Okay, this isn’t exactly late-breaking news, but it’s too good to pass up!
Christians have been predicting the end of the world for, oh, about 2,000 years now.
Science fiction writers have been creating doomsday scenarios for over a century.
Stephen Hawking
Scientists respond that these things just aren’t going to happen. The world is going to keep turning for several billion years to come, they say, and the universe will last even longer.
So I couldn’t help but chuckle when I heard that Stephen Hawking, one of the most famous scientists in the world, has his own doomsday scenario. And he says it could come at any time, with no warning.
The “God particle” could destroy the universe!
Yeah, I laughed, too!
Evangelical Christians think that God is going to destroy heaven and earth, and create new ones in their place. It’s going to happen any day now!
Serious scientists would never believe such a ridiculous thing.
Nope. For physicists, it’s not God, but the God particle that could destroy the universe any day now!
Okay, okay, scientists don’t like the name “God particle.” They prefer to call it the Higgs boson.
Stephen Hawking bet fellow physicist Gordon Kane $100 that the Higgs boson didn’t exist.
He lost.
And in a book of his lectures published about a year ago, titled Starmus, he got his revenge: The Higgs field, which is associated with the Higgs boson, could destroy the universe! So you can keep your hundred bucks, Gordon Kane!
In the preface to his book Hawking says:
The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100 [billion] gigaelectronvolts (GeV). This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. This could happen at any time and we wouldn’t see it coming.
In other words, it’s possible that the field associated with this recently discovered particle could suddenly start wiping out all matter in a bubble that would expand so fast that there would be no warning. Suddenly our world and everything in it would just vanish into nothingness.
For more on this possibility, see these articles:
- Stephen Hawking Says ‘God Particle’ Could Wipe Out the Universe, by Kelly Dickerson, LiveScience
- What Stephen Hawking Really Said About Destroying the Universe, by Laura Dattaro, Popular Mechanics
The universe isn’t going away any time soon
The World is Coming to an End!
Now, before you sell everything and buy a fancy red sports car so that you can go out with a bang, not every scientist agrees that the universe might vanish at any instant.
Even Stephen Hawking thinks that if it does happen, it’s not likely to happen for billions and billions of years.
Other scientists don’t think it will happen at all. The conditions that could produce such an event, they say, existed in the early universe. Yet here we are! And, they say, there are events taking place all around the universe right now that could have triggered such an event. Yet here we are!
Many scientists believe that it won’t happen because there are forces and phenomena that we still don’t fully understand that are keeping the universe stable. Perhaps it’s that mysterious dark matter. Perhaps it’s antimatter. Or perhaps it’s something else that we haven’t even discovered yet. But if the universe has managed to remain stable for this long, they reason, it’s likely that something is holding it all together, and that it’s not likely to go Pop! now or in the future.
So keep your day job, don’t run to the storm shelter, and don’t cash in your stocks and bonds just yet. It seems that this world of ours is a tough old beast, and isn’t going away any time soon.
And what about those Christians who say the world is coming to an end?
I wouldn’t listen to them, either.
For further reading:
- Is the World Coming to an End? What about the Second Coming?
- On Pluto, Atoms, and Other Things (such as Heaven) that Just Keep Getting More Complex
- Spirit: The Final Frontier
- Wavicles of Love
- Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Hi Lee!
It’s heartwarming to read your blog. Your perspective on things is refreshingly thoughtful. I don’t wish to be rude, but I’ve never had good expectations from religious folks with regards to logic and reason. In my own homeland, god-men are often the furthest from god really. Hence my prejudices have always got the best of me in all matters religious.
But after reading your blog, I’ve experienced great solace. I feel happy to have met a sensible and enlightened mind as yourself. This blog certainly reaffirmed my faith in humanity.
As far as my own religious views are concerned, I’m not so sure where to really affirm. I can be called an agnostic, or rather somebody in dilemma. I simply can’t believe the fairy tales of our ancient texts, yet I do respect their tennets of virtues (not those that we clearly know to be gender biased though).
I have a troubled mind really. With pressures to perform academically and excel in life, along with other family and worrying health concerns (despite the fact that I endeavour to remain physically active), I’m often pushed to the extremes at times. With so much disparity in circumstances, wealth and efforts over output of those around me and myself, I’m inclined to not believe in someone who’s out there looking over everyone. Otherwise, how would he answer to all the tribulations I’ve had to endure and of those who’ve experienced even worse?
I’m a strong believer in compassion though. I trust that people can be their best if loved in the same light as we would convey to perhaps someone dear to us. But I’m really troubled by many worldly concerns as the ‘unfairness’ of beauty (I read your blog, infact it was that very post that brought me here. Certainly happy to have stumbled upon it), of physical health that people take for granted while others really struggle with and how attraction is such a superficial affair really. Also, I usually have a hard time dealing with abrasive/hurtful behaviour from others. I may not get disturbed, but they all do remain in my mind all the same. That is one of my weaknesses that I’ve been trying to understand.
I do believe spirituality is a ‘fair’ experience. It’s depth is purely a product of one’s own willingness to delve deeper. But I struggle to attain it.
I wish for a calm and focused mind, a strong will and success in my actions. I have practised them to a great degree in my life. But now, I wish to attain them in absolute totality. Can you help me out please?
And thank you for the blog. I appreciate your thoughts and insights into life.
~Abhineet Saxena
Hi Abhineet,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, and your kind words. I am glad that my thoughts expressed here have given you some solace, and perhaps even hope for the spiritual side of humanity. I do aim to provide a more sensible, rational, and spiritual view of religion and life than is found in much of organized religion today, across the many different faiths of the world. I do believe that God is reaching out to us through the various religions (see If there’s One God, Why All the Different Religions?). Unfortunately, we confused humans have made an awful mess of a lot of what God has said to us.
