Swedenborg: The Father of Astral Projection

[Berserk]

F. THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN SPACE OR DISTANCE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITIES

PART I: This is the first of 3 posts on ES's discovery of how the principle of correspondence determines the structure of spiritual reality.  What corresponds to distance are the feelings we have for each other.  To quote ES's "Heaven and Hell:"  

"People who are nearby are the ones in a similar state and the ones who are far away are in dissimilar states.  This is why space in heaven is nothing but the outward states that correspond to the inner ones.  This is the only reason why the heavens are differentiated from each other; as are the communities in each heaven and the individuals in each community. It is also why the hells are completely separate from the heavens.  They are in an opposite state."

"This is also why in the spiritual world one individual is present to another only if that presence is intensely desired.  This is because one person sees another in thought in this way and identifies with that individual's state.  Conversely, one person moves away from another to the extent that there is any sense of reluctance.  Whenever people move from one place to another, whether it is in their town, their courtyards, in their gardens, or to people outside their own community, tbey go there more quickly if they are eager to and more slowly if they are not.  The path itself is lengthened or shortened depending on their desire, even though it is the same path.  We can illustrate this by our own thoughts. . .for whatever we focus on intently in our thought is seemingly present (HH #193-96)."

This psychological equivalence to earthly spacial relationships among heavenly communities raises interesting questions.   Most of us have multi-faceted loves and tastes.  Assume for the sake of argument that I wind up in heaven.  I enjoy the company of men who make me laugh, men who love sports, and men who stimuate me intellectually.  I enjoy the company of women who have the gift of empathy, women who charm me, and women who balance me because they are very different from me, etc.    Let us assume that people of each type enjoy my company equally and are equally evolved in their spirituality.  How will the "geography" of these personality types be worked out?  What combination of strengths, interests, and quirks would bring my "type" together into a heavenly community?  Would I be with comedians who make me laugh, with men who stimulate me intellectually, with women who charm me, but are very different from me, etc.?  How can love be quantified?  Does God have some hierarchy of values that elevates some loving personality types to a higher level than others?  If so, what are they?  Perhaps, it is simply a matter of the purity and frequency of a soul's vibration.  So many questions, so few answers!

[Berserk]

PART II: EVOLUTI0N AND CORRESPONDENCE

ES discovers that in both the spiritual and natural worlds each person, animal, plant, and mineral is encompassed by its spiritual replica, an energy sphere which continually emanates from it.  ""Thus the natural world derives from the spiritual, and the spiritual from the Divine (DLW 283)."  This insight is independently confirmed by channeled material from deceased Oxford professor F. W. Myers.  Myers confirms the truth of the widely espoused "as above, so below" principle.  Myers reveals that dinosaurs existed in the spirit world before they became physical and that their prior existence as spirits was essential to their emergence on Earth.    If ES  had known about dinosaurs, he would no doubt agree.  He reports: 

"This whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world--the natural not just in general but in detail.   So whatever arises in the natural world is called `something that corresponds'.  It must be realized that the natural world arises  from and is sustained in beng by the spiritual world exactly the way an effect relates to an efficient cause (HH 89)."

"Now because every single thing remains in being from the Divine,...and every single thing from that source is inevitably a representative of the real thing by means of which it has come into being, the whole visible universe is therefore nothing else than a theatre that is representative of the Lord's kingdom.  And this in turn is a theatre representative of the Lord Himself (AC 483)," 

So ES does not simply believe that God spoke and "Poof!" life appeared.  For ES, Nature provides a mechanism whereby the Lord's life reaches down to ultimates [evolved states] and returns to Himself through higher and higher "uses" (DLW 180, 316).  Both evolution and some form of reincarnation are at least consistent with this scheme of things. 

ES reveres biblical truth but insists that the Genesis creation story cannot be taken literally.  He precedes Darwin by almost a century and inevitably makes mistakes in his speculations about the development of life forms.  But he anticipates the general drift of modern evolutionary theory.  He recognizes the tiny lichen on a rock as a  developmental prelude to emerging forests.  He believes that each order of plants gives birth to a corresponding order of animals (WLG 30).  He traces the modern human species back to a primordial prehuman stage (SD 3390). 

