Judah invokes images of thunder and lightening to vivify the Lord's power to enlighten our minds when dark clouds surround us. Spiritual storms are inevitable. Can we use them to our advantage? -Editor.

How do you survive when you're in the grip of resentment or mired in gloomy doubts that your life will ever be worthwhile? What if you could experience a new reality crashing over you—not a cold, dark reality of things falling apart, but a vibrant realization of goodness, hope and love? I'd like to offer a metaphor for those sudden, profound insights that wake us up mentally and keep us going even in the darkest times: lightning and thunder. Experienced by everyone, these startling phenomena of nature also show up as stirring symbols in the Word, where they embody the dramatic entry of the Lord's influence into our daily thoughts. In explaining thunder and lightning as they appear in Revelation, Swedenborg writes,

Because of the flash of light that strikes the eyes, lightnings symbolize enlightenment, and because of the crash that strikes the ears, thunderings symbolize perception. And since these two together symbolize enlightenment and perception, voices then symbolize instruction. (Apocalypse Revealed §236)

Instruction—when enlightenment and perception, two higher kinds of knowledge, start connecting the dots in your ordinary consciousness and everyday life starts to make more sense and hold more joy. I want that. I want to get it—grasp spiritual reality—as surely as though a lightningbolt just lit up the land and thunder pounded through my bones. It's not just my imagination—I see it! It's not just a psychological game: I can feel it!

Can we experience an insight about spiritual life that's as vivid lightning? Can we feel the reality of God and goodness as powerfully as we feel thunder? I think we can, or at the very least thunder and lightning can show us that knowledge about God and eternal life—when it really hits us—will be as revealing and as moving as the blaze of a lightning bolt and the crash of thunder.

What can this symbolism do for us? If you're like me, spiritual stuff seems dry and two-dimensional much of the time. When caught up in the stresses of everyday life, do you ever forget that spiritual things aren't just a list of dos and don'ts? That the Word isn't so much a legal document or a list of beliefs but is rather a gateway to a meaningful and, yes—actually joyful approach to life? How often do we forget God and the Word entirely or only remember them as facts made impotent by the real world? When I'm in the grip of resentment or worry, these oppressive emotions seem all-encompassing, as though there's no reality besides my own clouded one. In these states of mind, the visceral impact of lightning's sudden flash and the ka-BOOM of thunder provide a sensory metaphor that my natural states of mind can latch onto to guage the awesome power of God, the reality of a spiritual realm and the importance of spiritual life. The symbolism gives me a snapshot of what I'm missing, of the deep emotional impact spiritual life can have on me if I'm willing to tune in to a new level of sensation.

Few phenomena of nature so reliably thrill or terrify people as do thunder and lightning. In general, people have all sorts of reactions to the weather: one person feels depressed on a cloudy day, another feels enlivened. One person thrills at a gust of wind, but in the same wind someone else feels raw and vulnerable. In fact, the same weather can either enhance our good mood or aggravate a bad one. But when lightning slashes through the air and a few seconds later thunder collides with our ears, most of us feel some combination of excitement and fear. Drawn by the spectacle, many people rush to a window or even outside to increase the chance of spotting an especially dramatic lightning bolt and feel the full force of the thunder that follows it. Still, not everyone loves it: some people hide under the covers. That's legitimate. But let me suggest that on a spiritual plane we could all do with a little thunder and lightning.

Lightning and thunder often accompany storms. A large portion of spiritual life is stormy with temptations—attacks by evil spirits that force us to choose whether to identify with the Lord or with the belief that we are self-existing. We can run from these storms—and, indeed, the Lord's prayer says, Lead us not into temptation. But we are also to pray, But deliver us from evil. Evil—and attacks from evil spirits—are bound to happen. In fact, Swedenborg teaches that temptations are inevitable if we want to be spiritually reborn. Our journey through life is overshadowed by one mental disturbance after another. From the first time that we, as adults, take ownership of a childhood belief, we embark on a voyage of spiritual temptation. If we persist through these ups and downs, these mental storms, I believe the Lord will be able to eventually give us heaven inside ourselves and a corresponding place in the great angelic community. In this realm our sight will take in gorgeous panoramas lit up by heaven's light; all our senses will revel in the beauty and our surroundings will sing the truth that we are not alone, that we live in the kingdom of the Lord, that we share in His love for every human being. For us then, enlightenment and perception won't just be bursts of awareness piercing the gloom: instead, they will be a new kind of everyday perspective, one filled with radiant insights and a zest for life that will enliven our very core.

