The Other Life/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
OUR SPIRITUAL BODIES.
DEATH is the renunciation of the natural body; nothing more. The soul then lives consciously in a spiritual world and in a spiritual body.
"There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body," says Paul.
Natural and spiritual! We think of one as being something solid and real; of the other as something ethereal, intangible, almost incomprehensible. This arises from the darkness of our natural state, and the feebleness of our spiritual perceptions. The spiritual has every form, quality, and property which we attribute to the natural. When death liberates us from our prison-house, our conceptions will be exactly reversed; that world will be substantial and this a shadow; that life will be the waking state and this the dream.
God has created two substances; so different that they do not connect by continuity—that is, they do not pass or run one into the other. One is within the other, like a circle within a circle, but they have no tangential points. They are wholly distinct or discrete. One is physical substance, the other is spiritual substance. They can never be transmuted into each other.
Spiritual substances are really alive, and are the only causative, sensitive, organizing forces in the universe. Physical substance, or matter as we call it, is of itself always inert or dead, being merely a plastic material moulded into definite forms by inflowing spiritual substances. Thus the natural world is caused by and represents or corresponds to the spiritual world. So the natural body is caused by and represents or corresponds to the spiritual body in which the soul is manifested.
We therefore reverse the creed of the materialist, who says that affections and thoughts are the result of physical organization, the invisible secretions of the brain. On the contrary, the brain with its subtile and wonderful forms is simply the result of affections and thoughts—the condensation of material particles around a more living brain, which pulsates in spiritual atmospheres, and which is the true "dome of thought and palace of the soul."
This spiritual body is not the soul, but an organic human form composed of indestructible spiritual substances in which the soul or vital spiritual principle lives and is finited, differentiated from God and from all other souls.
Death therefore does not solve the riddles of metaphysics. Spirits and angels discuss the nature and qualities of the soul just as our philosophers do on earth. The soul in its essence is incomprehensible. It is known only by its manifestations. The rational soul is only manifested under the human form. We can never see or understand God outside of that visible human form—the Lord Jesus Christ. We can never comprehend the spiritual principle or soul outside of some thinking, living form in which it resides.
We need not wonder at this. Thought and perception occurring in our finite organs, have necessarily their limitations, their impossibilities. God and the soul will for ever be mysteries. They are only revealed to us through created forms. We know nothing of heat and light but through objects which are heated or luminous. We know nothing of goodness, truth or beauty, but what we learn through those forms or objects which we designate as good, true or beautiful.
Therefore the spiritual world is organic, composed of parts, objects or substances, arranged into series, degrees and systems. It is a genuine world, a universe of itself, a cosmos, far more extensive, perfect and beautiful than this. It is perceived or recognized by the same senses which we here enjoy, only far more delightfully and thoroughly. The other life has not only its metaphysics and its theology, but its physics, its chemistry, its botany, its anatomy, its architecture, its art, its government, everything, indeed, which can be made a subject of intelligent study or of ennobling affection.
Those who expect to escape the life of the senses at death, and to rise disembodied into an ether of pure thought, are greatly astonished when they are raised from the natural body and find the other life a continuation of this.
How melancholy is it to converse with a professed Christian who has formed no definite idea of the bodily shape he is to wear in the better life! Who thinks of his deceased friends as disembodied spirits! formless and unsubstantial shadows! incessantly engaged in praising God and contemplating his divine perfections! And these dark, cold, cheerless abstractions, in the face of the living, beautiful, substantial revelations of the Scripture, even in the letter!
Ask this unthinking Christian who is startled by the assertion that the soul cannot be divested by death of the human form—ask him if Christ did not ascend to heaven with the human body which he exhibited to the doubting apostle? if Enoch and Elijah, did not pass bodily into the spiritual world? if all the spirits and angels seen of the prophets and apostles did not appear in the human shape? if his own idea of the final heaven of the saints is not based upon the resurrection and purification of his own gross natural body?
He will be obliged from his own standpoint (which is not ours) to answer these questions affirmatively; but he will not abide the logical issue. With strange inconsistency he charges us with entertaining a sensuous idea of heaven, when we affirm, from the biblical standpoint, that the soul has a bodily human form and enjoys all the senses and faculties which we here possess.
Swedenborg alone has taught us the deep philosophical and moral significance of the Human Form. It is the only form capable of expressing the spiritual life by freedom of will, rationality of thought and the subordination of the sensuous to a higher sphere. It is the form of forms, the central, pivotal, archetypal form to which all other forms in the universe refer themselves. All the forces, powers, substances of the natural and the spiritual worlds conspire to produce and to perpetuate the human form. And the cause of this stupendous fact is, that they are all animated from moment to moment by the creative breath of God, who is himself a Divine Man.
