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This is Volume 1 A Man of the Field Forming The New Church Mind In Today’s World
Volume 1: Reformation The Struggle Against Nonduality
Volume 2: Enlightenment The Spiritual Sense of the Writings
Volume 3: Regeneration Spiritual Disciplines For Daily Life
Volume 4: Uses The New Church Mind In Old Age
By Leon James October 2002 (draft 18)
Author information appears at the end. This document is in the process of being revised. Please note the draft version marked on top. To print this document, see Printing Note at the end.
A “field” means doctrine (AC 368) A "man" signifies faith and truth (AC 427; 4823)
Volume 1 Table of Contents
REFORMATION: THE INWARD STRUGGLE AGAINST NONDUALITY The New Church Mind is to be Formed by the Writings Exclusively Absolute Opposition Between Duality and Nonduality 2. Incompatibility with the Writings 4. Duality is the only reality 5. The natural and spiritual mind 6. Why nonduality can be attractive Eastern Nonduality in Western Thinking 1. The Writings do not contain any nonduality 3. The notion of ”experiencing nonduality” 4. “Sacred Tantric Sex” versus Conjugial Love 7. The Writings are not like other books or systems 2. The New Testament does not contain any nonduality 3. Trinity of Persons versus Unity of Three Aspects in One Person 4. People are saved apart from their religion 5. Mind-Body Nonduality and God-Cosmos Nonduality 6. Christian Science Nonduality 7. Secular nonduality in Objectivism, Skepticism, and the Aquarian Conspiracy 8. Rudolf Steiner’s Christian Occult Science 9. Anti-semitism and Holocaust Theology 2. The Secular Spirituality of Gurdjieff 3. The secular Swedenborgianism of Henry James, Sr. 4. Spiritual Christianity of Charles Augustus Tulk 5. Duality between good and truth 6. Psychological Nonduality: Near Death Experiences 7. Shamanism And Technologies Of The Sacred Overcoming Intellectual Impediments to Reformation and Regeneration 2. The Rational Is The Entry Way To The Spiritual 3. Deconstructing Nonduality In Our Mind 4. Development From Sensuous Rational Consciousness 5. The New Church Mind And Other Religions 6. The Nonduality Of Persuasive Faith 7. The Doctrine Of Discrete Degrees 8. The Formation Of The Internal Marriage Disconfirming Nondualist Propositions In The New Church Mind 2. The Notion That “Self Is An Illusion” 3.The Notion That ”All Great Religions Are Equivalent” 4. The Notion That “Meditation Is Spiritual” 6. The Notion That “We Are Already Perfect” 7. The Notion That “Being One With Nature Is Spiritual” 8. The Notion Of “Unconditional Love” 9. The New Church View On Forgiveness 10. The Secular View On Forgiveness 11. The Christian View On Forgiveness Introduction: Key Concepts In the New Church Mind 2. Discrete Degrees In Successive And Simultaneous Order 4. The Idea of “Salvation is by Means Only” 5. The Idea of “Conjugial Love” 6. The Mind Is In The Spiritual World 7. The Vertical Community: Spiritual Influx From Heaven And Hell 8. The Idea of “Earths in the Universe” Titles for the Abbreviated Citations in the Book Full Text Free Online Access to All Swedenborg’s Writings:
Access to Volume 2 hereVolume 2 is located at this address: http://www.theisticpsychology.org/books/nonduality/volume2-nonduality.html
Access Volume 3 hereVolume 3 is located at this address: http://www.theisticpsychology.org/books/nonduality/volume3-nonduality.html
Every spiritual truth in the Writings
Preface to Volume 1
This book presents the perspective on reality given in the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).
It is intended for all those, regardless of religious or intellectual background, who want to form a new mind in themselves that is based exclusively on the Writings. The book’s purpose is to assist them in undergoing reformation and regeneration in preparation for a conjugial life in heaven.
1. The Writings Are A Divine Scientific Revelation
In today’s intellectual climate revelations from God, His Name, the Bible, heaven and hell, Church Doctrine, and the like are automatically considered religious issues. When I started reading the Writings I was well into my career as a psychology professor, writer, and scientist. I knew that the two-dozen books of the Writings that I was studying were categorized as religious books, since I found them in our university library in the section on Bible Commentaries. But the books were written by Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist of repute in his days, and known to many influential intellectuals in Europe and North America in the 19th century. Swedenborg, the impeccable mining engineer with international reputation, differed from his scientific colleagues in that his science was fully a theistic science.
Swedenborg was a fully rational thinker with a passion and commitment for explanations of phenomena that span the entire chain of their existence from ultimates to firsts. And since it is irrational to think that firsts can be from nothing or from chaos, rationality requires that the first of all phenomena be a rational Human God.
Swedenborg’s science was therefore inclusive and centered on a Human God who runs the universe in a rational way that is discoverable by intellectual investigation.
Swedenborg relied on the revelations of the Bible for the scientific facts about the spiritual world. Since he had no direct access to the spiritual world (until age 57), he extracted the facts from the Bible using both its literal meaning and spiritual meaning. The Bible reveals many scientific facts about the spiritual world in relation to the natural world, as for instance:
The above list of scientific facts about the universe is based only on the literal meaning of the Bible.
Swedenborg also extracted many scientific facts from the spiritual meaning of Bible verses, as for example:
At age 57 the Divine Human appeared to Swedenborg, held him affectionately in His arms, and announced to him the mission for which he was prepared by God since early childhood. Swedenborg was to be the revelator by whom the Second Coming of the Lord was to be effected. Swedenborg was going to write and publish a series of books called the Writings. The Writings were to be the Divine Rational of the Lord which was to be revealed to the human race as a rational and scientific system of thinking. The Divine Human was to effect its Coming within these rational truths. Any individual who read these truths and understood them, taking them to be the guides of life, would be regenerated and conjoined to the Divine Human by means of this new rational consciousness of God. Henceforth this will be the orderly method of regeneration for the human race.
In order for the revelations of the Writings to be scientific and rational it was necessary that Swedenborg have direct access to both worlds simultaneously. Swedenborg had to be given the means to make empirical and experimental observations in the spiritual world, such as the following:
From all this you can see that Swedenborg’s Writings constitute theistic science. The Writings of Swedenborg are rational scientific works written in Neo-Latin by a Swedish scientist and engineer in the 18th century. They are unique in the history of humankind because they present a fully rational comprehensive scientific account of all of reality, God, and human beings.
Prior accounts in the history of literature were never fully scientific, and never fully complete and comprehensive. If Swedenborg had merely written what his own genius figured out, the Writings would remain one of the greatest collections of rational philosophy, science, and theology anywhere. But the Writings are not books from the genius of Swedenborg, but much more, something entirely different, unparalleled in the history and evolution of the human race. The Writings are God’s Rational and Scientific Revelation now given to the human race for the first time. They present a fully rational and scientific account of reality, such as God has created it. If the content of the Writings were merely Swedenborg’s ideas of reality and God, they would form part of the literature of the world. But if the Writings are from God, then the Writings are unlike all other books that could be written.
