Merkabah

[Skarekrow]

You don't feel anything happening inside your head do you? Like some kind of odd flow or something? Just curious.

I do…but that could also be the pot…lol

 

[Skarekrow]

[MENTION=6697]apemon[/MENTION]

I actually DO feel different somehow since yesterday…I can’t quite place it though….flow may be a good descriptor.

 

[apemon]

I do…but that could also be the pot…lol

Don't count on it. I have some 'buddies' myself, I guess we'll see. I got weird crawly stuff up there for a couple months or so.

 

[apemon]

[MENTION=6697]apemon[/MENTION]

I actually DO feel different somehow since yesterday…I can’t quite place it though….flow may be a good descriptor.

Aha. Immersion and surrender. do not battle but flow. Welcome my friend.

 

[Skarekrow]

Aha. Immersion and surrender. do not battle but flow. Welcome my friend.

 

[Kgal]

I haven't looked at this yet...but saw it on my facebook feed and thought of you.

"Graham Hancock
I'm honoured to have been amongst the interviewees in "The Culture High". Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/culturehigh. Full description: "Journeying across the North American landscape, The Culture High is the riveting story that tears into the very fiber of modern day marijuana prohibition to reveal the truth behind the arguments and motives governing both those who support and oppose the existing pot laws.
With budgets to fight the war reaching billions and arrests for simple possession sky rocketing to nearly a million annually, the debate over marijuana’s legality has reached epic proportions. Utilizing the quirky yet profound nature of its predecessor, The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, The Culture High raises the stakes with some of todays biggest names, unprecedented access to footage previously unobtainable, and incredibly moving testimonials from both sides of the spectrum. Top celebrities, former undercover agents, university professors and a slew of unforgettable characters from all points of view come together for an amusing yet insightful portrait of cannabis prohibition and the grasp it has on society as a whole.
The Culture High will strip search the oddity of human nature and dare to ask the question: What exactly is going on here?": https://vimeo.com/ondemand/culturehigh "

 

[Kgal]

Don't count on it. I have some 'buddies' myself, I guess we'll see. I got weird crawly stuff up there for a couple months or so.

I had some of that going myself. It became so strange I ended up going to the dentist and an oral surgeon. They found nothing wrong with me.
There have been days where I felt strange bumps all over my skull just underneath the skin.
TMJ
Grinding of teeth.
Strange sensations up near my ears and above.
Unusual headaches.

Most of it has settled down now.

A couple of months ago the channeled messages were saying we're going through the upgrades of the Throat, Third Eye, and Crown Chakras....and to expect issues with those areas of the human body.
DNA transformation is happening now too. We are steadily moving through the Photon Belt and being inundated with the Love Energy of Source Creator. Give us a year- apemon - and we'll be fully initiated. The First Wave will have risen! Woot!

Several nights ago I invited Pachamamma(Gaia)to dance with me - and to my astonishment she did. Two nights ago I was doing my usual blessing of Water while showering and Water merged with and flowed through me. Amazing Bliss....!!!
Evidently I am not only merging with my Higher Self - but the consciousness of the Elements as well. Earth. Water. Air. Fire.
Hmmm... I wonder what merging with Fire will be like.

Oh. ...and I have my own 'buddies' too. That hasn't interfered with any of my process. :w:

 

[Skarekrow]

I had some of that going myself. It became so strange I ended up going to the dentist and an oral surgeon. They found nothing wrong with me.
There have been days where I felt strange bumps all over my skull just underneath the skin.
TMJ
Grinding of teeth.
Strange sensations up near my ears and above.
Unusual headaches.

Most of it has settled down now.

A couple of months ago the channeled messages were saying we're going through the upgrades of the Throat, Third Eye, and Crown Chakras....and to expect issues with those areas of the human body.
DNA transformation is happening now too. We are steadily moving through the Photon Belt and being inundated with the Love Energy of Source Creator. Give us a year- apemon - and we'll be fully initiated. The First Wave will have risen! Woot!

Several nights ago I invited Pachamamma(Gaia)to dance with me - and to my astonishment she did. Two nights ago I was doing my usual blessing of Water while showering and Water merged with and flowed through me. Amazing Bliss....!!!
Evidently I am not only merging with my Higher Self - but the consciousness of the Elements as well. Earth. Water. Air. Fire.
Hmmm... I wonder what merging with Fire will be like.

Oh. ...and I have my own 'buddies' too. That hasn't interfered with any of my process. :w:

Like anything, pot used in moderation is not harmful at all, in fact I believe beneficial to us and our psyche.

For a while there, I thought my light would go out completely. Dark days.

 

[Kgal]

Like anything, pot used in moderation is not harmful at all, in fact I believe beneficial to us and our psyche.

For a while there, I thought my light would go out completely. Dark days.

Yes Sir.... I completely understand. Been there....still walking through the valley of the shadow - at times. I'm glad to see you lit a candle for your Self.

 

[Skarekrow]

[MENTION=4459]Sensiko[/MENTION]

 

[sprinkles]

[video=youtube;Bkd_6EPnDt8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkd_6EPnDt8[/video]

 

[Skarekrow]

Carl Jung's Near-Death Experience

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[TD]In a hospital in Switzerland in 1944, the world-renowned psychiatrist Carl G. Jung, had a heart attack and then a near-death experience.

His vivid encounter with the light, plus the intensely meaningful insights led Jung to conclude that his experience came from something real and eternal.

Jung's experience is unique in that he saw the Earth from a vantage point of about a thousand miles above it.

His incredibly accurate view of the Earth from outer space was described about two decades before astronauts in space first described it.

Subsequently, as he reflected on life after death, Jung recalled the meditating Hindu from his near-death experience and read it as a parable of the archetypal Higher Self, the God-image within.

Carl Jung, who founded analytical psychology, centered on the archetypes of the collective unconscious.

The following is an excerpt from his autobiography entitled Memories, Dreams, Reflections describing his near-death experience.[/TD]
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The beginning of 1944 I broke my foot, and this misadventure was followed by a heart attack. In a state of unconsciousness, I experienced deliriums and visions which must have begun when I hung on the edge of death and was being given oxygen and camphor injections.

The images were so tremendous that I myself concluded that I was close to death. My nurse afterward told me:
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[TD="class: auto-style21"]"It was as if you were surrounded by a bright glow."[/TD]
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That was a phenomenon she had sometimes observed in the dying, she added.

I had reached the outermost limit, and do not know whether I was in a dream or an ecstasy.

At any rate, extremely strange things began to happen to me.

It seemed to me that I was high up in space.
Far below I saw the globe of the Earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light.

I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India.
My field of vision did not include the whole Earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light.

In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver.
Far away to the left lay a broad expanse - the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of the Earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue.

Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back - as if in the upper left of a map - I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean.
My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all.

I knew that I was on the point of departing from the Earth.

Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view - approximately a thousand miles! The sight of the Earth from this height was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.

