If evolution is the drivng force behind the diversity of life on earth, why not conjecture that evolution is also a major force in driving the development of spirit planes?

SWEDENBORG: EVOLUTI0N AND CORRESPONDENCE

ES discovers that in both the spiritual and natural worlds each person, animal, plant, and mineral is encompassed by its spiritual replica, an energy sphere which continually emanates from it.  ""Thus the natural world derives from the spiritual, and the spiritual from the Divine (DLW 283)."  This insight is independently confirmed by channeled material from deceased Oxford professor F. W. Myers.  Myers confirms the truth of the widely espoused "as above, so below" principle.  Myers reveals that dinosaurs existed in the spirit world before they became physical and that their prior existence as spirits was essential to their emergence on Earth.    If ES  had known about dinosaurs, he would no doubt agree.  He reports: 

"This whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world--the natural not just in general but in detail.   So whatever arises in the natural world is called `something that corresponds'.  It must be realized that the natural world arises  from and is sustained in beng by the spiritual world exactly the way an effect relates to an efficient cause (HH 89)."

"Now because every single thing remains in being from the Divine,...and every single thing from that source is inevitably a representative of the real thing by means of which it has come into being, the whole visible universe is therefore nothing else than a theatre that is representative of the Lord's kingdom.  And this in turn is a theatre representative of the Lord Himself (AC 483)," 

So ES does not simply believe that God spoke and "Poof!" life appeared.  For ES, Nature provides a mechanism whereby the Lord's life reaches down to ultimates [evolved states] and returns to Himself through higher and higher "uses" (DLW 180, 316).  Both evolution and some form of reincarnation are at least consistent with this scheme of things. 

ES reveres biblical truth but insists that the Genesis creation story cannot be taken literally.  He precedes Darwin by almost a century and inevitably makes mistakes in his speculations about the development of life forms.  But he anticipates the general drift of modern evolutionary theory.  He recognizes the tiny lichen on a rock as a  developmental prelude to emerging forests.  He believes that each order of plants gives birth to a corresponding order of animals (WLG 30).  He traces the modern human species back to a primordial prehuman stage (SD 3390). 

In my view, he anticipates and corrects a flaw in the evolutionary principle of natural selection.  Natural selection assumes that chance variations create genetic advantages that improve the chances of survival.  ES accepts the role of randomness in creation, but insists that the Lord controls chance or probabiliity distributions (AC 5508).  His anticipation of evolutionary theory a century before Darwin is yet another confirmation of the validity of his gift of astral projection.

In my next planned post, I will discuss how his views on the origin and development of life forms find confirmation in modern scientific experiments.

Don

EXPERIMENTS THAT SEEM TO VERIFY SWEDENBORG'S INSIGHTS INTO ENERGY SPHERES:

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake argues that the DNA molecule cannot contain all the information essential to the organism's formation; rather, DNA is a finely tuned receptor which taps into the information contained in the "morphogenetic field" of that organism, a field that seems to be the functional equivalent of ES's energy spheres flowing out from each organism.  Sheldrake contends that the form, development, and behavior of living organisms are shaped and maintained by this field together with genetic inheritance.  In a sense, these fields function like a kind of species memory through which the newly acquired characteristics of prior generations can be passed on to future ones.  The key to species evolution is this: the condition of an organism's systems is constantly updated in these fields.

Sheldrake put his theory to the test in an experiment he conducted on live TV.  Millions of BBC viewers were taught to see hidden images in puzzle pictures.  Before the program aired, a base line was established by observing how well people could distinguish the hidden image.  After the program, people from all over the world who could not have seen or heard the program were again asked to find the image.  The results indicated significant improvement in the worldwide ability of non-viewers to distinguish the image.

Sheldrake was building on the findings of animal research.  (1) At Harvard experiments on rats found that children of rats mastered a maze much faster (tenfold) than their parents, even though the offspring were not born at the time their parents were tested.  This result was replicated in both Scotland and Australia and the rats' performance dramatically improved from place to place even though there was no physical contact among the geographically separated rats. 

