For Chapter 3, click here.
Near-death experiencers who meet the being of light say that this being emphasizes love and learning as the most important things in life. The love must come from within, but much of our learning comes from the outside. Even though we may have gone far along the spiritual path, we may still be working under some misconceptions about God and spirit. We may be mistaken about some of the ideas we cherish.
As we go along in this life, if our heart is in the right place God will not force us to give up mistaken notions that we love and see as guides. At some stages of our lives certain misconceptions may even prod us farther along than we otherwise would have gone.
For example, some people seem to need to believe that God is angry with them for the wrong things they do, or they would not be motivated to change their ways. But really, Swedenborg says, God is never angry with us. God only allows it to appear that way if we need to believe this in order to make changes in our lives.
Once we have overcome the bulk of our destructive side, though, we no longer have a need to hold onto faulty beliefs about God and spirit. At that point we have also left behind the ego that makes us cling to certain ideas because we think we understand things better than others. So we are ready to empty ourselves of everything remaining that does not correspond to our true love and motivation, and to learn what really does correspond to them. This is what the final stage is for.
Learning the Ways of Heaven
From Heaven and Hell #512–19
by Emanuel Swedenborg
Our third stage after death when we are a spirit is a learning stage. We go through this stage only if we are going to heaven and becoming an angel.
If we are headed toward hell we do not go through this stage because we cannot be taught anything. In this case our second stage is also our third. We are finished, since we have completely turned ourselves toward our own love, and toward the hellish community that is involved in a similar love. When this has happened we think and want things from what we love. Since our love is hellish we are motivated only by destructive things, and everything we think is false. This is what gives us pleasure since these are the things we love. Because of this we reject everything good and true that we had previously adopted because it had functioned as a means of getting what we love.
If we are good, though, we are led through the second stage into a third. In this stage we are prepared for heaven by being taught. The only way we can be prepared for heaven is by knowing what is good and true, which means we must be taught. We cannot know what is spiritually good and true, nor what is destructive and false (their opposites) without being taught.
In the world we can know what is legally and ethically good and true, and is called right and honest, because there are civil laws that teach us what is right. We also live among other people so that we learn to live by ethical rules that involve acting honestly and rightly. However, we do not learn what is spiritually good and true from the world, but from heaven.
We could know these things from the Bible and from the church’s teaching based on the Bible. But these things cannot affect our life unless the deeper parts of our mind are in heaven. We are in heaven when we accept God and also act rightly and honestly because that is what the Bible tells us to do. This means living rightly and honestly with the Divine as our goal rather than being motivated by our own self and our worldly possessions.
We cannot act this way, though, until we have been taught to do so. For example, we have to be taught that there is a God, and that there is heaven and hell and a life after death; that we should love God above all else, and other people as much as we love ourselves; and that we should believe what the Bible teaches because the Bible is divine. Without knowing and accepting these things we cannot think spiritually. And without thinking about them we cannot be motivated by them, since we cannot think things we do not know about, and we cannot want things we do not think.
When we do want these things heaven flows into us, which means the Lord flows through heaven into our lives. This flowing goes into our motivation, through that into our thinking, and through both of these into the way we live. This is where all our life comes from. We can see from this that we do not learn what is spiritually good and true from the world, but from heaven—and that we cannot possibly be prepared for heaven except by being taught.
As much as the Lord flows into our life, the Lord teaches us, since our motivation is fired by a love for learning the truth. This enlightens our thinking so that we can know the truth. And as much as this happens, our inner self is opened up and heaven is planted in us.
Further, God and heaven flow into the honesty of an ethical life and the right living of a law-abiding life, and make them spiritual. We then do what we do from God, since we are doing it for God’s sake. The honest and right things we do in our ethical and community life from that source are the real effects of spiritual life. Effects get their whole nature from what causes them. Whatever the cause is like, that is what the effect is like.
Angel teachers come from many different communities. They come especially from the northern and southern regions of heaven, since these angelic communities have a great deal of intelligence and wisdom from a knowledge of what is good and true.