In my view, he anticipates and corrects a flaw in the evolutionary principle of natural selection.  Natural selection assumes that chance variations create genetic advantages that improve the chances of survival.  ES accepts the role of randomness in creation, but insists that the Lord controls chance or probabiliity distributions (AC 5508).  His anticipation of evolutionary theory a century before Darwin is yet another confirmation of the validity of his gift of astral projection.

In my next planned post, I will discuss how his views on the origin and development of life forms find confirmation in modern scientific experiments.

[T.L.]

This thread deals with Swedenborg, not with Betty Eadie or Howard Storm.  In my view, Betty Eadie is almost as unreliable as Robert Monroe in her uncritical acceptance and interpretation of her OBE (NDE).  So why your long irrelevant tirade against her?  As for atheist Howard Storm's NDE, Have you closely read this ex-atheist's book, "My Descent into Death?"  I can respond to your mischaracterization in a separate thread on Storm.  One manifestation of SOME New Agers like yourself is an inability to follow a train of thought to its logical conclusion.  Don't "assume."  When you "assume," you just make an "butt" of "u" and "me."  As for other posters, remember Harry's rant as you observe how I actually unfold this thread.

  I know this was directed at harry, but what the heck. You are here on astral pulse and then categorizing people as 'new agers'. What is going on there? Also you mention about assumptions, as if you do not make assumptions yourself. You first post is wrought with assumptions. For one the state you are in while coming out of sleep is called hypnopompic, not hypnogogic. You are only in the hypnogogic state when you are on your way to sleep, not when coming out of it. These are two different states, albeit similar states. However it still is like comparing apples and oranges, there are differences. Another thing was the attack on Monroe. You act is if his additions to the community (on obe's) was somehow insignificant. There is much to be learned from his work. As someone who has obe's I found referring back to his books on certain issues helped a whole lot. As far as the religion thing goes, it seems you are very religious and your opinions about projection are definitely coloured by your religion. I know it may be hard for some religious people but it is best to leave religion out of projection so you may be objective about the experience itself.

[Stillwater]

Yeah, there are clearly some alternative viewpoints coming to bear here....

Outside of that though, it Swedenborg does seem like an interesting case. While 18th century Europe did know of the traditions of the east (Milton is always taking about "the Brahman", and later Thoreau speaks of "the forest Hindu sage"), there was still a general lack of understanding, so it is quite possible that people like Swedenborg had no exposure to people telling similar tales to his. It is readily apparent that most people writing on the subject today borrow heavily from one another, so it is difficult to sort out what may be independent thoughts, but since Swedenborg seems to speak of many of the same phenomena, it is an interesting view on the universality of these experiences.

There clearly are tracts of his that sound like folk stories, such as the stopping clock, etc, and it is difficult to sort his realities from what may have merely been said of him by others. Nonetheless, I agree that examples such as his are quite valuable.

[harry12345]

Come on Folks! Tambourines ready! All together now! Sing!

" Bringing in the sheep....Bringing in the sheep......Berserk will come re-joycing.....Bringing in the sheep"

[Stillwater]

Lol.... I have no clue what is going on here... there is too much passion in this thead.

I think we need to let people sort out the realities for themselves. People are speaking as though a war is going on in here

[iNNERvOYAGER]

Free books, cool stuff!

http://www.swedenborg.org/library_list.cfm?catID=94

[litenith]

Some of the books can also be found here in .pdf format, which I, personally, found more comfortable 

http://www.thelordsnewchurch.com/free_swedenborg_books_online.html#English2 

[iNNERvOYAGER]

Some of the books can also be found here in .pdf format, which I, personally, found more comfortable 
http://www.thelordsnewchurch.com/free_swedenborg_books_online.html#English2 

Very nice, thanks!

Been using free Macromedia Flash Paper printer driver to create pdfs of web pages (in Firefox).
Very handy if the site doesn't offer material in pdf form.

[catmeow]

I haven't read all the posts in detail, but this thread is a lot less acrimonious than others I have seen. There's no harm in critique. I haven't identified any losers on this thread yet, just people airing their opinions as they are welcome to do so. Interesting thread.

