Swedenborg: The Father of Astral Projection

[Berserk]

Emanuel Swedenborg was a prolific writer and my array of topics is highly selective and based on my own interests. My major source for replies I-II is my favorite book on ES: Wilson Van Dusen, "The Presence of Other Worlds: The Psychological/ Spiritual Findings of Emanuel Swedenborg." Both in I-II and the current post, I summarize Van Dusen's lengthy reports. My reports are also shaped by insights from the more scholarly work by Enrst Benz, "Emanuel Swedenborg: Vsionary Savant in the Age of Reason."

Modern astral adepts too often ignore the contradictions inherent in each other's astral "insights." More serious is their failure to come to terms with Emanuel Swedenborg [hereafter ES], the man who arguably deserves the title "The Father of Astral Projection." By the way, I am not a Swedenborgian. My thread will briefly expose the reader to ES's discoveries in the hope of inspiring discussion and debate on the extent to which his insights can or should be reconciled with those of modern astral adepts. ES is truly an original: he lived long before the emergence of modern New Age perspectives and can therefore serve as a useful foil for assessing the extent to which modern adepts are unwittingly duped by a misguided occult consensus. To provide the discussion focus and direction, I will now specify the sequence in which I will summarize aspects of ES's life and research.

I. SWEDENBORG: A SCIENTIFIC GENIUS
II. SWDENBORG'S EVOLVING METHODOLOGY
III. HIS VERIFICATIONS OF HIS CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAD
IV. HIS VERIFICATIONS OF HIS CONVERSATIONS WITH ANGELS
V. THREE INITIAL STATES AFTER DEATH
VI. SWEDENBORG ON THE NATURE OF HEAVEN AND HELL
VII. SWEDENBORG'S THEORY OF CORRESPONDENCES
(1) THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN SPACE AND DISTANCE IN
POSTMORTEM EXPERIENCE
(2) EVOLUTION AND CORRESPONDENCE
(3) SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS THAT SEEM TO VERIFY SWEDENBORG'S
INSIGHTS INTO ENERGY SPHERES
(4) THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE HEAVENLY REALM AND ONE'S
INNER REALITY
(5) CORRESPONDENCE: THE KEY TO DIVINATION
VIII. SWEDENBORG ON SOUL RETRIEVALS
IX. SWEDENBORG ON REINCARNATION
(1) SWEDENBORG'S DISCOVERY THAT PAST LIFE RECALL PROVIDES NO
EVIDENCE FOR REINCARNATOIN
(2) A SWEDENBORGIAN CRITIQUE OF THE NEW AGE CONCEPT OF THE
GROUP SOUL

In this post, I will elaborate only I-II of my announced agneda.

I. SWEDENBORG: A SCIENTIFIC GENIUS

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772 AD) spent the first part of his life absorbing the scientific knowledge of his era and wrote over 100 scientific works. He also mastered a repertoire of technical trades. His primary occupation was that of mining engineer and inspector of mines. But he was a ground-breaking thinker in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and astronomy. For example, he is particulary famous his nebular hypothesis. He also made major contributions in anatomy and the neurosciences. For example, he was the first to discover the functions of the brain's cerebellum. He recognized a special funtion of the pituitary gland two centuries before modern endocrinology. He was a metallurgist and is credited with founding the science of crystallography. He also directed a project that moved ships over 14 miles of mountains and valleys. He designed stoves, an ear ♥♥♥♥♥et, pumps and fire extinguishers, and a flying machine. The list goes on and on.

At age 56 in the 1740s, he shifted his focus to the nature of the pysche or soul. ln 36 volumes he recorded and interpreted his dreams and, in the process, anticipated many modern psychoanalytic insights. He quickly realized that anatomical and neurological would not be very helpful in this new quest. His former scientific approach was inadequate for such elusive matters. This realization catapulted him down the road to mysticism and astral exploration.

II. SWEDENBORG'S EVOLVING METHODOLOGY

Without knowing it, ES engaged from childhood in a meditation akin to Yogic and Buddhist practices. He would relax, close his eyes, and focus in with total concentration on a scientific problem. At the same time, his breathing would nearly stop and his awareness of the outer world and even bodily sensation would diminish to the point of vanishing. He whole existence would focus on the one issue he wanted to understand.

What began as an intensely intellectual form of meditation ultimately progressed to an exploration of his dreams, the hypnagogic state, and later, trances. The hypnagogic sate is experienced twice a day as one goes into and out of sleep. Few people have the discipline and focus to explore the spontaneous wellsprings of mind that bubble up from this state. ES learned to converse with its symbolic inner processes. Those who really explore this state can linger for hours watching scenes and hearing things said. For some reason, some people are primarily visual during this state, and others, like myself, are primarily auditory.

In the hypnagogic state, something is said or seen before there is any possibility of grasping its meaning. For example, in this state ES gains this insight: "As to pleasure, wealth, and rank, which I had pursued, I perceived that all was vanity and that he is the happier who is devoid of such things. ..I seemed to hear a hen cackling, as she does when she has laid an egg." ES later realizes that chickens are not very bright. Symbolically, his mind is warning him that his insight is nothing to be proud of and must be only the prelude to far more profound insights.

The sphere which most people rule within their minds is relatively small. Unlike ES, the average person would find it very hard to hold one thought, image, or intention in mind for even one minute. In the hypnogogic state, one can watch thoughts form and be spoken without one's behest. Further, the inner processes think faster and more cleverly than the meditator and the symbolic language spoken may not even be understood. By inspecting feelings, associations, and the situation being symbolized, it is possible to penetrate the symbol.

For ES these inner states suggest the presence of other spiritual beings interacting with our lives. Those who scoff at this suggestion have rarely shared ES's determination to use the hypnogogic state as a springboard for more vivid waking trance states and ultimately for visits to the World of Spirits, the Hells, and the Heavens. By contrast, we generally experience such inner states merely as pieces of the unconscious self bubbling to the surface. ES's communal notion of of the earthly self would embrace both perspectives as valid!

ES's exploration of this threshold state was a key to his later breakthrough as an astral adept. But there was another decisive factor that I recently discovered by perusing Ernst Benz's biography:

"At Easter, 1744, Swedenborg fell off his bed and found himself gazing into Jesus' face, radiant with warmth and love. This was a new starting point for his individuation, culminating a year later in spirit vision and a commission from God to give humankind a new religious revelation. This combined an esoteric view of God, heaven, and earth with a strong desire for a pietist reform of Lutheran orthodoxy (p. xx)." Lutheran orthodoxy would dismiss him as a heretic, but his revelations ultimately made him the father of modern spiritualism and astral projection.

To add a persnal note, I have had three interesting experiences with the hypnagogic threshold: (1) When I was a teenager, my brother Doug was on the verge of awaking when he was frightened by the spectre of a tall form leaning over my bed across from his. Doug initially thought it was my Mom, but when he called her name, the figure turned and proved to be a stranger. He still swears that he was fully awake when he witnessed that spectre. It seems more likely that he was fooled by the threshold between sleeping and awakening. But then was the spectre an astral spirit or merely an imaginary dream figure?

(2) I have often awakened to a whirring sound as if I were rotating rapidly at the end of a washing machine cycle. Was I re-entering my body after a forgotten OBE? (3) I have also often awakened to the sound of someone shouting at me. At first I would think someone was outside the house, but I would soon realize that the shouting was generated in this sleep threshold period. But was I hearing the end of a forgotten communication from an astral spirit? I remain skepical of any astral significance for (1)-(3), but ES's exploration of this threshold state often makes me wonder.

I am also haunted by a discovery made by David Fontana. Upon awaking, he was often frightened by an occasional sense that an invisible stranger was in his bedroom. Further exploration taught him that the stranger was in fact his own spirit returning to his body after a forgotten astral adventure.

ES's Discernment of the Genuineness of his Paranormal Enounters:

As his consciousness expands from dreams and hypnogogic states to waking trances, conversations with demons and angels, and visits to the afterlife territories, ES actively seeks out ways of validating his experiences. In all these psychic states, he begins to experience the little-known phenomenon called photism or orbs of light. The meditator seeking guidance finds a signal system to guide him. ES sees an affirming flame. He observes: "Such a flame appeared to me so often, and indeed, in different sizes in a diversity of color and splendor, that during some months when I was writing a certain work, hardly a day passed in which a flame did not appear as vividly as the flame of a household hearth." Most people who experience orbs are puzzled by by their significance. ES tested the validity of his flame and soon discovered that it was "a sign of approval." He could, for example, correlate it with his scientific breakthroughs. Both by its color and warmth, his flame symbolizes love and feeling. During his expanded awareness, ES begins experiencing his guiding flame during his daytime trances and visions as well.

Too many modern astral adepts tend to accept the entities they encounter at face value without rigorously discerning their positive or negative ambience. ES's passion to encounter the divine reinforces his discipline and resolve to test the spirits by sorting out their quality and usefulness. He even experiences automatic writing. He'd feel his hand being seized by lower-order spirits and forced to write things about biblical figures that he didn't even approve of. But his most impressive verifications derive from evidence that he can truly contact the dead and gain from angels information that at times cannot be gleaned from the minds of incarnate humans.

Don

[CFTraveler]

Thanks for the fascinating essay. One thing I should mention, is that some postmodern projectors, myself being one of them, consider the hypnagogic state to be a combination of many phenomena, one of communication with 'external' or 'other' beings, other versions of self, and projections of the subconscious- not necessarily to the exclusion of each other. Rewritten on edit- CF 3/9/07

[Tempestinateapot]

These are Berserk's original writings. He's going to be posting more, some of which I've already read. I asked him to post this, as it is really interesting. When he "copies" something, he puts it in quotes within the body of the post, and cites the author. I think he's left off the bibliography, or whatever it is he uses to quote his sources. I asked him the same thing when I read his original.

Don, I noticed several quotes, but not the author. Would you add that in? I told you Robert is fussy about that, and so are our mods. :D

[Berserk]

ES was a prolific writer and my array of topics is highly selective and based on my own interests. My major source for replies I-II is my favorite book on ES: Wilson Van Dusen, "The Presence of Other Worlds: The Psychological/ Spiritual Findings of Emanuel Swedenborg." Both in I-II and the current post, I summarize Van Dusen's lengthy reports. My reports are also shaped by insights from the more scholarly work by Enrst Benz, "Emanuel Swedenborg: Vsionary Savant in the Age of Reason."

III. ES's VERIFICATIONS OF HIS CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAD

ES never contacted the dead just to satisfy the voyeuristic curiosity of supplicants; rather, he had to be convinced that such contacts would benefit them spiritually. By his own admission, ES experienced hundreds of spectacular verifications of his gift of contacting deceased souls and angels in the spirit world. But he mentioned none of these in his prolific writings. The confirmatory incidents were all recorded out of the astonishment of the eyewitnesses. ES refrained from disclosing his verifications for at least two reasons:

(a) He believes that miracles have a coercive effect on belief that too often undermines the quality of free will in spiritual matters. In his view, impressive miracles tend to affect only the externals of belief. In time, the internal, freely chosen path comes to rule and even miraculous events are washed away and forgotten in the current of time. God has created us to FEEL or intuit our way to Him, not to THINK our way to Him. True, feelings can be shallow and unreliable. ES is referring to our higher-level feelings that are rooted in a truly loving mpulse that can tune in to God's loving essence. Even Jesus questions the power of miracles to convince skeptics to embrace spiritual truths in a life-transforming way (Luke 16:31).