No one should decide between these two possibilities without examining the Writings. I have examined them in detail, like I would a scientific collection of books which I intend to evaluate. Having done this, I have come to the conclusion that the Writings are the work of God, the last of the great revelations intended for the human race and called “the Word.” What is astonishing is that the Word of God in this new revelation is a science encyclopedia of the spiritual world! Since the spiritual world is within the natural, and is the cause of all natural phenomena, you can see why the Writings are a total and full scientific revelation of God. The human race now possesses two sets of scientific encyclopedias, one natural, the other spiritual; one about the natural world, the other about the spiritual world and how it animates the natural.
Now in the Writings, the human race has before it a full integrated rational description of God, creation, the universe, heaven and hell, history, truth, love, marriage, and regeneration.
This new beginning in science and rationality may be called the new age of THEISTIC SCIENCE.
The Christian tradition since the Lord’s First Coming has been that He is to come again to complete the world’s makeover called the salvation of the human race. They expect the Second Coming of the Lord to take place physically, appearing in the clouds, calling on those who believe in Him, gathering them together in one place, and giving them eternal life and happiness in Him. No one can tell you exactly what this means in terms of details—except those who have read and understood the Writings. For the Lord has effected His predicted Second Coming. This Second Advent was to complete the creation of the human race. He had already appeared physically in history and science, giving sensuous proof of Himself. When He foretold that He must come again, He did not mean that He is to come again in His glorified Divine Natural. He was actually saying that He must come again in His Divine Rational. Then we can know Him fully, by knowing the Divine Rational that is within the Divine Natural. A Second Coming in the physical would retard still further the evolution of rational consciousness in the human race.
The Lord is Divine Truth, which means that the new heavens He creates are made of rational loves, and these exist only in rational consciousness. The human race must evolve rational consciousness to become spiritually enlightened and live in heaven in eternity. This rational consciousness is brought about by forming our mind to reflect the order described in the Writings. This rational order is the Divine Rational of the Lord. From creation this is what the Lord intended, a human race that would evolve into rational consciousness and capable of having a celestial mind that lives in heaven. Now these rational truths have at last been revealed in the Writings. This rational revelation of Divine Truth is the Lord in His Second Coming.
Can a neighbor of yours know you if he only knows what you look like but not what you believe in and how you think? Christians got to know the Divine Natural of the Lord in a sensuous way, tangible, touchable. Even after the first generation passed on, the ensuing generations of Christians knew the Lord in this sensuous way because they believed that He was real, that He had indeed been here on this earth as God Incarnate. But this is relatively speaking, knowing the Lord like a neighbor whom we can see with our eyes every morning exiting from the apartment building, but whom we do not know because we do not know his beliefs and attitudes.
The Divine Rational of the Lord is within His Divine Natural, which makes sense because the Lord is Human. All humans consist of a rational mind within a body. In this world, we are a rational mind within a physical body, and in the afterlife, we are this same rational mind, but now in a spirit-body. The Lord is always within His Divine Natural Sensuous Body, as humans are always within their sensuous body. The sensuous body is the outward casing for the spiritual rational mind. The Lord’s Divine Natural Body is the outward Casing for His spiritual-rational mind called the Divine Rational. This Divine Rational is the origin and source of Divine Truth, the substance from which all is created. So the Lord’s Divine Rational is the true Divine Human that we are to love and know. This Divine Rational is what has been revealed in the Writings.
2. The Writings Are The Lord’s Second Coming
The Second Coming refers to the revelation of the Divine Rational. This revelation was completed and published on June 19, 1770, a date marked by the Lord in the spiritual world, by gathering the Apostles that had followed Him in the world, placing a copy of the True Christian Religion in their hands, and instructing them to go out and preach the new revelations of His Second Coming. This was witnessed by Swedenborg as part of his mission to be the architect and composer of the Writings. This new revelation was given for the entire human race, for all people regardless of religious background. Because it is a universal revelation of the Divine Rational, the form and content of the revelation had to be scientific and verifiable by rational analysis and criticism.
The Writings are God’s revelation to the human race of how He creates the universe and how He runs and manages every detail. This includes the revelation that the universe is created for a human purpose by means of truth within which is love. And it also includes the revelation of the existence of two worlds, one being a natural world where human beings are born and raised, the other a spiritual world, where human beings awaken a few hours after death and continue individual life eternally in either a celestial existence in heaven or an infernal existence in the hells. I mention these things here as general topics that have been of interest to the human race since the beginning of literature. But the Writings deal with these spiritual, philosophical, and religious topics in a rational way that give a scientifically precise and dynamic account of them. This is what I found so attractive in the Writings the minute I started reading them in 1981 at age 43, having discovered them in our university library while I was searching for Bible Commentaries.
Subsequently I also found out that the Writings of Swedenborg have had a distinguished but small following, that his books have been translated in a dozen languages, and that several communities have been created by people who call themselves the New Church religion that is based on the Writings. When I started reading the first pages of the first volume of the 30-volume collection called the Writings, I was able to see that this is not like any other work in the history of our race. I was trained as a scientist and earned a living as a psychology professor in a department that expects its faculty to teach the science and method of psychology. I have done this for 40 years now, and continue to do so as I write this book, at age 64. If the Writings had been like other books, I would have had to continue searching and longing for the scientific and rational understanding of reality and self.
Well, if the Writings do not spring from Swedenborg’s genius, what is their origin?
God has created the human race to evolve to ever higher powers of life and being. The perfecting of the human race is a gradual evolution in which our conscious cooperation with God is required to increase as we evolve to higher states of life and consciousness. The method by which the human race cooperates ever more consciously in its own evolution, is the method of truth and love. God is a Divine Rational Being whose essence is love and truth in an infinite degree. Divine Rational is the same as Divine Human, because the human is defined by the rational. The spiritual is nothing but the human rational in its essence.
God creates the universe not out of nothing, for this is irrational. God is infinite in quantity and complexity, and this infinite quantity is in God as one, that is, as one coherent whole. Nothing can exist that is not created from this infinite Divine Rational Substance called love and truth united as one. All things that exist are kept in existence by God’s substance of truth, within which is love.
3. Heaven Is Created From Rational Love
Since the universe is created from truth and into the order of truth, reality is a rational reality. God is a rational entity and our idea of God is a rational idea. All laws of the universe are rational laws. The spiritual world and the natural world are both rational worlds, by necessity of creation. Heaven is a rational creation. The suns and earths in the universe are rational entities. The human race is a rational creation and event, with a rational goal, and a rational method of evolution. The ultimate goal of this evolution is to reach perfection as a rational being.