The places of learning are located in the northern areas. They vary, and are arranged and distinguished by the various kinds of heavenly good. We are all taught in a way that is appropriate to our personality, and at a level we can handle. These places of learning are spread out for a great distance all around.
Those of us who become good spirits are led there by the Lord after we have gone through our second stage in the world of spirits and are ready to be taught.
Yet not all of us go there. If we have already learned these things in the world, the Lord still prepares us for heaven, but leads us there by a different path. We may go immediately after we die. Or we may spend a short time with good spirits while we get rid of some of the rough edges of our thoughts and feelings, which we had gotten from status and money in the world, so that we become purified.
Some of us must first be purged. This happens in a place called “the lower earth.” We may have to go through hard things there. This will happen if we have convinced ourselves of false things but have still lived a good life. False ideas that we have convinced ourselves of cling to us strongly. And before these false ideas are broken down we cannot see or accept the truth.
When we are in these places of learning we each live in our own home, since the inner self of each of us is connected to the community of heaven where we will be going. Since the communities in heaven are arranged in a heavenly pattern, the places of learning are arranged this way too.
We are not all taught in the same way or by people from the same heavenly community. If we have been brought up in heaven from childhood we are taught by angels of the deeper heavens, since we have not gotten wrong ideas from false religion, nor have we dirtied our spiritual life with the contamination that comes from status and money in the world. If we died as adults we will usually be taught by angels from the lowest heaven, since these angels are closer to our level than angels of the deeper heavens.
Teaching in heaven is different from teaching on earth. There, we do not memorize information, but put it right into our life. As spirits, our memory is in our life. We accept and absorb everything that is in harmony with our life and do not accept, much less absorb, anything that is not in harmony with our life. Spirits are feelings; so as spirits we are in a pattern that reflects our feelings. Since we are like this we are always filled with a love for true ideas that we can use in our life. The Lord sees to it that each of us loves the kind of work that fits our personality. This love is also strengthened by the hope that we will be angels.
Every useful activity in heaven relates to the good of the community. The community is the Lord’s realm, which is our country there. The more each individual activity looks to the common good, the better it is. This means that the countless types of activity there are all heavenly and good. Everyone loves both truth and useful activity, so that the two work together; our understanding of truth grows in our useful activities. The true ideas we learn are about how to be useful. This is how we are taught as angelic spirits, and prepared for heaven.
A love for the truth that suits our work is planted in us in different ways, most of which are unknown in the world. It happens especially by visual images of useful activity. In the spiritual world these visual images are presented in a thousand ways, all in such a pleasing and beautiful way that they pervade our being from the deeper parts of our mind to the outer parts of our body, touching our whole self. Through this experience we become our own occupation, so to speak. This means that when we reach the community we have been introduced to by what we have learned, we are involved in our real life because we are involved in our own work.
From all this we can see that knowledge, which is outward truth, does not bring us to heaven. We are brought into heaven by life itself: a life of useful activity that we enter through our knowledge.
It takes only a short time to prepare for heaven in the places of learning, since we are thinking in spiritual ideas, which can take in many things at once. When our time there is finished we put on heavenly clothes, which are usually shining white as if made of linen. Then we are shown a path that goes up toward heaven. We are put in the care of angel guardians there and then welcomed by other angels, and invited into different communities to take part in their many joys.
The Lord leads each of us into our own community. We go along various paths, and sometimes by a circuitous route. No angel knows the paths we are led by; only the Lord does. When we arrive at our own community our deeper parts are opened up. Since our deeper parts are in harmony with the angels in that community they recognize us immediately, and welcome us with joy.
