But that pain would be 100% voluntary due to their engaging in activities that push the limits and might result in accidents.
I think, for example, of a pro mountain biker who wants to test the limits on a crazily difficult trail or downhill run. Can’t they still do that in heaven? If not, heaven would be dull and insipid to them. And if there weren’t the possibility of pain from failing an obstacle or wiping out, where would the risk and sense of testing the limits be? Cue up this scene of Kirk and Picard in the Nexus:
So I tend to think that pain is possible in heaven. But not long-term, chronic pain, and no pain that isn’t a direct result of chosen risky activities. I.e., if you don’t want to experience any pain, you don’t have to, just by not doing things that might result in pain.
I would say, then, that it’s not that you would block pain in heaven, but that if you don’t want to experience pain, you wouldn’t engage in activities that might result in pain. And there will be no sources of pain that are outside your control, as there are here on earth.
If spirits can have abilities like telekinesis or telepathy, then hopefully I could have the ability to will pain away or block it, if I cannot will myself to be completely incorporeal.
(BTW speaking of that and Star Trek, the Organians were motivated to develop into energy beings (purely incorporeal) because they did not want to feel pain anymore.)
PS: And that willing pain away thing is if I get into situations that result in it. I do not wanna spend eternity feeling like a limited mortal being, even if it is not like mortality anymore. So yeah, I want to be able to will any pain away, even if I cannot will myself to become completely incorporeal, in any afterlife.
Hi K,
All of this would be an issue if pain were actually an issue in heaven. But it’s not.
I am only speculating that some people, some guys especially, would be bored if there were no possibility of pain and strain, because they’re all about risk and adventure, and banging yourself up occasionally is part of the experience. They would be annoyed if they couldn’t feel any pain.
You, on the other hand, seem to be highly pain-averse. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that pain would ever be an issue for you in heaven the first place. You wouldn’t need the ability to will pain away because you’d never feel any pain in the first place.
Heaven is not like earth.
Hi Lee. The more I’ve given thought to Swedenborg’s experiences in the afterlife, especially as I read through the Bible with them in mind, the less occasion I find to worry or fret over the specifics of Heaven (will I be able to cook and prepare food for others, or still play action video games, or work on computers or ride a bike, etc.?). Suffice it to say, it will be beautiful and wonderful and perfectly suited for each of us, in all our oddities and quirks and fullness of humanity! I think some people’s worries over such matters comes from broadly generalizing Swedenborg’s experience of Heaven as an 18th-century European nobleman as being the only, universal scenery and experience of heavenly life. By that, I mean that just because the banquets Swedenborg saw appeared out of thin air, I don’t think that precludes chefs and bakers in other parts of Heaven growing wheat and making bread from grain to loaf, if that is their preference for how to do things. Of course Swedenborg’s soul would be most comfortable, and naturally find its way to, that part of Heaven resembling the time and place he knew best and had the most affinity for! And I firmly believe that also applies for the rest of us throughout time.
We can see plainly from God’s Creation, that He loves and delights in variety! Why else would He look out over the universe with its innumerable stars and planets, and the Earth in all its light and color and innumerable intricate ecosystems and biological and chemical processes, and the millions of species of unique lifeforms, and declare it very good?
And where it gets REALLY exciting and inspiring, I think, is the fact that, in Heaven, all that variety will be compounded by human imagination! How many amazing and wondrous stories have we told each other over eons? How many incredible worlds for those stories to take place in have we imagined and conceived of? If there is someone out there who genuinely wants to experience or even live out their immortal life in, say, the world of Pokemon, or Star Wars, or Middle Earth, they very well could, since God creates the reality each angel and community in Heaven loves to be in most, and wants us to experience as joyful a life as possible! Now expand that to all the good and wonderful fictional worlds people have created, and add the intermingling of angels in and between those places!
Taking all of that together, I don’t think any of us need to even remotely worry about Heaven ever getting boring, or running out of things to do, places to be, or new experiences to have! I believe Swedenborg’s experience in Heaven, while certainly rich and insightful and expansive, barely illuminates a centimeter of a spiritual world so immeasurably complex and varied it stretches for millions of miles in all directions! I don’t know about you, but an infinite tapestry of the collective imaginations of the most creative minds and kindest and most loving people, all manifested into reality by God’s divine love and infinite power, is an afterlife I can barely even start to wrap my head around, but one I find great occasion to look forward to! In that context, I see 1 Corinthians 2:9 as nothing short of a promise from the Lord that, however amazing we conceive of Heaven, the reality when we get there will be more wonderful than we could have ever comprehended!
God Bless,
Chad
Hi Chad,
Well said! I completely agree.
It’s clear to me that the parts of heaven Swedenborg spent the most time in were the parts that came from his own times and culture. He did visit other parts, and told the stories, but these were less common occurrences.
Now that we’re several centuries away from those times, it may not be so clear, but many of the details that he describes in heaven were “all the rage.” For example, the pyramids of foods and drinks he describes at a banquet in heaven, and the game of rackets that he sees some youths in heaven playing. These were the latest trends of the time. Today we read them and it sounds like heaven is old-fashioned. But when they were first published, it would have a very different effect upon its readers. They would be thinking, “Wow, heaven is right up with the latest styles!” For them, it would make heaven feel very up-to-date and modern.
I have no doubt that it will be the same for us when we go there. We won’t see horse-drawn carriages and banquets of the 18th century nobility (of which Swedenborg was a part), but self-driving electric cars and vast AI supercomputers. Or maybe not that . . . 😉 But you get the idea. It will all feel very modern, and perhaps even a little ahead of where we are on earth.
I do think people can live in the worlds of their fantasies and games if they want to, although I think that our underlying body will be human, not Pokemon or anime. But if we want to inhabit a Pokemon or anime avatar and live in that world for a shorter or longer time, I think that will be perfectly possible.
And yes, Swedenborg himself says that he saw things in heaven that simply don’t exist on earth. Things that “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human mind has conceived.”
As for the vastness of heaven, it will be far bigger than people living on our small planet can easily imagine. There will be no end of new areas and cultures to explore, if that’s a person’s interest. And no end to the worlds that the human mind will conceive of, and God will create for us.
The way it has seemed is like this…
Expected afterlife:
[incomprehensible transcendence]
New Church afterlife:
An apparent Homo sapiens man dressed in a cloak and tunic with a sash with rubies approaches the visitor at the entrance to what looks like a European city, walking on foot. “Salutations. I am a messenger from the prince of this community”, he says, all stuffy and formal. “The prince requests an audience with you.” A white dove appears as a sign that God approves of this course of action.
Hi K,
If what you expect is incomprehensible, then you probably don’t have any clear idea of the afterlife. Not that the afterlife will be ordinary. It will be superlative. But it won’t be incomprehensible.
As for the scene you paint, I would first point out that nobody asked permission. A white dove appeared showing that God approves of this course of action. The two are not the same.
Also, “European” is the key word. The people who developed 18th century European culture did so because that’s how they wanted to live. Most of them will likely want to continue to live that way in the spiritual world. And that’s what Swedenborg found.
I presume that you don’t want to live like an 18th century European. Ergo, you won’t live that way. You will live the way you want to live.
What I meant by the analogy is that the afterlife Swedenborg seems to paint has been a very mundane one, with a very Earthlike existence. And very stuffy and formal, at that, as even people from the past and not 18th century Europe still acted that way. The dove part representing how it seemed that Heaven life requires constant permission from God to do anything.
By transcendent, I mean that I have expected the afterlife to be more like being able to go beyond mere human existence. Like that whole energy being but still able to perceive and manifest thing, being able to experience more than 3 dimensions, etc.
