Meanings Within Meanings
Dr. Michael Stanley

A talk on Swedenborg the Theologian

In this last of my three talks on Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th century scientist, philosopher and theologian, we shall see how this extraordinary man who had conquered the fields of science, philosophy and psychology of his time, discovered that the fount of the deepest knowledge and understanding he sought was to be found not in God's book of nature, but in God's Word, in the Bible, seen as a book of Divine and spiritual psychology, mapping out in parabolic or symbolic language the path of the individual soul seeking salvation from self-centered ego, conjunction with his Maker, and the bonds of brotherly love with his fellows.

Last time we left Swedenborg struggling to reach up beyond the mind's level of reason and judgement to a supra-rational level of the soul, hoping to find there the structures of the naked soul itself at the hidden centre of all men's lower faculties of reason, thought, imagination and sensation. He had been climbing, as it were, a ladder whose rungs were discrete levels of existence, each higher one representing itself on the next lower one as in an image, and governing it, as the mind governs the body's actions. The physical body he had seen as a unified kingdom, highly structured, stratified and mutually interconnected and interdependent, every part serving the whole. He had come to conceive of the mind within the body as itself a corresponding human form, formed likewise from structured and stratified mental substance. Both the physical body and the mental body were perfect instruments for the use of the soul in its life in the world. But how could he study the soul itself where all the great intuitions occurred, and more important, where all the fundamental, far-reaching, decisions were taken? The body does what it is told by the mind; the mind works out how to do what it is told by the soul; but what is the source of the soul's inmost desires and purposes or goals which it seeks to achieve through the instrumentality of the mind and the body?

What Swedenborg was now seeking was the realm of the spirit, the realm of ends, of purposes, of ultimate intent. And what he sought he eventually found; but what he found was not exactly what he had expected to find. It caused him, in the finding, not only great joy but also at times great inner spiritual suffering as well, for he had to learn to give up his purely philosophical pursuits.

To his great surprise he found that the origin of the soul’s intentions and purposes was a spiritual world peopled with men and women, all of whom had once lived on earth. The good inhabitants of this spiritual dimension were called angels and it is they who inspire affections and thoughts of love for others and for God: the evil inhabitants or devils, inspire selfishness and self-destructive emotions of hatred, jealousy, self-pity, and so on. Swedenborg experienced very vividly how a man is 'strung' as it were between heaven and hell by these two influences into his soul, one good and the other evil.

But it soon became clear to Swedenborg that all his knowledge and experiences in the sciences and philosophy, and all his new knowledge and experiences of the world of spirit in which our souls exist, were simply a preparation to enable him to perceive very clearly and distinctly the spiritual psychology at the heart of God's Word. Now that he had so fully grasped the fundamental nature of the material world, of the mental world, and now the spiritual world itself, and their relation to each other by correspondence, the higher representing itself in the lower as in an image, so he could now perceive the inner drama of the soul written symbolically in natural forms in the myths, the sagas, the histories, and the prophecies of Scripture. He saw how God's Word, or message to man, in origin something infinite and Divine, had clothed itself in lower forms of existence that could be apprehended by man at different levels of finite perception, spiritual and natural. The Bible, like the atoms, the human body, and the human mind, contained within itself discrete levels, one within the other, everything on one level corresponding to something on another level by the same laws of correspondence and representation that links the mind's images, ideas and decisions with the body's sensations and actions.

For example, just as we see material things by means of physical light through the eyes of our body, and mental images and ideas by means of mental light or understanding, through the 'eye' of our mind, so we can see spiritual truths by means of spiritual light, if our spiritual eyes are open to the things of the spirit. So Jesus Christ can declare, 'I am the Light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.' Another familiar Biblical example is Jesus saying that man must be born again before he can enter the kingdom of heaven. Clearly, Jesus does not mean, as Nicodemus thought, that a man must enter a second time into his mother's womb - He means re-birth of the spirit, not of the body that corresponds to it.

So the whole of God's Word, according to Swedenborg, is a spiritual book to be understood spiritually, yet clothed in the history of a particular planet and race at a particular time. The whole of God's Word is a parable of man's spiritual creation by God, and of the spiritual journey and trials to be faced by every soul desiring to be freed from evil influences and drawn eventually into the eternal heavenly states of life promised by God to those who follow Him.

God uses the image of the creation of the physical world in six days to represent in natural terms how He builds man's spirit into a perfect form in six stages, the waters, earth, grass. trees, fish, birds and animals, all representing elements and growths in the human spirit, both in wisdom and in love. The world of the mind can be a flourishing garden or a barren wilderness, and the Word speaks parabolically of both states in many places. Every person mentioned in God's Word is a representational facet of our own spiritual make up. For example, the Lord's disciples represent facets of our spirit that look to the Lord and depend on Him for faith, instruction, leadership and love. The Pharisees, on the other hand, are the proud, self-righteous feelings and attitudes that we also experience in ourselves. Jesus Himself in the Gospels is the Lord's life moving through our minds seeking to be heard, followed, and obeyed from love: but other elements in us are troubled by His presence and strive to have this life extinguished.

In such a manner Swedenborg saw the world of spirit and the world of nature and history linked correspondentially in their pages of the Bible. Yet he would have us bear in mind his claim that he gained this perception not by the powers of his own intellect but by a spontaneous illumination from above his rational mind inflowing from the Lord Himself.

Swedenborg had to give up his scientific and philosophical pursuits in order to concentrate full time on opening up for future generations the inner spiritual levels of the Word of God, so that all who chose might learn to hear God speaking to them and of their spiritual condition in even the most ordinary or fanciful-sounding portions of the Word.

And so this remarkable man achieved what no man before or since has ever done - he linked together under the same general principles of understanding, all the physical sciences, philosophy, psychology, the spiritual world, and Divine Revelation, but this only after long, intense study of each of these great fields of human experience, and only after accepting to subordinate his mind to the will, and wisdom of God. As a scientist in his own day he was regarded very highly and received many honours. But, as his thought began to plumb ever deeper depths, he left his contemporaries behind, and was in turn neglected by them. In fact only now, after two centuries of experimental science, can his prophetic insights into the fundamental nature of matter be appreciated and marveled at. But with the growing revival of interest in religion, the supernatural, and life after death, it may well be that his related yet distinctive contribution to our understanding of the world of spirit and the spiritual psychology of the Bible, will receive a more widespread acknowledgement and help many more to receive the spiritual understanding, conviction and guidance they need in passing through our modern, complex, and turbulent world.