(I) EMANUEL SWEDENBORG (1688 - 1772)

            Emanuel Swedenborg, the great Swedish scientist and theologian, was born in Stockholm in 1688 and died in London in 1772.  His father was first of all Chaplain to the Horse Guards of Charles XI, then later professor of Theology at Upsala University, Dean of the Cathedral at Upsala, Bishop of Skara, and a member of the Swedish Diet or House of Nobles.  Coming as he did from a wealthy and distinguished family which fairly consistently enjoyed a high degree of royal patronage, the young Emanuel was able to attend the Cartesian influenced University of Upsala until he was twenty years of age.  He then, as befitted a young man with his social and academic background, undertook an extended tour during which he spent nearly two years in London, and then, after a short sojourn in Holland and a year in Paris, he returned home via Swedish Pomerania.

            During the whole of this period he continued the mathematical, scientific and metallurgical studies to which he had been introduced at Upsala.  On his return to Sweden in 1716, Charles XII offered him a Professorship in Mathematics at Upsala but Swedenborg preferred an appointment as Assessor (i.e. a member of the Administrative Council) of the Board of Mines. He also took his seat as a nobleman in the Diet and began to contribute many memorials to its proceedings.  Thus for the next twenty-five years he was busily engaged in his official as well as in his political duties.  During the whole of this period he engaged in those profound scientific studies which enabled him to produce a series of remarkable books.  These established his European reputation as a scientist of the first order and even today astonish those who read them with their remarkable anticipations of later scientific developments.

            The total list of his works - scientific, mineralogical, political, philosophical and psychological - comprises seventy-seven publications, some of which are of considerable length.  Even Hegel would pale at such an output!  No wonder Emerson says of Swedenborg that "he is one of the missourians and mastodons of literature who is not to be measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars".

            In order to give some little indication of the brilliance of Swedenborg's scientific thinking and of the extent that he was ahead of his age, here are a few of his scientific anticipations:

             Years before Buffon published the first outline of the nebular hypothesis which was later developed by Herschel, Kant and Laplace, Swedenborg outlined the theory in great detail in Chapter 4 of his Principia.

            The dominance of the cerebral cortex in neurology (Section D, No. 61 in The Brian). Cerebral localization.  This is the basic theses of The Brain. Dr. Talbot, the editor of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, writing in the October 1968 number, points out that in the work cited, he also discussed the somatotropic arrangement of the motor cortex, the importance of the pituitary gland, the formation of cerebro- spinal fluid, and (shades of Sherrington), the integrative action of the nervous system with a pronouncement on the neuron theory for good measure.

            John Eastman points out that he introduced to Sweden the differential and integral calculus.

He predicted an atomic theory.

He was one of the creators of the modern sciences of crystallography and metallurgy.  He identified electrical phenomena nineteen years before Franklin's experiments.

He anticipated the theories of the solar origin of the earth and the undulatory principle of light.

He developed the bases of the modern theory of molecular magnetics.

            When Swedenborg was fifty-seven years old, he abandoned his brilliant scientific career, and for the next twenty-seven years he devoted his literary efforts entirely to theology.  During these years, he produced thirty large volumes, each averaging over 300,000 words in modern editions, as well as fifteen minor works.  His theological system is based on three fundamental concepts.

These are:

A)        The Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ as described in The Word in many places as John X, 30; John XIV, 6-11;  Col. II, 9.

B)        The holiness and the Divine inspiration of The Word:  The Word as a Divine medium of conjunction with the human race.

C)        The life of charity.  This involves the examination of a person's thoughts, intentions, and actions, using as criteria the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, as well as all the various injunctions set out in the Word, e.g. Luke XII, 15;  Matthew V, 28.

            Swedenborg has had an especial appeal to men and women of genius, those people who shape the culture patterns of nations.  A very curtailed list is given elsewhere in this leaflet and all these, plus many more are known to have studied and drawn upon the writings of Swedenborg.  Swedenborg has occasionally been attacked on account of his so-called supernatural powers. The best refutation of any charlatanism has been provided by one of his most severe detractors, Immanuel Kant.

            In a well-known letter to Charlotte von Knobloch (extant in any University library in Borowsky's Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuels Kant, Konigsberg, p.211-255) Kant gives an account of several otherwise inexplicable demonstrations of Swedenborg's powers.  He says that these occurrences "appear to me to have the greatest weight of proof and to place the assertion respecting Swedenborg's extraordinary gift beyond all possibility of doubt".  Since the original work by Archbishop L.E. Borowsky was revised and corrected by Kant himself, there should be little doubt that, if any charlatanism existed, Kant's careful and meticulous scrutiny would have exposed it.