Hi K,
What if 18th century Europeans like living that way? Are you telling me that if that is the life they prefer, they should not be allowed to live it because it’s “mundane” (in your opinion)? What if they like a sense of formality? Should they be required to live by today’s informal cultural norms because you think their way of life is “stuffy”? I’m sure they would have appropriate insulting terms for today’s informality, such as “brutish,” “boorish,” “shocking,” and so on.
I.e., this is just a matter of cultural differences. We look back and think that the people in those days were “formal” and “old-fashioned” and other epithets. But from their perspective, they were living in the latest, most exciting, most lively times! And if they like living the way they lived, and want to keep living that way in heaven, who are we to come along and insult their way of life, and consider it inadequate?
Once again, you don’t have to live that way. But if that’s the way they want to live, it’s not up to you to tell them that it’s not good enough. Different strokes for different folks. Swedenborg himself came from that culture, and was very used to it. The effect of his story on the Europeans of his day would be the polar opposite of your reaction. They would be saying, “Wow! Heaven is right there up with the highest culture and the latest developments!”
And once again, no permission was asked. They did not have to get permission. But they got an affirmation in the form of a dove. If you say to me, “I think I’ll go hang-gliding,” and I say, “That sounds like a great idea. Do it!” have you asked me for permission to go hang-gliding?
And: It was the “incomprehensible” part I was objecting to, not the “transcendent” part. Heaven is transcendent compared to Earth.
I meant like Earth in general with the mundane thing, not just Europe. The stuffy formality thing seems to be all of the New Church Heaven, not just the part from Europe, is what I meant. That is how the NC afterlife has seemed to me: all of it, not just the from-Europe part. Even the places supposedly from extrasolar worlds.
Hi K,
That, I think, is mostly a translation issue. Our existing translations are stuffy and formal. The original Latin is much more lively.
Secondarily, it’s a function of the messenger: Swedenborg came from a formal culture, and all of his experiences and his writings were, of course, filtered through his mind.
Bottom line: Heaven is not stuffy and formal. Even if some parts of it consist of people who enjoy the formalities and live that way, all of it certainly is not formal.
Bottom bottom line: In heaven you can live however you want to live. There is no “stuffiness” entrance requirement. If you think about the most boisterous and informal person you know, that person (assuming it’s a good person) will be going to heaven, and will be exactly the same person there as here: boisterous and informal.
Looks like my main objection to the New Church afterlife is similar to that of contemporaries of Swedenborg: that it seems too mundane or too Earth-like. Those critics in the 18th century and myself have read the writings and seem to see an afterlife that is way too much like physical life.
Hi K,
As I’ve said many times, you’ll just have to make up your own mind about this. But you’re still operating on the old physical view of the afterlife also. The afterlife is not physical. It’s spiritual. Swedenborg’s contemporaries were physical-minded, as are most Christians still today, so they could only read his descriptions of the afterlife physically and materially.
Cristopher Hitchens also had some criticism of an immortal afterlife in general. To paraphrase, he compared being mortal to being at a party, being tapped on the shoulder, and being told “I’m sorry, but you have to leave. The party will keep going, but you have to leave.” – and an eternal afterlife to being tapped on the shoulder and being told “Great news! The party never ends, and you can’t leave!”.
PS: Reminds me of this critique on eternal life by Thunderf00t, a scientist and atheist.
PS: Video is “Eternal life would be a curse (Thunderf00t excerpt)”, posted by cottonear, which is a clip from the video “Why do people laugh at creationists? (part 19)”, BTW.
PPS: I messed up the video code. It should be: z6nQSe4scww
Hi K,
The existing link to the video worked fine, but I did remove the timestamp from it, which caused the video to start playing at a random spot seven seconds into the video.
Hi K,
This is a great example of how false religious beliefs have driven thinking people away from a belief in God, spirit, and the afterlife. The afterlife this YouTuber is basing his arguments on is the old model that Swedenborg supplanted.
The irony is that the “bronze age nomads” of the Bible that atheists, including this one, love to rag on had beliefs very similar to what this Thunderf00t guy expresses. They believed in living this life to its maximum, and had little or no belief in any afterlife. Read the Old Testament. There’s hardly a word about any afterlife. It’s all about blessings and curses in this life. Only the New Testament has any clear statements about an afterlife.
The entire religious culture that this guy objects to is also outdated. It has been superseded by Swedenborg. You do not have to engage in any bizarre rituals or refrain from living this life to the fullest in order to secure your place in heaven. In fact, these things mostly detract from a path toward heaven. God wants us to live this life to the fullest in a good way. That is how we build a foundation for a great life in heaven.
Further, in a true understanding of the relationship of this life to the afterlife, having an afterlife raises the importance and goals of this life to a far higher level than what this atheist urges on us. This life is like our development in the womb, which is critical to build the basis for the much longer life we will live outside the womb. Far from taking away goals, understanding what the afterlife really is (as compared to the false teachings of most “Christian” churches today) takes the importance of goals and achievements in this life upwards several orders of magnitude compared to the belief that it all comes to an end at the end of this life.
Really, if there’s no afterlife, what’s the point of doing anything important here on earth? Sure, you can do something that will make life better for a few more generations after you. But sooner or later, everything you have done will become meaningless. The end will always be death. And as much as this guy thinks that taking away an afterlife will make people more focused on goals, the reality is different. People who lose any sense of an afterlife are more likely to descend into hedonism, working only as much as they need to so that they have enough to buy the things they want. Or if they do work hard, it’s only to pile up material wealth and pleasure, all of which will disappear for them once they die.
The general result of today’s secularism has not been the greater society predicted by the atheists, but a loss of morals, motivation, and decency in society, as people come to the conclusion that all that matters is getting pleasures and profits for themselves in the little time they have to live.
As for eternity getting boring, which is his basic argument, he’s missing several key elements of what the afterlife is all about.
First of all, there is no time in the spiritual, and no space. People do not live in the past or the future, as many people do here on earth. They live in the present, which, in their awareness, includes both the past and the future. Their lives are not focused on where they’ll be in a trillion trillion trillion years, but on what they’re doing and experiencing right now. And that never gets boring.
Second, he probably isn’t aware that in heaven, we have actual communities and actual work to do. It is not the empty place commonly conceived of in various religions, both Western and Eastern. It is a full life of human community and of surrounding nature. Quite the opposite of being some empty, boring existence, it is orders of magnitude bigger, more detailed, and more expansive than life on this earth. And people aren’t just playing all day. They’ve got work to do—albeit work that they love.
Finally, he’s not taking into account the infinity of God. What this means is that even after a trillion, trillion, trillion “years” (remember, there’s no time in heaven), we still will have only taken the first step toward the infinite possibilities for learning and growth that exist. There will never be a time when we run out of new things to learn, discover, experience, and new ways to grow as a person, precisely because we are finite and God is infinite. Rather than becoming boring after endless eons, life will only become more engaging and exciting.
In short, all of these objections might have merit if the afterlife were what Nicene Christianity says it is. But it’s not. The actual afterlife overcomes all of these objections, and more.
Hi K,
If the afterlife were a party, then his objection might be valid. But it’s an actual life, not a party.
I think Hitchens was trying to use the party as an analogy for life: he was saying that mortality sorta sucks because life is temporary, but immortality really sucks because life is endless, and one cannot escape.
Hi K,
I suspect it is his own life that sucks because it has no ultimate purpose, and he can’t imagine living forever like that. Fortunately, he won’t have to. He’s still operating based on the old, fallacious view of the afterlife.