After contemplating it for a while, I turned around.
I had been standing with my back to the Indian Ocean, as it were, and my face to the north.

Then it seemed to me that I made a turn to the south.
Something new entered my field of vision.

A short distance away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, like a meteorite. It was about the size of my house, or even bigger.
It was floating in space, and I myself was floating in space.



I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal.
They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hollowed out into temples.

My stone was one such gigantic dark block.
An entrance led into a small antechamber.

To the right of the entrance, a black Hindu sat silently in lotus posture upon a stone bench.
He wore a white gown, and I knew that he expected me.

Two steps led up to this antechamber, and inside, on the left, was the gate to the temple.
Innumerable tiny niches, each with a saucer-like concavity filled with coconut oil and small burning wicks, surrounded the door with a wreath of bright flames.
I had once actually seen this when I visited the Temple of the Holy Tooth at Kandy in Ceylon; the gate had been framed by several rows of burning oil lamps of this sort.

As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened:
I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me - an extremely painful process.

Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak.

I consisted of my own history and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am.
I am this bundle of what has been and what has been accomplished.

This experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness.
There was no longer anything I wanted or desired.

I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived.
At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence.

Everything seemed to be past; what remained was a "fait accompli," without any reference back to what had been.
There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away or been taken away.
On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything.

Something else engaged my attention: as I approached the temple I had the certainty that I was about to enter an illuminated room and would meet there all those people to whom I belong in reality.

There I would at last understand - this too was a certainty - what historical nexus I or my life fitted into.
I would know what had been before me, why I had come into being, and where my life was flowing.

My life as I lived it had often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and end.
I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing.

My life seemed to have been snipped out of a long chain of events, and many questions had remained unanswered.
Why had it taken this course?
Why had I brought these particular assumptions with me?
What had I made of them?
What will follow?

I felt sure that I would receive an answer to all the questions as soon as I entered the rock temple.
There I would meet the people who knew the answer to my question about what had been before and what would come after.

While I was thinking over these matters, something happened that caught my attention.
From below, from the direction of Europe, an image floated up. It was my doctor, or rather, his likeness - framed by a golden chain or a golden laurel wreath. I knew at once:
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[TD="class: auto-style28"]"Aha, this is my doctor, of course, the one who has been treating me. But now he is coming in his primal form, as a "basileus of Kos."[1] In life he was an avatar of this basileus, the temporal embodiment of the primal form, which has existed from the beginning. Now he is appearing in that primal form.
[1] Basileus was the king (i.e. "basileus") of Kos - a small Greek island on the Aegean Sea. The island of Kos was famous in antiquity as the site of the temple of Asklepios, and was the birthplace of Hippocrates.[/TD]
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Presumably I too was in my primal form, though this was something I did not observe but simply took for granted.
As he stood before me, a mute exchange of thought took place between us.

The doctor had been delegated by the Earth to deliver a message to me, to tell me that there was a protest against my going away.
I had no right to leave the Earth and must return.
The moment I heard that, the vision ceased.

I was profoundly disappointed, for now it all seemed to have been for nothing.
The painful process of defoliation had been in vain, and I was not to be allowed to enter the temple, to join the people in whose company I belonged.

In reality, a good three weeks were still to pass before I could truly make up my mind to live again.
I could not eat because all food repelled me.

The view of city and mountains from my sickbed seemed to me like a painted curtain with black holes in it, or a tattered sheet of newspaper full of photographs that meant nothing. Disappointed, I thought:
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[TD="class: auto-style16"]"Now I must return to 'the box system' again."[/TD]
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For it seemed to me as if behind the horizon of the cosmos a three-dimensional world had been artificially built up, in which each person sat by himself in a little box.

And now I should have to convince myself all over again that this was important!
Life and the whole world struck me as a prison, and it bothered me beyond measure that I should again be finding all that quite in order.

I had been so glad to shed it all, and now it had come about that I - along with everyone else - would again be hung up in a box by a thread.

While I floated in space, I had been weightless, and there had been nothing tugging at me.
And now all that was to be a thing of the past!

I felt violent resistance to my doctor because he had brought me back to life.
At the same time, I was worried about him.

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[TD="class: auto-style33"]"His life is in danger, for heaven’s sake! He has appeared to me in his primal form! When anybody attains this form it means he is going to die, for already he belongs to the 'greater company'!"[/TD]
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Suddenly the terrifying thought came to me that Dr. H. would have to die in my stead.
I tried my best to talk to him about it, but he did not understand me. Then I became angry with him:

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[TD="class: auto-style33"]"Why does he always pretend he doesn’t know he is a basileus of Kos? And that he has already assumed his primal form? He wants to make me believe that he doesn’t know!"[/TD]
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That irritated me.
My wife reproved me for being so unfriendly to him.
She was right; but at the time I was angry with him for stubbornly refusing to speak of all that had passed between us in my vision:

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[TD="class: auto-style33"]"Damn it all, he ought to watch his step. He has no right to be so reckless! I want to tell him to take care of himself."[/TD]
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I was firmly convinced that his life was in jeopardy.
In actual fact I was his last patient.

On April 4, 1944, I still remember the exact date I was allowed to sit up on the edge of my bed for the first time since the beginning of my illness, and on this same day Dr. H. took to his bed and did not leave it again.

I heard that he was having intermittent attacks of fever. Soon afterward he died of septicemia.
He was a good doctor; there was something of the genius about him.
Otherwise he would not have appeared to me as a prince of Kos.

During those weeks I lived in a strange rhythm. By day I was usually depressed. I felt weak and wretched, and scarcely dared to stir. Gloomily, I thought:
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[TD="class: auto-style33"]"Now I must go back to this drab world."[/TD]
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Toward evening I would fall asleep, and my sleep would last until about midnight.
Then I would come to myself and lie awake for about an hour, but in an utterly transformed state.

It was as if I were in an ecstasy.
I felt as though I were floating in space, as though I were safe in the womb of the universe in a tremendous void, but filled with the highest possible feeling of happiness.

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[TD="class: auto-style33"]"This is eternal bliss," I thought. "This cannot be described; it is far too wonderful!"[/TD]
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Everything around me seemed enchanted.
At this hour of the night the nurse brought me some food she had warmed for only then was I able to take any, and I ate with appetite.

For a time it seemed to me that she was an old Jewish woman, much older than she actually was, and that she was preparing ritual kosher dishes for me.
When I looked at her, she seemed to have a blue halo around her head.

I myself was, so it seemed, in the Pardes Rimmonim, the garden ofpomegranates, [2] and the wedding of Tiferet with Malchut was taking place.
Or else I was Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai, whose wedding in the afterlife was being celebrated.

