Dr. Leon James
Professor of Psychology
University of Hawaii
Published on the Web in 2004

For Permissions Note and Conditions of Use see Volume 18

The Topical Index to All Sections and Reading List is in Volume 18 :
    www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic 

This is Volume 9

The Genes of Consciousness
in Spiritual Development
 

(version 48a)

9.0    Geography of the Spiritual World = Anatomy of the Mind

            9.0.1    Discovering The Genes of Consciousness in Sacred Scripture

                            9.0.1.1    Duality Gene Structures

                            9.0.1.2    Trigrammatic Gene Structures

                                                9.0.1.2.1    Graphic Concepts for Trigrammatic Genes

                                                9.0.1.2.2    Rational Sets of Trigrammatic Concepts

                            9.0.1.3    Enneadic Gene Structures

                            9.0.1.4    Hexagrammatic Gene Structures

                                                9.0.1.4.1    Mapping the Divine Child's Mental States
                                                9.0.1.4.2    Using the Ennead Chart to Map the Mental Steps to
                                                                            Unity in Marriage

9.1    Models of Spiritual Development Based on Sacred Scripture

            9.1.1    Extracting Theistic Psychology Concepts From the Writings Sacred Scripture

                                9.1.1.1    The Literal Meaning and the Extracted Meaning

            9.1.2    The Scientific Meaning of Heaven

                                9.1.2.1    Heavenly Robotics -- In the Image and Likeness of God

            9.1.3    The Divine History of Theistic Psychology

                                9.1.3.1    Individual Spiritual Development Recapitulates New Church History
                                9.1.3.2    New Church History and Degrees of the Mind

            9.1.4    The Double Ennead Matrix -- Plotting Spiritual History and
                                    Individual Development

            9.1.5    The Law of Recursiveness in the Growth of Consciousness

            9.1.6    The As-of-self or Proprium

            9.1.7    The Phases of Consciousness in Theistic Psychology

            9.1.8    The Birth of the Rational--The Beginning of Being Human

            9.1.9     The Doctrine of the Church and Theistic Psychology

            9.1.10    Stages of Development in Theistic Psychology

            9.1.11    Levels of Extraction from Sacred Scripture

                            9.1.11.1    List of Additional Diagrams in Theistic Psychology

            9.1.12    The Two Heresies Possible in Relation to De Hemelsche Leer

            9.1.13    What About the Dangers of Literalism

            9.1.14    What is Theistic Psychology

            9.1.15    Spiritual Styles of Writing

            9.1.16    Intellectual Content in Relation to Degrees of Consciousness

            9.1.17    Religious Phases of Behavior in Relation to Consciousness

            9.1.18    Rational Consciousness is within Sensual Consciousness

            9.1.19    Embedded Progression of the Six Degrees

            9.1.20    The Four Ages of Ancient History

            9.1.21    Summary Statements of the Style of Writing of Sacred Scripture

            9.1.22    Spiritual Stumbling Blocks in Theistic Psychology

            9.1.23    How to Use Spiritual Geography Maps

            9.1.24    The Harmonizing Matrix

            9.1.25    Jacob's Ladder

                            9.1.25.1    Descending and Ascending Paths

            9.1.26    The Affective Mind, Cognitive Mind, and Sensorimotor Mind

            9.1.27    Successive and Simultaneous Relations

                            9.1.27.1    First Step: Infancy Period of Regeneration

                            9.1.27.2    Second Step: Childhood Period of Regeneration

                            9.1.27.3    Third Step: Adolescence Period of Regeneration

                            9.1.27.4    The Inversion

                            9.1.27.5    Fourth Step: Young Adulthood Period of Regeneration

                            9.1.27.6    Fifth Step: Adulthood Period of Regeneration

                            9.1.27.7    Sixth Step: Old Age Period of Regeneration

            9.1.28    Psycho-Dynamic Movements in Regeneration

            9.1.29    The Negative and Positive Bias in Thinking--Crossing from
                                                Sensuous to Rational Consciousness

The Topical Index to All Sections and Reading List is in Volume 18 :
    www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic 

Swedenborg described three levels of societies he encountered in the spiritual world. He called these the First Heaven, the Second Heaven, and the Third Heaven. The highest heavenly societies or the Third Heaven, were inhabited by people who on earth had their consciousness opened to the celestial-rational degree. The middle heavenly societies or the Second Heaven, were inhabited by people who on earth had their consciousness opened to the spiritual-rational degree. The lowest heavenly societies or the First Heaven, were inhabited by people who on earth had their consciousness opened to the interior natural degree or spiritual-natural. These three heavens had their corresponding hells. The intermediate "space" between the lowest heaven and the first of the hells ("Lower earth"), is called the world of spirits.

This organization by degrees of the spiritual world, overlaps perfectly with the organization by degrees of the mental world, or mind (spirit). This is the foundation for substantive dualism -- namely, the basic equation

spiritual geography = mental anatomy

as explained above.