(b) Besides, ES's gift is ridiculed by many of his contemporaries. For example, consider this incident witnessed by Dr. Krohl. One day at a large social gathering, Bishop Troilius decided "to amuse himself and the rest of the company at ES's expense." He derisively posed this challenge to ES: "By the way, ...tell us something about the spirit world. How does my friend Broman spend his time there?" ES answered instantly, "I saw him just a few hours ago shuffling cards in the presence of the Evil One, and he was only waiting for your worship to make a game of Tresett." An embarrassed Troilius had not told ES that Broman was one of his gambling buddies and that their card game of choice was Tresett! Dr. Krohl notes, "The conversation...was thus brought to a close, and it is not difficult to see which of the two became the subject of the company's mirth."

Perhaps, ES's allusion to "the Evil One" was meant tongue-in-cheek to knock Troilius down a peg. The ensuing 3 incidents seem even more compelling: (1) ES was once summoned for an audience with swedish Queen Lousia Ulrica. She asked him if he could really converse with the dead. When ES said "yes", she invited him and Count Sheffer to retire to a quiet spot where she asked ES to take a commission to her deceased brother. The queen and her brother had been separated because their countries were at war when he died. She did not really believe in ES's abilities. Still, at his next audience with her, she lightly asked if he had a message from her brother. ES suggested that they speak alone. The queen was later described as in shock, so indisposed that she had to retire. She said later that ES had revealed what no living person knew about her brother. The message must have been intensely personal because neither ES nor the queen ever revealed it.

(2) Around 1770 AD a merchant from Elberfield visited ES after he had moved to Amsterdam. He convinced ES that he had a burning spiritual quest and asked him if he could visit a recent deceased friend and ask him about their last conversation. ES asked his friend's name and then asked the merchant to return in a few days. Upon his return, ES smiled and said, "I have spoken with your friend; the subject of your conversation was the restitution of all things." If ES had simply read the merchant's mind, one might expect ES's ESP to be limited to the last conversational subject in general. But ES then accurately expounded in great detail the different positions that the merchant and his deceased friend had defended. The merchant turned pale and asked, "Is he in a state of blessedness?" ES replied, "No, he is not yet in heaven; he is still in Hades, and torments himself continually with the idea of the restitution of all things." The merchant exclaimed, "My God! What, in the other world?" ES replied, "Certainly; a man takes with him his favorite inclinations and opinions, and it is very difficult to be divested of them. We ought, therefore, to lay them aside here." The awstruck merchant then went back to Elberfield and shared his confirmatory story.

(3) A skeptic might try to explain incidents (1) and (2) in terms of ESP derived from the minds of the living. But our next incident seems to preclude that explanation. In 1761 a countesse M. de Marteville came to ES and explained that her husband, the Dutch ambassador to Sweden, had just died. He had given her a costly silver service just before he died and now the silversmith was demanding payment that she could no longer afford. Besides, she felt certain that her husband had already paid for it. She asked ES to contact her husband about the receipt. ES agreed and 3 days later he visited her and reported what her husband had told him. The receipt, it seems, was in an upstairs bureau. She protested that she had already searched that bureau. But the deceased husband had told ES that she should look for a secret compartment behind a certain drawer. the woman promptly went upstairs with ES, and to her astonishment, found the receipt, together with other important papers. No one alive had known about this secret compartment.

To me, ES's verifications of information gleaned from angels are even more impressive. I will document this in my next scheduled post.

Don

[Berserk]

IV. ES's VERIFICATIONS OF HIS CONVERSATIONS WITH ANGELS

ES claims that everyone has both angels from Heaven and spirits from Hell with them all the time, normally two of each. He applies the term "angel" to discarnate humans in Heaven as opposed to Hell and the intermediary realm he calls "The World of Spirits." His practiced mastery of discernment allows him to distinguish angels from the deceptive hellbound spirits. Lower-order spirits like to pretend that they can predict and even control the future, but they cannot. Modern astral adepts have seldom penetrated the heavens, and so, are often deceived by hallucinatory encounters with lower-order spirits. But the Lord, Heaven, and angels essentially transcend time. So anyone in contact with them can potentially read the past, present, and future, and even verify their contacts with the dead.

At first sight, some of ES's clairvoyant revelations might be due to ESP gleaned from the minds of eyewitnesses. Condider these 2 cases: (1) Chris Springer was a Swedish politician and a close friend of ES. Springer had been a major player in the secret negotiations between Sweden and Prussia. After ES's death, Springer revealed that ES had psychically gleaned detailed knowledge of these negotiations. ES discerned such details as who was present, what money was offered, what Springer had done, and why he had done it. (2) In the middle of a conversation at an Amsterdam party, ES lost his awareness of those around him and entered a deep trance. When he recovered, his dismayed associates asked him what had happened, but he initially refused to say. But after much coaxing, he soberly described how Emperor Peter III of Russia had just been strangled in a prison in Kopsha, Russia. He advised partygoers to note the date and his description, so they could later verify it from newspaper accounts. A few days later, the local papers confirmed his report.

Skeptics challenged his ability to receive such premonitions. His sister had died without his knowing it. When chided about this, he explained that he was emotionally distant from her at the time of her death and, in any case, had not asked his angels about her. When he did ask his angels to reveal when someone would die, he received accurate clairvoyance. Two episodes illustrate this:

(1) At a Stockholm gathering, ES was challenged by skeptics to a test: he was asked to identify who of those present would die first. ES immediately entered a profound state of meditation. After a while, he shared the angels' reply: "Olof Olofsohn will die tomorrow morning at 4;45 AM." This confident prediction transformed the mood of those present to one of anxious expectation. One of Olofsohn's friends went to his house the next morning to test the prediction. En route, he met one of Olofsohn's servants who informed him that his master had just died from a fit of apoplexy. The clock in his home had stopped at the very moment he had expired and the hand pointed to 4:45!

This episode reminds me of 3 deaths in the Long family. Nick Long died suddenly from a heart attack while a young man. His son, Nick, Jr., was later distraught over a failed marriage and hung himself while his mother, Eleanor, was attending a funeral at my church. Eleanor herself was killed in a fiery car crash a year later. Eleanor's death hit me very hard because she was always very kind to me. A week prior to her death, she had a dream in which several deceased relatives visited her home. Her late husband came downstairs and asked her, "Honey, do you want to dance?" Eleanor would ordinarily never turn down her husband's offer to dance, but she sensed that dancing was a symbol for her imminent passing. So she replied, "Oh no, I'm not ready yet!" These 3 deaths in the Long family had one thing in common with Ofofsohn's death: the clock in teir living room stopped at the time of death for all 3 of the Longs!

(2) ES's ability to receive accurate death premonitions from angels is dramatically corroborated by an exchange of letters with John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. ES wrote Wesley an unexpected letter, saying, "I have been informed in the world of spirits that you have a strong desire to converse with me; I shall be happy to see you if you will favor me with a visit." Wesley received the letter in an English drawing room just as he and his followers were preparing for an extended speaking tour. Wesley told those present that he was indeed eager to meet ES, but had told no one about this. He wrote ES that their meeting would have to be postponed for 6 months until the completion of his speaking tour. ES wrote back, apologizing that he could not meet him at that time because he was to die on the 29th of the next month, which, of course, he did.

My Dad's friend Helmut can attest that ES's premonition about the exact date of his passing is not unprecedented. Helmut's Dad always said he would die on his 91st birthday. When that day arrived, he had no obvious health problems and no one dared comment of the fateful date. He had a good breakfast and cheerfully announced he was going to take a nap. He passed away peacefully durIng the nap just as he'd always predicted.

ES receives angelic clairvoyance of 3 accidents or acts of Nature, none of which can satisfactorily be explained in terms of ESP tapping the minds of eyewitnesses. (1) In ES's day the uncertainties of wind and weather made it impossible to predetermine how many days a long sailing trip might take. Sea captains generally took his presence on a ship as a sign that the journey would be safe and swift. ES claimed he never feared these journeys because he had angels with him. Those angels demonstrated their presence in a conversation ES had with a Captain Dixon as they embarked on a trip from London to Stockholm. ES accurately predicted that the ship would arrive in Stockholm at 2 PM in exactly a week.

(2) On July 17, 1750, he and 15 others were guests of the prominent merchant William Castel in Gothenberg at his fine home on Canal St. At 6 PM, ES suddenly turned pale. When asked what was wrong, he described a fire burning out of control at that moment in distant Stockholm. in principle, he moght have acquired this information by ESP gleaned from the minds of Stockholm's residents. But the ESP explanation cannot satisfactorily account for his detailed knowledge of the fire's course. He described where it had started and where it was burning, including the inceration of a friend's house and the fact that the fire burned itself out just before it arrived at ES's home. The next day the governor summoned ES and sought and received his report on the fire which was confirmed in detail the following day.

(3) In 1770, ES attended a social event in his honor in Gothenberg. he sat beside Bolander, the owner of extensive cloth-mills. During dinner, ES abruptly turned to Bolander and sharply instructed him: "Sir, you had better go to your mills!" Bolander was taken aback at his rudeness, but nevertheless left the table and hurried to his mills. A large piece of cloth had just fallen near the furnace and had begun to burn. He arrived just in time to prevent his property from being reduced to ashes. When he returned, he thanked ES. ES smiled and explained that he had spoken so abruptly because he had "seen" that the danger was imminent.

Don

P.S. the ES anecdotes in this post are summaries drawn from van Dusen.

[Berserk]

ES's anticipation of the exact date and time of his own passing and that of others raises the question of whether our future is predetermined in important ways. For now, I don't want to probe the complexities of this issue, apart from confessing that I don't believe in either karma or a rigidly predestined future. Rather, I prefer to share Albert Baldeo's related synchronistic experience. Albert is a retired Protestant pastor and a friend of my parents. He recently shared his remarkable death vigil with me. His Dad lay dying in a nursing home in British Columbia, Canada. Jiust before he passed over, Albert witnessed his Dad sit up, brighten visibly, and shout, "Hurry up, brother! Hurry up!" Seconds later his Dad was gone--at 12 noon on a Tuesday.

A puzzled Albert soon discovered the significance of this bizarre episode. Albert was unaware of an incredible synchronicity during his death vigil. His Dad's brother simultaneously lay dying in the presence of loved ones about 10 miles away. Just before passing, he too sat up, opened his eyes, and shouted, "Wait for me, brother! Wait for me!" Then he died at 12 noon on Tuesday at the same time as his brother. Somehow both brothers were able to see each other's departing spirits while they were still able to function consciously with open eyes through their physical bodies. One brother was prodding the other to catch up to hiim and othe other brother tried to comply. No published NDE impresses me more for its evidential value that this one.

Don

[Berserk]

V. THREE INITIAL STATES AFTER DEATH

I take seriously what ES's astral explorations have revealed on this subject because of his many awesome verifications of his conversations with angels and other discarnate humans. My source here is ES's classic book "Heaven and Hell" (= HH) from which I will now quote extensively:

"When we die, we are still alive and just as human as ever. To convince me of this, [the Lord] has allowed me to talk with almost all the people I have ever met during their physical lives, with some for a few hours, with some for weeks and months, and some for years. This was primarily so that I could be convinced and bear witness (437)."

"There are three states that we pass through after death before we arrive at either heaven or hell. The first state is one of more outward concerns. The second is one of more inward concerns, and the third is one of preparation. We go through all three states in the world of spirits. Some people do not go through these states, but are either raised into heaven or cast into hell immediately after their death (HH 491)."