[Berserk]

F. PART III:

Normally, when seekers are fascinated by an arcane subject like astral exploration, they are absolutely delighted to discover that they have overlooked the Grandad of this field, especially when he is widely acknowledged as the most gifted astral adept ever.  But only seme of this site's seekers are normal.  Others are cowering members of the New Age Ghetto, who are overwhelmed by xenophobic rage or terror when someone like me shocks them out the warm milk of their mindless conformity.  So they whine, "Why cant we just keep religious themes out of this and keep our approach objective?  This just in: there is no objectivity in the realm of astral travel; fact and interpretation remain elusively inseparable.  That's precisly why we need a variety of astral experiences from people with radically different overviews.  ES is so special not only because he is the most famed and dinstinguised astral adept of all time, but because no one was actively pursuing OBEs in his day.  So his astral experiences are uncontaminated by the dummed down consensus of New Age Ghettospeak.  Of course, the fact that ES's experiences are not shaped by a ruling occult philosophy ensure that he offends not only the conventional church, but also less gifted modern New Agers.  But most importantly, ES's verifications are in a class by themselves. The next time you hear a professing astral adept whine about how hard it is to secure solid unequivocal verifications in etheric matter, just remind yourself that this adept is just admitting that he has not remotely refined his skill to ES's level.

Well, now that you've had a chance to see and sniff the broom up each other's New Age butt, it's time to resume more sweeping astral discoveries.    

SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS THAT SEEM TO VERIFY ES's INSIGHTS INTO ENERGY SPHERES:

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake argues that the DNA molecule cannot contain all the information essential to the organism's formation; rather, DNA is a finely tuned receptor which taps into the information contained in the "morphogenetic field" of that organism, a field that seems to be the functional equivalent of ES's energy spheres flowing out from each organism.  Sheldrake contends that the form, development, and behavior of living organisms are shaped and maintained by this field together with genetic inheritance.  In a sense, these fields function like a kind of species memory through which the newly acquired characteristics of prior generations can be passed on to future ones.  The key to species evolution is this: the condition of an organism's systems is constantly updated in these fields.

Sheldrake put his theory to the test in an experiment he conducted on live TV.  Millions of BBC viewers were taught to see hidden images in puzzle pictures.  Before the program aired, a base line was established by observing how well people could distinguish the hidden image.  After the program, people from all over the world who could not have seen or heard the program were again asked to find the image.  The results indicated significant improvement in the worldwide ability of non-viewers to distinguish the image.

Sheldrake was building on the findings of animal research.  (1) At Harvard experiments on rats found that children of rats mastered a maze much faster (tenfold) than their parents, even though the offspring were not born at the time their parents were tested.  This result was replicated in both Scotland and Australia and the rats' performance dramatically improved from place to place even though there was no physical contact among the geographically separated rats.  

(2) In pre-WW2 Europe, milk was home-delivered in cartons.  A bird species (bluetits) suddenly began to land on top of the cartons, remove the cover, and drink the cream.  Some of the birds were even found drowned inside the cartons!  Bluetits have a range of 4-5 miles.  Yet this practice spread for a hundred miles within a year.  The same phenomenon occurred in Scandanavia and Holland.  Milk delivery ceased during the German occupation of Europe during WW2.  Bluetits only have a 2-3 year life expectancy; so all the avian cream drinkers died off.  But after the war, bluetits resumed their cream drinking and this habit spread just as before WW2.

(3) David Fontana ("Is There an Afterlife?", pp. 22-23) discusses a study in which measurements were taken of electrodermal reactions on the skin of receivers while they were subjected to a series of both arousing and calming thoughts from a sender in another room.  The sender would visualize the receivers in a very fearful situation or as relaxing on a sunlit beach.  The receivers had no idea which type of thoughts were being sent.  Thus the experiments show that even when receivers have no conscious awareness of whether they are receiving arousing or calming thoughts, the unconscious or morphogenetic field seems to be receiving the information and registering it in physiological reactions.

[Stillwater]

ES is so special not only because he is the most famed and dinstinguised astral adept of all time, but because no one was actively pursuing OBEs in his day.

Agreed. The number of places such a person could have obtained information on the phenomenon is extremely limited, which makes the parallels his experiences have with today's much more significant, becuase there is a suggestion of universality.

2) In pre-WW2 Europe, milk was home-delivered in cartons.  A bird species (bluetits) suddenly began to land on top of the cartons, remove the cover, and drink the cream.  Some of the birds were even found drowned inside the cartions!  Bluetits have a range of 4-5 miles.  Yet this practice spread for a hundred miles within a year.  The same phenomenon occurred in Scandanavia and Holland.  Milk delivery ceased during the German occupation of Europe during WW2.  Bluetits only have a 2-3 year life expectancy; so all the avian cream drinkers died off.  But after the war, bluetits resumed their cream drinking and this habit spread just as before WW2.

