In the last couple of sermons I've presented I have talked about the levels in ourselves that are represented by the first two kings of Israel, namely Saul and David. Today I'd like to add some comments regarding our potential represented by Solomon. I want to start by briefly describing the distinct levels in our minds that are represented by these kings of Israel.
Let me preface this by saying that in our minds we have what Emmanuel Swedenborg describes as discreet levels. What he means is that we have an exterior mind that we live in, and an interior mind, or a midlevel where we can have some understanding of spiritual things, and an inmost, where the Lord dwells within us, giving us life.
Generally speaking, we are normally aware only in the external level of our minds. However, it is possible to experience our more interior levels while we are still in the physical body, and current studies being made in the areas of psychology and paranormal experiences are demonstrating that some people do sometimes tap into their inner levels.
These occurrences can be deliberate, but sometimes are not deliberate, but occur in near death experiences or out-of-body experiences. Sometimes they occur as a movement of consciousness out of the physical body, including the brain.
As the Bible says in our reading from Matthew 6:24, we cannot serve two masters. In a very literal way it is true that we can only experience the interior level minimally, and not the inmost level of our being while functioning in our outermost level. Of course, this saying of Jesus has more subtle implications, also.
We cannot understand the Bible in its more interior meaning if we are focussed on the literal meaning. This applies to experiencing the inner levels of mind also. We cannot experience, except in a very limited way, the deeper levels of our mind, or being, if we are in the external level. Like the literal level of the Biblical text, the external blocks the internal like clouds block the sun.
It wasn’t always like that in the human mind. The first people in the Most Ancient church had one mind in which these levels were not separate as they are in our minds.
They could, indeed were created to, think primarily in their upper or spiritual levels and use their natural level of mind only to assist them in living in the natural world. But when they became too engrossed in the natural, to the near exclusion of the spiritual, and defiled themselves, the Lord changed humanity so that now our natural level of mind is separate from our spiritual levels. This makes it possible for us to raise our understanding in the natural level and decide to change our natural self to coincide with more spiritual understanding of what is good and true. This is the process of regeneration.
The first three kings of Israel represent these three levels within us. But let’s go first to Goliath, whom David is required to defeat.
Goliath is the champion of the Philistines, who represent the external world. Goliath is the giant who lives within us, our love for material things. This is the love that is represented in Genesis 3:23, Adam and Eve being forced out of the Garden of
Eden to till the ground, which means to foster heresy and schism. It grows in our experience of selfhood as we begin to mature. It is the love for this physical world and the pleasures it provides that distract us from attending to our spiritual growth. This is a distortion of the Divine Love that comes forth to create everything. When our love is primarily for the things of this world, it distorts the love that creates everything. It is a choice we make.
As you will recall, David kills Goliath by hitting him in the forehead with a little stone. The forehead, according to Swedenborg in Apocalypse Revealed # 347 signifies the good of love. The forehead is the highest part of the face and the face is the image of a person’s affections, what we desire and live for.
David kills Goliath with a little stone, or a little truth, stones representing truths and David representing the undeveloped spiritual level in us. This is why we cannot serve, or love, two masters. We cannot love the things of this world and spiritual good at the same time. The two don’t mix.
Of course, we need things of this world to survive and a responsible person takes care to obtain life’s necessities, but our goal, or purpose, and therefore our ruling love, should be to open that interior level in us and love the things of the spirit, which is our real being. Physical things are necessary for the physical body, but not for the true self, the self within us that survives our bodily death. So David kills Goliath, preparing David to be the dominant love, the love of spiritual or higher things than those Saul represents.
Note that Saul, our natural level of mind, does not fight Goliath and the Philistines. Their strength is too much for Saul and his army, but a simple shepherd, a youth, which represents a love of good and truth, is able to kill Goliath, that giant craving for material things that stands between us and spiritual growth. We cannot serve two masters. We have to choose.
This choosing is a choice to raise our consciousness to a higher level, to consciously choose what is good and true.
Consciousness is at the heart of everything. Consciousness, as I will explain further, is the true being within us. It makes us what we are. And not only us, but everything in God’s creation. That’s a pretty strong statement. Is consciousness really central to being? My understanding is that consciousness is central to our experience of being. This isn’t just my opinion. Emanuel Swedenborg said as much in his Writings. Modern researchers like psychologist Edward Kelly of the University of Virginia, are demonstrating this with their research into near death experiences. Let me explain.