* * * * *
By the time we have reached this stage we are beyond memorization and rote learning. As Dannion Brinkley puts it in his book Saved by the Light:
Now more than ever I knew that this was a place of learning. I would be steeped in knowledge, taught in a way that I had never been taught before. There would be no books and no memorization. In the presence of these Beings of Light, I would become knowledge and know everything that was important to know. . . . It was like being a drop of water bathed in the knowledge of the ocean, or a beam of light knowing what all light knows.[1]
In the spiritual world we learn by direct experience, and by putting the insights from our experience directly into our hearts and our lives. When we are consciously being taught, this experience may come from visual images presented by angels. Apparently what we know of as video and film has developed to a much higher level in the spiritual world! Brinkley gives an especially vivid description of the type of visual imagery the angels—or Beings of Light, as he calls them—can use:
The Beings came at me one at a time. As each one approached, a box the size of a videotape came from its chest and zoomed right at my face.
The first time this happened I flinched, thinking I was going to be hit. But a moment before impact, the box opened to reveal what appeared to be a tiny television picture of a world event that was yet to happen. As I watched, I felt myself drawn right into the picture, where I was able to live the event.[2]
In the same chapter, called “The Boxes of Knowledge,” Brinkley goes on to describe the images he was shown. As both he and Swedenborg say, it is not the type of learning that requires memorization, but the type that we experience—and remember because of the compelling nature of the experience.
It is also the type of learning that goes to the heart of our own concerns. This means that it will be different for each one of us. Both the method and content of the teaching will vary, depending on who we are.
We may or may not need this final learning phase in our own spiritual growth. If we have already learned what we need to know along the way, and are not clinging to mistaken ideas, we will pass directly to our spiritual home. But most of us will still have things we need to learn before we are fully prepared for the spiritual work we will be doing in our future life. Perhaps one of the reasons we slow down physically at the end of our life on earth is so that we will take the time to observe life around us and contemplate its meaning.
Of course, even after we have completed this final learning phase there will still be many more things for us to learn. Knowledge is infinite. The purpose of this learning phase is to make sure our minds are pointed in the right direction: a direction that is in harmony with our heart’s direction.
At last we are received with joy into the community that is our spiritual home. It is the place where our heart has carried us—a place where we will find rest for our souls. Yet this is not the rest of idleness. It is a rest in which we are doing the things we do because we love to do them. Though in one sense we may be working very hard, in another sense everything is an effortless, unhindered flow from God through our soul and into our outward actions.
Notes
[1]Saved by the Light, by Dannion Brinkley. (New York: Harper Collins, 1994) p. 36.
[2] Saved by the Light, p. 37.
(Note: This is Chapter 4 of my book Death and Rebirth, first published in 2005. This text and associated artwork are copyright 2005 by Lee Woofenden.)
For the Conclusion and bibliography, click here.
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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 
I’m still scared to death of all this. There is so much bitterness and hate in me, that I know I’m going to hell. I don’t trust life, I don’t trust people and I don’t trust goodness. I’ve tried to change in the past, but it only goes for about a few hours before I revert to my norm.
Hi Rob,
When it becomes clear that a particular approach isn’t working, it’s best to try another approach.
Trying to change your character and outlook clearly isn’t working, and probably won’t work for you. Whatever the reasons you think and feel the way you do about life, about people, and about yourself, they are deep-seated, and not something you’re going to be able to take apart with a crowbar.
Perhaps some day that will be possible. But not today, and not tomorrow.
My suggestion, then, is not to keep banging your head against a brick wall trying to change yourself into someone that you’re not, and that you’re not going to be any time soon.
Instead, focus on what you do. Even if you’re sure you’re going to hell, you can still make sure you’re treating other people with basic human respect, and engaging daily—at least, on most days—in some form of activity that is useful and helpful to others, whether paid or volunteer. Even if there is bitterness in your heart, you can stop yourself from saying and doing bitter things. Right words and actions count, even—no, especially—if they come from an inner self that is in turmoil and conflict.
In Love and Marriage, Swedenborg describes a boy who appears as a dove from a distance, and Swedenborg learns that the boy is from a new heaven of the New Church. What else does Swedenborg say about this new heaven, and how does it relate to the 3 “normal” levels and 2 “normal” kingdoms of Heaven?