Though I do think a belief in a loving, wise, and powerful God is very helpful to our life as human beings in this world, I have come to think that even for those who don’t believe in God, or aren’t sure whether there is or isn’t a God, a belief in love, wisdom, and the power of kindness to others is a kind of belief in God because it is a belief in the qualities of God. (See: Do Atheists Go to Heaven?) So I would encourage you to hold onto your love for human compassion, dignity, equality, and all the other virtues of human life, while keeping your mind open to the possibility that there is a God who is the origin of everything good, true, and loving that we experience and express to one another.
As for attaining calm, focus, strength of will, and success in all totality . . . well, that is a wonderful goal because it is one that we can always strive for, and continually work for. Another way of saying this is that we will never achieve the absolute totality of things, because that exists only in the mind and heart of God. And yet, we can always be traveling toward that totality, and attaining more and more of it in our lives.
Yet another way of saying this is that life is a journey that continues as long as we have life—which I believe is forever. We can achieve many good and wonderful things. And yet, there will always be further to go, and more to achieve. Even when material desires and achievements lose their appeal, there are infinite spiritual achievements that still await us. And by that I mean achievements of mutual love and understanding, insight and inspiration, learning and growing as human beings in community with one another.
So if you find that you have not achieved everything you envision, don’t consider that a lack or a failure. Consider it a challenge and a call to continually move forward in the best directions that your mind can conceive. And as you make that journey, you will find many joys and satisfactions along the way that will refresh your mind and heart and keep you moving forward.
And yes, there will be many struggles and challenges, and even pain and heartbreak. These are the things that test and refine our souls, and bring us face to face with the ultimate questions of life. They are the times in which we make the deep and difficult choices that turn us in one direction or the other, upward toward the light or down toward the darkness, depending on whether we hold on to hope and goodness, or let despair and darkness overtake us. And they are the times we are at our most human. If we are able to face them and ride them through, we gain greater depth, compassion, and understanding both for ourselves and for our fellow human beings. For more on why God allows such things to happen to us, see: If God is Love, Why all the Pain and Suffering?
If you have further questions, I invite you to search the site for articles that may help, or to leave further comments and questions. You have your whole life ahead of you. And you are clearly a thoughtful and heartfelt person. I do think you will do good things with your life, even if you do have to face your share of struggle and doubt. That’s simply part of the human condition here on earth.
Reading 2 Peter 3 refers to the worlds ends, as it is burn barren upon Gods final judgement: by fire. Two examples of “judgement” prior are used as examples, Noah, how the world was destroyed by water…the next was Lot and Sodoms destruction by fire and brimstone. Each time the believer and their families escaped Gods wrath. Likewise prior earth being destroyed, Believers will be taken up into the “clouds” to meet Christ in the air.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your thoughts.
My belief is that many of these things were never meant to be taken literally. Christ often spoke in parables, and he encouraged his followers to pay attention to the spirit of his words rather than getting hung up on the “flesh” (or literal meaning) of his words:
For more on this in relation to a future Judgment Day, please see my article: Is the World Coming to an End? What about the Second Coming?
Lee thank you for responding… I do understand certain stories set in the scriptures that exemplify greater spiritual meaning – but in 2 Peter 3, he gives us historic “literal” examples of previous judgements of God. So this logically (and spiritually) tells us that this is not metaphoric nor a parable. That it is prophetic and will come to pass, as explained by the Holy Spirit through Peter. Again, the reference to earlier judgements are given literally to reinforce this prophesy.
Hi Lee. In case the physical universe came to an end, would that mean that there would be no more new people in heaven? Like, “ok guys, the universe is gone, so everyone who could possibly be here in heaven is already here. We’ll close the gates now!” I’d like to hear your thoughts about the consequences in the spiritual world of a possible death of the material universe. Thanks!
Hi Rod,
First of all, the ultimate fate of the universe is a matter of debate among scientists. And just when a consensus starts to emerge, new studies suggest that the consensus might be wrong. In fact, just in the past day or two, a paper came out challenging the generally accepted view that the universe is “flat,” meaning that it will continue to expand forever and eventually become cold, dark and lifeless, and suggesting instead that the universe may be “closed,” meaning that it will eventually contract back together in a “big crunch” that could lead to a new “big bang” and the beginning of a whole new universe. See:
Astronomers think the universe is a sphere. Here’s why that claim is so controversial
Other astronomers dispute this new claim that the universe is most likely closed. And the debate continues. For the possibilities contemplated by scientists, see Wikipedia -> Ultimate fate of the universe.
What this means is that we really don’t know whether the universe will come to an end. We also don’t know whether ours is the only universe, or whether there are other universes out there, forming a “multiverse.”
Personally, I lean toward the “cyclic model” or “oscillating universe” theory, in which there is a whole series of universes, one after the other. This accords with the general pattern of nature, which is full of cycles of birth, life, death, and rebirth. However, I’m not a physicist, so I’ll just have to wait and see whether the scientists come to any more definite conclusion about the ultimate nature and fate of the physical universe during my lifetime.
Given all that, I’m loath to speculate on what will happen in heaven if there comes a time when there are no more new people, and the gates are closed. Personally, I doubt that will ever happen. But if it does, I presume that the people in heaven will continue to enjoy their life with the people who are there. After all, they are already with the people they are closest to, even if no more new people come along. And they continue to learn and grow in knowledge, understanding, and wisdom to eternity. This means that their lives are not static even if there isn’t a new influx of people happening in their communities. I presume that there are many communities of people in heaven from bygone eras that haven’t had any new residents in hundreds or even thousands of years by earth measurements. And yet, they can still have a good, happy, and growing life with the people of their “closed” community.
But my inclination is to think that God will continue to provide new people for heaven to eternity, even if scientifically we don’t currently have a clear idea of the ultimate fate of the physical universe in which we happen to live.
