Scientific discovery of Spiritual Laws given in Rational Scientific Revelations


The Spiritual Significance of Neologisms

(formerly: Leon A. Jakobovits)
Dr. Leon James
University of Hawaii
2008 (version 27a)
With the collaboration, since 1976 of
Dr. Diane Nahl
Part I   ||   Part II   ||   Part III  ||   Master Neochart   ||  

 

This is Part III
Meta-Neos in Education and Training
Neologistic Discourse Analysis
The Divine Neo Fulfills Itself in the Reality of Conjoint Neocharts 

Summary of the Organic Human Mind or Mental World of Eternity

Conjoint Neos
Intimacy Neos

Neopower: How Conjoint Neos Produce Heaven

The Impossibility of Keeping Track of All Our Neos
Neos, Words, and Correspondences
Appendix
Scientific Activity and Research About Neologisms
Related Links to Leon James
Go to Part II  ||  Go to Part III
The Master Neochart  (overall)  ||  Neochart by Sub-Categories ||  My Favorite and Major Neos by Year
Part III starts here

Meta-Neos in Education and Training

Teaching children about all the neos they produce helps them to prepare the mental ground for the open up the human rational mind, and preparing it for its adult maturation. Meta-neo talk is the register of perception in self-witnessing. In other words, when we practice monitoring our thoughts and feelings (self-witnessing) we need to find an observation perch, or climb up to higher ground, in order to gain perspective on the mental scene or topic focus. This new higher ground of self-witnessing is mental anatomical layer 7Ce, discussed throughout this article. Layer 7 is called the rational mind (C=cognitive organ), and has an external component (e) which is based in materialistic and abstracted thinking that we do in layer 6C, anatomically just below. From conscious awareness in layer 7C we can observe the operations going on in our layer 6C, like from mental balcony or first floor window. We can see our thoughts with our rational mind. You have done this whenever you corrected yourself about thinking something. You realize that that’s wrong or incorrect, and you change your thinking as a result. Instead of going, you might decide to stay. Instead of getting mad at your boss, you decide to keep quiet about it. Etc. You are on your rational self-witnessing perch whenever you talk to yourself in a reasoned manner, for instance planning an encounter with someone, or judging an action as to whether it is good or bad, fair or unfair.
 We operate our daily round from mental layer 8C, which is called the external natural layer, the materialistic self. Social and ecological adaption and survival require that we be practical in our thinking. Our moving around in physical space with a physical body that we must protect, requires our external natural mind to be materialistic. Layer 8C controls layer 9C below it, which gets to control the physical body (layer 12), for as long as it lasts. So there is a chain of downward anatomical mental command structure in place. At the top sits our external rational thinking (7Ce). This is the part that needs to be instructed in childhood and prepared for young adulthood when we fully become conscious in layer 7Ce. We know what we are thinking and think what we believe, doing so from our own reasoning as an independent human being. This mental state begins our adulthood.
Teaching children the mental architecture of neo production on the daily round of living makes a lot of sense. Meta-neo literacy in education should form part of the series of literacy skills we now take for granted that they ought to be universally taught to children – math literacy, reading literacy, writing literacy, information literacy, computer literacy, science literacy, civics literacy, driving literacy, and spiritual literacy. Of all these, neo-literacy and spiritual literacy are the slowest to be recognized and developed. Spiritual literacy is the ability to apply correspondences to all Sacred Scripture and to derive theistic psychology from it. This spiritual literacy operates in our mental anatomy layer 7Ci. This is the interior rational layer in the natural mind (“i” is for interior). The interior-rational portion of the natural mind is our highest level of conscious thinking that we are capable of in this world prior to our resuscitation in the spiritual mind. Layer 7Ci thinking and consciousness is purely rational from the world of rationality itself, which is the Grand Human in the mental world of eternity into which we are born with a spiritual body, and where we awaken upon the separation from the physical body through the dying process. Our conscious understanding of rational meaning is pure in mental anatomical layer 7Ci (the interior rational). This is because its knowledge and concepts are sourced in layer 6, 5, and 4, which are the spiritual layers in which we operate after our resuscitation.
Layer 7Ce (external materialistic thinking) does not fully accept the dualism, two worlds, eternity, Heaven and Hell, God, Sacred Scripture. Many people don’t think about these things, especially those who are not fond of rational thinking as a permanent way of being. Many other people accept these things on persuasive teachings or blind faith, following the notion that spiritual mysteries cannot be penetrated by the human rational mind, hence it’s useless to try. But this is a materialistic thinking and consciousness of reality. It is based on the idea that what the physical senses bring us can be the basis for figuring out reality. This monism in the external rational mind (7Ce) restricts our humanity to the highest animal level on the planet.
Our true humanity begins with the pure rational thinking in layer 7Ci which takes its information not from the appearances of the natural world, but from the realities of the spiritual world of eternity accessible through the correspondential meaning of all Sacred Scripture. Spiritual literacy is the stairway to heaven. Meta-neo instruction prepares the ground for all of layer 7, external and internal, cognitive and affective, and sensorimotor.
Affective neos are feelings and intentions attracted to our consciousness by means of the offer for suitability for conjunction. This is the called the spiritual marriage of the affective with the cognitive. Every operation of our affective organ (“the will”) is experienced in consciousness as a feeling and as an intention. It is the source of all motivation in daily life, and in our immortal eternity. A feeling or an intention means a love. All feelings are the result of loves. All intentions are the result of the affections of love that long to be consummated by conjunction. Love is consummated by conjoining, as in a marriage, with a suitable thought or idea or plan or principle. To put it in a way that children might think of it, we make a wish and it comes true. The wish is a love conjoined to an idea, which is the hope that might come to pass even if it is only wish. It is in this spiritual union between love and hop that the child now lives and feels enthusiasm and energy and motivation to do this or that, which might be merely to wait in patience.
The spiritual union of the affective with the cognitive can be encouraged in affective education. Consider: “What do I need to think of, in order to feel better?” This is the principle that one can feel better by thinking different thoughts. Conversely, if one thinks of critical or negative or cruel thoughts in the cognitive operations, the only conjunction that takes place is with scary feelings, destructive loves, evil intentions, hateful wishes. This union is called the infernal marriage or concubinage.
It is clear then that thoughts attract feelings and moods that correspond to the thoughts and are compatible with them. The instruction of affective neos involves learning the details of the heavenly and hellish marriage in our mind, and in the mind of every human being. This is what it means to be a human being. This is how human beings function as organic units of eternity and substance.
Affective neo education is not only by verbal neologisms involving thoughts and reasoning. It is also involves the sensorimotor domain. All human senses can be used to perform expressions of harmony, rhythm, and pattern, and each of these sensorimotor neos attract an affective partner. The love is consummated when the physical expression is an offspring, as it were, of the spiritual marriage between love and understanding, between longing and fulfilling performance or act.
In this way morality and civics become the practice ground and avenue for the affective loves, intentions, and satisfactions from consummation. In other words, to feel the intensity and sincerity of patriotism in our heart, we not only recite in our cognitive mind the meanings and symbols of patriotism, but we also act out and perform the appropriate sensorimotor and physical movements, gestures, and recitations. These outward acts are spiritual offspring of the spiritual marriage between the affective and the cognitive operations in our mind. The Swedenborg Reports indicate with emphasis that “nothing is more important” in life than to know how the will and the understanding conjoin. This is the key to reformation of character and regeneration, for without these, we are drawn into the source of our selfish and hurtful loves, which is the Grand Monster of hell eternity.
The goal of affective neo instruction is to enable emotionally intelligent neo productions. Children will be able to feel the motivation for being kind, compassionate, and civil. They will consummate their love of showing kindnesses and acting peacefully. They will be empowered to experience the satisfactions of being public spirited, altruistic, and orderly. Emotionally unintelligent neos will gradually lose their value and attractiveness.
 

Neologistic Discourse Analysis

Consider a case in point, this paragraph that appears in the Preface:
/Neologistic records/, graphs, and /charts of a group or community/, /make visible the topic focus/ of its people. It /is their very consciousness/ -- /their preoccupations, their interests, their values/, their desires. Neolgistic records create a /spiritual geography/ of our /vertical community/ depicting thought and meaning/, idea and truth. No doubt a “Human Atlas of Neologisms” may eventually be derived from world-wide /neologistic databases/, which can show the /mental unity of the human race/, and possibly, the /directionality of its spiritual destiny/.
 There are different ways of systematically parsing text for its neologisms. Here I have followed the rule of parsing minimally, that is, including the minimum number of words in an expression, as we go through the paragraph cumulatively from beginning to end, and counting each neo only once (even if used again). I have indicated the parsings above with a slash (/) where a neo begins and ends. Note however that any of these neos may appear multiple times in an article or adjacent paragraphs. For the article count they should be counted only once. In My Neochart I have counted a neo only once in my career regardless of how often I have used it in various articles and at various times.
Using the minimal cumulative parsing technique on the paragraph under analysis, we obtain 12 neos. The paragraph length is 82 words so that the neo/word ratio is 82/12 or 7 (rounded off). A neo/word ratio of 7 in scientific text indicates that it is fairly complex in conceptual structure, which raises the cognitive load of “following the meaning” or sticking with the topic focus of the writer. I have seen complaints by some authors in the literature on neologisms that some of them are not necessary and merely increase cognitive load on the reader for the mere sake of vanity of the writer. Of course we want to avoid producing unnecessary neos in text whose purpose is to communicate new scientific content and information. We also want to avoid using an old expression for a new perception, since this would vitiate the writer’s discovery and interfere with the diffusion of this previously unknown idea, concept, focus, or perception. So we must reach a practical and reasonable balance. Hopefully I will be seen as striving for that balance in my writings.
Now let us take another look at the parsing issue and what’s involved in the implications. The first two neos in the paragraph when taken together, express a more complex concept than the two separately:
(1) /Neologistic records/ (2) /charts of a group or community/

/Neologistic records, graphs, and charts of a group or community/
 The second, longer neo is the result of combining two sub-neos and including the in-between words as part of the longer new neo. Note the collection of separate sub-neos contained semantically within the longer neo:
Neologistic records || Neologistic graphs || Neologistic charts
And then:
Neologistic records of a group || Neologistic graphs of a group || Neologistic charts of a group
And also:
Neologistic records of a community || Neologistic graphs of a community || Neologistic charts of a community
And finally:
Neologistic records, graphs, and charts of a group or community
This final neo is the full idea or description that I intended to convey. It is not the same as “Neologistic records of a community” even though this shorter neo contains within itself all the sub-neos. “Records” contains graphs and charts, while “community” contains group. I can see that some writers might prefer “Neologistic records of a community” to “Neologistic records, graphs, and charts of a group or community.” This depends on the specific intention the writer wants to communicate, which depends on the audience, the social setting, and the purpose of writing it. This is something that needs to be discussed further.
More research needs to be done to understand how we decide whether our new construction is a genuine neo or not. For instance, the expression “final neo” in the previous paragraph shows a google occurrence of 5, 500. But inspection of the documents listed indicates that none can be found that match the meaning of “final neo” given here, namely, the last neologism listed in as series of neologisms. So it is clear that “final neo” is a neo. But there are less clear cases as in my neo “spiritual psychology” which has a yahoo occurrence of 300,000. Again, in so far that I can briefly go through hundreds of documents, I have never been able to find any that relates to spiritual psychology based and defined by the Swedenborg Reports. The expression “spiritual psychology” was not in use back in 1984 among Swedenborg scholars and readers. So when I produced the expression, it was a neo. Here is another example. I coined the expression “semantic satiation” in 1958 and in 2008 it has a google occurrence count of 2,000. Only a small proportion of these documents reference my original work. Most of the users may be unaware of where the neo came from. Neo-authentication research may be able to disentangle these information diffusion procedures in science and literature.
A more difficult situation presents itself when the occurrences are few and seem to match the use I was making of it. For instance, the expression “google occurrence” has a yahoo count of 31. They seem to be used in the sense I used it when writing the above paragraph. Do I put it on my neochart then? I would say yes because I did not know the existence of this usage until I searched for it, after I constructed it and reread it, noticing it there. This answer may be practical for now, but I think that if neocharting becomes a community practice then we will need more reliable ways than introspection and memory. The same paragraph also shows my neo “google occurrence count,” which still has a zero occurrence in 2008. This is collateral evidence that “google occurrence” and “google occurrence count” are produced as genuine neos.
Consider one of the neos in the next paragraph: “intellectual, biographical, commercial, and spiritual uses of neos.” I entered this entire expression in my neochart. It contains eight words, or six if you count content words only. There are sub-neos in it like /intellectual, biographical, commercial/, /biographical, commercial, and spiritual/, /spiritual uses of neos/, /commercial, and spiritual uses of neos/ and so on, all of which have zero occurrence. But I wanted to preserve the entire expression as one complex concept. The sequence /intellectual, biographical, commercial, and spiritual/, semantically represents a unit with four aspects that make neos useful in revealing a person’s activity in a community. I have tried to maintain the conceptual units in the entries in my neochart. This explains why many entries are longer than the minimal sub-neos they may contain. 
Consider the expression “scientific specifics.” It came to just a few minutes ago as I was thinking about the general principle that such as is the quality of love, such is the understanding (Swedenborg). I was then thinking that we can comprehend the meaning of this general principle, but what is needed is the knowledge of the specifics, the scientific specifics. I remember searching my mind for a suitable expression, and “scientific specifics” came into my awareness. From my perspective it is a neologism that I coined since I do not know such an expression and don’t recall reading it anywhere. So I googled it and its occurrence is 961. You would expect the occurrence to be much higher, perhaps in the hundred thousand range, or more, given that “scientific” has a google count of 228 million, and “specifics” occurs in 431 million documents on the Web. Yet “scientific specifics” occurs in less than one thousand documents among the hundreds of billions.
The expression “scientific specifics” refers to the specifics of “scientific explanations” which occurs in 222 million documents. So why only one thousand for “scientific specifics”? At this point probably no one knows the answer. But the answer is available to us in scientific revelations. Further research on the correspondential sense of all Sacred Scripture will bring us the knowledge for the scientific specifics of neo construction in the human mind. The one thousand or so current occurrences for “scientific specifics” may all be neo constructions, or some may be while others are diffusions and borrowings in the way this process normally goes forth.
It is difficult to discuss neologisms without creating meta-neos, which are neologisms about neologisms. Once you start discussing the characteristics and properties of neologisms, you have to construct syntactic variants such as the adjective “neologistic” and the adverb “neologistically” (which I find has a yahoo occurrence of 500). This is not neo mania, nor neo show off. Meta-neos are necessary communicative devices that aid the reader in pin pointing the semantic shape and perceptual contours of the writer’s topic focus to be communicated. This all assumes of course that the information is useful to a reader. I believe it is, and I discuss the utility of neocharts and neo-analysis in this document. All this will become more convincing to more people as the intellectual, biographical, commercial, and spiritual uses of neos become known through the work of future contributors to this topic.
This morning I got this email from my son Rex who was looking over my neochart for the first time:
cool.  i was thinking about how to write a program that automatically finds neologisms in a document (by leveraging google).  the problem is, a neologism has to be not just unique, but also meaningful, which means that an automatic parser that just parses all possible phrases of adjacent words would come up with a lot of false positives.
This technical linguistic issue deserves attention by linguists. No doubt the Google people have the resources to come up with a workable answer. Do they not see the tremendous commercial opportunity in neocharts? Perhaps it would help the Yahoo people and the Microsoft people, if I specified some of the practical and useful values of a search engine for neocharts.
Companies, institutions, organizations, agencies, and departments can monitor their in-house neologistic productivity in both quantity and quality. What on earth for? That kind of reaction is part of our social communicative practices regarding topics. When I talk about neocharts people immediately treat it as non-serious topic. And no doubt throughout this article many readers will wonder whether I speak tongue in cheek about ideas such as neocharts, neocards, neo widgets, neocalendars, neo biographies, annual neo production, spiritual neos, Divine Neos, and so on. Let me assure those readers that I am being serious about each one of the several hundred neos I introduce in this article. The neo-inventiveness and neo-ranking of individuals, organizations, countries, books, email and texting messages, is a meaningful index of the productivity potential of the people and plans involved.
Plans that have a high neo-occurrence value are more likely to succeed – that is my hypothesis. I hope research will confirm it in the near future. Company and agency neocharts are an empirical description of the mental infosphere it manages as copyright ownership. Research needs to show the differential functions of affective neocharts, cognitive neocharts, and sensorimotor neocharts. The neochart infosphere relates to mental anatomy and, accordingly, needs to be described as an ennead matrix of nine zones of intersection.
Anatomical Layers of the Natural Mind
NEO CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURES
SENSORIMOTOR
Neos
COGNITIVE
Neos
AFFECTIVE
Neos
7
Rational
7Si
rational
sensorimotor
neos
7Se
7Ci
rational
cognitive
neos
7Ce
7Ai
rational
affective
neos
7Ae
8
Materialistic
8Si
materialistic
sensorimotor
neos
8Se
8Ci
materialistic
cognitive
neos
8Ce
8Ai
materialistic
affective
neos
8Ae
9
Corporeal
9Si
corporeal
sensorimotor neos
9Se
9Ci
corporeal
cognitive
neos
9Ce
9Ai
corporeal
affective
neos
9Ae
This ennead matrix indicates the quality and level of neos. The construction of corporeal neos occurs at the lowest level (9C) of cognitive reasoning that is closely bound to particular or singular events, hence is sensory bound, data limited, subject to illusory appearances of the senses. Constructing materialistic neos or sensual neos (zone 8C) requires a more abstract level of thinking that can see generals from particulars. Data are merely used to objectify an abstract relation or perception. It is the relation that is in focus and that matters. The relationships between elements of data or observation are abstract neos that operate above and prior to concrete neos. With level 7C thinking one can penetrate and perceive the causes of why generals and their particulars occur together in phenomenal observation. This is the rational level of scientific thinking. It sees for instance that we operate in a dual universe: the physical and natural world in time-space, and the mental and spiritual world in eternity. Level 7C neos are dualist neos sourced in the correspondential sense of Divine Speech as Sacred Scripture. This is the beginning of what is truly and purely human thinking, thus rational scientific thinking informed by Sacred Scripture.
Level 7C neos fall in two categories, external (7Ce) and interior (7Ci). These are two radically different types of rational operations, one natural-rational, the other spiritual-rational. The external natural-rational cognitive operations (zone 7Ce) are sourced in materialistic neos (8C) while on the other hand, the interior spiritual-rational cognitive operations (zone 7Ci) are sourced in Divine Neos coming through our spiritual mental layers (4, 5, 6). From the perspective of google-yahoo-microsoft people, the corporeal and materialistic neos (9C, 8C) have the most commercial significance at this point in time and historical development. Let us recall that we are now in the stone age of technology in comparison to what will be available to our great grand children. Eventually commercial use of spiritual-rational neos (zone 7Ci) will usher in a new post-Web era that will offer a heavenly Internet, which is an Internet that corresponds to the good and truth of the spiritual-celestial zones of the human mind. That will be the beginning of the true human neos whose higher order quality will include collective quasi-omniscience. There will then exist nothing that is beyond human knowledge, understanding, and control.
I can foresee in the distant future a synergistic bio-technology that provides ways of usefully representing the operations of the sensorimotor and cognitive organs. This would allow real time monitoring of neo construction procedures. Bionic interfaces may have the capability of managing these procedures, whenever the affective organ allows it. Thought-control and thought-management could not occur against the free will of the individual’s affective operations of love, purpose, and intention. We know from Sacred Scripture that God manages all procedures, including neo construction procedures in our cognitive organ. Our free will to choose in our own mind anything according to our understanding, is a human right guaranteed by God and maintained forever by God’s omnipotence. We know from this that human free will, which is located in the affective organ operations, cannot be controlled.
Teaching people skills in the construction of affective neologisms has its most significant effects in childhood when layer 8C is being built up for full fledged operation. The teaching of heavenly love neos is sorely needed everywhere you go. Hate neos abound in all our major socialization networks – song lyrics, TV and DVDs, novels, the Internet. Our face-to-face social networking procedures involve bullying, teasing, sarcasm, dispassionate gawking at the pain and terror of others. At the top of our affective love hierarchy sits a selfish despot whose name is Me and Only Me. The Swedenborg Reports distinguish between heavenly and evil neos, as you might expect since this is God’s principal, central, and essential information we need to have to effect a spiritual personality makeover (called “regeneration”). On the job training procedures need to deal with neo construction practices.
By inspecting the chart from bottom up (9, 8, 7) you are looking at the ascending order of human consciousness prior to resuscitation (about 30 hours after the dying process). As infants our consciousness of reality and the world is spent in layer 9 of the mental world of eternity. This is the layer closest to the physical body (layer 12) and its sensory-motor productions. In childhood we spend our consciousness in layer 8 of the mental world. Children are sense oriented but they perform abstraction procedures on what they observe through the senses. Children are untrained engineers. What is lacking is rationality, for without this there is no science, because no rational explanation. This is acquired in adolescence when we spend our consciousness in layer 7e. This is the external rational layer, closes to the materialistic abstractions of layer 8. Our adolescent mind tends towards the ideal which is perceived in the growing rational neos in one’s reflections. This idealized rationality is external because it does not know about God and Sacred Scripture except externally as teachings and readings.
Then our consciousness suddenly takes to an inversion. The adolescent becomes a young adult. Not yet a mature adult, but an adult, and past adolescence. This inversion is marked on the chart as layer 7i, the interior rational layer. The reason it is called interior is that anatomically it is closest to the spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4) which remains unconscious until after resuscitation. The spiritual mind is unavailable to our consciousness prior to resuscitation. In our daily awareness we can know about the spiritual layers of our mind, but we cannot sense them, observe them, or even describe them. All the information about our spiritual mind must therefore come from Sacred Scripture where we have access to the full series of Divine Neos.
Now here is an amazing and frustrating phenomenon or reality that I observed.
The meanings and relations we see, understand, perceive at each layer of our mental anatomy are not transferable to a lower layer. In layer 7Ci (interior rational cognitive operations), we can perceive, observe, and understand rational proof. This rational proof or demonstration is sourced in the interior rational series of correspondences we can access in Sacred Scripture. Theistic psychology is possible because of this availability in layer 7Ci. Now what happens when we describe the rational proof that is available to our consciousness in layer 7Ci? We can see and perceive the meaning and the proof in the description, and others can also see it when they are accessing that layer in their mind. But when people look at this description of the rational proof and meaning in their layer 8C, they see nothing of the proof and the meaning. Efforts to make it comprehensible to them in that layer of thinking is fruitless and frequently results in reactions of derision, denial, and even hostility. One instance of this antipathy between rational proof (layer 7Ci) vs. empirical proof (layer 8C), is the negative bias science that excludes God and Sacred Scripture from science, vs. the positive bias science that includes God and Sacred Scripture, as in theistic psychology and theistic science.
Mental layer 7Ci gives us access to the full series of neos in Sacred Scripture. In a prior Section the following was presented.
Here is the entire series of descending consciousness of Divine Truth in Sacred Scripture:
Layer 4: celestial-rational neologisms
Layer 5: spiritual-rational neologisms
Layer 6: spiritual-natural neologisms
Layer 7i: interior-natural neologisms
===========================
Layer 7e: external-rational neologisms
Layer 8: external-natural neologisms
Layer 9: corporeal-natural neologisms
Layer 7i is here designated as “interior-natural” while we are using here the expression “interior rational.” These differences in name reflect different features of the anatomical details involved in the mental series. The highest consciousness that materialistic science can give us is layer 7e thinking. Einstein presents a good example. Today (May 13, 2008) a news story announces that one of Einstein’s letters is being sold at an auction in London. In that letter Einstein declares that God and Sacred Scripture are “childish” legends. Here you can see the absolute inability of a man who is ranked among the most intelligent in the history of scientists, and especially in modern science. When Einstein operates in level 7Ce, giving elegant mathematical explications of relativity and time, he is restricted entirely to facts and information that come from layer 8 and 9 in his mind. Every rational idea or proof that he can provide is restricted to this external rational operation. It is called “external” because it has no access to the interior, as the interior rational does. “Interior” is also known as “spiritual” in the Swedenborg Reports.
But the instant that Einstein would adopt the positive bias science and say to himself that God and Sacred Scripture are possible, he enters layer 7Ci thinking that sees rational proof in Sacred Scripture in endless different ways. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) wrote his science books in the language and thinking of 7Ci, in contrast to Newton who wrote from layer 7Ce thinking.
  

The Divine Neo Fulfills Itself in the Reality of Conjoint Neocharts

Neo production turns out to be the central goal of our temporary life connected to earth, as well as that of our permanent afterlife of immortality. I didn’t know this as a conscious principle until I started working on this project this year (2008). The facts had been available to me for the past twenty-seven years, ever since I’ve been pouring all over the 27 volumes of the Swedenborg Reports (Mmm, 27/27 – interesting correlation to be investigated). How do these facts lead to the conclusion that neo production is our current and permanent “central goal” in living? Let us put them together in a rational account.
Reality exists in two worlds: the spiritual world of mental eternity, and the natural world of time-space. The world of mental eternity originates from the Spiritual Sun, while the natural world originates in the physical suns or star galaxies. The two realities are deterministically connected to each other, event by event, point by point, from general functions to particular individual qualities. This connection is called the Law of Correspondences and has been revealed Swedenborg Reports for the first time in the history of science. Every event or quality at all levels of possible detail, that exists in the natural world at any time or place, is called an effect of correspondence. And, every event or quality at all levels of possible detail that exists in the mental world of eternity (or “spiritual world”), is called a cause of correspondence.
For the first time in scientific history, the Swedenborg Reports (last volume published in 1771) empirically demonstrate that the literal sense of Sacred Scripture is also a natural effect produced by a spiritual cause. All things in the physical world are produced by correspondences, hence Divine Speech or Dictation must also appear in the physical world by means of correspondences. This is the law that applies to anything that appears in physical reality in the natural world. Swedenborg’s unique dual consciousness in both worlds (from age 57 to 84), allowed him to run this simple but impressive experiment, on a repeated and regular basis for 27 (or 29) years. In his natural consciousness and physical body he was reading a certain verse in his familiar Swedish or Latin Bible. Simultaneously, in his spiritual consciousness and spiritual body he was reading that same verse, and observing the difference. From this dual observation platform he was able to take copious daily notes detailing the difference between the natural sense and the spiritual sense of every verse and every word in the Old and New Testaments.
He was an expert at making indices and laying out text in numbered paragraphs that are cross-referenced to each other. He produced 6 volumes of analyses just for one Book in the New Testament called The Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. It took him 12 volumes to give the word by word analysis of the first two Books of the Old Testament called Genesis and Exodus. Each word of Divine Speech is produced by correspondence in a natural language. First is the reality of the Divine Spiritual Neo produced by God’s Mind in the Divine Mental World. This is called Divine Truth or Divine Speech, and also “the Word of God.” Note that Divine Speech or Truth does not have a creation history. It is eternal and permanent. You can’t point to anything and say this precedes Divine Speech or Divine Truth. Everything of creation has a beginning, by definition. You can point to God’s Mind, which is Divine Love and Truth, and correctly say that it precedes creation and all things in it.
The Divine Affective Neo called Divine Love is the uncreated origin or source that produces and propels the Spiritual Sun into creation. Creation is the work of the Spiritual Sun. This living eternal entity is Divine, and is God as He is Outside of Himself and in Creation.
The Spiritual Sun is the infinite changeless God-as-He-Is-in-Himself, presented in a visible form outside of how He-Is-in-Himself. This outside of how He-Is-in-Himself, is the beginning point of created reality. Everything created is produced by this one and only, and eternal living Spiritual Sun.
The Spiritual Sun is infinite but it appears as finite when viewed visually. Swedenborg was able to see the Spiritual Sun whenever he was conscious in mental layer 4 called the Third Heaven. Every person he met in that layer assured him that they too can see it, and marvel at it. They are conscious of the influx that comes from the Spiritual Sun from within their mental organs, as well as from without their sensory organs of sight and touch. They feel the spiritual heat entering into their affective organ, and they see the spiritual light in their cognitive organ as new understanding, new meaning, or new consciousness. Spiritual heat and light flowing out of the Spiritual Sun creates a rational ether or mental space around itself.
The spiritual heat creates a mental sphere of love with its affections and feelings, while the spiritual light creates a mental sphere of truth with its thoughts and rational understandings. This is the second sphere in creation, and is the mental zone of eternity that is closest to Divine Love and Truth streaming out of the infinite Spiritual Sun. The third mental sphere around the Spiritual Sun is the layer in mental eternity that produces the individual unique souls of every human being.
With layer 4 of the mental world of eternity we reach the first existence of human conscious awareness as an individual person. This is the mental state he calls the Third Heaven (or highest of the three heavens). It is the highest existence and reality for the human race. God’s infinite Love in Himself desires to make other minds happy from His Mind. Divine Love Neos are constructed out of such desire to share with others outside of self. God desires to make human beings happy and joyful from birth to endless eternity, and wills through His infinite Wisdom or Truth, to multiply and diversify endlessly these varieties of joys and intelligences that can live in human consciousness. The mental world of eternity is the construction zone where these endless joys and understandings can come into the living reality of every created soul. This is the plan that is revealed in eternal and universal Divine Speech as it is laid down in the natural-rational correspondences of the Swedenborg Reports.
When I tried to apply the analysis of correspondences to Sacred Scripture other than the Old and New Testaments, I discovered that the content of all Sacred Scripture is united and forms the natural representative of universal spiritual reality contained in Divine Speech. In other words, Divine Speech or Divine Truth is a permanent activity of the Spiritual Sun. Divine Speech flows out of the Spiritual Sun into the mental world of eternity that it forms around itself for the organic reception of good and truth (or love and wisdom). Spiritual heat is a living organic substance of God called Divine Love. We need to think about love as a substance from the Spiritual Sun, and spiritual light as a substance also of the Spiritual Sun.
These two living eternal uncreated Divine substances in God flow out of God into creation through the Spiritual Sun, which appears there, visible to human consciousness. This layer of human consciousness is called the celestial-rational mind. Swedenborg inspected the Sacred Scripture Book that is read by people who dwell in that mental layer in eternity. He described the kind of thinking that takes place through celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Speech. Every element of thinking exists in a married state to a specific element of love. Every thought is produced by a love. The thought is a “consort” to the love and together, they make a unique combination or existential neologism. Every neo in human consciousness is produced by this marriage between some love we have with some thought that it can go with. Thoughts are constructed in the cognitive organ out of the substances of spiritual light. Loves and their affections and feelings, are constructed in the affective organ out of the substances of spiritual heat.
In this way the organic spiritual marriage of love and understanding in every person, actualizes by correspondence the organic Divine marriage in God, which is the unity into one between His Divine Love or Good and His Divine Wisdom or Truth. This actualization of correspondences in the human mind fulfills God’s Love and strivings in creation as He is Outside of Himself. Note that since all things are produced by the substances of the Spiritual Sun, all things contain these substances. There is no way of getting rid of the center of something. You can see this logical principle operating with physical objects. You can’t get rid of what makes its center, namely the space and whirling particles that were detached from a sun in the initial phases of planetary evolution. A piece of that original star is at the center of every object on the planet. These connections are actually representatives or models (or effects) produced by correspondences of Divine Speech or Truth as it exteriorizes from the Spiritual Sun outward in a circle and across the various mental layers of eternity.
There is only one physical space, so the space at the center of each atom is the same space in which the galaxies are. These relations are actually representatives (effects) produced by the Spiritual Sun as its heat and light stream out across the various mental layers of the world of eternity. The Spiritual Sun is at the center of each thing or quality that is produced in the mental world eternity. The substances of spiritual heat (or Divine Love) and spiritual light (or Divine Light) produce each mental state organically. First they produce the three mental organs – affective organ (or the “will”), cognitive organ (or the “understanding”), and sensorimotor organ (or “spiritual body”). These three organs form a unitary system or mind, and this is reproduced in six distinct but interacting layers.

Summary of the Organic Human Mind or Mental World of Eternity

When our consciousness or understanding operates at layer 4, we are thinking and reasoning with celestial-rational correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth.
When our consciousness or understanding operates at layer 5, we are thinking and reasoning with spiritual-rational correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth.
When our consciousness or understanding operates at layer 6, we are thinking and reasoning with spiritual-natural correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth.
When our consciousness or understanding operates at layer 7i, we are thinking and reasoning with interior-natural (or exterior spiritual and celestial) correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth (that is, according to rationality based on spiritual and celestial meanings (layers 6, 5, 4) contained within Sacred Scripture).
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When our consciousness or understanding operates at layer 7e, we are thinking and reasoning with exterior-rational correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth (that is, according to rationality based on abstractions from sensuous appearances and meanings contained within Sacred Scripture).
When our consciousness or understanding operates at layer 8, we are thinking and reasoning with exterior-natural correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth (that is, according to abstractions from sensuous appearances and meanings contained within Sacred Scripture).
When our consciousness or understanding operates at layer 9, we are thinking and reasoning with corporeal-natural correspondences or meanings of Divine Speech or Truth (that is, according to mere sensuous appearances and meanings contained within Sacred Scripture).
These 6 organic mental layers reflect the geographic zones of the mental world through which Swedenborg traveled. To reflect this astonishing fact, I like to use this formula in theistic psychology:
spiritual geography = mental anatomy
In other words, the spiritual world of eternity and afterlife is nothing else than the mental world we are familiar with already. We are not conscious in layers 6, 5, 4 called the “spiritual mind” until after our resuscitation. Swedenborg observed many people in the process of being resuscitated (about 30 hours after death). In the initial mental states we are still conscious in the natural mind (layers 9, 8, 7) as we gain full consciousness in the spiritual mind. If the spiritual mind has not been opened by regeneration, then there is an attempt to provide the opportunity for character reformation to each individual. Swedenborg observed that each person chooses according to the ruling love they have acquired prior to resuscitation. If the ruling love is unregenerate, the spiritual layers cannot be operationalized for their consciousness. That ruling love prevents it because the spiritual mind is in the order of Divine Speech or “heaven”, while the unregenerate ruling love is always in the opposite order called “hell.” The ruling love selects a level of consciousness that is suitable to itself, and shuts out all other levels of understanding and truth.  
Swedenborg regularly for years spoke to people who live in one of the numerous spiritual societies of hell, globally called The Grand Monster in the mental world of eternity. He also spoke regularly to people who live in one of the numerous spiritual societies of heaven, globally called The Grand Human in the mental world of eternity. Since there is only one mental world of eternity, every human being is in that one world. Individual mental life is unique because each person’s organic soul and spirit (layer 2 and 3) is created unique at birth. From birth onward to endless immortality, every person’s mental organs receive the influx of Divine spiritual heat and light in a unique way, engendering a unique consciousness, and consequently a unique life, a unique relationship to God.
From all this you can see more rationally how it is that neo- production is the central goal of existence and of the creation of the universe. A neo (S) is born from the union between our love (A) and our understanding (C).
Affective (A) operations conjoin with cognitive operations (C) to produce a neo baby (S). The Neochart is an autobiographical record of this marriage in the mind of an individual over the course of intellectual development. Conjoint Neocharts form a record of the life of a conjoint self, which is the united mind of a conjugial couple.
The Divine Neo fulfills itself in the reality of conjoint neocharts.
 

Conjoint Neos

In the Swedenborg Reports God is revealing one of the most fundamental of all philosophical puzzles, namely, the rational and complete answer to the question: “What is the purpose of the universe and human life in it?”
The beginning purpose and the end purpose of all creation is conjugial love.
Creation and the universe exist for the purpose of fostering this love between a husband and a wife.
All other purposes in the running of the universe are subordinated to this one purpose.
Conjugial Love (CL) between a husband and wife (called “the celestial marriage”) corresponds to the conjunction of Divine Love and Divine Truth in God (called the "Divine Marriage"). In between these two is “the spiritual marriage” which is the conjunction of our affective and cognitive organs (“will and understanding). Regeneration brings about the spiritual marriage within each of us. After resuscitation we exist in the celestial marriage in some society of the Grand Human.
The spiritual marriage is something each of us must focus on. It is brought about and managed by the Divine Psychologist (“Holy Spirit” or “the Lord” or “God”). Regardless of people’s beliefs and religions it is the Divine Psychologist who manages this process in the mind of every human being past, present, and future, from birth to endless eternity. This is true of us here before resuscitation, it is true when we live our existence in heavenly consciousness after resuscitation, and it is true when we are in the Grand Monster. God manages every human being’s mental world and organic mental operations through the laws of correspondences, which God reveals in the Swedenborg Reports.
Natural marriages on earth are designed by God to foster the psychological growth of our inborn conjugial character.
God manages couples in natural marriages here on earth by providing for them intermediate steps of deepening the relationship from relatively external to internal and inmost.
The inmost phase in a natural marriage is practiced when we adapt our behavior to fit the unity model.
The intermediate phase in a natural marriage is practiced when we adapt our behavior to fit the equity model.
The beginning phase in a natural marriage is practiced when we adapt our behavior to fit the male dominance model.
 
The male dominance model is in layer 9 of the mental world of eternity (natural-corporeal mind).
The equity model is in layer 8 of the mental world of eternity (natural-materialistic mind).
The unity model is in layer 7 of the mental world of eternity (natural-rational mind).
In the male dominance model of behaving in marriage (layer 9), the couple practices sensorimotor intimacy without cognitive and affective intimacy within it.
In the equity model of behaving in marriage (layer 8), the couple practices sensorimotor intimacy within which is cognitive intimacy, but without affective intimacy.
In the unity model of behaving in marriage (layer 7), the couple practices sensorimotor intimacy, within which is cognitive intimacy, within which is affective intimacy.
Husbands who commit themselves to the unity model can search the Swedenborg Reports for information on how to behave and how to think within this model. I have done this for many years and have formulated a series of mental and interactional procedures that I collectively call The Doctrine of the Wife (DoW). 
The principal love in the unity model is to maintain intimacy at all three levels – sensorimotor, cognitive, affective. Events that break mental intimacy need to be studied by the husband, understood, and avoided on a daily and hourly basis. Here are such anti-unity events that I have observed in my life and the lives of other couples, both real and in the media. The list should be very familiar to all readers: 
  1. Husband disagrees with his wife (breaks trust she has in him to protect her and cherish her)
  2. She asks him to do something and he ignores her request (creates stress in her life, breaks her peace)
  3. She wants to keep talking about it, he refuses, obfuscates, or goes away (makes her feel like she is alone, abandoned, rejected)
  4. She argues with him to stop seeing certain friends, but he refuses, picks a fight each time (makes her feel discouraged, like she is unloved and failing)
  5. When he is in a certain mood he criticizes her, calls her names, acts like he is mad (makes her feel beaten up, abandoned, used, discouraged)
  6. He tries to make her feel guilty for not acting like she wants to have sex with him when he wants to (makes her feel like a victim of sexual blackmail and date rape)
  7. He talks about her behind her back in a critical or disrespectful way to his mother, children, friends, or strangers (makes her feel like dying when she finds out about it, something inside her goes cold towards him)
  8. He feels comfortable letting her be stuck with stress and inconveniences in domestic tasks and situations, without really coming to her rescue, giving her relief by doing things with her and for her, in the way she wants things to be done (doing this for her makes her feel sexy towards him and returns to her the freedom to be a feminine woman)
There are all sorts of interactional neos and transactional neos. These are new ways of having an exchange, or a different way of communicating or saying something to someone who can detect the neomaly (combination of neo and anomaly). Neomalies are anomalous neologisms. This happens frequently with friends, roommates, spouses. When people live together they evolve forms of sensorimotor coordination which one can perceive in their interactional rhythm, verbal and nonverbal. When married partners practice the unity model procedures in their interactions, they are each other’s best friends and evolve an interdependent conjoint self.  
mental anatomy of married couple
A conjugial conjoint self is constructed out of the husband’s masculine intelligence and the wife’s feminine intentions. The mental anatomy of men and women are in reciprocal form relative to each other. In a man’s mind the cognitive organ is on the outside, closest to the sensorimotor organ and his physical body, while in a woman’s mind the affective organ is on the outside, closest to the sensorimotor organ and her physical body.
You can see from this diagram that the anatomical conjunction of the minds of husband and wife takes three phases to complete. The first phase (1) is the mutual adjunction of their sensorimotor organs. I call it adjunction because, as the Swedenborg Reports show, two like organs cannot conjoin anatomically but can only be coordinated to each other in operation, each remaining independent and single. Mental conjunction requires reciprocal organic structures that are constructed to form a whole. This means that individuals are born single and remain incomplete in mental anatomical growth until each person can conjoin with its own reciprocal.
Marriages that practice the male dominance model involve sensorimotor and physical adjunction, but there is no cognitive and affective intimacy. In his own mind, the husband who practices male dominance does not knows little about his wife’s cognitive life, and knows even less about his wife’s affective life. Nor does he care to know. The male dominance model of marriage never goes beyond sensorimotor and physical intimacy.
Phase 2 begins when the husband gives up male dominance and adopts the equity model of marriage. Now he feels obligated to consult his wife’s thinking on many things about their domestic life. He even adopts a new philosophical attitude about it, favoring in his mind and in his talk the philosophy that “the sexes are equal” and that “women should be given the same opportunities as men” etc. Equity husbands negotiate and haggle about who does what how much, and when things get rough and he feels he is expected to do too much, he will rebel, throw a fit, fall silence, take a walk, go out, or worse, make his wife feel jealous and insecure. The husband will self-servingly fall back on the male prerogative model of society, giving him the ultimate word on just about everything in their life together.  Still, there are many husbands who see through this self-created subterfuge and how dangerous and hurtful and unfair it is.
Phase 3 begins when the husband realizes that sensorimotor adjunction and cognitive sharing and intimacy, are not enough. He knows that his wedding vow was to take care of her ‘till death do us part’ but in his heart and desire he feels differently. He longs for the hope that their union may be forever, beyond death and into immortality. She is his soul mate. He knows it, he feels it. Soul mates are forever. So now, under the impact of this regenerative affective neologism he changes his mind, he remakes his vow to her, this time saying ‘till endless eternity.’ Now he is entering the unity phase of affective intimacy. He very soon realizes and feels that this is not going to be an easy task.
Conjunction is a powerful anatomical process of change and remaking, restructuring. The reciprocal anatomical components in each of them are covered up by much thick growth belonging to other loves, other than conjugial, having to do with self interest, gender politics, family ties, preferences and fears, sympathies and antipathies in everything cultural in which they are mentally immersed – lifestyle habits, prejudices, weaknesses. These differences or interactional dividers were there before in the earlier phases, but they were so much easier to cover up, to lay aside and ‘agree to disagree.’ But now in the unity phase (3) there is no hiding from each other. Masculine neologistic productions clash with feminine ones. You can see the nature of this clash of characters when you consider the anatomical diagram of their mind.
 
mental anatomy of married couple
His cognitive organ is right next to the sensorimotor and the outside physical world. His affective organ is hidden deep behind the recesses of his cognitive awareness. The masculine intelligence looks outward into the physical world and is occupied with it. His affective operations remain deep seated and not very well known. He is quick to disagree, then quick to get angry at her when she interferes with his way of thinking about something. He expects her to submit, to agree, to be loyal to his way of seeing it and justifying it.
He resists her when she reflects to him his feelings and motivational intentions. He denies them. He is different than she imagines, he says and thinks. What is she to do?
 
Her affective organ is right next to her sensorimotor environment and physical body. She feels things by perception. She is not as practiced as he is in justifying and explaining how things are with him. She just knows it, because she perceives it. Her intention and love for conjoining him to herself is so powerful that she burns hot with desire for affective intimacy. She can only obtain this if he wants to have that with her. He must reciprocate by conjoining himself to her. This is the unity dynamic: She strives to conjoin herself to him, and he strives to conjoin himself to her. Her outward feminine love conjoins itself to his outward masculine intelligence (phase 2). Now when this is done, she waits. She must wait for him to conjoin his inner masculine love (affective organ) with her inner feminine intelligence (cognitive organ). The diagram shows this process with the lines conjoining the parts.
Note: Click here for additional discussion on the layers of mental anatomy with mental organs, and on husband-wife relationship in the unity phase.
The deepest form of masculine intelligence exists in two phases, unenlightened (mental layer 7Ce) and enlightened (layer 7Ci). The difference in level of operation between the external rational layer (7Ce) of a man’s cognitive organ (C) and his interior (i) rational layer (7Ci) is like that between the physical and the spiritual. One is temporary and sourced in appearances, the other is eternal and sourced in realities. To depend on appearances (in layers 9, 8, 7e) for one’s survival is to ultimately fail to adapt, and consequently it is to fail and to miss the desirable potential, giving up the desired goal. But to depend on realities for survival is to adapt successfully, attaining full potential, and enjoying the attainment of all one’s cherished goals. Enlightenment is the mental state of reasoning from realities. Unelightenment is to reason from appearances.
For example, to say that the “sun rises and sets” is to speak according to the visual appearances of the sun’s progression across our daily horizon in the sky. This is merely a communicative convention that makes things more convenient for people. There are many such instances in our daily round of activities and settings. But to construct a scientific explanation that relies on this appearance is to destroy science as the study of reality. Science does not base its theories and explanations on mere data and observations – these are merely appearances, effects, correlations, accidents. Instead science bases its explanations on abstractions away from the appearances in data observations. Theory must go beyond the data, or else it is imaginary and unreal. Such imaginary theory has no power to explain, nor power to predict or control anything of importance.
What is added in theory that is not in the observational appearances of the data?
The answer is that rationality is what theory is made of. We construct a theory by putting rational ideas together into a pattern that enlarges our understanding of something. The something is the observational data or “phenomenon” (whose etymology denotes the appearance to the senses). Anatomical layer 7Ce gives access to external rational theories which are above mere abstractions (layer 8C) of sensory observations and instrumental measurements (layer 9C). But layer 7Ci gives access to interior rational theories sourced in the spiritual layers of mental eternity. These spiritual layers are created by the layers of correspondences in Sacred Scripture -- spiritual-natural in layer 6C, spiritual-rational in layer 5C, and celestial-rational in layer 4C. These levels of spiritual consciousness are purely rational, uncontaminated by the appearances of the physical senses that restricts our natural world consciousness to appearances (layers 9, 8, 7e).
The unenlightened masculine intelligence practices the male dominance model of relating to women (layer 9) in phase 1, then in phase 2, practices the equity model (layer 8 and 7e). In these two phases men relate to women in terms of appearances (layer 9) and in terms of abstractions (layer 8). But in phase 3 men relate to women in terms of realities. The unenlightened masculine intelligence (layers 9, 8, 7e) is incompatible with feminine intelligence because one is external (belonging to the physical world) while the other is interior belonging to the mental world of eternity. Feminine intelligence is shown on the diagram above as being located in the inmost or highest region of the woman’s mind. Feminine intelligence is informed by rational perceptions more than by external appearances. It is the reverse with the unenlightened masculine intelligence, which is more informed by and reliant on external appearances and their abstractions, rather than by understanding of the causes of these appearances. All causes are in the mental world of eternity (or “spiritual world”), and all phenomenal appearances in the physical world are effects of mental causes. Hence it is that feminine intelligence, which is based on rational perception, is higher than masculine intelligence that is not yet enlightened, and consequently is based on appearances and their abstractions.
This is why it is necessary for a man to subordinate his own masculine intelligence to his wife’s feminine intelligence regarding all matters pertaining to their life together. The Swedenborg Reports divide the things between a husband and wife in two broad categories, “forensic” and “domestic.” In the literal sense “forensic” refers to the things a man does outside the home to support and protect his family, like employment, politics, commerce, science, community-building. But in the correspondential or spiritual sense “forensic” refers to unenlightened masculine intelligence (9C, 8C, 7Ce). In the literal sense “domestic” refers to what a woman does in the home to take care of home management and parenting. But in the correspondential or spiritual sense “domestic” refers to enlightened masculine intelligence (7Ci).
So in a real sense a man becomes spiritually enlightened when subordinates his masculine intelligence to his wife’s feminine intelligence. This is known in theistic psychology as the Doctrine of the Wife for Husbands (DoW).
This subordination is purely voluntary. The woman has no power to compel the man to listen to her. She can plead and beg and complain, but that’s where it ends if he chooses to ignore her. This subordination is sourced in pure heavenly freedom guaranteed by the Divine Psychologist who manages this process in all its details and progressions. Neither does God compel anyone. God’s omnipotence is exercised to insure that the man’s choice in this matter will be purely his own choice in accordance with his own love and motivation. For only that which he chooses from love in accordance with his reason, does belong to him in eternity. Through this attitude of unity the man becomes more and more enlightened. God has arranged matters this way from creation by making masculine intelligence to be the reciprocal of feminine intelligence so that the two can form a one, and thus a higher self, a conjoint self.
When the two minds work as one they produce conjoint neos. Heavenly life in eternity is constructed out of conjoint neos. Swedenborg describes the heavenly surroundings of the couples who construct their mental environment by means of conjoint neos.
It is a heaven of neos!
Everything there that is visible as an environment is like a dream space filled with everything surprising that is happy, charming, beautiful, involving, and rationally meaningful. Swedenborg saw dream houses and palaces, new types of gardens and plant arrangements, new fruits that are delightful and even instructive because of their representations in the Grand Human, which is the mental world of eternity. Every wonderful and meaningful object that appears in mental anatomy layer 4 is a representative of conjugial love between a husband and wife united into a conjoint self. This dream like reality in eternity is very real, unlike a dream or daydream we have here in our natural consciousness, which only lasts a short while then ends, making us face the concrete facts before us and surrounding us. But in the spiritual consciousness we have after resuscitation in layers 6, 5, 4, the surrounding sensorimotor neos are mental performances of our inner loves that use our thoughts and imagination to give them meaning.  
Our cognitive life of thinking is in the service of our affective life of loves. Every love has a built power to consume itself. To be consumed is the purpose of a love’s existence. A love is consummated when it conjoins itself to a thought, as in a spiritual marriage, and producing offspring of that affective-cognitive union, that are visible as sensorimotor neologisms.
Prior to resuscitation, while we’re here conscious in our natural mind (anatomical layers 9, 8, 7), there is a discrete barrier separating our sensorimotor operations (9S) and our temporary physical body (layer 12). This may be called the dualist barrier of existence. Humans are born into a dualist creation, one in time and physical matter, the other in eternity and mental substance. Our physical body contains physical organs and structures patterned after the spiritual body, which is a mini-version of the Grand Human. The spiritual body contains our mental organs: affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. These interact with each other in correspondence with the in the exact way in which the three systems in the physical body interact – circulatory/digestive, respiratory/oral, and nervous/skeletal. Every detailed physiological, biochemical, and atomic operation of the three interdependent physical systems is a particular effect caused by some affective love in the spiritual body, in conjunction with some cognitive idea, and together through the intermediary of the sensorimotor determinations, readinesses, and instantiations.
The conscious portion of our natural mind has control over the physical body’s voluntary movements. This control ratio is like the difference between a child’s knowledge of using a cell phone and the team of engineers and computer scientists that built it and keep its global system running. We know only the most general things of what is actually going on when we make our arm and fingers move to place food in our mouth. So the control of the physical environment we have is like the control a child has over the United Nations. But we know from the memory of our dreams that in a purely mental world we have the power of a god, like the author of a novel has power over the characters. Our ruling love makes everything happen in our sensorimotor dream environment. We can see the powerful attraction of beauty and feel the intensity of the pleasure, and when we are captured by an infernal love, we feel the terror and see the ugliness and deformation.
After resuscitation, for a relatively brief process or phase, we are as if still located in our natural mind and consciousness, and our earth bound cultural memories, identity, and self-image. Things are not normal or as before, we realize that. People appear and disappear, the surrounding environment instantly and drastically changes, people we know are as if there, along with strangers who somehow inexplicably yet seem familiar. Scenes come and go as if in an intense dream or spiritual holodeck. Who is the programmer? It is the Divine Psychologist managing the individual’s entry point into the final and eternal destination – somewhere in the Grand Human or in the Grand Monster. The individual’s ruling love is given the opportunity by the Divine Psychologist to make that choice.
There are two kinds of ruling loves in the mental world of eternity. One is the chief love in the spiritual layers (6, 5, 4) called the love of good and truth, and the other is the chief love in the natural layers of our mind (7, 8, 9) that is nothing but the love of corrupted good and falsified truth. For example, when we love to do something for the sake of ourselves alone, we hate to do something for the sake of others as well as ourselves. The first is an infernal love, the second is a heavenly love. Following our resuscitation and while we are still conscious in our natural mind, the Divine Psychologist brings us face to face with our principal loves, both heavenly and infernal. This is done through a series of Divinely orchestrated happenings and meetings that provide people with the experiences they need to become consciously aware of their deep seated and often hidden principal loves.
In the Swedenborg Reports the Divine Psychologist declares that “Love is man's willing, and derivatively is his thinking, and thereby his acting." (AC 3938)
People's loves have activated them throughout their life in the earthly environment and body, forming their character, over which they superimposed a social personality that others could accept and live with. But throughout this time the real character of the ruling love remains hidden – unless the individual undergoes reformation by spiritual enlightenment, and proceeds with regeneration of character. This cooperation process with the Divine Psychologist allows the mental rebirth of a new heavenly ruling love that will take the person to the Grand Human. And otherwise the person remains attached to the infernal love of wanting only what is of gain to self, and hating all heavenly loves because these loves benefit others and not merely self.
Both heavenly and infernal loves are empowered by the Divine Psychologist. Hellish loves conjoin themselves with hellish thoughts in what is called an “infernal concubinage” between corrupted good and falsified truth. This infernal marriage or marriage made in hell, produces the sensorimotor environment of the Grand Monster. Swedenborg describes many details of this appearance in his book Heaven and Hell published in 1758, which forms a portion of the Swedenborg Reports. Evil loves, or lusts, are consummated in abominable ways so that the sensorimotor environment they instantiate as a surrounding environment is dark, dreary, dangerous, dungeon and dragon-like. People in their role as devils and genii, or sirens and sorceresses, play out an immortal life that is beastly, debasing, and devoid of any rational and sane sentiment or understanding. Cave like bandits and bands of pirates roam around, appear and disappear, threatening others with mental tortures known as the “fires of hell.” Sirens and magicians prey upon the less corrupt than they are, capturing lesser devils than they are, and consummating on them their love of dominating, enslaving, and extinguishing whatever they have left that is their own. Such is the sensorimotor environment produced by the infernal marriage in the human mind.
But if our ruling love after resuscitation allows those loves we have acquired that desire to benefit others and not just self, then we are incorporated into the anatomical framework of the Grand Human. The Swedenborg Reports describe various methods or mechanisms by which this incorporation is achieved. They involve spiritual “gyres” or sensorimotor induction procedures by which the individual’s anatomical framework is made to become an integral part and functioning component of the Grand Human. Swedenborg witnessed and described gyres or spiritual dances that involved thousands of participants. Often he could hear very large choirs accompanying the induction activity. The individual is inducted into some society of the Grand Human that shares the specific loves of the new arrival. And upon arrival there, the person feels like “coming home” and the neighbors have faces that look like brothers, sisters, and cousins. Above all, one begins life as a conjoint self, by being united to one’s soul mate as a spouse. This celestial marriage produces as offspring the endless neos in the universe.