Spiritual geography depicts the four "directions" in the spiritual world as directions of character in one's habits and inclinations. The geography of the environment around spirits is a natural correspondence of the character of consciousness of the inhabitants in each region in relation to the Spiritual Sun, which remains fixed. When Swedenborg traveled to different regions of the spiritual world, he did so by changing his own mental states to accord with the mental states of those he wished to communicate with. Geography of the spiritual world therefore is nothing else than anatomy of the mental world -- the two overlap completely and are the same.

So the human mind is organized in levels of height and our life on earth in the physical body determines the level to which our consciousness will rise. Thereafter, our life in eternity is an outcome of the height in rational mentality that we achieved. Our conscious life, or self, experiences the phenomena at the level that is active in our mind. The inhabitants of the highest level of the mind are called celestial, and their power and happiness so exceeds the inhabitants of the second level (spiritual), that the highest of the spiritual could not comprehend a single thought or idea from the lowest of the third level. Moreover, a single experience as actually felt and sensed by the lowest of the celestial individual, would annihilate the highest and best of the spiritual inhabitants, like our body would be annihilated if brought close to the sun.

From the extracted scientific sense of Sacred Scripture as the source, theistic psychology is informed about many crucial facts about human development. My work on the genes of consciousness presented in this Volume illustrates how predictive research in theistic psychology can be carried out (see Section xx).  The content is based on the research notes that I have kept since 1981 when I first started reading and studying the Writings of Swedenborg. These notes and articles have been available on the Web since 1997 (see Readings). 

Mental development is the same as spiritual development because spiritual = mental (see Section xx).

The burden of proof of this research is to show that we can construct systematic charts that accurately describe the phases of mental development and the spiritual dynamics that controls them. These charts are mental maps we can use to localize our mental states in daily life. We can see the territory we must travel in order to regenerate our character from being hellish by birth to becoming heavenly by rebirth (see Section xx). To "be reborn" refers to the act of elevating character reformation to the rank of a "ruling love," which is a dominant motivation in everything that we do in daily life.

For example, if, as a young person, you have the ambition to become rich, you elevate this motivation to a ruling love status. You will spend as much time as you can at it -- thinking about it, studying various ways of doing it, looking at successful models, reading and talking about it, and so on. Or, suppose you decide you want to make the Olympic team in your athletic endeavor. You will spend time, money, focus, energy, preparing yourself for it. Alcoholics and addicts constantly think about the substance they want and how they can get it, being willing to risk health, liberty, and life. These are just some of the ruling loves or dominant motives in people's lives.

Now at some point in every person's adulthood there comes a time in mental development when one elevates character reformation as a ruling love or dominant motive. That's the beginning of regeneration and the initial phase is called "rebirth" and is marked by a dedication for religious self-examination and self-evaluation. If the motive for character reformation is not religious, it is not called "rebirth" or "spiritual."

The phase of "rebirth" or "reformation," involves patterns of dynamic interactions that can be identified and localized through the systematic mental charts I am proposing. For constructing the mental charts of development I use an ethnosemantic nomenclature based on a system of three components as the basic meaning unit (see Section xx). I call this a trigram. Mental progressions are delimited by trigrams in sequence and combination. A "light" trigram and a "dark" trigram placed into semantic interaction,  constitute a "hexagram" which is the basic unit of cultural meaning. Two hexagrams placed into interaction create "argument registers" within delimited cultural areas. Examples include politics, instruction, advertising, theater, law, science -- each has its own proper discourse and justifications. People who don't know these sub-cultural registers of talking and thinking, cannot properly or successfully function in them.

The principal ethnomethodological components of ethnosemantics are the trigram, the hexagram, and the ennead matrix of nine intersected zones (see Section xx). I developed these methodological notions several years prior to finding the Writings and studying them (see Section xx). As I was becoming familiar with the Writings I noticed that they present various systematic series of mental events. There are no diagrams or charts in the Writings, and I was able to better follow these complex patterns described verbally, when I translated them into visual charts and matrices (see Section xx). That is when I discovered that the patterns referred to fit nicely with the ethnosemantic patterns I had discovered on my own in my research in ethnomethodology, ethnosemantic, and applied psycholinguistics.

The patterns of meaning in the Writings Sacred Scripture fit the cultural semantic units of society because the latter are produced by the former. In other words, Divine Speech through Sacred Scripture produces human mentality levels. The evolution of consciousness in the human race is under the same system control as individual mental development, hence one recapitulates the other (see Section xx). The syntax of cultural meaning in a civilization is framed and set by the syntax of spiritual meaning in Sacred Scripture. In this volume I report my findings regarding this common cause between the units of Sacred Scripture and the units of mental development. These units are the genes of human consciousness.