Truth belongs to love. Love is the creating, driving force, power, and goal. When love creates something, it does that by means of truth. Truth is the exteriorization of love. Love is the substance, while truth is the form of this substance. Truth can do nothing by itself, but only from love. Love can’t do anything except by means of truth. Since all things are created from love by its truth into truth, the human mind is the highest element of all creation. Only the human mind is created capable of conscious understanding of truth, which can also be called rational love. The human mind is to evolve into the ability to understand ever more interior truths or rational loves, of which the most interior, is God. All things of creation are in God, yet God is separate from this creation. It would not be rational to think that God has created Himself! Neither that reality has created itself! God has created reality, which means that God is outside reality, able to create it and run it.
The method by which the human race is to evolve to ever more interior understanding of infinite Divine Truth, is the method of Divine Revelations. This has been the case since the first generation of the human race. Literature has preserved the long record of Divine Revelations to the earlier generations. Each Divine Revelation was given by God as a stepped up evolutionary leap for the human race. Each new revelation took hundreds of generations to fully digest and incorporate into the fabric of human understanding. In this way there has been steady progress in the evolution of human consciousness, as reflected by a world that has left barbaric savagery behind and has developed for itself an advanced civilization based on rational principles of mutual cooperation and treatment.
4. A Divine Revelation That Surpasses All Others
The Writings are the latest new revelation given by God to the human race.
This is a special new revelation that surpasses all other Divine Revelations.
These new revelations are for the first time fully rational and scientific. The human race had to evolve a modern scientific mind before these new rational scientific revelations could be given. At last, in the Age of Reason of the 18th century in Christian Western Europe, the human mind was ready to receive, understand, and accept a full unqualified and total revelation of God and reality in rational concepts and terms that the modern mind could readily understand. This was done through the mind of Emanuel Swedenborg, recognized as one of the great geniuses in the history of literature and science.
At age 57 Swedenborg was at the height of his scientific and professional career. His achievements have been well documented in several fields, including metallurgy, chemistry, anatomy, psychology, theology, education, and legislation. He tells how the God of His childhood and country, in the image of Jesus Christ, appeared before him and held him affectionately in His bosom for a little while. He writes that the Lord then told him that he was being prepared since early childhood for the mission of Revelator and that the time has now come, in 1741, for him to begin his Divine mission.
Swedenborg’s awesome mission was to write the 30-volume collection of books called “the Writings” or “the Writings of Swedenborg.” These Divine Revelations are going to be the last in the series of Divine Revelations that were to be given to the human race. They were therefore going to be a full and total rational disclosure of reality and its workings. Prior Divine Revelations of the Word, such as the Old and New Testaments, were given in a language of authority and mystery, but the final portion of the Divine Word for the human race, are given in a language of rationality and science. No mystery is left standing. No appeal is made to authority, but only to the individual’s rational understanding.
A Divine Revelation is given for the purpose of raising the consciousness of the race. This is accomplished by means of the truths in the Revelation. It is necessary therefore that people be able to understand the revelation. To make this possible therefore, all Divine Revelations are given through the mind of an individual human being, a capable representative of the rest of the race. The man whose mind was prepared for issuing this last of Divine Revelations had to be a product of the Age of Reason in Christian Western intellectual culture. It had to be a modern scientific revelation because the human race had evolved to this level of rational and spiritual consciousness. The modern mind was unwilling to believe in a God of mystery and authority. It needed a rational scientific account of God, reality, and our position in it. Even a sensuous God was no longer enough. This sensuous God had to have a rational explanation or else He could not be understood, and what the modern mind cannot understand, it won’t love. Without love for God, we cannot be regenerated and saved for life in heaven.
The Age of Reason in Europe had two well developed rational elements. One was scientific and the other was religious. Science and theology were both rational creations of the modern human intellect.
The Christian religion was given as both a sensuous and rational revelation to the human race. The sensuous revelation was the unprecedented event of Incarnation--God born in history as a human being of flesh and blood. This event took the human race forward into rational consciousness. Now there was scientific physical empirical historical evidence and proof of God’s existence. Besides the sensuous revelation of the New Testament, a rational revelation is also made there, namely, that God is Human. This was the first time that the human race had proof that the universe was a rational universe created for a human purpose by a Human God. God was Human and Rational, thus, Love and Truth. And He created the universe out of Truth into truth, hence in a rational order. God’s Laws were rational laws. The presence of God with the human race was through rational consciousness, rational understanding, rational loves, not ecstatic emotions or animal sacrifices and ceremonies.
The First Coming was the Incarnation of God in a physical body. It was a momentous forward step in the evolution of human consciousness because the human race had never had this proof before, had never been able to face God in a physical and natural presence. Now God was part of our history, part of our science, part of our rational understanding of reality. Prior to God’s Incarnation the relationship of the human race to God was an indirect one. God could make an appearance in the sensuous human world by taking over the mind of a celestial individual and speaking through this person like a mouthpiece. The prophets and various individuals to whom God appeared in the Bible saw God through such an appearance, thus not God, but a human being possessed by the Spirit of God. But since God’s Incarnation, He can appear to human beings as Himself in His Own Divine Natural Body. This allows a far closer contact with God, hence a far higher level of consciousness and life for the human race.
The New Testament Revelations also revealed that there is going to be one more Divine Revelation necessary to complete the creation of the human race into its full perfection. This full perfection is the state in which we can cooperate consciously with God in our preparation for heavenly life in eternity. Full conscious cooperation cannot be done while there are mysteries left in religion, science, and reality.
The Last Divine Revelation, or the Last Testament of the Word, has been laid down in Latin through the mind of Swedenborg, and now we have it, I, you, and the rest of the endless generations to come. A copy of the Writings as the New Word is also to be found in every society of the numberless heavens in the spiritual world.
The Divine Rational Revelations in the Writings could not have been constructed and delivered through Swedenborg’s mind if Swedenborg had merely to take Divine dictation and to write down sentences in that way, without understanding them, without having constructed them out of his understanding. Therefore in order to have Swedenborg write those sentences he had to first understand all of reality and God in relation to the human race. He had to understand rationally so that he could compose those sentences from which others could extract the rational truths.
5. Swedenborg’s Scientific Experiments In The Spiritual World
How was Swedenborg’s understanding to be enlightened so that he could rationally and scientifically describe reality and God in relation to the human race?
The answer is surprisingly simple: Swedenborg had to be given access to a spiritual laboratory so that he may conduct his experimental and empirical observations by which he might discover the rational truths of reality and God in relation to human beings.