Hi K,
The geography of the spiritual world is complex. It’s not always easy to figure out how everything relates to each other. Swedenborg says that this new heaven, which was formed from Christians since the time of the Lord’s first coming, is below the ancient heavens. However, he also says that within it there is a highest, middle, and lowest heaven. Presumably it also has its own two kingdoms as well.
At any rate, here are some links to key passages in Swedenborg’s writings about the new heaven, if you would like to read them for yourself:
The New Jerusalem #1–4 (click the right arrow toward the top or bottom left to read the rest of the sections)
Apocalypse Revealed, Preface
Apocalypse Revealed #612
There are many more. If you really want to dig into it, you could go to https://newchristianbiblestudy.org/swedenborg/ and type “new heaven” (including the quotes) into the search box toward the top of the page. You could also read the entry on “New Heaven” in The Swedenborg Concordance, starting here.
Hi Lee,
I just wanted to get your thoughts on this 3 part question since they are all sorta talking about the same topic.
The first question is what do you make of this statement below:
“alien encounters are what trigger the reports of spiritual experiences.”?
And for the second part: I remember reading on an “NDE research site” I think it was either
near-death or after-death
both have .com at the end. But I remember reading on an article they posted saying:
“Here are the many discriptions of the afterlife realms from a variety of sources.Note that not every experience is the Same. What one experiences after death is based on a wide varity of factors such as religous beliefs or lack of, education, experiences, perspectives…With that in mind I hope you enjoy.”
“NDEs are the same as accidentle astral projection when the astral projection is spontaniously triggered. Reported to Psychical Research in London, Mr. Wilard had Veridical dream involving his wife.”
“Yes, NDEs Can be triggered by many ways other than death such as … drugs, coma, meditation, astral projection, after death contact, death bed visions, dreams, electro shock to the brain, and controversial ones such as alien abduction, orgasm, and religious ecstasy.”?
And for the final third question is: what are your thoughts on these quotes: “Many OBErs report going out of body and being taken on an ET ships and shown all kinds of cool things, I hear that happening a lot” and that “ETs are the beings of light which is why they learn so much in NDEs”? That same guy says how he sees “Tr3b” the “triangle crafts” when driving from Arizona to California.
This is the video here that is for reference. Which the videos description reads “Here’s why the supernatural tends to beat most other hobbies, with the plus of learning secrets of the universe.”
But I just wanted to get your thoughts on these statements!
Thank you kindly Lee
Hi Sam,
On your first question:
I think it’s the other way around. Spiritual experiences are what trigger reports of alien encounters.
There is no physical evidence that aliens have visited us. If there were, it would be all over the news, and it would be common knowledge. What there is instead is people saying they have seen UFOs. Some of them are probably fakers looking for attention or clicks. But many of them probably did see something that looked like a UFO. It’s just that they saw it with their spiritual eyes rather than with their physical eyes. There was no physical object up in the sky. There was a spiritual vision of something that looked like a UFO.
Skeptics call this “hallucination,” but it’s more than that. It’s seeing things with our spiritual eyes that may not be real spiritual objects, but are more like spiritual visions of things that mean something to us. For people who believe in UFOs, the UFOs give their life meaning. The basic meaning is that we’re not alone. There are other beings out there. Life is bigger than this earth.
And there are other beings out there. It’s just that they’re in the spiritual world, not in outer space. However, because the physical senses of the people seeing them are also active, they can be superimposed on their physical surroundings, making them look like they are physical objects when they are actually spiritual objects. That’s why people will swear that they saw physical space ships up in the physical sky with their physical eyes.
On your second question:
It is true that something like a NDE can be triggered by many things other than almost dying. Anything that seriously disturbs our normal mental functioning can lead to visions or spiritual experiences. What’s happening is that the veil that usually separates our conscious mind from the spiritual world during our lifetime on earth becomes temporarily thinner, or is removed entirely, until we return to normal earthly consciousness. The result is that we become conscious of the spiritual realm, and have spiritual experiences.