For a discussion of these diagrams see here.

 

Intimacy Neos

are of three types:
  • sensorimotor intimacy neos
  • cognitive intimacy neos
  • affective intimacy neos
When the husband or boyfriend is in the male dominance mood, the wife or girlfriend is restricted to living with his sensorimotor intimacy neos, while being deprived of his cognitive intimacy neos and affective intimacy neos. When the husband or boyfriend is in the equity mood, the wife or girlfriend is living with his sensorimotor intimacy neos as well as his cognitive intimacy neos, but is deprived of his affective intimacy neos. When the husband or boyfriend is in the unity mood, the wife or girlfriend is given access to all three mental layers of his mind, being able to conjoin with his sensorimotor intimacy neos, with his cognitive intimacy neos, and with his affective intimacy neos. The natural marriage turns into a spiritual marriage as the husband spends more of his time in the unity mood. The wife is then able to deepen the couple’s conjunction and advance progressively to anatomical conjunction in all layers of their mental world together. They are then united to eternity as soul mates. Through this joint effort at conjunction they have grown for themselves a conjugial couple’s conjoint self, which is the final completion of a human being.
Swedenborg interviewed conjugial couples in layer 4 of the mental world of eternity. As they approach him from a distance the two appear as one walking, and when the two are face to face talking it appears that they are talking as-if together in facial expression. These are examples of celestial sensorimotor intimacy neos within which are cognitive intimacy neos, within which are affective intimacy neos. They are joined in all their loves through a reciprocal conjunction of their mental anatomy. This affective conjunction is reciprocal between masculine love and feminine love. They each receive the love as spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun, but this Divine Love enters the masculine affective organ differently than its received by the feminine affective organ. Hence it is that the conjunction is possible being in reciprocal loves. This reciprocal and differentiated affective conjunction produces affective conjoint neos that express themselves, and thereby find their fulfillment, in the sensorimotor intimacy neos of their separated faces, as witnessed and described by Swedenborg.
CL 42. I shall append here accounts of two experiences from the spiritual world, of which this is the first.
One morning I looked up into heaven and saw above me one broad level above another, and as I watched, the first level near to me was opened up, and then the second above, and finally the third, which was the highest. I was enlightened by this so as to grasp that the angels forming the first or lowest heaven were on the first level, those forming the second or middle heaven on the second level, and those forming the third or highest heaven on the third level.

At first I wondered what this meant and why it so appeared; and then I heard a voice like the sound of a trumpet coming out of heaven, which said, 'We have noticed and now see that you are meditating about conjugial love. We know that so far no one on earth knows what truly conjugial love is in its origin and essence, important though it is to know this. It has therefore pleased the Lord to open up the heavens to you, so that the light which enlightens may flow into the inner levels of your mind and allow you to perceive it. Our celestial delights in the heavens, especially the third, are chiefly from conjugial love. We have therefore been given permission to send down a married couple for you to see.'

[2] Then suddenly there was to be seen a chariot coming down from the highest or third heaven, containing what seemed to be one angel. But as it approached, it seemed to have two angels in it. The chariot seen from afar sparkled like a diamond, and had harnessed to it foals as white as snow. The travelers riding in the chariot held in their hands two turtle-doves, and they called out to me, 'You would like us to come closer, but be careful then that the fiery radiance, which is from the heaven we come down from, does not strike too deep. It will certainly enlighten the higher concepts in your intellect, which are in themselves heavenly. But these are inexpressible in the world where you now are. So understand rationally what you are about to hear, and so explain this to your intellect.'

'I will be careful,' I replied, 'come closer.' They did so, and turned out to be a husband and wife. 'We are a married couple,' they said. 'We have led a blessed life in heaven from the earliest time, which you call the Golden Age. We have been perpetually in the bloom of youth, in which you see us today.'

[3] I gazed at them both, because I realised that in their life and their adornment they were a picture of conjugial love. Their lives were to be seen from their faces, their adornment from their dress. For all angels are affections of love in human form. Their ruling affection shines out from their faces, and it is their affection which provides and determines what they wear. So in heaven there is a saying, everyone is dressed by his affection. The husband looked to be of an age half way between an adolescent and a young adult. Sparkling light glittered from his eyes, an effect of the wisdom of love; this light made his face shine with a kind of internal radiance, and this radiation made his skin shine on the outside, so that his whole face was a single lovely splendour. He was dressed in an ankle-length robe, over a blue garment with a gold belt, decorated with three gems, a sapphire at either side and a carbuncle at the centre. He wore stockings of shining linen with silver threads in the weave, and pure silk shoes. This was the picture presented by conjugial love in the husband.

[4] In the wife it appeared like this. I saw her face and at the same time I did not see it. It looked like Beauty itself, but I could not see it because this is inexpressible. Her face shone with fiery light, the light the angels in the third heaven enjoy, and this dazzled my sight, so that I was simply amazed. When she noticed this, she spoke to me. 'What can you see?' she asked. 'I can see nothing but conjugial love and the form it takes,' I answered. 'But I both see and don't see.'

At this she turned sideways on to her husband, and then I could gaze at her more fixedly. Her eyes flashed with the light of her heaven, a fiery light, as I have said, which derives from the love of wisdom. For the love wives have for their husbands in that heaven comes from and is focussed on their wisdom, and the love husbands have for their wives comes from and is focussed on that love for themselves, so that it unites them. As a result her beauty was such that no painter could ever rival it or render it in its true appearance, for his colours lack radiance and his art has no means to express her loveliness. Her hair was beautifully dressed in an arrangement which had a meaning by correspondence, and it had flowers in it made of jewelled settings. Her necklace was of carbuncles, and from it hung a rosary of gold-coloured gems, and she had pearl bracelets. She was dressed in a red gown over a purple blouse, fastened at the front with rubies. But I was surprised to see that the colours changed as she turned towards or away from her husband, and this too made them sparkle more or less, more when they looked at each other, less when not directly facing.

[5] When I had seen this, they spoke with me again; and when the husband spoke, it was as if what he said came at the same time from the wife, and when the wife spoke, it was as if it came at the same time from her husband, so closely united were their minds, from which their utterances flowed. And I could also then hear the sound of conjugial love, which was in inward unison within their speech, and arose from the delights of a state of peace and innocence.

At length they said, 'We are being called back, we must go.' Then they were seen again riding in a chariot, as before. They drove along a paved road between flower-beds with olive-trees and trees laden with orange fruit springing from them. When they approached their own heaven, maidens came out to welcome them and escort them in. (CL 42)
CL 51. VII. THAT MARRIED PARTNERS ENJOY SIMILAR INTERCOURSE WITH EACH OTHER AS IN THE WORLD, BUT MORE DELIGHTFUL AND BLESSED, YET WITHOUT PROLIFICATION; FOR WHICH, OR IN PLACE OF IT, THEY HAVE SPIRITUAL PROLIFICATION, WHICH IS THAT OF LOVE AND WISDOM. That married partners enjoy similar intercourse as in the world, is because, after death, the male is a male and the female a female, and in both, an inclination to conjunction is implanted from creation. This inclination is an inclination of the spirit and thence of the body. Therefore, after death, when man becomes a spirit, the same mutual inclination continues, and this cannot exist without similar intercourse. For man is man as before, nor is there anything lacking either in the male or in the female. They are like themselves as to form, and equally so as to affections and thoughts. What else can follow then, but that they have similar intercourse? and since conjugial love is chaste, pure, and holy, that the intercourse is also complete? But see further on this subject in the Memorable Relation, no. 44. That the intercourse is then more delightful and blessed, is because, when that love becomes a love of the spirit, it becomes more interior and purer and therefore more perceptible; for every delight increases according to perception, and it so increases that its blessedness is observed in its delight. (CL 51)
Most sensorimotor intimacy neos produced by a united couple were not directly described by Swedenborg, but in theistic psychology we expand our knowledge of all spiritual subjects through the study of correspondences in Sacred Scripture, and especially in the book Conjugial Love (published in 1763), which forms part of the collection called the Swedenborg Reports (or “the Writings of Swedenborg”).
Further discussion on intimacy in united couples will be found in my lecture notes for The Unity Model of Marriage.

Many of Swedenborg books are available online from this site:
 http://www.swedenborgdigitallibrary.org/index1a.html

Neopower: How Conjoint Neos Produce Heaven

When Swedenborg’s spiritual mind became conscious at age 57, he was able to describe in a natural scientific language what his spiritual mind was observing. The Swedenborg Reports are published today in various languages, sometimes in a collection comprising around 30 volumes. These are now available free online and can also be searched.

Swedenborg had daily familiarity with the layers of the mind called the three heavens: layer 6 (first and lowest heaven), layer 5 (second heaven), layer 4 (third and highest heaven). He described the life of the cities he visited. Swedenborg describes life in the third heaven as almost inconceivable to our natural mind, in which we are conscious of our thoughts. We will become conscious of our spiritual mind immediately following the dying and resuscitation procedures. Then we will have conscious access to the three layers. We will go through a process of recognizing what our inner loves really are, especially our ruling love. If this ruling love is new and regenerated, then the three heavenly layers will be accessible to us in accordance with the degree of regeneration of our ruling love – either first degree, second degree, or highest degree. The higher the degree to which we are regenerated, the more we are capable of loving the heavenly mental order of God and creation.

The ruling love of the highest mental layer in heaven is conjugial love.

I was amazed, dazzled, and overjoyed when I first discovered this in the Swedenborg Reports (back in 1981). My wife recognized the significance of this new spiritual truth. It took me four more years of intense study of the Swedenborg Reports before I was able to approach this topic with rational understanding and a scientific attitude.

Women know this all along – the highest and deepest heaven is the heaven of conjunction with a soul mate.

Men act like they need to understand this from their masculine intelligence and understanding. Women perceive it, and from that know it. Sometimes they say it out loud. But they know that a man is normally scared of the idea of unity with the same woman forever. When men speak their thoughts freely, they say that the idea feels like a depressing prison. Research shows that men who think this way live out their un-neo of being “chained” to a woman’s love, and lose their romantic passion after about seven years with the same woman. Nontheistic psychology recognizes a silver lining in this loss of passionate love after years of intimacy and joint living. The literature calls the new relationship without passion by the name of “companionate love.” This love expresses itself in being supportive of each other, being loyal, and deepening their overall general intimacy.

But there is another possibility, as described in theistic psychology based on the Swedenborg Reports. According to Swedenborg’s observations in mental layer 4 (celestial heaven), passionate love never has to cease, and continues to grow more and more, in spiritual relationships. The unity model of marriage is the method by which the husband can achieve affective intimacy with his wife, after achieving cognitive intimacy and sensorimotor intimacy. Once the husband operates from the unity model, he is establishing an organic entity called the conjoint self (see above). This new conjugial couple is within a passion of mutual love that intensifies and magnifies progressively to endless eternity. Swedenborg interviewed couples who had lived on this earth thousands of years ago and have been living ever since their resuscitation in mental layer 4 with each other as a conjoint self. They testified that their passion of love for each other has had this progressive and endless quality since then. They also looked to be “in the flower of youth” and exceedingly beautiful and attractive.

The surrounding environment of the people who live in mental layer 4 are difficult to describe because they attain a degree of excellence and perfection totally unknown and unimagined here in our natural mind (layer 8 and 7). He saw magnificent houses and palaces, filled with Divine art and designs of jewelry that cannot be described in a natural language, surrounded by spacious gardens that that were shaped in indescribable harmonious arrangements, filled with amazing plants, flowers, and fruits that are unknown on earth. Their clothes were magnificent, their food was beyond culinary excellence, their demeanor and interactions were genteel and coordinated. They had copies of Sacred Scripture written in celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Speech, from which they have all their intelligence and their quasi-omniscient knowledge. Whatever topic they think about, they are able to understand and know everything there is to know about it.

The magnificent appearances of the third heaven in mental layer 4 constitute a celestial sensorimotor reality that surrounds the spiritual body of each person there. How is this heavenly environment created? Do they have factories and artisans and transportation vehicles? No. There are no machines, no work force, no raw materials, no delivery crews, no interior decorators. These things are present and needed in a natural environment such as that which surrounds our physical body. But our spiritual body is born in the mental world of eternity and contains our mental organs in which are produced our immortal feelings, thoughts, and sensations, all coalescing into a personality or unique self. The mental world of eternity is constructed out of rational ether surrounding the Spiritual Sun (as discussed before). Everything in the surrounding “outside” is actually produced by loves in the affective organ (A), and reasonings in the cognitive organ (C).

 In other words, the following formula of correspondences produces all heavenly sensorimotor neos in the mental world of eternity:

Loves in the affective organ (A) à corresponding thoughts in the cognitive organ (C) à corresponding sensations in the sensorimotor organ (S) à surrounding appearances (clothes, food, cities, gardens, animals, jewels, etc.)

Or, in different words:

Divine Neo à Conjoint celestial affective neos à Conjoint celestial cognitive neos à Conjoint celestial sensorimotor neos à Corresponding heavenly appearances in layer 4 (Third Heaven)

The first arrow indicates influx from the Spiritual Sun into the mental world of eternity. The Divine Neo is from the Divine Marriage in God’s Mind between Divine Love (affective) and Divine Truth (cognitive). The second arrow indicates the celestial marriage between the husband’s affective neos (from his ruling love), and the wife’s cognitive neos (from her ruling love). This organic spiritual anatomy was described above. The celestial sensorimotor neos are their conjoint neo-babies. These produce the surrounding appearances by the built in laws of correspondence. In other words, everything Swedenborg could see around the people in the third heaven (mental layer 4) – palaces, fruits, jewels, animals – was produced by the sensorimotor organ active in that layer (4S).

Swedenborg noted a distinct lowering in magnificence and complexity of the surrounding sphere in which the people are in layer 5 (Second Heaven). This was a surrounding produced by the love of truth, while the celestial surround in layer 4 (Third Heaven) is produced by the love of love. The spiritual heaven (layer 5) is perfect at a lower degree in comparison to the celestial heaven (layer 4). The two spheres are so distinct that they are unattainable to each other. The most perfect truth is far less in excellence and power than the least perfect love.

The celestial marriage (layer 4) is between the husband’s inmost love (4A) and the wife’s inmost intelligence or wisdom (4C). She corresponds to Divine Truth and he corresponds to Divine Love. This is the reverse of what it is here in the natural mind, where he corresponds to truth, while she corresponds to love. The celestial marriage is the conjoint self. The power of the conjoint self to produce a sensorimotor environment is a far greater power than that available in the mental layers below (5 and 6). The spiritual mind contains three layers: 4, 5, 6. They are arranged in discrete levels of operation or capability.

To obtain the power and reality of layer 4 we need to acquire a ruling love that is supportive of conjugial love, and is in harmony with it. To obtain the power and reality of layer 5 we need to acquire a ruling love that is supportive of the love of truth for its own sake, and is in harmony with it. To obtain the power and reality of layer 6 we need to acquire a ruling love that is supportive of the love of uses for the sake of others, and is in harmony with it.

Our ruling love at resuscitation determines in which heavenly layer we exist in the mental world of eternity. If our ruling love Is not regenerated prior to resuscitation, our heavenly layers (6, 5, 4) are inoperative for conscious life. They remain unconscious as before death. Our unregenerate ruling love determines which level we select from the three available in the natural mind: layer -7 (first hell), layer -8 (intermediate hell), layer -9 (lowest hell). To be conscious in the natural mind while living in the mental world of eternity, is analogous to being an electrical engineer and applying for the position of chief surgeon in a heart transplant hospital unit. Everything in our natural mind is based on experiences from the physical body and world of time-place. What is left, or up, or far, or near, or cold, etc., everything from the natural world is irrelevant to the spiritual world. There is no direction between them on anything whatsoever. The only connection is correspondential.

You are already familiar with these ideas if you think about what happens in your dreams. You produce the dream scene through your loves and desires in your affective organ. These sub-loves conjoin with thoughts that your cognitive organ constructs. Each thought or reasoning procedure is supportive of a sub-love, and their conjunction produces a sensorimotor environment that you experience as the dream. Since the sub-loves in many dreams are not conscious when we are awake, they prompt thoughts and events that are not like the thoughts and events in your waking state. There is a whole army of these little known sub-loves in our affective organ, all held together and managed by our ruling love. This also is mostly unknown until we are regenerating.

When you are in a stressed and frightened mental state, your dreams may contain hellish scenes where you are being pursued relentlessly by some hidden enemies that appear here and there. The appearances of hell in the mental world of eternity (layers -7, -8, -9) is produced by hellish loves adjoined to insane thoughts. Swedenborg visited the people who live in these layers since their resuscitation. They are each totally one hundred percent insane. Their insanity is spiritual. They think and reason as if they believed to still be in the physical world. They deny that there is an afterlife, God, heaven, conjugial love, heavenly peace, innocence, or beauty. On a number of occasions, Swedenborg recited a true sentence to them and asked them to repeat it and explain it (e.g., “Complete loyalty in marriage makes the spouses the happiest.”) They would repeat: “Complete loyalty in marriage makes the spouses most unhappy.” Or “Infidelity in marriage makes the spouses most happy.” They then went on to argue for their side. Whatever Swedenborg countered, they turned into its opposite.

Other signs of their complete insanity shows by what they call beautiful. They live in dilapidated houses in atrocious condition, filled with squalor and vermin, surrounded by dark clouds and a horrible stench. The pick ordure up, and hold it to their nose, and declare that this is what they find most pleasant, most beautiful. They have no knowledge of anything and resist all attempts at education or rehabilitation. They plot wild and impossible schemes against each other, betraying each other, enjoying cruelty and the suffering of others.

Mental power in layer 4 produces heavenly cities and joy. It originates from the love of love. Love is the enjoyment and intention of making others happy by benefitting them with our skills and capacities. This love is first and foremost the conjugial love of married spouses. The Swedenborg Reports reveal that God is loved when we love good in others. The highest good is identified as conjugial love. So the love of conjugial love is the highest good, the most powerful love. Conjugial love is loved in one’s spouse, hence that is the love for the highest good. There is no higher love than the love of God as the conjugial love in one’s spouse. When I love my wife I am not to love the person of my wife but the conjugial love in my wife that is God with her. Only from my wife can I have conjugial love from God.  

The power of conjugial love as the highest good in creation is the neo production power in mental layer 4. Hence the Third Heaven that it produces as a surrounding appearance is unmatched by anything elsewhere in the human mind. The next lower power is the power of the love of truth. At this level of consciousness (layer 5) the love we have for God and our spouse (layer 5A) is the result of the truths we understand (5C). Our primary love is for truth, and our secondary love from that, is for God and our spouse. The next lower power is the power of the love of uses. At this level of consciousness (layer 6) the love we have for God, for truth, for conjugial love is secondary, and what is primary is our love for skills and abilities.

In summary:

The Grand Human Neos (three heavens)
The power of layer 4 (Third Heaven) is the love of conjugial love from celestial-rational correspondences of Sacred Scripture.
The power of layer 5 (Second Heaven) is the love of truth from spiritual-rational correspondences of Sacred Scripture.
The power of layer 6 (First Heaven) is the love of uses from spiritual-natural correspondences of Sacred Scripture.
The Grand Monster Un-neos (three hells)
The un-power of layer -7 (first hell) is the hatred of uses.
The un-power of layer -8 (second hell) is the hatred of truth.
The un-power of layer -9 (third hell) is the hatred of conjugial love.

The Impossibility of Keeping Track of All Our Neos

I discovered this scientific law just today (May 12, 2008).
I’ve been trying to keep track of all my neo productions – written, conversational, and reflective. At first I naively believed that I could keep a record of my reflective neologisms by following one of my favorite long standing rule of life: If you think, ink it. I have this from the well known author and lecturer Paul Pearsall who was kind enough to provide a blurb for the cover jacket of my book with Diane on Road Rage and Aggressive Driving (2000). Interestingly, there are no occurrences on the Web of “If you think, ink it.” I advocate this rule to all the students that happen to register for my section of the psychology curriculum for majors. And I have them practice the self-witnessing approach to keeping track of one’s emotions, intentions, thoughts, and sensory-motor behaviors, including verbal. But this is the first time that I was imagining that I could snatch most of if not all of my reflective neos from sudden memory, that I might add them to my Neochart. While I was still holding on to this dubious intentionality I was also trying to go through my published articles to identify all the scientific neos they contained. This time I was even more confident that this would be a task I can handle.
Neither task is actually possible. Today I had the perception of the reason why it is impossible. I should have known better to begin with, given that I have constructed many scientific neologisms during the 1970s when I was writing about ethnomethodological psycholinguistics – as you can see from a number of entries in my Neochart from that period. One of the great and deep ethnomethodological neologisms that I received from other intrepid ethnomethodologists preceding me, is this one in Garfinkel’s 1967 book Studies in Ethnomethodology:“Dana succeeded in putting a penny in the parking meter today” – which still today 31 years later has no other occurrence if you google it. Remember that googling and yahooing only brings you to Web pages. Still this is a huge sample that should accurately estimate the occurrence of various sentence fragments. I was struck back then when I read the book in 1971 by Garfinkel’s demonstration, and theoretical proof, that it would be impossible to explain in full what this sentence means. And yet, it did mean something specific and informational to the wife to whom this sentence was said by the husband. Garfinkel tries at first to explain the direct meaning, the context, the past history, the relationship between the couple, how the family is involved, their sub-cultural background and social practices, the law, the geography, the times and period. All of this had to be explained to some historian who wanted all the explanations needed to understand this sentence spoken in an ordinary dialog.
Garfinkel shows with other examples from office and work contexts that when you write an explanatory paragraph as part of a collection of paragraphs like a Report or Letter, each explanatory paragraph opens up new issues that have not been explained before. And when you try to explain the new issues, the paragraphs you construct for their explanations, now require more paragraphs to be explained. In other words there is no way of fully explaining anything that is part of human social practices like relationships, interactions, events, objects and their use.
I could have remembered this sooner when I started forming the idea that a Neochart can be more or less complete. Here is the amazing point, or mental law that I discovered today: The more complete you try to make your Neochart, the further behind you get.
Neos are not only immortal and spiritual but they are visible to consciousness for only a split second in sudden memory, then they are gone forever. We can only snatch a very small proportion of them into short term memory, and then store them in our long term memory and from there through our fingers into digital databases on computers. Neocharts must therefore be considered highly selective and not representative of the continuous and endless series of neos that human living produces in the mental world of eternity. Each of those endless neos, born in one mental location in an individual’s unique mind, are like food morsels and liquids in the diet that keeps our body alive.
A case in point: my entry for this afternoon produced the above page and a half of around 800 words. In an attempt to describe my perception or meaning I had to produce 30 neologisms. On the average, every fifth word is a neo. This applies to writing. Things multiply by several magnitudes when you consider people’s talking, where many more sentences are produced than in writing. Clearly, talking neos are constructed much more effectively than writing neos. The production of reflective neos is by several magnitudes greater than that of talking neos. The very act of monitoring our reflective neo production produces meta-neos of still greater quantity, which increases inordinately with meta-meta-neos. The highest production of neos across the layers of mental eternity is in layer 4 called the “Third Heaven” in the Swedenborg Reports. In this region of the Grand Human (heart and reproductive organs) human neos are the direct result of Divine Neos through the Omniproprium that provides the source of all loves and understandings existing in that highest region of human consciousness.
By the time this Neo article reached 90 pages in length (May 27, 2008) it contributed 700 neos to the Master Neochart, which at the time had 1870 entries. The neos I produced just in this article amounts to a third of the neos I identified in two dozen previous articles that I sampled. The most likely explanation is that I am trying to be exhaustive about counting all the neos in this Neo Article, while I only sampled the previous ones, and mostly for one-word and two-word neos. But even in this Neo Article I am not fully exhaustive because I am exhausted by this losing battle of trying to keep up with all or most of my neo productions. I spend more time adding neos to the Master Neochart than I have time left for writing new paragraphs, whence still more neos are born. My wife gets exhausted seeing me exhausted by this task. She has exhausted her motivation to keep up with my discoveries and enthusiasm for neos. Of course, if you have bigger resources available to you than your own hard work, such as assistants, or a few computer programmers, paid or volunteers, then go right ahead and see how exhaustive you can be about keeping track of all your neo babies. No doubt a research grant on neo productivity might solve these technical issues.

 

Neos, Words, and Correspondences

What is the distinction we are to make between these three words or concepts? A "neo" is short for neologism, which means a new mental unit. All mental units come into existence in the cognitive organ of one of the six layers of the mental world of eternity. Higher order neos are progressively more spiritual and rational as they approach the highest layer (4C). A “word” refers to a unit of speaking, writing, communicating. The “word” is the smallest stand alone unit that is listed in a dictionary. A “correspondence” is the relationship between cause and effect, given that “effects” are natural phenomena, while their “causes” are mental phenomena.  Neos are new words, either singly, or in new combination. Correspondences are relationships between natural and spiritual neos.

Appendix

Scientific Activity and Research About Neologisms

Related Links to Leon James

Discoveries and Inventions (with links to articles)
http://web.archive.org/web/20161031210444/http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/discoveries.html  
Swedenborg Encyclopedia of Theistic Psychology (hundreds of entries with links to articles)
http://web.archive.org/web/20161031210444/http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss.html
List of Publications
http://web.archive.org/web/20161031210444/http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonpublish.html
Directory of Available Articles and Books Online
http://web.archive.org/web/20161031210444/http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonarticles.html


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The Spiritual Significance of Neologisms

(formerly: Leon A. Jakobovits)
Dr. Leon James
University of Hawaii
2008 (version 27c)
With the collaboration, since 1976 of
Dr. Diane Nahl
Part I   ||   Part II   ||   Part III  ||   Master Neochart   ||  
This is Part II
Where Are Neologisms Located? Where Do They Come From?
The Indeterminacy of Meaning
Bio-Geographical Taxonomy of Spiritual Neologisms
The Trinity of Neos
Discourse Thinking Neo Production Procedures
The Spiritual Ladder of Ascending and Descending Neologisms
Neo-Biology
The Un-reality of the Grand Monster
The Non-existence of Evil Neos
Neo-Communication Theory
Throwing Neos at One Another – The Spiritual Neo Ball Game
The Descent of the Divine Neo Through the Mental Layers
The Utility of Scientific Neologisms

 

Go to Part II  ||  Go to Part III
The Master Neochart  (overall)  ||  Neochart by Sub-Categories ||  My Favorite and Major Neos by Year
Part II starts here

Where Are Neologisms Located? Where Do They Come From?

Neologisms come into existence in the mental world of eternity and they remain there forever. Neologisms are immortal spiritual objects or entities. Neologisms float around in the mental world of eternity like white and red corpuscles patrol the blood stream in the circulatory system of the physical body, along with numerous other elements and compounds, which are both beneficial and harmful, even deadly. Evil neologisms are anti-neologistic forces in the mental world of eternity. Evil is defined in the Swedenborg Reports as the “corruption of good,” while good is defined as spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun flowing into the mental layers of humanity and into our affective organ where they produce good in our will or willing, that is, they incline us and propel us to “good works” which are good uses. In other words, our good abilities, skills, intentions, and thoughts originate and are rooted in the inflowing spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun. It is an organic inflow and a biological process, like the inflow of physical heat into a plant on earth, which has the consequence of generating and producing organic physiological operations by which the cells grow, reproduce, and multiply, and with this organic bulk comes the growth, health, and use of the plant, that is, its usefulness to human beings, animals, other plants, and the environment.
Everything that is good is the good that inflows from the Spiritual Sun. Should this inflow cease for a moment, every good then disappears. The good that inflows belongs to and remains part of the Spiritual Sun, just as the heat that inflows from the physical sun into the plant on earth, is now in the plant, and its atoms and cells, but is not part of the plant. The heat remains part of the sun. And so the good in us is not part of us, but is in us. And since this good in us is God’s good through the Spiritual Sun, it remains God’s good. And hence it is that God is in us. Neologisms existing and floating around in the mental world of eternity are substantive forms of cognitive good in our mind. They are Divine Literal Neologisms ultimating, not in Sacred Scripture, as we discussed above, but in human consciousness. God’s Consciousness is a fusion of Divine Good and Divine Truth in Himself, in His infinite Essence that cannot be fathomed or described or known by mere finite human beings. In order for God to have a personal relationship with a human individual, God-As-He-Is-in-Himself entered creation through the Spiritual Sun, which is the emanation from His infinite Love and infinite Wisdom or Rationality. Divine Truth is from God’s Divine Rationality or Wisdom, and good is from God’s Divine Love. Our affective organ is an organic receptor of spiritual heat, and our cognitive organ is an organic receptor of spiritual light.
The Spiritual Sun is the origin of all created substances. First there is a living organic mental sphere or ether of rationality created around the Spiritual Sun. This living substance called rational ether is the mental world of eternity into which the human mind is born, and in which it exists forever as an immortal individual, and collection of individuals called “spiritual societies” in the Swedenborg Reports. It is constructed out of the spiritual substances of heat and light that endlessly and forever stream out of the Spiritual Sun in infinite variety, diversity, and quality. The mental world of eternity is endless, borderless, boundless. It is human through and through. This is because God-As-He-Is-in-Himself is Human, and thus God as He Is Outside of Himself and in creation, is also Human. In fact, Swedenborg reports that when he was present in consciousness in Layer 4 of the mental world of eternity, he was able to see the Spiritual Sun visually, and gives a description of it. And in fact, he reports that everyone whose consciousness is raised to that layer, can see the Spiritual Sun. He conversed about it with many who in the afterlife existed in that layer, which is also called “the Third or Highest Heaven.” When we arrive there after our second death, we begin a life of endless conjugial happiness in that Divine Human layer, where God overlaps with human beings through our reception of His Omniproprium. We are then quasi-omniscient persons, understanding everything about whatever we think of. And our loves are then heavenly loves in endless variety and quality of good. Our thoughts are then correspondences of Divine Celestial Neologisms. Our loves are then correspondences of conjugial love in endless variety and quality of good.
When we become celestial angels we assume the role as chief architects in the evolving construction of the mental world of eternity. The loves that we then receive in our affective organ from the Divine Human through the Spiritual Sun, give rise by correspondences to the loves and affections of people whose consciousness is in a lower layer called the Second Heaven. The correspondences of their loves and truths form the loves and affections in the layer below called the First Heaven. All three Heavenly layers in the mental world of eternity are connected by organic correspondence to the three layers that form the Natural Mind. You are reading this in your consciousness in the natural mind, which has three layers: from top down: the rational layer (layer 7), the sensual or sensory layer (layer 8), and the corporeal layer (layer 9). This is the layer that is closest to the temporary physical body and its sensory input through physical matter and energy (layer 12). In between is the spiritual body (layer 11), and the natural limbus or cutaneous membrane (layer 10) (see the Anatomical Chart of Layers).
One of the most significant Divine Neologisms appears in this verse of the New Testament Sacred Scripture that begins the Gospel of John, the last of the Four Gospels:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

 For the past two thousand years much has been written about this mysterious sounding verse. It was not fully understood until the Swedenborg Reports arrived on the scene in the eighteenth century. Today from the perspective of theistic psychology this verse can receive a scientific meaning that is rationally integrated into mental anatomy, spiritual geography, and theology. This rational integration is based on nothing but Sacred Scripture. And it is confirmed scientifically by observation and experiment over the 27 years of Swedenborg’s daily life as a conscious dual citizen in both the world of time and the world of eternity.
From this evidence we now can explain scientifically how it is that “the Word was God.”
Several more things are revealed in the ensuing verses:

He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood[a] it. 14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,[d] who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

In theistic psychology it is known that the creation of the universe by God was by means of the Spiritual Sun, which is an emanation from God and contains the substances of good and truth in infinite variety. Spiritual heat within spiritual light, flowing out from the Spiritual Sun into creation, produces the mental world of eternity where human beings are born and exist as immortal feeling and thinking subjects.
Once the mental world of eternity was created, a physical world in time and space was created. The content of the physical world was fashioned in accordance with the content of the mental world of eternity. Hence it is that every planet, every object, every physical property comes into existence when inert physical matter from any sun or star, including the sun itself, and all its components, corresponds through its property to some property of the mental world of eternity. In this way nature is nothing but a theater of the spiritual, and correspondences dictate the connection as cause dictates effect.
The correspondential meaning of “the Word” in the above passage is “Divine Truth,” and this is the same as “spiritual light from the Spiritual Sun.” In other words, “the Word” or spiritual light creates all things that are created. Spiritual light enters the cognitive organ of every individual and sets it “online” with the Spiritual Sun, hence, God. Whatever flows out of the Spiritual Sun is part of God and is God. This is because God cannot be divided, so what is God in the Spiritual Sun must be God in the spiritual light that flows from it.
Thus it is that God is in us, as written in the New Testament Sacred Scripture.
We are not part of God, for this would mean that God is divided. But the infinite can be within the finite as the spiritual is within the natural, or as the whole is in the part. God in us does not mean that anything whatsoever of ours is Divine, for this would bean that God is divided. But God in us is necessary for every human being since without this there is no source of life for the individual. God in us as His own spiritual light is what we call “our life.” Should God in us cease as a continuous co-Presence in our mental organs, we would no longer have any life.
It is said that “the Word became flesh.” This is a historical reference to the birth of the Divine Child two thousand years ago. It is known that Christians celebrate this event every year as Christmas. But Sacred Scripture is not only relevant to religion, but also to science, even if in a different way. For instance, if there is a God who is omnipotent (positive bias in science), then it follows logically that Sacred Scripture is absolute truth brought to humanity’s natural consciousness by God. Then it follows that the Incarnation Event occurred as told in Sacred Scripture. Then it follows that this is a scientific revelation about God. It is scientific because it is true, and it shapes all of reality, its history, our evolution, and the current events of our individual lives. However, all of this may be true and scientific, but it is necessary to show this, and it is necessary that people understand it rationally so that they themselves can think about it and talk about it.
I have attempted to do this in my textbooks on theistic psychology. I welcome you to consult them online. 
See my article on the The Scientific Meaning of Christmas.
See also by Leon James: "Recognizing Our Dual Existence" and "A Brief History of God and Humanity" Information Swedenborg. Winter 2008 Issue. Pp. 6-10.  Available online here:  http://www.swedenborg.ca/newsletter/NewsletterW07_08.pdf

 

The Indeterminacy of Meaning

The “indeterminacy of meaning” (1969) is one of my deepest insights prior to 1981 when I began studying the Swedenborg Reports. After several years of researching the area of semantics, meaning, verbal learning, language teaching, and discourse analysis, I came to the realization that the meaning of a sentence or speech act cannot be determined by the meaning of its words. We can paraphrase the sentence, translate it, analyze it, but we will not arrive at its actual meaning it had in the interaction. Recall that every exchange you have, every conversation, every nonverbal interaction, is a unique event. This is the definition of “actual.” When A says X to B, what actual joint meaning does X have, if the event is unique? When I saw that the answer I constructed the neo titled “indexical meaning.”
In other words, meaning is indeterminate and indexical, rather than fixed. It is a popular idea in the social sciences or psychology, that communication involves “message and code transmission” from one person (message sender) to another (message recipient). This idea involves another idea, which is that meaning is a fixed code that can be codified in a dictionary or in our memory. This idea certainly fits our educated common sense understanding in daily life. We think about the email message or text message that we received, and we see it codified in language text, fixed in content as it careens across the miles, same when sent, same when received.
This is true. But it’s not yet about the meaning of the message, only about the codified digital electronic signal that carries the message as an outward envelope. The meaning of the message is not carried by the technology. The meaning is organic, human, mental, spiritual. Meaning and text or message are in different discrete degrees. Computers cannot think with meaning, and yet they can translate documents. Translating is possible because it involves a fixed code, and this code carries the message within which is the meaning. The carrier is physical and can carry only physical messages and text. The mental content or meaning cannot be carried by the physical carrier.
Once you see this clearly and rationally, thus scientifically, you will understand that actual meaning is a mental transfer process involving two minds. Remarkably, this simple and basic solution is not available to non-theistic psychology which denies the dualism of human reality as being simultaneously in time and in eternity. This is obvious when you recall the idea that we are “born into eternity” with a permanent spiritual body, which is connected by correspondence to a temporary physical body. This procedure of temporary dual citizenship is necessary for our spiritual development, which in turn is necessary to insure the heavenly conjugial happiness of our immortal life in eternity. What are the two people doing when they are having a physical interaction, such as “Hi. How are you?” “Hi. Pretty good. You?” The interaction is taken by both participants to be appropriate speech acts produced as a normal greeting exchange for the two of them.
There is a well practiced sensorimotor coordination in the performance of the exchange. The meaning is constructed as a sense-making procedure of the cognitive organ (C), as it is applied to the incoming sensorimotor information (S). This sense-making is also called appraising the incoming information. When person M says to person N in that exchange, “Hi. How are you?”, then person N sees and hears it (S), makes sense of it (C), and attaches some value to it (A), as for example, the judgment that “it’s normal.” This affective satisficing procedure is the occasion for the affective optimizing procedure to be applied to it. Our normal state of sensorimotor vigilance (S) in public places includes a motivational readiness or intentionality (A) to show an appropriate overt sensorimotor performance (S) that matches that of the other person. This is a social requisite for normalcy. “Accounted non-reactions” may be acceptable later, as for instance, “Sorry I didn’t say Hi. I’m incredibly overloaded in my schedule.” Not making up for ignoring a greeting is value-attached as abnormal or hostile. Hence there is a sanctioned social obligation to respond to a greeting, or else to account for it later.
All this is very familiar to all of us, though it may sound technical to discuss it. But it’s worth it because it gives us more skills in rational thinking. If you examine the details of your participation in an exchange you will observe that we use indexical meaning when appraising or performing cognitive sense-making procedures, applied to what we noticed in our physical environment. We notice the person walking towards us, and we are motivationally ready to optimize the exchange. We notice the person’s normal performance of greeting initiation (“Hi. How are you?”). We satisfice the performance as a normal greeting, and we optimize it by our coordinated performance (“Hi. Pretty good. You?”).
Where is the meaning of the exchange?
Recall that the physical exchange is a natural event that must correspond to a spiritual event, the latter being the cause of the former. What spiritual events cause the natural events that produce greeting rituals? Mental events are spiritual. They are made of the operations of the affective (A), cognitive (C), and sensorimotor (S) systems of the spiritual body. The “mind” is the spiritual body with its three systems of operations from which we have feelings (A), thoughts (C), and sensations (S). The meaning in the greeting exchange is the desire or love (A) of one person being consummated in another. For instance, each person is motivated (A) to make a normal impression (C) in the routine exchange (S). To accomplish this, each person has access to overlapping indexical meanings for each particular exchange they have together. For instance they can vary the tone of voice or facial expression in order to facilitate the consummation process of a particular affection. For instance, we might like to create a good impression by being a little funny in the performance of the greeting exchange.
You can see from this that there are no limits to the particular ways in which you can select from the indexical meaning of this situation between them. You can be serious, or downcast, energetic or ready to drop. You can be friendly or neutral, depending on the specific affection or love that is striving to be consummated. If you are motivated to achieve closer friendship you select an indexical meaning that the other person can satisfice for your intention for greater closeness. When you witness in the other person the evidence for reception of your intention, then your love for greater closeness is consummated. You feel satisfaction when your motive is achieved. Now you can form another motive that progresses your love still further. This is the meaning of the greeting exchange that was performed. The meaning of the greeting is the exchange of love in it.
The indeterminacy of meaning in a ritualized greeting exchange suggests that when semantic and cultural content is involved in the exchange, the meaning will be still more involved and indexical. In general, the more complex the meaning exchange, the more indexical it is. Every exchange is unique and is constructed out of unique neo production procedures in the three organic mental systems (A, C, S). 
The indeterminacy of meaning insures that all actuality will be composed of only neos, and no repetitions can occur. This principle is a rational consequence of God’s omnipotence. In God infinite things make one. God’s Mind is the source of infinite creations. The good and truth streaming out of the Spiritual Sun are infinite in variety and diversity and consequently, uniqueness. Nothing that exists can be exactly like anything else that exists. This is because God is the source of all that exists, and God’s infinity produces the uniqueness of all created things.
Sacred Scripture is a Divine Neo production. Infinite ideas and truths are enclosed within every word. Swedenborg talked to people in layer 4 (Third Heaven), the highest human intelligence yet attained. They confirmed that they can perceive the uniqueness of every object or event. They confirmed that infinite things are enclosed in every Divine Neo in Sacred Scripture.
Consider the following situation:
A man walks into store and says, “Do you sell triple A batteries?” The clerk reaches over to a display case and places a box of six on the counter. Question: If meaning is indeterminate, how did the clerk know to hand the customer the box of AAA batteries? Answer: The clerk applied indexical meaning procedures to come up with the box. For instance:
“This man is asking if we sell AAA batteries. He wants to buy a box of them. I’ll just hand it to him.” This sense-making procedure fits the sensorimotor exchange sufficiently to be judged as normal for the situation. It happens regularly that someone asks if we sell the batteries and they buy the box when I put it in front of them. Except for that other time, but that was abnormal. The man wanted to break a 20 dollar bill and he didn’t want the batteries. So he said never mind the batteries, he needs the money for something else, but can I please break the twenty for him. Oh, yeah, there was this other time when the man was trying to rob me, so when I put the batteries in front of him, he pulled a gun.”
Each of us performs mental procedures when we are having a communicative exchange. Talking is mentally exchanging. In fact, Swedenborg reports that after resuscitation in our spiritual mind, we communicate more by thought-language than by verbal-language. The human thought-language is universal and unlearned, unlike the various natural languages we use in our natural mind, which have to be learned. Swedenborg communicated in thought-language with people from other planets and galactic systems, completely independent of each other in contact and development. And yet, they all communicated by the same human thought-language.
This does not mean that they necessarily understand each other in the same way. In fact, Swedenborg encountered varieties of human thinking and loving, vastly different from ours on this earth. In some situations he mentions that “intermediate spirits” or mental states, were required for him to place himself into those non-earth meanings or consciousness. The intermediate minds were able to serve as a kind of interpretive bridge between Swedenborg’s mental states and the mental states of the aliens (or vastly different human beings). The differences are called differences in “genius” and are too strange or stressful to contact directly. Hence the intermediate spirits made this indirect contact possible given that they partook to some extent of both types of human genius. Despite these great differences in loves and thinking, the same universal human thought-language is used by all human beings after their resuscitation.
Quoting from the Swedenborg Reports:
EU 1. Since, from the Divine mercy of the Lord, the interiors, which are of my spirit, have been opened to me, and thereby it has been granted me to speak with spirits and angels, not only with those who are near our earth, but also with those who are near other earths; because I had a desire to know whether there are other earths, and what their nature is, and the quality of their inhabitants, therefore it has been granted me by the Lord to speak and converse with spirits and angels who are from other earths, with some for a day, with some for a week, and with some for months; and to be instructed by them concerning the earths, from which and near which they were; and concerning the lives, customs, and worship of the inhabitants thereof, and of various other things worthy to be related: and because in this manner it has been granted me to know these things, it is permitted to describe them from what has been heard and seen. (…) (EU 1)
EU 6. There are spirits [ = people after their resuscitation ] whose sole study is to acquire to themselves knowledges, because they are delighted only with knowledges. Therefore these spirits are permitted to wander about, and even to pass out of this solar system into others, and to procure for themselves knowledges. They have declared that there are earths inhabited by men, not only in this solar system, but also out of it in the starry heaven, to an immense number. These spirits are from the planet Mercury. (EU 6)
EU 50. My long continued association with the spirits of Jupiter proved to me that they are more upright than the spirits of many other worlds.  When they arrived, their coming, their stay and the influence they exerted were so gentle and sweet as to defy expression.  In the next life the character of each spirit reveals itself in his influence, which is a sharing of his affection.  Uprightness is revealed by gentleness and sweetness, by gentleness because he is fearful of doing harm, and by sweetness because he loves to do good.  I could very clearly tell apart the gentleness and sweetness of good spirits from our world from that of theirs.  They said that when any mild dispute arises between them, there is to be seen a kind of thin shaft of light, such as lightning often produces, or a band filled with flashing and moving stars.  But a dispute among them is quickly settled.  Stars which flash and at the same time move indicate falsity; flashing stars which are fixed indicate truth.  So the former type indicates a dispute. (EU 50)
EU 55. I was further informed by the spirits from that world [EU 50] about various matters concerning its inhabitants, such as their way of moving, and their food and houses.  When moving, they do not walk upright like the inhabitants of this and many other worlds; nor do they go on all fours like animals, but when they walk they help themselves with the flat of their hands, at every other pace half rising to their feet.  As they move, at every third pace they turn their faces to one side and look behind them, making a slight twist, quickly accomplished, of the body.  This is because they think it impolite to be seen by others except face to face.  
[2]  While they walk in this fashion, they always keep their faces up, as we do, so that they can see the sky as well as the ground.  They do not keep their gaze fixed on the ground, a practice they call reprehensible.  The worst sort of people among them do this, and if they do not become used to lifting up their faces, they are banished from their community.
[3]  When, however, they sit down, they look erect like people in our world as far as the upper part of the body is concerned, but they squat cross-legged.  They take great care, not only when walking, but also when sitting, to avoid being seen from behind, but only in the face.  In fact, they rather like to be seen face to face, since this displays their mind.  They never display a facial expression which does not match their mind, something they find impossible.  Those present can by this means see quite plainly what another's intentions towards them are, since they do not hide them, especially whether their apparent friendliness is genuine or forced.  The spirits from there demonstrated this to me and their angels confirmed it.  As a result their spirits too do not appear to walk upright, but rather like swimmers to assist their progress with their hands, looking around them from time to time. (EU 55)
EU 102. The spirits of the earth Saturn came from afar into view, and there was then opened a living communication between them and such spirits of our earth. The latter, on thus perceiving the former, became as if insane, and began to infest them, by infusing unworthy suggestions concerning faith, and also concerning the Lord; and whilst abusing them with these invectives and insults, they also cast themselves into the midst of them, and from the insanity in which they were, they endeavored to do evil to them. But the spirits of Saturn feared nothing, because they were secure and in tranquility; whereas the spirits of our earth, when they were in the midst of them, began to be tortured, and to respire with difficulty, and so they cast themselves out, one in this way and another that, till they all disappeared.
The spirits who were present perceived from this, what is the quality of the natural man when separate from the spiritual, and when he comes into a spiritual sphere, namely, that he is insane; for the natural man separate from the spiritual is wise only from the world, and not from heaven; and he who is wise only from the world, believes nothing but what be can apprehend with his senses, and the things which he believes he believes from the fallacies of the senses, which, unless they are removed by an influx from the spiritual world, produce falsities. Hence it is that spiritual things to him are not anything, insomuch that he can scarcely bear to hear mention made of anything spiritual; wherefore such become insane when they are kept in a spiritual sphere. It is otherwise during their abode in the world, where they either think naturally concerning spiritual things, or avert their ears that they may not hear them; that is, they hear and do not attend.
It was also manifest from this experience, that the natural man cannot introduce himself into the spiritual, that is, ascend; but when man is in faith, and thereby in spiritual life, in this case the spiritual man flows into the natural, and thinks therein. For there is given a spiritual influx, that is, an influx from the spiritual world into the natural, but not the reverse. (EU 102)
EU 148. A THIRD EARTH IN THE STARRY HEAVEN, ITS SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS.
Some spirits appeared at a distance who were not willing to come near. The reason was that they could not be with the spirits of our earth who were then around me. From this I perceived that they were from another earth, and afterward I was told that they were from a certain earth in the universe; but where that earth is, I was not informed. These spirits were altogether unwilling to think of their body, and indeed of anything corporeal and material, differently from the spirits from our earth. This was why they were not willing to come near. But still after the removal of some of the spirits of our earth, they came nearer and spoke with me. But then anxiety was felt, arising from the collision of spheres; for spiritual spheres encompass all spirits and societies of spirits; and because they flow forth from the life of the affections and of the thoughts therefrom, therefore where there are opposing affections there arises collision, and thence anxiety. The spirits of our earth said that they did not dare to approach them, since when they were approaching, they not only were seized with anxiety, but also appeared to themselves as if bound hand and foot with serpents, from which they could not be loosed until they withdrew. This appearance had its origin from correspondence; for the spirits of our earth have reference in the Greatest Man to the external sense, thus to the corporeal sensual, and this sensual is represented in the other life by serpents.
# Man's external sensual is represented in the spiritual world by serpents, because it is in the lowest things, and in comparison with the interiors with man, lies on the ground and as it were creeps; and that they were thence called serpents, who reasoned from that sensual (n. 195-197, 6398, 6949). (EU 148)
EU 149. Because the nature of the spirits of that earth is such, they appear before the eyes of other spirits, not like others, in a manifest human form, but like clouds, and for the most part like a dark cloud, in which is mingled something of a bright human appearance. But they said that they are white within, and that when they become angels, the dark color is turned into a beautiful blue, as was also shown to me. I asked whether they had such an idea of their body, when they lived as men in the world. They said that the men of their earth make no account of their bodies, but only of the spirit in the body, because they know that this is to live to eternity, but the body to perish. They also said that many on their earth believe that the spirit of the body has been from eternity, and was infused into the body at conception. But they added that they now know it is not so, and that they repent having been in such a false opinion. (EU 149)
EU 150. When I asked whether they wished to see anything on our earth, and said that this could be done through my eyes (see above n. 135), they answered at first that they could not, and then that they did not wish it; since they would see only earthly and material things, from which they remove their thoughts as far as possible. But still there were represented before them magnificent palaces, like those of kings and princes on our earth, for such things can be represented before spirits, and when represented, they appear altogether as if they were there. But the spirits from that earth set no value upon them, calling them marble images; and then they told me that they had more magnificent ones, which are their sanctuaries, not of stone, but of wood. When it was said to them that these were still earthly, they answered that they were not, but heavenly; because when they look upon them, they have not an earthly, but a heavenly idea, believing that they will also see similar ones in heaven after death. (EU 150)
EU 168. A FIFTH EARTH IN THE STARRY HEAVEN, ITS SPIRITS AND INHABITANTS.
I was led again to another earth which is in the universe out of our solar system, and this also by changes of state, continued for nearly twelve hours. There were in company with me several spirits and angels from our earth, with whom I discoursed in the way or in that progression. I was carried at times obliquely upwards and obliquely downwards, continually towards the right, which in the other life is towards the south. In only two places I saw spirits, and in one I spoke with them. In the way or progression I was enabled to observe how immense is the Lord's heaven, which is for angels and spirits; for from the parts uninhabited I was led to conclude that it was so immense, that if there were many myriads of earths, and on each earth a multitude of men as great as in ours, there would still be a place of abode for them to eternity, and it would never be filled. This I was enabled to conclude from a comparison made with the extent of the heaven which is about our earth and designed for it, which extent was respectively so small, that it did not equal a hundred millionth part of the extent uninhabited. (EU 168)
EU 170. The spirits with whom I now discoursed were from the northern part of their earth. I was afterwards led to others who were on the western part. These also, wishing to discover who and what I was, immediately said that there was nothing in me but evil, thinking thus to deter me from approaching nearer. It was perceived that this was their manner of accosting all who came to them; but it was granted me to reply that I well knew it to be so, and that with them also there was nothing but evil, by reason that every one is born in evil, and therefore whatever comes from man, spirit, and angel, as from what is his own, or his proprium, is nothing but evil, inasmuch as all good with every one is from the Lord. Hence they perceived that I was in the truth, and I was admitted to speak with them. They then showed me their idea concerning evil with man, and concerning good from the Lord, how they are separated from each other.
They placed one near the other, almost contiguous, but still distinct, yet as it were bound together in a manner inexpressible, so that the good led the evil, and restrained it, insomuch that it was not allowed it to act at pleasure; and thus the good bent the evil in whatever direction desired, without the evil knowing it. In this manner they exhibited the dominion of good over evil, and at the same time a state of freedom. They then asked how the Lord appeared with the angels from our earth. I said that He appears in the sun as Man, encompassed therein with solar fire, whence the angels in the heavens have all light; and that the heat which proceeds thence is the Divine good, and that the light which proceeds thence is the Divine truth, each from the Divine love, which is the fire appearing around the Lord in that sun.
That sun, however, appears only to the angels in heaven, and not to the spirits who are beneath, since they are more removed from the reception of the good of love and of the truth of faith, than the angels who are in the heavens (see above, n. 40). It was granted them thus to inquire concerning the Lord, and concerning His appearance before the angels from our earth, because it then pleased the Lord to present Himself before them, and to reduce into order the things which had been disturbed by the evil spirits of whom they complained. This also was the reason why I was led thither, that I might see these things. (EU 170)
EU 176. To an inquiry concerning their houses, they said that they are low, of wood, with a flat roof, around which project caves sloping downward; and that in the front part dwell the husband and wife, in the next adjoining part the children, and after them the maid-servants and men-servants. Of their food they said that they drink milk with water, and that they have the milk from cows, which are woolly like sheep. Of their life they said that they walk naked, and that to them nakedness is not a cause of shame; also that their social interaction is with those who are within their families. (EU 176)
 

