The Other Life/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
OUR SPIRITUAL SENSES.
HE who supposes that there are spiritual essences abstracted from organic forms, is startled by the use of such terms as bodies, senses, sensations, sight, hearing, speech, etc., in relation to the other life.
How can there be any conscious life, natural or spiritual, without sensation? Sensation, and perception which is only a more interior sensation, are the states of the spirit itself in the act of recognizing the existence and qualities of things.
All life flows in from above. Its forms are studied by observation and reflection, but they must be first perceived by sensation. Therefore in the spiritual world, nearer, to the divine source of all things, we have life in greater fullness and sensation in greater perfection.
Sensation is effected by contact or a very near approach to it. All sensation is touch. It is touch which brings us into relation with a universe outside of ourselves. We touch the physical objects about us with delicate nerve-cells sheathed in soft and pliant tissues. We touch the flowers through an aromal atmosphere which circulates around them as our own great atmosphere envelops our globe. Through the medium of an undulating air, breaking in delicate waves upon our auditory nerves, we touch the mighty organ as it breathes in music and the distant clouds as they smite in thunder. Through the infinitesimal vibrations of a luminous ether, we touch the mountain-tops and the stars and the sun.
Through similar and corresponding atmospheres and media, composed of spiritual substances, our spiritual senses come into contact with the spiritual world. We touch or communicate with each other in our thoughts and affections, with spiritual objects around us, with heavenly societies near or remote, and with God himself. Wonderful and beautiful is the parallelism or correspondence between the natural and the spiritual worlds in all their forms, forces and phenomena!
In the spiritual world as in the natural, there are three discrete degrees of attenuated substances, which receive and present or make objective the influxes of divine love and wisdom into created forms. The aura is the medium of heat, the ether the medium of light, and the atmosphere the medium of motion and sound.
The aura of the spiritual world contains the divine love in its bosom which is manifested as spiritual heat. The ether of the spiritual world is a sacred garment of light manifesting the divine wisdom so far as it can be manifested to the spiritual eye. These forces radiate from the Sun of the spiritual world, which appears before the face of spirits and angels similar to our sun but far brighter; and that sun is the first and central proceeding, outbirth and objective embodiment of the Divine Life. The atmosphere of the spiritual world is a vast aerial ocean like ours, bearing in its bosom the higher and more subtile spiritual forces. It receives, absorbs and reflects the divine heat and light, and tempers them to the state of the spirits and angels who live and move in it.
The organic forms of both worlds are similar and exist in different series and degrees. There are solids and liquids and gases and aromas, and probably modifications of spiritual substance still more subtile and mysterious. To bring us into contact with all these things—this cosmos which reveals to us the glory of God, different senses are required and different organs, through which the varying sensations may be manifested. Hence the eye, the ear, the nose, the mouth and the skin, with all their beautiful organic forms—forms as necessary in the spiritual as in the natural world.
The spiritual body has, therefore, its spiritual senses; its sight and hearing, its smell, its taste, its touch.
It is very difficult for persons trained in the old theology to believe they are dead, after they have passed permanently out of the natural into the spiritual world. They find themselves men as before, in form and structure, in functions, passions and opinions. They are surrounded by a visible universe built up of forms similar to those with which they are already familiar. Towns and cities tower upon the hill-tops or gleam by the sea; the road meanders in the meadow; the river ripples in the valley: the birds sing in the air; the flocks browse in the field; the mountains lift their azure pyramids to the sky; and a great sun shines serenely over all.
The new-comer from the earth, expecting to find himself a "disembodied spirit," gazes around in mute astonishment. He questions himself, into what other strange and beautiful physical world, and by what miracle he has been transported. Then some dearly-loved one approaches, some friend long lost, long folded from his vision in the light of heaven, and proceeds to instruct him about the differences between the spiritual and the natural world, which underlie the apparent resemblance, and thus to lift the veil of darkness from his spiritual sight.
What good spirits and angels do for men newly deceased, Swedenborg by divine permission has done for the Church and the world. To those at least who accept from his illuminated pages the philosophy of heaven, the Word of God is no longer a sealed book. Death is no longer a leap in the dark, nor the resurrection afar off, nor the spiritual world a dream!