It was the mystic marriage as it appears in the Cabbalistic tradition.
I cannot tell you how wonderful it was. I could only think continually:

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[TD="class: auto-style28"]"Now this is the garden of pomegranates! Now this is the marriage of Malchuth with Tifereth!" [2]
[2] Pardes Rimmonim is the title of an old Cabbalistic tract by Moses Cordovero (sixteenth century). In Cabbalistic doctrine Malchuth and Tifereth are two of the ten spheres of divine manifestation in which God emerges from his hidden state. They represent the female and male principles within the Godhead.[/TD]
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I do not know exactly what part I played in it.
At bottom it was I myself: I was the marriage.
And my beatitude was that of a blissful wedding.

Gradually the garden of pomegranates faded away and changed.
There followed the Marriage of the Lamb, in a Jerusalem festively bedecked.
I cannot describe what it was like in detail.
These were ineffable states of joy.
Angels were present, and light.
I myself was the "Marriage of the Lamb."

That, too, vanished, and there came a new image, the last vision.
I walked up a wide valley to the end, where a gentle chain of hills began.

The valley ended in a classical amphitheater. It was magnificently situated in the green landscape.
And there, in this theater, the hierosgamos was being celebrated.

Men and women dancers came onstage, and upon a flower-decked couch All-father Zeus and Hera consummated the mystic marriage, as it is described in the Iliad.

All these experiences were glorious.
Night after night I floated in a state of purest bliss:

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[TD="class: auto-style33"]"thronged round with images of all creation (from "Faust," Part Two.)"[/TD]
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Gradually, the motifs mingled and paled.
Usually the visions lasted for about an hour; then I would fall asleep again.
By the time morning drew near, I would feel:

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[TD="class: auto-style33"]"Now gray morning is coming again; now comes the gray world with its boxes! What idiocy, what hideous nonsense! Those inner states were so fantastically beautiful that by comparison this world appeared downright ridiculous."[/TD]
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As I approached closer to life again, they grew fainter, and scarcely three weeks after the first vision they ceased altogether.

It is impossible to convey the beauty and intensity of emotion during those visions.
They were the most tremendous things I have ever experienced.

And what a contrast the day was: I was tormented and on edge; everything irritated me; everything was too material, too crude and clumsy, terribly limited both spatially and spiritually.

It was all an imprisonment, for reasons impossible to divine, and yet it had a kind of hypnotic power, a cogency, as if it were reality itself, for all that I had clearly perceived its emptiness.

Although my belief in the world returned to me, I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that:

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[TD="class: auto-style33"]...this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional box-like universe especially set up for it.[/TD]
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There is something else I quite distinctly remember.
At the beginning, when I was having the vision of the garden of pomegranates, I asked the nurse to forgive me if she were harmed:

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[TD="class: auto-style33"]"There was such sanctity in the room," I said, "that it might be harmful to her."[/TD]
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Of course she did not understand me.
For me the presence of sanctity had a magical atmosphere; I feared it might be unendurable to others.

I understood then why one speaks of the odor of sanctity, of the "sweet smell" of the Holy Ghost.
This was it.
There was a pneuma of inexpressible sanctity in the room, whose manifestation was the mysterium coniunctionis.

I would never have imagined that any such experience was possible.
It was not a product of imagination.
The visions and experiences were utterly real; there was nothing subjective about them; they all had a quality of absolute objectivity.

We shy away from the word "eternal," but I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which present, past, and future are one. Everything that happens in time had been brought together into a concrete whole.

Nothing was distributed over time, nothing could be measured by temporal concepts.
The experience might best be defined as a state of feeling, but one which cannot be produced by imagination.

How can I imagine that I exist simultaneously the day before yesterday, today, and the day after tomorrow?
There would be things which would not yet have begun, other things which would be indubitably present, and others again which would already be finished and yet all this would be one.

The only thing that feeling could grasp would be a sum, an iridescent whole, containing all at once expectation of a beginning, surprise at what is now happening, and satisfaction or disappointment with the result of what has happened.
One is interwoven into an indescribable whole and yet observes it with complete objectivity.

I experienced this objectivity once again later on.
That was after the death of my wife.

I saw her in a dream which was like a vision.
She stood at some distance from me, looking at me squarely.

She was in her prime, perhaps about thirty, and wearing the dress which had been made for her many years before by my cousin the medium.
It was perhaps the most beautiful thing she had ever worn.

Her expression was neither joyful nor sad, but, rather, objectively wise and understanding, without the slightest emotional reaction, as though she were beyond the mist of affects.

I knew that it was not she, but a portrait she had made or commissioned for me.
It contained the beginning of our relationship, the events of fifty-three years of marriage, and the end of her life also.
Face to face with such wholeness one remains speechless, for it can scarcely be comprehended.

The objectivity which I experienced in this dream and in the visions is part of a completed individuation.
It signifies detachment from valuations and from what we call emotional ties.

In general, emotional ties are very important to human beings.
But they still contain projections, and it is essential to withdraw these projections in order to attain to oneself and to objectivity.

Emotional relationships are relationships of desire, tainted by coercion and constraint; something is expected from the other person, and that makes him and ourselves unfree.

Objective cognition lies hidden behind the attraction of the emotional relationship; it seems to be the central secret.
Only through objective cognition is the real coniunctio possible.

After the illness a fruitful period of work began for me.
A good many of my principal works were written only then.

The insight I had had, or the vision of the end of all things, gave me the courage to undertake new formulations.
I no longer attempted to put across my own opinion, but surrendered myself to the current of my thoughts.
Thus one problem after the other revealed itself to me and took shape.

Something else, too, came to me from my illness.
I might formulate it as an affirmation of things as they are: an unconditional "yes" to that which is, without subjective protests acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see them and understand them, acceptance of my own nature, as I happen to be.

At the beginning of the illness I had the feeling that there was something wrong with my attitude, and that I was to some extent responsible for the mishap.
But when one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one’s own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them.

There is no guarantee not for a single moment that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril.
We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death.

Then nothing happens any longer at any rate, not the right things.
Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.

It was only after the illness that I understood how important it is to affirm one’s own destiny.
In this way we forge an ego that does not break down when incomprehensible things happen; an ego that endures, that endures the truth, and that is capable of coping with the world and with fate.

Then, to experience defeat is also to experience victory.
Nothing is disturbed neither inwardly nor outwardly, for one’s own continuity has withstood the current of life and of time.
But that can come to pass only when one does not meddle inquisitively with the workings of fate.

I have also realized that one must accept the thoughts that go on within oneself of their own accord as part of one’s reality.
The categories of true and false are, of course, always present; but because they are not binding they take second place.

The presence of thoughts is more important than our subjective judgment of them.
But neither must these judgments be suppressed, for they also are existent thoughts which are part of our wholeness.

Commentary on Jung's NDE

Carl Jung’s experience is a typical transcendental NDE which shares many characteristics with multitudes of other NDEs such as experiencing:
(1) an ultra-real and ultra-vivid realm which is impossible to forget,
(2) multiple realms of existence,
(3) the Void,
(4) observations of the Earth from outer s: pace,
(5) a heavenly temple,
(6) an encounter with the Light,
(7) an encounter with Jesus during his experience of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb,
(8) lessons concerning the human ego,
(9) a timeless realm,
(10) heavenly music,
(11) feelings of intense peace and ecstasy,
(12) the receiving of higher knowledge,
(13) mental telepathy,
(14) a life review,
(15) an understanding of the mechanics of reincarnation,
(16) meeting the "primal form" (i.e. higher self) of people still living on Earth,
(17) visions of the future, and
(18) an inability to adequately describe the experience.