Bio-Geographical Taxonomy of Spiritual Neologisms 

The mental layers of eternity, of which our individual mind is a component, are not to be pictured like horizontal arrays across a page, but like the inside anatomical components of the human body. Each layer corresponds to different anatomical, physiological, and biochemical components and systems. Swedenborg navigated his consciousness across the entire geographical region of spiritual societies in the Grand Human and Grand Monster. He would meet with and explore the mentality of people in various societies of the Grand Human or Grand Monster. He would describe the quality of consciousness of the people in “the region of the right eye” vs. the left eye, or the region of the heart and “loins” vs. the region of the pancreas, right hemisphere of the brain, or the cranium, etc. He discovered that the mind-body connection exists by the laws of correspondences that integrate the layers and its systemic operations. In other words, the laws of correspondences are cause effect relations between physical and mental, between body and mind, and between the natural things and spiritual things. Spiritual things are mental things since they are operations of the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor organs. Speaking from our subjective experience, spiritual, immortal, and eternal things are no other than sensations, cognitions, and loves. This is because the mental world of loves, thoughts, and sensations is eternal, non-physical, and outside time, while what is physical is in time and space, thus is temporary, limited, and conditional.
Every biological component and function of the body corresponds to some particular mental component and function of the mind. For instance, the physiological function of the lungs corresponds to the mental operation of the cognitive organ. The sub-components of the lungs, such as the air sacs, or the rib cage that encloses it and protects it, correspond to specific functions of thinking, reasoning, and imagining. The anatomy and physiology of the body are correspondences to the mentality of the people who exist or congregate in that geographical region of the Grand Human and Grand Monster. For more details on this bio-geographical map, chart, or taxonomy see Physiological Correspondences by Worcester (1889).
What is involved in the idea of “mentality of the people”? Every quality and variety of human mentality is formed by means of neologisms. The categories of neologisms are the categories of human mentality. The universe of neologisms exists as a collection of individuals arranged in sub-collections that portray the human anatomical form, its outside and its inside. Neologisms are experienced subjectively as new meaning, new insight, new understanding, new causal connection, new truth, new power. Neologisms bring new consciousness, new perceptions, new wisdom and rationality. The word “new” in the correspondential sense involves renewal, or new birth into a higher plane of consciousness, goodness, love, and connectivity with the Divine Psychologist. “Neo” means new, hence higher and more excellent in humanity. While “-logism” is from “logos,” meaning word, idea, meaning, truth. “Neologism” in the spiritual sense therefore means “New Word” or a higher form of neologisms out of which our new higher consciousness is formed into a plane or layer of operation that is of a superior quality and virtue.
Collective Neologisms
A form of collective spiritual neologisms is described in the Swedenborg Reports as follows:
[Note: “Good spirits” are the people who live in anatomical layer 6 of the mental world of eternity, and “angelic spirits” in layer 5. Those who inhabit the highest human layer (4) are referred to as “angels.”]
AC 1648. There is a speech of good spirits, and also of angelic spirits, which is a simultaneous speech of many, especially in circles or choirs, concerning which of the Lord's Divine mercy hereafter. The speech in choirs has often been heard by me; it has a cadence, as if in rhythm. They have no thought about the words or ideas, for into these their sentiments flow spontaneously. No words or ideas flow in which multiply the sense, or draw it away to something else, or to which anything artificial adheres, or that seems to them elegant from self, or from self-love, for such things would at once cause disturbance. They do not inhere in any word; they think of the sense; the words follow spontaneously from the sense itself. They come to a close in unities, for the most part simple; but when in those which are compound, they turn by an accent to the next. These things are the result of their thinking and speaking in society; hence the form of the speech has a cadence in accordance with the connection and unanimity of the society. Such was once the form of songs; and such is that of the Psalms of David. (AC 1648)
 In other words, after our resuscitation we think and speak differently than the natural languages we use here. This spontaneous and automatic way of talking and thinking reflects the greater collectivity of the social-psychological environment in the mental world of eternity, in comparison to the social relations we have now through our physical bodies. Our choirs here require practiced and deliberate training to achieve the appearance of performing collective neologisms. But the choirs after our resuscitation (which occurs 30 hours after death), proceed without training or direction, completely spontaneously. This occurs because all the individuals in that group or collectivity are activated in their affective organ by the same series of sentiment.
This “simultaneous speech of many” or “speech in choirs” has a “cadence, as if in rhythm.” The normal thinking mode is suspended and each individual spontaneously excludes any thought or focus on self and what is the person’s own. Thus, the normal single independent individual thinker is transformed into a collective self or a group self. In this mental state we experience a richer and higher form of thinking, meaning, and consciousness. This elevation of the individual through the collective self is embodied in the sensorimotor environment that Swedenborg witnessed. The “thinking and speaking in society“ produces collective neologisms that enlighten and pacify their character and experience.
AC 1649. Wonderful to say, this kind of speech, possessing the rhythmical or harmonic cadence of songs, is natural to spirits. They speak so among themselves, although they are not aware of it. Immediately after death souls come into the habit of speaking in this way. I have been initiated into the same, and it has at last become familiar. The reason their speech is of this nature, is that they speak in society, which for the most part they are not aware of: a very clear proof that they are all distinguished into societies, and that consequently all things fall into the forms of the societies. (AC 1649)
 After our resuscitation into the mental world of eternity we become collective personalities speaking and thinking collective spiritual neologisms – but without being aware that it is collective. Swedenborg had that awareness because of his dual citizenship, which allowed him to contrast his speech through his physical body in his horizontal community in Sweden, vs. his speech through the spiritual body in the vertical community of the mental world of eternity. This is called “vertical” because distance is determined by similarity and difference of sentiments, consequently of thinking and speech. Our horizontal community here is determined by physical distance, independently of social and psychological similarity. After resuscitation we can no longer visit and travel to places in our vertical community that are different and at variance with our norms, ideas, and loves. Our travels and visits in the mental world of eternity can only take place by modification of our mental state, that is, of our loves and thoughts. This is how Swedenborg navigated through the mental ether of eternity. This process of mental change often required the intermediate neologisms of “intermediate spirits” whose sentiments and thinking were closer to Swedenborg’s but not yet close enough to his target audience of people who had been born on different planets and were of a different genius or mentality from earthlings. When the psychological distance was very great, a series of intermediate neologisms were required that took Swedenborg several days of processing or mental travel (counting his earth days in time).
Swedenborg describes the existence of performative neologisms in the mental world of eternity, to which we are all headed from here, so that each of us will witness these spiritual human gyres and what’s more, will participate in them! (I am looking forward to that.)
AC 3889. In order that I might know not only that there is a correspondence of the celestial things which are of love with the motions of the heart, and of the spiritual things which are of faith from love with the motions of the lungs, but also how the case is with this correspondence, it was given me for a considerable space of time to be among the angels, who showed it me to the life. By a wonderful and indescribable flowing into gyres they formed a semblance of a heart and another semblance of lungs, together with all the interior and exterior contextures that are in them. They then followed the flow of heaven in a free way; for heaven is in the endeavor toward such a form, from the influx of love from the Lord. Thus they presented the several parts that are in the heart; and afterwards the union between the heart and the lungs, which they also represented by the marriage of good and truth.
From this it was evident that the heart corresponds to the celestial which is of good, and the lungs to the spiritual which is of truth; and that the conjunction of these two in a material form is precisely as is that of the heart and the lungs. I was also told that the case is similar in the body throughout (that is, in its several members, organs, and viscera) in regard to the things therein which are of the heart, and those which are of the lungs; for where both do not act, and each distinctly take its turn, there cannot be any motion of life from any principle of the will, nor any feeling of life from any principle of the understanding. (AC 3889)
These performative spiritual neologisms executed in our anatomical layer 4, or “Third Heaven of angels” where Swedenborg was travelling in the mental world of eternity, are different from ordinary verbal neologisms that are performed by collective speech. The performative gyres communicate new meaning and consciousness that Swedenborg could not describe in natural verbal neologisms and called them “wonderful and indescribable.” From the meaning communicated through these performative spiritual neologisms, Swedenborg received a whole new insight and understanding about how the effects of the heart inflow into the lungs, this action being a correspondence to how the good we receive in the affective organ directs and fuses with the truth that is in our cognitive organ, and by this action we achieve a new and more excellent life.
 
Simultaneous Neologisms: Celestial, Spiritual, NaturalWhat is consciousness?
 
In theistic psychology I define consciousness as the vertical dimension of the mental world of eternity. We are born into this world but we are not conscious of it until after resuscitation when we lose all connectivity to the physical body and world. Swedenborg interviewed a large sample of people who were undergoing the process of resuscitation, at the end of which they open their eyes and find themselves conscious in their spiritual mind, having but vague memories of their natural mind which gradually shuts down and is no longer present to our conscious awareness or memory. What remains are all the spiritual correspondences that are contained within every natural neologisms. So our consciousness is not the same in the spiritual mind, but it is related to our natural mind as the contents of a box are related to the box, because the meaning of the natural neologism contains within it the meaning of the corresponding spiritual neologism, and this in turn contains the meaning of the celestial neologism that corresponds to it.
Meaning within meaning within meaning. These three anatomical layers of the human mind form its consciousness. There is no other human consciousness than what is formed at these three interconnected layers of the mental world of eternity.
The mental world of eternity is a human sphere shaped into the form of every anatomical organ familiar to us in the physical body. The mental world has the human anatomical form because it is the original form from which the form of the physical body was created. The mental world is the cause that is within the effect, which is the physical body. Where is the mental world of eternity? It is within the physical world of time-place. The word “within” as used here was coined by God during His Physical Incarnation Life on earth, whose biography and sayings are preserved as the New Testament Sacred Scripture. As discussed above
nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you.(Luke 17:21)
 This Divine Natural Neologism, “within you,” referring to the “kingdom of God” or heaven, contains within it a Divine Spiritual Neologism, and within that, a Divine Celestial Neologism. We gain a higher spiritual consciousness when we extract the Spiritual Neologism that is contained within the Natural “within.” At the spiritual anatomical level of consciousness (layer 5), the meaning of “within” in the Divine Spiritual Neologism, derives the meaning of the light of truth in our understanding or cognitive organ. At the celestial anatomical level of consciousness (layer 4), the meaning of “within” in the Divine Celestial Neologism, derives the meaning of the heat of love in our affective organ (or “the will”). The spiritual meaning of “within” is the cause of something. The celestial meaning of “within” is the source of that cause.
For example, the expression of eating food appears frequently in Sacred Scripture. Through knowing correspondences from the Swedenborg Reports we can derive the Divine Spiritual Neologism that is within the Divine Natural Neologism of eating food. This spiritual meaning is to appropriate spiritual truths through loving them and willing them. As there are different varieties of spiritual truths in the mental world of eternity, therefore there are varieties of foods on earth. The two are connected like cause and effect. Now to get to the source of this cause we need to derive the celestial correspondence that we have in layer 4 of our mental anatomy. This celestial meaning that corresponds to “eating food” is to receive spiritual goods in our affective organ by loving the good that inflows from God as spiritual heat. Eating is therefore a representative of incorporating spiritual light and loving its good.
The reason that eating is so frequently mentioned in Sacred Scripture is that our eternal existence and happiness in the heavenly layers of the human mind depends entirely on our appropriation of spiritual good through loving them and willing them in our daily choices of living here on earth. And this most critical appropriation cannot take place except through spiritual neologisms that introduce our thinking and speaking to what is good vs. what is good corrupted.
Simulataneous Order of Neologisms in Discrete Degrees Part 2Constructing a neologism is a “performative speech act” (Austin and Searle come to mind). There are three types of constructed neologisms: affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. These constitute the threefold self or mental anatomy of every human being. Affective organs produce affective neologisms. Cognitive organs produce cognitive neologisms. Sensorimotor organs produce sensorimotor neologisms. God produces Divine Neologisms. In terms of the sequence of production of neologisms in the universe we have the following sequence: (see the Chart of Mental Anatomy)
Divine Rational Neologisms (Layer 1)
Celestial-rational neologisms (layer 4)
Spiritual-rational neologisms (layer 5)
Spiritual-natural neologisms (layer 6)
Interior-natural neologisms (or natural-rational neologisms) (layer 7)
Exterior-natural neologisms (or materialistic neologisms) (layer 8)
Corporeal-natural neologisms (layer 9)
 A layer is called a “discrete degree” in the Swedenborg Reports. This means that there are no direct connections between layers, but only a functional relation of correspondence. The layers are arranged “sequential order”, and as it proceeds from top to bottom, or from internal to external, what succeeds contains within itself what precedes. Layer 1 events cause by correspondence all layer 4 events, and the cause is within the effect it produces. “Within” means a discrete degree more interior, hence, prior, or higher in command. Layer 5 is caused by layer 4, within which is Layer 1). By the time the exteriorizing sequence reaches the outmost layer, the sequential order is complete. Now the entire series from first to last is contained in layer 9 in “simultaneous order.” The accompanying diagram is a visual representation of this type of embedded cause-effect structure.
The diagram makes it clear that when we look at a neologism written by someone we are looking at layer 9, which is the outmost containant of all the neologisms that are contained within its discrete degrees. Every neologism coined by a human being is therefore a Divine Neologism (Layer 1) that has exteriorized from the inmost of existence (Layer 1) to the outmost natural mind and world. This shows how God is the source of all neologisms produced by human beings. It also shows that the entire human race participates in the production of one individual’s neologism.
Autobiographical neologisms are expressions and sayings by others that provide you with a source of insight into some mental area. Affective autobiographical neologisms bring us to a deeper or higher love in relation to an area of activity or use that we perform. Cognitive autobiographical neologisms brings us a higher or deeper understanding to go along with that higher love. Thus takes place the mental marriage of love and understanding, which produces the constant stream of sensorimotor autobiographical neologisms as an objective and visible record of our mental life in its growth and development. The mutual sharing and exchange of all types of neologisms is the mental economy by which God unites all individual human beings into one global individual called the Grand Human in the mental world of eternity. In the Swedenborg Reports God reveals this about Himself, namely that He is the Life of the Grand Human, which in its totality makes up the eternal heavenly abodes of human beings who desire to be in mutual conjugial love with a soul mate, and led in totality by the Omniproprium of God in His Presence as the Divine Human.
The Swedenborg Reports explain that “to love” is to want to make another happy from oneself. 
The love that we have for our pets or our children fits very well with this Divine Neologism. God is explaining to each of us what we must do to love. This is true love. Love that is God’s love in human beings. God gives this love because His Nature or Character is Love Itself. God loves the human race or the human individual, which means that God wants to make the individual and the race happy from Himself. This means that He wants us to have whatever good He can give us, or that we are willing to receive in our affective organ as spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun that is around God like a living Aura of Life, of Love and Truth.
We want to make our children and pets happy when we love them. And we want to do this from ourselves. That means that we want to give them whatever good we have and we want them to take it so they can have it. This is the thought that we find rewarding “so they can have it.” We want them to have our good so they can own it, so it is theirs. If we have some food they need or like, we give it to them. If we have money to buy them things, we spend it. If we have a certain skill that we love that makes us happy and better, we want them to have it. We want to teach it to them so they can have it as their own. If we have values that we cherish we want to pass those on to them so they can have those values, and they can have the satisfactions that come with owning those values. So it is with God and us human beings.
The grand plan and ultimate destination God has created for human beings is the Grand Human in mental world of eternity. Every human awakens in consciousness at resuscitation, a few hours after the dying process and separation from being intertwined with the physical body. Then our consciousness in eternity begins. We have arrived to our life of immortality in our eternal spiritual body, with which we were born along with the temporary physical body. In this spiritual body we can participate and receive the Life of the Grand Human, and join one of the numberless spiritual societies in the various regions of the Grand Human. Swedenborg described the differing mentality of the people in many of these regions, like the region of the heart, or the province of the lungs, etc.
Now you can have a better perspective on the sentence you read just above: “The mutual sharing and exchange of all types of neologisms is the mental economy by which God unites all individual human beings into one global individual called the Grand Human in the mental world of eternity.”  
In other words, your particular unique thinking, speaking, and writing are the personal and autobiographical venues by which God is integrating you into the synergy of the Grand Human. Your uniqueness is essential to the perfection and evolution of the Grand Human. Isn’t this amazing? I coined a neologism for it when I first wrote about it in 2004: the Perizonius Thesis. This means that your daily production of neos is like “daily bread” to the people in the Grand Human.
Neologisms are semantic way stations or platforms in the mental world of eternity. Each neologism is a pin point on the spiritual map of the region in which the neologism is enrooted. Every region of the Grand Human, and its perversion or opposite as the Grand Monster, originates a particular mental variety of neologisms. Affective neologisms originate in the regions of the Grand Human that involve the circulatory organs and operations of the blood and lymph system. Cognitive neologisms originate in the respiratory system of the Grand Human, including the larynx, mouth, and lips. Sensorimotor neologisms are sourced from the skin, membranes, cartilages, bones, sensory organs, nervous system, and brain.
Divine Celestial, Spiritual, and Natural Neologisms are the varieties of truths that construct our intelligence and rationality at each anatomical layer. The physiology, anatomy, and biochemistry of the body are nothing but correspondences and symbolic representatives of the mental internet that constitutes the Grand Human. This is the true reality, while the physical internet of communities and societies on earth are temporary appearances instantiated by correspondences of the physical world with the realities of the eternal mental world.
If all this sounds to you somewhat abstract rather than concrete and immediately relevant you can bring it down to concrete objectivity simply by realizing that you are now in the mental world of eternity. “You” means your self, your conscious identity as a unique person, the “me” that forms your actuality in daily life, namely, your sensations, your thoughts, and your feelings. This is you. Now where are these mental events? They cannot be in your brain or physical body because sensations, thoughts, and feelings are not material operations, but mental operations, and these have no space or energy or time as do other physical objects.
It is clear therefore that the mental world is outside space and time, and this is called the world of eternity. When we die and resuscitate a few hours later, we awaken in the mental world of eternity, which is the same world you are in right this moment, and were in since your birth. You are not conscious of this because we are born with a natural mind or consciousness, and a spiritual mind or consciousness. Our natural consciousness is from sensory input through the physical body, and therefore our natural thoughts and natural feelings reflect the physical world only. But our spiritual consciousness after resuscitation is from sensory input through the spiritual body, and therefore spiritual thoughts and spiritual feelings reflect the mental world of eternity alone, and nothing at all about the physical world of time.
This is real and concrete, like anatomy and physiology. Sensations, thoughts, and feelings are organic-physiological spiritual operations of the mental organs called sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective. It’s very useful to know this because it allows us to plot the strategy of our spiritual navigation in the afterlife of eternity. If we monitor our daily production neologisms we can keep track of how much of our loves are rooted in the societies of the Grand Human, and which of our loves are rooted in the societies of the Grand Monster. This spiritual economy is called “salvation” in the Swedenborg Reports. In other words, after resuscitation into our spiritual consciousness, we are compelled by the laws of spiritual physiology to undergo a search for our hidden loves, especially our ruling love that controls all the loves.
The ruling love we have when we are resuscitated always wins, as we can see from the many observations Swedenborg made over the course of 27 years of daily observations and records. The ruling love is what we care the most for, more than any other love. If this love is enrooted in the Grand Monster, we are irresistibly drawn by our own love to the region of the Grand Monster where that love exists with the people who inhabit that region of the mental world. If our ruling love is enrooted in the Grand Human, we are irresistibly drawn to that society of people, and when we arrive there, or into that mental state, we become synergistically linked in consciousness with them. We breathe and live that specific variety and species of love.
Clearly then, nothing can be more important to us in this life than to manage the production of our daily neologisms so that our ruling love, with its retinue of sub-loves in our affective organ, be enrooted in the Grand Human’s endless supply of Divine Celestial and Spiritual Neologisms. When we come across such a hellish driving neologism as “Look at that idiot. He forgot to turn off his turn signal,” we need to react to it with a heavenly driving neologism as “That’s not kind of me to think that about him. I take it back.” When we do this systematically as a daily spiritual self-witnessing discipline in all the areas of our activities and exchanges with others, then we are following the rational and effective strategy God makes available to us to insure that our ruling love after resuscitation is enrooted in the Grand Human. What can be more important than that in the few decades we spend in our natural consciousness, vs. the endless life of immortality in our eternal spiritual consciousness. You be the judge if there is anything that could possible more critical to you.
Spelling-neologisms are new ways of spelling a word or name, which may be accompanied by a change in pronunciation. A prominent example comes to mind: “nucular” for “nuclear” (starting in the 1950’s I believe). More recently I witnessed “anacronym” for “an acronym” or for “acronym.” Spelling-neos are related to phonological neologisms, which are new ways of pronouncing a word or name. No doubt there is a discoverable law that describes the cross-modal interaction dynamics between spelling-neos and phono-neos. We know that the visual and auditory systems can behave both independently and interdependenty. Research on correspondences may reveal what this dynamic is.
All neologisms are eternal. Every neo is an immortal neo.
This is clear when you consider that neologisms are semantic units or meaning objects, and these are mental objects and operations. The Swedenborg Reports demonstrate that all mental objects are constructed out of substances that flow out of the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity, into which we are born with an eternal spiritual body that contains our immortal mental organs – affective (“will”), cognitive (“understanding”), and sensorimotor (“body”). Our sensations, thoughts, and feelings are therefore immortal objects preserved forever in our spiritual body. Neologisms are innovative operations in our three mental organs, namely, affective neologisms, cognitive neologisms, and sensorimotor neologisms. You can see from this that neos are immortal mental objects preserved forever in the mental world of eternity through our spiritual body.
Living necessitates the continuous construction of endless immortal neologisms. This is because all neologisms are sourced from Divine Neologisms through the Spiritual Sun and its outflow of good and truth in the form of spiritual heat and light. Every single thing that flows from God through the Spiritual Sun is an “image and likeness” of God, and since God is infinite, every single thing that flows from God must be infinite and unique. The infinity within every existing thing makes every object that exists completely unique and innovative. This means that every object, quality, or operation is a Divine Neologism. There can never be two identical objects or two repetitions of the same thing, or two repetitions of a sensation, thought, or feeling, desire, and satisfaction. Heavenly life is the life of neologism itself.
Heavenly life is the happiness of neologisms.
Human beings are maximally happy only when every moment of living is more exciting than the previous one. Swedenborg reports that those who are in mental anatomy layer 4 (or “third and highest heaven”), are maximally happy. If God were to add to their happiness, their being would burst and end. To keep this layer of human consciousness in a state of maximal happiness God provides people with His Own Omniproprium or Divine Human Character which each person in that conscious layer can experience subjectively as his own or her own. Our as-of self in anatomical layer 4 is quasi-omniscient so that the desire to know something is filled instantaneously in our consciousness, without searching, reflecting, or remembering. Everything that can be known about something we want to know about, instantaneously and without mental effort, fills our awareness. With the Omniproprium as our as-of self in layer 4, we are able to operate from the highest human loves possible, which gives us access to the highest goods in existence, which means the possession of skills and abilities that we are unable to even begin to imagine, no matter how much we fantasize about it. Reality will always be larger than our fantasy of it.
The celestial-rational neologisms that operate in mental anatomy layer 4 (our “highest” heaven), are located in the region of the heart and the region of the reproductive organs in the Grand Human. These are the human neologisms that are closest to the Divine Neologisms. The mental states that we experience in this layer provide the source of our rationality and abilities in the lower layers of consciousness. The celestial-rational meaning is the highest form of human understanding of Sacred Scripture. Swedenborg saw the Books of Sacred Scripture in that layer of the eternal human mind. The people who keep their daily consciousness in that region spoke to him and said that every neologism that comes to them is from Sacred Scripture .
Loud-talking neologisms are things people say for show, for the attention of the listeners, more than the person they are talking to. Loud-talking neologistic speech acts are insincere and manipulative, and if we do this for selfish reasons, then these are evil acts that hurt you because they connect you more powerfully to a ruling love that is sourced in the Grand Monster. Neologisms of insincerity are corruptions of neologisms of sincerity. There is a point by point relationship between the Grand Human and the Grand Monster, with the latter being the transformed opposite of the former. All evil is nothing but the distortion of good, and all falsity is the distortion of truth. The infernal concubinage of evil and falsity is the opposite of the heavenly marriage of good and truth.
Rearrangement neologisms are new ways of combining existing words. For example, the arrangement of three very common words into this: “feeling, desire, and satisfaction” creates a rearrangement neologism. The novel arrangement is normally motivated by the perception of a new pattern. Rearranged neos belong to paraphrastic sets of semantically related neos. In this case, the arrangement “feeling, desire, and satisfaction” is achieved by thinking of affective selections only. On the other hand the arrangement “affective, cognitive, sensorimotor” is motivated by mental anatomy, just as the arrangement “anatomy, physiology, biochemistry” is motivated by the anatomy of the physical body.
Endearment neologisms are affectively motivated and sourced in the celestial layers of our mind (4). The love we have for our pet, child, partner, car, etc., creates the endearment neo. I produce endearment neos when I hold my wife, or when I groom my black cat Mana. Homonymous neologisms are words, phrases, arrangements that appear the same but involve different innovations. For instance, if I say “So sweet” to my wife, and then also to my cat, the two appear to be the same (“So sweet”) but they are different, one having my wife as a context, the other having my cat as the context. The context alters the meaning of the neologism. If I call my wife “Sweetie” and a minute later I call her “Sweetie,” these are homonymous endearment neologisms and they denote different affective operations. This is because time and sequence change the interactional context therefore the meaning.
There are two kinds of loves and each kind has distinct properties or ways of operating in our mental world. Inherited loves operate one way, acquired loves another way. Both kinds of loves share some properties, while they are different in others. A shared property of all loves, or all operations in our affective organ, is that they are sourced in either the Grand Human or the Grand Monster. No love exists that is not heavenly from the Grand Human or hellish from the Grand Monster. There are no other created sources for loves.  
Another shared property of all loves is that they arrange themselves in a management hierarchy, with a few “cardinal” loves, or primary loves, and very many sub-loves. These sub-loves are like assistants to the chief loves. At the very top of the love hierarchy, managing, directing, and controlling the entire affective hierarchy, sits the “ruling love.”
The Swedenborg Reports identify many loves that are described in Sacred Scripture. For the “fallen” spiritual race known as the split-brain race, the principal inherited loves cumulatively passed on to every succeeding generation, are the love of self for the sake of self, the love of dominating others for the sake of self, the love of materialism and earthly objects for the sake of self. These inherited loves operate as impulses and triggers in the affective hierarchy. These spiritual trigger loves function by connecting our mind to specific societies in the Grand Monster. Every individual joins one of these societies when after resuscitation they decide to throw off or anesthetize the entire collection of heavenly loves in the affective organ. This decision moment of eternal fate is called “the second death.” This is why we are called the “fallen race” in the sense that if we don’t cut our inherited ties to the Grand Monster, we go down in life on the path of least affective resistance, almost imperceptibly, like a boat being drawn away by an unknown undercurrent, and headed towards disaster on the rocks. 
We also inherit heavenly trigger loves that connect our affective organ to the societies of the Grand Human. These heavenly trigger loves include the love of innocence in obedience and surrender to the parental order that is a representation of God’s order. We can see this principal heavenly love in infants and toddlers, and in adults who love to be good and orderly because it is God’s order. At the same time we can see in babies and toddlers the hatred of this love of obedience, and this negative rebellious selfish love comes from their connection to the Grand Monster societies. Such is the zone of the mental world that we live in every day and every minute while we are earthbound and our natural mind is tied by correspondence to the physical body. It is a spiritual war zone. We alternate between sides, so that one moment we are with the hellish societies in our vertical community, and another moment we are with the heavenly societies. The heavenly and hellish societies battle each other inside our thoughts and feelings.
The Divine Psychologist with every person’s mind manages the details of this mental warfare. Remember that the warfare refers to ourselves. We are at war against our self and within our self. The societies on either side cannot battle each other. Heaven cannot battle hell apart from our loves. The battle of evil vs. good, and its sub-battle of falsity vs. truth, is a battle that we keep going. We can end it at any moment because the Divine Psychologist is there managing the details and the goal or outcome God wants and provides for each person. We can cooperate or resist. God honors both by supplying the events for either.
The Divine Psychologist provides a methodology or spiritual discipline to allow us to win this battle for eternity.
It is the method of neologisms.
We receive heavenly neologisms from Sacred Scripture and commandment neologisms from our conscience. These are the mental vehicles of delivery for spiritual truths that give us awareness and judgment of the quality of our loves, whether hellish or heavenly.
In order to understand this rationally let’s bring it down to anatomy and see how this actually works. The details are revealed in the correspondential sense of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, as demonstrated and proven fully in the Swedenborg Reports. God’s Divine Speech issuing from the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity reaches mental anatomy layer 4 (“Third Heaven”) in the form of the written Sacred Scripture that exists in that layer of human consciousness. Swedenborg saw the actual book in a temple that housed it. It is surrounded by a spiritual light that is thousands of times more brilliant and intense than our sun at noon on a clear summer day. Yet this light doesn’t blind the onlooker or reader, but is experienced as interior enlightenment with wisdom and understanding. The letters, words, and expressions are celestial-rational correspondences of what God actually spoke. These celestial-rational neologisms constitute the first entry point of God’s Divine Truth and Rationality into the conscious minds of human beings.
What determines how much of this light we can take into our conscious understanding and awareness?
The answer is love. Such as our love is, such is our understanding. To be conscious of the meanings of celestial-rational neologisms (layer 4) we must admit into ourselves, our affective organ, celestial loves such as are sourced in that mental layer. The chief love in that layer of human consciousness is conjugial love. In the Swedenborg Reports God reveals the scientific fact that all loves are arranged in a top-down hierarchy, and that at the very top of this is conjugial love – the mutual and reciprocal love of unity between a husband and wife existing as a conjoint self. This ruling love of the heaven and the universe is the exteriorization of spiritual heat (or love) and spiritual light (or truth). These two Divine and infinite eternal living substances make a one in God. Good (or love) and truth (or rationality) exteriorize into creation through the Spiritual Sun, and the human consciousness of these two spiritual substances starts with the mental world of eternity, layer 4.
Good and truth are united in God as one, and this is called the Divine Marriage of Good and Truth. As spiritual heat and light flow into layer 4 they are received as two – spiritual heat (or love) is received in the affective organ (layer 4A) while spiritual light (or truth) is received in the cognitive organ (layer 4C). The result is that love and truth from God now exist in human beings and their consciousness – love in the affective organ (or “will”) and truth in the cognitive organ (or “understanding”). If both good and truth have been received and are in the person, they operate in the person bringing about a coordinated interaction between our loves (layer 4A) and our meanings (layer 4C). We experience the motivation (4A) to think about (4C) how we might be maximally useful to others, starting with our conjugial partner, and extending the circle to our neighbors in the society we live in layer 4. From there the “good will” and “good works” or “uses of charity” (4S) exteriorize to layer 5 (“Second Heaven”), and from there downward and outward, until it the chain of neologisms enters our conscious natural mind we use in daily life here (layers 7, 8, 9).
When the affective and cognitive organs are conjoined in a person the new mental state is called “the spiritual marriage of good and truth.” This is the way of salvation because it is the method by which we are regenerated and become spiritual. This means that the spiritual marriage of good and truth in our natural mind (layers 7, 8, 9) must take place prior to our resuscitation. We must engage in spiritual combat prior to our death here. Without this, we cannot be regenerated in character so that the “infernal marriage of evil and falsity” with which we are born and raised, will remain forever as our mental state of disorder, insanity, and hell. The Swedenborg Reports explain why it is said in the New Testament Sacred Scripture that there are no marriages in heaven. The correspondential sense of “marriage” is “the conjunction of good and truth in our mind.” This conjunction must take place before death, and if it doesn’t, it cannot be obtained after resuscitation, as it is explained in the parable of the five virgins who brought lamps without oil, and were denied entrance into heaven (Matt. 25:1-12).
The reason we cannot obtain “oil” (=good of love) after “waking up” (=resuscitation) is that the good of love can be ours (“buy for ourselves”) only if we acquired it by first voluntarily giving up evil loves that are contrary to good. This cannot be done after our death. How do you give up enjoyments you love? The method is given in Sacred Scripture. The purpose of the existence of Sacred Scripture is to teach people how they can give up their inherited and acquired evil enjoyments. This process is called regeneration of character. And it always involves spiritual combat.
What is spiritual combat?
It is the method of Divine Psychotherapy or Healing. The Divine Psychologist is in every person’s mind through the good and truth we are willing to receive from the inflow coming from the Spiritual Sun. As the good enters the affective organ we experience some heavenly desire, intention, or motive. Now we experience a mental conflict. This good strives to bring about the spiritual marriage in the person. The good seeks out anything in the cognitive organ that is compatible with it. Only truth is compatible with good. All truth enters our understanding and awareness through teachings that originate in Sacred Scripture – that there is a God, that God gives Sacred Scripture as a Divine guide, that there is Heaven and Hell, that we are to shun evils as sins against God, and that if we do not, our fate in eternity is in hell. These spiritual truths are compatible with the heavenly intentions and motives that inflow as good.
Now begins the spiritual combat. The infernal marriage of evil enjoyments in the affective organ, and falsified truths in the cognitive organ, puts up resistance to the spiritual marriage of good intentions and true understandings. We experience this combat as a temptation. The Divine Psychologist arranges surrounding events so that our infernal desire for an evil enjoyment is intensified. We feel the temptation to reject the truth, to believe the falsity, to justify the evil enjoyment. At the same time we feel the intention of conscience as a powerful motive to remain true to the good.
“I feel like doing X, I feel like not stopping doing Y, because it’s what I want, what I enjoy, what is me -- even though I know from truth, conscience, morality, and Sacred Scripture that I must not do X or continue to do Y. I must stop, but it feels like I can’t. I feel terrible, conflictual, pulled in opposite directions. Please God, help me.”
That’s it. The last speech act brings victory. Until then, defeat was certain. The hells were already waiting to welcome us. But the last speech act changed the outcome. We are a “firebrand snatched from the fire.” We just got saved by the grace of God. The Divine Psychologist gave us victory in temptation. The instant we acknowledge and appeal to God in our struggle to “shun evils as sins against Him,” and against heaven, that instant the temptations eases, slips away, hides in a mental cave, returns to the mental dungeon of evil loves that keeps all enslaved who hold on to them out of enjoyment.
Once the temptation is overcome, and victory is experienced, the Divine Psychologist gives a new peace, a new heavenly strength, a new ability to love what is good and true in our mind – until the next temptation. Regeneration is the process of undergoing temptations in spiritual combat. It is a lifelong process, and we must cooperate with the Divine Psychologist all along the way. In order to understand the psychology of cooperation with the Divine Psychologist, we need a basic grounding knowledge of mental anatomy in relation to spiritual geography. The physiology and biochemistry of regeneration proceed in a lawful and orderly sequence of mental operations. These steps are described in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture in the correspondential sense of Jacob’s Ladder (Gen. 28:12-13).
“…He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God of…”

 

The Trinity of Neos

God is Divine Human Person possessing an infinite Soul, Mind and Body which are the Very Forms into which human beings are created, with a soul, mind and a body.  
1.  The Trinity of neos we produce:
You are producing an affective neo when you have a new love, intention, or motive.
You are producing a cognitive neo when you have a new thought, plan, or principle.
You are producing a sensorimotor neo when you have a new sensation, movement pattern, or verbal expression.
2.  The Trinity of Divine Human Neos God produces:
God’s Divine Love is within every affective neo.
God’s Divine Wisdom is within every cognitive neo.
God’s Divine Proceeding is within every sensorimotor neo.
3.  The Trinity of Three Divine Aspects of God’s Neos:
God’s Affective Organ comprises an integrated whole in which infinite loves and purposes are present to eternity.
God’s Cognitive Organ comprises an integrated whole in which infinite truths and principles are present to eternity.
God’s Sensorimotor Organ comprises an integrated whole in which infinite sensations and motor determinations
        are present to eternity.
  

Discourse Thinking Neo Production Procedures

Discourse thinking” (1975) refers to thinking in discourse or sentences. I discovered that I spontaneously do this when I’m trying to become aware and remember something that I’m thinking. I was delighted with this discovery, which I consider one of the most significant of all my neos prior to 1981. Making yourself think in words is possible most of the time. This strategy allows the following mental procedure to be performed:
Influx à sudden memory à short term memory à discourse thinking à long term memory
This sequence of operations shows that our thoughts are produced by a spiritual influx from the mental layer that is immediately above the consciously active layer. The influx is not direct since mental layers are in discrete degrees and influence each other solely by the laws of correspondences. We normally figure things out on our daily round of activities in consciousness layer 9 and 8. When our thinking is bound to the appearances of sensory input (layer 9C), the influx comes from layer 8C, which is more abstract and independent of the literal appearances given by our senses. When we are conscious in layer 8C (“scientific materialism”) the influx comes from our layer 7eC (“natural-rational”), which is the highest form of external natural thinking, that is, rational thinking or reasoning that is based on the abstractions of appearances. When we are thinking consciously in layer 7eC, the influx comes from our layer 7iC (“interior-natural”), which is the first layer that is not bound to the abstractions of sensory appearances. This layer is based on the spiritual truths that we extract from Sacred Scripture and understand rationally.
Sudden memory is the first phase of our consciousness that is tied to the influx. I discovered the existence of sudden memory in 1974. I was engaged in the practice of self-witnessing, which involves monitoring the contents of sudden memory. I found out that there is a period prior to short term memory when I examined the contents of my short term memory and realized that it is sparse in comparison to the fast pace density of sudden memory. Thoughts tumble into our consciousness at a higher rate than we can record them in short term memory. By the time we access short term memory as much as 1,000 milliseconds have gone by, during which a sequence of ideas have actually occurred. With a little focus and practice you can actually perceive the difference.
The experience of trying to “snatch something” from sudden memory is similar to the procedure of trying to recall the contents of a dream, one or two seconds upon waking from one. There is the familiar feeling of the “tip of the tongue phenomenon”  where you can almost say what it is you’re trying to remember, but something is blocking it at the last millisecond. My current interpretation is that the contents of sudden memory and of most dreams are spiritual, not natural. In other words, they are pre-verbal thoughts. Pre-verbal thinking is the external natural and cultural form (layers 7e, 8, 9) of the universal human thought-language that every person spontaneously starts using immediately upon resuscitation, when the spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4) becomes conscious to us.
The language we use in the spiritual mind is innate and does not have to be learned. Swedenborg confirmed this by speaking to many people immediately after their resuscitation. I believe that sudden memory is the first conscious localized cultural translation of the innate spiritual thought-language within an individual. We can perceive it and monitor it, but we cannot recall it. It’s like being awake and conscious in all your dreams, but when you wake up, you have no memory of what you were conscious of. By using the discourse thinking technique it is possible to snatch more content from it, and place it in short term memory before it is gone, out of our reach. Discourse thinking seems to actually slow down the stream of sudden memory. If you make yourself to think in words, second by second as you’re doing something, you are able to be aware of more things that you are actually thinking.
Children spontaneously think out loud using language. It’s not until around the age of 6 or 7 when they learn to inhibit the tendency to think out loud. But even as adults we sometimes think out loud without realizing it, and if others can hear us, it can be embarrassing to some people. I recall thinking out loud as I walked on streets, realizing too late when another pedestrian came into earshot, and feeling foolish for doing it. As people get older the tendency to think out loud reasserts itself and has to be actively repressed for social reasons. I believe that all these thinking out loud situations have a common cause, which is the people’s motivation to become more aware of what they are thinking.
The progressive filtering down of the Divine Neo (layer 1, Spiritual Sun) across the mental layers of eternity can be seen materialistically (layer 8C) or with a rational (layer 7eC) or an interior-natural (layer 7iC) perspective. First we see it in a materialistic perspective (layer 8C). We might think of a physical model we are familiar with in our thinking and reasoning, as for example, a glass elevator on the side of a building going down from the Divine Penthouse, passing across all the lower floors, until it reaches the ground floor. Each floor represents a mental layer. The elevator could be a symbol of our consciousness, and the floor level could represent the level of our consciousness. We, the “I” or the conscious “me,” stands in the elevator and gets a different vision or perspective from each floor.
This is a materialistic perspective on consciousness. Layer 8C thinking and reasoning is called materialistic because it is based on sensory input from the physical world, as recorded in layer 9S. This layer is the closest the two worlds get to each other, namely, the mental world of eternity (layer 9S and above) and the physical world of material space and time (layers 11 and 12). The world of eternity is the mental world and it is an organic living world. The world of time, space, matter, and energy is a dead world. The energy and matter in physical space have one origin and source, namely, a physical mass of intense solar energy. This mass of solar matter and gravitation expands everywhere to generate the planets. The solar mass is dead, and the planet is dead, with everything whatsoever that is constructed on the planet from the planet. Something dead is the origin of only what is dead.
In contrast to this dead world, the mental world of eternity is a living world because its origin and source is from the Spiritual Sun. This is a living Divine Solar Mass of spiritual energy and substance. What is this? What is spiritual energy and substance? This is not a materialistic analogy at layer 8C or 7eC thinking and reasoning. This is a literal and empirical description, not a figurative speech. When I started bringing the Swedenborg Reports into psychology after 1981, I started using the expression “substantive dualism” to reflect this idea that the spiritual world outside time and space is a substantive world. The concept of “spiritual substance” corresponds to the concept of “physical matter.” The Spiritual Sun is living not dead. All its substances are living. Nothing but what is living can exist in the world created by the Spiritual Sun around itself and from itself. Whatever is created from the living substances of the Spiritual Sun is inherently living and remains living to eternity. Death is not possible in the mental world of eternity since everything, with no exception, is constructed out of the Spiritual Sun.
The Divine Human Neo, as the Spiritual Sun Itself (layer 1), exteriorizes and descends from above across the layers of the human mind (2 to 9). This is not a physical descent, as in the materialistic analogy of the elevator standing for consciousness, discussed above. We need to think of this descent in terms of correspondence alone. The mental layers are organic and living. This means that they are reactive and adaptive. Our affective organ closest to the Spiritual Sun (layer 4A) is the first to be flooded with the spiritual heat of the Spiritual Sun. The affective layer of the mind (A) is a living organ that is built from the infinite variety of spiritual heat, which insures that every affective organ is unique. The substance of spiritual heat is also called “love” and its diverse “affections” or supporting cast of sub-loves. Each unique affective organ being created at birth is located in the spiritual body which also houses the cognitive and sensorimotor organs. These three organ systems operate at different levels, each level of operation being called a mental layer.  
Layer 4A of our mind is therefore made out of Divine Love, which is also called spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun. Layer 4C of our mind is made of Divine Truth, which is called spiritual light from the Spiritual Sun. Layer 4S of our mind is made out of the spiritual marriage between layer 4A and 4C. This layer produces all the mental neo babies that make up the Third Heaven of eternity.
Note that the Divine Human Neo does not actually descend from layer 1 (Spiritual Sun) to layer 4. Instead, spiritual heat floods the affective organ (4A), which is made of spiritual heat, so that the unique living affective organ of a person reacts to it, each in its own unique way. The relationship between the Divine Human Neo in God (Divine Love and Truth, layer 1) and the human neo in us (layer 4A, 4C) is a discrete difference. There is no possibility of a continuity between the Divine substances out of which our mental organs are constructed, and our own self or consciousness as a human being. God’s Consciousness is infinite and ours is finite. It Is not possible for the infinite to turn into the finite, or the finite to contain the infinite at its level of existence.
But the infinite can be within the finite in a discrete way that is related by correspondence. The Divine substances of heat and light out of which our mental organs are constructed are and remain God’s substances, God’s living or God’s life. There is an absolute duality between what we are made of and what we have that is our own. The unique reaction of our affective organ (A) to receiving the sphere of spiritual heat, is the unique consciousness we have of our feelings. No other human being has the same affective organ as you have, and therefore the feelings you are experiencing in your consciousness are your own unique feelings. They are not God’s feelings, and they are not someone else’s feelings. They are your own. These unique personal feelings, or loves and sub-loves, coalesce into a personality we call “me” or “self.” The self is a product of mental biology.
The self is our own, but the organic mental organs that make up the self, are not our own. They are part of the outgoing Spiritual Sun and all things in the mental world are made of it and remain of it. Your watch or pen is made of a piece of the dead sun. Your affective and cognitive organs are made of a piece of the Spiritual Sun. What we call “pieces” of the sun are, in substance, the sun itself, but now seemingly in a different location from its origin.
Once the Divine Human Neo is adapted to mental layer 4, producing there a conjugial life in the celestial heaven, it descends by correspondence to layer 5, producing there the spiritual heaven. Swedenborg reports observing that the differences are not continuous but discrete. For instance, the lowest possible level of operation at layer 4 is out of reach of the highest possible level of operation for layer 5. Swedenborg compared the meaning of the layer 4 Sacred Scripture with the meaning of the layer 5 Sacred Scripture. There was no comparison possible. The only relationship was that of correspondences. Every idea of thinking and reasoning in our layer 4C, is the cause of the corresponding lower every idea of thinking and reasoning in our layer 5C. Similarly, every love and intention in our layer 4A, is the cause of the corresponding lower love or intention in our layer 5A. When our consciousness is in layer 4C, we operate at a discretely higher level in our motive and intelligence, than in our layer 5C. We are a higher form of human being and human consciousness in layer 4 than in layer 5. Similarly with layer 6, which is the correspondential action of layer 5.
When the Divine Human Neo descends past layer 6, it enters in a new relationship of correspondence. Layers 4, 5, 6 are called the spiritual mind, but layers 7, 8, 9 are called the natural mind. They are both organic, both constructed from the substances of the Spiritual Sun, but they operate entirely differently. When we are born we have a temporary natural body and a permanent spiritual body. These two unique bodies are in exact correspondence to each other, part for part. Our spiritual body with its mental organs changes and progresses spiritually, while the physical body and its organs, grow naturally. The connection ends through the process of death and resuscitation.
The spiritual body and its organs, hence what we call “our mind,” has a lower and more external portion called the natural mind (layers 9, 8, 7), and a higher and interior portion called the spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4). The natural mind grows in correspondence to the sensory events activating the physical body. Our mental layer 9 is the closest in correspondence to the physical world of time, place, matter, limits, etc. Our thinking in layer 9C is based on the appearances of the senses, and we say “The Sun rises.” But in layer 8C, our thinking is abstracted, knowing that the sun does not rise, even as we speak from appearances by mere convention. In layer 7eC we can reason rationally, above mere materialistic abstractions that in themselves remain materialistic ideas and ways of thinking. So layers 9, 8, 7 of the natural mind are called natural because they are built up in content, culture, and meaning by the things and events in the physical world.
But layer 7eC is still a type of rational thinking that is limited by the appearances and abstractions of the physical world of time and space. There is a spiritual gulf between the spiritual mind and the natural mind that cannot be crossed, even by correspondences. Hence it is that the Divine Incarnation was necessary to create a new layer called the interior-natural mind (layer 7i) which could also become our own rational, like layer 7eC is our own. But with this new higher rational operation (layer 7iC), we are able to think and reason without using any of the abstractions and appearances of the lower layers (7eC, 8c, 9C). With our interior-natural thinking (7iC) we are able to be conscious of and comprehend higher meanings and truths that are contained several discrete degrees within and above the literal meaning. Layer 7eC is external thinking and reasoning, based on the natural-rational abstractions of the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. Layer 7iC is interior thinking and reasoning, based on the spiritual-rational correspondences of Sacred Scripture. 
Our conscience in layer 7eA (external natural conscience), operates at a level of power far below in magnitude than the level of our conscience in layer 7iA (interior-natural conscience). The external natural conscience has failed the human race. All people are born with a conscience of good and justice, but this fails to prevent them from abusive, cruel, and unjust actions. We know that we are not supposed to be overweight, and even feel guilty about it, from the weak conscience we have. But this conscience is not strong enough to keep us from being overweight. Similarly, people who injure others, steal from them, lie and discriminate against them, also have a weak conscience incapable of preventing them from doing horrible and stupid things from which they and others suffer. This is the “Fallen Conscience” of the human race.
But the Divine Incarnation Event created a new conscience in layer 7iA. This new “will” receives the spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun, and retains it without dissipating it by hating it. It is able to receive love and motivation (7iA) that has spiritual correspondential power over the love and motivation in the lower rational conscience (layer 7eA). An example is the requirement of the popular and successful Alcoholics and Drugs Anonymous health movements, which specify that the person must acknowledge a “higher power” from which one receives the ability to overcome the addiction. This higher power is God acting by correspondence in the person’s mind, activating the operation of layer 7iC. The person becomes conscious of a higher meaning in life. Life is managed by a higher power, and we are healed by this power when we acknowledge and accept the spiritual-rational idea that God is active in our mind and in our lives, managing all the details. This is spiritual sanity. The idea we had before that acknowledgment, and its rational understanding, was that we manage our own lives ourselves. And this is spiritual insanity.
Theistic psychology is the knowledge and reasoning we have in the interior-natural mind (layer 7iC). This knowledge and reasoning is gathered by applying the science of correspondences to Sacred Scripture, using the methods prescribed in the Swedenborg Reports.
 

