Half a Century of Science in
Psychology
Scientific Neologisms Coined by Leon James
For the Period 1958-2008
Including an Analysis of the Natural and Spiritual Properties of Neologisms
(formerly: Leon A. Jakobovits)
University of Hawaii
2008
(version 26a)
With the collaboration, since 1976 of
Dr. Diane Nahl
Part I || Part II ||
Part
III ||
Master Neochart
This is Part II
Preface General Introduction || A Definition of Neologism ||
Consider this little experiment || Syntactic Levels of Neologisms
|| Sentential Neos || The Spiritual Poetry of Neologisms
|| The Spiritual Dimension of Neologisms || Where are neologisms
located? Where do they come from?
Meta-Neos in Education and Training || Neologistic Discourse Analysis || The
Divine Neo Fulfills Itself in the Reality of Conjoint Neocharts || Conjoint Neos
|| Intimacy Neos || The Impossibility of Keeping Track of All Our Neos || Neos,
Words, and Correspondences || Scientific Activity and Research About Neologisms
|| Related Links
Part II starts here
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)
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.
What 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.
Constructing
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…”
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” (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.
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.
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 or 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:
-
Studying the laws of correspondences revealed in the Swedenborg Reports
-
Organizing them into a scientific account called “doctrine of truth from
Sacred Scripture”
-
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 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).
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.
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.
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 for
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 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.
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