(2) In pre-WW2 Europe, milk was home-delivered in cartons.  A bird species (bluetits) suddenly began to land on top of the cartons, remove the cover, and drink the cream.  Some of the birds were even found drowned inside the cartions!  Bluetits have a range of 4-5 miles.  Yet this practice spread for a hundred miles within a year.  The same phenomenon occurred in Scandanavia and Holland.  Milk delivery ceased during the German occupation of Europe during WW2.  Bluetits only have a 2-3 year life expectancy; so all the avian cream drinkers died off.  But after the war, bluetits resumed their cream drinking and this habit spread just as before WW2.

(3) Fontana (p. 22-23) discusses a study in which measurements were taken of electrodermal reactions on the skin of receivers while they were subjected to a series of both arousing and calming thoughts from a sender in another room.  The sender would visualize the receivers in a very fearful situation or as relaxing on a sunlit beach.  The receivers had no idea which type of thoughts were being sent.  Thus the experiments show that even when receivers have no conscious awareness of whether they are receiving arousing or calming thoughts, the unconscious or morphogenetic field seems to be receiving the information and registering it in physiological reactions.


Sheldrake's research is not widely considered mainstream science.  But it has the virtue of falsifiability, at least in principle through more and better testing; and it seems to imply that one reason why we are stymied in our quest for answers to questions that genuine encounters with spirit realms might be expected to provide is that afterlife skills and programs may not yet have evolved to the degree needed.  Two issues come to mind in this respect: (1) Why are new arrivees in the spirit world not routinely allowed to visit and reassure the loved ones they left behind?  One answer might be a lack of spiritual and psychic development during earth life and a lack of vibrational harmony between contactee and contactor.  But might not the potential for such vibrational compatability be subject to evolutionary forces in both this life and the next?   

Another answer might be a lack of organized astral training programs to alert new arrivees to this glorious possibllity.  In other words, the group mindset and astral resources needed for such a program may not yet have evolved to the point of efficent implementation.  Evolutionary forces might be needed to handle the problem of memory dormancy of new arrivees.  Both ES and Robert Bruce discuss this issue encountered during their astral adventures. 

These qusetions trigger another question: what is the astral equivalent of the earthly evolutionary principles of natural selection and genetic mutation?   Are astral bodies subject to mutations in their energetic make-up?  Is the creation of new souls shaped by a natural selection process?  Earthly evolution favors the survival of the fittest.  Is fitness for PUL a factor in a selection process for the creation of new souls?   If astral life as a unified whole reflects a God of PUL, might not astral evolution be slowly directed to mirror PUL as an increasingly manifested principle for the organization and unity of consciuosness?   Such issues might force us to abandon cherished notions of ultimate reality as beyond time or timeless.

Don

Don-

About the Harvard experiment re. mice, see my thread titled "Can fear be genetically transmitted."

And if that's true, why limit it to just fear?  New born mice knowing how to navigate a maze for instance.

Per Sheldrake, maybe it's beyond DNA transmission as well, since the field might be affected in non-physical ways also.

Your theory on evolution on both sides of the veil is intriguing.  It makes me wonder about life way back in the "cave man" days.  Life was short and brutal and largely isolated.  Language was yet to evolve.  Did people experience manifestations of dead relatives as some of us do today?

So we have to wonder what the afterlife was like at that time....of course if time does not exist in that dimension, is that really a question that has any relevance?  Earthly evolution obviously requires sequential time, but is that also the case in the afterlife?

r

Don:

Ah, you brought up the channeled material F.W.H. Myers. I'm usually not into channeled material, but the information Geraldine Cummins received from F.W.H. Myers seems to be accurate. Like Swedenborg, Myers states that reincarnation doesn't exist in the way many people believe it does.

People might want to check out "Thirty years among the dead" by Carl Wickland and read the chapter about Theosophy (the book is available for free on the internet as a PDF file). As you suggested in the past, it could be that the children Ian Stevenson investigated didn't experience past life memories. Rather, they were influenced by the memories of Earthbound spirits that attached to them. The carried over birthmark factor might contradict this in some way. 