But while we live on this earth, where black clouds are brewing, we need lightning and thunder. Storms wash over us; darkness often reigns. Even our best days can be tainted by an undercurrent of self-interest and contempt or fear of others. But if we're willing to come out from under the covers when mental storms rage, we might just see a brilliant flash of lightning and be rocked by its thunder. The Lord wants to communicate with us, and His very communication can trigger a stormy response from hell. To the lower levels of our minds the thunder and lightning (the Lord's life flowing in) might feel terrifying, as though it's threatening our life (see Secrets of Heaven 7573 and Apocalypse Revealed 615). But we can also ride out the storm; we can embrace the thrill: for even as the hell in us wants to run and hide from the Lord, the heaven in us can rejoice that spiritual reality is being shown and told to us even in the chaos and gloom of temptation.

Keep an eye out for lightning and listen for the thunder. It might go something like this:

[FLASH!—the whole landscape is visible]

There is a God—and He can give me a new heart to love others like He does!

[ka-BOOM—the whole body throbbing like a drum as thunder rumbles through]

Oh my God—I get it! You're here—You know me—thank You.

Judah Synnestvedt

Judah and his wife, Lydia, have 1.5 children and hope to be setting off to seek their fortunes in some General Church congregation come July 2014. Judah thinks of a lot more articles than he writes, usually re-directing his productive energy towards Theological School assignments. Sometimes, though--as with the present article--study for school gets to overflow and actually have an impact on real people. This piece grew out of a study of thunder and lightning in the book of Revelation. In general the article reflects Judah's goal of challenging the natural level of his and others' minds to consider spiritual reality.

Joel takes a quote from Apocalypse Revealed and uses it to bring together the image of the Old Testament God with that of Jesus. He writes of how easily the two have been pigeon holed into separate roles, while in truth they embody each other seamlessly.-Editor

Growing up, I would occasionally encounter some variation of the phrase “the angry God of the Old Testament.” This was often contrasted with the loving image of the Lord found in the New Testament. Sometimes it would come up when someone compared the New Church to other Christians, in that they often portray God as the angry God of the Old Testament alongside Jesus, while the New Church claims that Jesus is God Himself. It would be easy, I think, to start seeing the distinction between angry Father and loving Son as the same distinction between truth and goodness. Truth by itself is harsh, so that would be the Father. Goodness is loving and merciful, and so the Son.

I had subconsciously adopted a bit of this attitude when I was younger, so I was surprised one day to read the following passage:

By 'the Father' is understood the Divine Good of the Lord's Divine Love...and by 'the Son' the Divine Truth of Divine Wisdom. (Apocalypse Revealed 613)

In other words, it is the Father who is goodness or love, and the Son who is truth. It took me a bit to start to get this, but once I started to, it gave me a new insight into what truth and goodness really are. But I’ll get to that shortly.

First, I want to look at how this idea plays out in the Old and New Testaments. It is easy to stereotype God. When we look at God the Father in the Old Testament, we might see a God that is distant, and, with the truths of the New Church, dismiss this as a flawed depiction. We (or at least I) can stereotype this image of God as angry and harsh. And not just a little bit either: The God of the Old Testament requires a man to sacrifice his beloved son to prove his loyalty (Genesis 22:2). The God of the Old Testament wreaks vengeance on the children of those who slight Him (Psalm 137:9). The God of the Old Testament is jealous, an uncompromising lawgiver who will have his people killed if they stray just a little from his commandments (Numbers 15:35). Is this really a picture of love? (Now, it certainly isn't a picture of truth either, but we might see how truth could seem like this if it's truth without any love attached.)

Jesus, on the other hand, is so obviously about love. He teaches people to be like little children. To not worry. To trust. To love each other, even our enemies. To give to the poor, the needy, to anyone and everyone. His great commandment is that we love each other as He, God, has loved us. Throughout His life on earth, He made it clear that he came to heal people, both physically and spiritually. How could He not be a perfect representation of goodness and love? And that’s where it starts to come together. Jesus is a perfect representation of love.