As I’ve covered in many other responses, this doesn’t necessarily mean we’re seeing the spiritual world as it actually is for those who live there. More often, I think, people see something more like a spiritual movie, but a full-sensory movie, not just a movie on a flat screen. It’s as if they’re immersed in the scenes, so that they feel very real. These scenes represent things to people of various beliefs and religions, hence the differences in experience for people of different religions and beliefs, including for people who believe in UFOs. Just as our dreams are personalized to our particular mind, memories, and experiences, so these spiritual full-immersion “movies” are personalized to people’s individual mind, memories, and experiences. Each experience will be different, based on the different states of mind of the people having them.
On your third question:
Refer to the answers to question 1 and question 2 above. 🙂
Hi Lee,
Thank you so much as always for your guidance and for your time as well for just clarifying these complicated subjects into such understanding and what you said makes so much sense as always of course!
Thank you so much again Lee!
IS it possible to have an NDE without being near death?
Back in 2012 I was in a hell state, I hated god, everybody and everything (including myself) and didn’t care about lying, steeling or just being cruel and evil to others.
After work one night driving home I had this experience of unconditional love in the car with me I didn’t see anyone, but I somehow know this is Jesus Christ in the car loving me no matter what I did or thought of myself and others. That experience changed my life. I started top love others and want to serve them. I have more compassion for people that are suffering and look for ways to alleviate the pain. I want to know the truth and search it out, that’s why I’m interested in Swedenborg’s experiences, they seem to make more sense of explaining who god is and his kingdom, more so than the church I grow up in and still attend.
I just hope Swedenborg was telling the truth, and isn’t taking us all for a ride. I like his description of who god is, his aims and goals, how the after life works and is governed. his explanation on marriage, being of use to serve others, and how we can be in either heaven or hell in this life now by how were living our lives and the chooses we make.
What gives me pause about believing him is the things he got wrong, that nowadays we know are wrong, such as human life on other planets.
Hi tammi85,
I wish everyone could feel the Lord’s unconditional love the way you did. But not everyone would be able to receive it as you did, and change their lives. God picked just the right time to visit you and turn your life around.
About whether Swedenborg was telling the truth, your heart is telling you he was, but your head is throwing up obstacles. Once you overcome those obstacles, your faith will be stronger than if you had quickly and easily accepted Swedenborg’s teachings—which, he said, were simply true Christianity. You will also have a more thoughtful and well-grounded approach to these beliefs, being able to sort the spiritual wheat from the earthly chaff in Swedenborg’s writings.
You may be interested to hear that on his deathbed Swedenborg was given an opportunity to recant any of his teachings by the Rev. Arvid Ferelius, who was a Swedish Lutheran pastor in London, where Swedenborg died. This is from The Swedenborg Epic, by Cyriel O. Sigstedt:
Notice that the question was about his “theological system.” Swedenborg recorded a lot of spiritual experiences and other events in his writings that are not part of his “theological system,” but are illustrations throwing more light on it. These came from Swedenborg’s own mind and experience, not from the Lord as his Christian teachings did.
My own view is that God intentionally provided that there would be errors of material fact both in the Bible and in Swedenborg’s writings. Why? Because God wants us to read sacred literature for spiritual insight, not for material-world information. Including historical and scientific error in these sacred books weeds out skeptical people who cannot think spiritually, while pushing those who are open to spiritual understanding to think more deeply about what they are reading. Please see the section titled “Spiritual food and drink” in this article:
Eat My Flesh, Drink My Blood
In the end, you will have to make up your own mind. My suggestion is that you pay attention to the spiritual truth that answers your questions and feeds your soul, and set aside the outdated material matters such as men on the moon. How important are Swedenborg’s views about aliens compared to his teachings about the wonderful love of God?
The Logic of Love: Why God became Jesus
were his views on Marriage part of his theological system?
Hi tammi85,
That’s a very good question. It deserves a whole article of its own. But here’s the short version, in my view:
Swedenborg’s teachings about marriage originating in the divine marriage of love and wisdom in God are part of his theological system. He covers this in some of the early chapters of Marriage Love, and elsewhere in his writings. His teachings about monogamous marriage as a spiritual and eternal relationship are also part of his theological system.
