In Arcana Coelestia 5145:2 Emanuel Swedenborg wrote "A person's interiors are distinguished into degrees, and in each degree the interiors are terminated." What does this mean?
Swedenborg tells us that he discovered that within our minds there are four degrees or levels of consciousness that we can be in. But we can't be in more than one of them at once. That is because they are terminated or brought to a close at their lowest level so that they are distinct from the level below or above them. That means that in our normal state of consciousness that we experience when we are not sleeping, we can at best only be vaguely aware of what is going on in the levels of our minds above our normal waking state.
As we can see from our reading for today, we can reason in our lowest level of consciousness, our everyday mind. We can all take two numbers and add them together. We can also decide on the best way to reach a destination and use a map to get there. We can also get the wrong answer to a more difficult math problem if we reason incorrectly. We can get other things wrong, too. A lot of times we believe what we want to believe, not what is actually true, and reason, or rationalize, to justify our conclusion. So to be truly rational in the way Swedenborg uses the term, we must be able to reason within the bounds of true reality. But much of reality exists outside our ordinary level of awareness.
The easiest way for us to experience the separate levels of consciousness within our minds is to learn to meditate and actually practice it. People who become good at meditation experience that the more inner levels of consciousness can be opened. But we can't force this to happen. In fact, trying to force it is the best way to prevent the opening of our inner level. By our own volition or power we can't, as Swedenborg assures us, do anything good.
In meditation we must permit our inner levels of mind to open by withdrawing from our normal, what we call waking state of consciousness. What actually happens is that if we sincerely desire it, the Lord briefly opens our interior levels. But we must first begin to practice looking inside ourselves and the easiest way to begin is to deliberately practice meditation with the sincere desire be changed to live and act by God's will for us, or be reformed and regenerated.
Swedenborg describes the levels and discusses them everywhere in his Writings. He stresses that we are focused on the external world. This is what caused the downfall of the Most Ancient People and what we call the Fall and the Flood.
Originally, people were created to be in contact with the spiritual world and were focused mainly on that world within themselves. Their ordinary waking state, unlike ours, was the highest level of mind and it was opened to them. It was in that highest level that they lived and they were in direct communication with spirits and angels, just as Swedenborg was when the Lord opened his inner levels.
According to Swedenborg, who reports talking with the Most Ancient People in their heaven in the spiritual world, tells us that they spoke in the universal language of angels which consisted more of facial expressions than of words. In that language ideas can be explained in a moment that would take an entire book to explain in our verbal languages.
But gradually, spoken language developed and later generations of those most ancient people became more and more engrossed with life in the material realm rather than the spiritual, and as a result selfishness and evil intentions became their primary motivation. In other words, they became like us, seeing primarily the physical world, eventually with only material interests and appetites. Like us, their wills were focused primarily on material things.
Because they had only one level of mind, there was no way the Lord could teach them and turn them back to the way he created them. Because the earliest human beings could not be reformed and regenerated the way the Lord created the minds of the Most Ancient People, he changed the human mind to have separate, distinct levels. In this way we can learn what is true and hopefully adopt what we learn and then the Lord can reform our will.
When we are born we have only a rudimentary mind housed in an undeveloped brain. As we grow up, our brains develop and more exterior levels of our minds develop. This comes about as a result of our experience of the material world. It is similar in one lifetime to what the human species experienced when the Lord changed the way the human mind is constructed. The stages of this development are described as they are portrayed in the Bible from beginning to end in George Dole's wonderful little book entitled "A Book About Us." Everyone who cares about eternal life should read that little book. A Book About Us.
As we grow and mature our minds develop new levels. These levels are named by Swedenborg as the interior rational, the exterior rational, the interior natural, and the exterior natural levels of mind. Above all of these is the celestial level of our minds where the Lord dwells in us, but this is unavailable to us consciously.
In order to be regenerated, we have to change. We cannot remain the person we have developed into and also be different. We have to change in some very basic ways. The changes need to be made gradually or we would lose our sense of self. Actually, our sense of self is only an appearance. Our life is the Lord's life in us, not life of our own. But that's another sermon.