The human mind is a spiritual organ constructed out of the substances of the Spiritual Sun that stream across the rational ether that is the human mind. (see Section xx). There is only one spiritual world, that is, only one mental world (see Section xx). Therefore the same one Spiritual Sun is in every human mind (see Section xx). The mind is an organ with several layers or portions, each constructed and functioning in its own discrete layer of operation or function (see Section xx). Two substances issue from the Spiritual Sun -- spiritual heat and spiritual light (see Section xx). The substance of spiritual heat is the life force or power that animates the human mind and every created object in the universe (see Section xx). It is called Divine Love.

This substance of spiritual heat -- or, love -- is covered over or hidden in relation to created things and the human mind. Spiritual light covers spiritual heat in the way that light from the earth's natural sun covers over the physical heat that is within it. You can feel the heat on your arm and face but you can't see it. You can only see the light, but you remember that there is heat in it when you imagine the sunlight on your face or arm. Of course, in winter time the heat of the sun is hidden so deeply within the sunlight that we can't feel it though we may have the sun shine on our cold face. Spiritual heat, or love, is hidden within spiritual light, or truth, and therefore the conscious active visible operation in our mind is that of truth, while love is relatively in obscurity, mostly outside the reach of our conscious awareness.

This situation is totally reversed when we become spirits at our resuscitation, a few hours after our mind is cut off from contact with the physical body at its death (see Section xx). We awaken in our spiritual mind which previously was unconscious. And the conscious natural mind we had in everyday living is quickly rendered unconscious. As spirits conscious in our spiritual mind, our life is far more intense and absorbing than it was in our natural mind while tied to earth. In the spiritual mind, the affective organ completely dominates the cognitive organ. In the natural mind, the cognitive retains relative independence from the affective.

There is a significant biological change we undergo when our consciousness is moved from the natural mind to the spiritual mind. The natural mind receives all its sensory input externally, through the brain and nerve endings throughout the physical body. The spiritual mind receives all its sensory input internally, through its affective organ. The affective organ is activated by the reception of spiritual heat, while the cognitive organ is activated by the reception of spiritual light. This is similar to the way a green leaf receives sunlight on its surface cells, which activates in them the operation of the photosynthetic pigment called chlorophyll, essential for its function. At the same time, the deeper layer of cells in the leaf, stem, branch, and roots, receive the heat that is within the sunlight in the spring and summer. This heat activates in them many of the biochemical operations that maintain a plant alive.

The Divine Proceeding substances of the Spiritual Sun form a one in the Divine Human, who may be seen appearing inside the Spiritual Sun as a bright aura. But when the Divine Proceeding enters the human mind the heat and the light are separated in reception. Due to their construction, the spiritual heat is receivable only by the affective organ and the spiritual  light is receivable only by the cognitive organ. The activation in the affective organ is felt subjectively, or experientially, as love in its endless varieties of forms or qualities -- affections, inclinations, attractions, aversions, urges, motives, intentions, sentiments, perceptions. You can see from this list that it is the affective organ, also known as "the heart," that gives us the heat of love and the passion of excitement and enthusiasm. On the other hand, the cognitive organ is relatively cool, even cold, like the freezing sunny days of winter and late fall.

This separation or relative independence of the cognitive and affective organs is a special characteristic of our split-brain race called the "spiritual race" in the Writings Sacred Scripture. The most ancient race on this earth is called the "celestial race" and their brain was not split like ours is, into the right brain and the left brain. Swedenborg was the first modern scientist who came to the conclusion that the right and left hemispheres had different functions. base this conclusion on the anatomical evidence discovered by 17th and 18th century scientists. Swedenborg correctly identified the left brain with the mental cognitive function of thoughts and the right brain with the mental affective function of feelings.

Mental growth or spiritual development in our current spiritual race is entirely different than what it is in the celestial race. Though the celestial race had died out long ago, Swedenborg was able to visit with those who dwell in the immortality of their heavens. He referred to their mentality or consciousness as "the Most Ancient Church" that lived on this earth long prior to the era of the ancient times known as the Old Testament civilization. The celestial mind is united in its affective and cognitive organs, while the spiritual mind is divided or disunited. This mental organic distinction is responsible by correspondence for the united brain vs. the split-brain.

Mental development among the celestial people proceeded by means of the regeneration of the affective organ which simultaneously effected the regeneration of the cognitive organ, since the latter was united to the former. The opposite developmental process goes on with the spiritual split-brain race. The cognitive organ must be regenerated first by means of spiritual light or rational truth. Meanwhile the affective organ continues to distort and filter the spiritual heat or love that it receives. In other words, the conscious understanding (cognitive organ) can be reformed by means of doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture (spiritual light) that we take up into our memory-knowledges (see Section xx). After reformation is completed or nearly completed, we begin to experience the motivation to put the doctrine into practice in our life. Then for the first time, our affective organ begins to be respond or react to the incoming spiritual heat or love.