The Human Form is, therefore, the universal form. God is a Man; heaven is a Man; the universe is a Man; society is a Man; the church is a Man; government is a Man. Men, spirits, and angels are units in these composites; microcosms in these macrocosms, as every atom of a crystal is an infinitesimal repetition of the crystal itself. There is nothing outside of this human form. All inferior forms, animal, vegetable, mineral, are fragments, portions, repetitions, prophecies of the grand type. Everything in nature points, like the old signs of the zodiac, to some part of the human body.
Every living form, vegetable or animal, advances by stages of growth and development to a certain typical adult standard, in which it fully manifests its life and fulfills its uses. Growth and development are different. By development a simple substance assumes a more complex form. The contents of the egg develop into the chick. Food is developed into blood. Blood is developed into nervous fluid. By growth an organ or tissue, whatever its rank in the scale of development, enlarges in size, density or capacity. When development and growth are perfected, the form is said to be adult. The inflowing life from God which arranges, adjusts and organizes atoms as well as worlds, bears everything steadily onward to its specific adult type.
It is for this reason that infants and children who are transplanted from earth to paradise, grow to be men and women in the spiritual world. The natural causes which produce the development and growth of the natural body correspond to the spiritual causes which produce the development and growth of the spiritual body. It is as impossible for infants to remain infants for ever in heaven, as it is for them to continue infants indefinitely on earth.
But how does the spiritual body grow?
The natural body lives by bread; but the spiritual body, by the words that proceed out of the mouth of God. We cannot live by bread alone or by natural food. We require spiritual food for the organic spiritual side of our life. Spiritual food is affection and thought; or in more comprehensive terms, good and truth. The spiritual body grows by the reception of affections and thoughts, by the appropriation and assimilation of spiritual good and truth just as the natural body grows by the digestion and assimilation of natural food.
To feed a child in heaven is to instruct it in spiritual things, and to inspire it with a heavenly affection for the truth communicated. Infants appear as infants when they first enter the spiritual world, because they cannot feel, think, love and act as adults. But their destiny is human, not infantile. Their organs receptive of divine life must grow and develop. By successive appropriations of spiritual goods and truths, they attain to the form and uses of adult life; and their spiritual bodies grow proportionately until they reach the typical standard.
The adult natural body is kept in life and action by a continual circle of waste and supply, a continual casting off and a continual renewal of its elements. So it is with the spiritual body. It is wrought by means of spiritual goods and truths. It must render back all it receives. Woe to it, if in the spirit of selfishness it would keep anything to itself. It must exhale, radiate, distribute, impart to others all the good and truth it has acquired. It receives only on the condition of giving. Its life is held on a tenure of perpetual uses, of ceaseless, spiritual activities. The delight attending the execution of these spiritual functions is the blessedness of heaven.
The spiritual bodies in which we find ourselves after death are male or female. Man is man and woman is woman, morally, intellectually and organically for ever. One cannot live the life or fulfill the functions or be transmuted into the form of the other. The anatomical differences flow from the spiritual differences; and both are essential, organic and eternal. Sex is mental. The sexes were made for each other, not only in time but for eternity. It is only in heaven that we learn the true nature of love. It is only in heaven that marriage is spiritual, celestial, perpetual, divine.
There is no reproduction and birth in the spiritual world. No spiritual bodies are born there; they are created simultaneously with their natural bodies, here grow and develop in them and are extricated from them at death by the process called resurrection. But heaven is full of angels with spiritual bodies like ours. Where did they come from? If they were not born there, did God speak them all instantaneously into being out of utter nothingness? No! for God works always by organic and uniform laws; from centres to circumferences, from atoms to masses, from chaos to order, by definite steps, series and degrees.
Angels were not created before men, as is commonly supposed. The story of the fall of angels from heaven is purely symbolical. All angels have been men or women on some earth of our material universe. There is no form higher or purer or holier than the human form; no destiny loftier than the human destiny. The final end of creation is a heaven of angels. If that could have been attained in the beginning by a spiritual creation alone, what were the use of a physical life with all its imperfections?—of a race of men with all their sufferings?
The inference from this is, that the physical universe is the necessary, first-created and utterly indestructible basis of the spiritual; an inference pregnant with philosophical and theological truth.
The old dispensation teaches that the natural body, after having been resolved into its original gaseous elements, will be suddenly re-composed and then changed in the twinkling of an eye into a spiritual body. A natural thing transformed into a spiritual thing! This dogma, so revolting to reason, science, common sense and a true conception of divine laws, is blindly accepted in the Christian Church, because it seems to be taught in the letter of the Bible.