Hi K,
I should add that I don’t have any ill will toward Hitchens, Dawkins, et al. I think they’re mostly sincere. They were just dealt a bad hand in the religion department, consisting of the old falsified and destroyed version of Christianity. To paraphrase one of our former Swedenborgian seminary professors, they don’t believe in the same God we don’t believe in.
To someone on the autism spectrum or with some other social disability or stunted development, humans can be perceived as usually hostile and authoritarian, with endless imposed rules and BS values. It can be to the point where the person with the disability is so different that they can see humans as this hostile alien species by default, and themselves as dumped on the wrong planet (how that wrongplanet autism forum site got the name BTW). If such a person with such a worldview passes away and makes it to any Heaven, hopefully such a perception no longer applies to angels there (though it would most certainly still apply to demons in any hell).
PS: In other words, hopefully angels do not impose (nor need to impose) many or any rules on other angels, they are not quick to anger or hostility like many people in this world seem to be (even without autism or some other social issue), and of course delusions can be cleared away in the so-called World of Spirits in the states after the first state after death.
PPS: A not too unusual experience of people on the autism spectrum or with some other social issue is making other people angry without intending to do so, via unintentional faux pas or the like. Hopefully angels can read intentions so misunderstandings like that do not happen in Heaven, even if angels can be easily angered otherwise (which I doubt).
Hi K,
First, as I’ve said in previous responses, autism itself will fade away in the afterlife for people on the spectrum. There might be some residual effects upon their personality from having gone through their earthly life on the spectrum, but the autism itself will no longer exist for them. This falls under the rubric of mental handicaps (or whatever the currently accepted term is) that are taken away in the spiritual world, whereupon people grow to full mental maturity and health, which is the state they remain in to eternity. This will therefore not be an issue for anyone in heaven.
Even in hell, any earthly sickness and handicaps no longer exist, because everyone, good and evil alike, leaves the physical body behind at death, along with all its physical and genetic defects. In hell, only “defects” that were consciously chosen in a state of spiritual freedom remain with people. And autism is obviously not something that people choose.
In other words, being on the spectrum won’t be a problem in heaven (or even in hell) because people who were on the spectrum on earth will no longer be on the spectrum in heaven. They will have full mental and physical health.
Second, yes, angels are very slow to offense or anger. They look at the intentions, which clearly show in people’s words and actions in the spiritual world. And they are always looking to interpret people’s words and actions positively, not negatively. This is a characteristic of angels, whereas evil spirits are quick to attribute bad motives to people, and then attack them for those bad motives, even if those aren’t the person’s actual motives. Even if some remnants of autism did remain in people in heaven, which I don’t think they do, angels would view the person positively, and take into account such limitations. It would be similar to loving parents of an autistic child here on earth, who love and cherish their autistic son or daughter, and overlook any involuntary effects upon their character and actions due to their mental handicap.
But really, since autism does not persist in heaven, this would apply only to people who have just passed over from the material world via death, and are still living in their external life and character as it existed on earth, before all those externals are taken away. And even then, I believe that many physical and mental handicaps are taken away immediately upon death, especially if the person didn’t identify with them. People who are whole and healthy in their mind, even if they aren’t in body, will, I believe, have their physical and physically-based mental handicaps removed immediately upon death. Others who identify with their handicaps may take longer to shed them.
As far as all sorts of rules imposed upon people, that’s just not how heaven works. People in heaven act from good motives based on true principles. There is no need to bind or restrain bad behavior with rules, because angels aren’t interested in engaging in bad behavior. Perhaps in some of the very lowest heavens there are a few more rules because the people there are not very wise. But they’re not burdensome rules. They’re more like guides to help the people there keep their lives on track.
The place that really has rules is not heaven, but hell. There Swedenborg records conversations with evil spirits who inform him about the rules they have to abide by. But not in heaven. There, everyone is free because everyone has a good ruling love and wants to do good for other people, without any self-centered or greedy motives behind it.
In short, none of this will be a problem in heaven. The autism itself will disappear; everyone in heaven looks for the good in other people all the time; and in heaven there is no need to pile up rules to restrain people’s bad behavior, as there is on earth and in hell.
Another so-called pop culture reference, but I take it from what I have seen of Swedenborg writings that the afterlife is this magical place, sort of like Hogwarts and that town around it, with how things that usually do not happen in the physical are part of everyday life there? Like although a number of things are more fixed and the afterlife realm is somehow more real than the physical rather than ever-shifting and non-substantial like dreams or imagination in this life can be, other things could shift around reflecting mental states (like those stairs in Hogwarts)?
Hi K,
Hogwarts is a school for teens and pre-teens. Shifting staircases makes psychological and correspondential sense, because young people in that age group have continually shifting minds. There are children and teens in the spiritual world, too, since every child or teenager who dies is raised to adulthood in heaven. So there will be shifting minds there too. But the stable population of heaven is adults, whose character has reached some level of adult stability. That’s why I don’t think the staircases in angels’ houses will be shifting around all the time.
However, yes, there things that happen every day in heaven that would be considered magical here, such as instantly traveling over a vast distance to see a friend, or even the classic flying through the air without the benefit if wings or an airplane. Then there’s food and drink just appearing when you’re hungry, whole lecture halls appearing when people want to discuss and debate a subject, and so on.
However, as you say, these things aren’t dreamy and unreal. Once they appear, they are just as solid and real as anything in this material world, and even more so. It’s just that when they aren’t needed anymore, or people move on to something else, they fade away and disappear. They’re solid and real, but not fixed and (quasi) permanent as they would be here on earth. Here on earth, if you want a lecture hall, you’re going to have to hire a contractor, get it built over a period of months or more, and then it will be there for years. That’s not how it works in the spiritual world. A lecture hall will appear as needed, then disappear when it isn’t needed anymore.
Angels’ houses have permanence because they represent an angel’s core character and personality, as determined by the angel’s ruling love. Because angels’ ruling love is permanent, and isn’t changing all the time, the angel’s house will also be permanent, and won’t change all the time. But other things that are subsidiary, even within an angel’s house, can change day to day and even moment to moment. Things that correspond to those secondary, changing things go in and out of existence as the angels want them or think about them.
On earth, this would be “magic.” In heaven, it’s just the way things work. Angels don’t think twice about it, any more than we think twice about picking up our phone and calling a friend who’s halfway across the world—which would have seemed like magic to someone living two hundred years ago.
As mentioned earlier, dreams can be ever-shifting and inconsistent. Like when I dream, I may first dream I am flying above the clouds at noon. Then the dream changes the story on me, and I am suddenly running along the ground in a suburb in the evening, merely pretending I am flying, like a little kid. Then the story changes again and I am at home at night, using this website. Then the story changes again and it is daytime… Abrupt changes. Inconsistent narrative. Frustrating limitations. And all in what feels like ethereal, ever-shifting colored smoke. And of course, limited to what I know.
So that is why I have expressed hope that any afterlife is at least as real and consistent as real life, if not more so. Not the BS of dreams.
Hi K,
The afterlife is a real life. It’s not a dream.
In this world, there are endless restrictions on flight (like FAA regulations), and endless restrictions on the wilderness (like the Antarctic Treaty, etc). One cannot simply go out and have an adventure or fly freely. And the modern world in general has many, many, many rules. I sure hope you are right in that the NC Heaven is nowhere near as stifling or limiting.
Hi K,
There’s no need for any of that in heaven.
But I think maybe somewhere in his unpublished works Swedenborg might have said something about the “bureaucratic hell,” where government functionaries spend eternity auditing each other and telling each other where they can and cannot dig holes. 😉
(For the literalists out there . . . that was a joke.)