I think a person needs to be careful when citing incidents like this one as direct evidence- for one, being so many years in the past, the details are obscured, and it is near impossible to gather further information. The fact that the feeding started spontaneously does not really support the Sheldrake theory so well as merely suggesting that something about how the milk was processed or handled changed, or perhaps something about the birds themselves (their prior foodsource dwindled, they were forced to migrate, etc). The fact that the birds resumed feeding on the milk when it was made availible again does not necessarily mean that information was passed non-physically- it is quite possible that the same thing which cause the birds to desire the milk in the first place attracted their offspring all the same.

Notice that I am not saying Sheldrake is wrong, but rather that using anecdotal evidence of this sort can be dangerous- no causal connection can be inferred, and a person could cite such incidents in the defense of many different conclusions. For instance, all the facts being the same, someone might have used this case as evidence for the usefulness of dormant genetic patterns (the birds had a natural predilection to drink cream, but a certain chemical substance was added in the pasteurizing process which they had un-used hormonal receptors for).

[Berserk]

Stillwater,

That's why off beat biological science needs to follow the same two principles that are so neglected in OBE exploration: verification and especially regular replication.  Sheldrake is constantly trying to confirm his theory of morphogenetic biological fields from an ever increasing array of studies.  But these confirmatory studies are still far too few, so to date his findings do not qualify as respectable science.  Still, it is truly fascinating that Sheldrake seems to be unconsciously reissuing ES's perspective on evolution through biological energy spheres.  This fascinates me because I don't consider natural selection and random genetic mutation to be sufficient in themselves to account for life's spectacular upward drive towards ever more complex, adaptable, and intelligent life forms.

[harry12345]

Be Spiritually, Psychically, Mentally, and Physically aware of this guy, folks. He uses copy and paste in all of his previous Christian based endless posts, and then edits his posts from his endless, religious based Christian dogma, to fit in with his current mental hidden agenda and whatever ulterior motives he has in planting himself on this forum, the Astral Pulse Forums! He resided for years on Bruce Moens "Afterlife Conversation" forum and message board!..Now he's here!? All his "stuff' is just repeated junk from his original posts, over the many years, on Bruce's and other forums!...I don't think he ever got over the fact that his girlfriend committed suicide because of his utter dogmatic and phony intellectual revelations that the Christian tradition and way, is the ultimate spiritual "Truth!"??...Harry12345!         

[iNNERvOYAGER]

I'm inspired by the "Blind watchmaker" idea:

http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/mirror/biomorph/

Always thought that the greatest miracle of the physical universe is the idea that all matter and life can originate ( at least from one point) from a single Hydrogen ion or proton.

To think that something is smart enough to create a cloud of protons and associated forces, then say, "go forth and create a home for a universe of star children purely from a combination of random events and the controlling factor of environment."

I wouldn't consider a micro managing director simply dictating the course of design to be true genius and miraculous.

I'm fascinated to hear of modern engineering methods that make use of The Blind Watchmaker algorithm driving novel practical design to solve real engineering problems.

[Berserk]

Every philosophy major knows that no arguments from design are airtight because they depend on unprovable assumptions and analogies which may seem intuitively strong, but cannot be decisively rescued from the charge that they might be "weak" analogies.  The best argument from design comes from Lehigh microbiologist, Michael Behe's book "Darwin's Black Box."  Behe argues that living cells depend on at least 6 systems or biological machines that are "irreducibly complex," i. e. not the result of incremental evolution.  What Behe means is that the components of these 6 systems are all essential to the cell's functioning, so that no component is indispensable.  Behe's argument sparked a furor in the scientific community.  I have read many attempts of scientists to rebut him; none of them seem successful. 

My problem with Behe is that evolution obviously proceeds with the help of other factors than natural selection and random mutation.  Clearly, the reality of consciousness played a vital role, but our scientific grasp of the nature of consciousness is so rudimentary that its relevance cannot be assessed.  Still, the Swedenborg-Sheldrake theory seems as promising as any supplementary principle because of the prominence it gives to the role of consciousness.   