Jung’s experience is remarkably similar to Dr. Eben Alexander III, a neurosurgeon whose near-death experience is profiled in his book, "Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife."

As Jung reflected on life after death, he recalled the meditating Hindu from his near-death experience and interpreted it as a parable of the archetypal Higher Self, the God-image within.

No matter what you call it, a higher self within or God ... once touched, it does lead to insights and the belief that something lies just beyond our realm here on Earth.[/TD]
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[TD]"The unconscious psyche believes in life after death" - Carl Jung MD[/TD]
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[Skarekrow]

[video=youtube;QA4y6xnPvlk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QA4y6xnPvlk[/video]

Interesting...

 

[sprinkles]

[video=youtube;QA4y6xnPvlk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QA4y6xnPvlk[/video]

Interesting...

I think people confuse "feeling good" and "being a nice person" with being spiritual.

You see, people do want to be loved and treated nicely and there can be a sense of longing for connection and rightness but that isn't necessarily spiritual. That's more like being hungry and knowing you want some food - valuable information but you ideally don't form your entire outlook based on a vague perception of a subjective need.

There's more to it than nice feelings, especially since this vague prescription doesn't tackle more difficult questions like how to keep stillness when everything is going horribly wrong in spite of your efforts to love everybody.

Edit:
Or basically knowing how to eat doesn't put the actual food on your plate.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=5045]Skarekrow[/MENTION]

Also for me kindness is a RESULT of practice, not the other way around. When I'm in the most spiritual need is also usually when I want to murder everybody.

Kindness doesn't give me spirituality. Spiritual practice lets me remember how to not always stab people's faces off.

 

[apemon]

I think people confuse "feeling good" and "being a nice person" with being spiritual.

You see, people do want to be loved and treated nicely and there can be a sense of longing for connection and rightness but that isn't necessarily spiritual. That's more like being hungry and knowing you want some food - valuable information but you ideally don't form your entire outlook based on a vague perception of a subjective need.

There's more to it than nice feelings, especially since this vague prescription doesn't tackle more difficult questions like how to keep stillness when everything is going horribly wrong in spite of your efforts to love everybody.

Edit:
Or basically knowing how to eat doesn't put the actual food on your plate.

Got that right. It's truth, not what makes us feel better. Too subjective. And because we think it's about feeling better, it can blind us to truth. Oh brother. Perhaps I should just be still. lol

 

[Skarekrow]

I think people confuse "feeling good" and "being a nice person" with being spiritual.

You see, people do want to be loved and treated nicely and there can be a sense of longing for connection and rightness but that isn't necessarily spiritual. That's more like being hungry and knowing you want some food - valuable information but you ideally don't form your entire outlook based on a vague perception of a subjective need.

There's more to it than nice feelings, especially since this vague prescription doesn't tackle more difficult questions like how to keep stillness when everything is going horribly wrong in spite of your efforts to love everybody.

Edit:
Or basically knowing how to eat doesn't put the actual food on your plate.

@Skarekrow

Also for me kindness is a RESULT of practice, not the other way around. When I'm in the most spiritual need is also usually when I want to murder everybody.

Kindness doesn't give me spirituality. Spiritual practice lets me remember how to not always stab people's faces off.

Got that right. It's truth, not what makes us feel better. Too subjective. And because we think it's about feeling better, it can blind us to truth. Oh brother. Perhaps I should just be still. lol

So I posted this because I found it interesting.
I do know that there is more to spirituality than striving to do good.
What is curious though is Swedenborg is also the experiencer of a NDE. - I will actually follow up this post with a summary of his account as I have wanted to post that up here and just haven’t yet.
Yes, there is the question that if you don’t do good acts in a selfless manner than that doesn’t count. I say, it absolutely counts, and it especially counts to that person you are helping.
Because here is the thing…some people are hyper aware of their actions and motives (one could put INFJs in that category me thinks).
That person had to consciously ask him/herself the question - What is good? What is right? What good am I responsible for? Have I cultivated good?
I think there are plenty of people out there who have never asked that of themselves…not only that, but would probably look at you like you were crazy if you did ask them.
The next step would be making a conscious decision to multiply these things in your life….this is a task many can not handle.
But even if one does do something good, just because it makes them feel good and nothing else (which I don’t think anyone who contemplates these questions with any sincerity would do), it isn’t for naught because you are still bringing joy to another person and that is greater in my opinion than in inflation of the ego.
That happiness, the gratitude, the thankfulness that others show us when we do something nice for them or helped that person somehow I believe can really be felt…just like you can really feel the anger emanating off of someone. There is nothing wrong with going out of your way to cultivate that IMO.
Now if it is purely selfish and you begin to charge for your services then you step into lots of other questions like - why do light workers even charge for their services?
First of all, that is their talents and gift and they should use it and earn a living doing it. I also find that most of them will help you when you really need it regardless of money or not.
Anyhow…I also think that there is some truth to the concept of doing good and good will return to you, maybe even in a spiritual manner.
Doing good alone does not make for spirituality…but one also has to consider what he meant by it having experienced the other side (if you subscribe to it).

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=5045]Skarekrow[/MENTION]

Well everything is connected so yes, you're going to accomplish by doing something - anything at all. That's a fact of existence and it works all the time, not only when it is convenient. People seem to forget that and that is one aspect which tends to throw up red flags and cause me to be suspicious.

Everything you do has a spiritual impact for good or ill because it's an actual thing and not for pretend goodfeels.

 

[Skarekrow]

The Trigger of Psychic Visions: Emanuel Swedenborg's Near-Death Experiences

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Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and was quite renowned in his day for his contributions in various fields of natural science.

His writings were first oriented towards anatomy, physiology, and psychology gained substantial recognition.

Later in his life, he experienced a religious crisis and began to write of experiences of being in communication with spiritual entities.

His later spiritual writings abound with vivid descriptions of what life after death is like.
The parallels between his out-of-body spiritual experiences and NDEs are quite remarkable. So remarkable, in fact, that in Dr. Raymond Moody's ground-breaking book on near-death experiences, Life After Life, has an entire section devoted these parallels.

In this article you will learn these parallels and read an excerpt from Swedenborg's most famous work entitled Heaven and Hell which was translated into the book entitled Awaken From Death.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style12, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]1. Emanuel Swedenborg and His Out-of-Body Journeys[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]The following information comes the section of Dr. Raymond Moody's book, Life After Life, on Emanuel Swedenborg.