The differences between the spiritual and the natural world flow from the difference which exists between the suns, which are their respective centres, and which, each in its own sphere, creates, illumines and animates all around it.
The natural sun is supposed to contain matter in a state of constant and intense ignition; whence there are emanations of heat and light. The sun of the spiritual world is life itself, the first proceeding from the Divine Essence; and its emanations are love and wisdom. The natural world was not called into being by the breath of God and set afloat with independent forces and qualities, utterly divorced from the spiritual spheres. On the contrary it is created from moment to moment by the inflowing life of the spiritual world. The spiritual sun flows into the natural sun by correspondence, and animates it as the soul animates the body. The love of the spiritual sphere becomes the heat of the natural; the wisdom of the spiritual becomes the light of the natural; the organic forms of the spiritual become the organizing, life-giving forces of the natural.
Our natural philosophers and astronomers seriously calculate how long the light and heat of the natural world will last! They estimate the time in which they will be exhausted by radiation from the solar surface. They predict a far-off period when the sun will grow cold and dark, and the planetary system perish in the frozen abysses of an eternal night. Blind leaders of the blind!
The natural sun exists and is fed by the perpetual influx of the spiritual sun into its inmost recesses. Its heat and light will endure so long as the love and wisdom of God, flowing through a spiritual sun, continue to create and sustain the universe. The earth is established that it can never be moved. The physical universe is the coexisting and indestructible basis of the spiritual. It is the footstool of the Lord.
This view of the connection between spirit and matter by influx and correspondence, starting from two co-existing solar centres, and thence pervading every form and atom of both the natural and spiritual worlds, is alike remarkable for its grandeur and its simplicity, the two essentials of a universal truth. It is the pivotal point around which will revolve a new and perfect philosophy, that shall make more music in the human mind than the fabled music of the spheres.
Heat and light are primary forces from which all others are derived. Every substance has form and properties determined by its relations to heat and light. So every spiritual form or idea has relation to love and wisdom, or what is synonymous, to goodness and truth, which are the heat and light of the spiritual world. This duality of relation is universal. Every thought in the Word of God has a specific relation to goodness and truth, or to the will and understanding, which is sometimes beautifully unfolded by Swedenborg.
In this world we only perceive heat as heat, light as light. We have an intuitive perception that spiritual heat has some relation to love, and that spiritual light is in some way analogous to wisdom. But we have not grasped the idea which Swedenborg offers us, that love and wisdom are spiritual substances and powers acting upon the soul as heat and light act upon the body. In the other life we shall have the same sensation of heat and light which we have here; but in addition and by means of interior faculties, now shut but which will then be open, we will perceive the simultaneous inflowing of love into the will and of thought into the understanding.
How can it be made comprehensible to the natural mind that the light of the spiritual world is actually wisdom, intelligence, thought?
Swedenborg says:
"That the light of heaven has in it intelligence and wisdom, and that it is the intelligence of truth and the wisdom of good from the Lord, which appears as light before the eyes of the angels, has been given me to know by living experience. I have been elevated into that light, which glittered like the light radiating from diamonds, and whilst I was kept in it, I seemed to myself to be withdrawn from corporeal ideas and to be led into spiritual ideas."
Again he says:
"The more intelligent the angels are, in so much the greater and brighter light are they. The differences of light in heaven are as many as are the angelic societies which constitute heaven—yea, as many as are the angels in each society."
In the natural world all men enjoy the same light and see the same objects—because the emanations from our sun are material. In the spiritual world that sameness of vision is impossible, because spirits differ in the reception of the divine love and wisdom which alone in that sphere produce the phenomena of heat and light. Every spirit feels and sees by the heat and light which he has appropriated from the spiritual sun. The light about him comes from within him, and the objects he sees reveal or express to him the divine love and wisdom, as they appear from his own special standpoint and through himself as the medium. This is the secret of the great fact, that every spirit creates his own heaven or hell, his own house, his own external scenery, his own social life.