These laboratory facilities were given him as part of the Divine mission, which is why Swedenborg wrote that the Writings represent the greatest miracle and wonder ever bestowed upon the human race by God’s Love. Swedenborg’s experiments with spirit subjects and geographical explorations in the spiritual world were effected through the intermediary of many people in the spiritual world. The people who inhabit the celestial regions in their mind are called angels and have many powers that Swedenborg did not have, being still a man on earth. These angels intervened of his behalf, protected him from harm, and arranged for conditions Swedenborg needed to make his observations and to write them down in a natural language (Neo-Latin and Swedish). He not only wrote down what happened but was also given the capacity to provide a scientific and theological context for his observations and reports. Thus, nothing is wanting in the Writings for fulfilling its role as the greatest intellectual boon the human race has ever received, or will ever receive again.
Within a matter of a few weeks since the Lord’s appearance to Swedenborg, he began to experience new perceptions as he was reading the Bible. His practiced genius was able to make detailed indexes of the Holy Book which he read in the original Hebrew and Greek. To his amazement he discovered that within the literal meaning of the Old and New Testaments there lay hidden a spiritual meaning that was not apparent to the reader until each word and phrase was taken as a correspondence for some deeper spiritual meaning. For example, by collating many corresponding passages from both Testaments, Swedenborg showed how any rational and educated person could discover the spiritual message in each verse. The content of these spiritual meanings hidden within the literal had to do with the rational exposition of reality and God in relation to the human race.
This systematic work of discovery was most important and impressive, and will be a benefit to humankind for all the ages to come. And yet, this work would not have been sufficient to constitute the final, total, and thus last, Divine Revelation by which everything the human race can know and understand. There also had to be a science to it. Where was the science of it? Extracting a rational system from historical Divine works in the Bible is admirable, but it is not a scientific work. The only way Swedenborg could produce a scientific report of the spiritual world was to be there when he describes it!
This was granted to him by Divine intervention as the greatest miracle in human history.
6. Swedenborg’s Dual Citizenship—Natural And Spiritual
A few months after his momentous encounter with the Lord, Swedenborg began to have flashes of conscious presence in the spiritual world. He did not know what is the spiritual world. From his initial flashes it looked like a version of the natural world, with people walking about in cities and in the country side where there were forests, deserts, mountains, and lakes. It took just a few months for him to get adjusted to a full time permanent conscious awake state in both worlds simultaneously.
Never before in history has anyone ever claimed to be fully conscious in both worlds simultaneously and uninterruptedly for 27 years while carrying on their profession and normal duties and in society. This was especially a significant development because Swedenborg was an impeccable scientist of the modern Age of Reason in Christian Western Europe. He was able to connect all his vast modern knowledge of natural science and biology to his new life in the spiritual world. He wrote daily notes, forming a coherent description of the relationship between the two worlds. He was given access by the Lord to any society or individual in the spiritual world that he desired to investigate. He was given the means by which to conduct experiments, such as for example, what happens to the mind when you experimentally remove from it this or that idea or belief. Also, what happens when you supply this or that truth to an individual, or how people with different genius communicate with each other through others, in an information network, what the language of communication is in the spiritual world, how people form different cultures and civilizations can co-exist, and many such things.
He kept notes of his meetings and interviews in the spiritual world with thousands of people in all categories that were relevant to his science and culture. He was thus able to compare the understanding and state of life of many categories of people, comparing their demographics with their spiritual character. He was able to talk to authors from the ancient Greeks whose books he had read and studied, so that he could compare what happens to the author’s mind when he goes to the afterlife with these ideas. He was able to speak and travel with people in the spiritual world who had been born on other planets and thereby he gained an empirical knowledge of the varieties of the human race. He was able to visit the high places and the low places of the spiritual world, encountering there the highest level of the human, and the most depraved. Because humans retain their ideas and attitudes when they pass on, they can be explored as to the details of their life and conduct. Swedenborg was able to make precise cause-effect observations between the ideas and loves we accumulate as our personality, and the quality of our life and experience in the spiritual world.
You can see from all this that no other writings can be compared with the Writings of Swedenborg.
Now that the modern scientific Divine Rational Revelations have been given to the human race, it will take many generations before they are recognized and acknowledged by many. Since 1771, the year the last work of the Writings was published, there have been thousands of individuals who have recognized them and acknowledged them as Divine Revelations. Today, in the computer age of the Internet, the Writings have become available to anyone who desires them. The Lord manages every detail in the universe, hence also, who and when anyone gets to see the Writings, and then, what of it one can understand, love, and assimilate for life.
No one can see anything special and spiritual in the Writings who is not led by the Lord to do so. This is not some special favoritism or sectarianism of this or that new religion. The Writings are a complete work of rational science. The only requirement for access to higher human consciousness is to read the Writings as the Divine Word given to humankind for the enlightenment of rational consciousness.
No religion is necessary, no teacher or guru, no initiation ceremony, no prior qualification of personality, orientation, or character. Nothing is required except a modern scientific mind able to figure our and comprehend rational ideas laid down in a rational and scientific manner.
In this book I have taken the rational arguments and proofs in the Writings and applied them to my understanding of reality and science. As a trained professional scientist all my life I have carried my profession and science into the analysis and confirmation process of all that is in the Writings for anyone to verify. I have then taken this new understanding of reality and myself and applied it to what is every individual’s principal tasks in life: regeneration.
7. This Book Is About Regeneration
The human race has been for a long time in a “Fallen” or degenerate state by heredity. This is because all new human loves and tendencies accumulate in the mind and are passed on by hereditary mechanisms to one’s offspring. Today as each of us is born into the modern world and culture, we have the potential of becoming a celestial mind by means of regeneration, which goes on throughout our life in the physical body. Once we awaken in the spiritual world, a few hours after the physical body dies, we begin a new life in a spirit-body that contains our will and understanding. These two organs are filled with our experiences, knowledge, and affections or loves. We are then to continue forever being the kind of individuals we became while maturing on earth. Clearly then, it’s a matter of survival and rational self-interest to see to it that we arrive in the afterlife with a personality and character that can live in a heavenly sphere, by which we can avoid the eternal misery of those who sink down into hell because of their distorted and insane character or personality.
In the spiritual world all individuals feel totally free to be who or what they are in their loves and interests. In fact, they are compelled by the laws of the spiritual world to be on the outside what their affections or loves are on the inside. While tied to a physical body, our inner madness, rage, and insanity do not show, being inhibited by society and consequences. But as soon as we awaken in our spirit-body, nothing that is within can be kept from coming out. Therefore by necessity there are Divine laws of reality in the spiritual world that keep the order and make continued life possible in that order. And so, regions and habitations are set up in the endless expanse of the spiritual world, in order to accommodate the life for every type of human beings that enter the world of spirits from the numerous earths in the universe. There are heavens and there are hells, reflecting the character of those who live there. And within the heavens and the hells, there are innumerable sub-regions and societies, each made up of people of a similar character who live together and share one another’s fate.