Either way I think it will all turn out for the best according to God’s providence and goodness. Thank you, Lee.
Hi Lee following on from the previous comments on this article regarding the fate of the universe, if you look at the holographic universe theory which Stephen hawking changed his mind to believing to be true. Then we need not fear the end of the universe as the theory, swedenborg and The bible all state the source (God) is constantly renewing amd creating the universe at every moment in time so although the universe will expand and various parts of it will die off as is nature there will always be a new areas of the universe and new planets , new societys and new heavens . I think that make sense aha
Hi AJ749,
What you are describing sounds a bit like the “steady-state model,” in which new matter is continually being created to fill in the space made by the expanding universe. However, this theory is now almost universally rejected by cosmologists. Personally, I think an “oscillating universe” is more likely. In nature we don’t see brand new animals and plants continually being created from nothing, but rather the existing plants and animals continually reproducing themselves in an ongoing birth and death cycle—which also involves evolutionary development over long time periods. It makes sense to me that the physical universe would work the same way on the large scale.
As for the holographic universe theory, I think that what’s behind it is the reality (from a Swedenborgian perspective) that the material universe is a “projection” of the spiritual universe rather than something that subsists on its own. But I put “projection” in quotes because it is really an expression rather than a mere projection. In other words, I do believe that the physical universe is objectively real, and not just a projection. But its continued existence depends upon a continual inflow of energy from God via the spiritual world. This, I suspect, looks like a holographic universe to scientists who dig deep into the structure of the physical universe.
However, I do agree that the effect of the ongoing generations of people here in the material universe results in continual creation of new heavens (really, new areas of heaven) and new communities within the various heavens in the spiritual world. The spiritual world is not subject to birth and death cycles in a “biological” way, as the physical universe is. Its growth is additive rather than cyclical. However, angels do also go through cycles analogous to our cycles of day and night, work week and sabbath, seasons of the year, and so on. It’s just that these cycles don’t involve “physical” birth and death, but rather spiritual cycles of emptying out or “dying” of old thoughts and feelings that are no longer the best possible for them, followed by growth via the “birth” of new love and wisdom.
Didn’t Swedenborg say that the spiritual is somehow dependent on the physical? If so, and if the universe evolves according to scientific theory where there’s eventually the Dark Era (just photons and electrons in an ever-expanding void), could that change so Heaven doesn’t end somehow just because the physical is a nearly empty void?
Maybe future spirits in the distant, distant future (like over 10^10^50 years from now) could come from “Boltzmann brains”?
Hi K,
Yes, Swedenborg did say that the spiritual world rests on the physical world, and is therefore “dependent” on it in the sense that it needs something underneath or around it to keep it in its proper form, akin to the skin keeping the body together.
Though this makes sense to me logically and by analogy, I don’t have a clear practical sense of why spirit and angels in the spiritual world would need a connection with people on earth. It makes more sense to me that people on earth need angels and spirits around them, because we are alive due to our spirit, and not due to our body, meaning that we need a spiritual environment to keep our spirit alive just as our body needs a physical environment to keep our body alive.
Swedenborg does, however, make the strange statement that when we die, though we leave our body behind and continue to live in our spirit, and in our spiritual body, we do take with us a “border around it made of the finest substances in nature” (True Christianity #103). Apparently we retain something of nature even when we are living in the spiritual world. And since it is a “border,” it has to do with keeping everything in our spirit contained so that it doesn’t just spill out into its surroundings. If this is the case, then angels and spirits are in some way dependent “physically” on there still being something of the material world in existence.
At any rate, as for your question, I’ve thought about this also. Mind you, I’m not terribly worried about it. I figure God has it figured out, even if it bends our brain. But so far I’ve come up with three possibilities:
This last possibility is based on a passage I can’t seem to locate at the moment in which Swedenborg says that if a planet were to cease to exist, the spirits from that planet would be transferred to another planet, and associated with it, so that their connection with the physical world and its people would not be lost.
Perhaps there are other possibilities that I haven’t thought of.
As for Boltzmann brains, such a thing, if it ever existed in reality, would be so rare as to be unlikely to form a sufficient basis and connection even for the billions of people that will inhabit the spiritual world from our planet alone, let alone for the inhabitants of all inhabited planets in the universe.
If the universe is cyclical, expanding from a singularity, collapsing back to a singularity, and then expanding again in an endless cycle, then perhaps the spiritual world would have to go into a sort of hibernation in between cycles. But since the uninhabitable part of the timeline seems much longer than the habitable part, it seems unlikely to me that God would design things that way.
At any rate, it’s an interesting question to ponder, even if it’s not the most immediate and practical issue for the life we’re living right now.
Since the spiritual is beyond spacetime, maybe there’s no 1:1 correspondence between time in the physical and changes of state in the spiritual, so if there is 10^10^10^56+ years of the Dark Era, maybe it’s not so long in the spiritual?
Also how did Swedenborg come to the erroneous conclusion that all worlds are inhabited, or the possibly erroneous conclusion that the spiritual “depends” on the physical? Who told him such?
And while the ultimate fate of the universe is not immediate and practical, it is inevitable, and the spiritual is beyond spacetime.
Finally, as for that “border around it made of the finest substances in nature”, maybe that could be spacetime itself, as spacetime is now thought of like a substance. Stuff like photons, leptons, and quarks are subject to spacetime limits and entropy.
Hi K,
There does seem to be a correlation between spiritual “time” and physical spacetime. People die at a particular time on this earth, and then they wake up in the spiritual world. This happens in the same sequence in the spiritual world as it does in the material world. If a husband dies first, and his wife later, he will arrive in the spiritual world first, he will wait for her there, and she will arrive later. However, for her fixed days weeks, and years will be passing, whereas for him there will be no sense of time, but only of passing events and experiences. I think this is hard for us earthlings to grasp until we actually experience it either by having a near-death experience or by dying and going to the spiritual world.