The Spiritual Ladder of Ascending and Descending Neologisms

Meaning and consciousness are subjective and collective experiences of truth and rationality issuing from the Spiritual Sun in the form of spiritual light within which is spiritual heat. The unity between these two living and eternal Divine substances enters creation and existence outside of God. God is present in the created universe as this Divine substance from Himself. The first creation outside of God is mental ether or the mental world of eternity. This is where human minds are born, become unique individual selves, and live forever. No death exists in the mental world of eternity.  
What is mental ether?  
It is the consciousness of truth, the meaning of truth, the understanding of truth and reasoning with truth. This acknowledgment of truth and engaging process with truth, creates meaning and consciousness. The mental world of eternity is suddenly filled with light, the light of truth understood. All things in the physical world are created from this process of acknowledging truth and engaging truth by thinking from it and which gives us human rationality. From Divine Truth and Rationality, to human truth and rationality, to physical logic and mechanics – this is the descent of truth as it exteriorizes into the created universe, forms it, directs and manages it. This is God’s Divine Order by which all created layers and objects, and events are managed, from the sub-atomic to the galactic, and from the individual particular to the collective universal, or as it is said in Sacred Scripture: “From firsts to lasts”:
TCR 63. (5) God is omnipresent from the firsts to the lasts of His order. God is omnipresent from the firsts to the lasts of His order by means of the heat and light of the spiritual sun, in the midst of which He is. It was by means of that sun that order was produced; and from it He sends forth a heat and a light which pervade the universe from firsts to lasts, and produce the life that is in man and in every animal, and also the vegetative soul that is in every germ upon the earth; and these two flow into each thing and all things, and cause every subject to live and grow according to the order implanted in it by creation. And as God, though not extended, fills every extense in the universe, He is omnipresent. It has been shown elsewhere that God is in all space without space, and in all time without time, and consequently that the universe in its essence and order is the plenitude of God; and this being so, by His omnipresence He perceives all things, by His omniscience He provides all things, and by His omnipotence He effects all things. From this it is clear that omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence make one, or that one implies the others; and thus that they cannot be separated. (TCR 63) (Swedenborg Reports)
The Divine Psychologist has established the order of regeneration, manages it directly in every human being, and reveals in Sacred Scripture the manner of our cooperation in that process. Our willingness sets a limit to the progressive steps of regeneration. The further we progress in character reformation (or regeneration) the deeper the hellish loves that we are called upon to give up in order to progress still further. There seems to be an endless series of hellish loves in which we are intertwined. The process would fail in every case were it not for the Divine Intervention and omnipotent management of every detail from firsts to lasts, from our birth to our endless eternity. No evils are allowed to come into existence in the mental world of eternity except those evils that God manages and uses for good purposes for the benefit of the individual and the collectivity of humankind. In this sense this is a perfect world and a perfect creation. All evil events and happenings in both worlds, are used by God for good, No single event can occur except as part of God’s perfect plan for the good of all concerned.
God’s management of the universe is through the descent and ascent of human consciousness as embodied in neologisms. Layer 1 of the mental world of eternity is the Spiritual Sun from which flow out Divine Rational Neologisms in the form of spiritual light within which is spiritual heat. These form and enter the subsequent layers, of which the first conscious layer is formed by spiritual truth in the form of celestial-rational neologisms in Sacred Scripture. From there human consciousness and meaning of Divine Truth descends and forms the next layer in the human mind. Here is the entire series of descending consciousness of Divine Truth in Sacred Scripture:
Layer 4: celestial-rational neologisms
Layer 5: spiritual-rational neologisms
Layer 6: spiritual-natural neologisms
Layer 7i: interior-natural neologisms
===========================
Layer 7e: external-rational neologisms
Layer 8: external-natural neologisms
Layer 9: corporeal-natural neologisms
Our regeneration proceeds from top to bottom (layer 7, 8, 9) after we developed from bottom up (layers 9, 8, 7) – see chart. It starts in young adulthood when we begin to think from ourselves instead of from our socialization or imbibed neologisms. Reaching young adulthood required our psychological development from layer 9 (infancy), then to layer 8 (childhood), then to layer 7e (adolescence and young adulthood). At this point there is an inversion from ascending to descending. It starts with one’s reformation, which is the state of acknowledgement of Sacred Scripture as the source of all knowledge and understanding of spiritual truth and regeneration. This is layer 7i called the interior-natural layer. Layer 7e is the natural-rational mind thinking with self-intelligence based on the knowledge of the physical world. This natural-rational thinking cannot detect the actuality of the dual universe, God, or Heaven and Hell in our mind. All spiritual knowledge is from spiritual truth, and this is from Sacred Scripture alone. God’s delivery mechanism of truth and reality is through the neologisms contained in Sacred Scripture at each mental layer.
Regeneration of layers 7, 8, 9 (natural layers) proceed under the motivation and influence of layers 6, 5, 4 (spiritual layers). The spiritual layers do not need regeneration since they are formed by Divine Neologisms at each layer. We are not conscious of the operation of these spiritual layers (4, 5, 6) until after our resuscitation. Swedenborg’s spiritual mission required that these layers become conscious to him prior to his death, while he was still able to write and publish the scientific Swedenborg Reports in this world. Among the earliest generations on this planet everyone had this dual consciousness to some extent.
TCR 63. (5) God is omnipresent from the firsts to the lasts of His order. God is omnipresent from the firsts to the lasts of His order by means of the heat and light of the spiritual sun, in the midst of which He is. It was by means of that sun that order was produced; and from it He sends forth a heat and a light which pervade the universe from firsts to lasts, and produce the life that is in man and in every animal, and also the vegetative soul that is in every germ upon the earth; and these two flow into each thing and all things, and cause every subject to live and grow according to the order implanted in it by creation. And as God, though not extended, fills every extense in the universe, He is omnipresent. It has been shown elsewhere that God is in all space without space, and in all time without time, and consequently that the universe in its essence and order is the plenitude of God; and this being so, by His omnipresence He perceives all things, by His omniscience He provides all things, and by His omnipotence He effects all things. From this it is clear that omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence make one, or that one implies the others; and thus that they cannot be separated.(TCR 63) (Swedenborg Reports)
Individual biography recapitulates collective evolution. The phases of our individual regeneration replicates the phases of the historical evolution of civilizations in history. The mentality level of the Divine Literal Neologisms that make up Sacred Scripture matches the mentality level of the people to whom that Sacred Scripture was given – otherwise they would not receive the new teachings of how they are to live. The mentality of the people who lived in ancient times four thousand years ago was rudimentary and barbaric. The idea they had of God was a corporeal idea in layer 9 (9C). God was understood as a powerful despot or king who punished people who don’t perform the rituals they were prescribed to follow. God was seen as loyal to that particular small nation and ethnic group. God not only punished, but boasts repeatedly of how he is going to take revenge on those who don’t honor His Glory. In terms of the commandment to love, they interpreted this as meaning to love themselves as a people, and to exclude from this love all others in the universe. They were willing to serve a God only if He made them superior over all others. And they were willing to accept as reward only that which was materialistic and belonging to this world only. Such were the people of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, and such is the level of discourse in the literal sense of that Testament.
Historically the three Testaments complete each other and form a perfect and complete whole:
Old Testament Sacred Scripture (second millennium BC)
New Testament Sacred Scripture (first century AD)
Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture (18th century)
 In the ascending phase of psychological development, we go through layer 9 (infancy), layer 8 (childhood), layer 7 (adolescence to young adulthood). This ascending developmental series corresponds to the historical ascending level of consciousness and mentality:
civilization in the days of the Old Testament (the Age of Antiquity)
civilization in the days of the New Testament (the Age of philosophy and pre-modern rationality), and
civilization in the days of the Swedenborg Reports (18th century, the Age of Enlightenment and beginning of modern science).
 In the descending phase of regeneration and spiritual development, we go through layer 7 (young adulthood), layer 8 (adulthood), and layer 9 (old age).
The regeneration of our layer 7e (natural-rational mind) is by means of the Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture, in coordination with spiritual layer 6 (“good spirits in the First Heaven”). Layers 6 and 7i become conjoined, and this brings our consciousness to a new level of spirituality.
The regeneration of our layer 8 (external-natural mind) is by means of the New Testament Sacred Scripture, in coordination with spiritual layer 5 (“angelic spirits in the Second Heaven”). Layers 5 and 8 become conjoined, and this brings our consciousness to a still newer and higher level of spirituality.
The regeneration of our layer 9 (natural-corporeal mind) is by means of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, in coordination with spiritual layer 4 (“angels in the Third Heaven”). Layers 4 and 9 become conjoined, and this brings our consciousness to the highest and final level of spirituality. At this point we lose our connection to the physical body through the dying and resuscitation process, and continue life in our spiritual layers (6, 5, 4) that constitute the heavens of the Grand Human.
The Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture is written in natural-rational neologisms that are understandable in our layer 7 (natural-rational mind). The New Testament Sacred Scripture is written in natural-sensual neologisms that are understandable in our layer 8 (natural-sensuous or materialistic mind). The Old Testament Sacred Scripture is written in natural-corporeal neologisms that are understandable in our layer 7 (natural-corporeal mind). The psychological characteristics and mentality for each layer are described here.
The cumulative construction of neocharts provides you with snapshots of the organic growth of your mind and its rational development. It is the chart of your spiritual journey. A case in point is my neochart construction. As I kept working on the project, sampling more of my articles, the number of entries kept increasing from a few hundred to a few thousand. The document size was slowing down the application’s ability to handle it and every command became painfully slow, even typing! I had to devise new strategies of working on the document and still end up with one easy list readers could see alphabetized, numbered, and linked. I kept a back up copy regularly so now I am able to see how the neochart was changing in identity over time.   Here is an example of how the ‘neochart developer-record’ (=a record about the developer of a neochart), produces a poetic picture of the evolution in consciousness in the spiritual landscape of the chart developer. The first analysis is a collection of sentence neos in the chart, arranged in successive days over time.

 

Neo-Biology

Neologisms are born in the minds of human beings. They are our mental children, immortal, indestructible, existing forever in the mental world of eternity. Neos are constructed out of rational ether that forms the expanse of the mental world of humanity. There is only one mental world and every person is born into it, and remains in it forever. Your mental world is my mental world is every one’s mental world. Mental ether is created as an expanse around the Spiritual Sun which forms its center and its highest point. This creation is prior to time which does not exist in this spiritual expanse in which our feelings, thoughts, and sensations exist and have their source of life. The result of this activity of our mental organs is experienced by each person as consciousness of a unique self (or ‘the me that I am’). This is what is called human “life.” The consciousness of self is life. It is our life, each of us immortal humans. We have it forever – self and life. This life is the life of our neos.
If we stop producing neos we cease to have life. We are then in a mental zone called death. Our consciousness experiences darkness, ignorance, fear, stupidity, insanity, suffering, a being enslaved to animal like lusts devoid of humanity, rationality, compassion, knowledge. Death is also called hell. No neos are produced in hell. The mental layer where hell operates in every human mind is devoid of neo production, which belongs to life and sanity. Mental children are stillborn in hell. Infernal ideas in hell are anti-neotic, contrary to inventiveness, which is from the higher layers of the mental world called heaven.
Only love in the heavenly layers of our mind is capable of bringing neo-babies into eternity. A heavenly love, like the love of doing things that are useful, or the love of being sincere and truthful, seeks out a rational justification or idea with which that love can conjoin itself as a synergistic functioning unit. The good love is a reception in the affective organ of the spiritual heat inflowing from the Spiritual Sun in the midst of the mental world. Every individual’s mind is exposed to the same Spiritual Sun in eternity. The same spiritual heat inflows into every individual’s affective organ, but is received uniquely according to the individual’s innate and developing uniqueness to eternity. Hence it is that the affective operation from the reception of spiritual heat creates a unique love, a unique self, along with unique inventiveness, and finally unique neos.
The neo-baby is born from the marriage between the love in the affective organ and the understanding in the cognitive organ, that is, the marriage between good and truth. This is called the spiritual marriage in the Swedenborg Reports. It is the basis for regeneration and salvation, consequently our ability to live in our heavenly layers in eternity. The spiritual marriage is the synergistic conjunction between our will, which consists of our loves (affective organ), and our understanding, which consists of our awareness of rational things (cognitive organ). Love marries understanding and begets a neo. The neo is born in our sensorimotor organ. This is the closest that our mind gets to the physical world where our physical body is located. The sensorimotor layer of the corporeal mind (layer 9S) is adjacent to the physical body (layer 12), with the spiritual body (layer 10) and the limbus (layer 11) intervening between the mental and the physical, the eternal and the temporal.  
Neos in the sensorimotor layer of the corporeal mind (layer 9S) make an appearance in the concrete physical world (layer 12) through language that is spoken, heard, or written by the physical body. The neo lives within the meaning of the verbal expression. The Swedenborg Reports show that the neos of Divine Speech exist within every verbal expression in Sacred Scripture. They are lined up in a rational series or arrangement like the DNA of the cells of the physical body. The spiritual DNA series of every Divine neo is available to us by extraction from Sacred Scripture, using the method of correspondences that is revealed in the Swedenborg Reports.
Neo-extraction methodology involves the following:
  1. Studying the laws of correspondences revealed in the Swedenborg Reports
  2. Organizing them into a scientific account called “doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture”
  3. Applying this doctrine to our daily willing and thinking by undergoing spiritual combat through temptations, which we face by means of our understanding of the doctrine of truth and our reliance on God even as we fight as-if our self, consequently with effort, anxiety, and mental pain.
 This three-step process is repeated every day, every hour of our life on earth, until at death, we reach the point of full regeneration of character. When we resuscitate a few hours later, we have our regenerated loves which make it possible for us to live in them, and they exist at the heavenly layers of human existence and consciousness. Everyone lives in their loves. If these loves are evil loves, sourced in the Grand Monster layers of the mind, then they live in hell. But in heaven, if these loves are sourced in the Grand Human, where only good loves exist.
Step 3 above is the spiritual marriage. It is the operation of a heavenly love – opposing evil traits in our mind, with a rational idea or plan – doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. The desire and intention to oppose our evil traits is a love in our will (affective organ). This love is received there from the spiritual heat inflowing. This love by itself cannot bring forth results in the sensorimotor behavior. Love gets pregnant with an idea and a plan. The sensorimotor executes the plan from the love. Understanding of truth, or rationality, has no ability to bring forth a single neo. It is the love of using that understanding that brings forth the neo. We can know truth, but it will makes us free only if we live the truth, and this requires loving the truth. Without love, truth is cold and infertile. Dead. Love appears as truth. The love that is implanted in truth gives it life. Truth applied to our willing and thinking is hot from love. Truth not applied, is cold and dead, without power or life. Truth separated is not genuine truth but appears as truth under certain loves that are not heavenly. The love of self for the sake of self, or the love of greed, etc., can engender the effort of gathering truths and thinking intelligently and adaptively. But in the end, self and greed only lead to falsified truths, insanity, and a non-human life of death in the hell zones of eternity.
 

The Non-existence of Evil Neos

The Swedenborg Reports reveal that during the life of the first generations of people on this earth there was no evil. There was a potential of evil in the mental world of eternity in layers 9, 8, and 7. In other words God creates the natural mind to be able to operate in a manner that is contrary to the heavenly order of good and truth which inflows into the spiritual mind of every person since birth. The spiritual substance of good, in the form of spiritual heat enters the affective organ of the spiritual mind (layers 4A, 5A, 6A), and the spiritual substance of truth, in the form of spiritual light enters the cognitive organ of every human being (layers 4C, 5C, 6C). Those who have disconnected from the physical body and have passed into resuscitation, perceive this influx directly since their conscious awareness of life is no longer in the natural mind (layers 9, 8, 7).
After resuscitation into the mental world of eternity, the natural layers of the mind are disconnected from our conscious awareness, and replacing that life is the new immortal life of the spiritual mind. The loves and understandings we then have determine the nature of our consequent external sensorimotor life. During the early generations all the varieties of love people experienced on this earth in the conscious natural mind (layers 9, 8, 7), were in correspondence with the varieties of love that inflow into the spiritual mind from the Spiritual Sun in the mental layers of eternity (layers 4, 5, 6). Everything in nature was friendly to human beings because it was a garden paradise in the order of heavenly gardens and paradises that are spiritual and mental, thus eternal and truly real.
God created the operation of devolution in the natural mind as a potential. Why? Why not have a permanent heaven on earth, as the generations multiply, pass on, and populate the Grand Human of eternal conjugial heavens. This is God’s Divine purpose revealed in Sacred Scripture. In the Swedenborg Reports God explains, through the mind of Swedenborg, why He created the devolution potential in the natural mind. God compares the human race to a growing vine, or its branches. Sometimes God compares a human being to a tree. As our modern mind knows from science, all organic species have a built in capacity and endeavor to reproduce themselves. What is less generally known is the cause of this process of reproduction and transmission of inherited characteristics in physical bio-organisms and species.
The Swedenborg Reports expand our scientific understanding of the process of generational transmission or inheritance. The natural process of inheritance of traits in the physical world, is a representative model of the original process of inheritance of traits in the mental world of eternity where we have our spiritual body from birth onward. What is being transmitted from parent to offspring in the mental world of eternity where we live our conscious and unconscious lives?
Loves are being transmitted and inherited.
The loves that the parents have are reproduced in the mental genes of each unique soul and mind. The mental layers of the parents are reproduced in the mental layers of the offspring. What the parents and grandparents and great grand parents love, that will also be loved by the next generation. Loves are inherited. The spiritual body at our birth houses the three mental systems of our life – affective (feelings, intentions), cognitive (thoughts, imagination), and sensorimotor (outside world interactions). Each mental system is an organic entity that is constructed out of the fibers of substances flowing in from the Spiritual Sun. These substances of good (heat) and truth (light) are living, immortal, and Divine.
Loves are affective operations with these living Divine substances. God is “within us” in actual organic sense since these substances of the Spiritual Sun are His Own Loves and Truths. God creates the universe by means of these substances that are His Own. There is nothing else out of which anything can be created (certainly not out of nothing). Everything that exists comes from something prior to itself, as discussed in the Swedenborg Reports. God alone, and His Own Eternal Substances, are prior to existence and belong to Being, which is eternal and infinite, having no beginning. God’s Being, in the form of the Spiritual Sun, makes up the platform of existence, which includes eternity and time. This is the meaning of “God is within us.”
Rationality sees that God’s substances cannot mix with created objects or minds. Infinite substances cannot mix with finite objects. Hence this platform that is the Being for existence is within existence, not mixed up with existence. Existence and Being are forever separated and can never be continuous with each other. Being must remain separate for existence to exist. This separation is called distinct degrees. The Divine and the created are in separate degrees, When the Divine is within the created it is called a relationship of correspondence. The Being is the original and real, while the existing is an image of it in an altogether separate and lower construction.
The mental world of eternity is the first organic existence on the exterior and beneath the Spiritual Sun. There are six layers for the spiritual and natural minds, three each. The outermost layer of existence is 12, which is the physical body and the natural world that supports it. The closest layer to the order of the Spiritual Sun is layer 4 in the mental world of eternity. Every individual is born with this layer in the mind. This is the highest potential for created human beings. It is called the Third Heaven in the Swedenborg Reports.
In the original generations, spiritual love and truth flowed into layer 4, then successively into layers 5 through 9, which is the corporeal mind and consciousness that is formed from the sensations of the physical body. The entire chain of discrete layers of correspondences remained in the order of heaven (layer 4) that was formed by God through the Spiritual Sun as His Own Loves and Truths. Physical earth was a paradise, a heaven on earth, an earth that models the heavenly order, the heavenly loves, which model God’s Divine Human Loves.
People lived in families in harmony with nature and themselves. There was no guile, no desire to lie or possess the goods of others. There was loyalty in marriage and friendship. There was sincerity in all communication. This heavenly order in the natural mind could not be achieved by imposition through God’s Omnipotence. The loves that each human baby inherited were not the individual’s own loves. They were merely present to the individual. Each love had to be made one’s own before the person could become a mature adult ready for eternity in the spiritual mind. To achieve this process of individual ownership of loves after they’ve been inherited, God faces the person with a choice of accepting and loving that love, or not loving it, and leaving it to sink into the silent background.
To accept and love an inherited love we must consummate it as a habit. This makes that love our own forever. When we are resuscitated this love will be with us in our consciousness and will be active in determining the quality and nature of our continuing life. Every love we acquire by practice remains forever as a portion of the mental world attached to us, forming us, determining who we then are.
This choice-making procedure cannot be actualized in human beings without giving them a comparison between heavenly loves and infernal loves, that is, loves that are in the heavenly order vs. loves that are the opposite of the heavenly order.
The capacity to choose the opposite of good is the origin of evil in the human mind.
For instance, among the numberless loves we inherit is the enjoyment of winning. God sets up events in each person’s daily biography which are occasions for the person to experience the joy of winning. It becomes our own love as we strive to acquire the various skills needed for winning and succeeding. As we acquire this love we also acquire many of its sub-loves or affections. For instance, we acquire skills of deceit to help us win and succeed, and we enjoy these insincerities and manipulations when they are successful. God activates our conscience to indicate to us that these side-loves are not compatible with heavenly loves. And now we have a moral and spiritual choice.
We discover from experience (arranged and managed by God), that we have loves that are contrary to heavenly loves. Instruction from Sacred Scripture informs us that these un-heavenly loves are called hellish loves, and that we must voluntarily choose to reject them, even though we enjoy them intensely.
This is difficult to do, so God provides assistance at every step of the process. It is called the process of regeneration. This involves our inherited loves and all the sub-loves that we have made our own by practicing them and allowing ourselves to enjoy them, to make them a part of our character forever. Regeneration is the long process of daily choices that God manages to bring us in order to allow us to consciously reject the inherited enjoyments that are contrary to heavenly order.
As we grow and mature, we make more choices of our own. If our choices are progressively towards the hellish order, our natural mind becomes more and more a model of hell. What we enjoy is hellish, like the fun of vandalizing, the enjoyment of getting away with deceiving or stealing, the lust of indecency, the disdain of others in comparison to self, etc. These hellish enjoyments are the opposite of heavenly enjoyments, such as the desire to be useful to others, the zeal of honesty, the love of truth, the humility of self in comparison to others, etc.
The purpose of life on earth is to acquire heavenly loves which form our experience in eternity. These can be acquired only by voluntary choice and regular practice. Hence the potential for evil must be created in the human mind to permit us to grow into true human beings. The Swedenborg Reports define what is the true human mind, namely, to choose good from the understanding of truth. We learn truth from Sacred Scripture and conscience, and this truth teaches that we ought to choose good in order to fulfill our potential for being true humans. 
When we choose what is contrary to good, the truth in our understanding becomes falsified truth. This falsified truth now justifies the choice of what is contrary to good. When this justification in the cognitive organ marries the enjoyment of what is contrary to good in the affective organ, the infernal marriage takes place, and the result of it, is the sensorimotor hells in the natural mind. 
Likewise, when we use truth to justify our choice for good, we create the spiritual marriage in our mind, and this establishes a heavenly order in our natural mind. We then love and enjoy what is good, love and enjoy willing, thinking and doing  what is good. We abhor what is contrary and threatening to heavenly loves. We understand that the wages of sin is death. After resuscitation we can no longer possess both heavenly and hellish traits in our conscious mind. God manages to embroil us in events that are occasions for expressing our ruling love and its chief sub-loves. They come out from behind. These loves now demand the attention of the cognitive organ’s understanding, its ability to manufacture falsified truths and principles that acknowledge these loves as good.
With this development, the mental world goes topsy turvy. What is true is turned into falsification of truth. What is irrational is turned into the false appearance of reasoning. Now heaven is despised, and feared. Swedenborg was able to do an experiment in which some heavenly neos were written on a piece of paper in layer 4 of the mental world of eternity. By Divine Providence and Management, the truths written on the paper reappeared in appropriate correspondences at each layer as it appeared to descend the layers of the human mind. The appearance of a representative paper in the zone of resuscitation was noted by some people who were in that mental state, with whom Swedenborg was having a discussion.
These people were normally in their Grand Monster states called the hells, but when there is a purpose for it, they are permitted by God’s management procedures to appear in the zone of resuscitation. This is the mental state we all have when we are resuscitated. Our conscious awareness is then in a divided state. This is possible only in external states (layers 9, 8, 7e). This is our natural mind while we are conscious with it here on earth. When we are awakened by the resuscitation process, which takes about 30 hours from death, we are able to recognize our self as the same person who was conscious on earth. This provides a continuity of life, and a progressive introduction into the consciousness of our spiritual mind, which had remained unconscious until then.
The people from the Grand Monster, now in the resuscitation zone, were shown the piece paper on which was written spiritual truths expressed in natural mind correspondences. They were asked to read what was written on the paper. And what they saw and read was the precise opposite of the assertion written down. This provided evidence that the natural layers of the mind have the capability to invert truths and to produce clever and ingenious reasoning that confirms the reality of the inversion.
Take for instance the truth that God’s omnipotence must express itself in both general and in particular, so that there is no detail about anything that is not managed by God. This includes therefore the details of our thinking. People are willing to accept the general idea that God is omnipotent, but not the specific idea that God manages our thoughts. They think and say: God doesn’t manage our thoughts because that’s our business. Or that God doesn’t manage the blood corpuscles movements in our arteries because those obey the natural laws that God put in place at creation.
People also say that God sometimes cannot save someone from suffering or death because there is evil in this world that God has not yet vanquished. These statements or reasonings are falsifications of the simple rational truth that God is Omnipotent. In the Swedenborg Reports rational explanations are given regarding how God’s Omnipotence insures that only those events or thoughts can occur for which God gives permission, and only those are allowed which God turns into the spiritual and eternal benefit of all involved. God’s Omnipotence maintains a perfect world, both natural and mental (or spiritual).
For every heavenly neo, there is a corresponding un-neo. The loves of those who live in the Grand Monster are exact opposites of the loves with the people in the Grand Human. The reality of heavenly life is turned into the un-reality of hellish life. Heavenly neos create a sensorimotor environment and appearance of heavenly beauty, grandeur, and peace. The un-neos of the hell layers create a sensorimotor environment and appearance of hostility, insanity, and suffering. The insanity and ferocity of loves in that state of mind immerses the consciousness in dreadful fantasies that are induced on each other, and lived like never ending nightmares. All spiritual light and heat, or truth and love, that inflow into the spiritual layers of the mind in these people, is turned into its exact opposite love and meaning of truth when the inflow reaches their natural mind in its descent of correspondences across successive layers.
To continue existing in the Grand Monster states of the mind people there have to continue to exert effort in inverting every heavenly neo that comes their way in conscious awareness. Swedenborg visited those awful mental states and talked to the people who exist there permanently. They are each active in the group fantasy life of insanity. The variety of nightmares they live is astounding, captured in essence in the book Heaven and Hell (1758).
 

The Un-reality of the Grand Monster  

Prior to resuscitation, while our natural mind is filled with the content and events of the physical world, we are a mixed bag. Our natural mind consciousness is filled with both neos from our heavenly loves that are sourced in the Grand Human, as well as un-neos from our hellish loves that are sourced in the Grand Monster. Self-observation on your daily round of activities will demonstrate this to you. One moment you smile at your roommate, and a few moments later, having heard or seen something you don’t like, your face takes on a stern appearance and there is vengeance and retaliation in your voice and actions. Some time later you smile again and are filled with the desire to be friendly and useful. An hour later as you drive home you denigrate a motorist for being in your way. You feel impatient to get home. You take risks in the way you drive, allowing yourself to be distracted, posing a threat to innocent others. You think about someone you don’t like and you enjoy the fantasies of their demise and suffering. You get home and you start cooking for others who will soon arrive. You have a love for preparing dishes in the way the others enjoy and prefer. You want to satisfy them. You get mad at a stranger on the phone who is doing a survey. You retaliate for being disturbed, attempting to make the person feel bad before you hang up. Before bed, you study Sacred Scripture and pray to God to give you happiness and success.
You can adapt his generalized scenario to your own daily round. Do some self-witnessing. Make a record of the number of times a day your mind is in a heavenly love, and when in a hellish love. There is no need to be exhaustive. Just sample the highlights. You will then see the evidence for the spiritual principle that we oscillate between heaven and hell on any normal day of our life on earth. Some people’s heaven-hell oscillation is slow, remaining in one or the other for periods of time, while other people alternate quickly between heavenly and hellish loves.
This oscillation ceases at our second death when we enter either the Grand Human or the Grand Monster, and become fully and completely integrated in one of the societies there, and this forever. Individual thinking then resembles group thinking, and individual feeling and intention is actually a group feeling and intention. This is because the spiritual body in mental ether does not offer the same resistance as the physical body in the natural world. People living in a specific spiritual society act together as a mental unit, or generalized other that Swedenborg calls “subject spirit.” He observed on his mental visits to the Grand Human and Grand Monster, that it is common for a spiritual society to speak and intend as one group mind, speaking through one of them whom they appoint as the subject spirit. So when Swedenborg talked to one individual in that society, others, and perhaps all the others, were also present in the exchange, though they could not be seen.
These phenomena reveal the nature of our life after resuscitation into the mental world of eternity, which is quite different than the nature of our life on earth. Our life here serves to give us opportunities for acquiring heavenly loves, such as exist with those who exist in the Grand Human societies (layers 6, 5, 4). God manages these opportunities, creating the occasions in which we can act from the marriage in our mind of truth and good inflowing from God through the Spiritual Sun of the mental world of eternity in which we are born and in which we remain forever after. Consequently, it is absolutely necessary that we be a mixed bag in our character here on earth, loving both good and corrupted good, and thinking both truths and falsified truths.
This co-mingling spiritual soup in our mind establishes the freedom to choose loves. Our eternal destiny is based on the quality of these chosen loves. The loves that are sourced in the Grand Monster betake us there, while the loves that are sourced in the Grand Human, betakes us there. We are our loves, and we live where those loves exist. Falsified cognitive neos create an imaginary un-reality that nurtures and satisfies corrupted affective neos. The two form an infernal marriage that spews out un-neo babies of sensorimotor illusions and delusions which immerse their consciousness in un-satisfiable lust, stupefying fear, un-imaginable suffering, sub-human stupidity, and furious hatred of everything and everyone. In short, the un-reality of un-neos is a sub-human mental state. 
Upon resuscitation we are in a mental state called the resuscitation zone. Mental physiology then takes its inevitable course. The person’s ruling love must take total charge of the affective organ. The mixture of heavenly and hellish loves in our natural mind must now be undone. No one can enter their permanent mental state in the Grand Human or the Grand Monster without first eliminating the loves that are incompatible. Swedenborg was given to observe what happens when people in the resuscitation zone are still unclear about which ruling love they have grown in themselves over the years of life on earth. He accompanied a group of them who resuscitated together on account of some disaster they were in on earth. They were persuaded of the idea that they deserved to go to heaven on account of their faithful adherence to the rituals of their religion.
They were taken to one of the societies in the Grand Human, using the heavenly loves they possessed. But as soon as they had arrived into that mental state within themselves, they became very disturbed and acted with great agitation, complaining that they saw nothing, heard nothing, experienced nothing, except this inner pain that felt like they were dying all over again. They were then brought back into their former mental state they had in the resuscitation zone, where they felt completely revived and ready to continue their journey to the second death. Eventually they were integrated into one of the societies of the Grand Monster, where they could feel at home and on a familiar territory of loves.
This event demonstrates that the mental states in the Grand Human and Grand Monster are purified from any mixture. This purification process is physiological. Every mind contains two ruling loves, each with their own army of compatible and assisting administrative sub-loves. All loves in the mental world of humanity fall into two categories, as for instance:
·         the love of self for the sake of self alone vs. the love of self for the sake of others as well as self
·         the love of things for the sake of self alone vs. the love of things for the sake of others as well as self
·         the love of ruling over others for the sake of self alone vs. the love of ruling over others for the sake of others as well as self
These three sets of opposite loves are the chief loves Swedenborg encountered in the afterlife of eternity. Think of something you did in the past hour that you loved to do and felt its satisfaction or enjoyment. For instance, you thought about phoning your friend, and after doing it you felt satisfied. Some love got you to think about calling, calling, and finishing the conversation. What was this love? It could have been the love of conjoining mentally with the person you called. Or, it could have been the hatred of that person, and the calling allowed you to express your retaliation and punishment. The satisfaction of punishing and retaliating is a love for the sake of self alone, hence a hellish love sourced in the Grand Monster. Or perhaps you called to give the person some information you knew they would want, information that might help the person in their effort to get a job or succeed in a useful project. This is a love for the sake of others as well as self, hence a heavenly love sourced in the Grand Human.
The love of something for the sake of self alone produces un-neos with which that infernal love can produce a hellish sensorimotor environment in which to enjoy that infernal love. The love of something for the sake of others as well as self, produces genuine rational neos with which that heavenly love can produce a heavenly sensorimotor environment in which to enjoy that heavenly love. Every love in the affective organ produces its own neos in the cognitive organ, with which to be conjoined as in a marriage, and thereby engender the neo world around the person who is the subject of that love. This exterior world of mental appearances can be shared with others who have this love within them. In this way, a group of people in the mental world form a spiritual society in which the outward world is shared in common. This outward world exists in the sensorimotor organ or system and is projected by representatives in the social environment, creating the subjective experiences of being in a “city” or attending a “conference” or singing in a choir, etc. There are multiple activities going on in every spiritual society that Swedenborg visited. The continuity of loves maintains the continuity of neos, which maintain the outward appearances of eternal life. Hence it is that after our second death our position in a spiritual society remains forever. It is our ruling love that keeps us there in eternity. Every love is eternal because it is constructed out of the eternal substances of the Spiritual Sun.
You can now see that the switchover from the reality of neos to the un-reality of un-neos begins at resuscitation and is complete at our second death. Swedenborg notes that this is a relatively short period, when viewed through his earth consciousness. He was a dual citizen of both worlds for 27 years according to his earth life, so that he was able to observe that most people are inducted into either the Grand Human or Grand Monster within a few days, weeks, or months, of earth time, depending on individual make up. It made sense for Swedenborg to estimate things in terms of time, but for the people going through the process there was no impression of time since this belongs only to the physical body, which is left behind as inert.
What determines the quality of our ruling love at our second death? 
It is the process of regeneration prior to resuscitation that allows us to replace our inherited enjoyment of hellish loves. This process requires that we acknowledge God, study Sacred Scripture for the knowledge of what is good and evil, and then using this knowledge of truth to battle against our selfish loves by which we desire to own things and do things for our sake alone. Battling the temptations that God brings into our mind every day is the only way of acquiring heavenly loves as our own. This process takes the entire lifetime and God bring a series of events and temptations systematically designed by Him to face our loves for the sake of self alone, to battle against them by means of truths, and to compel ourselves to act as if from the love of others as well as self. Eventually this heavenly love will become our own genuine love so that we become ready to undergo resuscitation process of purification, and finally, the process of physiological induction into the organs of the Grand Human or Grand Monster.
The Grand Human societies are in layers 6, 5, 4 of the spiritual mind, while the Grand Monster societies are in layers 9, 8, 7 of the natural mind. While we are on earth the spiritual layers are unconscious but operational, influencing by correspondence what goes on in the natural layers. The natural layers are a mixed bag, as discussed above, containing heavenly and hellish loves. Regeneration is a physiological process that must take place prior to resuscitation, while we are still filled with loves of both kinds, and God keeps us in a balance between the two. This balance is necessary for the free exercise of our choices for type of love. When we undergo regeneration, our spiritual layers are readied for conscious operation immediately after resuscitation. Those who are regenerated prior to resuscitation, can then after resuscitation, function in the spiritual mind, in which are the layers of the Grand Human. But those who are not regenerated prior to resuscitation do not have their spiritual mind operational after resuscitation. Consequently, people have to make do with an existence in the natural mind.  
This is contrary to the order of creation, and contrary to the order of mental ether around the Spiritual Sun. As a result, the subjective life of the person in eternity is stuck in the natural mind. These layers (9, 8, 7) now become corrupted as the heavenly loves are removed from them in the purification process prior to the second death. The person becomes a mere caricature of their former self. The Grand Monster societies are all located in these corrupted natural layers. The people who are in that mental state are insane in a rational world of truth and good. They change truth into falsity and good into evil. What they believe to be reality, is unreality. All their thoughts are un-neos, falsified from the real neos, to which they hang on as truth and as reality. Everything in their sensorimotor world is turned upside down.
Those who are in the Grand Monster societies become the source of un-neos for the natural mind of people on the numberless earths in the physical universe. Their function is to provide the continuity of inherited evil enjoyments in the minds of people on earth, so that these may provide a mental balance with the neos of the people who are in the Grand Human societies. In this way the mind of every individual on the earths is connected to the minds of people in eternity, in both chambers.
The entire human race is thus kept together by God in one perfectly functioning synergistic entity.
 

Neo-Communication Theory

In the Swedenborg Reports God reveals a new scientific theory about how human being communicate. Currently, scientists believe that when we communicate, meaning is being transmitted from one person to another. For example, when I say to my students gathered in a class room, “Today there will be three students giving their oral presentations.” The speech act I uttered in the context of our semester long course, conveys a specific message through its meaning. Now the students know some things they didn’t know before I made the announcement. They understood the meaning of my speech act. They each can make the same predictions of the future of that day’s class. Usually, after the second oral presentation, they start their team meetings, but today, they know from the meaning of my message, that there will then be a third student giving an oral presentation.
Scientists who study how people talk and exchange meanings, usually explain that the meaning of a communicative act is analyzed and fixed by cognitive operations or process. First we isolate the message from its background of sounds and then analyze the words and their arrangement by linguistic skills we learn in childhood.
Heavenly loves are living mental substances (spiritual heat) which strive to be fulfilled by what is outside of themselves and separate from them.
·         The fulfillment of each unique heavenly love is to see itself in another human being.
·         Love (A) perceives through the senses (S) what is usable for its fulfillment, and sharpens their power (S) of detecting or locating what is usable by that love to fulfill itself.
·         Love directs cognitive operations (C) to formulate a plan or method of attaining its fulfillment.
·         Heavenly love is fulfilled when it can see its own good in another person, by recognizing the good of that love when it appears in the other person.
Every love is unique, possessing some unique feature of good, some unique virtue or quality.
Divine Love in the form of spiritual heat, is within every unique heavenly love, and causes that heavenly love to appear in human beings, that is, to be received in the affective organ.
Now the Divine Love is within the heavenly love that a human being can feel or be motivated by. The heavenly loves possessed by human beings are dead without the Divine Love within them, which is what is its life. The Divine Love cannot be divided into pieces of itself. In the Divine Love infinite unique loves exist as one Divine Love. When the Divine Love is received in the affective organ of an individual, all of the Divine Love is within each of the heavenly loves the individual may possess. We may possess numerous heavenly loves, and in each of them the Divine Love is present in full. This is what it means that the Divine cannot be divided.
The Divine Love inflows into the affective organ successively for each of its six discrete layers (4 down to 9). The Divine Love as it inflows into humanity, takes on a fourth covering in layer 4A, called the celestial-rational loves. It then takes additional covering in layer 5A (spiritual-rational loves), and layer 6A (spiritual-natural loves). This completes the “descent” of Divine Love into the layers of the spiritual mind. There is no corruption of the Divine Love, but only adaptation in the variety of human genius created by God. Now the Divine Love, covered over with 6 mental layers, takes on a seventh mental covering as it crosses into the natural mind. Starting with this natural layer (7), the Divine Love creates for the first time the Divine Law of Permissions, and continues this Law into covering 8, and finally into covering 9, which is the corporeal mind whose loves (9A) fulfill themselves in the physical world. Layer 8 loves (8A) fulfill themselves in the operations of the operations of the cognitive organ, while layer 7 loves (7A) find their fulfillment in the operations of the affective organ.
The Divine Law of Permissions allows the creation of mental zones in the natural mind where the Grand Monster societies can form and continue their immortal existence. This is our inherited anatomical connection to the hells. God creates the mental world of eternity with facilities to serve both the Grand Human heavens, and the Grand Monster hells. Both types of loves exist in the human mind from birth. Heavenly loves in the natural mind represent and correspond the uncorrupted layers of our spiritual mind. These heavenly loves in our natural mind allow the spiritual mind to grow and be serviceable for us at our resuscitation. We can acquire a heavenly love as our very own only when we first banish from our mind the hellish loves that correspond to it in its opposite. God brings us to events which give us an opportunity to reject the contrary love from hell. In the Swedenborg Reports this is called “shunning evils as sins.” With each episode, God makes sure that we are not tempted beyond our ability or readiness to resist. Resisting a temptation as-if of our own will power, allows God to remove that evil love and neutralize it so it never comes to haunt us again.
Creating facilities for the hells in the natural mind allows God to present us with temptations. Without spiritual temptations we would never be able to perceive that we are inverted, and what we call good is actually taking us to hell, and what God calls good is what can take us to heaven, we call evil. The presence of evil in the natural layers of the mind is allowed by the Law of Permissions in order to fulfill the Divine Love which wants to give the good of eternal conjugial happiness to every human being. Hell serves the Divine Love by providing a balance in the natural mind between good and evil traits. Only if we know both can we choose from our own love. What we choose from our own love, remains forever as ours.
God provides the process of regeneration for every individual on earth through the desire to improve and to be good. This desire is aroused in each person through the inflow of spiritual heat. As the individual is regenerating through resisting temptations, the inherited and acquired connections to the Grand Monster societies in the natural mind, are gradually and progressively eliminated or silenced. More and more that individual’s life on earth becomes a representative of the spiritual mind (or heaven). At death and resuscitation, the person’s natural mind is quickly silenced and embalmed, and the person continues eternal life in the Grand Human, which is the spiritual mind. But if the person resists regeneration by killing the implanted love of becoming good, the connection to the Grand Human in the spiritual mind, is cut or embalmed. After resuscitation the person lives in the natural mind, which is now one with the Grand Monster.
  

Throwing Neos at One Another – The Spiritual Neo Ball Game

What is a neo?  
Besides being the short form for neologism, the word neo refers to a mental operation or state of one individual that is being induced upon another individual.
Ordinarily the word communication, or to communicate, refers to one person constructing a message that carries some meaning, and attaching it to a conventional sensorimotor performance, or signal, in the sphere of another person, who is in a position of detecting, or noticing it, and of reacting to it by performing a conventional sensorimotor response to which the person attached some meaning. The two people ordinarily alternate turns in performing for each other. Ethnomethodologists (Sacks, Shegloff, Sudnow, come to mind), have studied the alternating patterns of conversationalists when there are more than two participants, and the sequence of mutual performances reflect the affective neo ball game that is going on, as well as reflecting the cognitive (or meaning of the message).
Ethnomethodologists have not yet, as far as I know, discussed the idea that conversational interaction involves the induction of mental states on each other. That’s what a neo does. Consider as an instance, the actuality of two people riding in a car, and the driver and passenger are talking to each other. From the materialistic plane of analysis (layer 8C) we can say that the two conversationalists are in a car traveling together across streets and roads. But from the rational plane of analysis (layer 7C) we can see that the two people are not actually in a car traveling across city streets, which we can see is an appearance that pictures or represents, the real e vent that is going on with the people, namely, that they are having a mental state exchange, taking turns inducing upon each other, some particular mental state they select for the occasion.
This exchange of mental states proceeds by affective induction, which then engenders a cognitive construction that corresponds to it, and unites with it, to produce the performative sensorimotor neo that embodies the mental state. The alternating turn taking of neo selection is the basis of community life. Consider for instance the turn taking rituals you participated in today. You enter a room and say “Hi” -- or one of the many other existing formulaic expressions that are used in your group when entering a room. Performing “Hi” through your sensorimotor determination, is the outward conventional (agreed upon and practiced) signal that packs the affective neo. That’s what a performance does in a social exchange. A conventionalized sensorimotor performance is the interactional occasion, or detectable event, that induces a new mental state in the other conversationalist. Hence the performance is called a neo, which makes its appearance as the verbalization of “Hi” along with its tone, facial configuration, and gestures (or paralinguistic features).
Note that a neo is a full service transactional device. It involves the other person in a mental wrap around the entire spiritual body and changes the state in all three of its organic systems – affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. Neos are social procedures people use for inducing mental states on each other.
Various neo-production practices exist in each spiritual society. Neo selection when you walk into a room is an open ended set since the ability of the other to detect and receive neos has no specifiable limits. For example, instead of walking into the room and performing a formulaic greeting, you can walk in backward, carrying a big bag, with your key chain in your mouth, and mouthing an indistinct sound as you widen your eyes big, and hurry across the room. You can be a stage director and imagine any number of ways someone might be able to perform a greeting neo while entering a room. By selecting a particular sensorimotor neo to perform in a social event, you are fulfilling a particular love you have. In other words, your affective organ is in a particular state of reward or consummation, when you experience the fulfillment of that love, as you go through with the performance of the particular neo you selected.
The other person who is the recipient or beneficiary of your performative neo, perceives the unique and inventive quality of good that is in your love. Love perceives love. One person’s love is detected by another person’s love. The two loves find each other, meet, and react. The reaction consists of a collection of new affective neos being experienced by each. Conversational interaction is a conventionalized dance or gyre in which tremulations of affective neos expand in patterned ripples across the entire expanse of the mental world of eternity. These modulations of mental states ultimately affect every human mind. Right now as you are reading this your mental state is affected by the neo ripples initiated by countless others in the societies of the Grand Human and Grand Monster (see my article on the Perizonius Thesis for more details). When you say “Hi” to someone, you are involving the entire humanity. Every neo you produce ripples across eternity. Every neo others produce ripple across your mind.
The neo ball game is the actuality of life. Human beings appear as individuals outwardly, but inwardly we are connected and networked through the Grand Human and Grand Monster. One way to think about it rationally is to consider the logical implications of the Divine Law revealed in the Swedenborg Reports, namely, that ‘In God, infinite things are together as one.’
I discussed earlier the idea that the Divine Neo, in the form of spiritual heat and light flowing from the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity, enters our affective and cognitive organs, producing there heavenly neos. These heavenly neos are our loves and understandings in operation, the two together being our very life. Each heavenly neo we possess has the Divine Neo within it. An endless stream of heavenly neos issues from the Divine Neo. Infinite things make a one, in the Divine Neo. Heavenly neos in our spiritual mind are within natural neos in our natural mind. Hence every natural neo we produce on our daily round of living, has the heavenly neos and the Divine Neo within it. Hence it is that God is within every single thing that exists. Since ‘In God, infinite things are together as one” therefore all things that already exist are together as one in God. Hence all human beings, the entire humanity of individuals here and in eternity, are together as one in God. And from this you can now see that what happens in one individual’s mind must necessarily influence the mind of every other individual in the human race.  
God’s Omnipotence, God’s Love (or “Divine Good”), and God’s Intelligence (or “Divine Wisdom”), are therefore the source and cause of creation. They hold all existing things together as a universe. The function and meaning of the universe are given by God’s Rational Purpose for creation. The goal and plan of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom are that human beings come into life by conception and birth on some nurturing planet in a supportive community, which allows the individual to grow and to become mature adults, whose minds are a representative of the heavenly order of good and truth. In the love and wisdom of people living in an eternal conjugial heaven, God finds His Divine Love and Yearning fulfilled. This is then the purpose and plan that God has in creating and evolving the universe.
The human heaven is the Grand Human and its endless societies forming a networked and connected entity in the shape and function of the human body. The life of this heaven is the neo ball game. The affective (A) and cognitive (C) neos produced in the two mental organs (A and C), are the feelings or intentions (A), and the meanings and understandings (C) we each have in our consciousness or awareness. Each intention and each meaning is unique. God’s Law of Infinity determines that only things that are unique can come into existence. Every single thing that exists must be a neo, a new thing, a new creation. This endless collection of unique mental neos is the evolving and expanding life of humanity. Each neo can be born only once, and in only one individual’s consciousness. Once the neo exists, it is transmitted to all the zones of the mental world of eternity, permeating and reverberating in every self and personality.
The charting of neos may be possible in future research when humankind learns to extract that knowledge from Sacred Scripture. In the meantime we can begin charting the neos that appear in our natural mind. This article and project may hopefully serve to encourage others to engage in this research.
 

The Descent of the Divine Neo Through the Mental Layers

The central shaft of every created thing is the Divine Neo, also called the “Spiritual Sun” (Swedenborg Reports). From this inmost position the Divine Neo exteriorizes into the discrete layers of existence – first, through the mental world of eternity (anatomical layers 4 through 9), then, through the remaining layers of existence (10, 11, 12). This exteriorization is called the “descent” of the Divine Neo because what is interior is superior, while what is exterior is inferior. The exteriorization of the Divine Neo takes place by successive coverings. Covering 4 is called celestial-rational consciousness (or “Third Heaven”) and is formed by Divine Speech in the form of Sacred Scripture written in celestial-rational correspondences. These are an endless collection of heavenly neos in the affective and cognitive organs of the those who exist consciously in that mental sphere. Third heaven neos are the highest and most excellent of all human neos, being closest or purest in reception of the spiritual heat and light that constitute the neos.
The Swedenborg Reports give an indication from Swedenborg’s direct experience and observation, of what kind of consciousness we have when our loves are celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture. Foremost in prominence about the people in that mental state, is that conjugial couples, man and woman soul mates, are reciprocally fused into a single conjoint self. From a distance Swedenborg saw each couple as one “Angel,” but from close up he saw them as husband and wife, each with their own beauty, manner, and intelligence. The masculine portion of the conjoint self in mental anatomy layer 4, is a representation and correspondence of the Divine Neo within his affective organ. The husband in his inmost anatomy is masculine love. The wife in her inmost anatomy is feminine intelligence. These inmost reciprocals are conjoined in the celestial marriage. No particle of the husband’s mental anatomy can be like anything in the wife’s mental anatomy. Their perfect reciprocal unity is made possible by this absolute differentiation.
Every particle of the husband’s mental anatomy strives to conjoin itself with the corresponding feminine particle in the wife’s mental anatomy. Wisdom corresponds to love, and love has its fulfillment in wisdom. The celestial woman corresponds to wisdom (spiritual light), while the celestial man corresponds to love (spiritual heat). Spiritual heat conjoins itself irresistibly to spiritual light, forming the celestial marriage. This is caused by the Divine Marriage, which is the conjunction of Divine Love with Divine Wisdom in God’s Mind.
The Divine Neo, having filled layer 4 with celestial-rational neos, and consequently, being now covered with covering 4, then descends, or more accurately, appears in layer 5 (“Second Heaven”), which it fills with spiritual-rational correspondences of Divine Speech in the Sacred Scripture that appears there. Swedenborg saw the text of Sacred Scripture in each of the three layers of the spiritual mind (4, 5, 6). He confirms by observation that the three versions are correspondences of each other. Letter by letter, word by word, the three versions correspond to each other precisely. The Divine Neo under covering 5 appears under various Second Heaven neos, which are so below in quality to Third Heaven neos (layer 4) that there was no comprehension of anything across the two layers. Even the simplest of ideas in layer 4C are absolutely incomprehensible to layer 5C. The only possible connection is that of correspondence, so that the idea in layer 5C is an exact correspondence of the idea in layer 4C.
The descent or exteriorization of the Divine Neo then appears in layer 6 (“First Heaven”) which becomes filled with spiritual-natural correspondences of Sacred Scripture. Again the relationship is discrete, so that the lowest or simplest idea in layer 5 is absolutely incomprehensible to layer 6 ideas and meanings. Now under covering 6 the Divine Neo leaves the perfection and purity of the spiritual mind and takes on covering 7, which is the highest portion of the natural mind. This mental state plays a critical role in our regeneration, and consequently our salvation for life in heaven.
The natural-rational mind (layer 7) has two functional parts, as already discussed. Layer 7i (“interior”) is the interior layer closest to layer 6, which is the lowest portion of the spiritual mind. Layer 7e (“external”) is the external layer closest to layer 8 (materialistic mind). These two functions – 7i and 7e – initiate and direct the regeneration of our natural mind. The work of the Divine Neo in these two layers is contrastive. It is explained in detail in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, through the correspondences to the story of the four patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, each of whom represents the operations of the Descent of the Divine Neo across the mental layers during regeneration. The creation of human consciousness took many generations for its evolution, and attained its final anatomical completion barely two thousand years ago, through the Incarnation Event, which was the process by which God acquired a Divine Natural Mind and Body on this earth. This process is described in Sacred Scripture as the “Glorification of the human,” that is, the uniting of the earthly human with the eternal Human Divine, so that the human becomes the Divine Human. During this glorification process, which involved the most severe temptations of the external human being prepared for becoming the Divine Human.
This spiritual physiological process is described in great detail in the correspondential sense of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture. The Swedenborg Reports give a word by word analysis of the entire Book, giving the correspondential sense, and showing how this makes a perfect rational series with numerous sub-parts fitting into a whole. The process of glorifying the external human involved expelling all the inherited un-neos that filled the affective organ of every human. No human being was able to do this. God could not appoint or prompt anyone to do this work. It absolutely required that God Himself do this. It could not be delegated or done through human beings, even angels. Neither was it possible for God to do this directly in His full omnipotence, without destroying the Grand Monster, and its countless numbers of societies, which would also destroy the Grand Human, as the balance would no longer exist in the minds of people on earth (as discussed above). The entire human race in both the world of time and the world of eternity stood at the line of death and extinction.
The Grand Monster societies had become stronger in the minds of people than the Grand Human societies. If this imbalance had continued, no human being could be regenerated, and consequently everyone would have been born for hell, and no one could have existed in heaven. By assuming for Himself an external earthly personality and body, God on earth could accomplish what no one could, namely, the salvation of the human race from destruction in the Grand Monster. Those who are in the Grand Monster are called “dead” because nothing human or heavenly, is functioning in them.
God saved the human race by creating the interior portion of mental anatomy layer 7i (in the natural rational mind).
The existing external layer 7e in the natural-rational mind looks outward and downward to the natural world. Every rational idea in layer 7e is sourced in the materialistic abstractions of layer 8, which are grounded in the sensory-corporeal mind that immediately controls and lives with the sensations from the physical body. Scientific thinking has done considerable progress as it moves from the observational data in layer 9 (e.g., “the sun is rising”), to the abstracted theoretical explanations in layer 8 (e.g., “the earth moves around the sun”). The progress continues still further when scientific thinking operates in layer 7Ce (external portion of the natural-rational layer). Examples include such ideas as “emergent phenomena,” “hyper space,” “multiple realities,” or “morphic resonance” (Sheldrake comes to mind). These super-ideas are grounded in earthly ideas, which are grounded in sensory input, and consequently sourced in the world of time, space, and matter. Level 7Ce thinking could not overcome the hold of the Grand Monster societies upon every human’s natural mind on earth. No regeneration was possible because this requires other-worldly ideas and power, that is, ideas based in the spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4) and consequently on the Spiritual Sun, not the natural sun.
Human consciousness had to be raised by a notch, a discrete degree, to its final completion. This required creating mental layer 7i within the natural-rational mind. This was accomplished in His own mind by the external human who was being prepared to become the infinite Natural Body and Mind of God. The process of glorification was completed at the death and resurrection of the external human, now the Divine Human. A new Divine entity was created in the created world.  From then on, anatomical layer 7 of every human mind, past, present, and future, possesses an external and an interior portion or function. The interior portion and function of layer 7 is called the “interior-natural” layer (7i).
Prior to the glorification process human beings possessed the ability of constructing external-natural neos (layer 7Ce), but after it, humans possessed the ability of constructing interior-natural neos. What is the difference?
When we read Sacred Scripture in layer 7Ce consciousness, we are not capable of understanding higher order correspondences that are within Sacred Scripture. We are unable to take off the 7th covering in which the Divine Neo is wrapped or covered, as discussed above. For instance, when we read the Swedenborg Reports in their literal sense, we are thinking and comprehending natural-rational meanings of the Divine Neo (layer 7Ce). For example, we do not comprehend the formula “spiritual world of the afterlife in eternity = mental world in which we are in now.” People have the image that they are here now, on earth, and that when they die, they “pass on” to the other side. They see heaven and hell as the future of their lives, and not the present. But when we think from layer 7Ci ideas, we can comprehend that we are born into eternity and that we cannot exit it or enter it as we are already there. Death is therefore not a “passing on” but a “waking up.”
In layer 7Ce (external-natural-rational) we think of God as the Being we encounter after death, while in layer 7Ci (interior-natural-rational) we think of God as the Divine Neo at the center of all our neos. In the external-natural-rational layer (7Ce) we are persuaded that our salvation depends on understanding the spiritual truths of Sacred Scripture, but in the interior-natural layer (7Ci) we realize that salvation depends on the quality of our love, regardless of our knowledge of spiritual truth. In layer 8C we think that our salvation depends on being “forgiven by God” for our sins, or hellish traits and enjoyments. We then think that this forgiveness is given when we are repentant and acknowledge to God that our nature is evil and hellish. In layer 9C we think that we gain salvation by performing the proper rituals of one’s religion.
But in layer 7Ci we see that religion and salvation are two separate things. We are saved not by proper rituals (layer 9, not by our repentance (layer 8), not by our understanding of truth (layer 7Ce), but by loving the good (layer 7Ci).
The Divine Neo in the Spiritual Sun is the Divine Marriage between Divine Love or Good, and Divine Wisdom or Truth. When the Divine Neo exits the Spiritual Sun and enters the mental world of eternity, the Divine Marriage appears to dissolve. Divine Good in the form of spiritual heat enters the affective organ at the highest level (layer 4A), while Divine Truth in the form of spiritual light enters the cognitive organ at its highest functioning point (layer 4C), which does its thinking with celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Truth found in Layer 4 Sacred Scripture.
The Divine Neo at the center, or inmost structure, of the affective and cognitive organs, is undivided in Itself, but when it is covered over with layer 4 consciousness, the Divine Neo appears as split into two kinds of things – affective heat and cognitive light. We feel the heat, love, and good from the Divine Neo in our affective system of functioning. We see the light, understand truth, and think according to wisdom and rationality from the Divine Neo in our cognitive system of functioning. Now the cognitive neos (within which is spiritual light), and the affective neos (within which is spiritual heat) long to get back together again. When they do, it is called the spiritual marriage. The conjunction of good in our affective with truth in our cognitive is the process of regeneration.
Good and truth come into us divided, but when we are regenerated, they are conjoined in us.
Consider some examples from our daily life. We live in a society that has both heavenly and hellish features. The heavenly features include people’s striving to improve their life and environment. This deep seated motivation for improvement gives us the many sub-loves that energize us into acquiring a variety of useful skills and pro-social attitudes that build society and maintain its institutions, including all the professions and trades. The hellish features include people’s striving to improve their own life at the expense of others. The Swedenborg Reports identify the ruling love among all of our hellish traits and motivations. It is the love of doing everything for the sake of self alone. This purely selfish love hates the idea that we shouldn’t do things merely for our own benefit or comfort.
Before we are regenerated in our inherited character, we hate to be good, and we hate the good. We don’t like to do things for others. We feel no reward, no excitement of living until we see how something is going to benefit us. Just to be useful to society for the sake of being useful, or for the sake of altruism, or for the sake of community, or God, is to our unregenerate consciousness a heavy burden. We rather not have it. We would much prefer to do everything for our own comfort and gain. And when we will allow that some things we do should be for the sake of others, nevertheless we don’t like it, and we try to keep it at a minimum. Our joy of living depends on everything happening for us, for our comfort, pleasure, interest.
God makes sure that our conscience tells us when we are being selfish, unfair, unjust, unloving. God also makes sure that every society possesses Sacred Scripture, which is the source of the spreading knowledge in society about God and regeneration. God allows people to resist and reject regeneration, conscience, and Sacred Scripture. This freedom is necessary for regeneration, which proceeds by temptations in events that God manages to bring to each person. Resisting temptations while being in freedom to choose, seals our spiritual fate to the ruling love of hell, with which we are born as a mental inheritance from our biological parents.
In order to be able to resist temptations we must conjoin in our mind the truth we know (C) with the good we feel (A). For instance, we may know the truth from Sacred Scripture that we should be considerate of others and look out for their comfort as much as we look out for our self. We enjoy watching TV or listening to loud music, or partying with friends in our apartment, or riding a motor cycle that makes noise, or using a car that smokes pollution because we have postponed a needed repair out of negligence or bad planning. These are common things we do every day, and they all fall into the hellish category because they are selfish. What is happening to us as we do these hellish things?
Even though we know the truth that these are selfish or hellish things we do, yet we continue to do them. The truth we know (C) is not married to the good of feeling compassion for others (A), feeling the desire to improve the life of others around us (A). We know what to do to be good (C), but we don’t have the motivation (A) to do it. The heavenly love (A) is not married to the heavenly truth (C) in our mind. We must unite these two in order to become good. This involves resisting the temptation to continue just being selfish, and to give up that way of feeling about others. This is the process of regeneration.
 