The "world of spirits" is a transitional state between the heavens and hells and seems to be the equivalent of Focus 24-26 in the Robert Monroe nomenclature. The highest level of the world of spirits seems to be the equivalent of Focus 27. In biblical terms, the world of spirits embraces Hades (not to be confused with Hell) in its lower planes and Paradise, an old Persian term for "park," in its upper planes.

(1) OUR FIRST STATE AFTER DEATH

"We use the outward aspects of our spirit to adapt our bodies in the world--especially our faces, our speech, and behavior--to our interactions with other people. The more inward aspects of our spirit are the ones proper to our intentions and consequent thought, which rarely show in faces, speech, and behavior. We are trained from infancy to present ourselves as friendly, benevolent, and honest, and to conceal the thoughts of our own intentions. As a result, of this habitual behavior, we scarely know our inner natures and pay no attention to them (HH 492)."

"Our first state after death is like our state in the world, since we are then similarly involved in outward concerns. We have similar faces, voices, and character; we lead similar moral and civic lives. That is why it still seems to us as though we were in this world unless we notice things that are out of the ordinary (HH 493)."

Most NDEs are marvelous experiences. But ES chillingly insists that the initial postmortem state is normally wonderful even for people who will ultimately find their way to a hell. ES's mention of their trips to gorgeous gardens and parks in the first state recalls descriptions of Focus 27:

"Their friends...take them around to various places, into the company of different people. They go to different cities, to gardens and parks, often to gorgeous ones because things like that appeal to the outward concerns they are involved in. Many of them think they will make it into heaven because they led moral and civic lives in the world, not reflecting that both good and evil people lead similar outward lives (HH 495)."

ES adds that "the first state after death...rarely lasts more than a year for anyone (HH 498)." This fits neatly with modern research on contacts received by the recently bereaved from deceased loved ones. One study indicated that 50% of Americans and 48% of the British report convincing contacts with their deceased loved ones within the first year since their death. After that, the number of such contacts dramatically dwindles. Making such contacts is much harder for those who have moved on from the world of spirits to a heaven or a hell.

(2) OUR SECOND STATE AFTER DEATH

"Our second state after death is called a state of our deeper interests because then we are given access to the deeper reaches of our minds, or of our intentions and thoughts, while the more outward interests that engaged us in the first state become dormant (HH 499)." "We as spirits are brought...into the state of those deeper intentions and consequent thoughts we engaged in when we were left to ourselves in the world and our thinking was free and unfettered (HH 502)."

At this stage we shed aspects of self that were shaped by social expectations, peer pressure, and the need to present an acceptable presenting self that can mask our inner self. As a result, "people who were inwardly devoted to the good...then behave..more wisely than when they were living in the world...In contrast, people who were focused on evil...then behave more insanely then when they were in the world (HH 505)." It now becomes impossible to act one way and inwardly be another. The person pauses at this threshold world long enough to become one with her own nature.

"Once people like this are in the second state, they are let back into the state of their more outward concerns for brief periods of time. They then retain a memory of how they behaved when they were in the state of their more inward concerns. Some of them are embarrassed and admit they were insane. Some of them are not embarrassed at all. Some of them resent the fact that they are not allowed to be in the state of their more outward concerns all the time, but they are shown what they would be like if they were continually in this state. They would constantly be trying to do the same things covertly, misleading people of simple heart and faith with simulations of goodness, honesty, and fairness. They would destroy themselves completely because eventually their outer natures would be ablaze with the same fire as their inner natures (HH 506)."

"The things they [evil people] had done and said in secret are now made public, too, because now, since outward factors are not constraining them, they say the same things openly, and they keep trying to do the same things without any fear for the reputations they had in the world...They [visually] look to angels and good spirits like the [evil] people they really are (HH 507)."

(3) OUR THIRD STATE AFTER DEATH

"Our third state after death is one of instruction. This state is for people who are entering heaven and becoming angels and not for people who are entering hell, because the latter cannot be taught (HH 512)." Their close-mindedness prevents them from sensing the vast heavenly world beyond the world of spirits. "As a result, their second state... ends in their turning straight toward...the hellish community that is engaged in a love like their own." The general intention of the hells is to ignore God and vault the interests of self above all others.

Heaven is not just reserved for Christians. On the one hand, ES casually mentions bishops he has encountered in hell. On the other hand, humble and teachable agnostics who have lived the equivalent of a loving Christian life will then be "taught things like that God exists, that heaven and hell exist, that there is a life after death, that God is to be loved above all, and our neighbor as ourselves, and that we are to believe what is said in the Word because the Word is divine (HH 512)."

Don

[Palehorse Redivivus]

Berserk... are you the same Berserk I knew way back when? If so, good to see ya. :D If not... good to see ya anyway! Heh.

As I'm off to lose consciousness pretty soon I can't read this whole thread right now, but I've been intrigued by Swedenborg for a while, so I will be. :)

[Beekeeper]

This is certainly interesting reading, Don. Thank you for what you are sharing with us. I found myself wondering if ES was ever accused of witchcraft.

[Berserk]

VI. ES ON THE NATURE OF HEAVEN AND HELL: PART ONE--HELL

[Yes, Palehorse, I am the same. I have more recently been passing myself off as "Deadworm," my handle when I began this thread.]

For ES all of earthly life is a preparation for a postmortem existence in which our core desires and feelings towards others cannot be hidden in face-to-face encounters. In the next life we naturally gravitate towards people who share our values and want to play by our rules. Besides, in the spiritual world there is no discrepancy between physical proximity and spiritual remoteness. Essential affinity is presence, and essential incompatibility is distance. For these reasons, “the Lord never turns His face away from anyone or spurns anyone, never casts anyone into hell or is angry (HH 545).” “The divine aura that emanates from the Lord is a constant effort to save everyone (HH 595).” “The Lord does not punish anyone: demonic society itself does (AC 245)” and its denizens ultmately choose that society because they feel most comfortable there. The various levels of hell are appallingly squalid “in heaven’s light,” but quite glamorous in their own light (e. g. HH 553).. Spirits who look “bad” to the “good” will look attractive to the “bad” who share the same core desires and values. "When spirits voluntarily arrive at their hell and go in, they are accepted cordially at first and think that they have arrived among friends. This lasts only a few hours, though. All the while they are being probed to find out how crafty they are and, therefore, how powerful. Once this probing is complete, the attacks begin in various ways (HH 574).” “The hells are governed by means of angels [righteous discarnate humans] who are given the ability to look into the hells and check the insanities and riots there. Sometimes angels are sent there and their very presence brings matters under control (HH 342).”

“These two loves, love for oneself and love for the world, rule in the hells and actually constitute the hells...Love for the Lord and love for one’s neighbor rule in the heavens and actually constitute the heavens (HH 554).” ES identifies 3 basic levels of hells, each of which contains countless communities based on subtle distinctions determined by the principle like attracts like. (1) The first and mildest level supremely values brute force and is focused on behavior. Here no one trusts anyone: one must either control or be controlled. Spirits are reluctantly forced into alliances not out of sympathy, but out of common resentment of a common enemy. Spirits are insensitive to the motivations of their partners because they are insensitive to their own motivations. Yet in their minds, they are often “happy” because they enjoy the thrill of vengeance and the hatred that fuels it. They establish new emotional normals. Alliances are constantly broken down and reformed with new members as one’s role fluctuates from victim to victimizer.

(2) The 2nd level of hells focuses not on brute force, but on the workings of the human mind. Spirits here will try to con you out of anything you own. Here your intellect is focused not on the effort to understand things as they are, but to create the illusion that they are as you want them to
be. The goal is not a cooperative venture to solve mysteries, but an egotistic obsession with defending one’s point of view.


(3)The 3rd level of hells focuses on the workings of the human heart Spirits here will try to work on your feelings until you have no will of your own. ES associates the 3rd hell with the malignant creation of illusions. Our feelings, undisciplined by rationality or realism, construct fantasy worlds where anything can happen. Everyone at this level is a creator as well, which means that cosmic conflicts constantly erupt in which the odds are all against you. Occasionally, you may prevail and your illlusions may invade the minds of your opponents; but more often you find yourself to be the martyr. But in each mental battle, the winners become special targets in the next conflict.

Don

P. S. This post is heavily dependent on George Dole's book on ES--"Freedom and Evil: A Pilgrim's Guide to Hell." But several qutes from "Heaven and Hell" are interspersed.

[Ioolo]

Fantastic read! I had only read briefly about ES but he was a true inspiration. Thanks for sharing :D

[Berserk]

[Thans Ioolo]

PART TWO: HEAVEN

In the heavens communication is telepathic, and so, is no longer based on human languages. As ES puts it, "They are not able to utter...any name (AC 1876)." There is no time as we know it in the heavens. This transcendence of time explains why ES's angels can be so accurate in their predictions. Modern adepts are often fooled by astral predictions that emanate from ignorant but pretentious lower planes.

ES encounters beings from other planets in the universe who expand the immensity of heaven. In the heavens, everyone lives in societies with people of similar uses and disposition. The stereotype of a boring heaven of sterile rest and worship is admittedly reinforced by many Christians. But ES's astral travels reveal that heaven is far from a place of ideness. Everyone there has spiritual work to do:

"Some spirits have believed that heavenly happiness consisted of a life of leisure. Then they were shown in many ways that heavenly life consists of...thoughtful actions...that are services to others...So that these people might feel shame...they are allowed to perceive what kind of life this [idleness] would be. They see that it is thoroughly miserable (HH 403)."

ES's picture fits neatly with biblical teaching. St. Paul asks rhetorically: "Don't you know that the saints will judge the world?...Don't you know that we will judge angels (1 Corinthians 6:2-3)?" The Greek for "judge" can be translated "exercise jursidiction over" and the Greek for "world" ("kosmos") can be translated "universe". So Paul's questions might be translated; "Don't you know that we will have jurisdiction over angel?" and "Don't you know that the saints will exercise jurisdiction over the universe?" Thus understood, the latter question may imply a future role for humans as co-creators with God in new universes! In this regard, the identity of the "us" in Genesis 1:27 is intriguing: "Let us make man in our image." This can be neither a literary we nor a reference to the Trinity. So the "us" may refer to intelligent beings from prior creations and may thus hint at our ultimate destiny. ES learns that there is government in heaven, but only those who are truly useful to others are allowed such power. This insight parallels Jesus claim that the extent of personal civic jurisdiction in heaven depends on one's faithfulness in performing earthly responsibilities (Luke 19:16-19).

Spirits in the hells and the intermediate realm (ES's "world of spirits") are visible to souls in the heavens. But "the heavens are not visible to spirits in the world of spirits unless their spiritual sight has been opened (HH 583)." Those bound for heaven sense that there is an ultimate higher power and are determined to relate to it.

In my view, Robert Monroe's aversion to the loving God of conventional spiritualities prevents him from exploring the heavens beyond Focus 27. Some of his "Knowns" seem traceable to misunderstandings emanating from the lower astral planes: e.g.

"These to me are Knowns: This, our Creator...does not demand worship, adoration, or recognition, does not punish for `evil' or `misdeeds', does not intercede or interdict in our life activity (UJ 224-25)."

His biased terms "demand" and "punish" deflect attention away from two truths disclosed by ES's angels: (1) the heavenbound delight in worshiping God and feasting on His love. (2) Many people are truly evil, but they in effect punish themselves by choosing to ignore the godly loving path in favor of the hellbound path on the basis of the principle like attracts like.