What we have to do is gradually learn to think in a new way. That is, we have to begin to live more in our internal levels of mind. They need to be opened by the Lord. The Lord will open them if we truly want him to and if our sincerity leads us to work to change ourselves into more spiritual beings. As Swedenborg points out, very few people reach the highest level of development during this earthly life. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try at least to begin to be regenerated so that the Lord can continue the process in the World of Spirits.
This requires more than church attendance. It requires more than casual reading of the Bible or Swedenborg's Writings. These things of themselves are on the same level as going to school as children and learning our math facts, etc. Reformation and regeneration require learning to pray differently, more interiorly. It requires living more intentionally, with a far greater awareness of what our motives are, how we are affecting others. We must become willing to set aside our selfish desires and seek to make our purpose in life service to others and the Lord. We need to pay attention to what the Lord teaches in the Gospel and realize that yes, his teachings do apply to us personally.
This may sound simple, but it is very hard to do. That's because we forget what our goal is. We easily and unconsciously slip back into our old habits.
That is because of our habit of thinking only externally, in concert with the world around us, based on our sensory input. The psychologist Charles Tart wrote a book called Waking Up. In it he describes what he calls the 'consensus trance'. What he means by this is the state of mind we are all habitually in. It is the state of mind we develop as little children as our brains develop that closes our sight into our interior levels of mind and fixes us on the external world to the degree that almost all the time we are unaware of our self except in the most surface way. Tart says we are all focused outward. We can't examine ourselves because we don't pay attention to ourselves. Instead we react to the external world and what we experience in our exterior natural level of mind.
This is our habitual way of doing what we call thinking. Jesus told Nicodemus he must be born again. He didn't mean physical birth. Once is enough. What Jesus meant is that the inner levels of our minds must be opened. Our Spirit must be born, or awakened. We must become aware in the higher levels of our minds which are closed in us as we are. If the upper levels of our minds are closed, if we are in the trance state of our so-called normal state of mind, we are closed to the Lord acting within us.
If we can catch ourselves being selfish or thoughtless toward someone else, if we can stop ourselves from spreading some gossip we have heard about someone we don't love much, if we can begin to resist all the temptations we are constantly giving in to and stop rationalizing to excuse ourselves, then we can begin the process of changing the way we think and then changing the way we act.
The Lord said no one is good but God. As we are we can do nothing good. Only the Lord can. But we can begin the process that allows God to change us. We can look inside. We can sincerely try to change. If we start while we are still in this world, the Lord will help us and we will eventually arrive at our place in heaven that he has prepared for us. But we have to begin. We have to sincerely try to change. We have to try harder to remember to look inside and pay attention to what and how we really are. That is the beginning of regeneration, that is the beginning of being born anew of the Spirit.
READINGS
New Testament Reading: Matthew 12: 31-37
And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Reading from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven #9013.7-8
In the other life an evil person is allowed to speak evil and also falsity; but not good and truth, because there all are compelled to speak from the heart, and are not allowed to be of a divided mind. They who do otherwise are separated from the rest, and are hidden in hells from which they cannot possibly go forth. That such are they who are meant by “those who say a word against the Holy Spirit” is evident from the above words of the Lord, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; how can ye, being evil, speak what is good?” The “Holy Spirit” denotes the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, thus the Holy Divine Itself, which is thereby interiorly blasphemed and profaned.
That it will not be forgiven them is because hypocrisy or deceit in connection with Holy Divine things infects the interiors of man, and destroys everything of spiritual life in him, as was said above, insomuch that at last there is nothing sound in any part of him. For the forgiveness of sins is the separation of evil from good, and the rejection of evil to the sides (n. 8393), which cannot be done with him in whom all good has been destroyed. Therefore it is said “It shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in that which is to come.” Of this character also are those who are meant by “him that had not on a wedding garment,” who was bound hand and foot and cast out into outer darkness (Matt. 22:11–13, see n. 2132).