If we look back to the God of the Old Testament, yes, He is harsh. But He is also infinitely forgiving. Tender. Caring. Loving. Deeply passionate about protecting His children (Isaiah 49:15, 16). He brutally punishes people, but He always promises that they can come back to Him (Deuteronomy 30:4). He gives a plethora of laws, but then says that all He wants is for people to love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with Him (Micah 6:8). It’s not so much that the God of the Old Testament isn’t loving. It’s that we, and the children of Israel, are blind to His love. We can’t see it. We don’t get it. It’s just pure, unbridled passion that sometimes lashes out like a flame and other times softens into pure mercy.

We think of Jesus as love because in Jesus we can, for the first time, see what love should really look like. It is a love that we can actually comprehend. We don’t just take it on faith that Jesus is loving; we know from His very words and actions that He is.

And here’s where we come back to that insight into what truth and goodness are. Truth is not about facts or information or knowledge. It’s about expressing love. When truth is actual truth, it is a perfect representation of love. Without truth, love ends up being confusing, harsh, irritable, fickle. If we try to be loving without truth, sometimes it may work, but we’ll end up missing the mark many times. Truth is the tool that links the love that we intend to the reception of that love in another. When truth is in its proper place, all a person will see is the love that is being expressed by the truth. And so when we look at the Lord, all we see is love, because the truth is so clear that love shines through its every facet.

Joel Glenn

Looking into the connection between the Genesis story and the origin of Chinese characters, Todd has been reconsidering his less than literal reading of the Bible. He cites a number of factors that leave him asking if God said it that way because that is how it actually happened. -Editor

Last week we took a quick look at some Chinese characters and made connections to the book of Genesis. I left you with the task of drawing your own conclusions as to the value of this information, and agreed to share my perspective. Here goes...

One of the challenges I wrestle with is when to take the Bible literally. There are some places where I am glad to not, for example, “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” (Psalm 137:9). There are other places where it is clear and sensible to take it literally, like the Ten Commandments, Golden Rule, etc. The Genesis story though is a place where I've never really considered taking it literally. I've been quite happy with the belief that those first eleven chapters were “made up histories,”(Arcana Coelestia 2897) thus dismissing any and all attempts at using them at face value. Yet I'm finding that there are a lot more people in the world who are Biblical literalists than I thought. One of the co-authors of “The Discover of Genesis” uses the Chinese character connection to Genesis to assert that God literally did create the world in six, twenty-four hour days, then took the seventh day off.

Personally, I don't think that the two are really related, but what caught my eye was the author's making the case for a literal tower of Babel and God's subsequent confusing of the common language. Imagine the scene: it's 4,500 years ago, and your culture is accustomed to communicating

“by movements of the lips and by corresponding changes of facial expression. For, being celestial people, whatever they were thinking shone out of their face and eyes which altered correspondingly” (Arcana Coelestia 1118).

It leaves me thinking that perhaps there is more literal truth to those early chapters of Genesis than I had acknowledged. In fact, in doing my research around this I revisited the earlier quote about “made up histories.” In fact, the full sentence reads,

“The historical sections of their Word were written in the prophetical style and were for the most part made-up historical narratives, like those in Chapters 1-11 of Genesis” (Arcana Coelestia 2897, emphasis added).

Additionally, with a little more research we find evidence that the Garden of Eden was a real place too.

“Where the church was before the flood, may also appear from the lands which the rivers encompassed that went forth from the garden of Eden, by which in various parts of the Word are likewise described the boundaries of the land of Canaan” (Arcana Coelestia 567).

“Chinese originally migrated from a site in Mesopotamia, for they show evidences of similarity to the later Babylo-Assyrian culture in arts, sciences and government. The approximate date of their origin, 2500 BC, is surprisingly close to the strict chronological dating of the great event at the tower of Babel.” (The Discovery of Genesis, p 2).

My point? That there is perhaps more that is literally true in the Bible than most New Church people give credit for. This does have real implications. Think about current issues such as tithing, which many New Church people don't do because in the internal sense of the Word the topic is remnant states, not a literal requirement to give 10% of your income to God. There's also homosexuality, which the Bible literally says is an “abomination,” but various people in the church will say, “nah, the internal sense is different. Homosexuality is fine.” Lastly, what about women's ordination, which I know is a hot topic in some General Church societies. The Bible, in the literal sense, gives us an all male priesthood and a full set of twelve (actually thirteen when you count Judas' replacement) male disciples. Plus Paul. No women there.