Remember how I brought up that color does not work the way Swedenborg claimed it works (with black, white, and red as the primaries)? Maybe in the afterlife realm, it could be based on KWR (black-white-red), and such a color model could somehow make far more colors in the spiritual than RGB or CMYK can in the physical?
Or maybe the KWR thing is something Swedenborg was wrong about, and RGB and CMYK could work the same in the spiritual (though likely far more vividly) as such do in the physical.
Hi K,
It’s possible that the spiritual world operates with a KWR color scheme. But I doubt it. If it did, then by correspondence, the physical world should operate with that scheme also, which it doesn’t. But maybe the correspondences don’t work that way. Who knows? The interesting (but not particularly important) question for me is where Swedenborg got some of these mistaken ideas, such as the red-white-black color scheme, the idea that the father determines the race of the child, and so on.
Earlier you claimed or implied that a number of people wouldn’t mind living in an afterlife version of Phoenix for all eternity. I have been there, and I think it is objectively hellish to live like that (and not talking about the heat here). Hopefully people who like Phoenix and are Heaven-bound will find more beautiful and less strip mall living arrangements someday after they pass away at the end of their mortal lives.
(Not looking down on Phoenix in a haughty or better-than-you tone here. It really is not so great of a place to live: it is like a strip mall made of smaller strip malls, with usually naught to do but shop and work. And life there is rather isolating and mechanistic. And all that is not even getting into the crime.)
Hi K,
Obviously in the heavenly version of Phoenix there would be no crime, and a more comfortable climate.
As for shopping and working, maybe to you that seems hellish, but to many people, it’s a very nice life. They have a sense of accomplishment from their work, not to mention plenty of human interaction in most jobs, and then they can relax and enjoy the fruits of their labors. What’s wrong with that?
You don’t have to live that way if you don’t want to. But if nobody liked living that way, why would Phoenix have been built the way it is in the first place?
Shopping and working are not hellish per se of course, but when you live in a place where that is _all_ there is and it is isolating and ugly and mechanistic to live there (the city looks like a giant circuitboard), that is when there is a problem.
If there is a heavenly version of Phoenix in the afterlife, I imagine it is not insular nor isolating nor mechanistic, and it is not all corporate business and advertising and the bare minimum infrastructure to be functional but with no real beauty or culture. And not car-centric since people can fly and space as known in the physical does not apply over there.
As for why Phoenix is the way it is, it could be due to corruption and a desire to maximize profit.
PS: Though there could also be good or non-crappy motives in making Phoenix the way it is too, but going there shows that it is mainly about corporate business.
PS: Looks like the view of Phoenix in the physical as hellish is not a unique one.
https://old.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/gekq6s/endless_phoenix_sprawl/
(language warning for that link)
Hi K,
Phoenix is not my idea of the ideal life. And yes, the heavenly version would be a glorified version of it. But I suspect that there are many residents of Phoenix who truly believe that it is the best city and the greatest place to live on earth.
I guess the point I was trying to get at is if there is objectively bad ways that people live in this world, can they part with them even if they like them, if and when they reach the New Church Heaven? Like people living in ugly strip malls like in Phoenix moving to places that are arranged a lot nicer and have real culture to them, or people in Japan who wear face masks all the time even when not sick ditching the mask in the afterlife (assuming such things are objectively bad)?
(Again, no intent to sound haughty or looking down on people in a better-than-them way here.)
Hi K,
Sure, if there are objectively bad ways people are living, they will part with those ways of living before going to heaven—assuming their heart is good, and they are going to heaven.
But are strip malls really objectively bad? For the people who work in them and who shop in them, they are not bad at all. They are good. They are places of human contact and commerce.
As for masks, they are also not objectively bad. When I was in my twenties, I wore a mask a considerable portion of many of my days, because I worked in a small wood shop that was full of wood dust, and I didn’t want to breathe it. Masks are good or bad depending upon the quality of the air. If the air is clean, masks are bad because they constrict breathing. But if the air is not clean, masks are good because they filter the air, and feed better air to the lungs.
As for the people who now wear face masks all the time, I’m not personally in favor of it, but at least it’s their freely made choice rather than something forcefully imposed upon them. Presumably they believe the air is bad in one way or another, and that’s why they wear masks. It’s their choice how to live their lives, even if you or I may think it’s based on misinformation.
Of course, the air in heaven is cleaner than anything we can possibly imagine here on earth, so wearing a mask would simply be silly, and no one would do it.
My main point here is to question what is “objectively bad.” Something that to you seems bad because of your particular character and tastes may not be bad to another person. From a spiritual and Christian perspective, strip malls and masks are mere trivialities compared to what’s actually objectively bad, such as lying, stealing, adultery, murder, and so on.
Another thing: modern urban society seems rather mundane and restricted. Like everyone does office jobs or retail work, and standing out too much is seen as, as younger people put it, cringe. Everything seems to be about routine corporate business. There is no real community, even with places specifically called community centers (which did not need to be a thing before). The average person seems to be like a copy of every other average person.
Then when you look at what a Renaissance Festival tries to be, or that fictional town around Hogwarts in Harry Potter. Actors portray characters who are unique and rather self-expressive. The place is portrayed as a place full of beauty and wonder. Not to mention real community.
Hopefully the New Church afterlife is more like the latter, instead of modern urban society where one does not know their neighbor, and driving to the community center or some retail business for a seminar on how to do line dancing sounds like the punchline of a joke.
Again, not trying to sound haughty or looking-down here. I genuinely think that modern urban society like in Phoenix, AZ or in a typical Japanese city is not healthy.
Hi K,
One big difference in heaven is that nobody works because they have to. Everyone works because they want to. And everyone’s work is what they love to do. So even if there are strip malls and corporate offices in some parts of heaven, everyone frequenting them will be having the time of their life, not drudging away to pay the bills.
At any rate, for you, heaven does not have to be anything like Phoenix or a Japanese city. But for others, it may very well be, only a glorified version of them, in which everyone is having a wonderful time.
So if there is strip mall in Heaven somehow, it would be like idyllic art that somehow makes a diner look like a happy nostalgic paradise, instead of a dreary corporate craphole like it can be in this life?
Hi K,
I think so, yes. Or something like that.
Dunno if it is just me, but this world in the physical (at least or especially the human world) seems to have this so-called tint of decay to it, more or less. Like a tendency for a subject of this world to look like such is through a harsh and ugly filter, in varying degree. And the physical bodies of people, good or evil alike, seem to have this tendency to look like living embodiments of decay somehow. Hopefully it is not a sign of mental illness.
Meanwhile, when I look at a painting or other art, such impressions can be absent, and the scene can look idyllic.
For example, here is a pic by a Korean artist of a scene in the mundane modern world, but it seems to lack that harsh and ugly tint of decay entirely.
https://x.com/kolo_2020/status/1630977123296100353
Hopefully the New Church afterlife also lacks that harsh and ugly tint of decay, at least in Heaven.
Hi K,
Right. Entropy and decay are inherent qualities of the material world. They’re not qualities of the spiritual world.
So hopefully that feeling or impression or filter or whatever of decay will be gone in any NC Heaven.
Hi K,
Yes, it will be gone.
In heaven, things don’t get built and then immediately begin to decay, requiring constant maintenance to keep them intact. They are continually renewed by correspondence with our thoughts and feelings. If they are no longer needed, instead of having to be disposed of or left disused or moldering away, they simply disappear, because they no longer correspond to the thoughts and feelings of the angels in the vicinity.