However, much of the material in Marriage Love about gender roles, marriage customs, and so on are not part of his theological system. Swedenborg himself, when he was defending that book against the Swedish Lutheran Consistory’s efforts to ban it in Sweden, referred to it as “not a book of theology, but a book of morals.” (However, “morals” should probably be translated as “customs” instead.) So Swedenborg himself didn’t think of everything he wrote there as part of his theology.
What this means, practically speaking, is that Swedenborg’s ideal and teachings about faithful, loving, monogamous marriage as a spiritual and eternal relationship are something we can believe in, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept everything he said about gender roles and marriage customs, much of which comes from his 18th century European culture.
isn’t this just picking and choosing what you want to believe in and what you don’t? Choosing to believing what sounds politically correct nowadays but discarding some of the things said just because it might offend modern peoples ideas? How can this be the truth? The truth doesn’t change just because the times change.
how are you able to choose what you want to believe, yet discard what you don’t?
Hi tammi85,
Everyone picks and chooses what they will believe. It’s impossible not to do this.
Even people who claim to get all of their beliefs from the Bible pick and choose which parts of the Bible’s teachings they will accept and which they won’t. I’m not aware of any Christians who believe you should stone a wayward son to death. Yet that is a very clear teaching in the Bible. I’m not aware of any Christian who believes that you should cut of your hand or gouge out your eye if it causes offense, yet Jesus himself taught this. And how many Christians, if someone slaps them on the right cheek, will turn their face the other way so that the person can slap them on their left cheek also?
The idea that you can just turn off your brain and believe “what the Bible teaches” is an illusion. Every Christian believes in his or her particular interpretation of the Bible, including which parts of the Bible you’re supposed to follow and which parts you aren’t.
A lot of it is which parts they believe are meant to be taken literally and which parts are meant to be taken figuratively. Obviously, those two teachings of Jesus are meant to be taken figuratively. And yet, some fundamentalist Islamic sects actually do cut off a hand and the opposite foot of people who break Islamic law. So Christians could take that teaching of Jesus literally, but they don’t. Why not?
There is simply no way to turn off your brain and follow everything in the Bible—or everything in Swedenborg’s writings, either.
The real question is what principles you will adopt to decide which parts to follow literally and which parts to take figuratively or as illustrations, not as Christian doctrine.
Even if you join a church that tells you what to take literally and what to take figuratively, you have still decided to join that church. You could have joined a different church that has a different interpretation of the Bible. In other words, even if your “principle” is that you’re going to believe and do what your church says, you’ve still chosen to be part of that particular church, and not some other church that would teach you something different.
Unfortunately, people who try to turn of their brains and just believe and do what their church tells them to often get sucked into fundamentalist and cultish churches that exert huge amounts of control over them, take their money, and so on. Turning off your brain can be dangerous. The world is full of unscrupulous wolves in sheep’s clothing who will take advantage of people who are unwilling or unable to engage their thinking mind and make their own decisions about what they will and won’t believe, and how they will live their lives.
How do I choose what to believe and what to discard? I start with the two Great Commandments. On those two commandments, Jesus said, hang all the Law and the Prophets—meaning the entire Bible. In other words, the most important teaching in Scripture is that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Everything else in Scripture depends on these two commandments—and for Christians, should be interpreted according to them.
Right off the bat, any teaching that conflicts with the Great Commandments is something I discard. If I am being told that I must hate and condemn certain people because they believe the wrong thing or live the wrong way, I know it is false, and the person saying it is a false teacher, because it conflicts with the second Great Commandment.
In short, I evaluate everything based on whether it supports or conflicts with the two Great Commandments. And there are many beliefs in the so-called Christian Churches that conflict with the two Great Commandments.
Where I go from there would require a whole book, not just an article. But at least this gives a foundation for how to evaluate different beliefs and the actions that flow from them. For example, cutting off someone’s hand or gouging out their eye because they are “sinners” is not loving our neighbor as ourselves. It is engaging in horrific violence. That’s how I know that doing so is not Christian because it is contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
And so on.