Love = good (see Section xx), which means that the affective operations activated by spiritual heat gives us the objective power of "changing our minds" or modifying our inherited character. The collection of affective traits or usual operations in our affective organ is called our character. This is the same as the hierarchy of our affections (see section xx). Spiritual heat, which is love or goodness in their endless variety or qualities, now add themselves to the affective operations in proportion to the truths of doctrine that we formed for ourselves from Sacred Scripture. The more we have knowledges of truth from theistic psychology, the more goodness and ability we can receive in the affective organ when activated by spiritual heat.

As this process of mental growth continues, the affective organ filled with good, and the cognitive organ filled with truth, can be united. When this is achieved, from being spiritual, we become celestial. This means that we are capable of living our life from rational loves. This is the true human life (see Section xx).

The passage below summarizes the important facts about the stages of mental development:. Following the quotation, I will present a numbered list of the facts that one can extract from this passage. These facts can be confirmed by several other passages. In the Writings Sacred Scripture mental development is often referred to as "regeneration" or character reformation. "The Lord" refers to the Divine Psychologist who is with every human being from birth to endless immortality. The Divine Psychologist is an active co-participant in every detail of mental growth. There is no mental growth other than what the Divine Psychologist manages to arrange in a successive order of mental states, each step elevating our rational consciousness of Him. It this elevation process that is called mental growth, spiritual development, regeneration, and character reformation. The more we grow mentally and are elevated in rational consciousness towards God, the more we become truly human, with heavenly character, abilities, and life.

Arcana Coelestia 2946

Such is the first state of all who are being reformed and becoming spiritual; that is to say, they do not believe that they are reformed by the Lord but by themselves, that is, that all will of good and all thought of truth originate in themselves.

What is more, the Lord maintains them in that state, for if He does not they are not able to be reformed.

 Indeed if they were told before regeneration has taken place that they are incapable by themselves of doing anything good, or by themselves of thinking anything true, they would either lapse into the mistake of supposing that they must wait for an influx into the will and an influx into thought, and not attempt a thing, if that influx does not take place; or into the mistake of supposing that if good and truth have any other origin but themselves, nothing would ever be attributed to them as righteousness; or into the mistake that in this case they would be like machines without a mind or any control of their own; or into further mistakes. Therefore they are allowed to think that good and truth originate in themselves.

[2] But after they have been regenerated, the recognition that the situation is different is gradually instilled into them - that everything true comes wholly from the Lord.

And as they grow more perfect it is also instilled into them that whatever does not come from the Lord is evil and false.

Those who have been regenerated are led, if not during their lifetime then in the next life, not only to know this but also to see it with perception, for all angels enjoy the perception that this is so.

Please see what has been stated already about these matters in the following places:
Everything good and true comes from the Lord, 1614, 2016.
All intelligence and wisdom come from the Lord, 109, 112, 121, 124.
Of himself man cannot achieve anything good or think anything true, 874-876.
Nevertheless everyone ought to do good as if from his proprium or own self, and not stay his hands, 1712.

If man compels himself to withstand evil and to do good as if from himself he receives a heavenly proprium from the Lord, 1937, 1947. (AC 2946)

My commentary:

(1) There are two phases of reformation
 "All who are being reformed and becoming spiritual" refers to the first phase of mental development, which occurs in early adulthood when we begin to think for ourselves from ourselves (see Section xx). At some point, which varies with individuals, we experience the intense motivation to undergo character reformation for the sake of becoming a good person. This initial mental state of wanting to be good, is based in self-intelligence rather than doctrine from Sacred Scripture, so it is not yet genuinely spiritual or rational. In other words, "they do not believe that they are reformed by the Lord but by themselves." In this early phase of our regeneration we believe that the good intentions we have to be good, are from ourselves, from our good intentions and motivations, and from the thoughts or justifications we have for them. The result is that we feel "meritoriousness," which is an evil belonging to the love of self (see Section xx). In this initial state of regeneration or mental growth, we believe that "all will of good and all thought of truth originate in ourselves."  Later however, we attribute to the Divine Psychologist that our willing is good ( = having good will or good intentions).  And we attribute to Him that our  thinking is true ( = understanding genuine doctrine from Sacred Scripture).

(2) Mental growth involves going through stages of semi-truths and falsities
The Divine Psychologist controls every detail of the process of character reformation, which is what makes it work--as limited only by the degree of our cooperation or willingness to learn doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture and to use it to fight the temptations that the Divine Psychologist brings to us every day. "Temptations" refers to the clinical technique that is used by the Divine Psychologist to bring our conscious awareness to the loves and attachments that we have in our inherited character. Normally these are hidden from our natural mind's awareness. The Divine Psychologist controls the exact order in which we are to face this self-knowledge of our evil selves. When He brings one of them to our focus, the subjective feeling we have is that of being involved in a feeling-storm that sweeps across our consciousness and fixates us into a disturbing mental state.