Entities from the lower astral convey a contrary narcissistic principle to Monroe: "There is no good, there is no evil. There is only expression (UJ 217)." This stress on self (valueless self-expression) stands in contrast with the resolve of the heavenbound according to ES: their humility and respect for the greatness of creation fuels a deep resolve to be with others and be of significant use to them. In the heavens, says ES, the joy of one is the joy of all. By contrast, the general design of the hells is an orientation towards self over others. This splits existence apart and causes hell's dissension. Despite this, those with this orientation will most comfortably drift towards the company of likeminded people in the hells because they nevertheless feel better there than in the company of saints. It just suits them better than the heavens.

According to Monroe, in the astral planes, "there is no greater, there is no lesser. There is only balance (UJ 217)." This claim echoes ES's principle which, in my view, expresses this truth more accurately: "The relationship of heaven and hell...is like that of two opposites that act against each other.. This action and reaction yield a state of equilibrium within which everything exists...This is the spiritual balance which provides us with our freedom for thinking and intending (HH 536-57)." Thus, hell is part of the enrichment of ultimate possibilities.

In my view, ES's most striking and original contribution to our understanding of the afterlife is also his most controversial: his insights of the role of "correspondences" in the fabric of existence. I will tackle this issue in my next planned post.

Don

[Berserk]

VII. SWEDENBORG'S THEORY OF CORRESPONDENCE:
(1) THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN SPACE OR DISTANCE AS
PSYCHOLOGICAL CHANGE OF STATES:

This is the first in a series of posts on ES's discovery of how the principle of correspondence determines the structure of spiritual reality. ES learns that there is no space in heaven. What corresponds to distance are the feelings we have for each other. To quote ES's "Heaven and Hell:"

"People who are nearby are the ones in a similar state and the ones who are far away are in dissimilar states. This is why space in heaven is nothing but the outward states that correspond to the inner ones. This is the only reason why the heavens are differentiated from each other; as are the communities in each heaven and the individuals in each community. It is also why the hells are completely separate from the heavens. They are in an opposite state (hh 193)."

"This is also why in the spiritual world one individual is present to another only if that presence is intensely desired. This is because one person sees another in thought in this way and identifies with that individual's state. Conversely, one person moves away from another to the extent that there is any sense of reluctance. Whenever people move from one place to another, whether it is in their town, their courtyards, in their gardens, or to people outside their own community, tbey go there more quickly if they are eager to and more slowly if they are not. The path itself is lengthened or shortened depending on their desire, even though it is the same path. We can illustrate this by our own thoughts. . .for whatever we focus on intently in our thought is seemingly present (HH #194-96)."

This psychological equivalence to earthly spacial relationships among heavenly communities raises interesting questions. Most of us have multi-faceted loves and tastes. Assume for the sake of argument that I wind up in heaven. I enjoy the company of men who make me laugh, men who love sports, and men who stimuate me intellectually. I enjoy the company of women who have the gift of empathy, women who charm me, and women who balance me because they are very different from me, etc. Let us assume that people of each type enjoy my company equally and are equally evolved in their spirituality. How will the "geography" of these personality types be worked out? What combination of strengths, interests, and quirks would bring my "type" together into a heavenly community? Would I be with comedians who make me laugh, with men who stimulate me intellectually, with women who charm me, but are very different from me, etc.? How can love be quantified? Does God have some hierarchy of values that elevates some loving personality types to a higher level than others? If so, what are they? Perhaps, it is simply a matter of the purity and frequency of a soul's vibration. So many questions, so few answers!

Don

[CFTraveler]

I would say that God does not elevate or separate, that our resonance does-and frankly, love is the 'glue' that binds, or the magnet that connects. Kind of like polymerization- Given the right conditions compatible souls find themselves, and God is the condition.

[Berserk]

VII (2) EVOLUTI0N AND CORRESPONDENCE

ES discovers that in both the spiritual and natural worlds each person, animal, plant, and mineral is encompassed by its spiritual replica, an energy sphere which continually emanates from it. ""Thus the natural world derives from the spiritual, and the spiritual from the Divine (DLW 283)." This insight is independently confirmed by channeled material from deceased Oxford professor F. W. Myers. Myers confirms the truth of the widely espoused "as above, so below" principle. Myers reveals that dinosaurs existed in the spirit world before they became physical and that their prior existence as spirits was essential to their emergence on Earth. If ES had known about dinosaurs, he would no doubt agree. He reports:

"This whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world--the natural not just in general but in detail. So whatever arises in the natural world is called `something that corresponds'. It must be realized that the natural world arises from and is sustained in beng by the spiritual world exactly the way an effect relates to an efficient cause (HH 89)."

"Now because every single thing remains in being from the Divine,...and every single thing from that source is inevitably a representative of the real thing by means of which it has come into being, the whole visible universe is therefore nothing else than a theatre that is representative of the Lord's kingdom. And this in turn is a theatre representative of the Lord Himself (AC 483),"

So ES does not simply believe that God spoke and "Poof!" life appeared. For ES, Nature provides a mechanism whereby the Lord's life reaches down to ultimates [evolved states] and returns to Himself through higher and higher "uses" (DLW 180, 316). Both evolution and some form of reincarnation are at least consistent with this scheme of things.

ES reveres biblical truth but insists that the Genesis creation story cannot be taken literally. He precedes Darwin by almost a century and inevitably makes mistakes in his speculations about the development of life forms. But he anticipates the general drift of modern evolutionary theory. He recognizes the tiny lichen on a rock as a developmental prelude to emerging forests. He believes that each order of plants gives birth to a corresponding order of animals (WLG 30). He traces the modern human species back to a primordial prehuman stage (SD 3390).

In my view, he anticipates and corrects a flaw in the evolutionary principle of natural selection. Natural selection assumes that chance variations create genetic advantages that improve the chances of survival. ES accepts the role of randomness in creation, but insists that the Lord controls chance or probabiliity distributions (AC 5508). His anticipation of evolutionary theory a century before Darwin is yet another confirmation of the validity of his gift of astral projection.

In my next planned post, I will discuss how his views on the origin and development of life forms find confirmation in modern scientific experiments.

Don

[Berserk]

VII (3) SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS THAT SEEM TO VERIFY SWEDENBORG'S INSIGHTS INTO ENERGY SPHERES:

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake argues that the DNA molecule cannot contain all the information essential to the organism's formation; rather, DNA is a finely tuned receptor which taps into the information contained in the "morphogenetic field" of that organism, a field that seems to be the functional equivalent of ES's energy spheres flowing out from each organism. Sheldrake contends that the form, development, and behavior of living organisms are shaped and maintained by this field together with genetic inheritance. In a sense, these fields function like a kind of species memory through which the newly acquired characteristics of prior generations can be passed on to future ones. The key to species evolution is this: the condition of an organism's systems is constantly updated in these fields.

Sheldrake put his theory to the test in an experiment he conducted on live TV. Millions of BBC viewers were taught to see hidden images in puzzle pictures. Before the program aired, a base line was established by observing how well people could distinguish the hidden image. After the program, people from all over the world who could not have seen or heard the program were again asked to find the image. The results indicated significant improvement in the worldwide ability of non-viewers to distinguish the image.

Sheldrake was building on the findings of animal research. (1) At Harvard experiments on rats found that children of rats mastered a maze much faster (tenfold) than their parents, even though the offspring were not born at the time their parents were tested. This result was replicated in both Scotland and Australia and the rats' performance dramatically improved from place to place even though there was no physical contact among the geographically separated rats.

(2) In pre-WW2 Europe, milk was home-delivered in cartons. A bird species (bluetits) suddenly began to land on top of the cartons, remove the cover, and drink the cream. Some of the birds were even found drowned inside the cartions! Bluetits have a range of 4-5 miles. Yet this practice spread for a hundred miles within a year. The same phenomenon occurred in Scandanavia and Holland. Milk delivery ceased during the German occupation of Europe during WW2. Bluetits only have a 2-3 year life expectancy; so all the avian cream drinkers died off. But after the war, bluetits resumed their cream drinking and this habit spread just as before WW2.

(3) Fontana (p. 22-23) discusses a study in which measurements were taken of electrodermal reactions on the skin of receivers while they were subjected to a series of both arousing and calming thoughts from a sender in another room. The sender would visualize the receivers in a very fearful situation or as relaxing on a sunlit beach. The receivers had no idea which type of thoughts were being sent. Thus the experiments show that even when receivers have no conscious awareness of whether they are receiving arousing or calming thoughts, the unconscious or morphogenetic field seems to be receiving the information and registering it in physiological reactions.

Don

[CFTraveler]

I like Sheldrake's theories. I just wish he would stop trying to quantify his fields and call them 'chreodes'. That name bothers me, although I do like his ideas.

[Berserk]

VII (4): THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE HEAVENLY REALMS AND
ONE'S INNER REALITY

Some of our dreams are merely faint echoes of the prior day's events. Others are triggered by bodily issues. But our more important dreams use imagery to dramatically represent the dreamer's situation in life. Our minds are designed with a self-corrective internal guidance system that is more brilliant than we seem to be. After our more poignant dreams, we often ask ourselves, "Where did I come up with that?" Aspects of our dreams can be attributed to influxes from like-minded disnarnates in the world of spirits. We can gain insights into symbolism in the heavens from the symbolism in our more significant dreams.

Like dreams, the spirit in heaven finds herself in a world of representations; she is beginning to meet her own nature in the things, people, and settings that surround her. Like attracts like.

"[Spirits] actually accept and absorb whatever agrees with their life. They do not accept much less absorb, what does not agree. This is because spirits are affections, and therefore have a human form that resembles their affections (HH 517)."

"Seen in any of heaven's light, all the spirits in the hells appear in the form of their own evil. Each one is in fact an image of his or her own evil, since for each individual the inner and outer natures are acting as a unit, with the deeper elements presenting themselves to view in the outer ones--in the face, the body, the speech, and the behavior. So you can tell what they are like by looking at them (HH 553)." "Angels can know the essentials of a person's life from just few uttered words (HH 236)."

Each person spontaneously designs and eventually comes to the spiritual realm of his own choices. Spiritually rich inner states reflect in surroundings that are gorgeous and rich. Barren inner states reflect in wretched surroundings.

There are buildings, cities, hills, woods. etc. But these are psychological realities corresponding to inner states. There are meals, but spiritual food has inner implications for the life and development of individuals. The garments one finds in one's closet reflect changes in one's qualities.

Don

[Berserk]

VII (5): ES ON CORRESPONDENCE AS THE KEY TO DIVINATION

ES writes: "The whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world--the natural world not just in general, but in detail. So whatever arises in the natural world out of the spiritual one is called `something that corresponds' (HH 89-90)."

A. HOW TO KILL WITH ASTROLOGY:

This aspect of correspondence might explain the various types of divination. The most fascinating (if ghastly) radio interview I ever heard was with astrologer Jack Gillam. At the birth of his son, Jack noted a "death aspect" on his son's horoscope that would become effective on the boy's 3rd birthday. When this birthday arrived, Jack's wife kept the boy in the kitchen to keep an eye on him. But when the phone rang, she got distracted and the child toddled out of the house, crawled through a hole in the fence, and headed for an apartment block next door. The little boy fell into the outdoor swimming pool. A 12-year-girl by the pool could easily have saved him, but she ran off screaming, and so, he drowned.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung did a study of astrological compatibility between couples. He found that the predicted astrological correlation clearly confirmed their compatibility. Years later, Jung had second thoughts about these results. Why should planetary relationships have anything to do with love? He tried to replicate his earlier study. This time he found no correlation between planetary configuration and romantic compatibility. So why the difference? Apparently, Jung's open curiosity in the first study attracted to him just those people whose horoscopes would create the illusion of astrological validity. Jung calls this synchronicity. In my view, Jack Gillam's belief in astrological "death aspects" worked like black magic attracting the event that he most feared. His son's premature death was no doubt facilitated by influxes from negative spirits.