If your spirit could be conducted through many spiritual and celestial spheres one after another, you would discover that in each sphere, a different influx of ideas and perceptions took place in your mind. You would be intromited into states of intelligence and wisdom ineffable. All the learning of all the men in our world would be a trifle to it. It would not be wisdom acquired by your own efforts, but it would come instantly into your mind with the light of the sphere into which you entered. Changes of light in heaven are changes of thought.
If the heat of your life, the animal heat of your spirit, if we may use the term, did not correspond to the light into which you were elevated, that light would soon fade away and all the lightning flash of wisdom it had brought would disappear and be remembered only as an unspeakable dream. This occurred to Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, when he was elevated to the third heaven.
In this world where heat and light may be separated in a measure, an evil man may possess much spiritual knowledge, and a good man may live in such mental darkness that he believes the greatest absurdities as sincerely as if they were rational truths. In the other life where the interiors and exteriors of the mind are made to correspond, this is rectified. We only see and understand finally what we love; for light comes from heat and wisdom comes from love.
Swedenborg has a beautiful line which ought to be the motto of every church or association of men:
"Ex concordia lux; exdiscordia umbra."
From union of hearts comes light; from discord, darkness.
A church or society of men banded together without genuine brotherly love, is a mere debating-society where discussions produce only confusion and doubt. The reason why such beautiful light and such magnificent objects exist in every heavenly society is, that the members are organized on the basis of love to God and each other, the genuine source of all spiritual light.
The atmospheres of light about the heavenly societies are indescribably beautiful. Some of them are of silvery, some of golden hues. Some have the sheen of pearls or diamonds or other precious stones. Some appear to be composed of brilliant infinitesimal flowers; some of the minutest rainbows wonderfully woven together; and others of the microscopic faces of infants and cherubs. The light of our world is feeble and dim in comparison with the flaming splendors of those heavenly societies in which the love of God is the heat that animates and the wisdom of God is the light that surrounds them.
The appearance of a light or a great light is indicative of the revelation of truth. Moses was called to his task by the light of the burning bush. The divine will was revealed to the high priest of the Jews by the miraculous variegations of light in the precious stones which glittered upon his bosom. The wise men of the East were led to the infant Saviour by the light of a star. Paul was summoned to his better mission by a great light that shone on his way. For a long time before Swedenborg's spiritual sight was opened, he was visited by wonderful and beautiful lights shining around him, glittering prophecies of the heavenly truths about to be communicated through him to the Church and the world.
Yes, spiritual light is truth; and our spiritual eyes are the organs which receive it for the soul's contemplation and delight. The manifestation depends upon the state of the organ. There is a spiritual blindness as well as a natural blindness—an inability to discern spiritual truth, no matter how beautifully or forcibly presented. Spiritual truth cannot be seen by the carnal eye; that is, by men who are immersed in the love of self and the world, who are busied with the pursuit of money, pleasure, power, fashion, or pre-eminence, and who look to the external forms of things instead of to the interior life.
Our spiritual bodies, which are the perfect forms of men and women, have hearts which beat, lungs which respire, tongues that speak and ears that hear.
"And I heard a voice from heaven as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder; and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps; and they sang as it were a new song before the throne."
The voices of angels are described by Swedenborg as being indescribably sweet and beautiful. He saw a hard-hearted spirit who involuntarily wept upon hearing an angel's voice, for he said that it seemed to him that love itself was speaking. On the contrary the voices of evil spirits are harsh and discordant, and their interchange of ideas sometimes sounds at a distance like wailing and the gnashing of teeth.
The songs of angels, individually and in choirs, constitute one of the greatest enjoyments of the other life. Imagine a city in heaven, every house of which is a palace, and whose architectural glories are bathed in the purple splendors of a celestial morn. Every window is thrown open to greet the spiritual sun which is representative of the Lord. Thousands of beautiful and happy spirits present themselves to view, clad as the angels are, and all voices join in singing a morning song of praise and joy, of such divine harmony that the whole soul is thrilled and melted with delight. This did Swedenborg see and hear.