Or, you may picture temptations as feeling like you are being flooded by a massive emotional ocean wave and swept out to sea where you flounder and tremble in the unknown deep waters of darkness and terror.

During mental states of "spiritual temptations" (see Section xx), we experience an attack on our justifications. We begin to doubt that the Divine Psychologist is really really with us in our mind. Maybe it's just a way of talking about it that could be helpful. Maybe I don't really need to change. etc. You are familiar with this process whenever you make a resolution to be good in some area of your behavior, and then you see yourself irresistibly giving in to your enjoyment and "temptation." Then the spiritual part of the temptation phase begins. You begin to doubt whether your resolution was good in the first place. Maybe you can make exception this time. Maybe you're not really cut out for this. etc. Through this technique, the Divine Psychologist keeps you moving ahead in your character reformation. The spiritual temptation gives you the occasion first, to recognize some specific evil in you, and second, to reject it as something you don't want in your immorality. If you do this much, and mean it from a high ranking affection, then the Divine Psychologist can remove your attachment to that evil. But in no other way (see Section xx).

In this process of successive mental states of growth, the Divine Psychologist is maintaining us in mental states that are not good in themselves, so that He may gradually bring us to mental states that are genuinely good. That God allows and maintains in us mental states that are not good, is an instance of the Laws of Divine Permissions (see Section xx). God allows us to believe something false and do something evil when He could prevent it. But if He did, we are told here, that we "are not able to be reformed." Some falsity and evil are of a certain kind that God can use for our benefit as we proceed step by step closer to willing and thinking from the "new will" and not from the "old will" (see Section xx).

(3) There are several "errors" that we can fall into when we are in the early states of reformation
We experience strong resistance in accepting the idea that we are "incapable by ourselves of doing anything good, or by ourselves of thinking anything true." One error is philosophical. It is the idea that we are nothing but organic robots, or 'machines without a mind,' if we cannot think from ourselves and decide for ourselves on anything, including when to lift the hand, or where to look with our eyes, etc. A computerized robot merely reacts to or obeys the programmed instruction, line by line. And if the program hangs up, the computer-robot is frozen. So we picture this scenario in our mind as we read in the Writings Sacred Scripture that we cannot think a single thought from ourselves, or make a single decision. It is all from God. To believe yourself to be a robot if God makes all the decisions is a mistake in thinking rationally. The actuality or truth is that every act of thinking and willing that we do is not from ourselves but from God since God is the only available source of power for any act or movement in the universe or in the mind (see "omnipotence" in Section xx). This is why God permits us, during this initial state of reformation, to "think that good and truth originate in ourselves." Later we will have to get rid of this idea. And if we don't, heavenly life departs from us and we are drawn to the life of hell.

This is because there are only two alternatives in the spiritual directionality of our mental states -- up to the heavenly layers of our mind, or down to the hellish layers of our mind. Accepting the rational truth of omnipotence allows us to avoid a locked sequence of mental states in the downward direction of our hells. This downward direction of our mentality and consciousness is being produced by self-love and self-worship, which is the alternative to the love of God -- which includes the desire and striving to comply with God's Commandments and the doctrine of truth we extract from Sacred Scripture. We can go through the motion of declaring our reformation or "rebirth" and making it known to others. But what determines our actual progress is nothing else than the extent of our effort in daily willing and thinking. All our concepts and justifications must be actually revised to conform to the doctrine of truth we have extracted from Sacred Scripture. If our motive to reform is self-love we will hang on to our old character, our old way of justifying what we do and enjoy. There might be cosmetic changes in appearance or in personality, but there will be no change of character, hence no actual rebirth, no regeneration, no preparation for heavenly life in immortality. When we resuscitate a few hours after death, we enthusiastically launch ourselves into the wickednesses in our hell where we establish permanent residence (see Section xx).

The way to avoid the fatal errors during initial phases of spiritual development, is to be open to the next phase by being totally willing to accept it and entering it.

(4) In the next phase of mental development, the new realization that none of our willing and thinking originate in ourselves, is "gradually instilled into us."

At first we are willing to accept the idea of God's omnipotence in our mind -- but only from a general motive that wants to be right with God. We can call this mental state a form of "blind faith" because it is general, like a creed that we consider once a week or once a year during special occasions. This mental state cannot last as a permanent feature of our character unless we make it specific to our own willing and thinking. We must ask ourselves specifically, what does it mean for God to be omnipotent in our willing and thinking? It doesn't mean that He is making the choices for good and evil for us, since that would turn us into spiritual robots without our own will. So what does it mean that our willing and thinking do not originate in ourselves but in God? This new scientific understanding or rational realization is "gradually instilled into us," which refers to guided tours of mental states that we must be willing to undergo and cooperate with.

(5) As we progress in more advanced states of regeneration and we "grow more perfect," the understanding is "instilled into us that whatever does not come from the Lord is evil and false."