In heaven, there are no old, abandoned, decaying cities or neighborhoods or houses. Things come and go as they do or don’t correspond to the current thoughts and feelings of the individuals living there, and of the community of people in which they live. Houses are either inhabited or nonexistent. Ditto for villages, towns, and cities. The environment around us, both human and natural, instantly and seamlessly adapts to our individual and collective minds and hearts. There are no crumbling sidewalks and bridges. Everything is fresh and new, because it is all being instantly created from moment to moment to correspond to the people who live in the area and who use those sidewalks and bridges.
Maybe the NC Heaven could feel like an idyllic painting or art then, only more real than real life in the physical then. Instead of feeling all harsh and ugly like at least the human world in the physical tends to feel.
Hi K,
I think so. One of the things I liked about the movie “What Dreams My Come” was its portrayal of the spiritual world as something like an Impressionist painting. Unfortunately, the movie ended in reincarnation. But apparently the movie did draw on Swedenborg’s presentation of the nature of the afterlife.
Earlier you mentioned that items in the spiritual that are not in use can vanish. Does this mean they are gone forever, or can they be easily brought back later?
Hi K,
If you think about something, and want it, it will return. Presuming it’s a good thing, of course. Bad things are more spotty. But in heaven, people want good things, not bad things.
Maybe missing something here, but what exactly is the spiritual of New Church beliefs supposed to be anyway? Seems to me it is some kind of manifestation realm of concepts that are abstract in the physical, such as love or truth: here in the physical truth is the abstract of stuff like 1+1=2 and adultery is wrong, but in that magical dimension of the so-called spiritual realm, it appears as light or water?
Second, where is the so-called spiritual realm supposed to be in relation to the physical? I know it is not in the same space but at some so-called higher level of vibration as New Agers believe, and it is beyond space and time. But would not beyond space and time mean nowhere and at no time or nonexistent, as Martymer81 (a science teacher and atheist on YouTube) put it? Is the so-called spiritual realm in whatever medium is between universes in the multiverse theory? Or is it somehow, seemingly illogically, nowhere yet everywhere or something?
Finally, the being in the afterlife of New Church still seems to me to be like being stuck in a very lucid shared dream: even if what happens in it is not limited to experience like nightly dreams are, everything there reflects some kind of thinking, and there seems to be no objective reality beyond thought like there is here in the physical. Being in the New Church afterlife seems like being in the simulation realm of the Matrix (never saw that movie but familiar with the basic premise), except one can never wake up from it, especially if it is literally like dreams or daydreams but one is immersed in them.
Hi K,
In response to your first question:
Even the physical universe is a “manifestation realm.” It’s just that it’s been given fixity and inertia, so that it keeps on going “on its own” in a sense. But it, too, is God “manifesting” on lower levels of reality. Everything in the physical universe is an expression of the love of God, formed by the wisdom of God, through the power of God.
This is the principle of “correspondence.” Everything in the physical universe corresponds to, or reflects, something in the spiritual universe, and ultimately, something in God. So if you’re digging some dirt with a shovel, both the shovel and the dirt are a manifestation of some element of God’s being and character.
The spiritual universe is also a “manifestation realm,” but it’s much less fixed, does not have inertia and entropy as the physical universe does, and is therefore much more directly responsive to our thoughts and feelings than the physical world is.
Consider how much work it takes us to shape the physical world around us into the forms we want it to take so that we can live in our preferred environment. If we want to live in a city, we have to spend decades, if not centuries, building that city brick by brick, timber by timber. If it burns down, we have to start all over again and rebuild. Ultimately, we make it into what we want it to be. But it’s a whole lot of work, and we have to constantly maintain it.
In the spiritual world, all that laborious physical labor isn’t necessary to form things into the shapes and environments we want them to be in. Simply by conceptualizing something with a real desire for it to come into existence, it will come into existence. The effect is the same. If, in the spiritual world, a whole bunch of us want to live and work in a skyscraper, we get a skyscraper. But we don’t have to spend months or years of hard labor to have the skyscraper. We can just get together, think about what we want, and it will appear for us.
Is it better to have to do all that hard labor to get the very same thing? And then have it be subject to entropy and decay, such that eventually it will become a liability, too structurally weak to remain sound, such that we either have to laboriously and very carefully demolish it to avoid damaging surrounding structures, or we have to just let it collapse and do whatever damage it’s going to do? Wouldn’t it be better if, once we no longer want or need the skyscraper, it would just disappear, and we didn’t have to cart off all the rubble and dump it somewhere?
Both worlds are “manifestation realms.” It’s just that the physical world is made of dead matter, which is very resistant to our thoughts and desires, such that we must work very hard to form it into the things we want, whereas the spiritual world is made of living substance that is very responsive to our thoughts and desires, so that it “spontaneously” forms whatever we want. If what it forms is something that is a stable part of our character and personality, it will remain stable long-term. If it’s in response to short-term or fleeting thoughts and desires, it will remain as long as we’re thinking about it and wanting it, and then disappear when we no longer want it.
As for spiritual and divine things being “abstract,” that’s only how it appears to us because we’re living in the physical universe, and our physical senses can sense only physical things. Therefore non-physical things seem diaphanous, wispy, unreal, and “abstract” to us. But in fact, love and truth are solid and real, and not at all abstract, on the spiritual and divine levels.
The ultimate reality is God’s divine love, even though it seems farfetched and unreal to us. As a physical analogy (or correspondence) think of the nuclear reactions that are taking place in the core of the sun. They are the source of nearly all our light, warmth, and power, either directly or indirectly, and yet they’re not anything that has any reality for us here on earth. We can with great difficulty cause a fusion reaction, and so far we’ve mostly done it in an uncontrolled, explosive manner. (Today’s nuclear power plants use fission, not fusion.) And yet, though nuclear fusion is far from our ordinary experience, it is the fundamental reality of our physical life, without which we could not live.
God’s love is like that nuclear fusion going on at the center of the sun. It’s not abstract and theoretical. It is an actual, real powerhouse based on actual substances putting out unimaginable amounts of power in the form of spiritual warmth and light. Without it, none of us would exist in the first place, let alone being alive, living, breathing, thinking, feeling beings.
How could our life be based on something so fundamentally different than what we normally experience here on earth? Yet our entire life is entirely dependent upon nuclear fusion going on at the core of the sun ninety-three million miles away from us. And that nuclear fusion is far more intense than anything we could possibly survive. It is necessary for us to be nearly a hundred million miles away because if we weren’t, it would be so real and intense that it would destroy us.
In the very same way, God’s love is the ultimate reality. It is far more real and intense than anything we can possibly imagine. If we were to be immersed in it, it would instantly vaporize us. And “vaporize” wouldn’t even be a strong enough term. It would annihilate us. It is a level of reality far beyond anything we could possibly handle.
Everything else in the universe is a “manifestation” of that ultimate reality that is God’s love.
Hi K,
On your second question:
The spiritual universe is an entirely different plane or level of reality than the physical universe. It is not made of physical matter. It is not a medium between different physical universes. It is not in any physical location. It is completely non-physical.
Of course, materialists such as your atheist science teacher will say that this means it’s not real. They’re perfectly free to believe that if they want to. And if they do, they will reject God and spirit as something unreal, and will reject any evidence or indications that God and spirit are real. It’s really no different than flat-earthers insisting that the earth is flat despite all evidence to the contrary. So it’s best just to let atheists and skeptics believe what they’re going to believe, because you’re not going to convince them, any more than you can convince a flat-earther that the earth is spherical, not flat. If God were to appear to them personally and say, “I’m real, you knucklehead!” they would quickly reject it as a hallucination, and would return right back to their materialistic and atheistic beliefs, only even more convinced than before that there is no God.