This book is about regeneration, which is the conscious discipline of character change based on the scientific principles revealed in the Writings.
When we read the Writings we begin to understand regeneration in a medial, psychological, and educational perspective that is unique and new. Our prior understanding is based on the fundamental principle of nonduality, which is that all things exist in one continuum of the universe or reality. When we begin to see things from the perspective of the Writings, we can replace every concept of nonduality into a duality. Every duality is by reference to the natural and the spiritual as two separate and distinct worlds, tied together by rational laws of correspondence that have now been revealed by God.
In Volume 1 I show how rational analysis can be used to debunk and deconstruct concepts and notions of nonduality that are opposed to the dualities in our mind from the Writings. Once our mind is rearranged in this new mode, we can begin regeneration, which requires us to cooperate with the Lord by shunning evils as sins because sins prevent the preparation of our mind for eternal life. This cooperation must be in all the specifics of our willing and thinking hour by hour, every day. In Volume 3 I explain how to do this systematically and effectively by means of spiritual disciplines. These “regeneration disciplines” consist of doing ordinary things in our daily life from a new motive, which is that we are striving to obey the Lord’s Commandment that we monitor our willing and thinking, that we evaluate every particular in the light of the truths from the Writings, that we desist from willing what is evil and thinking what is false, and at last, that we detest these things that are in us from hell by heredity, culture, and unregenerate habits.
Others may also have an interest in the book, especially the wives of the men who are undergoing reformation and regeneration by means of the Writings. Women are also going through the gradual process of regeneration and have to cooperate with the Lord in that process in order to be saved for heavenly life. They may find it useful to learn what their husbands are going through from a Doctrinal point of view. Men and women have categorically different patterns of regeneration because there can be no overlap of interior nature between men and women (xx). Also, this book discusses the content and quality of everyday thoughts and feelings of husbands who are undergoing reformation and regeneration. And since husbands resist conjugial love from hereditary antipathy, often fiercely and cruelly, their wives have to endure much abuse and unhappiness in the process of their regeneration. Knowing the details of their husband’s mental struggles may be of interest and use to their wives, and to women generally.
Also, all who are interested in Swedenborg’s Writings and ideas may find much useful details and spiritual applications to daily life. People who have not read the Writings may be interested in how I analyze important lifestyle concepts such as God, religion, spirituality, heaven and hell, love, truth, personality, and especially, the process of deepening marital relations.
The New Church mind, as defined in the Writings, is to be formed entirely and solely from what is written in the Writings. The New Church mind contains many traditional views and ideals. It accepts the Christian virtues, supports law and order, supports liberty for all, puts patriotism and religion as its highest values along with marriage, parenting, and a strong educational system for all. The New Church mind supports human rights, equality between the genders, equal opportunity for all, constitutional democracy, and a strong defense system to protect the homeland. All these things are traditional values in our society and history and forms a part of the New Church mind. The New Church mind considers the Bible as the Holy Word of God, along with the Writings, which it calls the Word of the Second Coming and the Third and Final Testament.
No religious or spiritual mystery is allowed in the New Church mind, but only that which is explainable rationally. This is because the Lord has, in a rational way, revealed in the Writings all the former mysteries of religion, philosophy, and science. It is not necessary to join a religious denomination or Church in order to form the New Church mind in oneself. The only requirements and methods are from the Writings. The New Church mind cannot be formed solely by the traditional values mentioned, without undergoing reformation and regeneration. This means that everything in the mind must be rearranged. Our moment by moment willing and thinking must be radically changed. This is called being in “the good of life.” To quote from the Writings:
For it is the case with the life of charity (which is the heavenly life itself) that with those who are being reformed and regenerated it is continually being born and growing up and receiving increments, and this by means of truths; therefore the more of truth there is insinuated, the more is the life of charity perfected … (…) In truth, however, there is no life, but in good. Truth is only a recipient of life, that is, of good. Truth is as the clothing or garment of good; therefore also truths are called in the Word "clothing," and also "garments." But when good constitutes the rational, truth disappears and becomes as if it were good. (AC 2189)
The Writings explain why reformation is necessary. The reason given is that we are born with a natural mind and with the potential of developing also a spiritual mind. This new mind becomes functional only through reformation and regeneration of one’s old mind and inherited character. The spiritual mind is required for a life in heaven after the life in the physical world. Regeneration is the process of character self-modification and it goes on throughout one’s life here, and hereafter to eternity (AC 47, 233, 1712, 2877, 5664, 10299; NJHD 148; DP 102; CL 82; SE 5958; LJ 299; AE 864). The New Church mind is the individual who is motivated to adopt the rational system presented by the Writings and to let it exclusively form one’s willing and thinking minute by minute in daily activities and life.
This book presents practical methods for husbands who want to form the New Church mind in themselves. It is not a commentary on other systems of religion and philosophy. Every group must find its own truth and method of salvation. Liberty for every group to do this is essential for progress, peace, and freedom. Thus, I speak only for what should be the New Church mind as defined by the Writings. I have attempted to justify every assertion by reference to the Writings. If you find anything that you think is a misinterpretation, please write me (email address: leon@hawaii.edu ).
All citations in parentheses are to Swedenborg’s books which collectively, are called the Writings. The places marked by (xx) are still to be filled in. If you have any of these citations at hand, please email them to me. The standard Title of the Work referred to in these citations is given at the end.
The Word is the Divine Truth which is in the Lord and from the Lord … Divine Truth has power in itself, and such power that, by means of it, heaven was created and the world with all things therein. (HH 137).
Without the Lord's coming into the world no one could have been saved. It is the same today; and therefore without the Lord's coming again into the world in Divine truth, which is the Word, no one can be saved. (TCR 3)
In the spiritual sense, a “man of the field” signifies “the faith and truth of doctrine” (AC 368, 427, 4823). This book is about the spiritual Doctrine that each man is to extract from the Word of the Writings, by applying the literal sense to oneself, to the hundreds of willing and thinking acts we perform every day in the course of our normal activities. This use of the literal sense is required for our reformation, regeneration, and salvation for eternal life in heaven. Every time we apply in this way one of the literal sentences from the Writings, we are enlightened by the Lord so that we can perceive the spiritual sense within the literal. This conscious process counts as cooperation with the Lord in our regeneration. Without this active conscious daily habitual cooperation with the Lord, we cannot be regenerated. This will be proven in the book by many citations from the Writings. It is the spiritual understanding of Doctrine that constitutes faith and truth. The Lord infills true faith with Divine Love, and from this union we have closeness with Him, love unto Him, and new interior celestial truths that make us wise like an angel, and capable of conjugial union with the wife.