In other words, since we are all born with an entirely evil character, every single thing that comes from our self or proprium, is evil (see Section xx). Suppose for instance that we appear to do good by, say, working hard to coordinate with a team. Our motive appears to be good and cooperative, but in actuality it is not good, if doing good stems from ourselves. It only appears to be good to the outside observer who does not take into account why we are being cooperative and helpful. We may have a selfish or dishonest motive rather than the motive of helping the team reach its goal. For instance, you might want to appear cooperative and helpful out of fear of punishment for non-cooperation. This means that you would not cooperate if you had no such fear and felt completely free to do what you really wanted. So what appears like your good behavior is actually not good. But when you attribute your good intentions and behavior to God, you can no longer operate from a selfish or dishonest motive. Your teamwork is then genuine cooperation, not faked.

One of the ways we resist cooperating with our Divine Psychologist is to hang on to the idea that we when we make sacrifices to help other people, we are being good from ourselves. This is the fatal error of "meritoriousness" which is a mental state in which we desire to take credit for our good intentions and actions. But Sacred Scripture is revealing to us that whatever we do not attribute to God acting in us, we attribute to ourselves, and this is "evil and false," that is, leads us into a sequence of mental states that spirals downward into the hells of our mind.

(6) We reach still more advanced phases of regeneration through our willingness to cooperate in deeper and deeper temptations.
These deeper stages of spiritual growth continue in the world of spirits after our resuscitation (see Section xx). After our "second death," when we permanently enter our heavenly state, we are given the sensuous consciousness of influx, actually "perceiving" that our decisions are operated by the Divine Human, that is, by the influx of the Divine Human's Proprium into our affective and cognitive organs (see Section xx). In that state of mind our sensuous mind no longer reacts against the influx of the Divine Human Proprium, as it did in earlier phases of regeneration (see (1) above). Swedenborg was told by the angels themselves that they do have this conscious perception of the "influx," and further, those who had this perception more keenly, attributed absolutely nothing to themselves, nor did they have any wish whatsoever to follow their own proprium -- an idea that threw them into horrors.

(7) In summary:

• (a) All intelligence and wisdom come from the Divine Human

• (b) Of ourselves we cannot achieve anything good or think anything true

• (c) We ought to do good as if from our proprium or own self, and not "stay our hands" 

• (d) When we compel ourselves to withstand evil and to do good as if from ourselves, we receive a heavenly Proprium, which is the Divine Human's Proprium

Proposition (a) is a logical consequence of God's Omniscience and Omnipotence.

Proposition (b) is a logical consequence of (a).

Proposition (c) is the result of influx being unconscious, which allows us to put up our own effort -- a spiritual requirement for appropriating good and truth as-if it were our own. Without this appropriation we cannot have a heavenly immortality.

Proposition (d) asserts that our heavenly life depends on our willingness to always act from the Divine Human's Proprium, and this willingness comes only after we do what is in (c).

 

9.0.1  Discovering The Genes of Consciousness in Sacred Scripture

Consciousness is the experience we have when spiritual light activates operations in our mental organs -- affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. Theistic psychology is based on substantive dualism (see Section xx), which is the empirical description of the dual universe -- natural and spiritual. Spiritual light is a substance streaming forth from the Spiritual Sun, which all inhabitants can see. The light contains spiritual heat, so that in actuality, both substances enter the mind. The light activates the cognitive organ, while the heat activates the affective organ (see Section xx). This activation is what we experience as consciousness.

We are more aware of the cognitive activation than the affective activation (see Section xx). For instance, we look around us and what is going on is meaningful -- we can make sense of it. This making sense activity is initiated and maintained by the operations in the cognitive organ which the spiritual substances activate there. Meaning is a vehicle for consciousness. Spiritual light is nothing else than Divine Truth. It is the substance of truth that lights up our consciousness.

If the spiritual substance would stop streaming in, our consciousness would vanish and we would have no rational meaning concepts in our understanding. We would be like apes and chimpanzees, or dolphins and dogs and cats. We could have no relationship to God because God is a rational concept, and all rational concepts require meaning and consciousness. Organically viewed, animals do not have mental organs above their natural mind, like we do -- rational, spiritual, and celestial levels of our organic mind.

Consciousness is therefore based on Divine Truth. But while Divine Truth can enter our mental organs it does not produce consciousness directly, like electricity that enters a light bulb and makes it light up. If this were the case we would not be human, but angelic robots activated by God's mind (see Section xx). To feel human on this earth we must feel free to pursue our own desires using our own intelligence (see Section xx). God gives us this sense of individual freedom and uniqueness, but this does not mean, as some have supposed, that He departs, leaving us to our own devices, while He is watching "from a distance." But this is later replaced by a more rational idea when one takes into account God's trinity attributes -- omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. Hence God cannot be not present somewhere, and there cannot be some power or activity that is not powered by God's omnipotent powers.