As always, you are free to draw your own conclusions from all of this. I still believe that our eternal fate is tied more to what we intend and how much we love more than anything else, so I don't intend to turn into a fundamentalist. However, when I consider this discovery I take a moment to pause and wonder how many times the tempter has said to me, “Did God really say...” and using my knowledge of the internal sense, unaware of the blind spots I've developed over the course of my lifetime, answered back, “Well, that's what He said, but what He really meant was...” when in reality, God actually meant what He said.

Todd Beiswenger

Todd is currently serving as Pastor to the Hurstville New Church, in Sydney Australia. The emphasis of his ministry has been promoting practical teachings for everyday living that combine compassion with personal responsibility to help people be at peace within their own head.

Todd introduces the basic tenets of a book he just read that postulates that the story of Genesis is richly entwined with the early evolution of Chinese characters. Is this nonsense? Read it for yourselves. -Editor

I've spent the better part of a year in the southern suburbs of Sydney, Australia, and one of the surprises has been the sheer number of Chinese people living just up the road. It isn't much of an exaggeration to say that Chinatown is the suburb next door. To help with my assimilation process I've been learning some Chinese, but just how to hear and speak it. Reading Chinese and learning all those thousands of characters was a hopeless task...I thought.

A few months later my brother points me to this book titled, “The Discovery of Genesis” by C H Kang and Ethel R Nelson that promises to show how the truths of Genesis were found hidden in the Chinese language. Not really sure what I was going to get, I ordered the book. Today, I am happy with my purchase.

Let's see if I can summarize the premise for you: Chinese writing started off as pictograms, which is a fancy way of saying that they wrote with pictures. What the book demonstrates is that some of these pictures, or characters, were made to reflect the content of Genesis. To fully understand this, we're going to have to have a very quick lesson in Chinese character construction. While there are thousands and thousands of Chinese characters, there are only a couple hundred “radicals” or “primitives.” These are recognized as ancient characters, which the language is built on. For example, here is the symbol for “man.” You can see the two legs clearly, and if you squint you can see the flare at the top showing the head. Next we have the number “two” shown by these two lines.

So far, so good, right? Reading Chinese is easy! Some characters are the combination of two or more of these radicals. Since the characters have to be within a square, it creates the necessity to overlap, and sometimes share strokes. In this case, if you were to combine “man” and “two” you get this symbol for husband. Makes sense, right? A husband is a man, but he's really two people.

Let's make it a little more interesting. Take a look at this character for “God.” On the left side of the square we have the character “to reveal,” but the one on the right is a combination of the characters “man” and “garden.” Yes, there are a few different characters for “man.” But the point is that God is the one who reveals to man in a garden! Adam in the Garden of Eden anybody? Surely that is more than a coincidence.

Don't worry though, for those of you who need more convincing, there are plenty more examples. Take a look at this one: here's the symbol “dust.” It is a combination of the number “10” which is the “+” part that sits on a line. The theory is that ten toes on the ground is dust, because that is what we humans are: dust. What if the “dust” had a mouth? And it were “living?” Add it up and you have “living dust mouth” which is the symbol for “talk.” The “mouth” symbol is also used to mean “man” or “person” so you could take it as “living dust man” as well.

Keep building and you'll get to the character for “create” by adding the symbol for “walk,” meaning that to create is to make living dust people that talk and walk.

Here's one that has a closer tie to Genesis: forbidden. Now, if we remember that in the Garden of Eden there were two trees, and God declaring to them not to eat of one, we can quickly see the Genesis connection. Now look at the character for “forbidden.” You can see the two trees atop, plus the symbol we had earlier for “reveal” or “declare.”

There are plenty of other examples, including “devil” which is a combination of “secret,” “life,” “man,” and “garden.” I don't know why “garden” would be part of the “devil” symbol if there wasn't a Genesis connection. Now, what did the devil do in the garden? He tempted Adam and Eve. Building again on the “devil” symbol, we can add the two trees and the symbol for “cover” and we get “tempter.” Yes folks, the devil who works under the cover of the two trees. Pretty cool, eh?