            Although Swedenborg wrote in Latin, his works have been translated into thirty-three spoken European and Asiatic languages.  Since 1820, over five million copies of his theological works have been sold.  His prose style is Ciceronian in its clarity.  Although he is dealing with the most profound subjects, there is not the least trace of any ambiguity or confusion of thought. Measured by the most severe tests of internal consistency, such as the criterion of coherence so dear to the heart of Rationalism, Swedenborg's consistency of statement, both over the whole time span of the twenty-seven years or by the more severe test of using deductions to test the degree of agreement or disagreement with other deductions is inerrable.  His works are a completely unified system of thought, cohering not only internally but also agreeing both with Scripture and also with modern science.  His whole system is expressed in unimpassioned, cool, logical prose, since he repeatedly insisted that to evaluate and then to accept the truth of any proposition, an individual must exercise his God-given faculties of reason and of judgement.

  All he asks of any reader is unbiased rational appraisal.

(2)SUMMARY OF SWEDENBORG'S SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY

Written by H. E. Haine, Brisbane, Australia.

Swedenborg's Spiritual Philosophy

The Swedenborg lending library  and enquiry centre

The Lord regards nothing else in a person but the person's aim or purpose.  Whatever the thoughts and deeds may be, varying in countless ways, they are all good provided the purpose is good.  But if the end in view is bad, they are all bad. . . . . A person's aim is his very life.

Emanuel Swedenborg Arcana Caelestia, from paragraph 1317,

UNIVERSAL AND WHOLISTIC SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY.

            It is well recognised and accepted today by people everywhere that life is multifaceted and very complex.  There are no easy answers for coming to terms with whom we really are, or with the purpose of our life, or with our various relationships, let alone the bigger questions concerning a Divine Being and the spiritual domain.  What we can sense is that all these issues are interconnected and any degree of understanding will only come as the larger picture emerges.

            The spiritual philosophy in Swedenborg's writings draws together the many and varied dimensions to life in a universal and wholistic way at both the micro and macro levels; universal in the sense that it has application for every individual in whatever circumstances they find themselves, wholistic through the drawing together of the many aspects in a way that each supports the other.  The atom exists through a complex inter-relationship of energy forces and the same pattern applies at the level of the human mind.

This summary is simply an outline of some of the basic concepts analysed by Swedenborg, each of which relates to the whole.

DIVINE NATURE

            Divine Love and Wisdom continuously creating and maintaining what is created. The Divine Itself is the unity of love and wisdom.  Whilst in reality one does not exist without the other, our intellectual mind sees them as distinct.  Divine Love, being the very substance of creation, is invisible; Divine Wisdom, which gives form and direction to Divine Love, is visible in what is created.

            United Love and Wisdom is not static but a source of power which continually creates and sustains what it has created.  The closest example that we have in this world is through the heat and light of the sun acting together and providing the power for sustaining natural life. The Divine is outside the constraints of space and time, which exist only in this natural realm, and our own reflecting on the Divine nature must recognise that this is so.

OUR NATURE

            We are each a unique soul receiving and responding to the Divine Life which animates us. We are finite spiritual beings born with a material body in order to function in this natural world.  As a unique soul formed at the time of conception, we each continuously receive the Divine Life of Love and Wisdom enabling us to live as feeling and thinking beings.  As the highest form in creation, we have the ability to reason and make choices about spiritual matters as if we had our own life. The true person - the spirit - is immortal and on discarding the material body we become fully conscious of the spiritual realm.  The qualities of love and related intelligence - our ruling love - that we have made our own in this world remain with us and become the basis for our spiritual development to eternity. 

SPIRITUAL INFLOWING

            We are constantly under positive and negative influences from the spiritual realm As spiritual beings living in the worldly plane of existence, our internal minds are open to both positive and negative influences from spirits in the same way that our conscious minds are directly affected by our external circumstances.  These influences - positive from spirits in heavenly states and negative from those in hellish states - are kept in equilibrium by the Lord to preserve our freedom. As part of the total mind processes, the spiritual influences filter into our consciousness and impinge on our choice processes. But we need to become aware of them, especially the subtle and persuasive hellish influences, and only take on board those influences for good in our decision making if we want to be in tune with the Divine to achieve lasting spiritual growth.