We say that God is Divine Love. What does that mean? What is Love? Generally, we have a tough time defining what we mean by love. We say “I love you.” We might mean this romantically, or as a parent loves a child, or a friend loves a friend. The question is, what would they mean in saying “I love you.” They are expressing an emotion, but it is an emotion we find hard to define in words. If a child asks a parent “How will I know I’m in love with someone,” the parent is apt to reply rather helplessly,
“You’ll know when it happens.” Love is something we feel, but is difficult to explain. Perhaps that’s because love is not really a thing of this material world. Love is a heavenly thing. We say that God is love. The truth is, God is Love, Divine Love.
But real love is not just a feeling, it is actually a substance, but not a material substance, from which or of which everything else is created. If we go far enough into the structure of matter, it disappears. There’s nothing material there. Swedenborg tells us that Divine Love comes forth in the form of Divine Wisdom. Divine Wisdom is what is true or real, the basis of everything.
Swedenborg says that everything consists of love in the form of a substance that is substantial. In his diary entitled Spiritual Experiences, number 4293 he wrote, “Everything that exists in the other life is not, as some imagine, empty and void, but is the very substance itself that is the origin of all substantial things in nature. The substance there is living and is the very purest ethereal property, which is formed by the Lord into the most marvelous, scarcely describable, things”.
The only real living thing is God. Everything else is derived from or created by God from God’s self.
We consist of the Divine Wisdom that comes forth as the form of Divine Love. Divine Love is experienced by us as consciousness. It consists of Divine Love and Wisdom as we experience it. But like love, we find consciousness hard to define. What is consciousness?
We can feel it, experience it, even express it in our words, but we don’t really know what it is. We can experience the loss of it if we “lose consciousness”or simply fall asleep.
Dr. Ed Kelly, a psychologist at the University of Virginia studying consciousness and its manifestations, maintains that consciousness is what everything created is, everything in the physical universe consists of consciousness. This is exactly what Swedenborg meant when he wrote in his diary, quoted a moment ago, that everything is Divine Love coming forth as Divine Wisdom.
Without Divine Wisdom there would be no consciousness. They are essentially one and the same. The science of consciousness today is finally catching up with Swedenborg’s eighteenth century revelations. Without consciousness the physical realm simply wouldn’t exist.
Divine love comes forth as Divine Wisdom, and Divine Wisdom is what we call consciousness. It creates everything and brings to us life. The current study of near death experiences and other experiences of consciousness outside the body is showing us that consciousness exists separate from the physical bodies and their brains. What separates us humans from other creation is the higher internal and inmost levels of our human minds. God said “Let there be light.” Light means divine truth or wisdom.
Light is awareness, consciousness, the first of creation. According to Emanuel Swedenborg in Apocalypse Revealed 914 “this light which illuminates the mind, flows from no other source but out of Heaven from the Lord; and whereas they who are to be of the New Jerusalem will directly approach the Lord, that light will flow in, in the way of order, which is through the love of the will into the perception of the understanding.”
Modern science is pursuing this line of thought. It is constantly amazing to me how much of modern science Emanuel Swedenborg anticipated 250 years ago, but then, his research was guided directly by God, the source of Divine Wisdom, consciousness and our very existence.
We have many levels in our minds. Only the lowest is apparent to us normally. We live in that lowest level of consciousness. If we choose to regenerate and begin to practice what the Lord has taught us, we move from King Saul, to King David, and perhaps begin to think a little from our potential Solomon, with true wisdom. This prepares us for an eternal heavenly life, in the heavenly community of our own choosing. Ask yourself, am I stuck in my Saul phase?
Do I have enough of the spiritual in my choices to be like David? Am I striving to find the wisdom of Solomon and prepare to live eternally in the relationship with God called heaven?
Solomon means peace. We can only find true peace in our earthly lives by striving to become our potential Solomon.
These are very real choices we need to make. Modern science is showing how true the Word of God is. Earth is a challenging place to exist, but if we raise our consciousness to a level that confronts our earthly desires for what they are and seeks to follow the Lord, we can enter into the state called heaven when we leave this earth. In truth, we can even do so to a somewhat greater extent while still here on earth.
This desire should be our ruling love, above all else. It is the only choice that makes any sense, and discovering and making sense of reality is the ultimate purpose of our consciousness.
READINGS:
Old Testament Reading: Genesis 3:23
Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.
New Testament Reading: Matthew 6:24
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Reading from Swedenborg's writings: Spiritual Diary 4293
Everything that exists in the other life is not, as some imagine, empty and void, but is the very substance itself that is the origin of all substantial things in nature. The substance there is living and is the very purest ethereal property, which is formed by the Lord into the most marvelous, scarcely describable things.