[Berserk]

F. PART IV: ES ON CORRESPONDENCE--THE KEY TO DIVINATION

ES writes: "The whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world--the natural world not just in general, but in detail. So whatever arises in the natural world out of the spiritual one is called `something that corresponds' (HH 89-90)."

A. HOW TO KILL WITH ASTROLOGY:

This aspect of correspondence might explain the various types of divination.  The most fascinating (if ghastly) radio interview I ever heard was with astrologer Jack Gillam.  At the birth of his son, Jack noted a "death aspect" on his son's horoscope that would become effective on the boy's 3rd birthday.  When this birthday arrived, Jack's wife kept the boy in the kitchen to keep an eye on him.  But when the phone rang, she got distracted and the child toddled out of the house, crawled through a hole in the fence, and headed for an apartment block next door.  The little boy fell into the outdoor swimming pool.  A 12-year-girl by the pool could easily have saved him, but she ran off screaming and so he  drowned. 

Psychiatrist Carl Jung did a study of astrological compatibility between couples.  He found that the predicted astrological correlation clearly confirmed their compatibility. Years later, Jung had second thoughts about these results.  Why should planetary relationships have anything to do with love?  He tried to replicate his earlier study.  This time he found no correlation between planetary configuration and romantic compatibility.  So why the difference?  Apparently, Jung's open curiosity in the first study attracted to him just those people whose horoscopes would create the illusion of  astrological validity.  Jung calls this synchronicity.  In my view, Jack Gillam's belief in death aspects worked like black magic attracting the event that he most feared.  His son's premature death was no doubt facilitated by influxes from negative spirits.

B. MY SPECTACULAR CARD READING:

When I was in grad school, I reluctantly agreed to take my date to the New England flower show.  Quickly bored, I noted two card readers sitting at a table.  One read regular playing cards and charged $5; the other read Tarot cards and charged $35.  I had never had a card reading before and didn't really believe in it.  So I chose the cheaper reading.

The reader asked me to draw 3 cards.  The cards looked like a lousy poker hand to me.  Then she told me 4 things: (1) I should dump the gal I brought to the show.  This amused me because my date had sneered at the readers when she passed them and I took this advice as the reader's revenge.  But the reader was right: we were incompatible.  (2) Then the reader told me I had serious issues with women.  My ex-girlfriend, Janet, had recently committed suicide, but this comment seemed too vague to impress me.  (3) Next, she told me I was good with children and implied that I'd be working with them very soon.  This seemed absurd to me.  I was working on my doctoral thesis and had no time for kids.  (4) Finally, she told me that in the next few days I'd be receiving a job offer from an exotic place, but that I should not accept it.  I dismissed this too because I hadn't even applied for a job.  When the reading was over, I'm sure she thought I viewed her as a fake.

The next week, I got a call from my thesis advisor asking me about an overdue chapter of my thesis.  While I made excuses, he told me he was the commissioner of the Arlington Youth Soccer Federation and that he needed a coach for an under-12 boys team.  He knew I'd played soccer in Canada and asked me if I'd do it.  How could I say no to my thesis advisor?  I felt manipulated and thought I'd hate it.  In fact, the 3 years I coached those boys were one of the highlites of my life.  I had never been married, but those boys became like the sons I would never have.  The next year we were undefeated and made it to the county championship game which we lost 2-1.  So the reader was absolutely correct about point (3).

Two days after the reading, I received an odd call from a professor in Newfoundland.  He asked me if I'd be willing to come and teach in his university there.  I was dumbfounded because I hadn't applied for the job. I reluctantly turned it down because I wasn't close to finishing my thesis.  The reader had said I'd immediately get a job offer from an "exotic" place that I should turn down!   Newfoundland seems pretty exotic to me. So the reader's fourth point proved absolutely amazing!

So how did my bad poker hand yield such spectacular clairvoyance?  For the same reason that Gillam's death aspect proved true?  I'll quote Van Dusen's Swedenborgian perspective (p. 185):

"Astrology is an example of correspondence between the inner person and planetary configurations.  The ancients had a whole host of ways of trying to divine the future and find evidence by the arrangement of material things: the fall of cards (Tarot), tea leaves, yarrow sticks (I Ching), cracked bones, etc.  Usually these systems required a considerable amount of interpretation that allowed some projection of inner processes."