The Utility of Scientific Neologisms  

One function of neologisms is to provide scientists and trainees with new words and phrases that denote new ideas and descriptions of phenomena or relationships. I don’t know how many neologisms scientists produce in one decade, or in one person’s career, or how one field differs from another. When I inspect my own writings in science for the past half century I obtain thousands of neologisms, of which the neochart only presents a modest sample. This leads me to suppose that the majority of scientists create neologisms. No doubt there is a normal distribution to these, with one in ten scientists producing thousands of them in a career of several decades. This implies that neologisms have a normal function in the progressive expansion of the ideas and concepts in a field. A scientific field progresses on the backs of neologisms.  
A second function of neologisms is to organize the amassing literature in a field and its exploration through search engines. If you search the Web or electronic databases in libraries using a neologism chart such as the present one, you obtain a smaller collection of results that provides information on a slice of the topic in a field, and how the topic crosses over to related fields. It provides a more restricted view of the infosphere surrounding that concept or idea. It shows more hidden connectivity between topics than what we get from the surface view of a regular search. Perhaps in the future there will be specialized searches allowing you to search on neologisms only.  
A third function of neologisms is personal since people’s lifetime neologisms chart constitutes an autobiographical record of their intellectual production and inventiveness. The neochart is arranged on a time line that allows researchers to investigate the history of ideas in science. The developmental phases of a new concept can be charted. The rate and pattern of diffusion of neologisms within a field and across science, and across time, can be monitored and correlated with developments in culture, society, business, etc.

A fourth function of neologisms is the tracings of the evolution of a community or sub-area of the infosphere. Neologisms are instances of community cataloguing practices (CCPs). These are the conventions and agreements in a group or institution that constitute their ritual interactions, codified procedures, and standardized norms and expectations. They include what’s worth noticing or ignoring, what events or observations are worth reporting, what constitutes merit, who has more authority, and what are the ranges of acceptance and normalcy vs. what is deviant or unusual. These socialized mental practices have a unique subjective life within the experience and consciousness of each member or individual. I refer to these uniquenesses as standardized imaginings (a neologism that I coined in 1975).  

All individuals experience the CCPs in their mental operations, but attribute them to self. This systematic misattribution process has deep consequences that reverberate through many regions of the self, causing much anxiety, pain, depression, preoccupation, and manic swings. An example is the myth of inadequacy -- a neologism that Diane and I neologued in 1975, but it did not appear in publication until 2003 in one of her articles. These negative self-beliefs are rooted in the misattribution of standardized imaginings, from socialized practices to self-practices. There are many areas of such learned helplessness. For instance, we are socialized to feel inadequate in the area of health care, and we evolve various dramatic relationships in our mind with doctors, drugs, hospitals, insurance. We constantly talk about this to ourselves, playing out the drama of the inadequacy myth in relation to health issues, concerns, and needs. It works in a similar way with positive scenarios that we play out in our strivings, ambitions, hopes, plans, day dreams, and even night dreams. Individuals in a society, community, or group are socialized into mental practices that include:
 I. What to notice in the environment, on a screen or page – and what to ignore or     overlook
 II. What to make of something, what sense we are to make of it, what interpretation are we to construct
III. How to evaluate it, what are appropriate emotions we can have with it, what falls outside the range of
          acceptability
IV. Whether to do something about it, whether to act on it, whether to optimize it
V. How to engage it, what options are available, how to carry it out to the goal
VI. How to execute it, to perform it, to do what it takes to achieve it
 These mental procedures are organic and biological, involving the three basic mental organ systems:
(A) affective organ – operations felt subjectively as feelings, intentions, motives, desires for specific things or outcomes
(C) cognitive organ -- operations felt subjectively as thoughts, imaginings, reasonings, ideas about specific things or events
(S) sensorimotor organ -- operations felt subjectively as sensations and motor determinations (seeing, tasting, moving)
In the mental practices list above, the standardized operations in I and VI are performed as sensorimotor procedures (S), the operations in II and V are constructed as cognitive procedures (C), and the operations in IV and V are enacted affective procedures (A). Self-witnessing (a 1971 neologism) is the construction and enactment of systematic procedures for self-monitoring one’s mental practices on the daily round of activities. When self-witnessing is acquired and practiced as a habit, it provides a constant source of neologisms about the mental world. We can also call them spiritual neologisms since spiritual refers to our conscious life in the mental world of eternity after undergoing the mental resuscitation process, which takes about 30 hours from the moment of physical death or multiple organ failure.
The collection of mental neologisms in a community is a more accurate and realistic description of its actual life. The community cataloguing practices of a group, charted by means of ethnographically produced neologistic databases, is a spiritual map of the community’s connectivity with the Grand Human and the Grand Monster in the mental world of eternity. It is a real indication of the quality of life in a civilization, and its moral and rational level of evolution. Hence neologisms can not only tell us about the actuality of the present, but they can also give us new directions to consider and plan for, new hopes and endeavors, and ultimately, a closer presence of heaven, thus to God the Divine Human.
Another use for neologisms is exemplified by an email I received this morning from a friend-writer on whose Web site I was commenting. For fun, I included ten neologisms that I identified on his brief document in which he discusses one of the Ten Commandments as it applies to marriage. He wrote back: “Thanks, Leon. It's neat to read those neologisms. This line is the most important to me: Expectations like these lead to power struggles. It's the core concept in what we are trying to elucidate in this commandment.” My friend’s response leads me to think that writers will benefit from keeping track of their neologisms. There may be several specific uses that research will need to disentangle and identify precisely. For instance, in this case with my friend-writer, the neologisms helped him see more specifically the central focus and purpose of this segment of his workshop for couples. Another use might be to search who else has said something about a particular neologism you have constructed, when the results for the search are not zero or one (your own document). The fact that others have in dependently constructed the same neologism is a momentous and historical event in the autobiographical record of humanity’s intellectual life and development.
A neochart is an index of one’s intellectual autobiography. Global alphabetized neocharts may provide dates and a reference to an article where a particular neo is used. One may provide additional information such as occurrences of a neo in the work of others, information about the adoptions and spread of a neo, and a glossary that defines each neologism in the chart. There may also be related information and references. Also, research data may be provided such as word and word combination frequency distribution tables, how people evaluate a particular neo in terms of usability, attractiveness, information value, and so on. Also, comparisons may be offered between sub-categories of a neochart, and between neocharts of different people, epochs, type of publication, genre of literature, characteristic of the author, social conditions, and so on. The collection of neocharts in a community constitutes an intellectual record and history of that community.
Every time a neologism is constructed by an individual, humanity’s intellectual evolution expands one phase further towards its greater perfection. We know from the Swedenborg Reports that there is only one mental world of the human race, and therefore every individual’s mental world overlaps with this human mental world. They are the same. Hence whatever happens in one person’s mind has consequences for every human being. The entire race’s mental activity of sensations, thoughts, and feelings coalesce into a human shape called the Grand Human and the Grand Monster. All heavenly neologisms coalesce into a form that replicates a human anatomy chart in every known detail. Swedenborg interviewed people who were living their afterlife in various regions of the Neologistic Grand Human in the mental world of eternity. Spiritual geography maps and mental anatomy charts, drawn from the Swedenborg Reports, show that the neologisms being created in say, the region of the skin and membranes, contain a cultural content distinctly different from the neologisms being created in say, the region of the heart, or lungs. Every feature of spiritual geography in the spiritual world of the afterlife, coincides and corresponds with some particular feature of mental anatomy in the mental world of eternity. These two neologisms are just different expressions for the same world, since the spiritual world of the afterlife and immortality is the same as the mental world of eternity into which we are born, and in which we awaken in consciousness following our resuscitation process, which takes about 30 hours following death.
Today I said to Diane, “You just had a neologistic insight!” after I heard her inspiring analysis of a news event about the ongoing presidential elections. Later I reflected on the expression “neologistic insight” that I heard myself spontaneously speak out loud in reaction to my wife’s analytical comment. When would we designate an insight as neologistic? After some reflection I conclude that every insight is a neologism. What is an insight? It is the process of receiving a new rational perception. It is the ‘inner eye’ that has insights, while the outer eye only sees appearances. Insights are visions of the inner, and what is inner is called “cause” while what is outer is called “effect.” So when you have an insight you are ‘seeing’ something new, and the content of the insight is about causes in relation to the effects, about which one has the insight. In this case Diane received a rational perception of the cause of the political event in the elections – why someone prominent was saying and behaving in a certain way.
We produce neos by means of our ability to rationally understand what we perceive and observe around us. Our motivation for searching for this understanding is the love we have for making sense.
Affective love for making sense à cognitive procedures of sense-making à neo production by sensorimotor operations
Neos are sensorimotor performances that are the outward representations of perceiving meaning and constructing explanations. The meanings we perceive and become conscious of are those that are selected by our love. According to the Swedenborg Reports, such as is our love, such is our understanding, and consequently, such is our neo production.
In the context of social interactions and communicative exchanges, neos are speech acts we produce that are expressions or images of our inner loves. We speak according to our motives and intentions, which come from love. When we are free, we will to think and to do that which we love. Speaking or writing a neo is an invitation to others to travel to the same mental platform where they too can have the perception of that neo. This is called sharing meaning. All human beings have an inborn love for neo production and neo reception. Sharing neos in communicative transactions affords mutual satisfaction as it involves alternating turns of neo production and neo reception. The neo that one person loves to produce is enjoyed by another person when it is received. Conversational neos constitute a rich and rewarding motivational resource, which explains why talking is the most common and enjoyed human activity, both here, and in the afterlife.
Neo construction in conversation has an anatomical dimension and relevance.
In layer 9-consciousness (corporeal mind), our neo-construction is sensorimotor and concrete in focus and significance.
In layer 8-consciousness (materialistic mind), our neo-construction is cognitive and abstract in focus and meaning.
In layer 7-consciousness (rational mind), our neo-construction is affective and spiritual in focus and meaning.
Let us contrast layer 7-neos with layer 8-neos. Rational neo construction is above materialistic neo construction in the same way that rational-spiritual ideas (layer 7C) are above abstract-materialistic ideas (layer 8C). Layer 7 thinking produces dualist neos, while layer 8 thinking produces monist neos. Scientific abstract reasoning is thoroughly materialistic and steeped in the negative bias in science. All layer 8 scientific thinking is reductionistic, preferring and insisting on reducing the two worlds to one. In non-theistic psychology the mental world is reduced to a thinner version of the physical brain.
A “thinner version” of the mental world refers to the idea that the mind is an “emergent phenomenon” of the physical brain. This is an abstract-materialistic neo. To be “emergent” “of the physical brain” means that what emerges is also physical. It is believed within this framework of thinking (layer 8C) that the emergent “phenomenon” – namely the mind or the mental world of experience, is rooted in the physical world and cannot be other than what belongs to the physical world of time and place. Of course this physical world includes gradations of “thinness” as in the following illustrative sequence:
1.       solid matter
2.       liquids
3.       gases
4.       energy
5.       gravity
6.       light
7.       space or ether
8.       propensities
9.       life or intelligence
10.   spirit or consciousness
11.   time-space
12.   infinity, God, Universe, Fate, etc. 
These 12 phases of thinness of the physical world are contained within the single dimension of materialistic monism. People who add God to this list also like to add Universe or Fate, and the like. Note that anything added to this list as its extension is going to be materialistic, regardless of the degree of abstraction one can construct through intelligent thinking routines. Hence there are people who think of God in materialistic and corporeal terms (layer 8 and 9) as in “spirits” or “ghosts” etc., that can be seen or interacted with because they are materialistic, even though thinner in material than their former physical bodies. Some resuscitation neos I have seen in various articles on the Web indicate the belief that the afterlife is in the physical world, at some future date from now. The idea of physicalistic spirits (layer 9C) and materialistic afterlife (layer 8C), consequently the reasoning that supports it, gives its meaning to such commonly discussed topics as consciousness, life, God, eternity, heaven, and hell. These are discussed and defined materialistically in abstract terms such as capitalizing the word Universe and using it as the definition of God or highest power that exists. Another materialistic abstraction is the meaning given to “eternity” as some future time on earth.
The rational neos in layer 7C are of two kinds, external (7Ce) and interior (7Ci). External-rational neos constructed in layer 7Ce are tributes to the genius and ingenuity of great inventions that advance human civilization and fill society with science, engineering, art, management. These rational-materialistic neos (layer 7Ce) are discussed in the Swedenborg Reports under topic of “consulting one’s self-intelligence” when considering the rational issue of the existence of God and the spiritual world outside time and space. This rational-materialistic neos (layer 7Ce) are then contrasted with rational-spiritual neos (layer 7Ci) about which we read in Sacred Scripture. For instance, the idea that God is “not of this world” which leads to the interior-natural idea (layer 7Ci) of dualism – two worlds. The “dual universe created by God who is outside of creation” is a conscious idea belonging to the highest level of neo construction in the natural mind (layer 7Ci). All layer 7Ci-neos are interior-natural correspondences of higher layer neos constructed in the spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4), which in turn are correspondences of the Divine Neos continuously streaming out of the Spiritual Sun and into the mental world of eternity.
Sacred Scripture contains all the infinite Divine Neos to endless eternity in one integrated series of rational neos. A version of Sacred Scripture exists in all six anatomical layers of the mental world of eternity, that we call our mind. Each layer has its own meaning of dualism and God.
For instance, the Old Testament Sacred Scripture presents a Corporeal Vision of God, manifesting Himself in natural disasters, miracles, and physical rewards or physical punishments. There are almost no details given about the afterlife, so little actually, that many believe that the afterlife is going to be in the future on earth. This version of God presents Him somewhat like a Benevolent Despot or Emperor who wants to be glorified by human beings who are commanded to worship Him in certain specific ways, under the threat of physical punishment and loss of country, home, and comforts. This version of God presents Him as being partial to a specific people or ethnic group, considering everyone else as having a secondary status in relation to Him and “His people” or “Church.”
The New Testament Sacred Scripture presents an Abstract-Materialistic Vision of God (layer 8C), manifesting Himself as a physical, historical person, time-bound, place-bound, and identity bound. The abstraction neos in the New Testament Sacred Scripture require complex ideas that need to be figured out by rational reasoning. Then the materialistic feature can recede in the background while the abstract feature comes to the foreground of meaning or consciousness. For instance, the Divine Neo called “Trinity” expressed as “Father-Son-Holy Spirit” is thought of by some as a “mystery” which means that human rational reasoning cannot explain this “Divine mystery” to our comprehension. Bo others, the Trinity Neo is understood as One God who manifests Himself in three Aspects of Himself and His Creation. This neo is produced in layer 7Ce when remaining consistent about the “God is One” Neo.
Another example from the New Testament Sacred Scripture (layer 8C) that is contrastive with the Old Testament Sacred Scripture (layer 9C), is the meaning of sin. For our corporeal mind (9C) God defines sin as sensorimotor trespassing or behavioral neglect of the rituals of animal sacrifice, or of the commandments that governed one’s relations with neighbors, such as lying, stealing, or coveting. This corporeal focus on behavioral transgression as sin changes entirely in the New Testament abstracted focus on mental transgression. You can’t see the mental transgressions of someone else, hence it remains outside the scope of law and ritual in a group. There are no civil laws against thought-crimes.
Laws are about expressing the thought-crimes in words or deeds. Now, in the New Testament Sacred Scripture God is saying that mental crimes are the real sins we need to do something about. The layer 8C-sins of the New Testament Sacred Scripture are not identified or spoken of in the layer 9C-sins of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture. The idea that sin is mental rather than physical requires a new level of abstraction in materialistic thinking.
Human consciousness evolves according to the layer in which we are understanding Sacred Scripture. Layer 9 understanding of Sacred Scripture is corporeal and physical regardless of the version of Sacred Scripture. When we look at the spiritual neos of the New Testament with the perspective we have in layer 9 (corporeal mind), we see everything in it as corporeal neos. For instance, when we read about the idea of sin as “mental crimes” it does not impress us in layer 9 consciousness. When we read about the meaning of “burning in hell” as being immersed in our own lusts and cravings, we are not as impressed by this as when we read that hell is a prison where you get tortured by devils. The idea that our own evil enjoyments lead us into debilitating slavery to them requires a higher level of abstraction (8C) than we can comprehend in layer 9C.
The Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture presents a fully rational and scientific level of description and explanation of God, Trinity, sin, heaven, hell, Sacred Scripture, Creation, death, afterlife, eternity, marriage, Divine Providence, Holy Spirit, evolution of consciousness, and so on. These spiritual concepts are explicated through scientific revelations. Nothing is left out. It is now permitted (“Nunc Licet”) to learn scientific reasons explaining how sin and hell are connected through our freedom of choice in our daily lives. Through our understanding of the Swedenborg Reports God is opening up a new mental layer in human ability to think and reason with spiritual truths from Sacred Scripture. This layer is 7Ci. It is the interior-natural layer. With this mental layer God has completed the creation of the mental world of eternity. This layer could not be “opened” or operationalized in the human mind until the 18th century when the Swedenborg Reports Sacred Scripture were written, published, and disseminated by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).
Since then layer 7Ci neos have been created and diffused in all of humanity through the Grand Human societies in the mental world of eternity. An integrated collection of these neos was produced by me in my writings since 1981. These can be accessed through The Master Neochart. The content and reasoning that create layer 7Ci neos consist of the correspondences in which all Sacred Scripture is written. The Swedenborg Reports show that the afterlife is our mental world of loves, understandings, and sensations. Such as our loves are such are also our understandings, and consequently, such is the sensorimotor environment in our mental world. Nightmares are events and experiences in our mental world. Loves are immortal substances in our affective organ, and consequently our eternal life after death is determined by these loves.
If these loves are heavenly loves such as the love of truth or the love of being useful to others, then our external life becomes that of the joys, beauty, and intelligence of heaven. But If these loves are hellish loves such as the love of falsifying truth or the love of caring and benefitting self alone, then our external life becomes that of the lusts, ugliness, and insanities of hell. It is a free choice in the here and now of the mental world of eternity, following resuscitation there. There is no punishment for past sins. Love sticks to us forever. Our own loves takes us to our heavenly layers, or to our hellish layers. Both layers exist in every mind since there is only one mental world, and everyone is in it from birth to eternity.
The expression “cause-effect” is used in science and elsewhere, in two distinct ways. In theistic psychology, as in the Swedenborg Reports, all natural phenomena are effects, and all spiritual phenomena are causes, that is ‘true’ causes. In non-theistic science causes and effects are both natural phenomena, like virus and illness, or pressing gas pedal and car speeding up. This is known in the literature as materialistic monism (sometimes “positivism” and even “empiricism”). I call it the negative bias in science. It denies that God has anything to do with the cause-effect of phenomena. It prohibits scientists from giving explanation for phenomena that include God. This is the reason that the Swedenborg Reports have not been referred to in the voluminous non-theistic literature on psychology that has accumulated in the past 200 years. This is astonishing to me. The mental censorship, or if you prefer, mental standardization of thinking and reasoning, is extremely effective in the preparation of scientists, and throughout their professional careers.
I think this is bound to change in the near future because the Swedenborg Reports are getting more attention from scientists. This new evolution of science from non-theistic to theistic is bringing in the positive bias mode of thinking and reasoning in science, as exemplified by the Swedenborg Reports and the theistic psychology that is derived from its correspondential sense. In this new dualist perspective of the universe it is clearly seen that all natural phenomena are effects of spiritual causes. The two created worlds are locked into each other by the laws of correspondences. The science of spiritual phenomena is the study of causes, while the science of natural phenomena is the study of effects from those causes. The two together finally make a whole science of reality, a true science that is from the Divine.
Back then to consider an earlier sentence above: So when you have an insight you are ‘seeing’ something new, and the content of the insight is about causes in relation to the effects, about which one has the insight. Neologistic insights are perceptions of causes. The history of science, and literature generally, documents the intellectual inventiveness of people across the ages and generations. Scientific empiricism, positivism, and materialism are methodological issues rather than theoretical, explanatory, or rational. Scientific theory is above empiricism. It must be so or else causes cannot be brought into science. There are no causes in empiricism, no theoretical explanations, only (at the most), operational definitions and empirically constructed taxonomies. These are merely observations of the senses through mechanical measurements or digital instruments. They are devoid of theory, devoid of explanation, and therefore, devoid of understanding of the causes that create those observed effects.
Scientific neologistic insights are rational, theory-building constructions that represent enlightened or spiritual perceptions about the world of causes. These rational mental operations occur in the anatomical layer of the mind called natural-rational (layer 7), while the operational definitions and empirical taxonomies are materialistic or sensual operations in anatomical layer 8, which is called the “external natural” mind. The thinking and reasoning operations in this mental layer (8) are not rational but empirical, that is, sense-bound, or sensual, dependent on sensory input from the physical world of time-space. These thoughts are time-bound and place-bound, attached to physical objects and the appearances of the earth environment. But the rational layer of the mind (layer 7) is not time-bound and space-bound in this way. It is rooted in the world of causes since the rational is the cause of the empirical. The rational layer of the mind (7) represents the spiritual world of eternity and is from that world and operates in that world of causes. The empirical-materialistic layer (8) represents the natural world of time-place-matter and operates in accordance with the appearances of the sensory organs of the physical body and its instrumental extensions.
Natural scientific neologisms are about effects, while spiritual scientific neologisms are about causes.
So there must be a whole series of neologisms, and a universal taxonomy or Atlas, in relation to mental anatomy:
Spiritual Sun (layer 1)
Celestial- rational neologisms (layer 4)
Spiritual-rational neologisms (layer 5)
Spiritual-natural neologisms (layer 6)
Interior-natural neologisms (layer 7i)
==============================
Natural-rational neologisms (layer 7e)
Natural-sensual neologisms (layer 8)
Natural-corporeal neologisms (layer 9)
It is tempting to fall in love with one’s own neologisms, thinking, “Hey, look at my clever productions. These are my babies. I am their inventor. I possess the genius to create them. Look how superior they are. I am so creative. I deserve an award for each of these babies. Don’t you think? Etc.” There is no ultimate payoff to this kind of self-meritoriousness or self-aggrandizement. All neologisms are produced the same way, namely, from the Spiritual Sun through the layers of the mental world of eternity, and finally into the layer of conscious thinking in your natural mind. Our interior-natural mind (layer 7i) reacts to the end of the sequence originating in the Spiritual Sun (layer 1):
Scientific neologisms are born in either layer 7e or layer 8. Notice the line separating 4, 5, 6, 7i and 7e, 8, 9. Layer 7e or “external layer 7” is made of content from layers 8 and 9, and consequently all the semantic and cultural content we are aware of at that layer has come to us from the natural world of time and place. These enter our mind through the mental correspondences to the operations of the sensory organs in the physical body (layer 12). The content of our natural-rational mentality (layer 7e) comes to us from reading and hearing, and reflecting abstractly on sensory observations. But the content of our interior-natural layer (7i) is entirely from the mental world, from the Spiritual Sun through layers 4, 5, 6. Layer 7i plays a critical role in becoming regenerated and spiritual while we are in this life. This anatomical layer was not operational prior to the Divine Incarnation two thousand years ago (see The Scientific Meaning of Christmas).
In this more elaborated context, you can see that the study of neologisms is the study of how the human mind is organized in layers and what mental operations take place at each layer in relation to the laws of correspondences. An application of this idea in general form is my analysis of the spiritual sense of songs about cars and driving. The explanation of the anatomical layers of the human mind will be found in my lecture notes for the study of theistic psychology.
You can see from this discussion that neologisms play a key role in the evolution of human consciousness and the integration of the human race into one synergy. The human race is being created endlessly along the model of all organic growth familiar to us in biology. Life means growth, for the cessation of growth is death or the absence of life, consequently being inert or ‘life-less’. Endless progression of growth is a necessary condition for permanent human happiness. The heavenly layers of the human mind cannot endure unless there is ceaseless progression to greater perfection. God is infinitely perfect so that our endless progression towards perfection is the way closer and closer to God. The closer we get to God as an integrated Grand Human the more perfected we each become in conjugial love and wisdom from Sacred Scripture. Swedenborg interviewed angels of the highest heavenly layer in the Grand Human, the societies in the region of the heart and the region of reproductive organs (see chart here). They were quasi-omniscient, knowing everything about any topic they were thinking about. Their ruling love was to love God by striving to receive God’s Omniproprium as their own. They know that the moment they have a desire for something of their own proprium, like self-intelligence or independence of God’s Proprium, they lose all happiness and intelligence, thus falling back to their former mental states before they entered the Grand Human.  
I became tired of thinking “neologisms” and saying it so many times in the course of the day. My wife Diane started protesting and at one point called it my obsession. So instead of neologisms as started saying “neos.” Ah, that felt good. It took so much less effort to say it and to think it. I started keeping track of how many neos I discovered today, or yesterday, and wondering how many neos I will come my way tomorrow. I started wondering how many scientific neos (would you mind if I called that “scineos”?) have I produced in half a century of dedicated and concentrated daily effort.
How would I know this? It’s too arduous a job to count them all and keep track of what they are and when they were first published and making a link to the article on the Web. But fear not. I am a social scientist and well familiar with the methods of sampling, and their accuracy and value, if done correctly, and if none of the major assumptions and conditions are violated, knowingly or unknowingly. Still, that process may be more realistic and practical. Observation 1: every one of my articles I have so far analyzed – about 100 so far, contained far more scineos than I could process. So I would quit after getting about 50 neos from that article, and move on to another one. I hypothesize that an average length article of mine is about 200 pages (range: 7 to 700). I know that sounds like a lot, but writing is what I do every day for hours. The average page contains about 40 scineos, so that the average article of mine contains (200 x 40), which is 8,000 scineos per article. In my fifty years of writing scientific articles I have published about 250 average articles, which is (250 x 8,000) or 2 million scineos for 50 years of writing by one scientist. There might be about 200,000 scientists in the US who write heavily, so the annual scineos production for the US science infosphere is (200,000 X 2 million) divided by 50 (years), which comes to 8 billion scineos.
There, that feels better. Now I have a number to think about and savor and analyze. Eight billion scineos per year in the US alone. Well, this number is no doubt pretty small compared to the annual production of non-scientific neologisms in the totality of the infosphere, which may run into the trillions per day. And this number is no doubt miniscule compared to the total daily production of mental neologisms for the entire human race now on earth, and this in turn miniscule compared to the universal human race past and present. All this give us some indication of the inventiveness of human beings. We cannot be happy unless we are free to produce neos in all departments of life and zones of interest. The production of neos is a basic human right. Anti-humanity dictators and political bullies are afraid of this freedom and they try to suppress the production of neologisms in the country. They try to exercise thought control so that people’s thinking may remain neoless, impoverished and imprisoned in formulaic expressions advanced by the dominant political forces.


 This is the end of Part II
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The Spiritual Significance of Neologisms


(formerly: Leon A. Jakobovits)
Dr. Leon James
University of Hawaii
2008 (version 29c)
leon@hawaii.edu
This electronic book published in 2008 may be copied for personal and educational use. Commercial republishing or redistributing is prohibited without written permission.
Go to:    Part I   ||   Part II   ||   Part III 
Theistic Psychology Series of Online Books by Leon James   ||    Back to Leon James Home

This is Part I

Introduction

Exercise Homework 1: The Visible Body

The Dual Universe: Time and Eternity

Our Spiritual Barcode

The Spiritual Dimension of Neologisms

The Evolution of Neo Consciousness

Raising our Consciousness by Thinking in Correspondences

The Battle of Heaven and Hell in Our Mind

The Mental Zone of Resuscitation

Spiritual Garfinkeling -- Engineering Our Mental States on the Daily Round

Taxonomy of Unregenerate and Regenerate Loves in the Natural Mind

The Anatomy of Spiritual Combat in Temptation

Quotes From the Swedenborg Reports on the Organic Basis of Mind

Related Spiritual Ideas on the Organic Basis of Consciousness

Go to Part II  ||  Go to Part III 



Part I starts here

Author's Note

This electronic book published in 2008 is a kind of 'executive summary' of my efforts to build a foundation for theistic psychology, which I began in its current approach in 2000, after 20 years of studying the Swedenborg Reports. Its most recent expression, prior to this one, is available from my Lecture Notes.

Introduction

The journey of life begins in full at death.

If I had heard this sentence prior to 1981 I would have thought "O yeah, sure. What does that mean?" My education as a Ph.D. and as a scientist in psychology, did not prepare me for an answer, did not give me an answer to this all important subject of what happens to me when I die. This is a subject that intensely interests me, so much so, that it took me decades to learn that only some people would show real interest in the answer to this question. This book provides the definitive and scientific answer to what happens to us at death, and also provides the answer to why and how it is that the majority of people are not intensely interested in the answer.

Our first hurdle may be the biggest for some, but only small for others. We have been educated to think about science within the negative mode of science, rather than the positive bias mode of science. The negative bias mode is called monism or materialism, while the positive bias mode is called dualism and theism. When we, as scientists or scientists in training, now hear about the new concepts and ideas called "theistic psychology," we react with rejection, aversion, and spiritual venting. These affective or emotional reactions call forth thoughts of disconfirmation and ridicule, at first, and later, thoughts of how to prove these concepts wrong for science and in science.

But the new field of theistic psychology puts these concepts right in front of our focus, and challenges us to comprehend it rationally. In order to do that, readers or students are asked to switch from the negative bias mode in science to the positive bias mode in science. The challenge includes the promise or intention to lay out the empirical scientific facts and the integrated rational explanations, that will permit the average reader or student to decide whether it makes rational sense to them, or not. This is the challenge that must be faced at the start. Further, there is also the intentionality and claim in theistic psychology, that it does not contain explanations of religions or their doctrinal beliefs. This has been excluded from the methodology of theistic psychology. Some people may be puzzled by this claim, in view of the fact that theistic psychology is knowledge "extracted from the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture."

The difficulty is resolved when you consider that all religions are based on the literal sense of the Sacred Scripture that they call their own. No religion is based on the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture. But theistic psychology is. It is based on the correspondential sense exclusively. This methodology insures a discrete and complete separation between religion and theistic psychology.

I invite you to step out of the negative bias mode of thinking about science and God, and to step into the positive bias thinking of theistic science. You are not giving up anything, and you stand to gain a lot, as I have when I first started reading the Swedenborg Reports -- the only existing fully scientific and empirical account of the spiritual world and the afterlife of eternity.

I will share my greatest discovery on this topic, namely, that we are born into eternity, and that we have already been in eternity since our birth. We are therefore immortal beings. To be born into eternity means immortality, since what is born into eternity is eternal, by definition, and what is eternal is immortal.

What about "eternal" makes us immortal?

The concept of "eternal" contains two components: one is "outside time"; the other is "mental."

Phenomena that exist "outside time," by definition, exist in eternity. And what has been generally unknown in science until the Swedenborg Reports in the 18th century, is the empirical fact discovered by him, that "eternity" is the mental world that is familiar to every human being since birth.

That's right. It's an awesome discovery that will shake the modern mind from its current historical trend of materialism in science. Today, under the philosophy of the negative bias materialism, psychology cannot learn anything from the Swedenborg Reports, even though these 37 volumes have been around in several languages for the past 200 years. Swedenborg in Sweden published his book Rational Psychology (1743) more than a century before German psychologist Wundt opened the first modern laboratory of psychology in Germany. Swedenborg published several books on the physiology of sensation and on brain neurology. He was the first in history to conclude correctly that the left hemisphere of the brain functions in correspondence with the cognitive organ (thinking, reasoning), and the right brain with the affective organ (intention, perception).

Swedenborg discovered by direct observation that the mental world of eternity, where every person's mind resides since birth, is a large expanse in the shape of the human body. This expanse is filled with the human race. Every individual's mind resides somewhere in this Grand Human expanse. The location of each person can be specified by the anatomical structure relative to others. For instance, Swedenborg would indicate where his mental travels took him across the expanse of the Grand Human, by saying that he was "in the province of the right eye," or, "under the foot," or "in the gall bladder," etc. In each mental place, Swedenborg was able to talk to the people that lived there in full conscious awareness. He discovered that there was a perfect and exact correspondence between the quality of the ruling love of each person and the function of the organ in the anatomical region of the Grand Human in which they were living. The people living in the region of the gall bladder had an entirely different personality than the people who lived in the heart or lungs of the Grand Human. "Mental harshness" corresponds to the "harsh" chemical treatment of digested food in the gall bladder, where it is stripped and separated of non-digestibles. "Mental conjunction" or "spiritual love" corresponds to the "nourishing" and life-giving action of the heart and its circulatory system, which feeds every cell in the body.

Swedenborg's discovery is critical for the continued scientific development of psychology. The Swedenborg Reports provide us with an empirical methodology for the study of mind through its correspondences with the body.

The reason Swedenborg has been completely omitted from the history of psychology is that all his science is theistic, and there is no room for theistic science in non-theistic science.

This is not the idea that Swedenborg believed in God. Half or more of all scientists alive today say that they believe in God. The problem is not that scientists believe or don't believe in God. The problem has to do with scientific methodology. There are two varieties: the non-theistic methodologies and the theistic methodologies.

Swedenborg discovered by direct observation that the mental world of eternity contains a Spiritual Sun, only one. In the physical world of time, the star or "natural sun" of a solar system, is the origin of the planets in that system. All the physical objects on our earth, including our physical body, is made of materials from the natural sun. This natural phenomenon corresponds exactly to the phenomenon of the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity. Everything in eternity is made of substances from the Spiritual Sun. Our mind is made of these substances. These spiritual substances are living and immortal. There are two broad categories of spiritual substances radiating out of the Spiritual Sun and filling the entire mental world of humanity. One is called "spiritual heat" and the other "spiritual light." This corresponds to the "natural heat" and "natural light" that streams out of the natural sun to create objects, energy, movement, and life on the planet.

Our mental life is an organic process that begins at birth and continues endlessly in eternity. Life must have an organic basis. Mental life is carried out by mental organs. These organs are made of the substances from the Spiritual Sun. At birth, every human being lives in two bodies simultaneously that are connected together by correspondence. We have a physical body that is temporary and is made of natural substances from the physical sun. And we have a spiritual body that is permanent and is made of spiritual substances from the Spiritual Sun. Our spiritual body contains our mental organs.

We have three systems of mental organs, corresponding to the three systems of physical organs.


PHYSICAL BODY
in time and space

natural anatomy and physiology


SPIRITUAL BODY

in the mental world of eternity

mental anatomy and physiology


CIRCULATORY SYSTEM

heart, blood vessels, blood, lymphatic, digestive, reproductive, endocrine, biochemical, genetic

AFFECTIVE ORGAN

reception of spiritual heat, loves, motives, intentions, enjoyment, pleasure, fun, perceptions, impulses, preferences, conscience, attachments, relationships, togetherness, conjunction, marriage, socialization of feelings and emotions, value-attachment and ranking, goal-directedness

RESPIRATORY SYSTEM

lungs, bronchial, larynx, mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, vocal cords

COGNITIVE ORGAN

reception of spiritual light, thoughts, imagination, variety of intelligences, inventiveness, understanding of truth, rationality, language, abstract reasoning, morality, science, socialization of thinking

NEURAL-SKELETAL SYSTEM

brain, sensory organs, bones, joints, muscles, skin, hair, nails
SENSORIMOTOR ORGAN

receptivity to sensory information, experiencing sensations, maintaining situational vigilance, variety of motor readiness, motor skills and habits of performance, speaking and listening, writing and texting

The above is a general classification of mind-body correspondences.

The above indicates that the circulatory system in the spiritual body is nothing but the affective organ. Further, the respiratory system in the spiritual body is nothing but the cognitive organ. Finally, the neural-skeletal system in the spiritual body is nothing but the sensorimotor organ. This relationship of correspondence is an important research method for discovering and charting mental anatomy. The physical body is the window to the mind. The body is the visible mind. The temporary physical body is a perfect copy or model in physical matter, of the spiritual body which is permanent and eternal. By studying the anatomy of the physical body we are enabled to chart the development and evolution of the mind and its consciousness.


Exercise Homework 1: The Visible Body:

Go to http://www.visiblebody.com/ and register. Then learn to use the Visible Body application. It takes several hours to explore all that it can do. While learning the anatomy  of the body, keep thinking that these anatomical structures and interrelations are the visible mind.

Explore the circulatory system (Hide Others). See how it is in the shape of the body. You are seeing the affective organ, whose operations are the source of your feelings, loves, and motives -- hence our very life. Our very life is nothing but our loves, and your loves are the operations of the affective organ, which is the circulatory system of the spiritual body. The circulatory system or affective organ, is the central lifeline of everything human and living. The other systems of the mind are derivative of this and dependent on this for mental nourishment and consciousness. Explore the heart. You are seeing the ruling loves of a person, or of humanity as a whole. The ruling love disposes all other loves, and the loves together dispose all thinking and intelligence that belong to the cognitive organ or respiratory system.

Explore the respiratory system by itself (Hide Others). You are seeing the cognitive organ of thinking and reasoning, imagining and knowing. Explore how the heart and the lungs are connected and how they act together. You are seeing the interdependence between the affective (A) and cognitive organs (C), between how our thinking and reasoning (C) are influenced or determined by our motives and needs (A). Note that the heart in the spiritual body (our loves) could not live or survive on their own. If the blood is prevented from flowing through the lungs it cannot be oxygenated, and in that case all its nutrients are useless to the cells and everything dies. This is in exact correspondence to the interdependence between our loves (A) and our thoughts (C). Our loves (A) act upon our thoughts (C) in order to produce our sensations and motor determinations (S). The circulatory system acts upon the respiratory system to produce or enable sensory perception and motor action.

Moving your finger in the physical body (layer 12), requires a determination from your sensorimotor system (9S) in the spiritual body (layer 10). This sensorimotor determination to move your finger (layer 9S) is produced by the conjunction or co-action of your affective organ (9A) with your cognitive organ (9C). This may be expressed as:

9A --> 9C --> 9S --> 12 (finger moves)

There must first be a motive (A) in the circulatory system of the spiritual body in layer 9. For instance, you are typing at the keyboard and coming to the end of your sentence. Now your finger moves over to the period key and presses it. You had to have a motivation (A) to press that particular key. Your motivation was to end the sentence you were typing. This connects with the love (A) you have of communicating with someone or finishing writing something. This love you have is nothing else than the operation of your affective organ, which is the circulatory system of your spiritual body.

The love of communicating or completing your sentence, cannot exist on its own, cannot be anything on its own. In order for this love to have an existence in your affective organ, it must connect with thinks in your memory or knowledge that are in your cognitive organ (C). In the Swedenborg Reports this is called the connection between "the will and the understanding." or, the connection between "good and truth." This connection or conjunction is called the "spiritual marriage." It is the spiritual force in eternity that corresponds to the natural force of gravity in time. All movement and relative position in the physical world is ultimately determined by gravity. This corresponds to the mental world of eternity where the quality and level of all human consciousness is given by people's relative position in the Grand Human (S), which is the product of their love (A) conjoined with their understanding (C). The AC connection, or spiritual marriage, engenders the totality of our living (S). What we call "heaven" (Grand Human) or "hell" (Grand Monster) are the externalized sensorimotor (S) appearances produced by the internal marriage between our loves (A) and our thoughts (C). Love produces everything in eternity; in eternity everything is produced by our loves.


Here are some additional body-mind correspondences:

Beating the chest = feeling sorry, repenting or: being proud of oneself
Beating the chest = feeling sorry, repenting or: being proud of
Burning, boiling = feeling angry, passionate
Covered = secret, having a plan to deal with it  ("I've got it covered")
Drinking = learning, believing ("He is drinking it all in")
Eating bread = to nourish the mind
Food = operations in the affective organ, love, affection, charity
Left hand = mentally incapable ("He's got two left hands")
Paying taxes in a democracy = the effort we are willing to put into our character reformation
Ruminating = thinking about it, reflecting, considering
She's the pupil of his eye = cares a lot for her
Standing on the head = thinking and believing the opposite of truth
Taste = choices ("He has good taste in clothes")
Teeth = power ("that amendment has no teeth in it")
Tied up in knots = feeling disturbed or conflictual
To be hitched = to be married, mentally conjoined
Washing the body = repenting, cleansing or purifying the mind from evil traits
Wine = "faith", rational faith, positive bias in science, affirmative principle towards Sacred Scripture

More at:  Correspondences in Our Thinking and Language

Now here are more specific mind-body anatomical correspondences.

CHART of Body-Mind Relationships in the Spiritual Body

 

LAYER

CIRCULATORY SYSTEM

AFFECTIVE
Ruling Love

RESPIRATORY SYSTEM

COGNITIVE
Governing Truth

NERVOUS AND SKELETAL  SYSTEM

SENSORI-MOTOR
External Appearances

MENTALITY  THEMES
IN THE HEAVENLY ORDER
MENTALITY  THEMES
IN THE HELLISH ORDER
4
CELESTIAL-RATIONAL
A4

HEART, ARTERIES, REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS

C4

LUNGS, BREATHING, LIPS, CHEEKS

S4

HANDS, EYES, RIGHT BRAIN, CEREBELLUM, RIB CAGE, THIGHS

Receiving conjugial love from God.
Conjunction with God through His Divine Human Omniproprium.
Love of innocence and children.
Love of fidelity. Altruism.
Perceiving interior rational truths.
Inspiring in people good thoughts and dreams.
Inspiring in people the love of good.
(SEE LAYER 9)
5
SPIRITUAL-RATIONAL
A5

STOMACH, LIVER, MASTICATION, ASSIMILATION

C5

ESOPHAGUS, MOUTH CAVITY, SMELL, TONGUE, TASTE

S5

INTERIOR OF NOSTRILS , EARS, LEFT BRAIN

Discussing and reasoning about truths and doctrines.
Inspiring people who are seeking to understand truths and strengthen conscience.
Helping people in spiritual combat during regeneration efforts.
(SEE LAYER 8) 
6
SPIRITUAL-NATURAL
A6

NUTRITIONAL EXCHANGE IN CELLS

C6

RESPIRATION, OXYGENATION, AIR SACS

S6

 

Practicing the human virtues in community life.
Inspiring people with being useful.
Inspiring people to acquire motor skills.
Inspiring in people the rational foundations for aesthetics, art, sports, civics.
(SEE LAYER 7) 
7
INTERIOR-NATURAL
A7

SPLEEN, PANCREAS, BLOOD, ARTERIES, VEINS, CAPILLARIES

C7

DIAPHRAGM

S7

HANDS, OUTWARD SKIN OR LINING OF ALL INTERNAL ORGANS

Practicing the unity model of marriage and striving to attain eternal conjugial love.
Motivated to master the mental environment.
Religious or spiritual views based on what is rationally understandable.
Puts importance on cooperating with God in one's regeneration for eternity.
Values thinking from scientific dualism and theistic psychology.
Values sincerity, spiritual responsibility, rationality, diligence, altruism.
Hating conjugial love and desiring to pervert the institution of marriage.
Opposing and subverting moral virtues in community life and engaging in hurtful practices as a lifestyle.
Inspiring people with the enjoyment of selfish traits.
Inspiring people to dislike healthy activity and eating habits.
Inspiring in people the desire and enjoyment of tearing down the rational foundations for aesthetics, art, sports, civics, etc., in order to pervert or destroy their goodness and rationality.
8
EXTERIOR-NATURAL
A8

GALL BLADDER, KIDNEYS, URETHRA, BLADDER

C8

TEETH

S8

NEURONS, FEET, SKIN, BONES, CARTILAGE, MUSCLES, TENDONS

Practicing the equity model of marriage.
Motivated to master the social environment.
Abstract thinking from materialism and negative bias in science. 
Religious or spiritual views based on mystery, blind faith, authority, history, tradition.
Love of legalism, egalitarianism, symbolism, idealism.
Concerned with parity, duty, honor, recognition, glory, achievement.
Valuing honesty, social responsibility, patriotism.
Practicing the male dominance model under the guise of equity.
Love of reasoning about spiritual ideas in order to justify their chosen persuasions which consist of falsified truths and hurtful practices.
Love of inspiring people to deny or falsify Sacred Scripture, and to kill the conscience by attacking it and ignoring it.
Love of influencing people who are in spiritual combat during regeneration in order to get them to give in to their temptation.
9
NATURAL-CORPOREAL
A9

INTESTINES

C9

 

S9

SOLES OF THE FEET, HEEL

Practicing the male dominance model of marriage.
Motivated to master the physical environment.
Desire to punish and suppress individual freedoms.
Spirituality based on ancestor worship, saints and holy objects, miracles  supernatural events, and on persuasive teachings. Authoritarian and strict parenting and schooling.

Perverting conjugial love to promiscuity and infidelity.
Corporeal spirituality based on disjunction from God through opposing and hating His Divine Human Omniproprium.
Rageful hatred of innocence and children.
Lust of infidelity. Selfism. Arrogance.
Being blind to all interior rational truths.
Inspiring in people wicked thoughts and frightening dreams.
Inspiring in people the lust of evil.

 

Note that this chart gives the correspondential connection between organs in the spiritual body and our sensations (S), thoughts (C), and feelings (A). Note that we have a threefold self at each of the six layers. When you look at the mentality themes at each layer you can notice that they arrange themselves so as to match the physiological functions of each body part or zone. 

See if you can use this chart to locate your mental states in the course of a normal day. What proportion of time do you spend in the three heavenly mentality zones and in the three hellish mentality zones. Study the characteristics of the heavenly and hellish order in layers 7, 8, 9. (More discussion on this in the Mental anatomy Lecture Notes)

One might think that so far, Swedenborg's dualist psychology might have been acceptable enough to receive mention in the history of psychology textbooks taught to psychology majors and graduate students today. But that is not the case. The reason becomes clear when you consider what is the Spiritual Sun, and what are its spiritual substances out of which our mental organs are constructed.

Swedenborg observed that every person goes through a dying-resuscitation process that separates the connection between our physical body and our spiritual body. The process lasts about 30 hours starting from the complete cessation of all life in the physical body either by medical death, or violent and accidental death. Swedenborg himself underwent the dying-resuscitation process so that he could describe it as an eye-witness. He interviewed thousands of people immediately after they were awakened from the resuscitation process. These included strangers and people he was acquainted with personally. Everyone awakened in the spiritual body remembers their identity and life, but they now speak a universal thought-language that spontaneously comes out as they think or desire to communicate with others. Everyone can also see the Spiritual Sun.

The spiritual body contains the mental organs at several discrete layers of anatomy, as will be discussed next in detail. In summary, the spiritual body contains the natural mind and the spiritual mind. The natural mind is conscious until the dying-resuscitation process begins, and then the spiritual mind takes over at resuscitation. Until resuscitation, the spiritual mind is unconscious, so that all our consciousness is focused on the natural mind. But after resuscitation there is a physiological change so that the natural mind and our outward social personality is gradually being "decommissioned" or "put out of circulation." We then continue our life of immortality in eternity by means of our conscious life in the spiritual mind.

Our mental organs are not only constructed out of spiritual heat and light from the Spiritual Sun, but they are also activated by them. This corresponds to the phenomenon in the physical world that if you prevent sunlight and heat from the natural sun from reaching the planet, everything perishes and the planet becomes a dead planet. All plant life depends on continuous radiation from the physical sun, and the weather system that it causes in the atmosphere. This corresponds to the phenomenon in the mental world of eternity, whereby our mental organs and their operations of feelings, thoughts, and sensations, would cease and disappear if the radiation from the Spiritual Sun stopped.

Now the final point: What is this endless stream of spiritual heat and light coming out of the Spiritual Sun?

Spiritual heat is nothing else than Divine Love or Good, and spiritual light is nothing else than Divine Truth or Wisdom.

Now you can see the fundamental and unavoidable theistic aspect of the Swedenborg Reports.

This is one of the most astonishing facts of science that has ever come to human knowledge. Our mental organs are constructed, activated, and directed by God through God's Divine Love as spiritual heat, and through Divine Truth as spiritual light. The mental world of eternity is an expanse created, activated, and directed by God through love and truth substances.

This is a difficult rational concept to understand at first, because we think of love and truth as conditions or states of the body, or the mind, but not as substances like heat or light. After our resuscitation we will be able to look straight at the Spiritual Sun and experience the actuality of good and truth streaming into our spiritual body and activating our loves, thoughts, and sensations. Swedenborg found out that the people who dwell in the highest layer of the mental world, which is closest to the Spiritual Sun (layer 4), are conscious of the "influx" of heat and light as they gaze at the Spiritual Sun. Swedenborg also looked at Spiritual Sun and describes it as thousands of times brighter than the noon day sun in summer we experience here. The physical sun rays blind our eyes, but the rays of the Spiritual Sun have the opposite effect -- they clarify one's thinking and warm our heart with happiness from its heat of love and good. The spiritual light, which is Divine Truth exiting from God, is received by the people in layer 4 as quasi-omniscience, that is, whatever you think about while in that light, you can understand rationally and scientifically, spontaneously knowing everything that is knowable about it. 

The reality described in the Swedenborg Reports show that God is at the center of every phenomenon in both worlds. The two worlds are connected, point by point, by means of the laws of correspondences that are a central part of creation. It is not possible for science to discuss reality without describing the direct hands on role of God in that reality. Every existing physical object, and every existing mental operation, are directed or managed by God from within their inmost structure and substance, which is spiritual heat and light from the Spiritual Sun. God's feelings and thinking are therefore at the center of every phenomenon, that is, the origin and cause of every phenomenon. In terms of reality and existence, God's love and truth first enter the mental world of eternity in its highest layer (4), then descend or exteriorize through all the mental layers, and finally exist into the natural world of time where it creates every object and makes it to come into existence in a way and pattern that follows and brings about God's order and purpose.

In the Swedenborg Reports God reveals that His purpose for creating and maintaining the universe is

(1) to arrange for human beings to develop a natural mind on planets in the physical world,
(2) which allows their spiritual mind to be opened and activated after resuscitation,
(3) so that they can lead an endless life of conjugial happiness with a soul mate,
(4) which is communicated mutually to all who live in the Grand Human,
(5) so that the overall happiness of the human race continues to increase endlessly to eternity.

God's purpose is activated by God's Divine Love, which is to create people and make them evolve to ever grander happiness and intelligence, endlessly, forever. And all this is accomplished through God's Divine Truth, which is the source of human rationality and intelligence. The more we are in order with God's purpose and order, the more we experience this grand life, and the sooner. We can solve the problems of society and mind that non-theistic psychology has been unable to do so far. The positive-bias in science and the Swedenborg Reports have been made available to all people to further this Divine purpose for the world and humankind.