B. MY SPECTACULAR CARD READING:

When I was in grad school, I reluctantly agreed to take my date to the New England flower show. Quickly bored, I noted two card readers sitting at a table. One read regular playing cards and charged $5; the other read Tarot cards and charged $35. I had never had a card reading before and didn't really believe in it. So I chose the cheaper reading.

The reader asked me to draw 3 cards. The cards looked like a lousy poker hand to me. Then she told me 4 things: (1) I should dump the gal I brought to the show. This amused me because my date had sneered at the readers when she passed them and I took this advice as the reader's revenge. But the reader was right: we were incompatible. (2) Then the reader told me I had serious issues with women. My ex-girlfriend, Janet, had recently committed suicide, but this comment seemed too vague to impress me. (3) Next, she told me I was good with children and implied that I'd be working with them very soon. This seemed absurd to me. I was working on my doctoral thesis and had no time for kids. (4) Finally, she told me that in the next few days I'd be receiving a job offer from an exotic place, but that I should not accept it. I dismissed this too because I hadn't even applied for a job. When the reading was over, I'm sure she thought I viewed her as a fake.

The next week, I got a call from my thesis advisor asking me about an overdue chapter of my thesis. While I made excuses, he told me he was the commissioner of the Arlington Youth Soccer Federation and that he needed a coach for an under-12 boys team. He knew I'd played soccer in Canada and asked me if I'd do it. How could I say no to my thesis advisor? I felt manipulated and thought I'd hate it. In fact, the 3 years I coached those boys were one of the highlites of my life. I had never been married, but those boys became like the sons I would never have. The next year we were undefeated and made it to the county championship game which we lost 2-1. So the reader was absolutely correct about point (3).

Two days after the reading, I received an odd call from a professor in Newfoundland. He asked me if I'd be willing to come and teach in his university there. I was dumbfounded because I hadn't applied for the job. I reluctantly turned it down because I wasn't close to finishing my thesis. The reader had said I'd immediately get a job offer from an "exotic" place that I should turn down! Newfoundland seems pretty exotic to me. So the reader's fourth point proved absolutely amazing!

So how did my bad poker hand yield such spectacular clairvoyance? For the same reason that Gillam's death aspect proved true. I'll quote Van Dusen's Swedenborgian perspective (p. 185):

"Astrology is an example of correspondence between the inner person and planetary configurations. The ancients had a whole host of ways of trying to divine the future and find evidence by the arrangement of material things: the fall of cards (Tarot), tea leaves, yarrow sticks (I Ching), cracked bones, etc. Usually these systems required a considerable amount of interpretation that allowed some projection of inner processes."

I'm puzzled by several aspects of ES's principle of correspondence. But he seems to have identified a spiritual principle that can can be both beneficial and a source of devastating evil. I wish I had a better handle on this principle.

Don

[CFTraveler]

VII (4): THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE HEAVENLY REALMS AND
ONE'S INNER REALITY

Like dreams, the spirit in heaven finds herself in a world of representations; she is beginning to meet her own nature in the things, people, and settings that surround her. Like attracts like.

"[Spirits] actually accept and absorb whatever agrees with their life. They do not accept much less absorb, what does not agree. This is because spirits are affections, and therefore have a human form that resembles their affections (HH 517)."

"Seen in any of heaven's light, all the spirits in the hells appear in the form of their own evil. Each one is in fact an image of his or her own evil, since for each individual the inner and outer natures are acting as a unit, with the deeper elements presenting themselves to view in the outer ones--in the face, the body, the speech, and the behavior. So you can tell what they are like by looking at them (HH 553)." "Angels can know the essentials of a person's life from just few uttered words (HH 236)."

Each person spontaneously designs and eventually comes to the spiritual realm of his own choices. Spiritually rich inner states reflect in surroundings that are gorgeous and rich. Barren inner states reflect in wretched surroundings.

There are buildings, cities, hills, woods. etc. But these are psychological realities corresponding to inner states. There are meals, but spiritual food has inner implications for the life and development of individuals. The garments one finds in one's closet reflect changes in one's qualities.

Don There is an author (whose name escapes me- I lent the book out and it never came back) who believes that at death our spirits and souls separate and one of them reincarnates and the other one goes into this self-creation until in the future they become reunited. He equates one of them with our temporary rationality and the other with our subconscious, which really lives in our memories. He postulates that the part of us that is 'being' loses all memories of everything and stays in bliss, and then goes on to reincarnate, while the 'subconscious' part of us, the part that doesn't have decision-making capabilities, continues reliving it's past (whether positive or negative) thereby creating a continuation of it's previous existence, and impressing itself or becoming its part of the akashic records. According to him, the more aware a person is of his/her subconscious processes at the moment of death, the better chances he has of creating a positive hereafter and someday reuniting with it's 'spark'.
I can't remember the author's name, but the book was called "The missing secret of death" or something like that. I found the theory compelling even though I didn't necessarily agree with everything 100%. But then I hardly ever do.

[Berserk]

VIII. SWEDENBORG ON SOUL RETRIEVALS:

One of the things that has bothered me about ES is his failure to mention the possibility of performing retrievals. His astral insight that new discarnates in the World of Spirits gradually ascend to a heaven or descend to a hell may already imply the use of retrievals. because ES describes the role of astral schools and makes it clear that astral progress is ultimately a matter of choice and of achieving the right energetic for ascent. But now I've found a passage in Ernst Benz that seem to imply that ES even retrieved some evil discarnates in Hell:

"The devils [= evil discarnate humans] he converts change before his eyes, lose their bestial form, and regain their human faces (Benz, "Emanuel Swedenberg," p. 327).

I hope to track down more references to ES's retrievals.

Don

Berserk,

I just wanted to say I love your posts and thank you for them.

CFT,

I read that very interesting book too, it's by Peter Novak called "The Lost Secret of Death". He talks about the binary soul doctrine. Well worth the read, if this stuff is really true, I would think there's not much more important than uniting the conscious and unconscious minds before death.

[CFTraveler]

Berserk,

I just wanted to say I love your posts and thank you for them.

CFT,

I read that very interesting book too, it's by Peter Novak called "The Lost Secret of Death". He talks about the binary soul doctrine. Well worth the read, if this stuff is really true, I would think there's not much more important than uniting the conscious and unconscious minds before death. Thanks for mentioning it. For some reason, when I loaned the book out (to a friend that left town) the memory of the title and author flew right out of my brain. :lol: . I really find the theory compelling, and it makes sense on so many levels. (to me, anyway)

[Berserk]

CHRIST’S ROLE IN RETRIEVALS: A NEW TESTAMENT PERSPECTIVE

One of the most exciting aspects of astral exploration is the controversial possibliity of soul retrievals from Hell that Swedenborg defends, albeit almost reluctantly. I have the impression that posters here have a variety of different worldviews. So I thought I'd offer a brief survey of the treatment of retrievals in the Bible and the early church. Then, in a future post, I will explain why I find the treatment of retrievals by astral adepts Robert Monroe and Bruce Moen problematic.

The Bible challenges believers to satisfy the skeptic on the issue of divine justice: e. g. “Does God pervert justice (Job 8:3)?” The Fundamentalist view that non-Christians are eternally damned perverts divine justice and is unbiblical. The neglected doctrine of soul retrievals is one piece of this justice puzzle. The New Testament and early church provide the earliest literary evidence of the doctrine of retrievals in history.

When we think of the biblical Hell, we must bear in mind that this language is figurative. Jesus offers an alternative image of Hell that involves no fire (Luke 12:47-48). Fire is a common symbol of postmortem purgation in late antiquity. Jesus’ term “Gehenna” derives from the Valley of Hinnom, a garbage dump outside ancient Jerusalem where trash was burned. Thus, "Gehenna" can be construed as an image for the fate of wasted lives and Hell can be understood as a realm of separation from the experience of God’s love.

The ancient Apostles' Creed is routinely recited in liturgical worship. One of its affirmations hints at Jesus’ role in soul retrievals: “He descended into Hell.” This affirmation is rooted in two declarations in 1 Peter. In 3:19-20 Peter informs us that, after His crucifixion, Christ preached to the disobedient “spirits in prison.” In intertestamental Judaism, prison is a standard image for Hell. Christ’s preaching implies an opportunity for positive response and therefore amounts to an attempted retrieval. In 1 Peter 4:6 the beneficiaries of preaching to the dead include the unredeemed dead in general.

“The Gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God .”

In this text, it is not even clear that Christ is the presumed preacher to the hellbound. Perhaps, the retrieval role of the righteous dead is implicit in this second postmortem preaching reference.

RETRIEVALS THROUGH PROXY BAPTISM AND POSTMORTEM BAPTISM

Two books in the Catholic Old Testament (1 and 2 Maccabees) record the history of the Jewish revolt (175-163 BC) to liberate themselves from their occupying Syrian Greek oppressors. Judas, the Maccabean leader, arranges for prayers and sacrifices to be offered for fallen Jewish soldiers (2 Maccabees 12:42-45). In the early church, such rituals for the dead develop into proxy baptism for the unredeemed dead (1 Corinthians 15:29). True, this practice seems limited to Corinth and is prohibited in the fourth century. But St. Paul clearly approves of this practice and identifies it as part of the process by which God will ultimately become “all in all (15:28).” Thus, proxy baptism functions as an apostolically sanctioned early Christan form of soul retrievals and implies that God’s love abandons no one, even after death. The hellbound find themselves in this plight as a result of their own choices based on Jesus’ principle: “By your own standard or measure it will be measured back to you (Matthew 7:2).” This is a more specific application of the principle embraced by many astral explorers that like attracts like in the afterlife. This perspective does not contradict biblical allusions to eternal punishment. In both Hebrew (“olam”) and Greek (“aionios”) the terms translated “eternal” simply mean “for an indefinitely long time,” not “eternal.”

There is another way the early church understands baptism for the dead. The early church borrows both the image of the Acherusian lake and the Elysian field from Greek mythology to illumine their portrait of Heaven. This imagery roughly corresponds to the Monroe description of Focus 27. Immersion in Heaven’s higher vibration is expressed in terms of baptismal immersion in Heaven’s Acherusia lake. This postmortem baptism finds expression in two texts from the next generation of apocalyptic texts after the Book of Revelation. The first text is found in the Apocalypse of Peter (125 AD):

[Jesus:] “I will grant to them [the unrighteous] God, if they call to me (in their torment) and I will give to them a precious baptism unto salvation from the Acherusian lake, which...is situated in the Elysian field, the portion of the righteous with the saints (14).”

Now baptism in Greek means "immersion." Perhaps this poetic image of postmortem baptism is a symbol for purification processes such as that experienced by Guenther Wagner during his NDE. The Being of Light performed the "baptism":

"I received the impression that I would have to take a bath, but by dipping the whole body. It was made plain to me that the process was going to be unpleasant, but I could stop it if it became too painful...I was willing to do what the Being of Light wanted me to do. I was lifted up and put into a red light...After some time, I realized that I was being tossed about rather vigorously. It was like being in a washing machine. I cried, `I think that is enough!' Immediately, I was lowered down and the love and the warmth were switched off (Guenther Wagner--quoted from "near-death.com")."