Swedenborg described what happens when bodily functions such as respiration and circulation cease. This description is similar to what people describe when dying during an NDE.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style14"]"Still man does not die, but is only separated from the corporeal part which was of use to him in the world ... Man, when he dies, only passes from one world into another."[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style16"]Swedenborg wrote how he himself has been through the early stages of death and had experiences outside of his body. This corresponds to the out-of-body experience component of the NDE.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style14"]"I was brought into a state of insensibility as to the bodily sense, thus almost into the state of the dying; yet the interior life with thought remaining entire, so that I perceived and retained in memory the things which occurred, and which occur to those who are resuscitated from the dead ... Especially it was given to perceive ... that there was a drawing and ... pulling of ... mind, thus of my spirit, from the body."[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style16"]During Swedenborg's out-of-body experiences, he encountered beings whom he identifies as angels. They ask him, in effect, if he is prepared to die. This corresponds to NDEs where spirit guides appear and help the experiencer.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style14"]"Those angels first inquired what my thought was, whether it was like the thought of those who die, which is usually about eternal life; and that they wished to keep my mind in that thought."[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style16"]The communication which took place between Swedenborg and the spirits are direct transfers of thought - a way of communicating in which there is no possibility of misunderstanding. This corresponds to people having NDEs who describe communication as being telepathic.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style14"]"Whereas spirits converse with each other by universal language ... Every man, immediately after death, comes into this universal language ... which is proper to his spirit ...
"The speech of an angel or a spirit with man is heard as sonorously as the speech of a man with a man; yet it is not heard by others who stand near, but by himself alone; the reason is, because the speech of an angel or spirit flows first into the man's thought ..."[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style16"]Swedenborg described how the newly dead often do not realize they are dead because they still inhabit a body resembling their physical body in several respects. This kind phenomenon appears in many NDE testimonies such as that of Dr. George Ritchie.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style14"]"The first state of man after death is similar to his state in the world, because then in like manner he is in externals ... Hence, he knows no otherwise than the he is still in the world ... Therefore, after they have wondered that they are in a body, and in every sense which they had in the world ... they come into a desire of knowing what heaven is, and what hell is."[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style16"]Swedenborg described how - compared to physical life - the spiritual life has less limitations. Perception, thought, and memory are more perfect. Time and space no longer pose the obstacles they once had in physical life. This corresponds with NDE testimonies describing how thought becomes more expansive and how the afterlife realms exist in a timeless state.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style14"]"All the faculties of spirits ... are in a more perfect state, as well their sensations as their thoughts and perceptions."[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style16"]According to Swedenborg, the dying person may meet with other departed spirits whom they knew in life. These other spirits are there to help the dying person in their transition to life on the Other Side. This corresponds to NDE testimony involving the experiencer being welcomed by loved ones in a kind of homecoming.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style14"]"The spirit of man recently departed from the world is ... recognized by his friends, and by those whom he had known in the world ... wherefore they are instructed by their friends concerning the state of eternal life ..."[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style16"]Swedenborg wrote how the departed person may have their entire life shown to them in a vision. The departed person remembers every detail of it and there is no possibility lying or concealing anything. This corresponds to the life review of NDEs.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style14"]"The interior memory ... is such that there are inscribed in it all the particular things ... which man has at any time thought, spoken, and done ... from his earliest infancy to extreme old age. Man has with him the memory of all these things when he comes into another life, and is successively brought into all recollection of them ... All that he had spoken and done ... are made manifest before the angels, in a light as clear as day ... and ... there is nothing so concealed in the world that it is not manifested after death ... as if seen in effigy, when the spirit is viewed in the light of heaven."[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]Swedenborg also mentioned the "light of the Lord" which permeates the hereafter. It is a light of ineffable brightness which Swedenborg claims to have glimpsed himself. It is a light of truth and of understanding. This corresponds to the otherworldly Light seen in many NDEs.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style12, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]2. Insights from Emanuel Swedenborg's Out-of-Body Journeys[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]Dr. Moody provides insights of how Swedenborg's experiences provide striking parallels to contemporary near-death experiences.

During several of Swedenborg's near-death experiences, he would witness people dying and see their happenings in the afterlife.

He stated that immediately following death, there is a period of self-discovery in which the social masks worn by people on Earth dissolve away and the true self is revealed.

Each person then shapes their own eternity to correspond with their real inner nature.
Some people become irrational, driven by fear and greed.

Such people are in a spiritual condition which Swedenborg called "hell."
Hell is a psychological condition corresponding to the suffering that people experience on Earth when they allow themselves to be driven by the blind greed of their own egos.

There are no devils in hell to inflict punishments because in the hellish spiritual condition each person acts out their own malice by tormenting others.
This is perfectly described in Howard Storm's NDE of hell.

After death, most people find within themselves the psychological state Swedenborg called heaven.
It is a joyous conditionand a state of expanded awareness, of perceiving more and more of the grand plan of creation.

The heaven which Swedenborg experienced, corresponds to good deeds and not creeds.
Therefore, persons from many cultures and religions form the societies of heaven.

Swedenborg often mentioned that these societies - the "Church of the Lord" as he calls them - are universal. This Church of the Lord consists of all those who have lived in the goodness of love according to their own spiritual life on Earth.

Swedenborg's journeys into the afterlife provide us with more than just a glimpse of the Other Side; they provides us a very clear picture.

The following is an excerpt from Awaken From Death - an English translation of Swedenborg's classic Heaven and Hell.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style12, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]3. A Person's Strongest Love Is Revealed at Death[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]There is a strongest love which a person keeps after death and which never changes throughout eternity. Everyone has a considerable number of loves, but they all go back to their strongest love which a person makes one with - or taken all together - comprise it.

All the elements of intention that are in harmony with their strongest love are called desires, because they are desired.

Some of these desires are more inward, some more outward.
There are some desires that are directly bound; some are nearer, some are farther away.

There are various kinds of subordination.

Taken all together, they make up a kind of kingdom.
Thus, a person's desires are organized within themselves even though they are completely unaware it.

To some extent, however, this is made known to people in the afterlife where they have an outreach of thought and affection depending upon this organization.

This becomes an outreach into the heavenly communities if the strongest love is made up of the desires of heaven.

But this becomes an outreach into hellish communities if the strongest love is made up of desires of hell.
From this information, we then can understand the following:[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style22"]1.[/TD]
[TD="class: auto-style21, align: left"]After death, people become their desire or impulses.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style22"]2.[/TD]
[TD="class: auto-style21, align: left"]Throughout eternity, people stay the way they are insofar as their impulses or strongest love is concerned.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style22"]3.[/TD]
[TD="class: auto-style21, align: left"]People who have a heavenly and spiritual desire will enter heaven; while people who have a physical and worldly desire without a heavenly and spiritual desire will enter hell.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style22"]4.[/TD]
[TD="class: auto-style21, align: left"]People do not keep their faith if it does not come from a heavenly desire.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style22"]5.[/TD]
[TD="class: auto-style21, align: left"]Desire in action is what lasts; hence this is the person's true life.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]After death, a person is his desire or intention (impulses).
This has been made clear to me by observing experiences over and over again.