More rationally and philosophically, Swedenborg, from actual observation, affirms that the natural and spiritual bodies co-exist from birth; that death occurs when their union is sundered; that the resurrection from the dead is the extrication of the spiritual body from the natural, which occurs just after death. Death, the resurrection, the judgment, the end of the world, the second coming of the Lord, all receive far more rational interpretations in the new than were given them in the old theology. Swedenborg's is indeed the apotheosis of truth, elevating it from sensuous interpretations to spiritual life—to divinity.
The soul, therefore, which can never exist or be manifested for a moment without a spiritual body, has on earth an additional and temporary covering, through which it is brought for a while into sensible communication with the objects of the natural world. It renounces this external garment at death, never to resume it, for all the conditions of its being and of its happiness are amply provided in a spiritual world.
We are, therefore, living all the time in our spiritual bodies. Every thought, emotion and sensation is a condition or state of that spiritual body although we now refer them to the natural. It is through our spiritual bodies that we are brought into contact with spirits, with heavenly or infernal powers. Our affections and thoughts communicate, although we are not conscious of it, with the spheres of affection and thought which exist in the spiritual world. Our spiritual body is already an unconscious, invisible member of some society in heaven or hell. It is indeed continually moving or changing its place in the spiritual world, according to our interior changes of thought and affection, of conduct and life. Our spiritual senses are ordinarily closed during our earthly sojourn, and we are unconscious of this interior or double life. At death our natural senses are closed or perish, and we enter consciously into the senses of the spiritual body and upon the purely spiritual life; or rather the spiritual senses (previously closed) are then opened.
It is because our natural and spiritual bodies exist one within the other, that our spiritual senses may be opened into the spiritual world, and we may see, hear and converse with spirits and angels while still living on the earth. This fact not only renders the state of Swedenborg clear to the mind, but it explains some of the most mysterious as well as most beautiful portions of the Scripture. The appearance of angels to men, the visions of the prophets, the wonders of the Apocalypse, the transfiguration of Christ and many other mysteries, are brought within the range of intelligent comprehension, and faith illumined by reason is no longer blind. The objections of the skeptic are removed and the doubts of the Christian are dissipated.
No spiritual being ever did or can assume a material form and appear to men. Even God could not assume a physical form except by the organic processes of conception, birth and growth. On the other hand no man ever did or can penetrate with the material senses into a spiritual sphere. Spiritual objects can only be seen by the spiritual eye. Spiritual sounds can only be heard by the spiritual ear. The coexistence of two kinds of senses, one of which is ordinarily closed but which may be opened at the divine pleasure, is the only rational ground upon which a communication between heaven and earth can be explained. Ignorance of the coexistence of the natural and spiritual bodies with their separate spheres of perception, is the main cause of the prevailing darkness and skepticism about spiritual things.
During our earth-life we seem to ourselves to see, hear and feel only from physical causes. We look downward and outward entirely. We know nothing consciously of our interior, spiritual life. Nature stands before us, as a vast, crushing, inexorable reality; heaven floats afar off as a shadow or a dream. The spiritual is unheard, unseen, uncomprehended: present to us only in the pictures of hope, the whisperings of faith, and the intuitions of love!
At death the windows of our natural house are all shut; the rooms are ail empty. The tenement is deserted, silent, dark, useless; abandoned to the ravages of time and the elements. The windows of our spiritual house then open out upon the beauties and glories of the spiritual world. The rooms are radiant with eternal light; the halls are echoing with celestial music; the portals are overarched with immortal flowers. We are thenceforth dead to nature; and our friends, poor prisoners in time and space, see us no more.
How wonderful! how beautiful it is! that both kinds of senses, the spiritual and the natural, can be kept simultaneously open, and that a man can look out from his double eyes into both worlds; hear from his double ears the music of each, and converse one moment with angels and the next with men!
Such was the state of Swedenborg.
Such was the state of the prophets and apostles and of all men who have communicated audibly and visibly with the spiritual world. The possibility of such a state is latent in every human soul. The probability of its repetition depends upon the needs of the Church and the spiritual development of the race.
The spiritual body which lives in the natural body may or may not be a perfect image and likeness of its material covering. Sometimes it is very dissimilar, so that the face of the external man is unlike the face of his indwelling spirit. The reason of this is, that our natural bodies are derived from our parents and bear the imprint of many hereditary forces. They belong to the fixed things of nature and are only changeable within certain limits. But our spiritual bodies are moulded by our own appropriation of the goodness and truth which Divine Providence furnishes for our spiritual sustenance. As we subdue our hereditary evils and advance in regeneration, our spiritual forms become more and more beautiful.