I'm puzzled by several aspects of ES's principle of correspondence.  But he seems to have identified a spiritual principle that can can be both beneficial and a source of devastating evil.  I wish I had a better handle on it.

[Berserk]

H. THE NATURE OF THE SELF: PART I: A SWEDENBORGIAN CRITIQUE OF THE
NEW AGE CONCEPT OF THE GROUP SOUL

New Age reincarnationism is often associated with the concept of a higher self, soul disk, or group soul comprised of many manifestations of one's soul throughout history.  ES would view this as a perversion of what actually happens.  Objectivity on this question is of course impossible, but I place a premium on astral explorers who interpret such realities without doctrinal preconceptions.  Their preceptions have a chance to be more pristine.  Nothing remotely like a group soul was part of metaphysical discussion in the Sweden of ES's era. 
So ES is merely reporting what he experiences with no hidden agenda based on ideological opposition.  In "Heaven and Hell," ES reports his astral discoveries in this regard: 

"Kindred souls gravitate towards each other spontaneously...for with each other they feel as though they are with their own family (HH 44)," 

"There was a kind of angelic face that appeared to me, and this varied according to the qualities of affections...that were characteristic of the individuals in a particular community.  These variations lasted quite a while, and through it all I noticed that the same general face remained constant as a basis, with everything else being simply derivations and elaborations from it.  So there was shown me through this face the affections of the whole community...Not many individuals leave their own community to go to another because leaving their community is like leaving themselves or their life...(HH 47, 49)." 

"Sometimes a whole angelic community appears as a single entity in the form of an angel, a sight that the Lord has allowed me to see. . .Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are nothing but angelic communities that are given these names because of their functions (HH 52)." 

Similary, in classical channeling, the group soul is not like the Monroe/Moen soul Disk composed of multiple selves of the same soul unit.  Rather, the group soul is composed of originally distinct kindred souls with the same purpose.  Yet this channeled conception might easily be confused with the soul Disk concept.  For example, consider this quote form Paul Beard's book ("Living On," p. 135) that sums of the consensus of the history of channeling in the classical period:

"The group as a whole is in a real sense a soul also, a group soul, and [the discarnate person] is in very truth part of this soul.  The bond, the common purpose, will not all be seen in a flash....[but] will be carried out gradually, until the various parts are gathered together and made a whole." 

This alternative understanding may be the key to solving a significant contradiction between Bruce Moen and Robert Monroe.  Moen claims to be part of the same soul Disk as Monroe.  But Monroe is astrally informed that he has only one parallel incarnation--a female one.  He is also told that "she would seem like a long-lost sister (UJ 174)."  Moen reports no such intimacy in his earthly encounter with Monroe.  Perhaps, Moen, Monroe, and even this unknown female are distinct and separate souls destined to participate in a group soul in this Swedenborgian sense.  If so, there is no such thing as retrieving portions of one's self.

The group soul in the Swedenborgian sense gets rid of the the troubling notion of parallel incarnations from a timeless astral realm.  Consider the contradictory nature of Seth's perspective on the timeless interval between lives.  In "Eternal Validity of the Soul" Seth says, "There is no time schedule, and yet it is very unusual for an individual to wait for anything over 3 centuries between lives, for this makes the orientation very difficult, and the emotional ties with the earth have become weak."  But Seth assumes that time is irrelevant for entities between lives.  The earth ties can only become gradually weakened if there is in fact a passage of time!  A real contradiction!

[Stillwater]

I would say that you can interpret the words of these writers in any way you want, but you can only really ever know the truth for yourself, as you said- it can't be told to you, both for reasons of lack of verification, and the incommunability of some kinds of knowledge. You can't explain red to a blind man, or the taste of pomegranate to a computer- some things can only be experienced.

And while I think it may be fruitful to try to understand the higher realities, there is also much we will never figure out from this side, and I suspect the real truths are so much more complicated and elegant than what we might perceive them to be. We do the truth injustice in trying to classify and simplify. It is good to form a theoretical framework, but we shouldn't confuse this with answers.

Happy Christmas

[thirdeye26]

I never heard of Swedenborg; so your posts are of great interest to me. Perhaps I ought to read up on him a bit to make any intelligent contribution to this thread. I just wanted to say that I have found this thread and all the posts here very interesting and informative.