The whole of heaven is divided into communities on the basis of differences in the good that comes from desire. Every single spirit who is raised into heaven and becomes an angel is taken to the community where his or her desire is, and once there they are where they belong, so to speak - as though they were at home, where they were born.

An angel senses this and makes close friends with others like themselves.

When they leave and go to another community, there is a certain constant resistance.
This is the effect of their longing to return to those who are like themselves which means to their own strongest love.

This is how close friendships are formed in heaven.

The same holds true in hell, where people also form friendships on the basis of desires which are opposed to heavenly ones.

We may establish that, after death, people are their desire from the fact that there is a removal after death, a kind of carrying away of the elements which are not consistent with their strongest love.

If people are good, then all the things that are discordant, or that disagree with their true love, are removed and, so to speak, are carried away.

In this way they are installed in their own desire.

The same happens with people who are evil (the difference being that true things are carried away from them), until finally all individuals become their own true inner desire.

This takes place when a spirit-person is brought through into the third state described below.
Once this has happened, people constantly turn their face toward their inner desire, keeping it always before their eyes wherever they turn.

The same holds true for people in this world: their own desires leads them, too, and they are led by others by means of their own desires.

It is all the more true when they become spirits, because then they are not allowed to present the semblance of any other desire, or to pretend a desire that is not really theirs.

All personal associations in a person's life is evidence of the fact that people's spirits reflect their strongest love. In fact, whenever anyone acts and talks in keeping with someone else's desire, that person seems complete, with a fully expressive, cheerful, lively face.

But whenever anyone acts and talks contrary to someone else's desire, that person's face begins to change, to become hazy, and to fade from view.

Eventually the whole person vanishes as though they had never been there.
I have often been amazed that this is so, since nothing like it occurs in our world; but I have been told that something like this does happen to the spirit of a person which is no longer within another person's view when it turns away from that other.

Several times I have been enabled to see how good, simple folk wanted to educate evil people in matters of truth and goodness, and how such people ran away from this education; and when they reached their own kind, they grasped the false elements that suited their desire with an intense pleasure.

I have also been enabled to see good spirits talking with each other about true things, which the good people present listened to eagerly, while the evil ones who were also present paid no attention whatever, just as though they did not hear anything.

Paths are visible in the spiritual world.
Some lead to heaven, some to hell; one to one community, one to another.

Good spirits travel only along paths that lead to heaven, to the community which is involved in the particular good that comes from their own desire.

They do not see paths leading in other directions.
Evil spirits follow only paths that lead to hell, to the particular community there which is involved in the evil that comes from their own desire.

They do not see paths leading in other directions; and even if they do, they do not want to follow them.

Then, after the first and second states have been completed, these two classes are separated so that they no longer see or recognize each other.

Everyone becomes their own desire, not only in regard to the more inward elements of their mind, but also in regard to the more outward matters that are proper to their face, body, and speech; for all people become an image of their desire, even in outward things.

People who are involved in a physical desire are wholly incapable of living in heaven's warmth, since heaven's warmth is heavenly desire.

They are however capable of living in hell's warmth, which is a desire of cruelty toward other people who do not support them.

The pleasures of this desire are various kinds of contempt for others, of enmity, hatred, and revenge.

When they are involved in these, they are involved in their own life, utterly ignorant of what it means to do something good to others on the basis of and for the sake of the good act itself - only of acting on the basis of what is evil and for the sake of what is evil.

People who are involved in a physical desire cannot breathe in heaven.
If an evil person is taken there, he draws each breath like someone hard pressed in a struggle.

But people who are involved in a heavenly desire breathe more freely and live more fully the farther into heaven they are.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style12, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]4. The First Stage After Death Involves More Outward Aspects[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]There are three stages people pass through after their death before arriving in heaven or hell.

The first stage involves their more outward aspects, the second stage involves their more inward aspects, and the third stage is a state of preparation.

People pass through these stages in the world of spirits.

Insofar as the first stage is concerned - the stage involving people's more outward aspects - this is where people come to immediately after death.

All people have more inward and outward aspects to their spirit.
A person's more outward aspects are the means by which they adjust to the their body in the physical world (especially his face, speech, and manner) for associating with other people.

But the spirit's more inward aspects are the ones which belong to the person's intention and resultant thought, which are seldom evident in the face, speech, or manner.

From infancy, people get used to displaying friendliness, kindness and sincerity, and hiding their real thoughts and feelings.

So, as a matter of habit, they reflect a moral and civic life outwardly, no matter what they are like inwardly.

This habit is the source of people's virtual ignorance of what lies deeper within them and also of their inattention to these matters.

Everyone's first stage after death is very much like their condition in the physical world, since at that point they are similarly involved in outward matters.

They have much the same face, speech, and spirit.
Consequently, they have much the same moral and civic life.

This is why they are then quite unaware that they are not still in the physical world unless they pay attention to things happening to them and to what they were told by angels when they were awakened - namely, that they are now spirits.

So the one life continues into the other.
Death is only a crossing over.

Whenever individuals in the spirit world think about someone else in the spirit world, they set the person's face before themselves in their thought, together with many other things that characterized the person's life.

When they do that, the other person becomes present as though he had been called and summoned.

This kind of thing happens in the spiritual world because thoughts are communicated there and because distances do not have the same attributes as they have in the natural world.

This is why everyone, upon first arriving in the spirit world, is recognized by friends, relatives, and acquaintances of one sort or another.

And this is why they communicate with each other and associate with each other along the lines of their friendships in the physical world.

So they are taught by their friends about the state of eternal life and are taken around to different places - into different communities.

Some are taken to cities, some to gardens and parks; but most are taken to splendid places because this sort of place delights the outward nature they are still involved in.

Then they are intermittently led into thoughts they had during their physical life about the soul's condition after death, about heaven and hell, until they come to resent their former utter ignorance of things like this, and resent the Church's ignorance of such matters.

[Webmaster Note: In the hellish earthbound realm, people are able to travel anywhere on Earth as well.
The powers of the mind after death can be first realized in this earthbound realm where more spiritually developed souls are able to guide them to higher realms if they so desire.
Swedenborg's description of the first stage is similar to accounts of near-death experiences in this earthbound realm.]

Almost all of them are eager to know whether they will get into heaven.
Most of them believe they will because they have led a moral and civic life in the physical world, without considering that both evil and good people lead lives that are similar in outward aspects and do good works for other people in a similar fashion, attend church, listen to sermons and pray.

They are wholly unaware that outward behavior and outward worship do not accomplish anything; but rather it is the inner elements - from which the outward ones come - that really counts.

Hardly one out of several thousand people knows what their own inner elements are, or knows that those inner elements are where heaven and the church dwell within a person.

All the people who arrive from the physical world are put in connection either with a particular community in heaven or with a particular community in hell; but this applies only to their more inward elements.