Even if traditional non-theistic psychology were to admit and accept the mind-body dualism of the Swedenborg Reports, it would encounter the other intellectual barrier, which is the barrier of "God" as a concept in science.

To by-pass this intellectual barrier we need to adopt the positive-bias in science.

The negative-bias in science is called a "bias" because it is not dependent on the proof that God does not exist, or that the concept of God cannot function in science. The negative-bias science is materialistic in its foundations, hence it rejects dualism (eternity outside time) and God. Both are rejected without proof, hence we can call it the negative-bias of materialism in science. Similarly, the positive-bias in theistic psychology is not dependent on any proof that God exists, or that Swedenborg's reports of resuscitation are correct and valid. No such proof is possible within a materialistic perspective. Hence it is called the positive-bias of theistic dualism.

However, thought there is no proof either way, there are many empirical facts reported by Swedenborg, thanks to his ability to be conscious in his spiritual mind, simultaneously with his normal consciousness in his natural mind. This was the first time in human history that a modern scientist was given the opportunity of collecting observational evidence of the dying process, and of the life immortal that begins at resuscitation. At age 57, in the middle of an active and successful scientific and engineering career in Sweden, Swedenborg awoke one day feeling very strange, hearing and seeing things, being confused. After a few days however, he realized that his spiritual consciousness was present along with his natural consciousness. He was able to see and observe people in the afterlife, even as he was carrying on his busy life as a government engineer, prominent legislator, and publisher of scientific works and inventions.

He found himself with dual consciousness -- aware of his natural world surroundings as before, but in addition, aware of the surroundings of those who pass on, resuscitate, and continue their life in the spiritual mind and body. When each of us are resuscitated, we will be able to confirm all of Swedenborg's observations. Until then we need to approach the Swedenborg Reports without proof, in the positive-bias orientation, so that we can give it a serious examination (positive-bias in science), rather than reject it out of hand as impossible (negative-bias in science).

The examination of the Swedenborg Reports in the positive-bias mode does not mean that we are going to merely accept uncritically what they describe.

We must apply the tools of rational and scientific thinking as we examine the Swedenborg evidence.

  1. Do the descriptions and their explanations make rational sense

  2. Do they hold together consistently into an overall integrated system of scientific explanation

  3. Do any of the descriptions or explanations contradict each other

  4. Are the explanations usable for the phenomena and events we can observe around us in the physical and social world

  5. Are there any philosophers and scientists who have read these reports and accepted them

  6. Did Swedenborg have a good reputation as a man and scientist

  7. Did any of his contemporaries read him and agree with him

  8. How scientific are the explanations of mental phenomena, how detailed, how mechanistic and functional

  9. Are the cause-effect interactions explained rationally

  10. Can the knowledge be applied to current issues and problems

  11. Is research possible

  12. Are there factual data, or experimental set ups with variables being manipulated

  13. Empirically specific enough to be testable with data and observations

  14. Organic (like biology, anatomy, physiology), so that every piece can be isolated and studied on its own as well as its structural part and role in the functioning of the whole

I have studied the Swedenborg Reports since 1981 and have made available several of my articles and books online, showing that they fundamentally meet the rational and scientific standards specified above. To review this evidence you can consult these sources, where you will also find collateral literature (some online), by various authors who have also studied the Writings of Swedenborg.

The fact is that there is no precedent in the history of psychology for a theory as global and all encompassing as the presentation in the Swedenborg Reports. The theories and accounts in psychology are generally addressed to a small zone of human behavior or thinking. There is no theory or presentation tying together the most common issues of relevance to everyday life and society into one integrated account. For the first time in science history, the Swedenborg Reports present such a unified presentation of everyday life issues – birth, development, social life, death, resuscitation, life in eternity. If we apply the above assessment grid to a number of well known and accepted theories in psychology, none of them would pass the test.

 

The fact is that theories in psychology change rapidly. One of my graduate school professor at McGill University in 1960, the famed physiological psychologist Donald Hebb, insisted that a “good” theory in psychology lasts about ten years. It takes a few years to test a theory and develop new data that the theory cannot handle. The theory must be changed. And so on. This is what has been called the regular “revolution” in “normal science” (Kuhn comes to mind). If a theory in psychology lasts a long time, like that of Freud, it is not a good theory, according to this view, because it means it is not specific enough to be disproven by new data.

 

Hebb’s perspective may be accurate for non-theistic psychology. But it does not apply to the the theistic psychology extracted from the Swedenborg Reports. Here we have a theoretical account that is totally rational and so successful that it does both things that other theories have never done before:

(1) It is empirically specific, so that it can be tested with data and observations
(2) It is totally organic, holistic, or synergistic so that it is able to account for new data

Given all this, it makes sense for you to lay aside the negative-bias materialism in the study of these reports, and to examine them with a positive-bias. This means that you are accepting the possibility that the Swedenborg Reports might be scientific and valid. You are not saying that they are scientific and valid, but only that you acknowledge that they might be, if you lay aside the usual negative-bias materialism.

 

The Dual Universe: Time and Eternity

Duality encompasses two worlds, one physical in time, and the other mental in eternity. This is also called the spiritual world or the afterlife. Born into eternity through a dual body, one in each world, we ‘pass on’ at death and resuscitate a few hours later in the spiritual body and our own familiar mind and identity of self. To say that we “pass on” is to speak according to the appearance, especially to those still “on earth.” The scientific specifics revealed in the Swedenborg Reports indicate that our mind and self are in the spiritual body only, and therefore we are born into eternity and stay there. We are merely not conscious that our spiritual body is functioning in the mental world of eternity. Our thoughts and feelings are in that immortal spiritual body in eternity. So instead of actually “passing on” from “this side to that side”, we are merely becoming conscious that we are already in the mental world of eternity from birth.

This new spiritual consciousness is made possible by the dying and resuscitation process. It is something we look forward to with anticipation, though we also know from Sacred Scripture that we are responsible for preparing ourselves before that process of consciousness transition. If we awaken unprepared, we follow our inherited ruling love of doing everything for the sake of self only. This love exists in the Grand Monster, in the hells of the human mind. But if we awaken from resuscitation being prepared, we have undergone character reformation and regeneration through resisting temptations. Then we have a heavenly ruling love that pulls us irresistibly to conjugial life in the Grand Human.

The two worlds are tied together in an integral coordination. Every event in the physical world of time and nature is called an effect, and every event in the mental world of eternity and the Spiritual Sun, is called a cause. The effect once it comes about, cannot exist by itself but must have the cause within itself. This is the Divine Law of Correspondence between the natural and the spiritual, between physical and mental. In the discourse of many people, including scientists, the word “natural” is normally opposed to “spiritual,” and the word “physical” is normally opposed to “mental.” Few people have suspected or known that these two sets refer to each other. “Natural” refers to “physical,” and “mental” refers to “spiritual.” Consequently, natural and physical refer to phenomena in time, and these are effects, while spiritual and mental refer to phenomena in eternity (not in time), and these are causes.

These two, the physical and the mental, or in other words, the natural and the spiritual, are correspondences and are fully determined by the laws of correspondences. These are revealed in the Swedenborg Reports. Correspondences apply only across discrete degrees. The physical and the mental are in discrete degrees. This means that nothing from the physical can come into contact with the mental – they are separate universes. But they are tied to each other, point by point, phenomenon by phenomenon, object by object. A mental object is in the world of causes, thus the spiritual world. That particular mental object has an effect in the physical, and the two are functionally tied and determined by each other.

diagram of mental anatomyFor instance, the existence of the substance of water in the physical world is an effect whose cause is the existence of the substance of truth in the mental world. The mental world of eternity is a rational ether or expanse or field created by the Spiritual Sun. This phenomenon was visually observed by Swedenborg over the course of 27 years of daily dual consciousness, from age 57 to 84 when he was separated from his physical body in 1772. In his spiritual consciousness he was able to see the sensorimotor neos appearing in the various layers of the mental world of eternity, which is shaped overall into the appearance of the Grand Human. Every person he talked to in that spiritual consciousness (layer 4, Third Heaven) was able to see the Spiritual Sun.

The Swedenborg Report describe the Spiritual Sun as an aura that localizes the point of interchange between God and creation. God As He is in Himself, infinite, unknowable, unapproachable created mental and physical existence by means of this Divine Aura or Substance that flows out of Him and into His creation. The Spiritual Sun is therefore called Layer 1 of the mental world of eternity. From the Spiritual Sun issue an endless variety of mental substances out of which human minds are organically constructed. There are two types of spiritual substances, each infinite in their own. One type is spiritual light coming from the Spiritual Sun, and the other type is spiritual heat that is within the light. What is amazing is that the mental substance of spiritual light is nothing else than truth upon which is based rationality and the functioning purposeful order of reality. Further, the mental substance of spiritual heat is nothing else than love from which is constructed our will to live and survive.

When we are conceived and born God forms a spiritual body that contains the three systems of mental organs we call affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. These organs are constructed out of the substances of spiritual heat and light. Since spiritual heat (Divine Love) and spiritual light (Divine Truth) are Divine substances they are living and immortal. Anything constructed out of the substances of the Spiritual Sun is therefore indestructible and permanent. Our spiritual body and its mental organs are born into eternity and remain immortal and eternal. Our self and identity as a unique person remains forever and is indestructible. That’s nice to know, right? I thought so myself when I first found out, in 1981, having found the Swedenborg Reports in our university library on the campus of the University of Hawaii. My wife and I were searching for Bible Commentaries and came across a shelf of 40 books written by one man, E. Swedenborg. We each took a volume home and have kept reading, studying, and researching those volumes since then.

The order of reality has therefore been created with the Spiritual Sun creating the mental world of eternity, and then, outside of that by a discrete degree, creating the physical world in time. This is the sequential order of phenomenal existence in creation –

Spiritual Sun  à  mental world of eternity  à  physical world in time
Source  à  cause  à  effect

 These are created into discrete degrees, which means that the substances of the Spiritual Sun are the constructing elements of the mental world of eternity, and that these constructing elements do not become part of each other. Our feelings are constructed out of spiritual heat, which is Divine Love. That Divine substance is “in us” as components, but they are not part of us. This is because Divine substance cannot mix with non-Divine. This is the relationship of discrete degrees and correspondence. The Divine substance out of which our affective organ is constructed is the cause, while our affective operations and feelings of love, are the effects. Cause and effect are discrete, one is within the other, but they cannot mix or touch.

Quoting from the Swedenborg Reports:

SS 28. It will be comprehended by the learned that these three may be called end, cause and effect; also being, becoming and existing: the end is being, the cause is becoming and the effect is existing. Consequently, in everything that is complete there is a trine, called the first, the middle and the last; also, the end, the cause and the effect; and also being (esse) becoming, (fieri), and existing (existere). When one understands these things then also does one understand that every Divine work is complete and perfect in its last; and also that the whole is in the last, which is a trine, because the prior things are simultaneously therein. (SS 28)

It is similar with what is mental in relation to the physical. The mental is prior and is the cause, while the physical is posterior and is the effect. The cause cannot mix with the effect but they correspond to each other and act together, and live together. When the Source is within the cause and the two together are in the effect, the sequence is completed in simultaneous order. This is the order of reality. Here are some diagrams that depict and discuss simultaneous order of a variety of things in discrete degrees:

diagram 1  ||  diagram 2 ||  diagram 3  ||  diagram 4  ||  diagram 5  ||  diagram 6  ||  diagram 7  || 

God chose our planet earth to effect the Divine Incarnation. The reason is that of all the myriad of inhabited planets across the billions of galaxies, this earth is the only one that has supported a scientific civilization based on rational methods of thinking. In order for God to complete the creation of the human race, He had to acquire for Himself a Natural Body in the physical world. He had prepared this momentous event since the beginning of the generations of people on this earth. God’s Natural Body contained a Spiritual Body in which was a natural mind with its three layers (corporeal (9), scientific (8), external rational (7e). It also contained a spiritual mind with its three layers (First Heaven (6), Second Heaven (5), and third Heaven (4).

Just as it is with all people born on this planet, God’s Natural Mind was connected by inheritance to the societies of the Grand Monster. In order to disconnect this inherited natural mind from the hell societies, God-Man had to regenerate His inherited natural mind before He could make it Divine, and hence, truly His Own. To accomplish this God-Man had to do what no human being could, before Him. This was the very purpose for which He wanted to be Incarnated and acquire for Himself a Divine Natural Body that He could take to Himself in eternity, so that those in the afterlife of eternity could see Him visually, and touch Him with their hands. This visible touchable God is called The Divine Human. There is only One God. Until the Incarnation God could only be seen as the Spiritual Sun. This is because He had not acquired for Himself a Sensorimotor Body, which is the ultimate of human life. Swedenborg was told by those who live in layer 4 consciousness (Third Heaven) that the Divine Human sometimes appears to them face to face and talks with them.

The method that God-Man created to regenerate His Natural Mind is the method that every human being after that, must use to regenerate his or her natural mind. This method involves three steps:

(I) God-Man creates a new evolutionary layer in His natural mind. This is layer 7i or the interior-natural layer. This organ never existed in the current split-brain spiritual race, though it did exist in the earlier whole-brain celestial race that first lived on this earth (“the Most Ancient Church”). The interior-natural layer (7i) that God-Man constructed in the human natural mind actually completes the full evolution of the human race. With this new interior organic system in our rational mind (layer 7i) we are able to raise our consciousness to the spiritual and celestial level, almost as if our spiritual mind became conscious. Through this entirely new ability our rational mind has been able to evolve progressively for two thousand years and to produce modern science, society, and a global civilization.

This evolution could not have occurred on any other planet in the universe, and it is on this account that God was Incarnated on this earth. Hence it is that viewed spiritually, this earth is the center of the universe. All other human generations have been benefitted by the organic evolution that took place on this earth. The entire human race is kept by God as one organic unit called the Grand Human, and its opposite, the Grand Monster. These organic entities operate as one so that whatever changes occur in one place, affect all the other places, each in its own unique way.

You can see from this that neo production is the basis upon which human evolution depends. Layer 7i neos are the higher correspondences of Sacred Scripture that we can extract and organize into a science called theistic psychology.

 

Our Spiritual Barcode

diagram of mental anatomyOur soul at conception and birth (layers 2, 3) is imprinted with a spiritual bar code that contains the unique traits and abilities of the person's mental layers (4 to 9). This spiritual gene contains the entire future states of the person. Every mental layer contains its own portion of the spiritual barcode, which gives the person a unique spiritual identity in all states of consciousness. 

Spiritual barcodes are organic. They are made of a mixture of lighter and darker stripes or bars. Each stripe is a spiritual address located in one of the numberless societies of the Grand Human (layers 4, 5, 6) and the Grand Monster (layers -7, -8, -9). As each layer grows and develops in the course of our daily life, the operations taking place in each layer are determined by the barcode addresses organically stamped on that layer. Each spiritual address is actually an open connection or channel of communication between the loves of the people in the society at that address, and the loves that the individual is attached to.

For example, suppose you feel depressed because your supervisor criticized your for the way you are doing your work. Feeling depressed is a hellish love sourced in the Grand Monster. There is an address in your spiritual barcode in layer 9A that connects your feeling of being depressed with a society in the Grand Monster populated with people whose chief passion is to enjoy people's depressive thoughts and emotions about themselves. It's a kind of sadistic enjoyment, as when you and your friends enjoy teasing someone. This kind of bullying happens frequently in school, at work, with friends. Some people feel enjoyment when they see someone's misfortunes. These people also feel depression when others gain something or have something that you want, but can't have. There is a large collection of loves and sub-loves around feeling depressed. As long you the spiritual address with that society remains open for communication, you are going to experience these loves at various times (depression when losing, elation when winning, etc.).

Your emotion of depression when your boss criticizes you, or when a friend rejects you, or when you don't win the contest, etc., is produced by this connection that you keep open in your "vertical community" or mental world. Although we are all born with an inherited spiritual bar code that determines our heavenly and hellish loves, we are not part of the spiritual society where our loves originate from. We do not own these loves, nor are they within us. They are merely open channels that transmit this love to our affective organ in layers 7, 8, 9. They become our own only when we develop a love for that inflowing affective operation. For instance, one way we can react to our depression is to satisfy our love for retaliation. We enjoy thinking bad thoughts about the person who offended or rejected us. This enjoyment of retaliating, punishing, denigrating is a hellish enjoyment coming from a hellish love (layer -9, -8). Each time we experience the enjoyment of vengeance, the satisfaction of seeing someone suffer, even if it goes no further than in our imagination, we are making that love our own. And once a love is made our own, we can get rid of it only through regeneration, only by spiritual combat against temptations brought to us by the Divine Psychologist.

The process of regeneration by temptation is an organic process managed entirely by the Divine Psychologist within every person who is still active in the natural mind prior to dying and resuscitation. The cumulative activity of regeneration over days, months, years, and decades, consists of disowning our hellish loves, and owning our heavenly loves. We inherit both loves through the spiritual barcode connection in our vertical community. The lighter and darker stripes insure that we oscillate all day between heavenly and hellish emotions and thoughts. This regular and frequent alternation process of our consciousness is necessary for the ability to undergo regeneration. We inherit connections to the Grand Human (lighter stripes) and the Grand Monster (darker stripes) but the loves that come through the connections do not become our own loves until we decide to practice them and allow ourselves to enjoy them without opposition.

We can practice inherited heavenly impulses like curiosity, studying, cooperation, sincerity, conscience, etc., and they become our own loves, our abilities, our own good. But if we don't practice sincerity by preferring to lie and get away with deception, then we make the love of fraud and thievery to be our own love. The Divine Psychologist faces us with temptations in daily life in order to allow us to choose to love the hellish trait and enjoyment, or to refuse to love it, and to try to reject it, and even hate it. By refusing to practice an evil enjoyment, we are making it possible for the Divine Psychologist to remove that inherited connection in the spiritual barcode.

The more we regenerate a mental layer, the more the lighter and darker stripes are separated into two camps. Eventually all the heavenly stripes will be in one camp, and all the hellish ones in an opposing camp.

Today the neuroscience of consciousness has human awareness located in the physical brain. This may be called reductionist neuroscience because it reduces two dimensions into one. It views physical brain and mental consciousness as one material substance in time and place. Non-reductionist neuroscience allows for a dualism of substances. Physical substance is in time and place, and composes the brain of the physical body. Mental substance is not in time and place, and composes the brain of the spiritual body. There are therefore two bodies to consider at our birth, one made of temporary physical substances, the other made of eternal mental substances. The physical substances originate in the sun or star systems, while the spiritual substances originate in the Spiritual Sun, which is the center of the mental world of eternity. The two bodies grow up together in correspondence, and when the physical body dies, our conscious life continues as before through the spiritual body.

 

In other words our feelings, thoughts, and sensations are not events located in the physical brain and body. They are events located in the mental organs called affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. These mental organs are located in the spiritual body since birth, and remain there forever. Since the spiritual body is immortal, the mental organs are permanent in eternity. Our conscious self does not stop at the death of the physical body since the self is located in the spiritual body right from the start of conscious life.

 

Our mental organs are arranged in layers of operations from lowest (layer 9) to highest (layer 4). Our consciousness is determined by the level at which it is operating in any situation. The feelings, loves, mentality, thinking, preferences, limitations at each consciousness level have been described in the Swedenborg Reports and are presented in theistic psychology.

 

The above makes it clear that human consciousness has an organic basis. Note also that we consciousness is a composite contributed by three mental systems or functions of operation – affective (A), cognitive (C), and sensorimotor (S). Affective consciousness is determined by the quality of our loves in relation to God and the Spiritual Sun. This is because the Spiritual Sun, which is the origin of all human mental substances in eternity, is nothing but an exit point or outflow of the spiritual substances of Divine Love and Divine Truth, flowing into the created mental world of humanity. The Spiritual Sun is at the center, also at the highest region (layer 1) of the created mental world. There is only one mental world, and you and me and everyone is in that one same mental world. We cannot see one another now, while we are still attached to the physical body by correspondence. But immediately after our resuscitation, at the end of the dying process, we are awakened in consciousness in our higher or spiritual mind, and in that consciousness we can see everyone who has passed into the afterlife.

 

Swedenborg was an extraordinary Divinely initiated exception so that he was given conscious awareness in the spiritual mind while he was still here conscious in his natural mind and physical body. He led a strange dual consciousness life for 27 years, from age 57 to 84. He left behind the Swedenborg Reports which are about 30 volumes of his empirical and experimental observations during these years of the mental world of eternity and ho wit corresponds and relates to the conscious life we know here prior to passing on through dying and resuscitation.

 

Prior to our resuscitation our consciousness is limited the three layers of the natural mind (9, 8, 7). After resuscitation our consciousness operates in the layers of the spiritual mind (6, 5, 4). The task we have in our years on earth is to regenerate the natural mind, which allows the spiritual mind to open, grow, and mature. If the natural mind is not regenerated, the spiritual layers do not function after resuscitation. This means that we must then continue to operate in our natural mind, but now in the mental world of eternity. This is a disastrous situation and leads to an unhappy life in eternity called “hell.” But if we regenerate the natural layers, the spiritual layers are ready to function after resuscitation, and our consciousness can dwell in an eternal “heaven” with our soul mate.

 

Regeneration is an organic process. It is made necessary because our natural mind is born with inherited hellish loves. More precisely, we are each born with a unique spiritual bar code that automatically ties us to certain “hellish” societies, each of whom specialize in some selfish, cruel, insane, and destructive love or enjoyment. Regeneration is the organic process that separates us from that inherited connection. The process is carried out in cooperation with the Divine Psychologist who brings events and situations to the life of each person in such a way as to bring awareness to the individual of the inherited ties to the hellish societies. We can observe, witness, monitor our thoughts and feelings in the course of the day and evaluate them in terms of what we know about heavenly and hellish traits. The process is experienced as a "temptation" during which we are pulled by opposing emotional forces: to give in or to reject the hellish love, enjoyment, or habit. When we reject a hellish connection with the Grand Monster, we are gradually cut off from those societies so that we no longer "own" those hellish traits.

 

As regeneration proceeds day by day, and year by year, our spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4) is opened, operationalized, prepared for our conscious life in it after resuscitation. If we are unwilling to go through the lifelong process of regeneration, or conscious disowning of inherited hellish traits, then our spiritual mind is not opened or functional after resuscitation. We then experience consciousness in the natural mind (layers -9, -8, -7). The minus sign indicates that these natural layers after resuscitation are not suitable for genuine human life in the mental world of eternity. People in that consciousness are sub-human caricatures of their former selves when they still had heavenly traits along with the hellish. But after resuscitation, when the spiritual layers are non-functional, the heavenly traits are rejected or lost, leaving behind a monstrous version -- people who invert all truth and good into falsity and evil, creating a community of hell around them in which they have to spend their consciousness in mental eternity.

 

The Spiritual Dimension of Neologisms

 The construction of novel sentences, novel expressions, novel words, novel nonsense words, nicknames, names of endearment, titles, lyrics, names of people, streets, places, products, lifestyle practices, etc. -- these are normal speech acts all speakers of a language employ constantly. Children at play produce novel verbalizations that may be called nonsense neologisms or meaningless neologisms. I have neologued many romantic neologisms of endearment to describe the diversity of conjugial delights her appearance and presence initiates in me. According to my favorite author, no two things can ever be the same because all created things, qualities, or events must reflect God's infinity (Swedenborg). In other words, if things were not absolutely unique the created universe would not accurately reflect the creativeness of God, in whom "infinite things make one" (Swedenborg). In other words, all creations by God and all constructions by people are existential neologisms.

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a voluminous writers. The current publication of his entire works translated in English take up nearly 50 volumes. About 37 of these were written after his dual consciousness was awakened at age 57. I have been studying these volumes since 1981 and have based my work on it since then, especially my 18-volume project called "theistic psychology." I coined the neologism "the Swedenborg Reports" to refer to this collection of scientific reports on his observations during his dual consciousness. He was quite surprised when he found himself one day being conscious of two worlds simultaneously. One was the conscious awareness of the natural world through his natural mind and physical body, the other was the conscious awareness of the spiritual world through his spiritual mind and spiritual body. Every human being is born into eternity, with a temporary physical body attached to the natural mind, and a permanent or eternal spiritual body attached to our spiritual mind. The Swedenborg Reports are the first scientific reports on the afterlife world. No scientist before him had direct observational access to the dying process and the resuscitation process that takes place a few hours after the death of the physical body.

In 27 years of full conscious awareness of the spiritual world, Swedenborg observed thousands of people being resuscitated and was able to talk to them, both strangers and people he knew in this life. He also interviewed people who had lived on this earth thousands of years ago, yet appeared in the "flower of youth" in their heavenly habitations in eternity. Some of my favorite neologisms coined by Swedenborg are these:

the Divine Human

the as-of-self

discrete degrees

conjugial love

interior sense of Sacred Scripture

natural, spiritual, celestial senses

science of correspondences

spiritual rational

celestial rational

spiritual natural

ruling love

spiritual heat or love

spiritual light or truth

Spiritual Sun

One Person in Three Divine Aspects

Grand Man (or Grand Human)

spiritual doctrine

Most Ancient Church

Pre-Adamites

 In my attempt to render the Swedenborg Reports into contemporary psychological ideas and methods I had to coin a variety of neologisms such as these:

theistic psychology

the mental world of eternity

the Divine Psychologist

mental anatomy

spiritual psychobiology

genes of consciousness

substantive dualism

conjoint self

doctrine of the wife

surrendered husband

sweetheart rituals

unity model of marriage

substitution technique

self-witnessing

Perizonius thesis

Grand Human

Grand Monster

 The act of constructing neologisms has a spiritual dimension or significance when examined from the perspective of the Swedenborg Reports. Note the etymology of neologism: neo=new and logos=word or meaning. Thus, neologism=new word or meaning. The Swedenborg Reports present the view that a new spiritual age was ushered in by God through Swedenborg's Writings in which God reveals through him the science of correspondences that describes the laws by which God manages the universe in its various layers or discrete degrees. These laws are contained in the "spiritual sense" of Sacred Scripture.

All Sacred Scripture is Divine Speech or Truth that has descended from God and was transformed from a celestial meaning, to a spiritual meaning, to a natural meaning. The natural meaning of Sacred Scripture is the literal meaning. By applying the knowledge of correspondences to the verses and words of the literal sense of Sacred Scripture, one can extract the spiritual and celestial senses that are hidden within it. This extraction process is possible only when the individual is enlightened by God to see these more interior truths within the literal sense. Everyone is enlightened by God who is willing to stop acting and thinking from selfish traits, and wants to become a "new person" who is altruistic and happy with heavenly enjoyments.

This new human ability accessible to every human being now and in the endless future is called the New Word or the New Church. Thus "neologism" has a spiritual meaning that refers to this New Word, this new consciousness that God is bringing about, a new step in the evolution of human consciousness. When we coin a new term in science we are enacting the new human consciousness which is a more interior thinking, more spiritual and rational, closer to truth, to Divine Truth or Rationality.

The process of constructing neologisms must be connected to the process of sharing them.

The adoption of neologisms by others and from others is a spiritual sharing called "spiritual love" by Swedenborg. Every person is a neologist and constructs neologisms every day in ordinary speaking, writing, and reflecting. The process of thinking produces neologisms as a by product. To speak is to create. The inventiveness of our thinking and speaking is produced by our love -- what it is that we want and desire to express outwardly. The nature of love is to strive to externalize. To achieve this external existence, love transmutes by correspondence into thinking and reflecting, then at last into doing and sensing.

Speaking more anatomically, every human being is a threefold self -- affective self, cognitive self, sensorimotor self. Each self resides and operates within its own specialized organ -- affective organ, cognitive organ, sensorimotor organ. These mental organs are fused into operational synergy by the Divine laws of correspondences that activate and coordinate the layers in every human mind. The affective organ is a receptor for spiritual heat, while the cognitive organ is a receptor of spiritual light. In other words, our feeling and willing are subjective experiences resulting from the operations of the affective organ stimulated by spiritual heat. And similarly, our thinking and reflecting are subjective experiences resulting from the operations of the cognitive organ stimulated by spiritual light.

This operational synergy between the affective and the cognitive, between the inner willing and its understanding, transforms itself by correspondence into an outward existence in the sensorimotor organ, whose operations we experience as sensing, moving, verbalizing, and doing. The threefold self is therefore an anatomical construction activated by God through the inflow of spiritual heat and light. What is truly amazing is that spiritual heat and light are live substances, not at all like physical heat and light that come from the natural sun. In fact, the Swedenborg Reports fully establish the existence of the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity. From age 57 to his passing on at 84, Emanuel Swedenborg was a dual citizen, living a dual life, one through the physical body in the natural world of time and place, and the other through the spiritual body in the mental world of eternity, which he called "the spiritual world." He daily wrote copious notes of his observations, which have been published and translated and known as the Writings of Swedenborg. They amount to about 30 volumes.

Swedenborg confirmed that the Spiritual Sun is visible to all who raise their threefold self consciousness to the highest layer of their mind called the celestial-rational layer or "Third Heaven." He encountered and interviewed numerous inhabitants of this mental layer of humanity. These people told him that they had been born on earth in "Most Ancient" times and had been living in their Third Heaven since their death. Swedenborg marveled at their appearance and how they looked in their "early youth," which I take to mean around the age of 20. And what was even more amazing and delightful to discover, was that they were living as married couples in what Swedenborg called "conjugial love."

These Most ancient people were special and different from the race that evolved subsequently on this earth. We are part of the split-brain race whose genius and mentality is called spiritual, while the Most Ancients were a celestial race and their brain was not split into a left and right hemispheres. They were unable to simulate, lie, or act outwardly contrary to what they felt inwardly. Whereas our spiritual race can separate and break up the perfect synergy between willing and thinking and speaking. Our threefold self has evolved to be able to act somewhat independently of each other. As a result we are able to alternate between mental states called heavenly, and others called hellish. For instance when people drive in traffic it is common to alternate between relatively calm or good states and negative or agitated states. Sometimes it is called the Jekyll-Hyde syndrome. This kind of alternation is impossible for the celestial race, but for us, not only is it normal but the ability that makes it possible for us to regenerate the threefold self from its inherited negativity.

God works with every individual, continuously being active in the operations and synergy of the threefold self. From birth to endless eternity we are co-managers with the Divine Psychologist in the domain of our mind. God's management procedures are carried out through two types of forces acting on us. One is called "immediate influx" and the other is called "mediate influx." This refers to the way spiritual heat and light from the Spiritual Sun enters or inflows our threefold organs in the spiritual body. God's Divine Love inflows as spiritual heat substance, while God's Divine Truth inflows as spiritual light substance. The "flow" of spiritual substances first enters the layer of the mind that is closest to the Spiritual Sun. This is called the Third Heaven of mental eternity. Every human being is born into time and born into eternity. One is through a temporary physical body in the natural world, the other is through a permanent spiritual body in the mental world of eternity (or the "spiritual world").

Upon the death of the physical body, we lose contact with the physical world. A few hours later we awaken in our spiritual body. Remember that all along, since birth, our threefold self resides in the spiritual body in the mental world of eternity. When we lose connection to the physical world, we merely continue as before in the spiritual body. There is actual "passing on" or going anywhere. Our self and consciousness, our thoughts feelings and sensations, are already in the mental world of eternity. These have never been, and never could, exist in the physical world, as for instance in the brain of the physical body. Feelings, thoughts, and sensations are immaterial, hence cannot exist in something material.

Swedenborg observed then interviewed thousands of people who have just been resuscitated in the conscious awareness of the spiritual body. He describes the 30-hour process in some detail. He himself had been conscious in his spiritual body from age 57 onward, while normally one regains spiritual consciousness only after resuscitation, when natural consciousness ends. As a result of his dual existence for 27 years, Swedenborg was able to write the Swedenborg Reports which gives science for the first time in history, an empirical glimpse into the world of the afterlife.

One of the most far reaching discoveries Swedenborg's has made is that the threefold self has the spontaneous or automatic ability to project or create a sensorimotor environment that reflects, represents, and corresponds to the affective and cognitive organs acting in synergy. We have a foretaste of the mental world of the afterlife in eternity right now, when we are engaged in dreaming during sleep. We can gain a rational understanding of our afterlife if we reflect on what we are doing when we are dreaming.

It is the threefold self that is doing the dreaming during sleep. When we remember the dream upon awaking, especially when it is vivid, we can still picture or visualize parts of it. Our dreams are sensorimotor expressions and creations of the cognitive and affective organs acting together. We can actually experience sensations in all our modalities -- we can see things, taste and smell them, we can grab things, we can be held down by force or locked up in a room, and we can talk, eat, make love, even fly and transport ourselves instantly anywhere at any distance. This is the power of the sensorimotor organ in giving us subjective experiences. And all the operations of the sensorimotor organ are reactions by correspondence, to the operations in our affective and cognitive organs.

 This is what Swedenborg discovered when he became conscious in the spiritual mind, the spiritual layers of our mental anatomy, into which all human beings arrive after resuscitation. The environment of the afterlife is somewhat similar and congruent with the environment here on earth. When people are resuscitated they see their spiritual body as similar to their former physical body -- it looks like it, feels like it, operates like it. We also know this from our dreams where the mental body (or dream body) of others, and our own body, appear just like the physical body we are all familiar with. Of course they are not similar in construction, the physical body being made of physical matter from the physical planet and sun, while the spiritual body and its threefold system of mental organs, is constructed out of the spiritual substances of the Spiritual Sun. The spiritual body cannot die, cannot starve to death, or get sick from germs and poisons, cannot be held by force in a room, cannot be disciplined against its own will. The spiritual body and its mind is forever free.

Swedenborg observed the interaction patterns between people in their life of eternity. Everything you see around someone, and everything that happens there, is a construction of our "ruling love." This refers to the affective hierarchy that is embedded anatomically in our affective organ. We develop and grow this hierarchy of feelings and intentions by the life choices we make every day, and every hour or minute of the day. All choices that are freely made, that is not coerced by circumstances or people, are called free will choices of love. It is love that dictates and determines the choices we think about and execute. Since we alternate all day between heavenly and hellish loves, we slowly and gradually construct our love hierarchy, both in the heavenly category of operations, and in the hellish. By the time we "pass on" in our consciousness from this world to the next, which occurs at resuscitation, we "arrive" in the other life fully equipped and loaded with our loves in both categories.

Swedenborg discovered that after resuscitation people go through a psychologically and emotionally intense series of mental states during which they are progressively exploring their love hierarchies through experiences and events arranged and provided by the Divine Psychologist. This intense Divine psychotherapy has but one purpose: to bring people in touch with their ruling love and its hierarchy of sub-loves. At last all pretenses of the personality fly out the window, leaving in place the ruling love and its total and absolute control over the threefold self.

Now this ruling love takes over the person's existence. It dictates what the person intends, desires, thinks, and does. Every love that is incompatible or contrary to the ruling love, gets banished forever to the outmost regions of the mind, and they just lie there, inert, no longer operative, as if no longer alive. By the laws of existence in the mental world of eternity, the sensorimotor environment or appearances begin to reflect the new person, now stripped of anything ambivalent. The threefold self is now rendered completely consistent, completely unified.

If the person's ruling love is a heavenly love, a love that is compatible with heavenly order in the heavenly layers of the mental world of eternity, then the person begins a new life of eternity in the heavenly zones of the mental world of humanity. Bit of the ruling love is a hellish one, a love that is incompatible with heavenly order, the the person begins a new life in the hellish zones of the mental world. Thus it is that some people live in heaven, and others in hell.

Swedenborg explored the mental spaces of Heaven and Hell. He describes how people live in habitations, cities, gardens, mountains, and how these sensorimotor appearances are beautiful, benign, spacious, and diverse in the case of the heavenly layers, and how they are ugly, noxious, cavernous, dark, and filled with unspeakable horrors that the inhabitants there impose on each other, playing out their infernal loves, hatreds, and insanities. When those who are in hell are taken up in consciousness to the sensorimotor environment of the heavens in their mind, they experience even more severe tortures of the mind than the worst they have in hell. They feel torn apart from the inside seams of their being, and they spontaneously precipitate themselves back into their hellish loves, environment, and companions. There they feel revived due to having their infernal loves back. For without one's loves, one is not alive.

Even more amazing discoveries are described in the Swedenborg Reports. He was allowed to receive a bird's eye view of the mental world of eternity. And from that perspective he confirmed the shape of the mental world of humanity: the heavenly layers are in the shape of a Grand Human in angelic appearance, and below that, the hellish layers of the mind are in the shape of a Grand Monster. Swedenborg's spiritual geography is therefore identical to mental anatomy. The shape of our threefold self is a human form, and every organ is in the human form as well. Swedenborg visited the various spiritual societies that form the Grand Human and the Grand Monster, and he would refer to his location by reference to the body parts. He would say that he is "in the province of the liver" or in the region of the uterus, or heart, or lungs, or pancreas. The Grand Human and Monster possess the organs of both sexes. People live in one region or another as determined by their ruling love. Those who have compatible ruling loves are close to one another, which means that they communicate with one another more than with distant societies whose ruling love is at variance.

And even more amazing: the character or mentality of the people, as determined by their ruling love, corresponds to the functions and properties of the organs they live in.

And further, Swedenborg discovered that the societies in the Grand Human and Monster are completely integrated and function synergistically. There is a common "respiration" that affects every society mutually. There is a constant "communication" of all operations in the threefold self of every person in a society with all others in that society. And after that, there is a similar reverberation of influence that spreads across the entire mind of humanity. Every single love, thought, and sensation experienced by one human being reverberates and is communicated to the entire network of human beings. As Swedenborg puts it, in the eyes of God all human beings are integrated and seen as one human being.

Now we can get back to the role of neologisms in all this.

All life is of love and all love reflects the infinity of God's love. Love is behind all neologisms. Think of a sentence you wrote or said recently to someone. Where did that sentence originate from? It came from some love, something you wanted to say to someone, something you desired to express in words, some perception or insight you've had by looking at something, or thinking about it. Love comes out on the wings of some thought or idea, and shows itself in the medium of sensorimotor appearances. Heaven is a sensorimotor appearance created by heavenly loves acting through heavenly thoughts. Heavenly loves enter our affective organ through spiritual heat, and transforms itself as the accompanying thoughts, which then produce the environmental appearances, objects, sensations, and actions.

Neologisms are therefore affective loves in cognitive form that create the word, phrase, or sentence.

If you want to know the quality of a person's love, look at the neologisms they produce. The meaning of each neologism is a spiritual map of where the love is that produced it, or, that is within that meaning. Every meaning contains a love. The meaning and the love become one, like husband and wife become one in the conjugial couples of our heavenly society. The marriage between our love and its meaning engenders the coming into existence of a neologism. The parents of the neologism are the love and its meaning. An operation in our affective organ ("love") forms a union with a corresponding operation in our cognitive organ ("meaning"), and the two together create a corresponding operation in our sensorimotor organ, which is the neologism when it activates the speech mechanisms, or the typing-texting of the fingers. The source of the neologism is the love, and the love is an inflow of the spiritual heat into the affective organ.

Such is the nature of infinite Divine love. Its infinite intensity comes out into the created universe through the Spiritual Sun, which Swedenborg described as an aura surrounding the Divine Human. This Spiritual Sun is the origin of all loves in the mental world of eternity. God's infinite love is infinitely diverse and abundant, which is why everything that comes into existence must be unique. No two things that exist can be identical since every thing is created from some love, and all loves from the Divine Human are infinite and unique. This means that there are also infinite truths in God since every love must be married to its own truth. All meanings are forms of truth, and also, forms of truth that are distorted or falsified by the loves of each individual. Spiritual light is truth substance itself, and spiritual heat is love substance itself. Swedenborg interchanged the words love and good, and also the words truth and wisdom, from which come knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom.

In a pointed sense neos are zones of community ignorance. No one knows a neo prior to its construction by just one person. The diffusion of neos to others is the basis of community existence. People obtain their ideas and ideals from the neos of others. This is the process of cultural enrichment. Neo production of a group or society is an index of its inventiveness, adaptability, survivability. Cross-cultural sharing of neo production builds a unified globalism anchored in mutual love. It is the antidote to warfare and ethnocentric antipathy. People who benefit each other from their neo-construction procedures feel integrated in a community of humanity. All neos come down from God into the mind of its inventor. To love another’s neos is to love God in whom the neos are sourced. God is at the center of every neo.

Neologisms are new meanings, hence new truths from new loves.

When a neologism is born in the mental world of eternity, its location in the mind is either in the Grand Human or in the Grand Monster. Neologisms form a continuous reverberation within the spiritual societies that gave birth to its existence in the mind of an individual on earth, who is reflecting, speaking or writing. From there the reverberation of neologisms continue to the adjoining mental societies, and eventually every human being that ever existed or was born, experiences the results of that original reverberation of the birth of the neologism. Since every neologism is a unique spiritual child, it becomes the source of endless new meanings being added to the human understanding. This allows the generations to cumulate in intelligence and form ever more advanced, more humane, more heavenly civilizations on earth.

Each new generation thus benefits from this more advanced mentality and is able to create still more advanced and marvelous neologisms, that will further enrich the spiritual societies of eternity. This endless cycle of progress in the marriage of love and truth within each threefold self, is the organic mechanism that God provides for the endless evolution of the Grand Human, the endless expansion our loves and intelligences, with heaven and earth working together, the spiritual-celestial and the natural-corporeal acting by correspondence as one.

Be conscious of your neologisms and keep track of them. The semantic map or web, they form reveals the nature of your immortal existence in eternity.

Commercial neologisms like trademarks and product names are guaranteed by federal law the right to remain unique. Although one can use the name for other than commercial purposes, the owner can request a judge to prohibit certain ongoing uses by others of that name or title. Literary neologisms cannot be copyrighted, and once introduced or published, they are quotable and usable by anyone, including commercial dictionaries. Scientific neologisms are considered literary products and have no claims to ownership, except historical. Entertainment neologisms include titles of books, scripts, movies, and television programs. These are treated as commercial products and ownership of title and script are protected by federal copyright and patent laws.

Masculine neologisms are fundamentally different from feminine neologisms. One is the product of a man’s cognitive organ, while the other is the product of the feminine cognitive organ. Nothing in a man can be like anything in a woman, and vice versa (see here). I have not made an empirical study of this, and if anyone does, or already has, please email me if you would. It is well known that childish neologisms, that is, neologisms produced by the mind of children, revolves around the sensorimotor awareness of self. They respond with involvement and enthusiasm to little phonological games and interactions that involve verbalizing sound patterns and rhythms. They like stories where the teller imitates sounds of people, things, and animals. When they are a little older, they move on from sensorimotor neologisms to cognitive neologisms and invent clever and engaging limericks that people over the centuries have kept track of (the name Opie comes to mind). Adolescents respond with heart to patriotic neologisms that facilitate the development of a sense of belonging and identity. Young adults fall in love with affective neologisms or romantic neologisms found in the lyrics of songs. They also begin to be enmeshed in political neologisms in which they find a source of validation and self-confidence. Religious neologisms gain their deeper influence on people as they move into mature adulthood. Worshippers gain access to the doctrines and belief systems embodied in the titles of rules, principles, and creeds. In theistic psychology readers and students are introduced to the correspondential sense of Divine Neologisms, which are the words and expressions in Sacred Scripture.

As Swedenborg demonstrates, the Divine Style of Sacred Scripture is composed from Divine dictation or direct inspiration, and is such that every word and expression in it carries three meanings: the literal, the spiritual, and the celestial. Literal Divine Neologisms are expressed in a natural language and in the context of a particular cultural and historical milieu. This is why the literal sense of Sacred Scripture from different religions and time epochs appear to show independence or disagreements and contradictions. This is a necessary consequence of socialization practices in all cultures and places. We must provide intellectual content to religion so that children can be socialized into it, and so that adults can hold on to it with loyalty and belief, and pass it on to their children. This generational process of transmission of religious neologisms requires that their content be congruent with the content of the culture and belief systems that are being practiced. Hence it is that all Sacred Scripture in the literal sense reflects the content of the culture and civilization. God manages the two together, namely, the evolution of civilization and culture, and the progressive revelations in Sacred Scripture over the millennia and centuries.

But the spiritual and celestial senses of Sacred Scripture from different religions, cultures, and epochs are not only compatible but similar in intellectual content. The Swedenborg Reports demonstrate that every Literal Divine Neologism encapsulates within itself, a Spiritual Divine Neologism, and within that, a Celestial Divine Neologism. Everyone who studies the language or science of correspondences revealed in the Swedenborg Reports can perform this extraction process from the literal-historical, to the generalized spiritual, to the universal celestial. This threefold embedding of meaning and consciousness in Sacred Scripture is the physiological process that activates and maintains the threefold self of every individual – sensorimotor self, cognitive self, affective self.

The Literal Divine Neologisms of Sacred Scripture create and establish the sensorimotor self of every human being. The Spiritual Divine Neologisms of Sacred Scripture create and establish the cognitive self of every human being. The Celestial Divine Neologisms of Sacred Scripture create and establish the affective self of every human being.

The sensorimotor self is constructed out of our sensations, sensory involvements, and motor readinesses and determinations. The cognitive self is constructed out of our thoughts, reflections, images, and understandings. The affective self is constructed out of our feelings, loves, intentions, and desires. Hence it is that human consciousness and civilization is produced and managed by the Divine Neologisms in Sacred Scripture. The specific cause-effect connection varies with cultural and individual personality. The connection is more direct when people acknowledge Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech or Absolute and Divine Truth given to humanity for the growth and development of every human being. The connection is more indirect when people deny that Sacred Scripture is God’s Divine Speech or Word. The minds of people who reject the idea that God is real are nevertheless equally managed by God, without which the individual would cease to be human and intelligent. God manages the mind of atheists and others who have a system of beliefs that deny or exclude God, since without this Divine omnipotent management or control, the thoughts of the individual would not remain coherent and adaptable to survival.

The Swedenborg Reports, written in the 18th century, constitute a neologistic revelation as opposed to a “new” revelation which implies something different and foreign. But a neologistic revelation is a revelation about the old and familiar, now seen in a “new light,” which means that “new truths” are now seen in the old that were not seen by anyone before. Thus, the Swedenborg Reports (more commonly known as “the Writings of Swedenborg”), are a neologistic revelation about the Old Testament and the New Testament. These two Sacred Scriptures were studied by thousands of serious scholars and scientists for many centuries, generation after generation, and yet not one single individual saw the correspondential meaning that is hidden within these Sacred Scriptures. The Swedenborg Reports reveal the correspondential sense of the Old and New Testaments. This is not a “new” revelation, but a neologistic revelation about the old and familiar.

For instance, the New Testament has this verse:

nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you.(Luke 17:21)

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2017:21,

What does it mean to say that “the kingdom of God is within you”? Generations of thinkers have been involved in this issue. Wikipedia summarizes a number of these views, which I sample here:

(…) Albert Schweitzer, Rudolf Bultmann, Norman Perrin and Johannes Weiss argued that Jesus’ “Kingdom” was intended to be a wholly futuristic kingdom. These scholars looked to the apocalyptic traditions of various Jewish groups existing at the time of Jesus as the basis of their study [22], [23], [24], [25]. In this view, Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who would bring about the end times and when he did not see the end of the cosmic order coming Jesus embraced death as a tool in which to provoke God into action.

The most common view of the “Kingdom” in recent scholarship is to embrace the truths of both these parties – present reality and future manifestation. Some scholars who take this view are N.T. Wright and G.R. Beasley-Murray. In their views, the “Kingdom” that Jesus spoke of will be fully realized in the future but it is also in a process of “in-breaking” into the present. This means that Jesus’ deeds and words have an immediate effect on the “Kingdom” even though it was not fully manifested during his life. Even greater attention has been paid to the concept of the “Kingdom of God” by scholars during the current third quest for the historical Jesus (of which N.T. Wright is associated). (…)

The present aspect of the Kingdom refers to the changed state of heart or mind (metanoia) within Christians (see Luke 17:20-21), emphasizing the spiritual nature of His Kingdom by saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within (or among) you." The reported activity of Jesus in healing diseases, driving out demons, teaching a new ethic for living, and offering a new hope in God to the poor, is understood to be a demonstration of that Kingdom in action.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church accepts the doctrine of the Kingdom of God dividing it into two phases. These are, the Kingdom of Grace which was established immediately after Adam and Eve sinned, and the Kingdom of Glory which will be fully established when Christ returns to earth for the second time.

(The above is from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Heaven )

 As you can see from this no one was able to think of the correspondential sense that lies hidden in this verse of Sacred Scripture. Divine Speech is Divine Truth itself, and Divine Rationality and Wisdom, and is the source of whatever rationality and understanding human beings are permitted to borrow from God, and to possess “as-of self” in freedom. Every word and expression of Sacred Scripture must have a correspondential sense, and in fact, has a series of correspondential senses since these are arrayed in the mental world of eternity, from its top, which is God, through the layers of the human heavens, and finally and ultimately, in the natural language in which Sacred Scripture comes to us externally in our natural conscious mind. This is called Divine Literal Neologisms, as mentioned above. This Divine literal-historical sense is the ultimate transformation of Divine Speech as it descends across the layers of the mental world of eternity (more commonly known as the “spiritual world” or the afterlife of immortality).

The knowledge of correspondences revealed in the Swedenborg Reports gives scientists a new technology of knowledge extraction or a new spiritual discourse analysis, that provides us with a scientific methodology able to translate Divine Literal Neologisms into Divine Spiritual Neologisms and into Divine Celestial Neologisms. This is literally a Jacob’s Ladder by which we can carry our scientific methodology across the array of discrete layers in eternity (or “discrete degrees”), with each layer or degree getting closer to God’s Divine Speech. The Writings of Swedenborg are called “the New Word” but not in the sense of a “new” revelation, but in the sense of a neologistic revelation of the Old and New Testament Sacred Scriptures, which are then called “the Old Word.”  To say it again, the New Word does not replace the Old Word, but strengthens it, reveals its inner sense, which is infinite, because Divine Speech is in it.

The Divine Literal Neologism written in one English version as “the Kingdom of God is within you” is the external literal-historical sense that contains within it an internal Divine Spiritual Neologism. What is this? You can see from the Wikipedia summary that no one has known this. In the Swedenborg Reports we finally have the answer through revelation of the knowledge of correspondences, which are cause-effect connections between Divine Literal Neologisms and Divine Spiritual Neologisms. The “Kingdom of God” in the literal sense corresponds to the mental world of eternity in the spiritual sense. This is the world which contains the mental layers called “heaven” and “hell.” At the moment of our death here on earth, the resuscitation process begins. Swedenborg observed this process numerous times for 27 years. It takes about 30 hours to complete, and then we awaken as if from sleep, and begin our life of immortality in the mental world of eternity, supplied with a spiritual body (which we have from birth), and a mental environment that responds or reacts to our thoughts and feelings, as dreams respond and react to our wishes, desires, or fears.

The Divine Literal Neologism “within you” corresponds in its spiritual sense to the individual’s mind, which is born in the mental world of eternity and exists there forever. Hence, the entire Divine Literal Neologism “the Kingdom of God is within you” corresponds to the heavenly mental states we have after resuscitation – “if, and only if, we love and enjoy these heavenly mental states.” This is the Divine Celestial Neologism.

Divine
Literal Neologism
Divine
Spiritual Neologism
Divine
Celestial Neologism
the kingdom of God is within you
the heavenly mental states we have after resuscitation
if, and only if, we love and enjoy these heavenly mental states

 

The Evolution of Neo Consciousness

 Human beings are born with a spiritual body in the mental world of eternity. This body is made of substances from the Spiritual Sun, hence it is a living body, in contrast to the other body we also have on a temporary basis, the physical body, which is made of the dead substances of the physical sun. The physical body is connected by correspondence to the spiritual body so that every mental event in the spiritual body has a corresponding correlate somewhere in the physical body. The dying and resuscitation process disengages our spiritual body from the physical body. We then continue immortal life in the mental world of eternity, hardly ever remembering our association to earth. Swedenborg talked to people who had been just resuscitated, and they can still remember clearly their life on earth. But after awhile, the new life of eternity is so engaging and vivid that the past has little value or interest to the person.

The spiritual body is born with a spiritual mind and a natural mind, each arranged in three discrete degrees. We are conscious in the natural mind while we are still connected to our physical body on earth, but we are not conscious of our spiritual mind until after resuscitation. The spiritual mind serves as our consciousness after death and resuscitation. It has the power to create a heaven. The spiritual mind must therefore be carefully prepared so that it is fully operative for us after resuscitation. If we neglect to operationalize the spiritual mind prior to our death and resuscitation, it will not function. Our consciousness cannot move on from the natural mind we use here, to the spiritual mind we use in the mental world of eternity. The natural mind is well suited to give us a level of consciousness and intelligence that we use for our life on earth. But it is totally inadequate in the mental world after resuscitation. Those whose spiritual mind has not been operationalized have nowhere to go but to remain in the consciousness of the natural mind. This makes them insane and reduces their life to sub-human levels called hell.

In order to operationalize our spiritual mind we must regenerate the natural mind.

The natural mind must be regenerated in order to operationalize the spiritual mind. This is because we inherit sub-human traits in the natural mind. These sub-human traits give us many enjoyments to which we become very attached. Even though our rational level of thinking tells us that we must give up these sub-human enjoyments, we are unwilling to give them up. We love them and we make them part of our habits and our identity. They include all the loves of self for the sake of self. For instance, selfish loves regard only our own enjoyments, even if these actions hurt others. It I s more important for us to have those enjoyments than to stop hurting other people, whether they are strangers, family, or society and humankind universally. We violate the human rights of others. We operate below the level of our skill and intelligence. We mismanage, miscalculate, procrastinate, neglect, destroy many of the good things that belong to society and the human race – such as altruism, being useful, being peaceful, being honest, protecting innocence, rational judgment, etc. These are the human traits we inherit. They are our heavenly traits, while the former are our hellish traits.