This pattern continues through the first eleven chapters of Genesis, where we can find evidence in the Cain and Able story, the Noah story as well as the Tower of Babel. There are just over ninety characters that scholars have put together and connected to the Genesis account, and you can see most of them here. To be fair, some examples are certainly better than others, but to me, the overall body of work that is available on this convinces me.

Say you too are convinced, that the Genesis story existed before Moses wrote it, and that early Chinese people used the context of the Genesis story to create their written language...well, what significance does this have? Who cares? Why does it matter? Does it matter? Useless information, or useful information? For now, I invite you to post your thoughts on the matter in the comments section. I promise you won't hurt my feelings if you say, “Useless information, you wasted ten minutes of my life.” So be honest, and I'll likewise share some of my thoughts and connections with you next week.

Todd Beiswenger

Todd is currently serving as Pastor to the Hurstville New Church, in Sydney Australia. The emphasis of his ministry has been promoting practical teachings for everyday living that combine compassion with personal responsibility to help people be at peace within their own head.

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Here in part two, Stephen looks at themes within Swedenborg's work and how these variously connect him to other seekers or set him apart. He clarifies what he thinks separates Swedenborg's Christianity from all other Christian denominations. -Editor

Swedenborg is considered the founder of a religion, today called the New Church. He wrote thirty thick books that redefine Christianity. He did not think about his books as theology, though. They were always based on his own experiences. This is why there is more to Swedenborg than theology.

Swedenborg and Spiritism

Swedenborg is also considered to be one of the forefathers of spiritism, a movement that became very active in England in the 19th century. Spiritism basically means talking to spirits, in séances, with cards and oracles, or in magic rituals. This practice is based on the belief that we pass into a spirit world after death and can still communicate with people here. Spiritism is reputed to have some four million adherents the world over in 2012. That number is probably at the low end. By comparison, the religion based on Swedenborg’s theology only has a few thousand members the world over today.

Swedenborg and Life After Death

Life after death is maybe one of the biggest themes in Swedenborg’s books and stories. He systematically describes what life in the next world is like, right from the moment of dying, our initial interactions with angels, our instruction as to life in this new place, and the challenges that we all will have to face as our old self is left behind on earth. The biblical phrase, “all will be revealed” refers to our life after death. We will know everything there is to know about ourselves, nothing can be hidden, not even our private thoughts. The book Heaven and Hell is the main travel guide, as it were, to life after death.

Given the extensive descriptions of the afterlife, it is not surprising at all that Swedenborg has been connected to spiritism.

However, spiritism has a bad reputation in certain circles. It is associated with evil spirits, weirdness, irresponsible excitement-seeking, misuse of power, drugs, etc. Swedenborgians today mostly want nothing to do with spiritism and regret the association that exists. Yet...the association is understandable and even justified, since Swedenborg spent the last twenty-seven years of his life talking to spirits and angels on a daily basis, and he was very clear and open about that.

Swedenborg and Correspondences

An aspect of Swedenborg’s teachings that stands out in the context of the time he lived in (17th century) is correspondences, meaning: each natural object, each word, each color, has a connection to an invisible world. The corresponding thing is composed of spiritual substance. This spiritual substance is invisible to our physical eyes, at least for many people. The spirit counterpart of a stone, as an example, comes first and gives the quality, essence, and meaning to stone. Stone is an archetype, in the words of Jung, whereas a stone is an individual expression or manifestation of that archetype. Same with animals, geometric patterns, elements of nature, colors, clothing, metals, etc. This is typically not a one-on-one relationship, seeing that there is a huge variety in stones, in texture, hardness, color, value, etc. In other words, while it is true to say that stone corresponds to truth, that is an extremely generalized statement.

Today we are used to the idea of symbols, through psychology, dream work, and anthropological studies. In Swedenborg’s time this was a science in its infancy.

Swedenborg states that everything written in the Bible, the sacred text that he worked with, is written in correspondences. That is how it can be the Word of God. Each story has a corresponding meaning in the spirit world or in heaven, and so carries deep spiritual meaning still today for us, people on the path of regeneration. Swedenborg gives many examples of specific correspondences in his thirty books. He is by no means exhaustive, often just touching the surface. Yet the window of correspondences makes it possible to read the Bible in a new light, where each word has other layers of meaning. These layers are not intellectual ideas, there is no intellectual or philosophical system. These layers, instead, refer to a level of reality that lies underneath and above the reality we know. This makes Swedenborg’s explanations of the Bible more than just Swedenborg’s explanations. He is referring us to a greater universe.