Having said that, if there is no more life in the material universe, or an unimaginably long time period in which there is no life, there would be no such correlation between the spiritual and the physical. To use that example, no one would be dying, there would be no new spirits arriving in the spiritual world, and therefore nothing in the experience of spirits living there to relate their experiences to events in the physical world.
It is therefore possible that such a time period in the material universe wouldn’t even register in the spiritual world. Perhaps the entire spiritual world would drift off to sleep, and when everyone woke up the next morning, 10^10^10^56+ years would have passed in the physical universe, and a whole new period of life would be starting. I think that’s the same as what you’re saying.
I’m not saying I think this is what actually happens. I really don’t know. But it is fun to think about.
Hi K,
On the question of how Swedenborg came to the erroneous conclusion that all worlds are inhabited, it was by rational thought based on the scientific knowledge of the day. Here’s what he says about this in Other Planets (aka Earths in the Universe):
“Aha!” some Swedenborgians will say, “He heard it in the spiritual world! Therefore it must be correct! This is part of the doctrine of the church!”
No. Swedenborg specifically said in True Christianity #779, “I also testify that ever since the first day of this calling, I have accepted nothing regarding the teachings of this church from any angel; what I have received has come from the Lord alone while I was reading the Word.” The Latin word here translated “the teachings” is doctrina. Something that Swedenborg talked over with angels is not part of the doctrine of the New Church.
His words make it crystal clear that this is a rationally deduced conclusion based on available evidence:”We concluded that anyone with a capable mind can see, on the basis of things that are well known . . . . That is, we can determine on rational grounds . . . .”
Based on things that were “well known” in Swedenborg’s day—i.e., based on available scientific knowledge about the cosmos—the only way a planet could serve God’s intention in creating the universe—which was “for the sole purpose of bringing humankind into being as the source of heaven”—was to serve as a home for human life on that planet. Otherwise planets would be “uninhabited lumps created only to be carried along on a wandering course around the Sun and shed their feeble light for the benefit of just one planet.”
Therefore, on rational grounds based on what was known about the universe at the time, every planet must have humans on it.
Notice that Swedenborg did not say that the Lord told him this. He didn’t even say that angels told him this, or that it was “told to him from heaven.” He said that it was a result of rational thought and rational conversation with angels. And as I’ve said a number of times, including in the above article, angels’ scientific knowledge is no more advanced than the scientific knowledge of people on earth at the time.
Today, cosmological knowledge has advanced whole orders of magnitude since the 18th century. Even our most recent scientific cargo from another world, the samples from the asteroid Bennu brought back by the OSIRIS-REx mission, have shown that this common type of asteroid is rich in clays that contain water and organic compounds (these are carbon-based chemical compounds, not life as some of the clickbait titles try to make people think) that were a likely source of the water and organic compounds in earth’s crust that made life possible on our planet. After its initial formation, Earth was a barren rock. But a billion or so years of being bombarded by such asteroids seeded it with the materials required for life to develop on it.
This is just one of many ways in which other worlds are not mere “uninhabited lumps created only to be carried along on a wandering course around the Sun and shed their feeble light for the benefit of just one planet.”
Another way they are not is that gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn are vast chemical laboratories forming the complex organic molecules and other compounds required by life. Even if no life develops in that particular solar system, when its star comes to the end of its active period of creating energy through fusion, it will blast much of the material of its planets out into space, seeding the surrounding space with the compounds needed for life to form on future generations of planets. A significant part of that material will end out in asteroids that bombard potentially habitable planets, so that some of them become actually habitable, and develop complex ecosystems capable of supporting human life.
If we’ve learned anything at all in the past century or two of studying the physical universe, it’s that forming environments capable of supporting advanced life is an incredibly complex and energy-intensive thing. It’s not just a matter of popping off a planet and putting life on it. Two or three generations of stars and solar systems forming, dying, and seeding the surrounding region with heavier and more complex elements and molecules are likely required before it is even possible for a planet to develop that could support life. Before that, the required elements and compounds would not exist in sufficient quantities. This is something that takes billions of years, not six thousand years.
But Swedenborg did not have access to any of this knowledge because in his day the science of cosmology was in its infancy. It is therefore not surprising that reasoning based on the rather scant knowledge available both to him and to the angels he was talking to alike, it seemed an open-and-shut case that every planet, and even every moon, must have human life on it.
However, to my 21st century eyes, what is most striking is the vast time and processes and materials and developments that are required to produce even a single planet—ours—capable of supporting human life.
But what is all that vastness to God, who is infinite? If it were necessary to create a trillion trillion universes the size of ours to produce a single planet capable of supporting life, that would be no greater task for God than creating life in a teaspoon full of water.
Another way of saying this is that the vast processes required to produce us on this earth is, to me, an indication of the infinite love God has for us, and how precious we are in God’s eyes.
Hi K,
About how Swedenborg concluded that the spiritual depends upon the physical, that’s a much more complex question. And in this case, despite my lack of full understanding of why this should be the case, I’m inclined to think he is right. After all, God created the universe as a system, not as unrelated parts. And as a system, all of its parts are needed to make the whole.
At minimum, the physical world is required to produce new human beings to populate the spiritual world. This, according to Swedenborg, is the whole purpose of the material world. So in that way, the spiritual world does depend upon the physical world. Without humans to inhabit it, the spiritual world would be empty and meaningless. Even the environment of the spiritual world is a reflection of the minds and hearts of the people who inhabit it.
Swedenborg uses the analogy of a house on its foundation to illustrate how the physical world is required as a basis for the spiritual world. He also uses the analogy of the skin compared to all the parts and organs it contains. Something is required to provide a foundation for the spiritual world, and to hold it together as a unit. That something is apparently the physical universe.