You, also, will have to make up your own mind what you will believe and what you will discard. It is impossible to avoid doing this. Even giving someone else, such as a minister or a church, the authority to tell you what to believe and how to live is making a choice about what you will believe and how you will live.
I would suggest that if you want to be a true Christian, you also start with the two Great Commandments, and see where they lead you. Look at this or that idea, teaching, or doctrine, and ask yourself: Does it put love for God first, love for other people second, and everything else third? If not, then don’t believe it, and don’t live according to it.
Over in the afterlife body article, in a response to a post I wrote, you replied with:
[there’s no external environment independent from internal state of mind as there is here on earth]
Sounds sorta like the more New Age-y idea from multiple sources that the New Church afterlife is in some so-called plane of illusion or summerland that beings ultimately only temprorarily reside in, before moving on to higher planes of existence. Like in The Road to Immortality by Geraldine Cummins, or the “The Belief System Territories” that Bruce Moen (of afterlife-knowldege [dot] com) believed in.
Either way, being stuck in a realm that is just a projection of mind does not sound so great.
Hi K,
The spiritual world is not a plane of illusion. In fact, it is far more real than the physical world. It is created and continually sustained by God, just as the physical world is created and continually sustained by God. The difference is that the spiritual world immediately responds to our mental and emotional states, whereas the physical world does so only by direct physical manipulation, as in, when we build a house that fits our character and aesthetic sensibilities.
In the spiritual world, there is no need to physically build the house (though you can do so if you want to). The house will spontaneously appear corresponding perfectly to your character and aesthetic sensibilities. And it will be just as real and solid as—indeed, as I just said, even more real and solid than—the physical house that you built with your hands.
It is not a mere virtual world being projected by consciousness that actually has no reality or solidity to it. It is a solid, real world created by God just as the physical world is.
That’s a critical distinction. We do not create our own reality. God creates our reality for us and in response to us. This is where the New Age is critically wrong. It takes God out of the equation, and therefore completely misreads the nature of reality, both physical and spiritual.
As for being stuck, we’ve already been over that. Nobody is stuck in anything in heaven. Everyone is living his or her ideal life. And no, as covered above, it’s not a “projection of mind.” It’s a real world that is responsive to mind.
If everything in the realm reflects thought (even if created by someone else), and there is “no external environment independent from internal state of mind”, then it does feel like some sort of dream realm (albeit a very vivid one). And I said stuck because one cannot leave it (like Christopher Hitchens mentioned with that celestial North Korea analogy, but hopefully sans the totalitarianism) in New Church theology AFAIK.
Hi K,
This physical realm also reflects our mental landscape, except in a less dynamic and responsive way. Really, the only difference is the responsiveness, and the more living character of spiritual substance compared to physical matter. The spiritual realm is not a dream realm any more than the physical realm is a dream realm. Once again, it is far more real than the physical realm, which will feel like a shadowy dream by comparison.
And . . . if you are living the best life you can possibly imagine, with full freedom to do whatever you want to do, why would you want to leave? It would be like sitting down to a meal of your favorite foods, perfectly prepared, and then saying, “Nah, I’d rather eat that cardboard box over there.”
The actual experience of heaven is quite literally the polar opposite of the nightmare scenario of Hitchens’s fevered imagination.
In the Hitchens argument, God is watching you all the time (both in the physical and in the spiritual), so there seems to be at least the surveillance aspect, even if God is not the tyrannical type?
As for the stuck thing, even if the eternal realm is not like being in a dream one can never wake up from, for me there is still that being stuck in a body concern (which hopefully is not the case).
Hi K,
“Surveillance” assumes ill intent. Surveillance is used to control people. That’s not what God is doing. God is leaving us completely free. God never forces us to do anything, never misleads us, never violates our freedom in any way. That’s why “surveillance” is an incorrect term for God’s omniscience.
As for the “stuck” thing, I don’t have much more to say that I haven’t already said. It’s not gonna happen. And you’re gonna be pleasantly surprised when you get there.