Here's what Frederic Myers communicated to Geraldine cummins (from "The Road to Immortality"). Sorry to vere from the subject of this thread, but when both Swedenborg and Myers were named, I felt motivated to do so.

"THE group-soul is one and yet many. The informing spirit makes these souls one. I think I have explained to you before, that as there are certain centers in the brain, so in psychic life there are a number of souls all bound together by one spirit, depending for their nourishment on that spirit.

When I was on earth I belonged to a group-soul, but its branches and the spirit--which might be compared to the roots--were in the invisible. Now, if you would understand psychic evolution, this group-soul must be studied and understood. For instance, it explains many of the difficulties that people will assure you can be removed only by the doctrine of reincarnation. You may think my statement frivolous, but the fact that we do appear on earth to be paying for the sins of another life is, in a certain sense, true. It was our life, and yet not our life. In other words, a soul belonging to the group of which I am a part lived that previous life which built up for me the framework of my earthly life, lived it before I had passed through the gates of birth.

In this invisible world there is infinite variety of conditions. I can only speak of what I know. I do not claim to be infallible. Take the following as the axiom I would lay down for you.

Many Soul-men do not seek another earth life, but their spirit manifests itself many times on earth and it is the bond which holds together a group of souls, who, in the ascending scale of psychic evolution, act and react upon one another. So, when I talk of my spiritual forbears I do not speak of my physical ancestors, I speak of those soul-ancestors who are bound to me by one spirit. There may be contained within that spirit twenty souls, a hundred souls, a thousand souls. The number varies. It is different for each man. But what the Buddhists would call the karma I had brought with me from a previous life is, very frequently, not that of my life, but of the life of a soul that preceded me by many years on earth and left for me the pattern which made my life. I, too, wove a pattern for another of my group during my earthly career. We are all of us distinct, though we are influenced by others of our community on the various planes of being.

When your Buddhist speaks of the cycle of births, of man's continual return to earth, he utters but a half-truth. And often half a truth is more inaccurate than an entire misstatement. I shall not live again on earth, but a new soul, one who will join our group, will shortly enter into the pattern or karma I have woven for him on earth. No doubt "karma" is a word I use incorrectly here. For it is something more and something less than karma that he inherits. I am, therefore, a kingdom, and yet I am but a unit in that kingdom.

You may say to me that, for the Soul-man, one earth life is not enough. But, as we evolve here, we enter into those memories and experiences of other lives that are to be found in the existence of the souls that preceded us, and are of our group.

I do not say that this theory, which I offer you, can be laid down as a general rule. But undoubtedly it is true in so far as it is what I have learned and experienced.

Now, this speculation--as you would probably call it--is interesting when applied to genius. The souls who have preceded us on earth naturally stamp us mentally and morally. If a certain type of psyche is continually being evolved in the one group, you will find that eventually that type, if it be musical, will have a musical genius as its representative on earth. It will harvest all the tendencies in those vanished lives, and it will then have the amazing unconscious knowledge that is the property of genius.

Here, in the After-death, we become more and more aware of this group-soul as we make progress. Eventually we enter into it and share the experiences of our brethren. You must understand, therefore, that exist-ence for my soul-as separate and apart from my individual ego--is dual. I lived two lives, one in the world of form, and one subjective, in the community of which I am a member.

Men and women may not care to accept these statements of mine. They long either for an indestructible in-dividuality in the Hereafter or for a kind of spiritual swoon in the life of God. You will perceive in my anal-ysis of the group-soul that we are individuals and members of one whole. And when you come to the Fourth, and more particularly to the Fifth stage, you will realize how fine and beautiful is this brotherhood within the one being; how it deepens and intensifies existence; how it destroys the cold selfishness so necessary to an earth life, where one living creature must continually destroy another's manifestation in order to maintain its physical life."

It seems to me, that on earth the evolutionary driving force appears to be survival, proliferation and procreation.  In the spiritual plane, there is no physical body, and while there may be correspondences, as ES states, it is not clear to me that the same driving force applies. 