Hi K,
As to whether the “border around it made of the finest substances in nature” is spacetime itself, that’s a bit beyond my scientific pay grade. But from what I understand, spacetime can’t exist unless there is some form of matter in it, whether in the form of mass or in the form of energy. So I tend to think that indeed it is the finest substances in nature.
Swedenborg did not state exactly what this limbus consists of. Even if he had, since his theory of the elemental building blocks of nature was quite different from present-day molecular, atomic, and subatomic physics, we might still not know what this limbus consists of.
However, Swedenborg did go into a little more detail on this subject in a few other passages. First, here is the rest of his statement about this in True Christianity #103. I should mention that I have come to believe that the Aristotelian idea that the soul comes from the father and the body from the mother, which Swedenborg accepted as the “settled science” of his day, cannot be retained based on today’s greater knowledge of genetics, knowing as we do that offspring receive a nearly equal complement of genetic material both from the father and from the mother. But here goes:
Click the link on the number if you want to read the entire section.
There is a similar statement in Divine Love and Wisdom:
Swedenborg had gone into a little more detail earlier in Divine Love and Wisdom:
How these substances both “fade away” (Latin: recedunt) and form a skin is likewise beyond my pay grade.
But his fullest discussion is in his unpublished draft on Divine Wisdom. It is quite fascinating. In exists only in an older English translation:
As far as I know, this is everything Swedenborg says about the limbus in his theological writings. Having such a “border of the finest things of nature” seems to be a necessity for angels to remain constant in their existence in the spiritual world rather than coming into and out of existence as other things in the spiritual world do based on the thoughts and feelings of the angels in the area.
Presumably the idea is that nature itself must continue to exist for the “border of the finest things of nature” to continue to exist, and thus for angels to continue to have a constant and eternal existence rather than an ephemeral one as other things in the spiritual world do.
How this relates to the current scientific theory that the physical universe will end in heat death, I do not know.
However, questions such as this help to convince me that we humans will never run out of things to think about and try to figure out, no matter how many billions and trillions of “years” have gone by in our eternal life in the spiritual world.
Part of my faith is that even though I don’t have it all figured out, God does. In this, I’m not all that different from scientists who have great faith that there are good scientific answers to questions that currently we don’t even have scientific instruments that are powerful enough to investigate.
But back to the question, apparently even the Big Bag was supposed to somehow have come out of the primordial quantum field. Perhaps the quantum field itself is “the finest things of nature,” which precede and produce all others, including all the physical objects around us that we can see and touch. But I tend to think that “the finest substance of nature” are a little more solid and stable than quantum fields. They are, after all, supposed to be something that gives fixity to the spirits they contain as a border.
Hi Lee,
I have have a question on this “God Particle” I remember hearing about like how there is no Divine God but a “materialist god” which is this so called “God Particle” that created absolutely everything? I remember hawkings saying something about how the “afterlife” (which he says he debunked since he was a materialist) is just particles interacting from another dimension?
And sorta on the same topic, what do you make of this New Age quotes here: “96% or more of all reality is that dark energy, that dark matter that science can’t quite put its finger on, that’s these other dimensions.” And “that’s where these changes are initially taking place within the psyche because our unconscious mind isn’t rooted in physical reality it’s rooted in a higher dimensional state.” And how “we are these higher beings and how our higher self are equals and not mother or father figures. Our awareness of reality is gated and how we’re in this concentrated environment like the lights have been turned out. The whole of the cosmos the multiverse is aware of earth but earth isn’t aware of its place within this greater multi dimensional landscape of human and non human colonies that exist throughout the physical and non physical universes.” He goes on to say “this is the case this is how reality is built… based on inner vibrational frequency”.
I have other questions as well like how “we can engineer trauma into the DNA that can be passed down from generations”?
Here is the video but it is a bit long.
Which by “dimensions” they mean the afterlife? And again assigning physical level things to spiritual level things and not to mention Divine level things.
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
“The God particle” is a colloquial name for the Higgs Boson. Ironically, Peter Higgs, for whom the particle and the field it comes from are named, is an atheist, and heartily dislikes the name “God particle”! 😀 Anyway, the Higgs Boson is one of the more recently discovered subatomic particles. It didn’t create the universe. But physicists believe it has a key part in energy taking on mass and becoming matter. However, I’m not a physicist, and my knowledge of the Higgs Boson is very rudimentary. Anyway, the Higgs boson is not in competition with God for the honor of having created the universe. Rather, it is one of the means and results of God’s creation of the universe.
In the video you linked, I didn’t get the sense that the speaker was literally saying that dark matter is the unexplored areas of consciousness. My sense is that he was using dark matter as a metaphor: Scientist believe that most of what’s out there in the physical universe is dark matter that we can’t even see. That’s how it is for our awareness of spiritual things: we’re not even aware of most of it. At least, I think that’s what he was driving at.
Beyond the woo woo language, a lot of what the guy says is just about becoming more spiritually aware and focused. Nothing wrong with that!
About higher beings being equals, or brothers and sisters, rather than mother and father figures, Swedenborg says the same thing. All of our earthly biological relationships, he says, fade away after a while once we have entered the spiritual world permanently. By the time we settle into our heavenly home, regardless of any previous relationships we may have had on earth, we are all brothers and sisters to one another, and God is our common Father (today we would say Parent).
About earth not being aware of its place in the multiverse, that’s just a fancy way of saying that people on this earth are at a low, materialistic level for the most part, and therefore mostly unaware of their own spirit and of the higher spiritual realm that we were created to be in.
Of course, I don’t agree that we existed before and chose to come here to learn. The idea that this earth is some sort of turbo-learning atmosphere compared to the spiritual realms is the opposite of the truth. Here on this earth our ability to learn about what truly matters is heavily constricted compared to the wide open fields of spiritual learning that exist in the spiritual world.