Dedication
To my wife
It is her internal wisdom that led me to write this book as-of myself. She brought into our marriage the conjugial love she has in her from the Lord, inborn from nativity
An inclination to love one of the opposite sex, and with it a capacity for receiving that love, has been implanted in Christians from birth, for the reason that this love comes from the Lord alone (CL 466).
Wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in them to wish to be one with their husbands … But it is different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but designed to receive that love from their wives (CL 216)
The intelligence of women is by nature modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft and gentle, while the intelligence of men is by nature critical, rough, resistant, argumentative, and given to intemperance. Evidence that this is the nature of women and the nature of men is clearly apparent from the body, face, tone of voice, speech, bearing and behavior of each sex. (…)
From this I could clearly see that a man is born a form of the intellect, and a woman a form of love. I could also see what the nature of the intellect is and what the nature of love is in their beginnings, and thus what a man's intellect in its development would be like without conjunction with feminine love and eventually conjugial love. (CL 218)
VOLUME 1:REFORMATION: THE INWARD STRUGGLE AGAINST NONDUALITY
Introduction:The New Church Mind is to be Formed by the Writings Exclusively
1. Introduction
Quoting from the Writings:
There are two states that man must enter upon and pass through, when from being natural he is becoming spiritual. The first state is called Reformation, and the second Regeneration. In the first man looks from his natural to his spiritual state and longs for that state; in the second state he becomes spiritual-natural. The first state is formed by means of truths, which must be truths of faith, and through these he looks to charity; the second state is formed by means of the goods of charity, and by these he enters into the truths of faith. Or what is the same, the first is a state of thought from the understanding, and the second a state of love from the will.
When this latter state begins and is progressing, a change takes place in the mind; the mind undergoes a reversal, the love of the will then flowing into the understanding, acting upon it and leading it to think in accord and agreement with its love; and in consequence so far as the good of love comes to act the first part and the truths of faith the second, man is spiritual and is a new creature; and he then acts from charity and speaks from faith; he feels the good of charity and perceives the truth of faith; and he is then in the Lord, and in peace, and thus regenerate.
The man who while in the world has entered upon the first state, after death can be introduced into the second; but he who has not entered into the first state while in the world, cannot after death be introduced into the second, thus cannot be regenerated. (TCR 571)
The New Church mind in this book refers to any individual who is motivated to study the Writings as Divine Truth, and to love it by daily willing and thinking according to one’s understanding of it.
This means that every spiritual truth found in the Writings is to be taken as a Divine Commandment. Every idea and concept we acquire elsewhere must be kept separated in the external of our knowledge or memory and not allowed to commingle in the mind that is to be formed exclusively by the Writings. The New Church mind, as defined here, is not the New Church mind unless it is formed exclusively by the Writings.
Without the Lord's coming into the world no one could have been saved. The situation to-day is similar. So unless the Lord comes into the world again in the form of Divine Truth, that is, the Word, no more can anyone now be saved. (TCR 3)
You can see from this that the New Church mind can be saved only by means of the Writings and through no other means. The phrase “no more can anyone now be saved” refers to the new dispensation of the Second Coming, as indicated by the phrase “unless the Lord comes into the world again in the form of Divine Truth, that is, the Word.” This new Word now revealed for our salvation is the Word of the Writings. Whatever exists in the world today that is not from this new Word, cannot be for the salvation of the New Church mind.
All Christian people draw their doctrines from the Word as being their one and only source. (TCR 629)
God's Word is the source whence all theology must be derived (Letters 7).
What in particular concerns the doctrine that now follows, is that it also is out of heaven, because it is from the spiritual sense of the Word; and the spiritual sense of the Word is identical with the doctrine which is in heaven. (NJHD 7)
The existence of writings in the heavens is a provision of the Lord for the sake of the Word; for the Word in its essence is Divine truth, and from it is all heavenly wisdom, both with men and with angels; for the Word was dictated by the Lord, and what is dictated by the Lord passes through all the heavens in order and terminates with man. Thereby it is adapted both to the wisdom of angels and the intelligence of men. Thereby, too, the angels have a Word, and read it the same as men do on the earth, and also draw from it their doctrinals, and preach from it (AC n. 221). It is the same Word; but its natural sense, which is the sense of the letter with us, does not exist in heaven, but only the spiritual sense, which is its internal sense. What this sense is can be seen in the small treatise on The White Horse spoken of in the Apocalypse. (HH 259)
These passages teach that henceforth, from the Writings “is all heavenly wisdom, both with men and with angels.” All Doctrine for the New Church mind is from the Word of the Writings and from no other source. “Doctrine” refers to spiritual truths contained within the literal language of the Writings. No other books can be a source of spiritual truths for the New Church mind. All spiritual truths in our mind must be from the Writings, and no idea that is not from the Writings can be taken as spiritual truth for the New Church mind. While the Old Testament and the New Testament are also the Word, they can only be understood spiritually through the Writings.
The Word is the doctrine of Divine truth, and … everything of doctrine must be from the Word (AE 612)
It is written that “the only source of human regeneration is the Lord” (AC 10042) and the Lord is the Word (TCR 225; LORD 7; AC 2). Hence the only source of regeneration is the Word, which for the New Church mind, is the Writings.
The Word of the Divine Human in the New Heavens today is the Word of the Writings, and this Word is the same as the one we have on earth:
It is the same Word; but its natural sense, which is the sense of the letter with us, does not exist in heaven, but only the spiritual sense, which is its internal sense. (TCR 1)
What in particular concerns the doctrine that now follows, is that it also is out of heaven, because it is from the spiritual sense of the Word; and the spiritual sense of the Word is identical with the doctrine which is in heaven. For there is a Church in heaven as well as on earth; for the Word is there, doctrine is there from the Word; temples are there, in which sermons are delivered; because ecclesiastical and civil governments are there. In a word, the only difference between the things which are in the heavens, and those which are on earth, is, that all the things in the heavens are in a state of greater perfection, because all who are there are spiritual, and spiritual things immensely exceed in perfection those that are natural. (NJHD 7)
The Word is to be found in all the heavens and is the source of the angels' wisdom. (TCR 240)
The Word in heaven is written in a spiritual style which is quite different from the natural style. The spiritual style is composed simply of letters, each one of which denotes a particular meaning; and there are dashes, curves and points above, between and within the letters, which heighten the meaning. The letters used by the angels of the spiritual kingdom resemble printed type in our world; the letters used by the angels of the celestial kingdom are in some cases like Arabic letters, in others like ancient Hebrew letters, but with curves above and below, and pointing above, between and inside them. Even a single one of these points conveys a complete meaning. (TCR 241)
It is clear therefore that the angels read the Writings and this is their only source of intelligence and wisdom—“doctrine is there from the Word”. Note that Doctrine is the same as the spiritual sense of the Writings contained within the literal language—“doctrine is from the spiritual sense of the Writings” since the Writings are the Word. The spiritual sense cannot be written down in a natural language, and neither can the spiritual Doctrine drawn from this sense, since these two are identical. Note also that the spiritual sense of the Writings in heaven also have a letter! Without an outward letter of the Word there is no writing possible. So the outward containant of the holy truths from the Lord, is the letter the angels have. The angelic writing mode varies in accordance with the level of thinking in the three heavens, as the passage above describes it (TCR 241).