PROVIDENCE

            The Divine constantly works in every detail of life according to spiritual laws that look to our eternal welfare. Just as this world operates in accordance with natural, scientific, laws which apply consistently and coherently, so there are corresponding laws which govern all aspects of our spiritual life.  These laws are the Divine Providence in action, which has for its end the eternal happiness of every person.  The purpose of our existence here is to become sensitive to the Divine Will and act in ways that are harmonious with the laws of Providence.  When we do live in accord with the Divine plan, as we understand it to be, our lives will be blessed ultimately, if not at once.  Yet, even if we do act contrary to them, the Lord works untiringly giving us countless opportunities to return to the stream of Providence. In this world we always remain open to the possibility of misfortune but that will not be detrimental to our eternal welfare if we respond positively to these apparently adverse circumstances.

FREEWILL

            We cannot always choose what happens to us; we can choose how we respond to We are all creatures of our heredity and environment.  The worldly life of most people is determined by circumstances outside of their own immediate control - the law, governments and social expectations all impinge.  Nevertheless, our internal response to such circumstances is something over which we have total control. The God-given gift of freedom to choose rationally how we will act and react in any given situation remains available to us at all times unless our mental capacity becomes impaired, at which time we are no longer responsible spiritually and our eternal welfare is protected by God. All of these internal choices placed before us are character-building and we gradually build up the type of person we want to become. 

SPIRITUAL GROWTH

            A purifying process which through an inner struggle to overcome selfish motives we can enjoy the peace and joy of the Divine within. The whole purpose of our life in this realm of existence is to grow spiritually and achieve a transformation of our inner self - a lifetime of choices and change!  We are born with inclinations towards selfishness - clearly displayed in early childhood behaviour - which if left to develop unchecked will eventually dominate our whole being and motivation.  We can do something about it. Temptations - the inner struggle of choosing between higher and lower motives - are very much part of the process even being something we should expect and welcome.  Nature is full of examples of beauty and perfection coming through struggle; it is the same spiritually.  We may only just begin the process here, but in doing so we will engage in dynamic and expanding awareness and growth patterns to eternity. 

SPIRITUAL HEALTH

            Through loving what is good and true and applying in life our understanding of it for the eternal welfare of others (Karmic principle)  All health and disease have spiritual origins.  Bodily ill health often appears to result solely from external reasons but nothing in this material world exists which does not have a spiritual cause and connection.   The spiritual plane is the plane of causes, the physical one is the plane of effects.  Thus, all types of disease are caused by states of evil and falsity either coming from specific spiritual states within us or from the general causes of evil inflowing into the world.  Irrespective of our bodily condition, we are in a state of spiritual health when our mind or spirit is in the love of what is good and truth - those things which bring us lasting delight and thoughts we love to dwell on.  If we are caught up in fear, worry, hatred, greed, lust for power, revenge, and so on we are in spiritual ill health. Spiritual health automatically involves our own personal growth and a genuine concern for the welfare of others which, in turn, brings inner peace, humility and joy - spiritual riches beyond measure.

DIVINE MANIFESTATIONS

            The Divine reveals Itself through the imagery of sacred scriptures and in the functioning of created forms "God" has always provided communication with men and women both by divine revelation and through nature. Without direct revelation we cannot know of, or acknowledge, the existence of a Divine Creator. Sacred scriptures, especially the Word, give us this knowledge even if rather obscurely at times until we accept them in a psycho-spiritual framework concerned with our inner world - spiritual truths contained symbolically within natural images and stories. This relationship between the outer and inner worlds also applies to nature, being the result of the continuous divine creative process.  The functioning and usefulness of each individual part reflects the love and wisdom of the Divine so that through an understanding of how the material world operates we can gain insights into the nature of the Divine. 