Yes, music exists in heaven. It is indeed the voice of heaven, because it is the external form or medium through which the purest heavenly affections are expressed and communicated.
There is more in speech than the communication of ideas. That is but one half of the phenomenon. Ideas in the spiritual world may indeed be communicated without speech. One spirit coming to another takes on his entire memory in a moment, knows all he knows, thinks all he thinks. They can read each other's thought without exchanging an audible word. What then is the necessity of speech? of sound conveyed atmospherically from the mouth of one spirit to the ear of another?
It is because the affections of the speaker are involved and unfolded in the sound of his voice. There is a difference between the words and the sound. The words convey the sense or idea; the sound conveys the affection which originated and sustains the idea. Angels can detect in the sound of a man's voice the ruling loves and passions of his soul, and thence the secret key to his whole mental and moral nature.
This is the reason why a thing heard makes a more powerful impression than the same thing read; why oratory and music are more potent than the divinest philosophy; and why the pulpit, the bar, the stage, the forum are such mighty powers in the world.
Here, too, we see the necessity of public worship, in which divine truths are presented to the ear by speaking and singing. This is calculated to excite a sphere of devout affections which are insensibly communicated from one to another. The silent reading of a written sermon is a poor substitute for the magnetic fervor of the living voice, and the sweet brotherhood of choral music, which fire the heart with religious sentiment and stimulate the will to the obedient performance of religious duties.
The Christian who is not ready to speak, sing and pray with his brethren, to feel, think and act in a sort of choral harmony with the children of God, cannot pass the threshold of heaven. He will be kept in the world of spirits until he is instructed and purified, disciplined and trained to a sacred communism, rid of his selfhood and his selfishness, so that he is willing to lose his individual life in the larger life of the body and members of Christ.
We are not surprised that Swedenborg says there are churches and preaching and sacred music in heaven. What could be more rational? They do not constitute all of heaven indeed, but the most essential part of it. The communion of thought and affection thus established and fostered in the religious sphere of the soul, is the true secret of the infinite order, beauty, peace and joy, which reign perpetually in the social and civil spheres, and in all the external relations of the heavenly life.
Sound is to the ear what sight is to the eye. The seven notes of the musical scale correspond to the seven colors into which a ray of white light may be decomposed. There is, indeed, a series of wonderful parallelisms running through all the forms and forces of nature. These are simple repetitions upon different planes or discrete degrees of creation, of the fundamental laws and principles of the divine love and wisdom.
Sight and hearing depend upon the organic state of the eye and ear, those instruments through which the soul sees and hears. Some people are blind to certain colors; some are deaf to certain sounds. There are, indeed, sounds too high or too low to be heard by our ears. The same is no doubt analogically true of colors.
There is a spiritual blindness in which no ray of truth can be discerned; a spiritual deafness in which the voice of God is unregarded. There are spiritual thoughts which have never come within the range of our vision; spiritual harmonies which have never fallen upon our ear. There lies about us, indeed, a vast, invisible, inaudible universe full of spiritual beauty and glory. Our natural eye does not respond to the undulations of its ether; our natural ear does not catch the vibrations of its air. We scarcely credit its existence.
Our spiritual ears, which will be permanently opened at death, may be opened while living, and the voices of angels made audible. The spiritual hearing may be opened whilst the spiritual sight is closed and vice versâ. The little child Samuel heard with his spiritual ear the voice of the Lord, which did not reach the hearing of the listening Eli. When Swedenborg sat in his library conversing with angels and gazing upon heavenly scenes, nothing was visible or audible to friends who might have been standing by. Nor did Swedenborg have any specific consciousness that he saw and heard with spiritual organs. So thoroughly, indeed, do our natural and spiritual organs correspond and fit into each other, that a man with his spiritual senses open seems to himself to see and hear everything, just as he always did, with the natural eye and ear.
Paul was elevated, he says, to the third heaven, and saw and heard things which were unutterable; but so similar is our spiritual body to our natural body, our spiritual senses to our natural senses, the spiritual world in external appearance to the natural world, that Paul was sorely puzzled, and declares that whether he was in the body or out of the body, he could not tell. His sensations told him that he was in the body; but his theoretic faculty demanded to know how he could be in the third heaven with angels and still retain all his natural faculties and sensations.