The writings give us the concept of "as-of self" as a rational explanation that can resolve God's omnipotence on the one hand, and individual freedom on the other (see Section xx). Organically viewed, God creates, maintains, and controls every object or activity in two ways -- immediate or direct control, and mediate or indirect control. Consciousness is made possible by means of God's mediate control (see Section xx).

Mediate control means that God gives us the real feeling of freedom as-of self. This requires that He hide His immediate control by omnipotence. We have no perception or sensation of God's control. God gives us the feeling that we are alone in our mind, hiding the vertical community of spirits that influence us, hiding also, the immediate and direct control He exercises on every event or quality in existence and in our mind. God controls what thoughts are in our mind, but indirectly, in order to preserve our real feeling of as-of self initiative and responsibility. This is what makes us human.

God controls what comes to our mind, moment by moment, preventing some memories from coming to the fore, bringing an outside event that will serve to take our thoughts in a certain direction, and so on. However, God's control over our mind is not like the control of an author over the characters of a novel. Characters speak only the lines of the author's mind. They do not have their thoughts and speech. But real people do because they have real consciousness.

God's mediate control over our thoughts is effected by means of correspondences of Divine Speech exteriorizing into the natural world as Sacred Scripture. God uses Sacred Scripture to form the mentality level of cultures and civilizations. The same method is used to form the mentality level of individuals who read Sacred Scripture as part of their religion or intellectual interest.

The genes of consciousness are therefore discoverable by extracting the rational structures of meaning that are hidden within Sacred Scripture.

In this volume I illustrate a series of gene structures extracted from Sacred Scripture. These gene structures form the basis of our consciousness. I present dualities, trigrammatic, hexagrammatic, enneadic, and higher order gene structures extracted from the Writings Sacred Scripture. These gene structures form part of theistic psychology when they can be fully confirmed to agree with the literal meaning of the Writing (see Section xx). Until then they are to be taken as proposals for research to be confirmed or disconfirmed.

In Section xx, I describe how I discovered this ethnosemantic methodology a few years before I started reading the Writings. See also the article available at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/updates/lee/Section%208.1.3.html.

In what follows I will describe how this ethnosemantic methodology allowed me to apply systematic extraction techniques to the literal text of the Writings Sacred Scripture. The result is a clearer understanding of the rational series of truths conveyed through the Writings. I call them the genes of consciousness because they form the basic units of meaning that constitutes human consciousness. These semantic or consciousness units are created in our cognitive organ by the syntax of rationality that operates our thinking, reasoning, and understanding. This syntax of rationality is Divine and belongs to the Divine Human's Rational Mind. What do you think would happen if the Divine Rational Mind would stop for an instant to activate and operate this unconscious operational syntax?

All thinking would instantly lose coherence and become chaotic nonsense, and would cease altogether. The gene structures that create human consciousness are contained in Divine Speech and transmitted through Sacred Scripture at various levels of correspondences (see Section xx). Sacred Scripture establishes and maintains the basic rational dualities of rational thinking -- God and creation, Divine and Human, Good and Truth, etc. (see below). In the Writings Sacred Scripture, which is written in natural-rational correspondences (see Section xx), there are presented numerous trigrammatic concepts that establish a basic rational category system in our thinking -- [love / wisdom  /use], or [creation / redemption / regeneration], etc. (see below). When we place two trigrammatic systems into interaction, we form a an ennead matrix of nine intersecting cells. As shown below, enneadic structures are able to map out the series of steps of regeneration described in the Old Testament through the Writings. Hexagrammatic structures in combination allow us to map out and categorize the varieties of mental habits and their taxonomic relations. This knowledge is critical in raising our consciousness to the celestial level of operation (see Section xx).

9.0.1.1   Duality Gene Structures:

If you are familiar with the Writings of Swedenborg the dualities in this chart will be quite familiar.

Divine Speech establishes these absolute dualities in our mind, making them the basis of rational syntax. These are Divine truths ordering our catalogue of concepts. Whatever proposition or statement is generated by means of these revealed dualities, are rational propositions and doctrines. When we do our thinking based on revealed dualities, we are elevating our consciousness and our mentality level to the truly human, which begins with the rational (see Section xx).

It is useful to commit these dualities to memory. It is helpful to keep track of dualities as you read the Writings of Swedenborg. After further study, you will be able to generate lists of dualities in your thinking.

It is clarifying to run your eyes up and down each column and to consider what is the unifying theme for each. This will sharpen the contrast between the two series.

There are several sub-groupings or sub-varieties of concepts within each column. Overall there is a hidden taxonomic or ranking arrangement between the sub-groupings within each column, and ultimately, between them across columns. IN other words, dualities in the Writings Sacred Scripture are arranged in rational series and catalogues. You may be familiar with Roget's Thesaurus, a well known semantic taxonomy of thousands of synonyms and antonyms in English (available online at www.bartleby.com/110).