These more inward elements, however, are not visible to anyone as long as the spirits are involved in more outward matters, since outward matters are used to cover and hide inner matters, especially by people who are involved in something evil on a more inward level.

Later on, when they come into the second stage, their more inward elements become obvious because at this point their more inward elements are opened and their more outward ones recede.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style12, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]5. The Second Stage After Death Involves More Inward Aspects[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]The second stage after death is called the stage of the more inward elements, because at that point people are brought into an involvement in the more inward things belonging to their mind, or their intention (impulses) and thought, while the more outward things they were involved in during their first stage go to sleep.

As a result, when people are in this stage they are involved in their true selves and in their real lives.
Thinking freely from one's very own affection reflects a person's real life, and is the real person.

People in this stage are thinking on the basis of their very own intention, which means they are thinking from their very own affection or desire.

At this point, their thinking brings about a unity with their intention - such a unity in fact - they hardly seem to be thinking at all and are simply intending.

It is about the same when they communicate; except they communicate with a certain fear that the things their intention is thinking about might come out naked.

This is because their fear becomes part of their intention in the physical world due to the demands of a civic life.

Absolutely everyone is directed into this stage after death because it is the actual state of the spirit.
The earlier stage is the way people were in their spirit when they were in the company of others which is not their proper condition.

Once people are in this condition that is proper to their more inward concerns, it becomes very obvious what kind of people they were intrinsically in the physical world.

At this point, they are acting on the basis of what really belongs to them.

If they were inwardly involved in something good while in the physical world, then they behave rationally and wisely - more wisely in fact - than they did in the physical world because they are released from their ties to a physical body and are therefore free from the things that darken and, so to speak, cloud things over.

On the other hand, if they were involved in something evil in the physical world, then they behave senselessly and crazily - more crazily in fact - than they did in the physical world because they are free and not repressed.

When they lived in the world, they were sane in outward matters because they were using them to fabricate a rational person.

So once these outward matters are taken away from them, their madness is unveiled.

All people who, while living in the physical world, were involved in what is good and who acted out of conscience (those who have acknowledged something divine and loved divine truths, especially those who have applied them to their lives), it seems to all such people that when they are brought into the condition proper to their more inward concerns, it is as though they have been roused from sleep and come awake or have come from darkness into light.

They are thinking on the basis of heaven's light and therefore out of a deeper wisdom.
They are acting on the basis of what is good and therefore out of a deeper affection.

Heaven is flowing into their thoughts and affections with something very deeply blessed and pleasant which they had not known about before.

They are in communication with heaven's angels.
At this time, they also recognize the Lord and are worshipping him out of their real life.

They are involved in their very own life when they are in this stage of their more inward elements as we have just stated.

Furthermore, they are recognizing and worshipping him from their freedom because their freedom is part of their deeper affection.

They are then withdrawing from what is outwardly holy and are entering into that which is inwardly holy where true worship takes place.

No one enters hell until they are engaged in their own evil and engaged in the false things that are evil.
This is because no one there is allowed to have a divided mind - to think and say one thing while intending something else.

All who are evil there will think what is false because of their evil and will speak out of their evil's falsity.

Both their thinking and their speech will come from their intention and therefore out of their own proper desire and its delight and pleasure, in the same way they thought within themselves in the physical world when they were thinking from their more inward affection.

All souls arrive at the type of community where their spirits were in the physical world.

In fact, every person on Earth is bonded to a particular heavenly or hellish community: the evil person to a hellish one and a good person to a heavenly one. A person is guided there step-by-step and eventually gains entrance.

When evil people are involved in the condition of their more inward elements, they are turned in stages toward their own community.

Eventually they are turned straight toward their community before their condition is completed.
Once this condition is completed, they hurl themselves into the hell where there are people like themselves.

[Webmaster Note: This is a very good description of the Void experienced in NDEs.
It is where nothing there exists but our own true inward nature.

The purpose for this realm or "stage" is to reflect and understand who we have become from the physical life just lived.

Seeing ourselves as we really are can be a paradise if love is found there.
The love within us then draws us out of the Void and toward the light.

But if there exists mostly "evil" within us, then we may remain in the Void for some time or return to the Earthbound realm.

This is hell for those who are bound there; but it is not eternal damnation.

And all those in hell/void will eventually come to their senses, have a change of heart and be rescued.

Or some seem to think if you linger too long that is when you are reincarnated.]

A separation of evil souls from good soul occurs in the course of this second stage, whereas during the first stage they were together.

The reason for this is that, as long as people are involved in their outward concerns, it is the same as when they were in the physical world.

Evil people are together with good ones and good people are together with evil ones.

But it becomes different when they are brought into involvement on the basis of their more inward concerns and left to their own nature or intention.


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[TD="class: auto-style4"]The separation of good people from evil people occurs in various ways.
Broadly speaking, it occurs when evil people are taken around to those communities which they were in contact with through their good thoughts and affections during their first stage.

In this way, they are taken to those communities where they were persuaded by their outward appearance that they were not evil.

Normally, they are taken on an extensive circuit where their true self is continuously exposed to good souls. Upon seeing the evil souls, the good souls turn away.

As they turn away, the evil souls also turn away from the good ones and turn toward the region of hellish communities which they truly belong.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style12, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]6. The Third Stage After Death is Preparing For Heaven Through Instruction[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]The third stage of the soul after death is a state of instruction.
This stage is for people who are entering heaven and in the process of becoming angels.

It is not for those people entering hell because they cannot be taught.
As a result, the second stage is also the third stage for those entering hell.

It concludes when they completely turn toward their own desire and therefore turn toward a hellish community where its members are involved in similar desires.

When this has been accomplished, they intend and think from this desire - and since their desire is hellish - they intend nothing but evil and think nothing but falsehood.

They are delighted in their intentions and thoughts because they belong to this hellish desire.

Consequently, they spurn anything that is good and true which they adopted earlier as it was only a useful tool for their desire.

However, good people are brought through the second stage into a third stage - that of preparing for heaven by means of instruction.

No one can be prepared for heaven except by means of insights into what is true and good through instruction. This is because people cannot know what is good and true on a spiritual level, or what is evil and false, unless they are taught.

In the physical world, it's possible to know what is good and true on a civic and moral level and what is called fair and honest.

This is because there are civil laws which teach falsehoods.
There are also social contexts in which a person learns to live by, such as moral laws, all of which deal with what is honest and right.

But what is good and true on a spiritual level is not learned in the physical world, but rather in heaven.

Unless people realize and recognize these facts, they cannot think spiritually.
Without thinking about these matters, they cannot intend them.

If one does not know something, they cannot think about it. If one does not think about it, they cannot intend it. When a person does intend these things, then heaven flows in.

The Lord's life flows into the person's life through heaven.
The divine essence flows into intention and through intention into thought.

Then through thought into life.
Intention and thought are the source of a person's spiritual life.