And yet, this is where we form the character that we will take with us into eternity. That, and not “learning,” is what we’re here for. This is our time in the womb that forms us into the person we will be when we are born into the spiritual world. Learning is simply a means to that end. It is not purpose of our existence here.
Another thing I strongly disagree with in the video is that we have chosen everything that happens to us, and all we have to do is to change our consciousness, and bad things will stop happening to us. A woman who gets raped did not choose to be raped in this life or in any previous life. A man who gets mugged and murdered did not choose to be mugged and murdered in this life or any previous life. See:
Evil Is Real, and it Does Harm the Innocent
However, there are other things he said in the video that I like very much. Especially where he says that learning means nothing unless we put it into practice, and that we must live a life of love and compassion for other people, or none of our learning means anything. Also where he says that we have free will, and we are not necessarily perfect—in fact, sometimes we’re being horrible people, that’s on us, and it’s something we must make the choice to change. (Those aren’t his exact words, but those are the ideas he is expressing.)
From my perspective, there’s a lot of good in the video, but also some things I disagree with.
About all these “multi-dimensional beings” buzzwords, please read the comment thread on another post that starts here, where I talk about dimensions vs. levels.
Hi Lee,
Thank you so much again for the clarity and your time on these questions and statements/video. It makes so much more sense, as always! And very eye opening and how material, spiritual and Divine reality actually fit together along with our experiences and how it works while dispelling the woo woo slang and concepts that are pushed that muddies up the water!
Like in the new age field I hear a lot of “gurus” saying that antimatter or dark matter or whatever is the “afterlife” would that be like your one article you wrote how people like to use quantum and other physical sciences to mix it all together with spirituality when in reality these are distinct levels of reality?
Thank you again Lee!
Hi Sam,
Yes. Gurus who think dark matter or the quantum field or any other physical thing is the afterlife, or consciousness, or the spiritual realm, do not understand that the universe is arranged in distinct levels, one above or within the other. No material thing can be or become a spiritual thing. And since our consciousness is spiritual, not material, no dark matter or quantum field or multiverse has any consciousness at all. Consciousness requires a living body to express itself on the physical level and interact with material things. But even the life in a living body is spiritual, not physical. That’s why as soon as the spirit departs from the body, the body dies and begins to decompose.
Hi Lee,
Sorry, I forgot to add this question as well while on the same topic that always bothered me as well. It’s from a 2012 video I remember watching long time ago.
Here is a quote from the same person:
“So in a sense the rabbit hole of consciousness goes pretty deep and I really subscribe to this idea of all these reality systems as being illusional and I find it quite interesting that science I think a lot of people have this sort of sense that science is stuck in the past but you know with things like quantum physics particle physics where you have these scientists almost lining up to suggest that reality seems very holographic and that we in a sense are illusions being projected from a sorta of an event horizon point at the far edge of the physical universe so not too dissimilar from what we’ve been sorta of talking about and I think as perhaps science starts to be able to delve even deeper down into the structure of reality perhaps they’ll start to sort of change that focus inwardly instead of seeing it as that sort of you know physical related consciousness be related to the physical.”
This just seems like more woo woo like you talked about above? Like this so called event horizon and I remember other scientist taking about black holes have other universes in it and our universe is in a black hole?
here is the full video for reference where I got the quote from
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
Yes, there’s a healthy dose of woo woo there! 😉
The thing is, spiritual types will often see whatever science happens to be discovering at the time as amazing pointers to God and spirit, whereas materialistic scientists will see the very same discoveries as purely material results of the physical laws that govern the physical universe. These same materialistic scientists often get very annoyed at spiritual types who press their precious scientific research and discoveries into the service of their woo woo spiritual philosophies.
However, from a spiritual perspective there is nothing wrong with seeing the physical universe as an expression of the spiritual universe, and ultimately as an expression of God. That’s exactly what it is. And everything the scientists are discovering does say something about the nature of God and spirit.
Still, it’s perilous to take the latest cutting-edge discoveries and build a whole fancy spiritual system around them. What if new scientific discoveries disprove some favorite theory of the spiritual guru types? Where is their fancy spiritual system then? This, it seems, is exactly what happened with string theory, which a lot of spiritual types loved and drew on heavily, but which ultimately started looking like it is not a sound theory. Scientific experiments and discoveries just kept on not supporting the predictions it made. I may have already linked this Sabine Hossenfelder video here. If so, with apologies, here it is again:
The “ten dimensions” stuff that spiritual guru types like to talk about apparently comes from string theory. Now it looks like string theory wasn’t such a great theory after all. Unfortunately, many of the gurus haven’t gotten the memo, and they still keep talking about ten dimensions.
In general, attempting to determine the nature of God and spirit by studying the material universe is a poor and backwards way of learning about God and spirit. Gurus who base their spiritual philosophy on material science often come to very wrong and fallacious conclusions precisely because reasoning from effects in the material world to causes in the spiritual world is not a reliable way of coming to a good understanding of spiritual things.
Instead, what we need is revelation from God and from the spiritual world to tell us about God and spirit. Once we have learned about the nature of God and spirit from revelation, then we can see and appreciate their parallels and expressions in the material universe, and have a right understanding of them.
Another way of saying this is that thinking from higher things to lower things works well if we have a correct understanding of higher things, but thinking from lower things to higher things does not work well even if we have a correct understanding of lower things.
It seems to me that what you quoted there skirts right on the edge of thinking backwards, from material things to spiritual things, which will not lead to sound conclusions. I’m not even sure quite what science he is talking about. I suspect some of it is junk science, not real cutting-edge science. An “event horizon” is a more or less spherical zone around a black hole that, once something passes through from the outside to the inside, it can never return, but will inevitably get sucked into the black hole. How this relates to God and spirit, I really don’t know.