3. Spiritual Truths Understood Naturally and Spiritually
It’s interesting to note what natural letters of the alphabet on earth are similar to the spiritual writing alphabets in the heavens. The written letters of the second heaven of the spiritual angels resemble visually the “printed type in our world.” The letters of the third heaven of the celestial angels resemble visually “Arabic letters” and “Hebrew letters.” These two correspond historically on this earth with the three religions of the Western world--Islam and Judaeo-Christian. “
Those in heaven pay attention to the Word in the letter and perceive things there in exactly the same way as anyone is accustomed to perceive a person's thought as it presents itself in spoken words, or in the inmost heaven as anyone is accustomed to perceive a person's aims or end in view. (AC 9407)
Note therefore that the spiritual sense of the Writings only exists in the understanding because it is impossible to render it in the letter of the Word. If it were possible, the angels would not need a letter of the Word within which they can see and receive spiritual things! But the highest angels also need a letter for the Word, written in visible script, as discussed just above. This is a rational matter to understand and follows from discrete degrees in all things created (see Chapter 5 Section 6).
Clearly then, the natural literal sentences in the Writings cannot be same as the spiritual truths.
Prior to our reformation, sometime in adulthood, we read many things about heavenly secrets, which are knowledges revealed from heaven. They are called secrets because no human being in all of history and evolution, can ever discover a single spiritual truth from self, from experience, or from another human being. Every spiritual truth comes from the spiritual world which is in a discrete degree above the natural world, so that one can never access the spiritual from the natural.
This also means that there is no conscious access possible to our spiritual mind from our natural mind. The spiritual mind is tied to heaven because all its content is from heaven, and the natural mind is tied to earth because all its content is from earth. All spiritual truths that enter our spiritual mind from the angels, is unconscious to us in the natural. But it has an effect by correspondence. The spiritual meanings enter the natural meanings that we have obtained from the Writings. This correspondential activity goes on in the interior-natural mind that is formed within the natural-rational mind.
Note carefully: the natural-rational mind reads and understand the Writings naturally, but it is the interior-natural mind that understands it spiritually, by correspondence. It is the spiritual understanding that we need in order to be regenerated and saved.
4. The Great Battle Of Nonduality Vs. Duality
To be saved we must undergo reformation first, and when that is completed, we begin regeneration. The unregenerate mind prior to reformation is filled with nonduality. Nonduality is an orientation of the mind in which we are motivated to prevent the entry into the mind of absolute dualities such as compose every page of the Writings. For example, everything in the Writings is based on the idea that God is separate from created things, as He is infinite and created things are finite. Nonduality puts up a combat against this absolute duality, preferring the idea that there is a continuum between the finite and the infinite, so that if we could imagine ourselves to grow more and more perfect, we could become like God.
Another example is good and evil. In the Writings there is an absolute and eternal division between good and evil, or between spiritual truth and falsity. But nonduality in our mind desires to level them into a continuum so that evil is just a lesser form of good. Still another example is the spiritual constitution of men and women. The Writings describe the difference as an absolute duality so that nothing in a man can ever be like something in a woman, and vice versa. Nonduality is motivated to prefer a continuum between men and women that yields an overlap in traits. While this may be the appearance for natural traits, it is not so for spiritual traits.
There are many thousands of such items of nonduality in our mind as we begin our reformation. The nonduality is already ensconced, and receives the support of culture, science, and education. We therefore are faced with a great and mighty struggle to clean out our mind from these nondualities. If we leave them there, they destroy the absolute dualities we take up from the Writings, and therefore, prevent our reformation, regeneration, and salvation. The nondualities cannot be gotten rid off except by means of dualities form the Writings, and this only if we acknowledge the Writings as the Word. For only Divine Truth from the Word has the power to defeat the hells, and all of the hells are involved in maintaining nonduality in our mind.
We are in this sorry and precarious situation by birth. Our spirit or mind is born corrupted by heredity, deformed, injured, sick, and dying, on its way to hell. The most atrocious evils are within a beautiful baby, kept suppressed for a few months or years, by the presence of angels. But as soon as the child grows older, and begins to think from self, the evils break out and surround the individual, pulling like a mighty chain tied to hell. We can put on a facade of niceness for the sake of self-preservation and acceptance by others, but within the heart breathes every rage, hatred, deception, and obscenity. This sorry and troubling description is one of the most important revelations of the Lord’s Second Coming in the Writings. We must know our spiritual state in order to reform and regenerate, thus be saved for life in heaven. No religious faith or worship can save us, but only reformation and regeneration. The Writings have been given so that its truths within our mind, may have the power to battle and defeat the hells within us.
You can see that it is essential to acquire in our mind the literal meaning of the Writings. Without this knowledge of the Writings in sufficient detail, we cannot be reformed because we are unwilling to give up the nonduality which is in our unregenerate mind. The only way we have the motive power to reject our own nonduality is by reading, understanding, and believing the literal sentences of the Writings, even as we believe and worship Divine Truth or the Lord. This is the only way that the Lord has provided for salvation in His Second Coming.
Once we imbibe the letter of the Writings and honor it in our mind as the Word, we have developed into mature adult minds ready to undergo rebirth and reformation. Now the literal sentences that are in our mind become Doctrine of Life. We see each sentence as applying to ourself, even though very obscurely, and sometimes seeing not even that. But we accept rationally the idea that every sentence applies to us, in fact, is the Lord speaking to our natural mind. Now we suddenly become aflame with the desire to reform. We passionately seek out every nonduality in our mind, deconstruct it, mark it, put it in a special bin, and substitute for it a duality from those many sentences and ideas we imbibed from the Writings. Suddenly we see clearly in the light of those sentences and concepts. This is spiritual vision. For the first time we have a spiritual consciousness, the very beginning of it because we are in the reformation phase, but much more brightly when we progress in regeneration.
In the Writings, we read details about correspondences, the Lord’s Laws of Providence and Permissions, conjugial love, states of regeneration. All these subjects are spiritual topics, but they are laid down in a natural language. The literal meaning of the sentence is not the spiritual meaning that is contained within it. Because this would be impossible! It is impossible on earth as it is impossible in heaven, because the Word in both worlds is written in a visible script with letters.