But back to your actual question, the spiritual universe is not anywhere if “anywhere” is conceived of as some place within space as we know it. Space and time are properties of the physical universe. The spiritual universe is non-physical. Therefore spatial concepts such as location, distance, measurement, and so on simply don’t apply to it. It would be like talking about the curves of a cube. A cube doesn’t have curves.
It is also not just a “higher vibrational level.” No matter how fast you vibrate something physical, it will never become spiritual. It will just be a physical thing vibrating very fast. Yes, there are vibrations in the spiritual world. But they are spiritual vibrations of spiritual substance, meaning they are of a whole different character than physical vibrations of physical substance.
There is a distinct break between the physical world and the spiritual world. They do not flow into one another, nor are they contiguous with one another. Rather, the spiritual world suffuses the physical world. It is present everywhere in the physical world, but is not itself part of the physical world.
Your own mind is currently inhabiting the spiritual world, and even a specific part or “place” of the spiritual world, even though you’re not aware of it, and it doesn’t show itself in the physical world in any way. But it does move you to do the things you do, because all your thoughts and feelings are actually spiritual, not physical.
In other words, the way the spiritual and the physical relate to each other is the same as the way the mind and the body relate to each other. The mind is completely non-physical. It consists of thoughts and feelings, which are not made of physical matter.
I know, I know, materialists think consciousness is just a function of the brain. But they have yet to come up with any convincing explanation of how firing neurons result in consciousness and self-awareness. This is simply a belief on their part, because it’s the only thing they can believe. It’s not anything they can demonstrate or prove. And they never will be able to demonstrate or prove it, or even understand it. They will just continue to blindly believe that the mind is product of the brain, and they will pile up more and more spurious “evidence” to support that belief, even though a thought looks nothing like a neuron.
The reality is that our thoughts and feelings are a whole different type of existence or entity than our physical body. They are not subject to physical laws, and they only loosely inhabit space and time. In our minds, time dilates or contracts entirely based on whether we’re having a good time or a bad time. That’s not the case for our physical body, which actually is embedded in time and space, and subject to their phenomena and laws. No matter how good a time you’re having, if you have to pee, you have to pee.
The spiritual world is both nowhere and everywhere. It is nowhere if you’re looking for it in some particular physical place, because it’s not a physical thing. But it is everywhere because it is present in all space and time from a level above space and time.
As a crude physical analogy, wine fills a cup, but it is not the cup, and it is fundamentally different from the cup. The cup has its own existence. It must be a solid and formed into a container-shaped thing. The wine has its own existence. It must be a fluid, and it needs a container to be inside of in order to maintain its integrity. You can’t turn the cup into wine, nor can you turn the wine into a cup. The two are fundamentally different from one another. Yet one exists inside the other, and both need each other for their existence and/or meaning. The wine will be lost if it doesn’t have a cup or bottle to “dwell” in. But there would be no purpose for a cup or a bottle if there weren’t wine (or some other liquid drinkable substance) to put in it. The cup or bottle would never get made in the first place, because there would be no purpose or use for it. Even though the two are completely different from one another, they depend upon each other for their existence.
It is a crude physical analogy because both the cup and the wine are made of physical matter. Spirit is not made of physical matter. It is made of spiritual substance. So it does not literally, physically inhabit the physical universe. But it does dwell within the physical universe and depend on the physical universe to “hold it in,” so to speak, and give it fixity.
Yes, this causes some conceptual difficulties given that the physical universe seems not to be eternal—or at least, not in any organized form. But really, we’re only at the very beginnings of understanding the physical universe. We don’t actually know for sure what it’s long-term future will be. We only have theories. And I think it’s best not to draw conclusions based on what we don’t know. Better to draw conclusions based on what we do know.
TL;DR: the spiritual universe is an entirely distinct plane of existence that suffuses the physical universe without being a part of it.
[It’s really no different than flat-earthers insisting that the earth is flat despite all evidence to the contrary.]
I dunno. To be honest, to me it looks like the evidence against God and the spiritual outweighs the evidence for the existence of God (there is evidence?). Seems to me now that all believers really have is faith: hope that there really is a God and an afterlife.
And maybe contradictory personal experiences, or so it seems. And of course there are so many different contradictory religions. Atheists call this the argument from inconsistent revelation.
PS: In doing research on NDEs, I found they contradict eachother in fundamental ways, like some claiming that reincarnation is true, others being traditional Protestant in nature, others being New Age-y but no reincarnation, etc. And that is just in the West. Typical Thai NDEs are rather different, for example. And in Japan, it seems to typically be something about a field of flowers and the mythological 三途の川 (sanzu no kawa, or Sanzu River, or River of Three Crossings). Point is, NDEs and OBEs themselves are not reliable evidence.
PPS: Thanks again for the replies.
Also, there is the research of Keith Augustine and Susan Blackmore that casts even more doubt on NDEs and OBEs being supernatural experiences.
Hi K,
On evidence for God and spirit, see:
Where is the Proof of the Afterlife?
On contradictory religions, see:
Is There a Common Theme in All Religions?
There is no “evidence against God and spirituality,” though there is evidence against particular materialistic beliefs of certain religions, such as the idea that the world was created in six days. But from a Swedenborgian perspective, that’s not what those stories are about anyway.
Meanwhile, there is thousands of years of evidence for God and spirit, reaching back to the earliest surviving stories and literature of humankind, in the form of direct personal experience of God and spirit, as well as second-hand stories, all attesting to a long and rich interaction of humans on earth with spiritual realms and with God.
Materialists, of course, will reject all this evidence, because it is not material (aka scientific) evidence. But that is simply a case of selection bias. Materialists rule out all non-physical evidence, and then claim that there’s no evidence for spiritual things.
This, of course, makes absolutely no sense. We would expect the evidence for spiritual things to be spiritual (aka mental and experiential), not physical. It would be like claiming that there is no such thing as sound, only light, by rejecting all sound-based phenomena as valid evidence, and accepting only light-based evidence.
What’s happening here is that because of materialists’ belief in materialism, they reject all non-material phenomena, including non-material evidence, out of hand, and then claim that the lack of evidence proves that there’s no God and no spiritual realm.
So yes, it is very much like flat-earthers who reject all evidence for a spherical earth, and accept only evidence that supports a flat earth.
Hi K,
In response to your final question-ish thing:
About dreams specifically, I’ll respond more in answer to your other two comments. But short version: dreams are like spiritual movies in a spiritual movie theater. They’re not like walking around in the streets of the spiritual world.
If you haven’t watched “The Matrix,” do yourself a favor and watch it. Mostly the first movie. The other two just become standard action flicks in the Matrix universe.
And . . . It’s the physical world that is the matrix. The spiritual world is like waking up from the matrix to reality.
The spiritual world is not a chaotic, disordered mindscape like a dream or nightmare. It is an orderly, dependable place. That’s because everyone there has a fixed and eternal ruling love, which is the “pole” around which everything else revolves. So it’s more like a game of tetherball in which the ball is always bouncing around, but it doesn’t just fly off randomly on a tangent. It remains tethered to the pole, without which there would be no game.
Dreams are more like leaves blowing in the wind, which will go here or there or anywhere based on whatever way the wind is blowing.
There is a scifi wiki on Fandom called the Kardashev Scale Wiki. In it, the main author came up with this elaborate fiction where there is the universe, the multiverse, collections of different multiverses, a realm of infinite dimensions of space and time, a so-called metaverse that is the basic operations of the physical, the adverse where reality breaks down, and oblivion. Beyond oblivion and physical existence is Beyond, a realm of so-called thought-magic that is incomprehensible to inhabitants of the physical realms. Inhabitants of Beyond have powers that make the powers of a Q from Star Trek seem minuscule, though such beings are still finite. In Beyond is the Eye Beyond and the Brain Beyond, which is the God of that setting, I guess.