The next chart shows absolute dualities that belong to various different sub-groupings:

I predict that future research in theistic psychology will succeed in creating a taxonomy of dualities in the form of a thesaurus of the "New Church mind," which is the mind of every student of theistic psychology who is using it for their character reformation and preparation for immortality.

We undergo reformation just before we begin regeneration (see Section xx). Reformation is the active intellectual effort of destroying all nonduality in our mind which exists there from the socialized materialistic thinking of our natural mind, as we manage our lives every day. I have described what this arduous task consists of in Volume 1 of my book A Man of the Field available here: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/sexuality.htm  During reformation, which can only begin in adulthood, we make a voluntary choice to replace all our concepts of nonduality and relativity, with the absolute dualities presented in the Writings Sacred Scripture. When this is effectively accomplished, we can begin our regeneration. We can then begin to read the Writings and apply the method of correspondences with enlightenment to extract the doctrine of truth by which we judge and modify our daily willing and thinking (see Section xx).

Absolute dualities are presented in the Old and New Testament Sacred Scriptures, but in lower forms of natural correspondences. Here are some illustrations.

Semantic dualities from Sacred Scripture are gene structures that enter into all other meaning in consciousness. They establish the fundamental contention points of rational thinking, that form the basis of logical argumentation (see Section xx). They establish the major themes of culture and intellectual life. They connect us to our unconscious spiritual mind. They elevate our consciousness to the spiritual level of willing an thinking. They make civilization and rationality possible. They maintain sanity and health. They create the order for all societies on earth and in heaven. They connect our natural mind to the heavens in our mind. They are the foundation of our immortality in rational ether (see Section xx).

The dualities in the Writings Sacred Scripture form the highest level of abstraction in our mind. These dualities enter as presuppositions into all spiritual concepts are are therefore the fundamental genes of meaning or consciousness out of which all other meanings and understandings are based. The dualities are frequently reinforced in the Writings, as illustrated in the following passage, whose content is repeated in many other passages.

AC 1577

There are two things in the internal man, namely, the celestial and the spiritual, which two constitute a one when the spiritual is from the celestial; or what is the same, there are two things in the internal man, good and truth; these two constitute a one when the truth is from good; or what is also the same, there are two things in the internal man, love and faith; these two constitute a one when the faith is from love; or what is again the same, there are in the internal man two things, the will and the understanding; and these two constitute a one when the understanding is from the will. This may be apprehended still more clearly by considering the sun, from which is light. If in the light from the sun there are both heat and illuminating power, as in the springtime, all things are thereby made to vegetate and to live; but if there is not heat from the sun in the light, as in the time of winter, then all things become torpid and die. (AC 1577)

We can transfer the expressions in this passage into equivalence sets for greater clarity and for committing to memory:

You can collect these sets from various passages and cumulate them into a dictionary type listing for further study and research.

9.0.1.2  Trigrammatic Gene Structures

Trigrammatic gene structures were discussed in Section 4.4.7.2. Consider the following chart. First read each row across. This will locate you in the approximate area of the thesaurus of theistic psychology. This is the rational series of correspondences that create the genes of human consciousness and its syntactic structure. In this case we are looking at the trigrammatic gene structure.

Those who are familiar with the Writings of Swedenborg will recognize the above trigrammatic units as appearing everywhere and entering into numerous rational presentations and explanations. Each trigrammatic unit encapsulates a rational theme that needs to be reconstructed in the mind in order to make sense of it.

Now inspect each column separately by looking up and down. Do each column in turn. What do you notice about the overall syntactic theme of each? The syntactic theme is not related to the content of the words in any obvious manner. So if you're looking for a relationship based on the literal meaning, you will have a hard time finding the difference. The content of the words in the chart above are cast in natural correspondences of Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture -- corporeal (Old Testament), sensuous (New Testament) or rational (the Writings). For theistic psychology we need to extract the interior of this natural, which is called the interior-natural or spiritual-natural. This is the level of our first heaven in the new regenerated virtual organ within our natural mind (see Section xx).

This interior-natural can be found within the columns and across the rows, when their trigrammatic syntax is extracted and made explicit in particulars and singulars. Spiritual-natural concepts cannot be rendered fully at the literal meaning level, but they can be referred to through the demonstration of patterns of relationship. When these patterns become evident to you, that's when you are comprehending spiritual correspondences. It is an experience of enlightenment. You will notice that though you can't easily explain or define your higher comprehension level, yet you can think and speak from that level. The result is that your sentences sound like theistic psychology. When you are able to produce sentences of theistic psychology, the level of your understanding of Sacred Scripture is spiritual. You can then be fully regenerated and prepared for eternal conjugial happiness in the heaven of your mind, where you will be most joyous to find your soul mate (see Section xx).

The following visual method can be useful in better understand the underlying syntax of natural-rational correspondences.

9.0.1.2.1