Our next apocalyptic text explicitly assigns a retrieval role to the saints:

“To the pious, when they ask eternal God, HE WILL GRANT THEM TO SAVE PEOPLE OUT OF THE DEVOURING FLAME AND FROM EVERLASTING TORMENTS. This also will He do. For having gathered them again from the unwearying flame, and set them elsewhere, He will send them for His people’s sake into another life, an eternal one with the immortals, in the Elysian plain, where are the long waves of the ever-flowing, deep-bosomed Acherusian lake (Sibylline Oracles II, 331-338--composed around 150 AD).”

These two apocalyptic texts shed light on neglected imagery from the New Testament’s Book of Revelation. In his vision of Heaven John learns that Heaven’s gates are eternally open (21:25). Heaven’s permanently open gates imply traffic coming and going. Coming and going on what missions? Four factors suggest that soul retrievals are implied by this visionary image:

(1) In this vision, the hellbound wicked dwell “outside” Heaven’s gates (22:15).
In an earlier vision John sees everyone in Hell worshiping and adoring God and Christ in Heaven (5:13). In the first century, the expression “under the earth” refers to Hell. This vision of universal worship implies the possibility, not the doctrine, of ultimate universal salvation. The future is not fixed for Judaeo-Christian prophets and the decision to make godly choices always remains a prerogative of Hell’s denizens.

(2) The Book of Revelation is a very angry book. John has been exiled to Patmos by the Romans and his churches in Asia Minor are being persecuted by both Jews and Romans. John longs for vindication. His anger must be kept in mind when we try to interpret visionary imagery that he may not understand or even want to understand. He is not in the mood to hear that his persecutors may ulimately be retrieved from Hell. Thus, he shrinks from the implication of the postmortem scheme revealed to him--first death followed by the “first resurrection (20:5)”, then “second death 20:14)” followed by the implied second resurrection.

John never identifies the second resurrection, perhaps because it offends his desire for revenge. Conservative Christian tradition has surmised that the Great White Throne judgment (21:11-14).is the image underlying the seocnd resurrection. This assumption can be called into question on two grounds: (a) John does not use the language of “ascent” or resurrection in discussing this Judgment; (b) John’s concept of “second death” seems to imply ultimate release from “the lake of fire” for the second resurrection. In that case, the second resurrection would represent the retrieval of hellbound souls through the eternally open gates of Heaven.

Don

[Berserk]

In my prior post, I quoted two ancient Christan texts on soul retrievals, both of which mention the Greek "Elysian field" as an apt image of Paradise. This image fits well with the old Persian meaning of "Paradise," that is, a heavenly "park" or "garden." Both texts also use the image of ritual immersion in a heavenly lake to symbolize the feeling of immersion in the higher vibration of that spirit plane. Well, Albert Pauchard independently channels a parallel description of his first impression of Paradise through a reputable medium:

"IT SEEMED TO ME THAT I HAD SPENT AT LEAST SEVERAL MONTHS IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS...It was a state of serene bliss, of complete relaxation...It seemed to me as if all around me there were large and fresh fields covered with flowers. I was constantly surrounded by this golden haze....Gradually, I was overcome by weariness. I WANTED A REGENERATING BATH.”

Ir is a remarkable synchronicity that the discarnate Pauchard's allusions to both "the Elysian fields" and "a regenerating bath" mirror the allusions to the Elysian field and a baptismal immersion in both the ancient Apocalypse of Peter and the Christian Sibylline Oracles.

In my view, evidence from NDEs is more compelling than that from channeling. So I mention this channeling example only because it nively parallels Gunther Wagner's NDE longing for an analgous "bath," an apparent symbol of an immersion in a higher vibration.

Don

P.S. The quote from a discarnate Pauchard is drawn from Paul Beard's book, "Living On," p. 80.

[CFTraveler]

Berserk wrote:
"I received the impression that I would have to take a bath, but by dipping the whole body. It was made plain to me that the process was going to be unpleasant, but I could stop it if it became too painful...I was willing to do what the Being of Light wanted me to do. I was lifted up and put into a red light...After some time, I realized that I was being tossed about rather vigorously. It was like being in a washing machine. I cried, `I think that is enough!' Immediately, I was lowered down and the love and the warmth were switched off (Guenther Wagner--quoted from "near-death.com")." I had a similar experience when I was 12, but it was not a nde (unless it was and I didn't know it). I was immersed in this lake of red water, but it was a blissful experience, in which I felt all the universe as vibration. From the vibration I knew what was around and underneath me. It was such a different experience that I never quite got over having to return to 'regular living', and prayed to experience it again, to no avail, even to this day. I also had beings of light helping me into the water, but they kind of had to make me come back because I didn't want to.
This is the only time that I've read about an experience that so resembled the one I had.

[Berserk]

One of the most convincing aspects of NDEs is the great frequency with which Jesus appears to hardened atheists. As one NDE researcher reports, a typical exchange between Jesus and atheists begins like this: "But Jesus, I don't even believe in you." [Jesus:] "But I DO believe in you." Also, compelling to me are cases in which Jesus' role in soul retrievals is manifested to New Age adepts who are hostle, indifferent, or just plain ignorant about Him.

Consider the cases of just two astral adepts, Robert Monroe and Bruce Moen. (1) For example, Christ's role in retrievals finds routine confirmation in one of Robert Monroe's frequent OBE experiences reported in "Journeys Out of the Body," 122-123. Christ's identify seems evident from the signature ♥♥♥♥♥et fanfare (1 Corinthians 15:52), the sense of His omnipotence, the sense that the astral realms are "His Kingdom," the universal reluctance to gaze on His brightness (Acts 9:3, 8) and the universal reverent submission. Monroe's decription is strikingly paralleled in the life-changing "vision" experienced by William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, which is perhaps the most single-minded denomination in its devotion to helping the poor and down-and-out in practical ways. Quoting Monroe,

"It makes no difference where in Locale II, the [frequent] event is the same. In the midst of normal activity, whatever it may be, there is a distant signal, almost like the sound of heraldic ♥♥♥♥♥ets. Everyone takes the Signal calmly, and with it, everyone stops speaking or whatever he may be doing. It is the Signal that He...is coming through His Kingdom...It is an occurrence to which all are accustomed and to comply takes absolute precedence over everything. There are no exceptions."

"At the Signal, each living thing lies down--my impression is on their backs, bodies arched to expose the abdomen..., with head turned to one side so that one does not see Him as He passes by. The purpose seems to be to form a living road over which He can travel. I have gleaned that occasionally He will select someone from the living road and that person is never seen or heard from again. The purpose of the abdominal exposure is an expression of faith and complete submissiveness...There is no movement, not even thought, as He passes by..."

"In the several times that I have experienced this, I lay down with the others. At the time, the thought of doing otherwise was inconceivable. As He passes, there is a roaring musical sound and a feeling of radiant, irresistible living force of ultimate power that peaks overhead and fades in the distance...After His passing, everone gets up again and resumes their activities. There is no comment or mention of the incident...There is complete acceptance of the event as an ordinary part of their lives....Is this God? Or God's Son?"

Spirit retrievals have become an important focus of Monroe's TMI. So it is striking that his 3 books reveal no effort on his part to investigate the retrieval role and teaching of "God's Son." In my view, there are two reasons for this neglect: (1) Monroe discusses his new OBE gift with certain ministers who dismiss his talent as "dangerous and heretical ("Journeys," 34)." In Monroe's mind, these pastors thought he "should be exorcised." If Bob had asked me, I'd have given him both biblical and early Christian examples of astral exploration via OBE. In fact, I will provide such examples in my next planned post.

(2) In "Ultimate Journey," Monroe makes it clear that He dislikes words like "God" and "apiritual" and rejects the need to worship God (224-225). Unfortunately, Monroe seems to have a warped view of what true worship involves. If Pure Unconditional Love (PUL) is the most basic spiritual force, then "worship" is just another term for the process of refueling with PUL. from its Source through prayer and meditation. Monroe seems to overlook an obvious question: If PUL is a supreme spiritual value or energy, then how does Monroe know that PUL is not the key to intimate bonding with and empowerment by God?

(2) Like Robert Monroe's OBEs, Bruce Moen's astral explorations confirm that Jesus plays a prominent role in soul retrievals. Their witness is especially compelling precisely because both seem hostile towards conventional Christianity and create crude caricatures of it. Both astral explorers unintetionally confirm the biblical and early Christian witness to Jesus' role in retrievals.

In his online article, "Christianity," Bruce Moen shares the story of his astral encounter with a tour guide who helped perform retrievals from his base in “the House of God” in Focus 27. This man had been a preacher in a very legalistic and rather loveless Fundamentalist Hollow Heaven. He had expelled a couple from this Heaven for living together out of wedlock. The couple truly loved each other and invoked Jesus’ teaching that formal marriage was not required in Heaven (e. g. Mark 12:25). Jesus later appeared to this preacher a few times as a Being of Light and chided him for his distortion of Jesus’ love. The guilt-ridden preacher later confessed to his church that he had erred by expelling the couple from their Heaven. He began to preach a more tolerant and compassionate Gospel reflecting Jesus’ true message. This change made him more popular with many, but also got him expelled from this Heaven.

“Expecting to find himself in Hell, the preacher..was surprised when Jesus appeared in the inky blackness. After a tour of the real Heaven, Jesus explained that he’d been in a Hollow Heaven, what that meant, and some of his options for the future....The preacher decided to move to the House of God Center in Focus 27 and work at freeing others...As part of this work, Jesus and the preacher..had reentered his Hollow Heaven many times. They started appearing together to members of his former congregation he knew had legitimate doubts about the rules and beliefs. They appeared in private to people in their hiimes and on long walks along the road... Each time they answered questions and gave the message of Jesus’ loving forgiveness. This of course also broke the rules. Once someone had been cast out from this Hollow Heaven they were never supposed to be able to return from their sentence of eternity in Hell.”

“My tour guide esplained that things really got inreresting when he and Jesus began appearing before the congregation during Sunday church services. They loved to play a scene in which the teacher/ tour guide first appeared, hovering above the altar, surroundded by a cloud of angelic light. The Jesus would appear beside him and, addressing the congregation, say, `This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ That stopped when the old-time preachers came back on Sunday and ordered everybody out of this `House of Satan.’”

Don

[Tempestinateapot]

I won't get into an argument about "Jesus", but I would like to very simplistically address something from another point of view.

Jesus later appeared to this preacher a few times as a Being of LightI've read all of Monroe's and Moen's works, as well as a large number of NDE researchers' books, and also a lot of books on the afterlife written by past life and spirit world regressionists. That doesn't include scores of books I've read about people's personal experiences, either through NDE's, astral projection, channelings...you name it.

The point of all that is that in all of my readings, the general consensus is that while people may "believe" they are seeing Jesus, they are actually seeing a "being of light". Many have reported that going deeper into the afterlife world, they learn that the "being" who acknowledged himself as Jesus, in fact, was a guide (helper) who had taken on the personna of Jesus to comfort the newly arrived who either expected to see Jesus, or knew of Jesus, thus making him an understandable being for those who are disoriented at death. In cases of other religions, rarely does someone who has an NDE see Jesus. They will see the leader of their own religion, i.e. Buddha, Krishna, etc.