This is most important to understand, and is repeated in different ways, in several places throughout this book. At first this is hard to believe and accept, regardless of how much study we have done on the Writings. This resistance is similar to the resistance Christians put up to the idea from the Writings that the Old and New Testaments have an inner sense, and the only this inner sense is actually spiritual. They have difficulty believing this because they can hardly be expected to understand it without the Writings.
Prior to our reformation in adult life we are called Christians, but after reformation, when regeneration has begun, we are called True Christians—as the title of the last book of the Writings clearly indicate: The True Christian Religion. And the last thing in a section of the Word recapitulates all of the Word (xx). Hence The True Christian Religion (TCR) is the special Work of the Writings that embodies, recapitulates, and completes all that has been written in the Word before it. All who are called “True Christians” are of the New Church. The New Church mind regardless of religious background, is called the True Christian mind. The word “Christian” as part of “True” represents the Divine Human of the Lord as revealed in the Second Coming, for He is Divine Truth, and He is the Risen Glorified Christ born in the world (xx). All who know Him in His Second Coming, and love Him as the Divine Human, He calls “True Christians.”
After reformation, we develop a dual relationship to the Writings. We continue to study the literal as essential for the continued development of our natural mind. Remember that every word and sentence of the literal in the Word contains infinite spiritual secrets (xx). We need those sentences and ideas in our external memory-knowledges as an endless source of new spiritual truths that enhance our happiness and consciousness as angels to eternity. This is why the angels have the Word and read it as the source of all their wisdom (xx). But remember again how they access these spiritual truths each time they read the Word in script, or think from it in their memory-knowledge. The wisdom does not lie in the letters and sentences, but within them. This is a discrete degree above the script or letter. Therefore it is impossible to express spiritual truths in the script of the angels, even though that script is called “spiritual script” (xx).
This is the same for us on earth. The literal sentences and their meanings in our mind, are not spiritual since they are in the natural mind. We read the sentences and definitions about “the heavenly doctrine” and the sentence, “This is the Heavenly Doctrine.” These are indeed spiritual and heavenly subjects, but what’s written down is not the spiritual meaning. The Lord has provided for this: that as we and angels read the script, or think from it in our mind, He enlightens each of us. That’s how it works! Only this enlightenment is the spiritual sense. It’s like a flash of lightening in a meadow in the dark—our understanding breaks through the darkness and for an instant, we see the terrain in clear vision. After that instant we can describe what we have seen, but this description cannot recreate the vision of the terrain, but only a representation of it in language.
5. Enlightenment From The Lord
When does the Lord give enlightenment as we read the sentences of the Writings, or think from them in our mind?
The answer is the same for us now and later, when we are angels. The Lord gives enlightenment when we try to apply the sentence or idea in the letter, to our life, that is, to our willing and thinking moment by moment. This is the “work of charity” or the “life of good” that we must perform in order be saved. Our willing and thinking moment by moment consists of a sequence of acts we perform in our will and in our understanding. Thousands of individual acts of willing, intending, thinking, and reasoning, go on every day for every human being. Each one of these is either from hell or from heaven. Prior to our reformation, all are from hell! (xx), and to be regenerated we need to get rid of them as-of self, in our conscious mind, by a free choice motivated by the spiritual truth that they are sins against the Lord and prevent us from becoming angels. That’s a lot of work! But the Lord provides for the orderly progress within this psychobiological growth process.
Enlightenment is the flash of heavenly light the Lord sends into our conscious natural mind, whenever we examine one of our numerous acts of the day or hour, and evaluate them in the light of the sentences and ideas from the Writings.
The meaning of the flash that we try to write down or express in words, is called the spiritual Doctrine in our understanding (xx). This is the spiritual meaning of the Heavenly Doctrines now seen spiritually, while before regeneration began, we only saw their natural meaning, since we could not see what is within those sentences. Our mind was locked into what was in the outside of the sentences, namely their natural meaning. This natural meaning was essential to acquire so that we may use them to evaluate our willing and thinking acts. But now that we have applied it to ourselves, we are given to see what is within. Note carefully: the literal is till there, still true, still holy. It is still essential to imbibe it and understand it naturally with our rational understanding. NO progress can be made without this step!
But it must not be the last step! Mere memory-knowledges of the literal scientifics of the Writings does not have the power to save us, despite their holiness and essential condition for being saved. Faith cannot save, but charity within faith, saves (xx). The charity is the works of good we do by modifying our willing and thinking in accordance with the faith, the Doctrine, the understanding. The spiritual meaning is then revealed, first to the spiritual mind, of which we are unconscious, and second, by correspondence, to the interior-natural mind, of which we are conscious like a flash in the dark.
Prior to reformation, the Lord calls the works we do as “a hunter of the ground.” We have the Writings, we acknowledge it as the Word, we study and memorize it, but we do not apply it to our willing and thinking in particular, but only in general, like a confession or creed. It is in our mind for a few minutes a week or day, but then out of our mind, as we carry on intending and willing in the absence of our thinking about the Writings. But after reformation, we are motivated to change our moment by moment intending and thinking, so that they conform to what we have learned from our study of the Writings. In this new state, the Lord calls us “a man of the field.” We don’t just put the heavenly doctrines into our understanding, but into our will. This requires gradual regeneration, day by day, like a gardener or farmer toiling in his field.
Then the Writings are no longer merely the Word of our religion, but the Lord Himself in His Holy Spirit or Divine Rational. This is because we can now perceive the Lord within the letter in a way not perceivable until then. Our love for this Divine Truth develops our spiritual mind all the way to the Second Heaven of the spiritual angels. But if our love is for the Lord, and thence for His Truth, our spiritual mind is developed all the way to the Third Heaven of the celestial angels. To love the Lord’s Truth is to study the Writings and to make its concepts the governing ideas in our mind. To love the Lord, and thence His Truth, is to use this truth to modify our willing and thinking, so that we may become more agreeable to the Lord, to His Order, and closer to Him in conjunction.
Those who consider themselves in the New Church may assume that they are already saved since they believe in the Writings as the Word of their religion. But they must apply to themselves the Lord’s Doctrine:
UNLESS A MAN IS BORN AGAIN, AND, AS IT WERE, CREATED ANEW, HE CANNOT ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. That unless a man is born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of God, is the Lord's doctrine (TCR 572).
We need to ask ourselves: How is the New Church person reborn? The answer given in this book is based on my understanding of the Writings as the Word, and how it is to be applied to our daily willing and thinking. By observing the resistances I am experiencing in my reformation and regeneration I have become aware of how the Heavenly Doctrine is to be applied specifically to our willing and thinking in daily activities. The Writings show that progress in our regeneration depends entirely on the degree of our cooperation with the Lord. This cooperation is performed in the mental effort we exert in our willing and thinking, moment by moment, in our daily routines of social life. The effort is required because our na |