Anyway, is the so-called spiritual realm of Swedenborg writings sorta like the Beyond of the Kardashev Scale Wiki fiction, where it is beyond all physical existence and oblivion somehow?
PS: The main author of that wiki changed the lore a bit to simplify it though.
Hi K,
Sounds like there are some points of similarity. It is interesting to me how science fiction and other secular fiction, both written and in movie form, often reach toward themes that are basically spiritual without actually admitting that they’re spiritual.
Small note: the reason I think 45 degrees up in the sky is ugly is because the low sun angle looks wintry, it makes long shadows, and it is not as bright as overhead. And when the sun is 45 degree angle in front of you it, it is in your face all the time, and subjects in front of you is lit from behind, which makes for terrible photography usually.
Hi K,
Again, it doesn’t work that way in heaven. The directions there don’t work the way they do here. The sun is always in the east, and angels are always facing the sun, no matter which way they’re facing. So if you had a circle of angels, each one would be facing the sun, even though they’re all facing each other. So they would all be front-lit to each other, not back-lit. And there seems not to be any glare either, as there would be on earth.
Don’t ask me how that works. Here, it would be impossible. But in the spiritual world, as I said, things work differently. Again, I doubt we’ll really understand it until we get there.
Also, as I said before, I don’t take this too literally. Swedenborg makes these types of blanket statements, but then in other places he says things that make it clear that it’s not that simple.
Maybe in the New Church Heaven, even if the sun is always 45 degrees up and ahead, the light could appear to come from 45 degrees up from every direction, as if from a luminous ring, so it looks like light on a cloudy day even when sunny, but brighter and less gloomy?
PS: Although personally I like sunlight 90 degrees overhead best.
Hi K,
That’s not how Swedenborg describes it, but anything is possible. Clearly having the sun in front of them does not cause angels to squint and have a hard time seeing things. Again, I don’t think we’ll really be able to grasp this until we get there. Things in heaven don’t work the same way they do on earth.
Where does Swedenborg write about spirit flesh being somehow very different from spacetime flesh (like more responsive and such)? I recall reading that in the writings, newly arrived spirits are sometimes unable to tell they have passed on, and some angel told some new arrivals that nothing is missing and that they could even step aside and check their privates to see such is the case.
Hi K,
Swedenborg doesn’t talk about spirit flesh at all, because as I said, “spirit flesh” is a contradiction in terms.
The spirit flesh thing is how I see it. Anyway, where does Swedenborg talk about spirit bodies working differently from physical bodies, such as that more responsive to thought thing?
Hi K,
And as long as you see it that way, you will continue to torture yourself with the false notion that you will be “stuck” in a “gross” body forever. And if you want to keep using that oxymoron and torturing yourself with that notion, once again, there’s not much I can do about it.
There is not any one unified place where Swedenborg lays out everything about the spiritual body and what it is like. Rather, there are statements about it scattered about here and there throughout his writings, from which we can build a picture—though as I’ve said before, I don’t think we’ll truly “get it” until we get there.
About our spiritual body being more responsive to our thoughts, and most of all, to what we love, here are some statements:
And:
And on a broader level, in connection with communities of heaven or of hell:
And putting it in a more philosophical context:
There are also various snippets indicating that our spiritual body, although it appears similar to our physical body, is quite different in character. Specifically, it is much lighter and more responsive than the physical body. I’ll quote this one in the old translation because it uses one of your favorite epithets for the body: 😉
The Latin word translated “gross” here is crassus, which is defined variously as “think, dense, heavy,” “thick, viscous,” “dull, heavy,” “lacking in subtlety, coarse, gross,” “unable to perceive fine distinctions, coarse, gross.” This is how Swedenborg characterizes the physical body in comparison to the spiritual body.
Here is another passage, in the context of our transition from the physical world to the spiritual world:
Again, he emphasizes the greater fullness and sensitivity of our spiritual senses compared to our blunt and dim earthly senses, though elsewhere he says this applies especially to sight and hearing, and less so to the other senses.
Finally, there is an odd passage in which he says that when evil spirits are punished, they are given the illusion of having a body, which carries with it the ability to feel physical pain. I won’t quote the whole passage, because it’s rather gruesome, but here’s the relevant part:
Some of the punishments involve the feeling of having this body ripped apart and shredded. If this were an actual physical body, the only possible result would be death. But since it is not a physical body, the person, and the person’s spiritual body, survives an experience that would mean immediate death if it were a physical body.
This passage is also interesting in that it implies that the spiritual body as it is in itself cannot feel the physical sensation of pain. I’m not aware of Swedenborg actually saying that anywhere, but it is at least suggestive, once again, that the spiritual body is not like the physical body.
If passages like these are collected together, they form a picture of a spiritual body that has all the parts, senses, and functions of the physical body, but which is fundamentally different from the physical body in being lighter, more sensitive, more responsive to our inner thoughts and feelings—in fact, perfectly responsive to our inner thoughts and feelings—and so on. Elsewhere he talks about angels flying, seeing and hearing things that are vast distances away, instantly traveling great distances, routing whole armies of evil spirits just by shaking a fist at them, and so on. It’s hard for us here on earth, in our gross physical bodies, to get a real sense of what the spiritual body is like. But the clear picture is that even though it looks like our physical body, it is completely different in character than the physical body. In particular, it is not “gross” like the physical body.
In one of the passages you quoted, Swedenborg says this:
[Further, when their love is attacked, their faces change; and if it is attacked severely, they disappear completely. This is a distinctive feature of the spiritual world. It happens because their bodies are completely at one with their minds.]
Sounds to me like either spirit bodies can die, or at least they can be temporarily destroyed. That or spirits go away if they are attacked too much.
Hi K,
It’s a strange passage, yes. But disappearing is not the same as dying. It’s becoming invisible, not ceasing to exist.
Maybe not being in ICE (immaterial yet corporeal entity form) all the time in the NCA (New Church afterlife) is possible.
In this world, people have a desire to fit in. And in the modern world with all of its’ excess rules, people can seem to be usually quite colorless copies of everyone else. Especially in more conformist places where sticking out is looked down on even more, like in Japan.
In the New Church Heaven, are people who lived as so-called normies free to be more unique and different, or do they still conform to the norm?
Hi K,
Not everyone wants to be a unique stand-out person. Many people enjoy fitting in and being part of the group. That’s their character and personality. And it’s not wrong. Groups of people can do things that individuals can’t by themselves.
In heaven, there’s room for all kinds. Today, many people value being “individuals.” But historically, that’s something of an anomaly. Why is today’s Western individualism better than other cultures in which being part of the human community is a higher value? In South Africa, there is a Zulu saying, “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” literally, “A person is a person by people.” The idea is that we are who we are by virtue of our involvement in the community.
People who think and feel that way will continue to think and feel that way in the spiritual world. People who are rugged individualists will continue to be rugged individualists in the spiritual world. Neither one is “right” or “wrong.” All the varieties in people and communities adds to the overall richness and workings of heaven, just as it does here if we can just tamp the wave of racism and xenophobia that’s currently sweeping around the world.
Still, with less fear of bullying or being treated like crap for being different, more people could still be more unique in the New Church afterlife?
Hi K,
There is no bullying in heaven. Everyone there looks for the best in everyone else. People who want to be flaming individualists can be that way, and nobody will look askance at them. Of course, the way you want to live won’t be everyone else’s cup of tea. But those who are far from you in character and culture will live correspondingly far away in heaven, whereas those who are closer to you in character and personality will live closer to you, so that the people you are most likely to encounter in you everyday life will be precisely the people who most understand and appreciate your particular character and idiosyncrasies.