This comes from well over a hundred books I've read on the subject. The almost unanimous conclusion is that people "see" either who or what they expect, or in the cases of disorientation, the closest thing to a "God" that will comfort them enough to keep them moving forward into the afterlife. This, in no way, takes away from the loving teachings of Jesus. IMO, he is an advanced being, but one of many.

Also, in my opinion, Monroe's discussion of a "radiant, irresistible living force of ultimate power" does not show proof of "Christ", or the "Son of God", but were speculations by Monroe. Perhaps this "force" was the creator of our universe, or to a lessor degree, what Moen called the creator of the "Earth Life System", the "Planning Intelligence".

With all the mystical experiences I've had, both as a Christian, and later as a "New Ager", I've yet to come upon a being who called himself "Jesus" or "Christ". To the contrary, anything I've experienced has been a completely generic (silly term, but I can't think of a better one) experience or being. Just another point of view. :D

[Berserk]

Tempest [Patty], you claim, “The almost unanimous conclusion is that people "see" either who or what they expect.” This consensus reflects New Age bias and is refuted by more careful research such as the massive cross-cultural research of Osis and Haraldsson on 1,000 NDEs from the USA and India:

“The phenomena within each culture OFTEN do not conform with religious afterlife beliefs. The patients saw something new, unexpected, and contrary to their beliefs....Several basic Hindu ideas of an afterlife were never portrayed in the visions of Indian patients. The various Hindu `loci’ of an afterlife--Hindu Heaven--were NEVER mentioned. Nor were
reincarnation or dissplutin into Brahma (“At the Hour of Death,” 192-93).”

[Tempest: ] “In cases of other religions, rarely does someone who has an NDE see Jesus. They will see the leader of their own religion, i.e. Buddha, Krishna, etc.”
__________________________________________________ _
This New Age cliche does not stand up very well under close scrutiny. I heard an NDE expert on “Coast to Coast” discuss research on over 3,000 Asian NDEs, including many Buddhists. Not a single case reported seeing Siddartha Gautama (the Buddha) during the NDE. Also, in Islamic
NDEs, the BL (= Being of Light) is rarely identified as Muhammad. True, there are a few minor exceptions that prove my point. P. W. Atwater points to a couple of Muslim children who claim to have seen Muhammad during their NDE. I am unable to discover a single case of an adult Muslim who identified the BL as Muhammad. Other NDE research may produce such examples. But obviously, many alleged NDEs are full of hallucinations. So it is the pattern of appearances of religious figures that is most relevant. Even here, there are striking exceptions. In my next,
planned post, I will recount the story af a Christian-hating Muslim who was converted to Christianity by his unexpected encounter with Christ during an NDE.

[Tempest:] “The point of all that is that in all of my readings, the general consensus is that while people may "believe" they are seeing Jesus, they are actually seeing a "being of light".
__________________________________________________ ___________You forget that in Bruce Moen’s case, it is his astral guide who reports on the real Jesus’ role in supporring retrievals. Why would a light being want to deceive a discarnate worker in “the House of God” in Focus 27? Monroe’s routine encounters with a Christ figure neatly fit the description of others (e. g. William Booth) to whom the BL’s identity as Jesus is made clear. Your comment begs the question and overlooks the menacing fact attested, among others, by Swedenborg and channeling research that spirit impersonation is a common malevalent phenomenon in astral
contacts. The BL may not disclose His identity to non-Christians, but I doubt a loving presence like the BL would tell a series of lies. In any case, it begs the question to assume that an NDE BL is normally the same person for everybody.

NDE researchers like Ray Moody often recklessly claim that the BL does not identify itself, but is instead subject to a projected identity from the dying. This generalization is routinely refuted by NDEs and is already refuted by the case of George Ritchie (now a psychiatrist) that inspired Moody’s first book “Life After Life” and, indeed, the whole modern NDE research movement. In his forward to Ritchie’s book “Return from
Tomorrow,” Moody celebrates this book as “the chronicle of one of the three or four most fantastic and well-documented `dying’ esperiences known to me.” In the presence of the BL, Ritchie recalls: “The words came from inside me, yet they had an authority my mere thoughts
never had. `You are in the presence of the Son of God.’ (49).” Any question about whether Ritchie projects this identity onto the BL is removed when he complains, “Why hadn’t someone told me?” The BL’s reply clearly implies that He is Jesus: “Idid tell you. I told you by the life I
lived. I told you by the death I died (55).”

Your generalization is also unwarranted for 3 other reasons:
(1) Communication from the BL is telepathic rather than the result of an auditory voice delivered through moving lips. This fact alone makes the distinction between the identity projected by the BL and the patient’s projection of a comforting identity methodologically elusive. Though your generalization no doubt applies to many cases, it also seriously begs the question.

(2) This ambiguity infuses non-Christian identifications of the BL as Jesus with particular relevance. Your generalization ignores the finding I reported of the NDE researcher on “Coast to Coast.” To repeat, he found that Jesus often identifies himself to atheists, who typically respond with a confession like “But I don’t even believe in you,” to which Jesus typically replies, “But I DO believe in you.” .

(3) Your generalization is often refuted by the most in depth NDEs. which last long enough for an extensive interchange in which the BL makes its identity as Jesus crystal clear. Dr. Ritchie’s NDE can be supplemented by several examples, but I will confine myself to 2 more. (a) Atheist
Howard Storm immiedately picks up the BL’s identify as Christ: “He was King of Kings, Lord of lords, Christ Jesus he Saviior (“My Descent into Death,” 26).” This identification is confirmed by Storm’s other communications in the presence of the BL: e. g. “In our progression toward God, we will meet the Divine Activity of God, who is known to Christians as Jesus Christ. People who are not Christains myst know the Christ as well (55).” “No one will go to God except through the Atonement of Christ, the love of Christ, and the way of Christ (67).”

(b) During her NDE, Betty Eadie realizes: “There was no question who he [the BL] was. I knew he was my Savior and friend and God. He was Jesus Christ...I knew I had known him from the beginning, from long
before my earth life, because my spirit remembered him (42).” Any ambiguity in this identication is soon removed: “I was told the he [Jesus] is the door through which we will all return. Whether we learn of Jesus Christ here or while in the spirit, we must eventually accept him and surrender to his love (85).”

These 2 NDEs independently illustrate Jesus’ role in postmortem retrievals and neither requires a formal profession of faith in Christ before death. This mutual support is particularly impressive because few Christians are aware of the basis for this postmortem access to Jesus in biblical and
early Christian tradition, which I have provided in this thread. Jesus in effect informs Storm that He communicates to people from non-Christian cultures under different symbols and mythologies. Tellingly, when Storm asks, “`Which is the best religion?’...They answered, `The religion that
brings you closest to God (73).’” That said, Swedenborg’s astral exploration independently confirms the NDE insights of Eadie and Storm that postrmortem instruction on Jesus’ redemptive role is a standard part of the transition of rightous non-Christians to the heavenly realms (HH
#512). In a murky and methodolgically sloppy field like NDE research, independent confirmation of unpredictable NDE insights is one the two best forms of evidence available.

Of course, the second valuable form of evidence is verification. Betty Eadie meets her unbornadopted daughter during her NDE. More impressively, angels (perhaps discarnate saints) save Storm from almost certain death after his NDE and a discarnate Thomas Merton hands both
Storm and an independent eyewitness a book of his poetry at the Gethsemane monastery. And no one has more impressively verified astral credientials than Swedenborg.

Don

[CFTraveler]

After reading this post, I have to ask

But obviously, many alleged NDEs are full of hallucinations. So it is the pattern of appearances of religious figures that is most relevant.
Why?


In any case, it begs the question to assume that an NDE BL is normally the same person for everybody.
Why? From what I read the BL identified as Jesus to one person and told him that he appeared to others under other names. Why is this person correct, and not the ones who claimed to see Mohammed, for example?
I'm not arguing whether it may be Jesus who directs us, but I don't see the necessity for all those ndes to be attributed to him when the experiences are so varied. To call the ones that don't match 'hallucinations' and the ones that match 'the most relevant' is bewildering to me.

[Berserk]

Why? CF, obviously not all who allege an NDE truly encounter a Being of Light (BL). Some are either too sick or too disoriented to distinguish their hallucinations from real spirit contact. Others may be lying to gain attention. That's all I'm saying. The only way to make allowances for liars and the deluded is to focus on the pattern of identifications of the BL.

As for your second question, the party that greets the NDE patient varies in its make-up (discarnate friends, relatives, etc.). So we have no right to assume that the same Being of Light shows up for everyone. For example, many do not experience this Being of Light as brighter than the sun. The Being's varying radiance may already point to many different light beings associated with the greeting party.`

In atheist Howard Storm's NDE, the Being of Light (Christ) implies that He manifests to non-Christians under different identities and symbols, though He is in fact the historical Jesus of Nazareth. According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, the historical Jesus did not go around publicly proclaiming Himself the Messiah. Rather, He waited for His disciples and honest seekers to make that discernment for themselves. Thus, Peter is the first disciple to acclaim Jesus as the Christ and does so late in Jesus' public ministry(Mark 8; Matthew 16). But Jesus notes that "flssh and blood" has not revealed this to Peter. In other words, Jesus Hiimself never previously told Peter that He was the Messiah. I believe the Risen Lord follows the same practice with most decent non-Christians. But as one study shows, Jesus does reveal His true identity to atheists who are ready to handle it. This does not mean that the Being of Light is always Jesus. That probably depends on the percipient's religious orientation and level of spiritual development.

Don

[CFTraveler]

I see.

[Berserk]

Brian is a Christian missionary to Ethiopia who is an acquaintance of my parents and regularly visits their church. The NDE experienced by his ex-Muslim friend Ahmed is as significant as any I've ever encountered. Ahmed was dying of AIDs in a hospital in Addis Ababa. One day, a young Christian couple was making the rounds, praying for the sick. When they arrived at Ahmed's bed, he was irate when he realized they were Christians. He would later admit, "I wanted to kill them, but I was too weak to react!" Later that day, Ahmed experienced an NDE. A luminous figure entered his hospital room and quietly laid hands on him without speaking. To his horror, Ahmed realized that this man was Jesus--not Muhammad, Allah, or an angel. One can hardly argue that Ahmed projected this identity onto the Being because a visit from Jesus was the last thing this Christian hating imam was expecting.

Ahmed's health immediately improved, although tests revealed that he still had AIDs. He rallied enough to gain release from the hospital and immediately sought out the Christians. Again, hands were laid on him for healing in Jesus' name. This time he was completely cured and subsequent medical tests confirmed this miracle.

At this news, Ahmed went "berserk" with joy. He immediately went to nearby mosques and boldly proclaimed his healing and his resulting new faith. Because his prior role had been to train Muslim leaders, his impact was profound. Many Muslims were directed to him by visions which instructed them to seek out Ahmed to hear the truth. Others were healed in response to the prayers of Ahmed and his growing band of recruits. Soon they were able to convert 3 mosques into churches.

His Christian mentor, Barry, was concerned about the danger to Ahmed and his converts. They were unphased by their severe beatings and death threats from Muslim radicals. But when Barry urged Ahmed to take a more low key approach, Ahmed simply mused, "Oh well, I was already as good as dead from AIDs." Now Muslims struck back with lawsuits to regain control of their mosques. Worse, in his missionary zeal, Ahmed was neglecting his marriage and putting his wife's life at risk. She was willing to accept his Christian conversion, but not his neglect. Barry convinced Ahmed to enter marriage counseling to save his marriage. Ahmed is far from perfect, but his deathbed experience is a remarkable testimony to the impact of a luminous visit from Jesus during an NDE.