Some examples:

Fish : knowledge that lives in memory

Eagle : truth seen in clear rational perspective

Birds : thoughts

Fire : love, passion

Swedenborg and Shamanism

Michael Harner, in his 1980 book The Way of the Shaman, describes that medicine men and women from cultures all over the world have likewise attached consistent and coherent spiritual meaning to natural objects or animals. No analysis was used, only the direct experience of these objects and animals in the spirit world. A shaman is someone who travels into non-ordinary reality, call it a dream world if you must, and brings back information, revelation, and experience that can be passed on for the benefit of others. Healing can sometimes result by simply understanding the root of a personal problem. Information has power, if given at the right time to the right person.

By all of these definitions Swedenborg was a superb shaman. He travelled into heaven and hell with his eyes open, under the protection and guidance of angels, and if you want to believe it, under the guidance of Jesus Christ himself. Swedenborg brought back thirty books of insight and stories, experiences he had in that other world. This body of information is so coherent and deep that it is now considered by some a further revelation of the Word of God, in the sense that it opens up the Old and New Testaments and gives them new meaning.

Swedenborg and the Ancient People

Swedenborg was able to talk with people that are now in the spiritual world, including those that had lived a long time ago. A result of this is that he writes extensively about the ancient history of this planet. He does not indicate in years when this was, but he calls this period the time of the Most Ancient Church, or maybe better translated the “First period that there was any coherent religion.”

What he says about these people borders on the ridiculous. It is quite unbelievable. They were totally clairvoyant and could talk to plants and to animals. They openly associated with angels. They communicated with each other by using the muscles of the face, without sound or words. Their breathing was “internal.” It is not quite clear what that means. What Swedenborg literally suggests is that these ancient people did not use their lungs to breathe air. They were breathing with spiritual “lungs.”

Today we have remnants of these kinds of people in the primitive tribes around the world. Maybe a large part of their knowledge has been lost. Yet the traces remain. Knowledge of plants and herbs as medicine is present in all tribes. This can be very specific knowledge, such as which two plants to combine to get a specific effect. This is old knowledge, passed on through generations. Telepathy and shamanic journeys into the other world are abilities found around the globe in indigenous peoples, the Native Americans, the Incas, the Aborigines, the Kogis, etc.

Swedenborg and Theology: main idea – God

I am reading Lars Bergquist’s biography of Swedenborg and am struck by a claim he makes:

"Knowledge of God can, according to Swedenborg, be given to a person only through a personal, existential experience" (page 369 Swedenborg’s Secret).

God is love. Love is at the core of each human life (Divine Love and Wisdom 1-4).

We are a likeness of God because we experience things from God in ourselves as if they were our own. (True Christian Religion48)

The state of a person when he is being regenerated...does not become readily clear to anyone except from experience, and indeed through reflecting on experience. (Arcana Coelestia 933)

I have been informed, both by conversation with angels, and by living experience. (Arcana Coelestia 1378)

So what Lars Bergquist is highlighting, in his reading of Swedenborg, is that truth or God must be existentially experienced. Only then does anything happen internally in a person, a new birth, a new life.

There are thousands of references in the theological books of Swedenborg that point out that all that is written here was experienced by the author. In between the abstract chapters are stories of experiences that Swedenborg had in the spiritual world. These stories have been deliberately put into the books, right from the first Arcana volume down to the last published work (True Christian Religion). In fact, people criticized him for including the personal experience stories...

I [Rudolph Tafel] know that Swedenborg has related his memorabilia in good faith. I asked him once, why he wrote and published those memorable relations, which seemed to throw so much ridicule on his doctrine, otherwise so rational; and whether it would not be best for him to keep them to himself, and not to publish them to the world? But he answered, that he had orders from the Lord to publish them; and that those who might ridicule him on that account would do him injustice; for, said he, why should I, who am a man in years, render myself ridiculous for fantasies and falsehoods. (Documents Concerning Swedenborg Volume 2 p.417)

Conclusion:

So, one thing that makes Swedenborg’s teaching different from main stream Christianity is this: experience. Personal experience.