As for all our ordinary waking consciousness and this material world being an “illusion,” that’s not the right way to think about it. The word “illusion” gives the sense of something being unreal. However, the material universe is not unreal. It is very real. It is simply a lower level of reality than the spiritual world, which, in turn, is a lower level of reality than God.
I like the word “projection” a little better, because it contains the idea that our world expresses a higher world—which it does. But if “projection” means something that isn’t real, but only an illusion “projected” by something that is real, along the lines of Plato’s cave, then I don’t like it so much.
A better word, I think, is “expression.” Our reality is an expression of spiritual reality, and ultimately of God, on the material level of reality. It does not have the level of reality and detail that the spiritual universe has, nor does the spiritual universe have the level of reality and detail that God has. Each time things go down to a lower level, they lose some of their sharpness and resolution.
It’s like taking a 20 megapixel image from a good quality digital camera and shrinking it down to one of the old digital image standards, such as 1024 x 768 pixels. The resulting image is not an illusion. It does accurately represent the original, much higher resolution image. But it does so in a much less detailed way. This, I think is a better way to think about the relationship between the spiritual realm and the material realm.
The fallacy of thinking from material things to spiritual things as compared to the reverse can be seen by attempting to reverse the process, and get a 20 megapixel image from a 1024 x 768 pixel image. While a certain amount of fancy image processing tools can make an approximation of what the higher resolution image might look like, it will always be fuzzier, and never as crisp, as an original 20 megapixel image. Reducing a higher resolution to a lower resolution is a simple and accurate process. Increasing a lower resolution to a higher resolution image is not.
Just so, thinking from spiritual things to material things works well, as long as our “image” of spiritual things is accurate and not distorted. But thinking from material things to spiritual things is bound to give us a fuzzy and even distorted picture of what spiritual reality is like.
Hi Lee,
Thank you again for the clarity and how the physical levels doesn’t have any consciousness at all and with distinct levels and about the spirit it makes so much more sense and logical plus it just has an instinctual rightness about it.
Thank you again Lee
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the further explanation those topics and how using material reality to explain spiritual and even Divine reality is weak and doesn’t work that way. And like you and Swedenborg says as well there is a one directional flow from Divine to Spiritual to Material and not the opposite way which makes a lot of sense. And really gurus and materialist are similar in that aspect of trying to explain the spiritual and divine with material reality which is only going to lead in the wrong direction like you said. Plus a really weak worldview. Ever since learning true spiritual knowledge and learning more about the Bible it’s like building the right foundation that everything makes so much more sense and logic and is the proper way rather than putting twigs together and hoping your house doesn’t fall which is all the falsity out there!
And thats funny you bring up the 10 dimensions stuff I heard that so often in the New Age field that it’s pretty much considered absolute fact at this point lol. Along with other gurus with their “Theory of Everything” which you can’t have a theory of everything because isn’t it limited to material reality so how can there be a theory of everything? That always confused me as well lol
Thank you kindly again Lee
Hi Sam,
There’s no inherent problem with the idea of a “theory of everything.”
Swedenborg presents what could be called a “theory of everything” in his theological writings. But even Swedenborg’s system has its limitations. Even if, as Swedenborgians believe, he was guided by the Lord in what he wrote, he was still limited to what he was able to know and understand as a finite human being who lived and wrote at a particular time and place in the human history of this planet.
Now, two and a half centuries later, I still think that Swedenborg’s system comes as close to a sound “theory of everything” as anything else I’ve ever encountered. Unlike the elusive “theory of everything” (TOE) that physical scientists are seeking, Swedenborg’s “TOE” covers divine and spiritual reality as well. And it is robust enough to have stood the test of time for those two and a half centuries.
And yet, it has stood the test of time, not by being perfect in all its details, but by having the core concepts required to understand how the divine/spiritual/material universe works, and what our place is in it. Many of the details of how he presented it are now out of date or known to be mistaken, such as the idea that all planets and moons have human life on them. However, although we now know this to be mistaken, it is not a critical blow to his system as a whole. Just something that requires us to make some adjustments around the edges.
It is very similar to, say Einstein’s theory of relativity, or Darwin’s theory of evolution, which have stood the test of time, but have had some modifications along the way—especially Darwin’s theory, which in many ways is far more complex than Einstein’s theory. We don’t throw away evolution or relativity because the people who originated those theories were not correct in every single thing they said. Rather, we refine those theories as we learn more about the cosmos and the world of nature, and how they work.
This is exactly the approach I take to Swedenborg’s “TOE.” When I encounter something he turns out to have been mistaken about, I don’t throw away the whole system. Instead, I make the necessary adjustments in light of new discoveries and realizations.
The problem with some (but not all) of these spiritual gurus is that they tie their systems too closely to some particular cutting-edge new theory, so that when the theory changes or is disproven, their system becomes dated and looks untenable to people who are keeping up with the current developments in science. This, also, is why although I do use examples from science to illustrate spiritual principles that I’ve learned from the Bible and Swedenborg’s writings, I generally prefer to use older, more tested, and more stable science rather than the latest new things that are heavily subject to change.
And if we do tie spiritual ideas to the latest scientific developments, we should be ready to modify our thinking if subsequent science corrects or overthrows something that seemed like a very promising idea or theory.
And once again, science and the material world should not be the source of our spiritual ideas. Science is the study of the physical world, and is an excellent source of knowledge and understanding about that world. It is a poor source of knowledge and understanding of the spiritual world, and of God, because God and spirit are outside the subject area of science.
This is the fallacy of scientists thinking they can make grand pronouncements and write whole books about there being no God and no afterlife. They’re simply not qualified to make those statements. Usually, their books are characterized by a very superficial understanding of religion, based largely no popular fundamentalist ideas—which are a very low-level form of religion.