I think I mentioned this before, but another problem with the New Church afterlife (NCA) is that because people are locked into a certain character forever, it would mean that anyone who is out-of-place in the modern world could be faced with an NCA full of either alien tribal people who have no materialistic thinking at all and are thus really alien, past peoples of this planet who are also alien, or this modern world with its’ values and trends. For all eternity. Such a person could be rather alone forever.
Like for me personally, the NCA afterlife seems to be a choice between an eternal world full of either ultraconservatives or the excessively politically correct (and all of whom are smartphone zombies and live lives influenced by social media trends because they use smartphones and social media forever), the past of this world where beating kids in school for disobeying or getting answers wrong was seen as healthy (but forever), or aliens who have such alien spiritual thinking that they pretty much ignore the physical entirely and have no science or technology (while in the physical). And that is assuming I even make it to the NCA Heaven, instead of being stuck in the worse NCA hell forever. Even if I am content with living alone in the NCA, anytime I would visit a community, it could be based on this modern world, based on the savage past of this world, or based on really alien and vastly more spiritual thinking.
PPS: Again, I do not intend to sound elitist here. What I am getting at is that someone out-of-place in this life could find himself out-of-place for eternity in the NCA because of that locked-in-character-forever thing, with no hope of such a situation ever changing.
Hi K,
If the character is good and heavenly, what’s wrong with it being “locked in”? A pottery vase is useless if it’s not locked in (i.e., fired). Before it’s locked in, it’s a soft, formed lump of clay that will, over time, deform until it no longer has a coherent shape. It’s precisely the firing that makes it into the beautiful, useful, and (by material standards) permanent vessel that it is.
Yes, angels’ ruling loves are “locked in.” But they are good ruling loves. What’s wrong with that?
If an auto manufacturer makes a Ferrari, is it “locked in” if it can’t be a dump truck? And is the dump truck “locked in” if it can’t be a Ferrari? Each one has its own purpose, and both are good. If the dump truck suddenly turned into a Ferrari when its owner was using it to haul gravel, that would not be a good thing. You can’t haul gravel with a Ferrari. Most likely the owner would sell the thing, and use the money to by another dump truck, because that’s the vehicle he needs to do his job.
Every angel has a specific place in the “economy” of heaven. Having them shifting around all the time wouldn’t be good, any more than having heart cells suddenly morphing into lung cells or muscle cells would be good.
Further, angels enjoy being the person they are. And if you’re enjoying your life, why would you want to change? Personally, I’ve developed particular skills, most of them intellectual but some of them physical, and I’m quite happy to do ongoing work in the areas where I have skills. Do I want to suddenly become a plumber instead of a spiritual scholar and teacher? Not really. And the plumber probably isn’t interested in becoming a spiritual scholar and teacher, either.
No one in heaven is “out of place.” Everyone there is in exactly the right place for him or her.
Getting in the ol’ armchair again, this seems more like dissatisfaction with your own current life than anything else. By the time you make it to heaven (assuming that’s the direction you choose to go), all the struggles of this life will be behind you, and you will will be able to just settle in and live the exact life you want to live.
Still, that does not change the fact that it seems to me that the only choice of community in the NCA is hell. Or people from this crazy and seemingly FUBAR modern world. Or people from the nasty, brutish, stuffy, and tyrannical world of the past. Or from worlds that are so alien in their lack of material thinking that they never even invent writing! And I still see, plain as day, being _stuck_ in human form with all the organs forever as both disgusting and limited, rather than a misconception I “torture myself” with.
No offense, and maybe it is a bad mood, but I think if I found myself metaphorically eaten and digested into the metaphorical giant human of the New Church afterlife, I think I would likely hope there is a way out to a better and more transcendent afterlife. Or that the NCA is not eternal anyway.
In short, the New Church afterlife seems like a hell. From the innermost Heaven to the lowest hell. A Divine Comedy type of realm.
Thanks again for taking the time to write all the answers though.
PS: At least there could be exceptions and there could be people with ways that are not too alien from various places and times throughout the universe in the NCA, so if their ways never change it could be OK.
Hi K,
After you die, you will not feel like you are being digested. That is a correspondential appearance. You will be living a normal life, in a normal (but spiritual) world, going through the various stages that Swedenborg describes in Heaven and Hell as taking place in the world of spirits.
And . . . The NC afterlife will be hell for you only if you choose to make it such. My advice: Don’t do that! 😛
Either way, is there any hope that in the NCA Heaven, any objectively bad trend (such as society running on social media or treating straight male sexuality like it is a medical condition) will go away, even if people are stuck in one character?
Not tormenting myself that NCA is not the way, rather I hope it is not the way, BTW.
Hi K,
In heaven, that sort of thing will be a thing of the past. And if there are any that still believe that stuff, but aren’t actually bad people, they’ll be off in their own section, where they can’t bother ordinary people. But I think most, if not all of them will recognize that this stuff was a reactionary mistake.
In a better mood than before. Hopefully if the NCA (New Church Afterlife) is real, that people can get rid of more superficial bad things from this life (like excess conformity to not be looked down on or a society of smartphone zombies running on social media), and accommodations could be made for those who do not like being in so-called spirit flesh (human form or the like) all the time.
Hi K,
Glad you’re in a better frame of mind. This human life here on earth can be a roller coaster ride.
Yes, people can and do get rid of the more superficial bad things from this life, assuming their hearts are good. Much of that stuff is reactionary anyway. It’s one generation rebelling against previous generations, smashing the old so that they can move on to the new. It’s been happening for thousands of years, though more in urban and civilized society than in rural agrarian society, which tends to be more continuous from generation to generation.
In the spiritual world, there’s nothing to rebel against, and no old societal wrongs to correct. All this thrashing around and wild cultural zig-zagging is therefore not necessary. Liberals don’t have to deal with conservatives, and vice versa, because heaven is vast, and different character types and the cultures they build among themselves are separated from one another by their very differences. That is, if they’re conflicting differences.
Even if there is contact, there are also buffer zones between them. I am reminded of our teenage religion classes at our church camp in Fryeburg Maine, which my father taught during the time I was a teenager. One year he did a series on physiological correspondences, or the spiritual symbolism of the parts of the body. For some reason I remember his presentation about the pleura, parts of which form a buffer zone between the heart and the lungs so that their very different motions don’t interfere with one another. Similarly, in heaven there are angels that bridge the gap between very different types of people so that they can work together harmoniously.
But back to your specific concern, all these undesirable things will no longer be a thing in heaven. Everyone there is a grownup. Nobody is rebelling against anything. They’re not adolescents anymore, nor does their adolescence extend far into adulthood, as often happens in current Western society. They’re all living their ideal lives. What’s there to make a fuss about?
And once again about your spiritual body, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Years ago when I was heavy into reading near-death experiences, I noticed that quite a few of them mentioned not having a body. At the time, I thought this was strange, because of everything Swedenborg says about the spiritual body being so much like the physical body. But I now think that the spiritual body feels so different from the physical body that for many people entering the spiritual world, it feels as if they don’t have a body at all. Their physical body is the only body-like-thing that they have any experience of, and their spiritual body doesn’t feel anything like it, so they don’t identify it as a body.
I think that NDEs, assuming they are real, are more like easily contradictory visions than actually seeing any afterlife. So in a vision, like a dream, one can be (or not be) anything, like in a VR simulation.
But I still hope that I do not have to have a body all the time. Or at least I would like shapeshifting ability in any afterlife. And based on what I said earlier with how people can look different in different light or from a distance, maybe that is possible in the New Church afterlife anyway.