            (3)Chance? Coincidence? Providence?  On the surface, life can appear to be a bewildering array of random events, leading us to believe that chance operates in the situations of our lives. Is there more to life than meets the eye? We can be brought up with a jolt when something major happens in our life or that of a relative or close friend.  Was it by chance that Aunt Mary was shopping in the High Street when a car ran out of control seriously injuring her and several others? Was it chance that held me up in a traffic snarl that I missed a 3.30pm flight which crashed on take off killing everyone on board? Equally, was it chance that each one of the passengers killed decided to catch that particular flight?  Difficult questions to answer. Yet we also know that life presents many strange, intriguing connections and striking coincidence where unconnected events, or people who are complete strangers to each other, show a connection or relationship which normally just should not happen.  It is something which takes place far more often than statistically it should; so much so that more and more people are taking them more seriously than purely chance events, and subjecting them to careful scientific study. What are we to make of these events?  Do we just dismiss their strangeness out of hand and say that it is all just random chance with nothing more to it?  Do they leave us wondering, with the thought that there are more things going on in life than we realise?  Or do they indicate the evidence of a universal mind, causing and directing a chain of events to take place for some purpose which cannot be really understood?  Whatever, it is undeniable that these things happen and that everyone has his or her own strange episodes to relate.  James Redfield's recent book The Celestine Prophecy has created considerable interest in the whole area of coincidence in life.  The first Insight deals with the need to become consciously aware of the “coincidences” in our lives in order to sense and then discover that there is some other process operating behind the scenes.  Yet, the concept that chance encounters having a deeper meaning is not new and many mystics and philosophers have addressed it.  The "buzz" word for it in more modern times is synchronicity, a term coined by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, to explain the many mysterious phenomena which the scientific laws of causality can only ignore - a link between physical and psychic states which have the same or similar origin.

            Causality is a valid law to describe the connection between a physical cause and a physical effect, but synchronicity describes the connection between a psychic and physical state or event.  This is no criticism of the principle of causality, it merely goes beyond its boundaries into the more subtle but no less real world of mental energies . . . . .  Whether we are prepared to recognise this is another matter!  It is very easy to pour cold water on synchronistic coincidences and to explain them away.  The commonest type of coincidence is the "it's a small world" where two people who know each other happen to meet in a remote situation, perhaps when away on a holiday, or two strangers discover they both know a third person.  A cynic could justifiably maintain that meetings between friends who share similar interests and lifestyle is highly probable and that if you put any two people together, the chances are that they will quickly find areas in common.  So what?  But a good number of this type contain a further ingredient which is not so easily explained. Many people have experienced a presentiment that they will shortly meet a certain person, or read a certain word, and it takes place.  A common variety of this is the instance of picking up the phone on sudden impulse and ringing, only to be met with the startled reception, "Goodness, I was just on the point of ringing you!"  Normally when these types of coincidence occur we just accept them for what they seem to be; interesting and odd instances to tell one's friends.  Many of them arguably are quite trivial. Perhaps though, we can nip them too quickly in the bud, for there are many recorded examples of so-called coincidence which led to people being given help, assistance, and solutions they badly needed.  We do not normally go looking for such events in our lives, and we could ask how many others we miss out on noticing?   Is it legitimate to seek something underlying these coincidental events, or is it simply reading into things something which in fact is not there? 

            The spiritual teachings of the 18th century scientist, philosopher and Christian mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, provide a very helpful basis for trying to cultivate the habit of seeing links in the way life unfolds and presents things to us.  This includes events such as those apparently chance happenings mentioned at the beginning of this leaflet as well as synchronistic events. Swedenborg makes it clear that what is often called fate, fortune or coincidence is actually under the influence of Divine Providence.  Most religious people recognise that God does exercise an overall care and guiding role over creation.  Yet Swedenborg goes very much further showing that the beneficent care of the Divine operates in absolutely every detail, even the most seemingly insignificant and trifling, of an individual's life.  The focus of this divine activity is primarily related to our eternal welfare, not our material comforts.  All the time we are being presented with opportunities geared to assisting our spiritual growth, although we are unaware of this happening.  Of course it is very difficult for us to know fully what is significant and what isn't. We can never be quite sure what is of importance for our spiritual welfare and what isn't.  But we should not assume that something isn't working on a spiritual level so it is useful to cultivate the habit of seeking links in the way life unfolds and presents things.  An approach to life in the belief that nothing happens merely by chance and that all events in our lives, while not necessarily arranged by God, are completely and securely under the infinite love and wisdom of the Divine Providence can only bring peace of mind.  We remain free to make our own interpretations of all the various events and happenings; and usually it is sometime afterwards that we can begin to make some sense of it all. 

            Life can be like continually looking at the reverse side of a tapestry - many loose ends, knots and unconnected threads.  We need to have glimpses of the beautiful picture on the proper side!

 "All things, indeed, the least of all things, down to the minutest are directed by the Divine Providence, even as to the very steps . . . . there is nothing such as chance, and apparent accident or fortune is providence in the ultimate of order."  ~ Swedenborg.

 “There are more things in heaven and earth than you and I ever dreamed of . . .”