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the clarification on these “TOEs” it’s something that always caused anxiety for some reason. And it makes sense with all these “TOEs” is that they try and apply science to spiritual and divine concepts and how these scientist talk about like what you said how there is no God and afterlife because their “TOE” doesn’t include that. Which reminds me of an article I read on wiki called “Scientism” which is a belief that science is the only way to discover reality. And there are a lot ex members of that thinking that used to be like that but now espouse against that line of thinking and those who are in that way of thinking a lot of them are New Atheists which they say “According to Stenmark, the strongest form of scientism states that science does not have any boundaries and that all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor, with due time, will be dealt with and solved by science alone. 135] This idea has also been termed the Myth of Progress.”
And another quote that always bothered me was “Despite the debunking of God and spiritualism, people continue to search for mystic explanations, showing the deep-seated human need for certainty in uncertain times.”
This was by a materialist doctor Sean Carol or one of them that’s always in the press, which is their life mission to disprove any spiritual experiences and God. There’s others like him like James “the amazing” Randy I’m not sure if you heard of him but I guess he has “peer review scientific papers” and his “TOE” along with books like “The Truth Behind Ghosts, Mediums & Psychic Phenomena by Ron Rhodes”. Which supposedly debunks everything. Again using “TOEs” and “peer review journals” to debunk spiritual concepts?
Even though science is a poor source for understanding spiritual and divine reality which are their own distinct realities. It’s like giving credit to a paint brush and saying that is what painted the Mona Lisa and not the spirit behind it. But even physical “TOEs” wouldn’t that just be an expression of God anyway? Since got created physical reality and spiritual reality?
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
Yes, there are “scientists” out there (I don’t think they call themselves that) who believe that science covers all subjects, and will eventually answer all questions.
However, in my admittedly limited awareness of current scientific thought, a “theory of everything” is usually about explaining all physical things. Materialistic scientists don’t believe anything else exists, and most of them just ignore God and religion, so they’re not thinking about how to explain them. They’re looking for a theory that unifies all the laws of physics into a single formula that covers all physical phenomena.
This sort of theory of everything is not in conflict with God and spirit because it restricts itself to the material realm, and doesn’t attempt to go outside its wheelhouse to apply science to God and spirit. And yes, if we arrive at this sort of theory of everything, it will simply be a better understanding of the laws of the physical universe, which are part of God’s creation, and which reflect the nature of God on the physical level.
As for God and spirit being “debunked,” they haven’t been. But some materialists who have an ax to grind like to think they have.
As with their approach to everything else, these people have a materialistic view of God and spirit. They think they’ve “debunked” God when they show that lightning bolts are not weapons thrown by an angry god, but discharges of the static electricity that builds up in the clouds during stormy weather. They think that primitive people attributed lighting bolts to their gods because they had no scientific explanation for them. It doesn’t occur to them that maybe early people were well aware that lightning bolts weren’t weapons thrown by the gods, but saw them as an apt metaphor for certain spiritual and divine actions and events.
Hi Lee,
Thank you again for the further clarification on this subject, it really helped tie up all the loose ends of understanding!
Plus it really goes to show how weak of a belief these materialist have when it’s picked apart. It’s funny because they claim to have exclusively on “logic” but their thinking is anything but that! It’s like when Swedenborg says “The materialist is like someone who goes to a beautiful cathedral and hears an enlightened minister preach about divine matters and then goes home and says, “All I saw was a stone building, and all I heard was some complicated noise. … they do not see any of it. They do not even see that there is anything there.”
Thank you kindly Lee
Hi Sam,
Yes, that’s a great passage! (It’s Divine Providence #189.) My experience debating atheists confirms it: They just don’t see anything spiritual at all. They only focus on the material aspects of the Bible and religion, which they reject and hold in contempt.
Hi Lee,
I know I may be beating a dead horse as they say at this point so I apologize in advance!
But out of curiosity, I remembered reading this and wanted to get your thoughts on it as well being on the same topic.
The quote goes:
”Recently String Theorist Dr Laura Mersini-Houghtongave a talk about the latest discoveries of the Planck satellite, which proved the existence of Multiverses. This should explain some of the Out of Body experiences some of us have, where we encounter incredibly “physical” environments. We may have simply entered a parallel physical universe, or the mind of an actor within that universe.
Anybody who read Robert Monroe’s book “Journeys out of the body” will remember the part where he lived a parallel life going through a divorce and interestingly the technology he described is also slightly different to ours. I had similar experiences, down to a completely parallel existences.
Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton states, that the chances of a Big Bang and the creation of our Universe happening by chance are 1 / 10^{10^122} which is infinitely impossible. Instead she proposes wave functions, which when the energy is at tipping point creates a new big bang and with it another universe. Other universes would possibly be observable if we were able to ventured to the edges of our own universe. The Planck satellite has found concrete scientific evidence of this for the first time.
In a recent BBC Horizon program revolutionary theories of the Big Bang were advanced, gaining a bit, a bit more or very little support from observation. The scientist Dr Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina was the only scientist who hinted that wave forms may have been at the root of the Big Bang. Her theory was that the universe could be represented not as an object, but as a wave.
She manipulated the wave form with string theory. It also predicts a multiverse, but it doesn’t assume any pre conditions such as black holes or an infinitely expanded universe.
Things will become a little bit more complicated when scientists begin to search for the origin or such wave forms. This answer has little chance of finding a mathematical solution until scientists begin to embrace the idea of multi dimensions, which spawn their own phenomena and universes.
How can these phenomena be described or explained, when there are not even words for it. At least not words which belong to a mechanical universe such as “consciousness” or “intent” or “awareness”. There will come a point in the unravelling of the mysteries of our universe, where scientists will be as overwhelmed as Dr. Dave Bowman in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey, but they probably already are.”
Thank you kindly Lee
Hi Sam,
I don’t think any of this has much to do with science. At least, not with any science that actual scientists deal with.