This Ethiopian NDE reminds me of biblical hints that God would want a highly varied response toe NDE Being of Light.

"Do you Israelites think you are more important to me than the Ethiopians? asks the Lord. I brought you out of Egypt, but have I not done as much for other nations, too? I brought the Philistines from Crete, and led the Arameans out of Kir (in modern Iraq--Amos 8:7)."

God's confrontation of Israelite exclusivism is prompted by their neglect of social justice and compassion for the needs of the poor. Amos's prophetic word implies that God reserves the right to communicate under different symbols and mythologies to peoples from other cultures and religious backgrounds. Indeed, this implication is already implicit in God response to Moses at the Burning Bush at the very foundation of full-fledged Judaism. Moses doubts the Hebrew slaves will believe in his mission and asks what divine name he should give as his authorization. God refuses to provide a name and instead evasively instructs Moses to reply: "Tell them, I will be whatever I will be has sent you (Exodus 3:14)." In the Ancient Near East, people believed that a god's name adequately expressed the god's essence. So God's evasive reply to Moses amounts to a warning not to lock Him into a doctrinal box.

God is similarly evasive for the same reasons on two other occasions. When Samson's father, Manoah, asks for the divine name, his question is brushed off: "Why do you ask my name? You wouldn't understand if I told you (Judges 13:18)?" In Jacob's visionary experience of wrestling with God, his request for God's name meets with similar evasion: "Why do you ask me my name (Genesis 32:29)?" To me, the various identifications of the Being of LIght in NDEs are exactly what biblical revelation would lead me to expect.

Don

[Berserk]

IX (1) SWEDENBORG'S DISCOVERY THAT PAST LIFE RECALL PROVIDES
NO EVIDENCE FOR REINCARNATION:

ES discovers that we are mistaken in our belief that our thoughts are isolated. Our minds receive an influx from a endlessly changing array of good and evil discarnates who have not yet arrived at their ultimate destinations. According to ES, we are normally connected in this way to 2 good spirits and 2 evil spirits. The particular combination of these spirits at any moment depends on our state of mind at that moment. Neither we nor these associate spirits are normally conscious of the other.

What survives death indefinitely, says ES, is our inner memory which contains our inner loves and the patterns or approaches we've developed in reaction to life's experiences. Inner memory is totally distinct from bodily memory of life's details which eventually fades after death and becomes quiescent. ES's insight here is confirmed by astral adept Robert Bruce: "Memories of earthly life also seem vague [to the dead], much like how a half-forgotten dream is remembered by a living person. Many spirits seem to be aware only of their present reality."

Occasionally, the bodily memory of spirits is activated and gives the connected person the impression that these memories are hers and that she must have reincarnated. Ian Stevenson's celebrated research on the past life recall of young children is flawed by its failure to take this insight seriously. In at least one of his cases, the child's alleged past life continued until well after he was born--a sure sign of possession or at least some form of tempororary spirit merger. If a discarnate spirit's bodily memory is completely restored, that memory can override the connected person's memories and create the experience of possession. ES discovers that discarnate heavenly souls readily grasp the significance of his anti-reincarnation astral discoveries, but humans confined to the world of spirits (= Focus 24-26) refuse to believe because they are unwilling to experience the inevitable belief system crash that would cause them to renounce reincarnation: "I [ES] tried to convince them by many proofs that this is not true, but in vain (HH 246)."

Robert A. Monroe [= RAM] creates the sort of transitory possession that ES has in mind during an OBE visit to Locale III: "I temporarily displaced him. My knowledge of him...and his past came...evidently [from] his memory bank. I have wondered what embarrassment I have caused him ("Journeys Out of the Body", p. 96)."

RAM's possession experience should have made him suspicious that his implausible astral past life experiences are bogus fabrications. e.g.:

(1) his prior incarnation as a cave man pilot of a mentally controlled aircraft that is forced to dodge the spears of hostile natives (UJ 157): We are asked to believe in such a combination of prehistoric motifs and modern technology.

(2) a prior incarnation as a novice Christian priest who is invited by his fellow priests to rape "a frightened young girl" who is tied down and spread-eagled: We are asked to believe that Catholic priests would order such an atrocity, that the victim is an earlier incarnation of his wife Nancy, and that the stabbings will cause her "exquisite ecstasy" (UJ 154-156; cp. the earlier version in FJ 115-16)!

RAM's eincarnation memories are as implausble as his alleged discoveries of aliens in flying saucers who visit earth not to do genetic research, but to collect jokes (UJ 48-50). In my view, RAM's failure to address the credibility problems of his absurd past life "memories" is sufficent reason to mistrust the astral insights in his last 2 books.

Don



[

[Berserk]

IX 2) A SWEDENBORGIAN CRITIQUE OF THE NEW AGE CONCEPT OF THE
GROUP SOUL

New Age reincarnationism is often associated with the concept of a soul Disk or group soul comprised of many manifestations of one's soul throughout history. ES would view this as a perversion of what actually happens:

"Kindred souls gravitate towards each other spontaneously...for with each other they feel as though they are with their own family (HH 44),"

"There was a kind of angelic face that appeared to me, and this varied according to the qualities of affections...that were characteristic of the individuals in a particular community. These variations lasted quite a while, and through it all I noticed that the same general face remained constant as a basis, with everything else being simply derivations and elaborations from it. So there was shown me through this face the affections of the whole community...Not many individuals leave their own community to go to another because leaving their community is like leaving themselves or their life...(HH 47, 49)."

"Sometimes a whole angelic community appears as a single entity in the form of an angel, a sight that the Lord has allowed me to see. . .Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are nothing but angelic communities that are given these names because of their functions (HH 52)."

Similary, in classical channeling, the group soul is not like the Monroe/Moen soul Disk composed of multiple selves of the same soul unit. Rather, the group soul is composed of originally distinct kindred souls with the same purpose. Yet this channeled conception might easily be confused with the soul Disk concept. For example, consider this quote from Paul Beard's synthesis of astral insghts from classical channeling, in his book, "Living On," p. 135:

"The group as a whole is in a real sense a soul also, a group soul, and [the discarnate person] is in very truth part of this soul. The bond, the common purpose, will not all be seen in a flash....[but] will be carried out gradually, until the various parts are gathered together and made a whole."

This alternative understanding may be the key to solving a significant contradiction between Bruce Moen and Robert Monroe. Moen claims to be part of the same soul Disk as Monroe. But Monroe is astrally informed that he has only one parallel incarnation--a female one. He is also told that "she would seem like a long-lost sister (UJ 174)." Moen reports no such intimacy in his earthly encounter with Monroe. Perhaps, Moen, Monroe, and even this unknown female are distinct and separate souls destined to participate in a group soul in this Swedenborgian sense. If so, there is no such thing as retrieving portions of one's self.

The group soul in the Swedenborgian sense gets rid of the the troubling notion of parallel incarnations from a timeless astral realm. Consider the contradictory nature of the Seth entity's perspective on the timeless interval between lives. In "Eternal Validity of the Soul" Seth says, "There is no time schedule, and yet it is very unusual for an individual to wait for anything over 3 centuries between lives, for this makes the orientation very difficult, and the emotional ties with the earth have become weak." But Seth assumes that time is irrelevant for entities between lives. The earth ties can only become gradually weakened if there is in fact a passage of time! A real contradiction!

Don

[Tempestinateapot]

Don said:
Occasionally, the bodily memory of spirits is activated and gives the connected person the impression that these memories are hers and that she must have reincarnated. Ian Stevenson's celebrated research on the past life recall of young children is flawed by its failure to take this insight seriously. In at least one of his cases, the child's alleged past life continued until well after he was born--a sure sign of possession or at least some form of tempororary spirit merger.I'm going to have to respectfully and heartily disagree with your conclusion here. It appears to me that you are making assumptions that time is linear. Linear time is an illusion that we have agreed to while in a specific incarnation. If you accept the idea that time is relative (Albert Einstein), and the Greater Soul's experience that everything is happening at once, overlapping incarnations are not a problem. Possession is the last thing that I would think of to explain time differences in incarnations. "Temporary spirit merger" is also an odd way of explaining the phenomenom. In the sense that an OverSoul is experiencing everything at once, and has complete knowledge of it's many distinct incarnations, you could beg the idea that on a macro level, the spirits are merged. But, the individual understanding and experience of each separate incarnation is of one continuous life, with birth, death, and all experiences between...all on the micro level.

Relativity of simultaneity: two events that appear simultaneous to an observer A will not be simultaneous to an observer B if B is moving with respect to A.


ES discovers that discarnate heavenly souls readily grasp the significance of his anti-reincarnation astral discoveries, but humans confined to the world of spirits (= Focus 24-26) refuse to believe because they are unwilling to experience the inevitable belief system crash that would cause them to renounce reincarnationI have experienced the "belief system crash" in ALL areas of metaphysics. I have come to the conclusion that the only thing I can know with absolute certainty is that "I" exist. Everything else is speculation, faith, and personal beliefs. We are affected by our personal "belief" filters while in the astral. If you look for demons, you will find them. If you carry fear with you into the astral, you can manifest fearful beings. If you look for Jesus, or a similar type of being, you will find them. Thoughtforms are as "real" as any human is. I would be interested in seeing any documented NDE case of a person who had absolutely no knowledge of the human or the light being Jesus, and still returned to life claiming that is who they saw. It would need the further test of being documented as a clear-cut clinically dead experience for me to lend it credence.

I have had so called "higher" experiences in the astral. I don't think that I've ever read or heard of a higher experience than the experience of "Being God" and knowing all at once. This experience left my physical body a wreck as I wasn't energetically ready for it. Because of this experience (and similar ones), the closest thing that I can know (without getting into beliefs) is that there is no ultimate judgement, and that everything and every experience is possible.

While I respect Monroe's and Moen's works, along with many other researchers in this field, it is quite clear to me that every one of their experiences were seen through their personal filters. These filters are based upon their own prior knowledge, both on earth and the before and afterlife of their human incarnation. I also extend the idea that personal filters are at play in Swedenborg's, Robert Bruce's, and my own personal experiences.


According to ES, we are normally connected in this way to 2 good spirits and 2 evil spirits.In my experience, this is a very limited belief and dependent solely on ES's own personal filters during his out of body experiences.


Robert A. Monroe [= RAM] creates the sort of transitory possession that ES has in mind during an OBE visit to Locale III: "I temporarily displaced him. My knowledge of him...and his past came...evidently [from] his memory bank. I have wondered what embarrassment I have caused him ("Journeys Out of the Body", p. 96)."

RAM's possession experience should have made him suspicious that his implausible astral past life experiences are bogus fabrications.

There are quite a large number of reported experiences that entail an ability of stepping into historical person's, contemporary person's, and one's own personal experiences (during this lifetime) as a way of experiencing. Because all possibilities exist at once, it's unlikely that any history is changed. One is merely experiencing one set of experiences that number into infinity. Again, the traditional "possession" is the last thing that I would think of in such a case. Also, again, you could beg the idea that this is an innocuous case of possession. But, with an infinity of possibilities, I think of it more as a case of picking the possiblity that you resonate with, rather than a possession and changing of the course of history. Similar to a virtual reality experience.


We are asked to believe that Catholic priests would order such an atrocityI think we are all aware of the capabilities of all of humankind to do harm to another, and in a particular contemporary situation, priests have been known to perform atrocities on innocent children. I'm not implying that Catholics have the gold medal in atrocities, but you brought it up. :D