Swedenborg alone explains this and other biblical difficulties, by furnishing a true psychology, the result, not of metaphysical speculations, but of the observation and study of man from the spiritual side. And while he lifts the literal veil which conceals the real meaning of the Bible, his own doctrines on every subject are best and most forcibly illustrated and confirmed from the pages of Scripture.
The possession of the perfect human form, male or female, after death, and of spiritual sight and hearing, being conceded, the existence of the other senses cannot be denied. We have smell, taste and touch in the spiritual world. We have spiritual nerves which exactly correspond to the nerves of our physical body. It was in those spiritual nerves, indeed, that all our sensations of pain or pleasure occurred. When we drop the natural body, the real man with all his organs, emotions, thoughts, memories, sensations and possibilities, is simply withdrawn or extracted from it to lead on a higher plane a continued and better life.
Such is the resurrection from the dead!
Odors, like sounds and colors, are representative of the spiritual states of those from whom they proceed. Spirits detect by the sense of smell the quality of approaching spirits. Sweet and delicious odors accompany good spirits as direct emanations from their spiritual life. Heaven is full of the aroma of flowers and of the balmy fragrance of woods and fields. The souls of the rose, the violet, the mignonette, and the myriads of their charming sisters, float for ever as haloes of sweetness about the persons of the good, the pure and the beautiful.
The sense of taste is very obscure in the spiritual world; indeed almost null, almost dropped and left behind with those who enjoy the pleasures of the table on earth. There is no cooking in heaven; no gastronomic enjoyments. Eating there seems to be rare and little, a mere ceremonial, symbolical of spiritual appropriations as the Lord's Supper is upon earth. The reason of this is, that the spiritual body is not kept in form and life like the natural body by a regular supply and waste of inert material, but by a continual condensation or concretion of the inmost substances of the spiritual atmospheres, which concretion is effected by an emotional and intellectual appropriation of the divine love and truth which pervade those atmospheres. The spiritual bodies of infants grow in heaven by this process.
If any one objects to this idea of the condensation or concretion of invisible atmospheric substances into solid forms, we will remind him that it is the very process by which our own world has been constructed. Our entire globe was once gaseous or atmospheric, then aqueous and afterward solid. The soil we walk upon is a deposit from the atmosphere. Our natural bodies are gases temporarily solidified by chemical affinities.
All the pleasurable sensations evolved from the touch, exist in heaven and in the highest state of perfection. The delights which flow from this mode of communicating the affections are almost unintelligible to us who still linger in the shadows of the natural life.
The sins of the spirit are effigied in mournful symbols by the diseases of the body and the disorders of the physical universe. Painful sensations belong only to the natural world, the world of spirits and hell. There is no pain in heaven.
"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying: neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."
Physical pain comes from the distorted media into which the nerve-life of the spirit flows, whether a broken bone, a morbid growth, an inflamed tissue or a changed function. Spiritual pain comes from the influx of the divine life into perverted, disorderly and unregenerate spiritual forms. God flows forth continually with love, wisdom, peace, joy, for all his creatures. They turn themselves away from Him, and all his blessings are turned into their opposites. Love is turned into hate; the true into the false; heat into cold; light into darkness; peace into strife; joy into sorrow; pleasure into pain.
The views of Swedenborg about the spiritual world and the spiritual senses are forcibly illustrated and confirmed by the developments of Mesmerism and Biology, all of which have been made since Swedenborg unfolded the principles of psychology, from which alone they can be understood. He explains in the most satisfactory manner the phenomena of thought-reading, clairvoyance, magnetic vision, magnetic hearing, the transference of sensations, the induction of fantasy and the influence of spheres. These wonderful phenomena, although as well authenticated as anything can be, are still discredited by the theologians, metaphysicians and scientists of the old schools, because they can neither explain nor use them. That order of minds which would not and could not believe, "though one rose from the dead," is not yet extinct."