We inherit both hellish and heavenly traits. These traits are grounded in, and managed by, our ruling love and its hierarchy of assistant sub-loves. The ruling love is the chief or dominant motive in our life. We are born with two ruling loves: a heavenly ruling love and a hellish ruling love. Every individual personality expresses these loves in a unique way. No one has exactly the same ruling loves. As we grow daily we acquire habits of emoting, thinking, and interacting. Each habit is controlled and managed by one of the ruling loves. You can see form this that every habit of thinking and doing, feeling and emoting, must be controlled either by a heavenly ruling love or a hellish ruling love. Every thought, attitude, or reaction must be sourced in either heaven or hell, also called, the Grand Human and the Grand Monster.

The purpose of living on earth for awhile is to develop our natural mind and consciousness through interaction with the physical environment through our physical organs and body. Once we become adults, we are mature enough in mental development to enter the lifelong process of regeneration that will operationalize the spiritual mind we need to access our eternal heavenly life as a conjugial couple with our soul mate. Operationalizing the spiritual mind through regenerating the natural mind is the central purpose for our life here on earth. God works with every individual either with or without acknowledgement by the individual. When not acknowledged as present in the person’s mind, God manages the events, thoughts, and emotions of the individual in such a way that the person has no inkling that anything in their mind is managed by anyone. And when these people hear of this idea of God’s presence and management in their mind, they deny it. Still, God manages everything in such a way as to maintain that individual in perfect freedom to choose between a hellish habit and enjoyment, or a heavenly habit and enjoyment. God activates their sense of conscience and natural morality in order to incline them to human traits, and to disincline them from sub-human traits. This protects them and the people with whom they live.

When God is acknowledged as present, the individual feels attracted to Sacred Scripture and other spiritual writings and topics. God then begins a personal relationship with that individual. In theistic psychology God in that relationship is called the Divine Psychologist. It is a relationship between the Divine Human and the mere human. Human beings are human when they acquire the traits of the Divine Human. When these traits are in human beings, they are called heavenly traits. When these traits are deliberately turned into their opposites through the freedom that God maintains in our mind, they are called hellish traits. The two are opposites to each other and cannot coexist at the same time without the heavenly being destroyed or “corrupted” (no longer heavenly).

Our ability to oppose hellish habits and enjoyments is the basis for the regeneration of our natural mind, which is necessary for the operationalizing of our spiritual mind, which contains our conjugial heaven with our soul mate in eternity. The Divine Psychologist first brings rational truths about life, God, heaven, hell, and regeneration. These are the essential theistic knowledges we must have in order to undergo the regeneration of our natural mind by the Divine Psychologist. He is doing the regenerating, and maintains the freedom to choose in the dilemma He brings to us on a daily basis. For example, we love to laugh out loud and have a good time with our friends at a party or other places. This activity can be carried out in a heavenly order or in a hellish order. The heavenly order is to have fun without being offensive to others. The hellish order is to have fun regardless of bothering other people. The Divine Psychologist brings this event to your life so that your heavenly ruling love may have an opportunity to take over and so that you can have fun without bothering other people who are trying to sleep, or who are trying rest and relax, and they have become innocent by-standers or neighbors of your noisy party.

To take another example: You have the habit of skipping appropriate dental care once or twice day. You either never acquired the habit of daily flossing, or you are performing it without consistency. This is called the hellish order for dental care. The hellish order brings with it all sorts of unpleasant and painful experiences to oneself, and it often hurts those you love, and innocent strangers in the community. The heavenly order of dental care is to think about the good you are doing by flossing, to think about the teeth you are maintaining and taking care of. This gives a good feeling, a heavenly feeling that is far deeper than the hellish enjoyment of skipping and ignoring. The heavenly order gives you results, healthy teeth, clean breath. Your friends and intimates are not exposed to the awful experience of receiving your hellish breath into their nostrils, where it is nauseating them. They can love you more as you make yourself more attractive to love. It alos shows you care about them, which is a good love that others can love in you.

Take another example: As you are looking around you, at work, in school, in a restaurant, at a party, you make comments to yourself about people there. This is normal. There is a heavenly order and a hellish order in which this activity is performed. The hellish order gives you hellish enjoyments, and the heavenly order gives you heavenly enjoyments. This is how you are operationalizing your spiritual mind. You choose to perform daily activities in a way that conform to the heavenly order. This makes your spiritual to respond more and more, higher and higher, being readied by your actions, to serve as the consciousness of your eternal conjugial heaven with your soul mate. The hellish order of thinking about other people is to enjoy putting down, judging them, ridiculing them, resenting them, wanting vengeance on them, wishing bad things to happen to them, wanting to take away what they have and give them to yourself, etc. etc. Doing these hellish mental acts give us pleasure, enjoyments, hellish happiness.

The heavenly order of thinking about people is to think of both the good and bad in every person, and to honor or love the good in them, and to ignore or not love the bad in them, hoping and wishing that they strengthen their resolve for the good, and weaken or abandon their attachment to the bad. This is the heavenly order of thinking about others. It creates a heaven for you, if you think this way, and it does not take away anything or punish the other person. The heavenly order honors the humanity and right to dignity of every human being. This includes the heavenly order of loving not the person, but the good in every person.

The regeneration of our natural mind proceeds by a specific process that we need to know about and cooperate with.

As we know from experience in learning skills, we go through intermediate learning stages. So we can’t expect to regenerate our natural mind by going from hellish motives and enjoyments directly to heavenly motives and enjoyments. There are transitional states of mediate good that is not yet good, but is compatible with genuine good, and eventually leads to good. For example, consider how we learn to be successful in our jobs when we first enter the workforce as a teenager or later. At first we learn to do things so that we don’t get fired. This is not a hellish or selfish motive, but it is not our ultimate goal, which is to love to do a good job for the satisfactions it brings us, as we are thinking about how we benefit others in one way or another by the way we do our job.

There are two stages here: (1) doing our job so we can satisfy our love for not getting fired; (2) doing our job so we can satisfy our love for being useful. The first love is not yet heavenly. The second love is heavenly because the ruling love it belongs to is the love of being useful to others, and this is one of the chief heavenly loves. Consider another example. Since gas at the pump has gone to four dollars a gallon compared to less than half of that just a few years ago, more drivers are learning to save gas by what they drive how they drive. Newspaper stories and Web discussion groups have been discussing the practice of “hypermiling” which involves using a collection of strategies, each of which saves gas. The motivation to save gas can be heavenly or hellish, and the difference is observable in how drivers are performing the activity of saving gas.

Hellish hypermiling techniques include “drafting” (following illegally close behind another vehicle), “pulse & glide” (moving up to wanted speed, then letting the vehicle coast on its own back down, then giving it enough gas back to the wanted speed, and so on – while motorists following behind are subjected to this pattern), turning the engine off and coasting when other vehicles are around, etc. These bad hypermiling strategies increase the risk and inconvenience on others who are being subjected to these illegal driving methods. Heavenly hypermiling techniques include keeping tire pressure up, using higher quality engine oil, carrying less load, avoiding unnecessary acceleration, avoiding the emotional use of the gas pedal, maintaining proper car maintenance schedules, driving less when possible. From these consequences of their actions you can see that the motive or love to save gas can be either a hellish motive (“It’s good for me, and too bad for the cars around me.”), or a heavenly motive or love (“It’s good for everyone, and no one is punished through it.”).

Here is another common instance of an intermediate good that leads eventually to more genuine good and to heaven. It is the idea many people have that heaven is a reward from God for the good deeds we accomplished, and hell Is a place of punishment from God for the bad deeds we accomplished. This intermediate good is not fully compatible with the rational understanding of Sacred Scripture and God, from which we realize that God is pure love and cannot punish people for something they did in the past, especially in such a horrific way as what we imagine happens in hell as a form of punishment and torture. We rationally understand that God is good and omnipotent, hence does not have such loves that involve the satisfaction of punishing people who have evil loves and hurt others. Instead, God makes a way of isolating the acts of such people and keeping others safe from the consequences.

As you by now understand from what precedes, that heaven and hell in eternity are not rewards and punishments but consequences of one’s own ruling loves. Swedenborg observed that when people with a hellish ruling love (though not yet knowing it), ask after resuscitation, to be led to heaven, when they are there, they become numb, see nothing, and experience inner torture as if they are falling into a death swoon. These are the anatomical and physiological consequences of a ruling love existing in the wrong mental layer. The individual feels like dying, in agony, and being tortured. It Is not possible for a hellish ruling love to live in a heavenly environment. Hence it is that God makes provision for hellish loves to exist in the unregenerated natural mind after resuscitation. Hell Is not a place of punishment, but a mental state provided of the mercy of God, who is taking care of those who love hellish traits and consciousness, so that they too may have an environment in which they can pursue their loves in eternity.

What people do in their mind individually sums up to the level of humanity in a society or civilization. Humanity on this earth has been evolving in consciousness since the beginning. It took thousands of generations to cumulate the modern scientific civilization in which we live today. We get a good indication of the three phases of our individual regeneration when we consider the three phases of the collective evolution of rational and scientific thinking that evolved in the Western cultures during the past three thousand years. We know from the Swedenborg Reports that God manages the level of our thinking and feeling through the diffusion of knowledge and principles based in Sacred Scripture. We can contrast the level of thinking that is evident in the literal and historical meaning of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture (written between 3000 and 2000 BC), the New Testament Sacred Scripture (written between 35 and 100 AD), and the Writings Sacred Scripture, which we call the Swedenborg Reports (written in the eighteenth century).

Our motives and thinking in layers 9A and 9C (sensual-corporeal mind), matches the level of thinking of the Old Testament civilization. When we are still children mentally, we think a lot about being punished and getting rewards from our parents, teachers, and other adults. Our motives (9A) serve the ruling love of “me first.” We want our childhood pleasures and conveniences, insist on them no matter what, and throw a temper tantrum when we are opposed in our loves. We give in to our loves of owning the toys of others by taking them away from other children, if we can. We always look out for “number one” and we enjoy being cruel to other children who are different or who are more successful than we are. As children we think of God as a Father Figure that punishes and rewards what we do. We also have heavenly loves such as the love of obeying our parents and the love of being good, of cleaning up, and sharing food and toys. When we remain at this level of thinking and emoting as we grow up, we become corporeal minded adults, living a life that is mixed with prejudice and selfishness, and also with pride in parenting, loyalty to one’s own group, and a steady work ethic for self and family.

Those of us who grow out of the corporeal mentality of living, do so by acquiring higher mental loves that are available to our consciousness in layer 8 (abstract materialism). We must have a love of learning and being instructed, in order to move on in thinking and emoting to level 8C and 8A. We learn scientific explanations for everything around us. We begin to understand the objective material world around us. We can understand management and government principles, so that our laws become oriented towards supporting democracy and equal opportunity. We can create abstract forms of art and architecture. We can build an engineering industry capable of manufacturing machines, computers, and sophisticated armaments that can destroy and kill many people at once. In the United States in 2008 people will donate one billion dollars a day in voluntary charitable contributions. Every individual has equal rights under the law. One third of the population is overweight or obese, and half of all marriages end in divorce. Millions of children grow up without adequate medical care or parenting. And so on. I am drawing here a mixture of hellish and heavenly values and attitudes.

Such as are the individuals in the United States, such is that nation. One is a reflection of the other. The mentality of the United States is grounded in the New Testament Sacred Scripture. The Old Testament Sacred Scripture at mentality 9 focuses on the corporeal and the physical. God commands people what physical things they must perform to merit a fruitful life here on earth (e.g., specific animal sacrifices with specific rituals). God is portrayed as angry when people do forbidden physical things. God then rages in wrath and screams vengeance, and takes it out on the people, on their children, and on their children’s children. The punishments and the rewards are physical. There is almost nothing specific mentioned about the afterlife. This corporeal spirituality at layer 9 mentality, contrasts with the abstract and materialistic spirituality at layer 8 mentality, to which the New Testament is addressed. Now God is no longer portrayed as partial to just one nation and religion (the “Chosen People” in the Old Testament). God is now portrayed as universal, regardless of culture and religion.

In the abstracted mentality of the New Testament Sacred Scripture (layer 8), the new consciousness is attained that God wants to relate to us in the mental world as much as, or more than, He wants to relate to us in the physical world. Sinning is now defined as a mental corruption. The physical becomes secondary and is seen as the mere result of the mental. By themselves, physical rituals, sacrifices, and regulations are meaningless and useless. It’s the thought and motive in the physical act that must be examined and judged. Now for the first time in Western history, the New Testament Sacred Scripture reveals an astonishing and shattering new scientific fact, which is, that the afterlife of eternity is the mental world that is already familiar to us. One instance of this revelation is the well known declaration of Jesus in the New Testament that “the kingdom of God is within you.” The “kingdom of God” refers to heaven, and “within you” refers to our mental world. Hence it is that “sinning in the mind” is the actual sin that bars heaven to us. Not by punishment – but by the love that attaches us to thinking that way.

The Old Testament (layer 9) is for the concrete-corporeal mind. The New Testament (layer 8) is for the abstract-sensuous mind. The Swedenborg Reports (layer 7) are for the external-rational mind. These three anatomical layers are the origin of the three degrees of human consciousness and mentality in this world.

The Swedenborg Reports reveal that both the Old and New Testaments are written in the code of correspondences, as it applies to each level, which is distinct. It is shown that when you know these correspondences and apply them to the literal text using the specified procedures, the new underlying meaning that is derived is entirely at a different level of consciousness. While the literal sense of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture is addressed to layer 9 (corporeal-sensuous mind), its correspondential sense is actually addressed to layers 7i, 6, 5, 4 – in other words, to the spiritual mind, not at all to the natural mind. Layer 7i is the interior of the natural-rational mind (layer 7e), which forms the exterior of that layer. The interior anatomical portion of the natural-rational mind receives its influx of reality from the higher spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4), while the exterior anatomical portion of the natural-rational mind receives its influx of reality from the lower natural layers of the mind (layers 8 and 9). Hence it is that we have two discretely different registers of thinking available to us while on this earth. One is a rationality based on the external natural world (layer 7e), and the other is a rationality based on the interior spiritual world (layer 7i).

We do not, like Swedenborg, have consciousness in our spiritual mind, while we are conscious in the natural mind. Swedenborg talked to some of the people who had lived on this earth during the initial generations of human beings, many thousands of years ago. He was able to interview them when he visited their heaven in layer 4. The are mentioned in Sacred Scripture as the “Most Ancient Church.” They are described as a celestial race, possessing a whole brain, while our race of humanity that came afterward is called the spiritual race, and we possess a split-brain with left and right hemispheres. These people had dual consciousness, like Swedenborg, who was given the ability at age 57, while they had it since birth. At any rate, I don’t know how far the two situations are similar since they were whole-brained, while Swedenborg was split-brained.

Swedenborg found out that their Sacred Scripture was “written on their heart,” which meant that they were spiritually “online” with the mental world of eternity, where their grandparents and great-grant parents lived in layer 4. While on earth they looked at the physical world around them as representative effects of mental causes. Today we too can do this when we adopt the thinking order and rationality that is expressed in the universal correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture. These meanings or truths raise our consciousness when we allow it to be immersed in the thinking of correspondences.

 

Raising our Consciousness by Thinking in Correspondences

The pre-modern person was unable to think in correspondences. The wisest of the ancients were able to immerse their mind in the knowledge of correspondences, but it took a lifetime of harsh spiritual discipline, and only a few people in each generation could master it, and pass the knowledge on to the next generation. But today’s modern mind can easily handle the complexity and rationality of thinking in correspondences. The study of theistic psychology gives every student the ability to acquire the mental skill of thinking in correspondences. In the future, thinking in correspondences will be taught in public schools to children as part of the general literacy curriculum. It will greatly enhance the interest and receptivity of physical subjects such as biology, farming, husbandry, art, dance, sports, hand craft, etc. Thinking in correspondences is to translate the sensory input from external-natural (layer 9, 8, 7e) to interior-natural (layer 7i).

The duality of reality is expressed in the dualism of the external-natural and the interior-natural.

When we see the interior-natural of an event, quality, or object, we see its cause, its spiritual origin in the mental world of eternity (layer 7i), but when we see the exterior-natural of an event, quality, or object, we see the mere effects, the representation of its true reality in the mental world of eternity (layer 7e). The content and meanings in our exterior-rational thinking is limited to the appearances of reality. Imagine someone buying a large plot of land for just a few hundred dollars. Hard to believe – until you find out that the plot of land is a reflection in a mirror, or a painting on the wall, or just a video of the real thing. Now you can see that the person who bought this for a few hundred dollars got fleeced. If you take the appearances of reality to be reality, then your consciousness and thinking will be limited to layer 8 (these being materialistic abstractions of appearances).

According to the Swedenborg Reports, God has revealed the knowledge of correspondences to the modern mind of humanity in order to allow science and education to be the vehicle for its transmission to the new generations. There are critical benefits available to people who have been prepared for resuscitation through the skill of thinking in correspondences. Regeneration of the inherited natural mind progresses to the degree that people are willing to think in correspondences. The more the natural mind is regenerated, the more the spiritual mind is enabled. There is therefore a direct relation between thinking in correspondences and the quality of our life in eternity.

All genuine Sacred Scripture given by God anywhere anytime to some culture or people, is addressed to the spiritual mind when considered in the correspondential sense. In the new millennium of 2000, when I first published theistic psychology on the World Wide Web, another landmark step was taken in the history of research on human consciousness. Theistic psychology is defined as the scientific knowledge of God that is extracted from the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture. This new way of thinking in science (interior-natural layer 7i), begins a new age in science, leaving behind the monism of materialism, and immersing itself in the new methodology of theistic science.

The dualist thinking in science (layers 7e and 7i together), integrates into a rational unity the physical and the mental, the temporal and the eternal. At last, science can explore cause-effect relations between the rational and the sensory, the universal and the local, the spiritual and the natural, the mental and the physical. God has created a dual reality which we can now recognize and make part of our literacy, our culture, our government and industry. Every detail of society is a representative of some eternal reality in the mental world of eternity. Managing society will be far more successful and effective when we understand how every detail is caused by some mental love that is sourced either in the Grand Human (mental layers 4, 5, 6) or in the Grand Monster (mental layers -7, -8, -9). Similarly, managing ourselves will be far more effective if we understand how our loves today create our future in eternity.

The powers of a new scientific thinking in the interior-natural mind is awesome to behold. Every human being possesses all the anatomical layers of the human mind. Nothing whatsoever prevents us from operating our life from the interior-natural layer (7i) instead of the exterior-natural layer (7e). Nothing prevents us – except our own ruling love. Love prevents thinking that is contrary to love’s fulfillment. Such as our love is, such is our thinking. When we love materialistic loves more than we love spiritual loves, our natural mind is called a “little hell.” This is our daily consciousness, the meanings and thoughts with which we operate our conscious life and manage our identity as a person. But when we love spiritual loves more than we love natural loves, our natural mind is called a “little heaven.”

When we begin our regeneration in young adulthood, we turn our natural mind more and more into a little heaven. This means that our feelings (A), thoughts (C), and actions (S) are conjoined and arranged in a heavenly order, that is, in the order of layers 6, 5, and 4 (the “Grand Human”). Until then our natural mind was a little hell activated by thoughts and feelings sourced in the Grand Monster (layers -7, -8, -9). The people in these mental layers who are connected to us in our unregenerate states, are collectively a hell as a spiritual society, and each member’s mind is a little hell. The negative marker indicates that these layers were not regenerated prior to resuscitation. As discussed earlier, people after resuscitation who imagine that they live in a physical world are insane, and live out a delusional life in eternity based on fantasy and make-believe.

One striking example is given by the people in the hellish layers that Swedenborg observed who live in a collective and mutual fantasy of owning a fortune of gold. By various means and laborious efforts over a long period, each member is able to acquire a few tiny pieces of gold. At regular intervals they all gather together in one room, each placing their few pieces on the table. When these grow into a large heap of gold, they sit around it in silence, watching it, and imagining that this is their own gold. One man that Swedenborg interviewed said that they do this when they begin to experience an interior compulsion to see a large heap of gold that they can imagine is their own. He said that they know rationally that the gold they own is actually a tiny fraction of the large heap. And yet, they are able to fantasize that all of it is their own.

The fantasy is actually created by their ruling love. They are obsessively slavish to this love. The rational thoughts they can think remain on the outside of themselves. The ruling love will allow one thought that it keeps close by – the thought of “All this is mine, mine alone.” This false sensory reality (S) appearing in the cognitive organ (C) is constructed there by the love in the affective organ (A). It is their love for such a fantasy that is so extreme, so much more intense than any other love they can have. This is the top rank in their hierarch of satisfaction and enthusiasm. This is the way they can experience life again, or being alive again – like after a long sickness. He said that this state lasts for awhile, and then they all experience the irresistible need for a ‘recharge’ session. If they are prevented from it, they begin to feel depressed, as if all enthusiasm of living has departed from them. Then they are revived again after the fantasy recharge session.

The awful thing about this, I think, is that in between the fantasy recharge sessions, their folly does not diminish. The recharge experience works only on their affective organ, where the ruling love sits and commands. Their cognitive reality remains insane and unreal, filled with un-neos of everything. The mad ruling love (A) turns their mind and their society (C) into a mad, mad world (S). There is no consistency of growth and mental development. The people in that mental state become progressively more mad, less capable of having human feelings and rational thoughts. They are in a degraded form of sub-human life in terms of their emotions, their reasoning, and their interactions with each other.

The Battle of Heaven and Hell in Our Mind

Consider a common situation. We have the love of living in a clean place and keeping our living space clean and uncluttered. We enjoy that when someone else does it for us. We enjoy clean and orderly living and work spaces. We have a love for these things. This is a heavenly love since nothing in the perfection of the mental heaven of eternity can be less than perfect. Our love has the power to make things perfect in our mental world. But we don’t have the love of cleaning. Instead, we have the love of not cleaning, the love of avoiding cleaning, the love of not having to do what it takes to keep things orderly and clean around our living spaces. Many people hate cleaning chores. Many people do cleaning chores while they are hating it. Many people procrastinate and postpone cleaning because they hate it. Yet they all love a clean place. So something is wrong here.

What’s wrong with our natural mind is always the same thing: it is contaminated by inherited hellish tendencies and enjoyments. These are called hellish not out of moralistic judgment, but out of rational and medical assessment. In theistic medicine, the definition of “hellish” is any love that is sourced in the Grand Monster. The definition of “heavenly” is any love that is sourced in the Grand Human. The scientific and medical fact is that every love is an organic operation of the affective organ (also called the “will”). The affective organ is activated by an influx from either the Grand Human (or mental layers 4, 5, 6), or in the Grand Monster (our unregenerate mental layers -9, -8, -7). There is no other source of activation. These are the only two possibilities, given the mental anatomy revealed in the Swedenborg Reports. We inherit from our parental line, built-in connections to these two sources. Our life as an infant is activated by these two sources.

Observe an infant’s behavior and you will notice both heavenly traits (like innocence, curiosity, smile, focus on faces, etc.), as well as hellish traits (battles with parents about eating, lying down, sleeping, not touching, not eating, etc.). In childhood, the hellish traits become more visible and problematic – disobedience, stubbornness, rebellion, temper tantrum, screaming, hitting, getting away, not cooperating, etc. In adolescence and young adulthood we begin to see a lot of rebellion, criminality, addiction, destructiveness, emotional problems, selfishness, irrationality, etc. Every hellish act or habit comes from a hellish love, which comes from the people who live in the Grand Monster layers of the mental world of eternity. It’s a downhill journey. All we need to do is to give in to our hellish loves until we have a hellish ruling love entrenched at the top of the love hierarchy in our affective organ (layers -9A, -8A, -7A).

Immediately after resuscitation we are fully ready and eager to join one of the numerous mental societies of the Grand Monster. We are inexorably and irresistibly drawn to a particular society that is closest in compatibility to the hellish ruling love we brought with us in our natural mind (layers 9, 8, 7), from our life on earth. This is a downhill journey. It’s easy. You just coast with the river of inherited traits and enjoyments, living your life with them, enjoying them, loving them, becoming part of the society in which our ruling love is sourced. Swedenborg observed that when people first enter their “place” in the Grand Monster they are overjoyed, having the feeling that they at last have arrived “home.” The people around them who welcome them look familiar, feel like brothers, sisters, and cousins This is because all along we have been connected with these people as we developed our specific hellish loves.

God must intervene in this downhill slide towards and into hell. Every modern human being born today would take that affective slide, and arrive at their resuscitation surrounded by and grounded in some society of the Grand Monster. When they open their eyes after resuscitation is complete, and begin their final journey to immortality in eternity, they are surrounded by people from their society, and follow them quickly with gladness. Little do they know, or suspect, that after the introductions and the honeymoon period, their life turns into a hellish misery. They discover that the people around them are cruel and masterful manipulators. Their evil loves progressively worsens and creates a monster or demon, where a human being was before. This happens because the hellish ruling loves systematically finds and destroys any heavenly love remaining active. The individual becomes a mere evil caricature of the former self. The person is no longer a mixture of good traits and hellish traits. Imagine what you would be like if everything good and intelligent were put to sleep in your mind, and everything evil and stupid were to be intensified and magnified. Such is the person you would be in the hell of your eternity.

This is why God must intervene on behalf of all those people who are willing to undergo the process of regeneration before their resuscitation. This is a process that starts in young adulthood and goes on for the rest of your life on earth. God as the Divine Psychologist arranges the events of your life and the thoughts of your mind in such a way as to confront you with natural, spiritual, and celestial temptations. These are mental states during which you are consciously reflecting on your regeneration, while facing a dilemma or choice. The Divine Psychologist keeps you in a perfect balance by connecting you unconsciously to one of the spiritual societies in the Grand Human and a counter-society in the Grand Monster. The loves of the people in the Grand Human flow into that portion of your affective organ that contains your hierarchy of heavenly loves and sub-loves. The loves of the people in the Grand Monster flow into that portion of your affective organ that contains your hierarchy of hellish loves and sub-loves. The heavenly and hellish loves flowing in can actually be felt very intensely during the temptation moments.

For example, during your reflection of cleaning up your work space, you actually feel the intense motive to clean up. This is from the loves of the Grand Human flowing in. At the same time, or moments later, or alternately between the two, you feel like not cleaning up, like letting it go this time, postponing it. This postponement gives you an intense love and satisfaction. You are in a perfect balance. A heavenly love and a hellish love precisely oppose each other in your will. The Divine Psychologist manages with omnipotence and omniscience to keep you in this balance by maintaining the contact between you and the opposed societies. Every time you have this temptation you are given the opportunity to reject the love of not cleaning up, and to attach yourself to the love of cleaning up. That’s how the process of regeneration operates. You can see that you have plenty of time, plenty of opportunities – but not a limitless amount. Your time comes and you are thrown into the dying and resuscitation process. Then it’s too late to change anything after that. Your ruling love now at the top of your love hierarchy, makes the final decisions.

You can see from all this that “hellish” and “heavenly” are objective medical terms associated with mental anatomy, not subjective terms that are moralistic or judgmental.

 

The Mental Zone of Resuscitation

The journey of life begins in full at death.

The dying and resuscitation process lasts about 30 hours. Swedenborg observed thousands of people in the course of 27 years of observation who were undergoing the dying and resuscitation process. Swedenborg was allowed to undergo the dying and resuscitation process in order to understand the details of the procedure. He reports that upon awakening from this process people first see the faces of the spiritual medics who are assigned by God to handle every resuscitating person. There is a special zone in the mental world of eternity (or “spiritual world of the afterlife”), where resuscitation takes place. It is a biological process completely unconscious to the individual. Swedenborg says that God is especially close in attendance, managing the medical skills of the volunteers who came “down” out into the mental zone of resuscitation. These volunteers live in their mental layer 4 (celestial-rational consciousness). I was very surprised when I first read about these details in the Swedenborg Reports. It is quite likely that you too are surprised at these details. The mind is flooded with obvious questions, all of which come down to this one central question: Is this fact or fiction?

When I first started reading the Swedenborg Reports in 1981 I started with no knowledge of who he was or what these books are about. I just started reading one of the 27 Swedenborg volumes on the library shelf. Since I was a professor I had done this many times before about a favorite topic – the mind, spirituality, consciousness, God, the Bible, immortality, the afterlife. I confess here that I was little motivated to finish these books. I went as far as I could to keep my interest up. I felt guilty about this, wondering what was wrong with me. Other people love books, talk about books and authors, look forward to more books. They are very involved in books. I thought I was too. For many years I kept buying books to add to my collection. I kept all my books from college and graduate school. When I moved from one place to another, boxing and carting the books was my biggest expense. Again, I confess here that most of the text of these books remained unread by me. So I loved books. Why then was I not reading them like other people normally do.

Actually, I am still surprised to find out from people I talk with that they don’t read books. Swedenborg mentions that God (whom he always reverently referred to as “the Lord”), forbade him to read many books he may have otherwise read. This had to do with books on the subjects that he was going to write about, namely: Sacred Scripture, God, the spiritual world, angels, theology, and doctrines of the Church. Swedenborg’s thinking on these subjects had to remain neutral and impartial between the various religious and philosophical factions. He had to remain the impartial scientist and researcher. Swedenborg’s mind was the human vehicle by which God was constructing a new science to be known as Theistic Science, of which theistic psychology is the first instance.

This book written in 2008 is an executive summary, if you will, of my efforts to build a foundation for theistic psychology, which I began in 2000 after 19 years of studying the Swedenborg Reports. These were the only books that I have ever voluntarily read in full. Not only that, I have read them several times, I listen to audio versions of them every night when I go to bed, every day when I drive to and from work, every time I’m on an air flight, or in a doctor’s waiting room. I love having those audio versions that I listen to silently through ear phones, bothering no one. At the beginning I sometimes had the urge to start talking to people and to give them the good news – Did you know we are immortal? Did you know we are born into eternity with a spiritual body? Did you know that the Bible has a hidden spiritual meaning? Do you know why God allows evil in the world? Do you know what happens to children who die? To old people who die? Etc. etc.

It was fascinating for me to discover that people were not as interested as I was in these topics. I could not get over this. How could they just have a sort of take it or leave it attitude towards these topics? What other topic could be more important and fascinating that to know who is God, what kind of life do we have after death, do we lived a married life, do we have a body with which to enjoy sensual things such as we know them in the physical body or will we be sexless, foodless, passionless, and just a floating ghost or a dream fantasy…How does God manage every detail of every person’s life? How can Sacred Scripture be Divine and Holy? What makes it Holy? Did God really speak those words? Where is their supernatural power?

What is “mental”? Is it real? Is it as real as what is physical? What is the relation between the physical and the mental? Is it the same as the relation between the natural and spiritual? Are there angels? Devils? Do they influence people’s lives? What are natural laws? Does God manage these directly or indirectly? Do we have a spiritual body? What does it look like and what is made of? Do we mental organs, or only mental functions? Are some people born evil? How can people improve themselves and society? What does it take to have peace in the world? Why do some children die? Are there animals in the afterlife? What are the basic scientific laws God wants humanity to know about? Etc. etc.

I apologize for this long string of questions. They show you what some of the topics are in the Swedenborg Reports. Rational and full answers are provided to each of these questions. These were my questions, and the answers I sought in books in my adult life. I did not find the answers in those books. I only found incomplete, partially inconsistent, aesthetically inelegant speculations, theories, and intellectual constructions of vast proportions. I was desolate and desperate, my mind starving for rational truths about reality and the future. No one had them. No, not one. Until the Swedenborg Reports. Since then, everyone anytime anywhere can have rational, scientific, and complete answers to all these questions, to begin with, and many more as one continues studying them. Why? What is so special about the Swedenborg Reports?

The Swedenborg Reports are written in natural-rational correspondences of Divine Speech or Divine Rationality. In other words, Divine Truth in the form of spiritual light from the Spiritual Sun, flows first into the cognitive organs of those who are conscious there in anatomical layer 4C of the mental world of eternity. This highest level of human consciousness is also called “Third Heaven” and “celestial angels.” Our thinking layer 4C is by means of the celestial-rational correspondences in which is written the Sacred Scripture version that is in layer 4.

Second, the people who are conscious in mental layer 5C react to the activity in layer 4C above them, or within them. Our thinking in layer 5C (“Second Heaven” or “spiritual angels”) is based on the spiritual-rational correspondences of the version of Sacred Scripture they have in mental layer 5C.

Third, the people who are conscious in mental layer 6C react to the activity in layer 5C above them, or within them. Our thinking layer 6C (“First Heaven” or “spiritual-natural angels”) is based on the spiritual-natural correspondences in which is written the Sacred Scripture version that is in layer 6C.

Fourth, the people on earth who are undergoing regeneration of the natural mind (layers 7, 8, 9), react to the activity that is going on in their spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4). When we are conscious in mental layer 7Ci (the interior-natural mind) we are open to react to the correspondential sense of the Swedenborg Reports. Through reflecting on the correspondential sense, constructing a rational meaning out of it, we are able to react by correspondence to the activities in the layers of consciousness above us (layers 6, 5, 4).

Fifth and Sixth, the people on earth who are unwilling to study the correspondences in Sacred Scripture, react to the materialistic (layer 8C) and corporeal (layer 9C) components that only represent and correspond to the real operations that take place in their higher spiritual layers of consciousness (layers 7i, 6, 5, 4).

You can see from this that the descent of the Divine Neo, or exteriorization process of creation, goes through the sequential discrete anatomical layers of the mental world of eternity. At each successive layer the correspondences of Divine Truth or Divine Speech become more opaque, more covered over, more distant in meaning and consciousness. By the time Divine Speech has exteriorized and descended to mental layers 8 and 9, the Divine Truth has been transformed five or six times, translated into lower and lower forms of spiritual truth that is comprehensible to people whose consciousness is based in physical appearances of the senses (layer 9C), and on the logical abstractions based on those appearances.

This sequence of exteriorization of spiritual light through the mental world of eternity is replicated in exact proportions in the history, development, and evolution of human civilizations. The Old Testament Sacred Scripture was delivered to humanity three thousand years ago. The literal and historical meaning was addressed to the mentality of the people living in that age. But unbeknownst to them, the entire sequence of descent of Divine Truth in correspondences was contained within the literal sense of that Sacred Scripture. This follows the Divine law that sequential degrees are together in simultaneous degree. The first of the sequence is the center of the simultaneous. It is the deepest, most hidden. This is layer 4 with its celestial-rational correspondences to Divine Truth, the closest there can be in human minds. This layer can be recovered by extraction through the application of the laws of correspondences applied as prescribed in the Swedenborg Reports.

Layer 5 is next in the literal sense, less hidden, more visible, easier to extract. This layer allows us to extract the spiritual-rational correspondences hidden the literal of Sacred Scripture. Layer 6 is closest to the literal sense. It is less hidden and more visible in the extraction process.

So when we look at Sacred Scripture we are looking at the outside of Divine Truth, transformed and represented by correspondences. We can reflect on the spiritual-natural correspondences (layer 6) that lie hidden just below the surface of the literal and historical details being related in the text. Similarly with layer 5, which raises our consciousness to the spiritual-rational level of thinking and feeling (“Second Heaven”). Finally we can access layer 4, which raises our consciousness to the celestial-rational level of quasi-omniscience.

All Sacred Scripture that is genuine and from God must go through the sequence described above, and therefore, all Sacred Scripture contains the entire sequence to be extracted. While the literal sense is cultural, time-bound, and ethnic, applying mostly to one people, the correspondential senses that are extracted are not cultural, because not natural. The topics are spiritual, that is, relating the mental world of eternity.

It is anatomical layer 7i (interior-natural mind) that makes this extraction process possible. The Divine Psychologist must first activate this layer which otherwise remains dormant and non-functional. God activates layer 7i when the individual begins the regeneration process. The activation process is progressive, only a little at the beginning, and much more after that as we make progress in our regeneration. The more we resist our inherited hellish loves, the more our loves become heavenly, and the more activation takes place in our interior-natural mind.

This process slows down or dies when we make up our own interpretations to the literal of Sacred Scripture, using human knowledge, nontheistic science, and theory. This was done for hundreds of years in the case of the Old and New Testament Sacred Scriptures. And yet, after thousands of books written over hundreds of years, not one of them was able to present the correspondential sense that lay hidden within. This is because God prevents that path of thinking in order to protect people from “profaning” Sacred Scripture. This refers to destroying the spiritual mind, or, preventing it from ever being opened. When this is done, the fate of the individual is a progressively worsening hell to eternity. To protect people from profaning the knowledge of correspondences it remained hidden until the Swedenborg Reports, which begin the modern era of theistic science.

With respect to consciousness, individual development recapitulates collective evolution.

The regeneration process begins the phases of spiritual development. All spiritual development progresses by the elevation of our consciousness. Our consciousness exists at the level of the meanings with which we think. Early in the regeneration process we think with the literal meaning of the Sacred Scripture that we acknowledge as the basis of our relationship to God. Our consciousness is immersed in the literal meanings. For instance, when I first started reading the Swedenborg Reports my consciousness was immersed in the literal meaning of it. This literal is written in natural-rational correspondences at layer 7e, the external portion of the rational mind (layer 7). This layer is the highest of the three anatomical layers of the natural mind (8 and 9 are the other two).

As already explained, our thinking in this external layer of the rational mind (7e) is based on our own ability to figure out the meaning and try to make rational sense out of it. This is the approach or method we use when we study a textbook in a high school or college course. Also, when we read a technical manual for building or assembling something – we read the literal sense of the instructions and apply them to the physical objects to which they refer. This approach to the task of extracting the hidden layers of Sacred Scripture, is therefore done from the external layer of the natural-rational mind (layer 7e), using our own intelligence and methods of discourse analysis. This approach fails because it rests on layers 8C and 9C, which are time bound, culture bound, place bound, and ignorance bound. These are mere representations and appearances, not the real thing.

The real thing is what comes from the Spiritual Sun in the form of spiritual light substance and spiritual heat substance flowing into the mental world of humanity. This is real. This is the reality. By the time this reality or truth filters down to layers 8 and 9, the literal meanings no longer show all the hidden layers which the literal meaning covers over. This fundamental limitation and existential problem is overcome by the Divine Psychologist managing things in every individual’s mind form birth to endless eternity. In order for this to happen we ourselves must develop a love for the Divine arrangement, which is truthfully reflected in the arrangement of feelings, thoughts, and sensations in layers 4, 5, 6. We are not conscious in these layers prior to resuscitation. How then can we re-arrange our natural mind into a “little heaven” if we cannot rely on our own thinking regarding what Sacred Scripture says that God wants from us?

The answer is that we cannot rely on our interpretation of Sacred Scripture but must rely on enlightenment from the Divine Psychologist. This enlightenment is given in proportion to our love for cooperating with the Divine Psychologist in our regeneration. The Swedenborg Reports reveal that when we read Sacred Scripture the people in layers 6, 5, 4 are involved through correspondence. While we think of the literal sense as we read, they think of the inner sense hidden within the literal. First in line are the people in layer 6 who think of the spiritual-natural correspondences that are just below the surface literal meanings. Next in line are the people in layer 5 who think of the spiritual-rational correspondences that are two degrees below the surface literal meanings. Next in line are the people in layer 4 who think of the celestial-rational correspondences that are deeply buried below the surface literal meanings.

When a child reads Sacred Scripture the people in layer 4 are especially moved by the celestial correspondences that are hidden in the inmost sense. They can see this inmost celestial sense more clearly when a child reads Sacred Scripture because the ideas they have of the meanings are purely literal in the appearances (layer 9), rather than in the abstracted thoughts of the appearances, which is more nearly how adults read the language and style of ancient Sacred Scripture. The people in layers 6, 5, 4 are affected by the correspondence and are conscious of being affected – but they are not conscious or aware of any personal features of the people by whom they are affected, such as their identity, gender, or cultural origin. The vertical community operates by the laws of correspondences and without the conscious awareness of the people involved.

Progress in regeneration is possible to the extent that we do not consult our own self-intelligence when we are engaged in the process of extracting correspondences from Sacred Scripture. Neither can we consult the self-intelligence of someone else, which is also inevitably based on the order and arrangement of the physical world (layers 9C, 8C, 7eC). Our success in regeneration can come only from the interior layer of our natural-rational mind (7iC). An example of this is theistic psychology which excludes all hypotheses and theories that we can come up with about the hidden layers of Sacred Scripture. It includes only that which is explained in the literal sense of the Swedenborg Reports, but not on the literal sense itself, but the correspondential senses that lie within it.

Layer 7iC thinking is possible only as enlightened thinking. Anyone has this enlightened thinking when willing to use the information for one’s regeneration. This is the only love that will work. This love connects the individual to the Divine Psychologist in a conscious rational relationship in layer 7Ci. This new consciousness is called spiritual consciousness and is at first spiritual-natural (layer 6), but advances further depending on our willingness to fight our temptations in spiritual combat.

Regeneration is a lifelong process of getting rid of our hellish loves, and replacing them with new heavenly loves. The replacement of old loves with new loves is an organic process involving spiritual substances in the mental world of eternity. We are these living spiritual organic entities. Our identity and uniqueness comes from the unique personal “print” that God assigns to each of us at conception, which gets actualized in birth and maturation. Our mental organs are permanent, immortal, eternal. Our unique self must therefore be permanent, immortal, eternal. We have this immortality and permanence from the substances out of which we are constructed, namely, the spiritual heat and spiritual light flowing out of God into the mental world of eternity.

Our unique identity becomes more and more personal, more and more our own loves, as we live out our immortal existence, constructing a mental dwelling place for our self and our conjugial soul mate. This place is joined and enriched by new neighbors that continuously fill that mental dwelling place. Each new couple appears to us as family, having an appearance and manners that resemble ours. It is an idyllic mental dwelling in the world of rational ether where loves and truths are God’s building blocks. We have more and more of God’s good and truth as we develop more intense passion and attraction towards the heavenly order, which is the order of God’s Mind, and the reality of creation and existence by God.

The perfect human heavenly order is the inmost of every human mind (layer 4). Every human being receives a perfect and unique soul “print” in creation. This unique person is born to change the whole race and universe. Every soul that is added and integrated into the Grand Human (layers 4, 5, 6) changes the Grand Human forever. God is building or growing the living Grand Human into ever grander perfection. This is the evolution of consciousness of the human race. This building up and perfection process involves the adding and integrating of new souls. If a soul doesn’t get to the Grand Human after resuscitation of its spiritual body, then it is added to the Grand Monster. This is an eternal mental dwelling place for unrelenting selfish and cruel people. They have their own life of freedom to do as they please, which they do by being incredibly cruel and fiendish to the others who share their mental dwelling places.

The laws of spiritual locomotion or displacement in the mental world of eternity are such that you are always in the place of your desire or love. This contrasts with the physical world where we have to get our body to that place by some method like walking, driving, or being carried by another person, an animal, an airplane, boat, or rocket. But after resuscitation we are fully conscious in our spiritual body. There are no places to go to, only mental constructions directed by our loves and desires. Since there is only one mental world of eternity, all human beings are born into it and remain forever. This world of eternity is far more real than the physical world of time and space. This is a difficult idea to accept and understand.

If we think about this idea from the meanings we have in layer 8C, we will see it as illogical, and hence not acceptable to our comprehension. And if it is unacceptable to our comprehension we cannot love the idea, cannot relate to it, cannot get enthusiastic about it. Right. I understand. Fortunately I have the solution for the problem, a way of overcoming this mental barrier in our cognitive organ. This is where your difficulty is felt, sensed, perceived in yourself. How is it that you’re aware of the difficulty in your layer 8C operations addressed to this idea – the idea that there is only one mental world and everyone is in it?

But now, is you start thinking about it from above layer 8C, things immediately change. If you are looking down mentally on your thinking in 8C, then you must be doing the looking from your thinking in layer 7eC, which is the cognitive operation of the rational mind, external portion. You are doing that very thing (climbing to 7eC), when you notice how you’re thinking in your normal thinking layer, which tends to be layer 8C for most of us most of the time in daily social life and work. So when you notice in yourself that some new idea or principle that you are thinking about does not make sense to you, you are climbing in consciousness from 8C to the observation platform in 7eC. It is the rational mind (layer 7) that controls the operations of the abstract materialist mind (layer 8C).

The control exercised by the natural-rational mind (layer 7e) over the natural-materialistic mind (layer 8C) is by correspondence. This control is completely automatic and part of the mental flow and operation across the layers of the mental world of humanity around the Spiritual Sun in eternity. The Spiritual Sun as Layer 1, constructs and controls all the mental sub-layers from 2 to 10 through the built in laws of correspondence. This law is built in because worlds, layers, and objects are created by spiritual heat and light. These two infinitely varying substances are conjoined in God’s Mind as one. It is called the Divine Marriage in God. Every human being must also have a spiritual marriage in one’s mind, which is the conjunction of our affective (“will”) and cognitive (“understanding”) organs into a joint living synergistic operation that instantiates the sensorimotor world of the environment around us. These are the created dwelling places – physical for the physical body, mental for the spiritual body.

After resuscitation our consciousness is not in the spiritual body. It now displaces itself differently than we are used to in our physical body. Physical closeness in the natural world corresponds to mental similarity in the mental world. Since there is only one mental world you can understand the idea that all human beings can be together who want to, once they are conscious and functioning in their spiritual body after resuscitation. “Geographic place” or physical location corresponds to “mental dwelling place” which actually refers to “mental state.” Since mental states are organic operations in our mental organs, it follows that sharing loves brings people together in the mental world. We don’t need to travel or be carried since our love carries us. Love longs to be united to ideas, and together they love to create neo babies – new feelings, new thoughts, new sensations. When people get together in the mental world of eternity the similarity of their loves bind them together into a permanent community.

 

Spiritual Garfinkeling -- Engineering Our Mental States on the Daily Round

I was making up instructions for exercises that my students can do to increase their awareness of the level of consciousness they are thinking at any particular moment in the course of their daily activities. We all oscillate (or vacillate) between layers 9C, 8C and 7eC. For example, think about a routine task you have to do on a regular basis, like running errands for someone to whom you feel obligated. As you are thinking about the schedule for the day, while brushing your teeth or preparing breakfast, you feel flooded by a feeling of resentment: “I hate having to do this.” For a few more seconds, or minutes, your thoughts are compulsively addressed to this topic. It pushes other things out, for awhile. You are in the mode of venting. The Divine Psychologist has connected you with some spiritual society in the Grand Monster who specialize in the ruling love of feeling resentful. They absolutely adore and live for this sentiment, feeling, emotion.

During these few seconds, or minutes, and with some people hours and even days, our consciousness or mentality is situated (captured) in layer 9C. This layer is called concrete materialism, and sometimes sensual-corporeal. The people in the Grand Monster who operate permanently in this mental state feed on such connections between them and us. They are hoping and striving to be able to be connected to people in their natural mind, like we are here every day. Why does the Divine Psychologist connect you to them while you are brushing your teeth or preparing breakfast? The answer is always the same: get used to it. It’s because of your love. All day long, moment by moment, the Divine Psychologist connects and reconnects your mind to societies in the Grand Human and Grand Monster.

I think this may be one of the most difficult concepts to understand in theistic psychology.

It is also the very basis of theistic psychology. The purpose of theistic psychology is to acquire systematic, rational, and practical knowledge about regeneration. The success of this organic lifelong process determines our immortal life in eternity, which begins immediately after death. There is no end to that life. There is no comparison in choice between the value to us of safeguarding our eternal happiness versus safeguarding a tiny fraction of it here on earth. If we do not regenerate we are safeguarding the loves that we now have as unregenerate persons. These are not our loves, really, they are the loves of the people in the Grand Monster to whom you are connected. They become our loves only after resuscitation, when we enter their society, and immediately feel at home in that mental state of resentfulness.

The Divine Psychologist manages the process of regeneration in every little detail. This is necessary since mental states in our natural mind in daily life are always associated to corresponding physical events. These physical events must be arranged so that they happen to you. This requires omnipotence and omniscience, and Divine Love and caring for each human being. So all day long, the Divine Psychologist connects and reconnects each of us to the societies of the Grand Human and Grand Monster, meanwhile, making things happen in our physical and social environment that correspond to our mental states.

As you are venting your resentful thoughts to yourself in layer 9C, you are also conjoining these thoughts to your love of feeling resentful about the obligation you feel and the things it requires of you. This love is in layer 9A. It is a corporeal love joining up with a concrete materialistic thinking in layer 9C. This conjoining together of an unregenerate or hellish love (9A) with distorted reasoning (9C) is called the infernal marriage. It is the counterpart in the Grand Monster of the spiritual marriage of a regenerate or heavenly love (7A) with a rational thinking (7C).

As you are wallowing in the infernal marriage in layer 9, hating it, feeling hellish feelings that torture you like wanting to run away, wanting to tell the person off, wanting to destroy something, wanting to scream as if in agony, etc. These are hellish loves creating hellish feelings. As long as your consciousness is captured in that mental layer, you are going to be in hell with your feelings, with corresponding thoughts, and with the negative sensorimotor behaviors (9S) that the infernal marriage produces – pressing too hard on your toothbrush causing injury to your gums, or burning your toast, or cutting your finger, or banging drawers and doors, or driving off and practicing the emotional use of the gas pedal, etc. These series of little and big disasters go on and on – until your mentality, consciousness, and meaning of what’s happening, is liberated by some regenerated loves of happiness and control.

What is the mechanism by which we can change our mental state and raise our consciousness and mentality?

We change our loves by changing our thoughts.

Remember that -9A loves, like the love of feeling resentful, cannot “materialize” into your actuality or life until you are willing to think the thoughts and perform the reasoning procedures of venting to yourself about the obligations you hate. If you inhibit or suppress these thoughts and justifications, then the love of feeling resentful cannot be consummated. That is when the Divine Psychologist disconnects you from that society, and reconnects you to some other society. Now which one? That again depends on your love, since the Divine Psychologist is obligated to honor your love since that is your spiritual freedom to choose that love, whether it is hellish or heavenly.

As you are still brushing your teeth, or waiting for the microwave oven to deliver your meal, your love of getting out of hell is activated by the Divine Psychologist. Now comes the critical choice you have to make in full spiritual freedom to choose your loves. The love of getting out of hellish mental states (like feeling resentful, angry, and trapped), originates with some society in the Grand Human. It is a heavenly love that’s being offered to you. They don’t know who you are or what you are, and they don’t know your circumstances. They are just absolutely moved by the love of assisting people in getting out of hellish states. This love is used by the Divine Psychologist to make it available to you by connecting your consciousness to them. You cannot feel their love in layer -9A, but you can, in layer 8A and 7A. All you need to do is to cleave to that love being offered to you, namely, the love of getting away from hellish feelings and thoughts.

You are aware of this love “in the back of your mind.” You need to use a deliberate technique to bring that love to the fore of your mind, so that you can actually be in that state of love, which is heavenly and which brings peace, being focused, feeling enthusiasm and happiness for the coming day – the first day of the rest of your immortal life, one day closer to eternal conjugial happiness with your soul mate. These are the thoughts in layer 7C that you can dwell on as you finish brushing your teeth, or when the microwave oven beeps. As you develop these rational and heavenly thoughts about reality and your wonderful future, new loves can become active in your affective organ in layer 7A and 8A. The Divine Psychologist now connects you to societies that are immersed in the loves of scheduling and completing tasks. You feel imbued with new strength and enthusiasm.

As you are locking up the apartment and proceeding to your car or moped, you are back in layer 9, sequencing the sensorimotor activities that will take you to school or work. You are now far away from the place in the Grand Monster that hates the feeling of having these obligations to meet. Gone is the love of feeling resentful. It is replaced with the love of completing your tasks in as efficient way as possible, and still stay within the bounds of your standard of accomplishing things (which is also a heavenly love).

As you are locking up the apartment and proceeding to your car or moped, you are back in layer 9, sequencing the sensorimotor activities that will take you to school or work. You are now far away from the place in the Grand Monster that hates the feeling of having these obligations to meet. Gone is the love of feeling resentful. It is replaced with the love of completing your tasks in as efficient way as possible, and still stay within the bounds of your standard of accomplishing things, all of which involve a bunch of heavenly loves – the love to stay out of trouble, the love to enjoy friends, songs, and movies, the love to strive for success and prepare for a career or project, the love to be rewarded for work done, the love to be recognized and acknowledged for our skills and intentions, etc. etc.

These useful heavenly loves allow us to progress to our ultimate destination, which is to become a mature adult who is committed to regeneration progress on a daily basis.

This is then the personal challenge facing each of us – the challenge of regeneration. And this is assisted by knowledge of how the process of regeneration works. This process is revealed all around the world in every culture when you examine the Sacred Scripture they possess from tradition over the generations. Approach these holy texts with the knowledge of correspondences acquired for your own regeneration. These are the spiritual meanings that are hidden within the literal meaning. No one can extract this spiritual meaning except through the prescribed process, which is the only actually effective mechanism that God provides for human beings to access spiritual truths hidden within the literal meaning of all Sacred Scripture.

Theistic psychology is a phrase used to cover any and all knowledge that people have as a result of applying correspondences from enlightenment by the Divine Psychologist. That is how the spiritual organic process works. The natural organic process of the growth of a plant cannot be altered. All the variations of environmental conditions to which its organic process can adapt and function, will result in the plant surviving. But if some conditions are given outside this limit, the plant dies. This organic process is built into all organs, physical and mental. Our mental organs are constructed out of the substances that are within Sacred Scripture.