Thus a poor creature, crooked and bleared and blighted in body, but loving God and the neighbor sincerely, may possess a spiritual form of exquisite proportions and beauty. On the other hand the most enchanting face and figure in the world may conceal a spiritual body of hideous ugliness—an ugliness occasioned by pride, falsehood, avarice or the supreme love of self.
The spiritual body has, however, a considerable influence in moulding the natural body to its own likeness. If our natural life were indefinitely prolonged, it would probably effect this in all cases. The features of old people reveal their spiritual history. What sweetness and serenity in some faces! what pinched, selfish, anxious, scowling expressions in others! If sin had committed no ravages in the soul, old people would be as beautiful as infants.
How often also are the homeliest features ennobled and beautified by the sweetness and purity of a great and gentle spirit! How often are the fairest lineaments sensualized and darkened by wicked lusts and false persuasions, as the knightly face of Sir Launcelot was marked and marred by "the great and guilty love he bore the queen!"
After death, during the processes of exploration and judgment by which the good and evil elements in our characters are for ever separated, the spiritual body undergoes remarkable changes. In our final spiritual state two faces are impossible. When we die, we drop the natural face which sometimes is a mask concealing the spiritual face from the view of others. Freed from the imperfections of the natural life, and from the limitations of time and space, the soul develops rapidly. The external nature is dropped or becomes quiescent, and the interior good or evil comes to the surface, and stamps itself ineffaceably on the open countenance. Swedenborg says that some persons he had known in their earth-life changed after death beyond the possibility of recognition. These changes were outgrowths of their genuine spiritual characters.
The beauty of the spiritual bodies of those who are principled in mutual love which is the life of heaven, is altogether indescribable. Swedenborg says he saw celestial angels of such ineffable beauty, that the greatest painter on earth could not portray the thousandth part of it. And this beauty goes on increasing perpetually with the additions to their goodness and truth, which are the secret springs of all spiritual beauty.
If the good become so beautiful and the evil so deformed and hideous, how shall we know our friends and acquaintances who have long ago entered the spiritual world? The states of the soul, however long past and forgotten, are treasured up in the interior or spiritual memory. When these states are recalled, the spiritual body may resume the exact appearance, even with all the surroundings, which existed when those states were experienced on earth. Suppose a husband newly deceased wishes to identify a long-lost wife who has become an angel. When the memory of the wedding-night is awakened in the woman's mind, and the states of affection then existing are recalled into activity, the bride of his early love stands before him in the very bridal-robes she wore and with the same face and features to the minutest particulars. So any and every state of a spirit's life may be recalled, revived and pictorially re-enacted. These are "the Books" which will be opened at our judgment.
These changes, representative of interior states, are the only metamorphoses that our spiritual bodies undergo. The idea that spirits can assume any form they please, that they can appear in any other than the human form, that they can descend into the physical world in a material body, is a vulgar superstition. The spiritual body is to the spiritual world what the natural body is to the natural world. It is a real, definite, indestructible form, composed of spiritual substances which can never by any process get into the natural world and make itself objective to the natural senses.
That spirits sometimes appear at a distance in the spiritual world as lambs or wolves or serpents, depends upon the laws of correspondence and the operation of spheres, which are explained by the constitution of the spiritual world itself. Spirits are not metamorphosed into those creatures, for they appear constantly to themselves in the human form. But those creatures are presented to view as symbolically revealing the spiritual character of the persons they represent. When it is said that the evil one appeared in the form of a serpent or a dragon, it is meant that those monsters picture forth to the eye the corrupt sensual principle which is the animating power of hell. When it said that the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove, the dove simply represents the innocence and purity of the divine nature.
Why does not the spiritual body also die, being composed of organs and tissues so similar to those of the natural body? Because the spiritual body is the ultimate and basis of the soul, and the soul is immortal. Our natural bodies are of temporal use, because birth, growth, and discipline in the lowest sphere are necessary to the soul in its first evolutions. In due time the soul must expand and achieve the higher possibilities of its nature. It therefore rises from its worn-out and useless natural form, as the butterfly rises from the body of the grub-worm. Does the butterfly ever return into the body of the worm? There are no backward steps in nature or in the soul.
The spirits and angels who conversed with Swedenborg were touched with a certain sorrowful indignation, that men upon earth, and especially Christians believing the Word of God, entertained such vague and absurd ideas about the nature of the soul and the life after death, amounting to no idea at all, and closing the mind by sensuous fallacies against the light of truth. They rejoiced that Swedenborg had been intromitted into the spiritual sphere, so that he could teach mankind from actual observation, that a spirit is only a more perfect and beautiful man, living in an immortal human form and enjoying all the senses which we here attribute to the human body.