We can see from these considerations that there is no learning what is good and true on a spiritual level from the physical world; but rather from heaven.

And we see how no one can be prepared for heaven except by being taught.
The Lord brings the good souls who are to be taught to these places after their second has been completed.

However, this does not apply to everyone because some people have been taught in the physical world and have already been prepared for heaven by the Lord.

They are brought into heaven by another route.
Some of these people are brought in immediately after death.

[Webmaster Note: I believe Swedenborg is referring to people who grew spiritually on Earth and therefore bypass theEarthbound realm and the Void and go straight into heaven.]

Once souls have been prepared for heaven though instruction (which takes only a short time amount of time because the souls are taught spiritual concepts which include many elements at the same time), they are dressed in angelic clothes - most of which are white as though made of linen.

Once dressed, they are brought to a path that heads up toward heaven and are committed to angel guardians there.

Then they are accepted by other angels and introduced into communities where there are many forms of happiness.

[Webmaster Note: Swedenborg's description of this third stage agrees with those NDE experiencers who have entered and left the tunnel and enter into the light where they are met by loved ones, religious figures, the Council of Elders, etc.][/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style12, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]7. The Way to Heaven is Not Hard[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]Some people believe it is hard to lead a heaven-bound life (which is also called a spiritual life) because they have heard that a person needs to renounce the world, give up the appetites associated with the flesh and live like spiritual beings.

They believe to lead a heaven-bound life mean nothing short of rejecting what is worldly - especially wealth and prestige - and walk around in constant devout meditation on God, salvation, and eternal life.

They believe they must pass their time in constant prayer and in reading the Word and devotional literature. They believe they must renounce the world and live constantly by the spirit instead of by the flesh.

But an abundance of experience and discussion with angels has enabled me to know that leading a heaven-bound life is completely different from this.

In fact, people who renounce the world and live by the spirit in this fashion build up a mournful life for themselves - one that is not receptive of heavenly joy.

This is because everyone's life on Earth stays with them when they enter the spiritual realm.

On the contrary, if people are to accept a life in heaven, they must by all means live in the physical world and become involved in its functions and dealings.

Then through a moral and civic life they will receive a spiritual life.
This is the only way a spiritual life can be formed in people and their spirit be prepared for heaven.

Living an inward life and not an outward life at the same time is like living in a house with no foundation.
It gradually settles, or develops cracks and gaps, or totters until it collapses.

If we examine a person's life with rational acuity, we discover it to be threefold: there is a spiritual life, a moral life, and a civic life.

These lives distinct from each other.
There are people who live a civic life but not a moral or a spiritual one.
Then there are people who live both a civic life and a moral life and a spiritual as well.
These are the ones who are leading heaven's life - the others are leading the world's life separated from heaven's life.

The first conclusion to be drawn from this is that a spiritual life is not separated from a natural one, or from the world's life.

Rather, they are bonded together like a soul with its body.
If they become separated, it is as previously just mentioned, like living in a house without a foundation.

The considerations about to be presented will make it possible to see that it is not as hard to lead a heaven-bound life as some people believe it is.

Who can't live a civic and moral life?
Everyone is introduced to it from the cradle on and is acquainted with it from his life in the world.
Everyone, good or bad, leads it as well, for who does not want to be called honest and fair?

Almost everyone practices honesty and fairness in outward matters, even to the point of seeming honest and fair at heart, or as though they were behaving out of real honesty and fairness.

Spiritual people need to live the same way which they can do just as easily as natural people.
The only difference is that spiritual people believe in what is divine and behave honestly and fairly - not just because it is in keeping with civil and moral laws, but because it is in keeping with divine laws.

People who are thinking about divine matters while they are active are in touch with the angels of heaven.
To the extent that they are doing this, they are joined to them and in this way their inner person is opened, which seen in its own right, is the spiritual person.

When people are like this, they are adopted and led by the Lord without realizing it. Then anything honest and fair that they do as part of their moral and civic life is done from a spiritual source. Doing something honest and fair from a spiritual source is doing it out of what is genuinely honest and fair, or doing it from the heart.

The laws of a spiritual life, the laws of a civic life, and the laws of moral life are handed down to us in the precepts of the Ten Commandments.

The laws of a spiritual life are found first.
Then the laws of civic life are found next.
Finally, the laws of moral life are found last.

People who are simply natural, live by these precepts in the same way spiritual people do - in outward form. They worship the divine in similar fashion, go to church, listen to sermons, put on a pious face, do not kill, commit adultery, steal or bear false witness, and do not cheat their fellows out of their possessions.

But the natural person does this simply for themselves and for the world, or for appearances.

As for people who have recognized at heart what is divine, who have focused on divine laws in the deeds of their lives, and have lived by the precepts of the Ten Commandments, things are different for them.

When they are led into their inward aspects, it is like coming from darkness into light, from ignorance into wisdom, and from a mournful life into a blessed one.

This is because they are involved in what is divine, and therefore in heaven.

We can now see that it is not as hard to lead a heaven-bound life as many people think.
Whenever something gets in the way which people know is dishonest and unfair, something their spirit moves toward, it is simply a matter of thinking they should not do it because it is against the divine precepts.

If people get used to doing this - and by getting used to it gain a certain disposition - then little by little they are joined to heaven.

As this takes place, the higher reaches of their mind are opened.
As their minds are opened, they see what things are dishonest and unfair.

When they see what is dishonest and unfair, they can break away from them.
No evil can be broken away from until after it is seen.

This is a stage where people can enter due to their freedom.
And who cannot think this way due to their freedom? Once this has begun, the Lord works out all good things for them and arranges things so they not only see evil elements but dislike them and eventually turn away from them.

This is the meaning of the Lord's words, "My yoke is easy, and my burden light."

A heaven-bound life is not a life withdrawn from the world but a life involved in the world.
A life of piety without a life of love (which occurs only in this world) does not lead to heaven.

Rather, it is a life of love, a life of behaving honestly and fairly in every task, every transaction, every work, and from a more inward source which leads to a heavenly one.

This source is present in life when a person behaves honestly and fairly because it is in keeping with divine laws. This life is not hard.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style12, bgcolor: #F4F4FF"]8. A Chart Representing Heaven and Hell According to Emanuel Swedenborg[/TD]
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View an extraordinary chart showing a representation of the heavenly and hellish realms as described by Emanuel Swedenborg.[/TD]
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[TD="class: auto-style4"]"God listens not to your words [in prayer] save when he utters them through your lips." - Kahlil Gibran

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[Skarekrow]

@Skarekrow

Well everything is connected so yes, you're going to accomplish by doing something - anything at all. That's a fact of existence and it works all the time, not only when it is convenient. People seem to forget that and that is one aspect which tends to throw up red flags and cause me to be suspicious.

Everything you do has a spiritual impact for good or ill because it's an actual thing and not for pretend goodfeels.

I absolutely agree…I am only stating that striving to do good in a conscious manner does not negate the fact that you are doing something good.
That’s all.