This is a difficult and confusing concept to understand from layer 8C, but it is clearly understandable in layer 7eC. Remember that our mental organs are constructed out of the mental substances of spiritual heat and spiritual light. These are mental substances, Divine substances, living, infinite, and eternal. Spiritual heat is nothing else than Divine Love and spiritual light is nothing else than Divine Truth. The problem of comprehension is resolved as soon as you allow in your mind the entrance of a layer 7iC idea. This is an interior-natural concept, not a external-natural concept. It is the idea that physical=temporary appearances representing reality, and mental=permanent eternal reality in our mind, which is the mental world of eternity, of which there is only one, for all people.

Once you allow that idea as “possibly real” (which is called the positive bias in science), you are departing from and removing the existing negative bias in science, which says that this idea is “outside the realm of logic, rationality, empiricism, and science.” The negative bias thinking about the Divine Psychologist, the Grand Monster, etc., is that it is just some idea by some author whose research and conclusions do not qualify as materialistic science. The thinking level of materialistic science is layer 8C and layer 9S. In other words, the data and measurements obtained at layer 9S, provide the sensory input and data recording instruments. Then, our ability to construct mental abstractions (layer 8C) of the empirical data provide us with scientific explanations, principles, and theories.

Note that the abstractions and scientific explanations in layer 8C are above or within layer 9C, which involves constructing concepts and explanations based only on the appearances of reality which we see in data. Clearly, the rational and scientific explanations must be at a level higher in thinking and consciousness than the level of the data which are appearances of the senses and the physical instruments. Scientific explanation is at level 8C, which is why that mental layer is called “abstract materialism,” while the layer below is called “concrete materialism.” Data and measurements are concrete, while explanations are abstractions of the concrete. Abstractions of data are much closer to actuality and truth than the appearances of those data, which hide or cover up the actual reality or truth.

The concrete materialistic thinking of our anatomical layer 9C is related to the concrete materialistic thinking of the literal sense of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture. The abstract materialistic thinking of our anatomical layer 8C is related to the abstract materialistic thinking of the literal sense of the New Testament Sacred Scripture. The external-rational thinking of our anatomical layer 7eC is related to the external-rational thinking of the literal sense of the Writings Sacred Scripture (or “Swedenborg Reports”). These three sets of sacred text are unlike any other discourse produced by human beings on their own. The discourse and text produced by human beings only has a literal sense that can be abstracted and symbolized in many ways. But this text does not contain a spiritual sense corresponding to the layers above our natural mind and the Spiritual Sun. Some text comes from Divine Speech to produce Sacred Scripture, while all other text is constructed at whatever level the person is thinking, the consciousness level of the person, which is in the natural mind.

You can test out this principle by learning correspondences and applying them to various types of discourse and text. The results will show that only Sacred Scripture text contains the layers of the mental world of eternity in discrete correspondences to each other, from layer 1 to layer 9.

Consider the external-rational concepts you are studying in theistic psychology, like regeneration, the Grand Monster, the Grand Human, layers of mental organs, eternity, spiritual substances, etc. Consider them within the positive bias. That is, allow yourself the benefit of saying “possibly true” and reject the idea that will rob you from that benefit, which says “not possibly true, clever fantasy, not science.” It is your choice. To me it makes sense to teach the positive bias framework. I can understand it rationally as a scientist who respects consistency, organicity, rationality, usefulness, empirical confirmations, power to generate new explanations that lead to better understanding, etc. etc. These are the reasons why I think that it is worthwhile for me to teach the positive bias in science.

One of the exercises that I found useful involves the activity of spiritual garfinkeling. I constructed this sensorimotor neo by considering the exercise in Garfinkel’s 1967 book. He gave his students the exercise of going home and acting like they are guests. This would allow them to observe two useful things. First, other people’s reactions. Second, what is normal and ordinary is an arrangement or order managed by the participants who coordinate their actions to each other. When the students acted like a guest would act, they broke up this coordinated arrangement, and the ordinary was no longer in force. The social world of the participants was turned upside down.

“May I use the bathroom?”
“Where do you want me to sit?”
“Who are the people in this photograph?”
“How long have you lived here?”
Etc. etc.

You can see that the normal ordinary exchanges were disrupted by such questions and stances.

The exercise I am recommending uses a similar approach in a spiritual area, so I call it spiritual garfinkeling. I’m not sure if I should use a capital “G” or if Professor Garfinkel’s followers today would see my point for extending to theistic psychology what Harold Garfinkel did in non-theistic ethnomethodology. I see the neo I constructed as honoring the scientific value of his instructional assignment.

Spiritual garfinkeling consists of carrying out a regular activity while acting as if you are operating from layer 7, when actually you might be in layer 8 or 9. To act as if one’s consciousness is in a higher layer than it is – that’s the process that can help us raise our actual consciousness level to that higher layer. In this higher layer we have access to mental states that are sourced in the Grand Human (layers 6, 5, 4). This higher way of thinking (layer 7C) is rational rather than materialistic (layer 8C). For instance, when you analyze your feeling of hating your obligations, you can do it from layer 9C thinking (“I just hate it. I don’t want to do it. I resent having to.”). Or, you can do it from layer 8C thinking (“I can’t just walk away from the situation. I want to honor my obligations in this case. I am being a good person.”). Or, you can do it from your layer 7eC thinking (“Everything I do fits into a Divine plan for my future. It would be folly for me to ignore this central fact about it. Striving to be good will bring me the motivation, freedom, and happiness I crave for.”)

Once you begin to elaborate a higher form of thinking, you create the thoughts that your higher loves need in order to become actual in you, and to give you the mental states that you want for yourself. If you are in layer -9A facing concrete appearances (9S) that make you unhappy (-9A), the way out of the situation is to raise your level of thinking to 8C by the abstracted materialism to which we have access in that layer. We can construct abstracted explanations of our situation. Our situation appears bad (“I hate having to do this.”) (layer -9C). Our negative emotions (marked by the – sign), are supported by false thinking (“It’s not fair.”). The two form an infernal alliance to produce our disturbing environment (-9S) (feeling trapped, braking things, taking it out on innocent others, being in a bad mood, putting on a sad or mean face, etc.).

An effective method to gain control over the situation is to move right on up to layer 7eC thinking. You can do this if you are a student of theistic psychology, or, if you study Sacred Scripture and understand it in its deeper spiritual meanings. Layer 7eC thinking consists of paraphrases and applications of your knowledge and understanding of theistic psychology, or equivalent. It works most effectively when you are willing to think in the interior-rational layer (7iC), obtaining your information from the correspondential or spiritual meanings within Sacred Scripture. We need to be aware that when Sacred Scripture is applied in the literal sense, our thinking is restricted to the level at which the holy text is written.

Sacred Scripture text that is written for concrete materialistic thinking (9C), allows you to hate some people and to ignore their human rights. Sacred Scripture text that is written for abstract materialistic thinking (8C), does not allow you to hate some people and to ignore their human rights. You are commanded to love all people and to benefit them, not hurt them. Sacred Scripture text that is written for natural-rational thinking (7C), also does not allow you to hate some people and to ignore their human rights, but in addition, shows you what is actually going on with you when you hate some people versus when you love the good in all people.

At level 7iC thinking you are adding a critical missing component that is not present in 7eC thinking. This is the process of undergoing regeneration. Once you begin this process you are given access to 7iA loves and motives. Interior-natural loves are sourced in your higher layers (6, 5, 4). These loves are spiritual and celestial, while the loves in 7eA, 8A, and 9A are natural loves, possessing negative natural powers and weaknesses. Loves that are available in layer 7eA can conjoin only with 7eC thoughts (external loves with external thoughts). These are based on the materialism of the natural world, either concrete (layer 9) or abstracted (layer 8). There is a direct dependency between the content of 9C, 8C, and 7eC. To move the content to spiritual and celestial layers (6, 5, 4) it is necessary to operate in layer 7i, the interior-natural layer.

You move on from layer 7e to layer 7i when you activate the love of regenerating (7iA). This is called reformation. You change your world around by moving everything in it under the rule and command of your love of regenerating. You can elevate this love above all other loves you have, above the loves of what is concrete (9A), above the loves of what is abstract (8A), and above the loves of knowing and understanding rational truths (7eA). You enthrone a new love in the interior portion of your natural-rational mind, within the love that is in the external portion of your rational mind (7eA). This highest love in the natural mind is the love of regenerating. When you cleave to this love, holding on to it as dear life, you are given access by the Divine Psychologist to your spiritual and celestial layers.

When you practice spiritual garfinkeling you are acting as if you are in layer 7e or 7i, depending on your actual loves. For instance, when you are immersed in the negative feelings and thoughts of hating your obligation and lack of freedom, as discussed above, you can start acting as if you moved out of layer 9A, out of layer 8A, and into layer 7A. All you need to do is to figure out rationally within your understanding of the positive bias, how your regeneration motive applies to this one instance of feeling disturbed by your obligation, feeling rebellious, feeling enslaved. For example:

“What is my main task here. What am I trying to accomplish. Where am I trying to go. I want to be free of these negative feelings. I want to be free, really free. I cannot feel free on my natural loves. I need to access my spiritual and celestial loves. Sacred Scripture tells me that “with God all things are possible.” This means that the Divine Psychologist can give me new loves that will overcome the feelings of dissatisfaction and loss of emotional control. These new loves are spiritual and celestial, from my eternity, from my own heaven. I am moving towards that state. I must let the Divine Psychologist bring me these temptations of hating and rebelling against what I picked for myself as the right thing to do. I accepted this obligation out of a feeling of loyalty and caring. These are heavenly loves and I’m going to reject the hellish loves of trying to escape my obligation, then regretting it later, feeling the pain of guilt and self-hatred.” Etc.

You can see from the above discussion what is involved in spiritual garfinkeling. It’s like a mental bootstrap operation, lifting yourself out of the states you are in. Knowing about the details of regeneration and the work of the Divine Psychologist in your mind, allows you to access new loves, new powers, new satisfactions, new self-confidence, new skills and abilities.

The availability to us of this progressive level of abilities, is the result of the organic anatomy of our mental operations. As you know from prior discussions, we have the built in anatomical ability to operate our three mental organ systems at three levels of operation – layer 9, 8, and 7 (7e and 7i). These three levels of mental operations are in sequential discrete degrees, as discussed. This means that the highest possible progress in one level cannot reach the lowest operations of the next level. You also know that our consciousness or mentality level oscillates between these three, although as you can expect, the rate of oscillation will vary with the extent of our regeneration.

The process of regeneration starts in layer 7, when we abandon our thinking loyalty in layer 7eC to layer 8 and 9. Instead, we adopt a new loyalty in layer 7iC, which is filled with spiritual content from the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture. From this interior-natural layer, we can raise our consciousness to the highest levels by extracting higher correspondences from Sacred Scripture. The regeneration of our layer 7 turns our natural-rational mind from a little hell into a little heaven. This transformation is achieved through the influx of correspondences from layer 6 into layer 7i. The result is that layer 6 is made fully functional. This insures that we will be able to live in first heaven after resuscitation.

Following the regeneration of our natural-rational mind (layer 7), the really hard work then begins – the regeneration of the external-natural mind, layer 8. Our rational mind can be a little heaven while our materialistic mind can still be a little hell. Our regenerated rational mind (layer 7) cannot impose a new heavenly order on the materialistic mind below (layer 8). Our feelings and thoughts in layer 8 prior to its regeneration, are abstractions of mere appearances (layer 9). The abstractions from the physical cannot get rid of the physical. Every scientific theory and concept in the negative bias approach, will exclude the non-physical, the non-temporal or eternal, and the spiritual or mental. These are excluded. But if this turns out to be the real reality, then science in the negative bias excludes the true reality. This is then the reason why our layer 8 is called a little hell – because our thoughts about reality are inverted. The result is that what is true, we call false; and what is false, we call true. This is the meaning of “hellish order” or “little hell.”

The rational mind (layer 7) has to be regenerated first because layer 8 and layer 9 resist all efforts at regeneration. However, things are different once layer 7 is regenerated. When we read the Swedenborg Reports, or study genuine theistic psychology based on it, we can make the effort of studying every paragraph until we can understand it. As we build paragraphs that we can understand, our rational mind is formed by the Divine Psychologist, regardless of our awareness, and regardless of our ideas about God and the afterlife. This paragraph by paragraph cumulation of rational ideas and explanations results in the gradual regeneration of the rational mind (layer 7). It is accompanied by much activity in the affective organ. Our rational loves (layer 7A) seize upon our new rational ideas (7C) and they reciprocally conjoin into one – the spiritual marriage in layer 7.

Now we look down upon our feelings and thoughts in layer 8C below, and what do we see?

We see a little hell. We see negative loves and false principles and attitudes. We see habits that we cannot condone. We see enjoyments that are selfish and cruel. We see thinking that is often stupid, reasoning that doesn’t conform to rationality. We see a life of weakness and neglect, addiction and powerlessness, a disorder of the mind that translates into a disorder of society. This is the unregenerate layer 8. But we also see some brilliance there, feats of engineering and medical achievements, large institutions and huge armies operating in an orderly and efficient manner. Layer 8 is not only a little hell, it is also a little heaven. But the heavenly order and abilities cannot remain because the hellish order destroys them. Regeneration of layer 8 must take place before the heavenly portion in it is destroyed. This is accomplished through the influx of our layer 5. When layer 8 is regenerated, our layer 5 is fully opened and functional. After resuscitation we will be able to exist in the second heaven.

After layer 8 is regenerated, layer 9 can be regenerated. This is achieved through the influx of layer 4. When layer 9 is regenerated, layer 4 is fully open and functional. After resuscitation we will be able to exist in the third and highest heaven.

 

Taxonomy of Unregenerate and Regenerate Loves in the Natural Mind

Reasonings under the three levels of human consciousness:

Layer 7:Positive bias rationality: Reasoning based on rational-spiritual correspondences
Layer 8:Negative bias materialism: Reasoning based on abstractions from sensory appearances
Layer 9:Concrete materialism: Reasoning based on sensory or corporeal appearances

When we are beginning our process of regenerating we are motivated by a rational love in layer 7A. Loves are named according to the organic layer of our mind at which they operate:

Organic layer 9A supports corporeal loves, attached to the appearances of the sensorimotor world around it (9S). Corporeal loves (9A) encourage concrete materialistic thinking (9C), and together they produce the sensorimotor appearances of our meanings and consciousness in the corporeal mind (layer 9).

Organic layer 8A supports sensuous loves that encourage abstract materialistic thinking (8C), and together they produce the sensorimotor appearances of our meanings and consciousness in the sensuous materialistic mind (layer 8S). The difference in consciousness between layer 8 and 9 is of a discrete degree. No matter how advanced we get in layer 9, we can never reach layer 8 by using corporeal consciousness and meanings. In layer 9 the meanings reflect the appearances. For example, you are driving and another car has been following closer than you think that one car should follow another. You are conscious that you are feeling annoyed. All of a sudden things around your corporeal mind (9S) are no longer OK. You are not conscious of the hellish love (-9A) that gives you the feeling of annoyance (-9A). Your corporeal cognitive operations (9C) fall in line to support this love. But you don’t know what this love is, or even that it is operating in your affective organ, triggering the thoughts.

You are thinking that the driver behind you is annoyed with you and wants you to speed up. This conclusion is entirely based on the appearances in your rear view mirror. That’s all you are going by to make this conclusion.

What is this love? It is the love of self for the sake of self as it operates at the corporeal level of appearances (layer -9A). The car behind you is invading your territory. There is pressure and threat to such behavior from one motorist to another. You resent that. They should respect you by being more considerate. You hate people who…Wait! Quick! Start doing some spiritual garfinkeling. You’re thinking: “OK, I need to calm down. I’m just going to act like it’s the other’s driver’s inattention. It’s not a personal message to me that he is annoyed with me and is pressuring me to go faster. Not necessarily so! Maybe he is distracted. Maybe he has the habit of following too close. Maybe he is busy multitasking and isn’t even aware of me.”

This new thinking is in your layer 8C. Your consciousness, rationality, and meanings have jumper from the corporeal level of appearances (9C), to a more realistic interpretations of the situation based on emotional intelligence (layer 8C). This is the skill of knowing how to use spiritual garfinkeling procedures to allow your consciousness to escape from the reasoning that is based on appearances (“He is annoyed at me”) in layer 9C, to the reasoning based on an abstract interpretation of these appearances (“Not necessarily so!”) in layer 8C.

There is a discrete difference in the two loves that support these two layers. Corporeal loves are for the most part unregenerate (9-A). The love of self for the sake of self and the love of the world for the sake of self are the two ruling loves in layer 9-A before regeneration. So until the regeneration process reaches layer 9 we need to use spiritual garfinkeling to escape that inherited love in our natural mind. We suddenly just start acting as if we are operating in layer 8. We don’t try to reason our way out of it. We just jump. Our consciousness just takes off to a higher zone of existence. When we act this way, the Divine Psychologist is right there to support us. He provides the power and the effectiveness for whatever is supposed to happen in that situation. Our job is simply to act as if we are doing it ourselves, as if we are jumping from a corporeal love (9-A) to a sensuous love (8+A).

The laws of operation for consciousness in the mental world of eternity allow us to “look down” from one mental layer to that immediately below. When we are thinking with meanings that operate in layer 8C, we can use these meanings to show us what is happening in the meanings that is just external or below. Remember that in the mental world, what is “below” is the same as what is “external.” The three sequential mental layers of the natural mind – 9, 8, 7 – are together in simultaneous order, so that layer 7 is within (or above) layer 8, which is within (or above) layer 9. Think of three concentric circles with 7 at the center, 8 in the middle, and 9 on the outside. This is the organic arrangement of our natural mind, the mind in which we are conscious prior to resuscitation. Similarly, the spiritual mind in which we are conscious after resuscitation, has three sequential and simultaneous layers – 6, 5, 4.

Our conscious awareness is created by the meanings we are using in our thinking. These meanings are nothing else than the operations of the cognitive organ. Hence our consciousness level at any one moment in our daily activities is determined by which of the three cognitive organs it is attached to by a love. Loves in the natural mind exist at three levels, since loves are nothing but the operations of our affective organ. Our natural mind contains an affective organ at three anatomical layers – 9A, 8A, 7A. The 9A loves in the affective organ will generate 9C meanings in the cognitive organ. Similarly, 8A loves will generate 8C meanings, while 7A loves will generate 7C meanings. Consequently, such as our love is, such are our meanings, and such is our consciousness.

In our daily life, the level of human consciousness in our sensorimotor organ (S) is determined by the marriage between our affective loves (A) with our cognitive thoughts (C). This is the spiritual marriage (S) between our will (A) and our understanding (C).

You can see from this mental anatomy and physiology that our daily life consciousness operates at three levels:

7S:          rational consciousness from correspondences
8S:          materialistic consciousness from abstracted appearances
9S:          corporeal consciousness of concrete appearances
In terms of mental development,
In infancy:              corporeal consciousness (9S)
In childhood            materialistic consciousness (8S)
In adolescence:      rational consciousness (7S)
As young adults:    rational consciousness (7S)
As mature adults:   materialistic consciousness (8S)
In old age:             corporeal consciousness (9S)

Remember that S (sensorimotor system of the mind) is the spiritual child or offspring – neo baby – of the spiritual marriage between the affective organ (A) and the cognitive organ (C). This is a feature of mental physiology in the organic layers of the mental world of eternity. What you see around you, outside of you, and coming into you through your senses (S), are the actual appearances (S) created instantaneously by the spiritual marriage in your own mind between your loves (A) and your thoughts (C).

The taxonomy of natural loves is arranged in three levels (9A, 8A, 7A). Examples:

Unregenerate 7A loves:

  • Values forms of spirituality and religion that appeal to symbolism
  • Wants natural meanings to count as spiritual meanings, eliminating the discrete difference
  • Feels a distaste for thinking with correspondences
  • Loves to introduce self-made speculative interpretations of Sacred Scripture
  • Uses Sacred Scripture to support the male dominance model in marriage
  • Prefers the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture to its correspondential meaning
  • Values doctrinal understanding above the love of good in others
  • Values faith (C) and declarations of loyalty (S) above charity (A) and uses (S)
  • Loves to postpone the work of regeneration, or only wants to do the early phases of it
  • Etc. etc.
  

Unregenerate 8A loves:

  • Feels attraction to forms of spirituality and religion that appeal to mystery
  • Values knowledge and expertise only when they can use it for personal gain
  • Likes to be inventive for competitive reasons only
  • Motivated to donate their money, time, expertise only when it leads to social approval
  • Likes to acquire administrative, managerial, and executive skills in order to benefit from success
  • Indiscriminate love for media entertainment, drama, novels, without judging its moral level
  • Enjoys music that is popular, with lyrics or messages that are political, stereotyped, sexist, abusive, rebellious, crude, violent, explicit
  • Values the equity model in marriage
  • Etc. etc.
 

Unregenerate 9A loves:

  • Values forms of spirituality and religion that involve rituals, ceremonies, pageantry without being involved in their meanings
  • Feels attraction to superstition, black magic, spiritism, healing powers, idols, relics, cults
  • Attaches happiness to money, possessions, objects more than to other things
  • Feels happiness in feasting on large size meals that lead to being overweight
  • Loves to be inactive or “lazy”, loves to avoid physical workouts
  • Loves to resist or ignore health information and healthy lifestyles
  • Loves to procrastinate by avoiding obligations and the expectations of others
  • Enjoys ridiculing and downgrading certain others who are different, who are feared, or who are competitors
  • Likes to use religion and knowledge to control and manipulate others for one’s own selfish reasons
  • Loves to disobey legitimate authority and get away with what is illegal or not sanctioned
  • Lusts for the goods of others, hoping to take it away from them
  • Likes to enter into plots and conspiracies against innocent others
  • Feels elated when competitors and enemies lose everything or are destroyed
  • Feels loyalty to the person, both to the good and the bad in the person
  • Etc. etc.
 

Regenerate 7A loves:

  • Values the knowledge of correspondences in Sacred Scripture
  • Values forms of spirituality and religion that make sense
  • Values the unity model in marriage
  • Values a rational understanding of God and the afterlife
  • Loves only the good in a person, not the person, or the bad in the person
  • Loves to use rational thinking to understand everything
  • Loves to be sincere and peaceful because they are heavenly
  • Likes the ideas in theistic psychology
  • Strives to eliminate all hellish loves and thoughts
  • Etc. etc.
 

Regenerate 8A loves:

  • Strives to be inventive
  • Values education and science
  • Motivated to share and donate their money, time, expertise
  • Values and rewards administrative, managerial, and executive skills
  • Fascinated with media entertainment, drama, novels
  • Enjoys a variety of classical and popular music genres
  • Values the equity model in marriage
  • Values traditional forms of spirituality and religion for the sake of learning to become a better person
  • Etc. etc.
 

Regenerate 9A loves:

  • Enthusiasm and energy for work
  • Enjoyment of laughter and fun
  • Enjoyment of physical activity
  • Motivated to support and protect family, property, country
  • Willingness to obey legitimate authority
  • Values being honored, recognized, acknowledged
  • Values loyalty to selected others
  • Enjoys traditional music and folk dance forms
  • Values the male dominance model in marriage
  • Values forms of spirituality and religion that involve rituals, ceremonies, pageantry as a foretaste of heaven
  • Loves large size meals, banquets, group cooking, outdoors fun and social events
  • Etc. etc.
 

The Anatomy of Spiritual Combat in Temptation

We can influence where are consciousness is moment by moment, by deliberately thinking about thoughts and meanings that are attractive to a higher love within us. This is the spiritual garfinkeling technique.

For instance, you are brushing your teeth and thinking that you need to floss next. You are experiencing a feeling of distaste, reluctance, sadness. You are aware of your thinking: “I hate flossing. I think I’ll just skip today. Nobody is perfect. I’ve got more important things to take care of.” What level of consciousness is this cognitive operation going on? It’s level 9C. It’s a corporeal consciousness rooted in infancy, and as well in old age, when it is unregenerate. Having identified the level of thinking, you can conclude that the love in this marriage is in the affective organ layer 9A. Now you can consult a mental dictionary of loves that you need to acquire by study, observation, and systematic reflection.

It is useful to study and memorize taxonomies and diagrams in theistic psychology. Each taxonomy, matrix, and diagram constitutes what the Swedenborg Reports call “vessels” and “scientifics” in Sacred Scripture. These are cognitions, concepts, ideas, principles, relationships, rational accounts and explanations. We need to commit them to memory so that we can access them when they become relevant to an event, situation, or observation. We prepare ourselves for spiritual combat by “packing” these spiritual weapons in our long term memory, where we can access them when we face a spiritual temptation.

The Divine Psychologist needs for us to be ready to face combat when He brings an event to us (which takes omnipotence), while at the same time He sets our focus and our memory to deliver to our consciousness, the “vessel” or concept of truth that we have previously acquired. Now with this information or idea in our conscious focus, we face the temptation, and we fight emotionally as of self, knowing rationally that it is the Divine Psychologist who is actually managing the details and the outcome.

But if we are not prepared with concepts and understandings in our memory, we cannot face spiritual combat, and win. And in that case, the Divine Psychologist postpones the contest for another time in the future. And if we do not prepare at all, because we are not regenerating and don’t believe in regeneration, then there will be no spiritual temptations brought to us. We will then enter resuscitation without being regenerated. Our spiritual mind (layers 6, 5, 4) cannot be operationalized. Our consciousness must remain living in an unregenerate natural mind (-9, -8, -7), and this constitutes “spiritual insanity” or the Grand Monster.

When we face spiritual combat we are experiencing it as temptation. This is the conflict between opposing loves. For instance, you’re walking on the beach, keeping up a steady pace for your daily workout. Your eye catches a sharp piece of glass sticking out of the packed sand. You’re thinking: “Could give someone a nasty cut on the foot!” This is the event that the Divine Psychologist has brought to you, including managing your eye movements to locate the sharp glass. Now the combat is set up in the resuscitation zone of the mental world of eternity where your spiritual body is lying, quietly, not moving, as if asleep. A delegation of thrill seekers from a society in the Grand Monster arrives simultaneously with a delegation of volunteers from a society in the Grand Human. Every one on both sides was summoned by the Divine Psychologist. They were spending a normal day in their society when they received the Divine summons. They responded with opposing loves.

The people from the Grand Monster society responded from an infernal love to the chance of being able to suffocate compassion in some natural mind. That’s all they know. They have no identity or idea of who this person is, or even that this is a person on earth. They just sense that they have been given an opportunity to exercise their infernal love. They can see it too, since they are brought into a visual presence of your spiritual body, lying there, waiting for the resuscitation process to begin -- which may not happen for decades, depending on how long you are to live on earth. But in the meantime, while your spiritual body is in this semi-conscious state, it affords your natural mind to undergo the physiology of temptations.

As the Grand Monster people are brought near your spiritual body, on its left side, the Grand Human volunteers are also brought near, on the right side. They face each other. Your natural mind, which is also housed in the spiritual body (along with your spiritual mind), is now spiritually “flooded” and “immersed” in the hellish loves with their “falsities” or un-neos. Neos fight un-neos, and the what is at stake, is your life in heaven or hell in eternity. Nothing can be more important to you than this battle, and all the others like it, that you will have to go through. There is no other way of raising your consciousness level in eternity to your heavenly happiness (layers 6, 5, 4).

The reason there is no other way is that love sticks. When you attach yourself to a love, it will stick to you. Your mind cannot get rid of it – voluntarily. The Divine Psychologist cannot cut it out for you, which would be like cutting off the wick of a burning candle. The flame cannot live without the wick. You cannot live without your love. You are your love. Cut out the love, and you are gone. What then is the Divine Psychologist going to do when you inherit evil loves and you make them your own loves when you are an infant, a child, an adolescent, a young adult, a mature adult? The Divine Psychologist provided a way during the Incarnation Event. By forming a new mental layer in His mind as God-Man in the physical world, He achieved a new creation in the universe. He formed a new layer in the mental world of eternity that did not exist until then. He divided layer 7 into an external (7e) and interior (7i) portion. The external portion was already there and remained the same (layer 7e). Inside this external portion He formed a new interior portion called the interior-natural mind (layer 7i).

We now have the new ability of being conscious of the presence of the Divine Psychologist in our mind.

This new ability may be called the regeneration ability. Layer 7iC thinking is a discrete degree higher than layer 7eC thinking. We may read the Swedenborg Reports for instance, and understand it rationally by figuring out the literal sense, which is written in natural-rational correspondences of Divine Speech. This forms our layer 7eC with concepts and ideas from the Swedenborg Reports. Your own study of theistic psychology concepts is also done at this external-rational level of thinking about God and eternity (layer 7eC). This knowledge prepares you for spiritual combat. Loves from hell and loves from heaven now surround you, flood you with temptations. You consider picking up the dangerous glass. The temptation begins.

You slow down your pace, you hesitate. You turn your head and look at the glass again. Now the Grand Monster people are allowed by the Divine Psychologist to come closer to your spiritual body. You become aware you are feeling resentful, angry. This hellish love constructs a bunch of thoughts in your cognitive organ, thoughts that support the love of resentment and anger against people. Now the delegation of the Grand Human are allowed to come closer. Suddenly you feel compassion for the beach runner who is going to get cut up by the sharp glass. You can prevent that by being civilized and caring. You feel the love of community and patriotism and thoughts are formed to support this noble sentiment.

What happens next depends on what love you decide to hold on to – the love of being compassionate and civilized vs. the love of resentment and anger. All sorts of assisting loves may come into play here. More delegates from the heavenly and hellish societies are summoned by the Divine Psychologist. In a few seconds there may be dozens or hundreds of people involved on both sides of your spiritual body. What a tremendous drama. Talk about entertainment fiction. This is real, more involving than fiction. You swivel, turn around, and walk back. You decide to pick up the glass.

But the hellish hoards who are summoned to your side, have not given up the battle. Not by a long shot. They wiggle themselves into your love of performing your workout routine in an effective manner. You’ve trained yourself not to slow down in your fast pace. It’s the aerobic benefit you need. This love is an intermediate love, neither clearly heavenly, nor clearly hellish. We have many intermediate loves that serve as a transitional function. We love to exercise our body for various sub-loves, some of which are not heavenly. For instance, it flatters our vanity, and if relevant others don’t notice your healthy looks, you feel disappointment, and lose some of the motivation for keeping your workout up. The love of pushing yourself as far as possible in workout routines, leads to many injuries for millions of people every year. I see people running on the beach who have their knees bandaged. This can’t be good for them. I see overweight people who run, and this can’t be good (one of them told me she keeps injuring her knees because she is too heavy).

Before you reach the broken piece of glass in the packed sand, you swivel again and start your fast pace away from the tempting object. “I’m not getting involved. Let someone else pick it up. I’m keeping up my pace. That’s what I am here for.” But now a delegation of the Grand Human draws nearer to your spiritual body. They call out a love you have that is from their society, which you have had for years. You did not know this, and they did not know this. But now, as they are brought near you, that love of theirs is aroused in you again. It is the love of feeling clean and wholesome when you do the right thing. The thoughts tumble in your consciousness: “I can’t just leave it there and pretend I didn’t see it. I’ll just do it quickly and it won’t affect my pace too much.” You swivel once more, and this time you make to the glass, and pick it up, hardly losing a beat, as you continue your fast walk.

You know feel the relief of victory in spiritual combat. The Grand Monster delegation withdraws in fear and disgust. The Grand Human delegation now surrounds your spiritual body on all sides. Wonderful warm heavenly sensations surround you. You are basking in the glow of the aftermath of a spiritual temptation in victory. The people nearby who watched you swivel twice, then pick up something, have no idea of the momentous battle that just took place in four seconds. The Divine Psychologist is especially near and watchful during all our temptations. It is our lifeline to eternal happiness or unhappiness. Much is at stake.

Now reread this entire Section, and prepare yourself for your next combat! See how many loves you can add to the list where it says "etc."

Observe what happens when you talk to your friends about theistic psychology. You are presenting concepts from layer 7C. Quite probably, your friends will be in layer 8C or 9C as they listen to you. If in layer 9C, they might be annoyed, and might start ridiculing what you say or making fun with it, possibly tease you about it. If they are in layer 8C, they will ask you questions. They will try to prove how silly the ideas are. But if they are in layer 7C, you will experience a conversation about it in layer 7, which could be a surprising and pleasing exchange.

Now ask yourself why 7C thinking arouses the ire and ridicule of 8C and 9C thinking. The answer is that the loves of the rational mind (7A) that produce the ideas of the rational mind (7C) are opposed to the loves of the materialistic mind (9A, 8A) that produce the materialistic ideas (9C, 8C) that ridicule rational ideas (7C). Loves across the mental layers are discretely different and cannot be reconciled to each other (until regeneration takes place).

So there is a built in opposition to consciousness-raising in the natural mind. The Swedenborg Reports state that when a lower layer “looks up” to see what there is at a higher layer from itself, it sees “nothing but darkness.” Consider your own initial reactions to reading theistic psychology concepts and principles such as “mental world of eternity,” or “anatomical layer 8C,” or “extracting the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture,” or “the Grand Human and the Grand Monster,” or “the Divine Psychologist,” etc., you were reading and considering the meanings of these new concepts, with your usual layer 8C thinking that you use in getting through other “technical” books or courses. You were trying to make sense of a statement like, “Love is spiritual heat substance, and truth is spiritual light substance, both streaming from the Spiritual Sun into the mental world of eternity and immersing our mind in it.”

What meaning did such a statement have when you first heard it and tried to make sense of it?

When we are thinking with layer 8C meanings we are immersed in materialistic ideas originating and rooted in sensory input from the physical body and the natural world of time-space. So when you are constructing some meaning to “truth” as being “spiritual light substance” you are thinking of “spiritual substance” like you are thinking of “physical matter.” And you confirm this notion in your mind by considering that our eyes can see when they are immersed in physical light from the natural sun, or else, some artificial light like electricity, which is also physical light from the sun.

This 8C thinking equates the meaning of the expression (a) “physical light as being physical matter or energy from the natural sun,” with the meaning of the expression (b) “spiritual light as being spiritual substance from the Spiritual Sun.” To equate the meaning of (a) with the meaning of (b) is 8C level thinking. This equalizing of the two meanings form different discrete levels, is called “reductionism in science.” All 7C concepts from the rational mind will be reduced to 8C concepts form the materialistic mind. The result is that layer 7C is totally dark or non-existent to layer 8C. Nothing form our rational mind (layer 7) can exist in our materialistic mental layers (8 and 9).

The only solution to this situation is to accept the new idea that we can think at different layers of the mind.

These different layers are actually “discrete degrees” which means that no matter how high you get in your 8C thinking, you can never attain the lowest level of 7C thinking. You can confirm this principle in yourself when you monitor and analyze your thinking in layer 9C (concrete corporeal mind) vs. your thinking in layer 8C (abstract materialistic mind). This you can do because you alternate between these discrete ways of thinking in the course of your daily activities and situations. For instance, when you have the impulse and love to tell somebody off, you are engaged in venting your anger in your mind, thinking in layer 9C (e.g., “I wish I could make them suffer like I am now. I should burn this place down to show them, etc.”). But instead of proceeding with the awful action (9S), your consciousness jumps to layer 8C due to a bunch of 8A loves that motivate you to exercise self-preservation by looking to the consequences of your actions.

This 8A love of self-preservation and self-protection constructs new thoughts, new meanings in your consciousness regarding the situation and what’s going on: “No, I can’t do that. Don’t want to go to jail. I’ll find another way to get even. This place sucks!” etc. You can see that two discrete sets of different loves and thoughts are involved as your consciousness of the meaning of the situation flip flops between layers 9 and 8. The concrete materialism of the corporeal mind (layer 9) is based on the direct sensory input of the physical body and situation. We rely on the abstract power of layer 8C thinking to get us out of mere physical appearances. We can’t just act on what it looks like. We must figure out what’s actually going on. We are more intelligent in abstract thinking about appearances (layer 8C) than in thinking that is based directly on the senses (layer 9C).

So now with theistic psychology concepts, you are trying to understand them by constructing new types of meanings that are based in a rational universe, not physical universe. To raise our thinking level from the materialistic (8C) to the rational (layer 7C) we have to create a new world in our idea of the universe. We have to accept the positive bias in science and think: “It is possible that there are two worlds, one physical in time, the other mental in eternity.” The positive bias in science says: “This is a possibility” while the negative bias in science says “This is not a possibility.” If you adopt the negative bias in science you are keeping your thinking in layer 8C and 9C. If you adopt the positive bias in science you are changing your thinking level to 7C. One thinking level is appropriate for the physical world, and the other is appropriate for the rational world.

Now if you can extirpate yourself from the negative bias in science, during the time that you are studying theistic psychology concepts, then it is possible for you to attach meanings to rational ideas that are based in the mental world of eternity. You will be able to avoid reductionism, which takes away your ability to understand the reality of the mental world in eternity.

If you allow the possibility of two worlds, you empower yourself with the ability to understand theistic psychology and how it is a knowledge that you can apply in critical areas of your daily life that need greater effectiveness and control. Knowledge provides power to adapt, control, and modify. Assuming that our mind is real, and exists in its own real world, what are the consequences to me and my future? This is the beginning of level 7C thinking.


Quotes From the Swedenborg Reports on the Organic Basis of Mind

DP 279. III. SO FAR AS EVILS ARE REMOVED THEY ARE REMITTED. It is an error of the present age to believe

     1. That evils are separated from man and indeed cast out when they are remitted; and

 

     2. That the state of man's life can be changed in a moment, even to its opposite, so that from being wicked he can become good, and consequently can be brought out of hell and straightway transferred to heaven, and this by the immediate mercy of the Lord.

 

     3. Those, however, who entertain this belief and opinion do not in the least know what evil is and what good is; and they know nothing whatever of the state of man's life.

 

     4. Moreover, they are totally unaware that affections, which belong to the will, are nothing but changes and variations in state of the purely organic substances of the mind; and that thoughts, which belong to the understanding, are nothing but changes and variations in the form of these substances; and that memory is a permanent state of these changes.

 

From a knowledge of these things it may be clearly seen that no evil can be removed except by successive stages, and that the remission of evil is not its removal. These things are stated here in a summarised form; and unless they are demonstrated they may indeed by recognised but they cannot be comprehended; and what is not comprehended is vaguely defined like a wheel which is kept spinning round by the hand. Therefore, the propositions just stated must now be demonstrated one by one in the order in which they are set forth.

 

     [2] First: It is an error of the present age to believe that evils are separated and indeed cast out when they are remitted. It has been granted me to know from heaven that no evil into which man is born and to which he has actually habituated himself is separated from him, but is only so far removed that it does not appear. Before that, I held the belief entertained by most people in the world, that when evils are remitted they are cast out, and are washed and wiped away as dirt from the face by water. This, however, is not the case with evils or sins. They all remain, and when after repentance they are remitted, they are moved from the centre to the outskirts; and then what is in the centre, because it is directly under view, appears as in the light of day, and what is at the outskirts is in the shade, and sometimes as it were in the darkness of night. As evils are not separated but only removed, that is, relegated to the outskirts, and as a man may pass from the centre to the parts round about, it may also happen that he can return to his evils which he supposed had been cast out. For man is of such a nature that he can pass from one affection into another, and sometimes into an opposite one, and thus from one centre to another, that affection in which he is for the time being constituting the centre, for he is then in its joy and in its light.

 

     [3] There are some who after death are raised up by the Lord into heaven because they have lived well, but who yet have carried with them the belief that they are clean and pure from sins and therefore are not in a state of guilt. These are at first clothed in white garments in accordance with their belief; for white garments signify a state purified from evils. Later, however, they begin to think as they did in the world that they are as it were washed from all evil, and so to boast that they are no longer sinners like other men. Now this can hardly be separated from a certain elation of mind (animus) and a measure of contempt for others compared with themselves. Therefore, in order that they may be removed from their ill-founded belief they are sent down from heaven and permitted to enter upon the evils which they practised in the world; and at the same time they are shown that they are in hereditary evils, of which they were ignorant before. When they have thus been induced to recognise that their evils have not been separated from them but only removed, and consequently that of themselves they are impure, and indeed that they are nothing but evil, and that they are withheld from evil and kept in good by the Lord, and that this only appears to them as of themselves, they are again raised up by the Lord into heaven.

 

     [4] Second: It is an error of the present age to believe that the state of man's life can be changed in a moment, so that from being wicked he can become good, and consequently can be brought out of hell and straightway transferred to heaven, and this by the immediate mercy of the Lord. Those are in this error who separate charity and faith, and place salvation in faith alone; for they suppose that merely thinking and uttering the words which state their faith, if it is done with assurance and confidence, is what justifies and saves. Moreover, many suppose that this is effected instantaneously, and, if not before, about the last hour of a man's life. These cannot but believe that the state of a man's life can be changed in a moment, and that he can be saved by the exercise of immediate or direct mercy. That the mercy of the Lord, however, is not immediate, and that a man cannot from being wicked become good in a moment, and can only be brought out of hell and transferred to heaven by the continual operation of the Divine Providence from infancy right on to the end of his life, will be seen in the last chapter of this treatise. At this point this only need be observed, that all the laws of the Divine Providence have for their end the reformation and thus the salvation of man; and consequently the reversal of his state, which by birth is infernal, to the opposite state, which is heavenly. This can only be effected step by step as man, withdrawing from evil and its delight, enters into good and its delight.

 

     [5] Third: Those who entertain this belief do not in the least know what evil is and what good is. They do not know that evil is the delight of the lust of acting and thinking contrary to Divine order, while good is the delight of the affection of acting and thinking according to Divine order; nor do they know that there are myriads of lusts entering into and composing every individual evil, and myriads of affections entering into and composing every individual good, and that these myriads are in such connected order in man's interiors that it is not possible to change one without at the same time changing all. Those who do not know this may believe or suppose that evil, which to them appears to be one single entity, can easily be removed; and that good, which also appears to be one single entity, can be introduced into its place. As these do not know what evil is and what good is they cannot but suppose that there is such a thing as instantaneous salvation and also immediate mercy; but it will be seen in the last chapter of this treatise that these are not possible.

 

     [6] Fourth: Those who believe in instantaneous salvation and immediate mercy do not know that affections, which belong to the will, are nothing but changes of state of the purely organic substances of the mind, and that thoughts, which belong to the understanding, are nothing but changes and variations in the form of these substances, and that memory is a permanent state of these changes and variations. Everyone acknowledges, when it is stated, that affections and thoughts exist only in substances and their forms, which are subjects; and as these exist in the brain,* which is full of substances and forms, they are said to be purely organic forms. No one who thinks rationally can help laughing at the fanciful notions of some that affections and thoughts do not exist in forms that are substantiated, but that they are exhalations formed into shapes by heat and light like images appearing in the atmosphere. For thought can no more exist apart from a substantial form than sight apart from its form which is the eye, hearing apart from its form which is the ear, and taste apart from its form which is the tongue. If you examine the brain you will see innumerable substances, and likewise fibres; you will also see that everything in it is organised. What need is there of any other than this ocular proof?

 

     [7] The question arises, What is affection and what is thought in the mind? This may be inferred from all the things in general and in particular in the body where there are many viscera, each fixed in its own place and all performing their own functions by changes and variations of state and form. It is well known that they are engaged in their own operations - the stomach, the intestines, the kidneys, the liver, the pancreas, and the spleen, the heart and the lungs, each organ in its respective operation. All these operations are kept in motion from within, and to be moved from within is to be moved by means of changes and variations of state and form. Hence it may be evident that the operations of the purely organic substances of the mind are of a similar nature, with this difference, that the operations of the organic substances of the body are natural, while those of the mind are spiritual, and that both act together as one by correspondences.

 

     [8] The nature of the changes and variations of state and form in the organic substances of the mind, which are affections and thoughts, cannot be shown to the eye; but still they may be seen as in a mirror from the changes and variations in the state of the lungs in speaking and in singing. There is, moreover, a correspondence; for the sound of the voice in speaking and singing, and also the articulations of sound, which are the words of speech, and the modulations of singing, are caused by means of the lungs, and sound corresponds to affection and speech to thought. Further, sound and speech are produced by affection and thought; and this is effected by changes and variations in the state and form of the organic substances in the lungs, and from the lungs through the trachea or windpipe, in the larynx and glottis, then in the tongue and finally in the lips. The first changes and variations of the state and form of sound take place in the lungs, the second in the trachea and larynx, the third in the glottis by the various openings of its orifice, the fourth in the tongue by its various adaptations to the palate and teeth, and the fifth in the lips by their various modifications of form. Hence it may be evident that the mere changes and variations, successively continued, in the state of organic forms produce sounds and their articulations, which are speech and singing. Now, since sound and speech are produced from no other source than the affections and thoughts of the mind, for they exist from these and are never apart from them, it is clear that the affections of the will are changes and variations in the state of the purely organic substances of the mind, and that the thoughts of the understanding are changes and variations in the form of those substances, as is the case in the pulmonary substances. 

 

     [9] As affections and thoughts are simply changes in the state of the forms of the mind, it follows that memory is nothing else than a permanent state of these changes. For all changes and variations of state in organic substances are such that once they have become habitual they are permanent. Thus the lungs are habituated to produce various sounds in the trachea, to vary them in the glottis, to articulate them in the tongue, and to modify them in the mouth; and when once these organic activities have become habitual such sounds are in the organs and can be reproduced. That these changes and variations are infinitely more perfect in the organs of the mind than in those of the body is evident from what has been said in the treatise THE DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM (n. 199-204),** where it is shown that all perfections increase and ascend with degrees and according to them. On this subject more may be seen below (n. 319).

(DP 279)

 

AC 10367. And on the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Sabbath. That this signifies the state of good which is the end regarded, thus when man becomes the church and enters heaven, is evident from the signification of "the seventh day," as being a state of good, which is the end regarded. For when the six days which precede signify the state of man which precedes and prepares for the heavenly marriage, then the seventh day is when the man is in this marriage. This marriage is the conjunction of truth and good with man, thus when man becomes the church and enters heaven. That man enters heaven and becomes the church when he is in good, is because the Lord flows into the good with man, and through good into his truth. The influx betakes itself to the internal man where his heaven is, and through the internal into the external where is his world; and therefore unless the man is in good, his internal man is not opened, but remains shut, however much he may be in truths as to doctrine. And as heaven is in the internal man, it follows that when this is opened the man is in heaven, for heaven is not in a place, but in man's interiors. That man has been created according to the image both of heaven and of the world; his internal man according to the image of heaven, and his external according to the image of the world; may be seen in the places cited in n. 9279, 9706.

 

AC 10367. And on the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Sabbath. That this signifies the state of good which is the end regarded, thus when man becomes the church and enters heaven, is evident from the signification of "the seventh day," as being a state of good, which is the end regarded. For when the six days which precede signify the state of man which precedes and prepares for the heavenly marriage, then the seventh day is when the man is in this marriage. This marriage is the conjunction of truth and good with man, thus when man becomes the church and enters heaven. That man enters heaven and becomes the church when he is in good, is because the Lord flows into the good with man, and through good into his truth. The influx betakes itself to the internal man where his heaven is, and through the internal into the external where is his world; and therefore unless the man is in good, his internal man is not opened, but remains shut, however much he may be in truths as to doctrine. And as heaven is in the internal man, it follows that when this is opened the man is in heaven, for heaven is not in a place, but in man's interiors. That man has been created according to the image both of heaven and of the world; his internal man according to the image of heaven, and his external according to the image of the world; may be seen in the places cited in n. 9279, 9706.

 

[2] That the whole man is such as he is as to good, and not as to truth without good, everyone who reflects is able to know; for by means of and according to this he deals with others, feels with them, conjoins himself with them, and suffers himself to be led by them; but not by means of his truth, unless this is in accord with his good. By "good" is meant his delight, his pleasure, or his love; for all things that belong to these are to the man goods, and insofar as he is left to himself, so as to think from himself, he regards as truths those things which favor these goods. From this it can be seen that a man is conjoined with the Lord by means of good, and never by means of truth without good.

 

[3] Conjunction with the Lord by means of good has indeed been already frequently treated of in speaking of the regeneration of man, but as the man of the church at this day studies much the truths which are of faith, and but little the good which is of love, and for this reason is in ignorance about good, something further may here be said about the conjunction of good and truth which is called the heavenly marriage. Man is born into evils of every kind, and consequently into falsities of every kind, thus of himself he is condemned to hell. In order therefore that he may be rescued from hell, he must needs be born again of the Lord. This being born again is what is called regeneration. In order therefore that he may be born again, he must first learn truths, and if he is of the church he must learn them from the Word, or from doctrine derived from the Word. The Word and doctrine from the Word teach what is true and good, and truth and good teach what is false and evil. Unless man knows these, he cannot possibly be regenerated, for he remains in his evils and their falsities, calling the former goods, and the latter truths.

[4] For this reason the knowledges of truth and good must precede, and must enlighten the man's understanding. For the understanding was given to man in order that it may be enlightened by means of the knowledges of good and truth, to the end that these may be received by his will, and may become good; for truths become good when the man wills them, and from willing them does them. From this it can be seen in what manner good is formed with man, and that unless man is in good, he is not born anew, or regenerated. When therefore a man is in good as to the will, he is then in the truths of this good as to the understanding. For the understanding with man actually acts as a one with his will, because that which a man wills, he thinks when he is left to himself. This then is what is called the conjunction of truth and good, or the heavenly marriage. Whether you say to will what is good, or to love what is good, it is the same; for what a man loves he wills. And whether you say to understand the truth which is of good, or to believe it, it is also the same. From this it follows that with the regenerate man love and faith act as a one. This conjunction, or this marriage, is what is called the church, and heaven, and also the Lord's kingdom; nay, in the supreme sense, the Lord with man.

[5] But those who love their evils (which they either have received hereditarily, and from infancy have confirmed with themselves, or else have of themselves added, and have become imbued with anew) are indeed able to apprehend and in some measure understand truths from the Word, or from doctrine derived from the Word, but still they cannot be regenerated. For every man is kept by the Lord in this state in respect to the understanding, to the intent that he may be regenerated; but when he loves his evils, then the understanding of his internal man is not imbued with these truths, but only that of his external man, which understanding is mere memory-knowledge. Such men do not know what good is, nor do they care to know; but only what truth is. It is for this reason that they make the church and heaven to consist in truths which are said to be of faith, and not in goods which are of life. They also explain the Word in various ways in favor of their principle. From this it is that in the case of such, who are not at the same time in truths as to life, there is no conjunction of truth and good; thus neither are there the church and heaven. Moreover, in the other life the truths which they have called truths of faith are separated from them, for the evil of the will casts them out; and in their place succeed falsities that are in agreement with the evils in which they are.

[6] From all this it can now be seen what is the conjunction of good and truth which is signified by "the Sabbath." This conjunction is called "the Sabbath" from "rest," because "Sabbath" means rest. For when a man is in the first state, that is, when he is being led to good by means of truths, he is then in combats against the evils and falsities which are with him; for by means of combats, which are temptations, evils and their falsities are shaken off and separated; and yet there is no rest from them until good and truth have been conjoined. Then man has rest, and the Lord has rest, because the man no longer fights against evils and falsities; but the Lord in the man.

[7] That in the supreme sense "the Sabbath" signifies the Lord's Divine Human, is because when the Lord was in the world He fought from His Human against all the hells and subdued them, and at the same time reduced the heavens into order, and after this labor united His Human to the Divine, and made this also Divine good; consequently He then had rest, for the hells open not against the Divine. From this then it is that by "the Sabbath" in the supreme sense is meant the Lord's Divine Human.

[8] But with regard to these subjects see what has been already shown; as that when the Lord was in the world, He first made His Human Divine truth, to the end that He might be able to fight with the hells and subjugate them; and that He afterward glorified His Human and made it the Divine good of the Divine love (see the places cited in n. 9199, 9315; and n. 9715, 9809): That when the Lord was in the world He underwent the most grievous temptations (see the places cited in n. 9528): That consequently He has Divine power to save man, by removing from him the hells, and thus regenerating him (n. 10019, 10152): Concerning the twofold state of the man who is being regenerated by the Lord, see the places cited in n. 9274: That man does not come into heaven until there has been effected with him the conjunction of truth and good (n. 8516, 8539, 8722, 8772, 9139, 9832): And that the regeneration of man is an image of the glorification of the Lord (n. 3138, 3212, 3296, 3490, 4402, 5688).
(AC 10367)



Related Spiritual Ideas on the Organic Basis of Consciousness

 

Chakras

See these YouTube videos:

Chakras (etherguide)  http://youtube.com/watch?v=-frC2RLF0Ns&feature=related

Reiki Healing and Chakras    http://youtube.com/watch?v=5E666G1uI6U

Human Body Energy Centers  http://youtube.com/watch?v=DMxKffswZ1Q&feature=related

Yoga

Yoga and Correspondences   http://web.archive.org/web/20161031210444/http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/yoga.htm

Human Body

Register then explore the 3D human body application  http://www.visiblebody.com/Tour_Demos

Animation Video   http://youtube.com/watch?v=bv3gRdPMGZw

 



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Theistic Psychology Series and Other Online Books by Leon James

The Organic Mind: Discovering the Mental World of Eternity (2008)  ||  The Spiritual Function of Neologisms (2008)  ||  Lecture Notes on Mental Anatomy (3 volumes) (2007)  ||  Principles of Theistic Psychology (18 volumes) (2004)  ||  A Man of the Field: Forming the New Church Mind (3 volumes) (2002) ||  The Unity Model of Marriage (2001-2007) ||  Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg (1999)  || Swedenborg Encyclopedia of Theistic Psychology (1996) ||  De Hemelsche Leer Commentary (1996) ||  The Doctrine of the Wife (1985) || 

See also:

Scientific Neologisms Coined by Leon James in Psychology For the Period 1958-2008  ||  Collection of Driving Psychology Articles (2000) ||  Road Rage and Aggressive Driving (2000)  ||  Songs About Driving Cars on Roads and Highways Spiritually Understood (2007)

Directory of Full Text Articles and Books Online (1960-2008)  ||  Leon James Home


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