Swedenborg could have chosen to study the Bible as a scientist, as a philosopher. He could have gone the way of his contemporaries, Kant, Wolff, Leibniz. At first, he tried to be a scientist of the soul. But then God, Jesus Christ himself, came into the picture and said, “No, you can’t be an intellectual and write about me. Let me show you heaven and hell. Let me make sure you experience the things that other people only speculate about.”

And that is what happened, and that is what is recorded in the writings of Swedenborg.

Stephen Muires

Stephen is forty-nine years old and currently located in Stockholm. He is now a freelance New Church minister and shaman, having recently resigned from the General Church. His main areas of interest are the Native American flute, the direct experience of God, and the awakening human race. His current independent spiritual work can be followed on youareanotherme.wordpress.com.

Stephen tries to ascertain whether or not all of Swedenborg's work could be pulled under the umbrella of one clear theme. He puzzles over the fact that many people who read Swedenborg's work attack people who claim to interact with the other world, when the man whose doctrines they adhere to did the very same thing. -Editor

Swedenborg and the Search for the Soul

“The Search for the Soul” is a nice theme for Swedenborg’s life. It may not be the most accurate wording, since “soul” can have so many meanings. Swedenborg looked for the soul in nature, in the human body, in the brain. Then he looked in the Bible, in poetry, in symbols. He was not satisfied with this, however.

Then something happened that can only be described partially. I don’t think Swedenborg understood what was happening. His diaries and dream journals show great confusion and searching.

It is not even clear if his later works can be said to have “found the soul.” If soul is essence, the core, the most vital and relevant part of anything, then I guess that Swedenborg thought he had found it. He had found a continual internal sense or soul to the Bible. Part of that soul was the realization that the Bible talks about the evolution of the human race in symbolical terms. The first evolution was personal, and he called it regeneration. Swedenborg himself became a different person. He writes that he could hardly recognize himself as the person who wrote all those heavy scientific books.

Swedenborg found God, Jesus Christ, as he was looking for the soul.

Swedenborg became one of those people in history that stood right at the leading edge of history. They say he was ahead of his time. He designed a flying machine, had theories on galaxy formation that only much later were confirmed. But here he was at the leading edge of thought and human evolution. He knew this. It was hard for him to not be proud, and for all we know he stayed humble till the end. He published anonymously, never acquired followers, never started a church, and never even spoke publicly about his works.

Now a lot of time has passed. 250 years. The culture has changed enormously, as you all know very well. Because of this, some of Swedenborg’s books sound old-fashioned and limited. That’s okay: that does not invalidate them. He wrote about the relationship between men and women in a decidedly patriarchal way. Still, the leading edge quality shines through. Translations are still being made today, into many languages. The books sell minimally, yet every year there’s a few people from all continents that suddenly discover them.

After 1760 his name finally became known as author of Arcana Coelestia. He lost his anonymity. Sales were very low. Yet, as the years went by, individual people read and attacked his works. He was accused of personal interpretation of the Bible, calling it revelation. He was accused of being a confused dreamer, describing vague visions and trances. He was accused of perverting Sacred Scripture. He was taken for a charlatan and a magician.

However, as a person, Swedenborg is described as humble and very rational. He had a slight stutter which prevented him doing public speaking. He lived simply, without luxury. He performed his duties in politics. He was a very intelligent scholar and scientist. His books are extremely systematic, extremely well cross-referenced, and extremely logical.

But his ideas and assertions were far out of this world—literally, and for this he was attacked. The same thing happens to people today. It is humorous that in our present times, the very people who confess to the New Church theology based on Swedenborg’s works, in some cases vehemently criticize anyone who currently professes to talk to angels and have visions of the spiritual world.

Swedenborg was a New Age prophet if there ever was one, given that he wrote in the 18th century. A modern Swedenborgian however is likely to condemn New Age teachings for the same reasons people condemned Swedenborg 250 years ago. What can you say? It is unfortunate.

Stephen Muires

Stephen is forty-nine years old and currently located in Stockholm. He is now a freelance New Church minister and shaman, having recently resigned from the General Church. His main areas of interest are the Native American flute, the direct experience of God, and the awakening human race. His current independent spiritual work can be followed on youareanotherme.wordpress.com.