The main driving force in the spiritual plane appears to be love, and one's evolution or de-evolution appears to be governed by the amount of love we allow to flow through us or deliberately block with intent/ego/will.  Now could love correspond in some way to the earthly forces of natural selection? Perhaps expression of the force of creation (love) is it's own imperative.  Since love is the primal force (the initial mover of all things), perhaps in the physical world, evolution corresponds to it, by creating better and more numerous ways for expressing spirit (love) in the physical world.

M

Hi Don,

Great to see you posting again!  Very interesting subject as well.

Ultimately, I think it is consciousness that is evolving and yes, it seems reasonable to speculate that the spiritual realms are evolving as well.  For example, consider ELS as a realm of consciousness similar to Sheldrake's "morphic fields" in which we all are not only connected, but participating in its evolution.

Isn't it this field of consciousness, of which each of us is a part of, that creates this realm?  If so, it seems reasonable to speculate that the realm that receives us when we die is made up of consciousness that pertains to that realm and I would think the consciousness within it would be evolving just as the consciousness of ELS is evolving.

It does seem plausible that while we are able to slip from the realm we're occupying to a different realm by following a stream of consciousness, how coherent one can be within the realm one is visiting does seem to rely on how spiritually developed/evolved one is and how much is understood and how much experience one has in regards to the nature of the realm one visits.

Your mention of the spiritual creating the physical reminds me of an experiment done years ago where several of us were able to view the aura of a future leaf where the leaf grew into the space that the aura created.  Also years ago when I belonged to a laying hands healing group, there were times when I and others could see objects such as organs, vessels, tumors, etc. in the aura of a client.  In the case of disease, such as a tumor, it would appear that this was visible in the aura long before diagnosed in the physical body.

I, too, have found Sheldrake's work interesting.  Another experiment he participated in showed that animals are able to discern when their owner is about to arrive home.  There's a short video of the great lengths they went to with a dog on his website if anyone's interested.

Happy New Year!

Kathy

How does the constant growth of the earthly population relate to the spiritual realm? If we are all members of groups of souls attached to a spirit (or disk, or whatever), why are the numbers of physical manifestations growing? The law of conservation of matter would suggest that more spirits are "incarnating" over time. Why?

3 explanations are commonly invoked to explain past life recall during phasing and NDEs: (1) linear  reincarnation; (2) parallel incarnations; (3) unwitting soul mergers.
(1) is refuted by Ian Stevenson's own cases, in which the alleged prior personality was living at the time of the child's birth.  Once it is establsiehd that in unwtting soul mergers, the merging spirit's memories merge with one's own, option (3) emerges as by far the most plausible explanation of alleged past life recall.  In this respect, ES's research strikes me as decisive.

But several other arguments stick a fork in the parallel incarnation theory. (1) The evidence from NDEs and ADCs that the afterlife launches our future postmortem career with challenges and roles for which this life is a preparation; (2) the fact that the parallel incarnations alleged by Robert Monroe can't be verified through hypnotic regression.  Souls from the same Disk should surely be able to recall the same lives in considerable detail.  (3) The very notion of parallel lives presumes a logically incoherent notion of astral timelessness.  ES's  research demonstrates that time is experienced differently in the astral realm, not that it ceases to exist.  Thus, the perception of the time it takes to travel a familiar astral route to visit someone varies, depending on how receptive the visited soul is, not on how far away that soul is.  To be logically coherent, all experience depends on sequence of moments, and that sequencing by definition implies time.

If Rupert Sheldrake is right about each species having a morphogentic field that registers insights from each member of the species and if species preexist in the etheric before they manifest on earth, then memories of distinct deceased souls might have insights that inform and benefit lives of the same species here on earth.  If ao, parallel incarnations of a common identity would have nothing to do with this process. 

Don

Berserk2 wrote on Dec 14^th, 2013 at 12:08am:

If evolution is the driving force behind the diversity of life on earth, why not conjecture that evolution is also a major force in driving the development of spirit planes? SWEDENBORG: EVOLUTI0N AND CORRESPONDENCE ES discovers that in both the spiritual and natural worlds each person, animal, plant, and mineral is encompassed by its spiritual replica, an energy sphere which continually emanates from it.  ""Thus the natural world derives from the spiritual, and the spiritual from the Divine (DLW 283)."  This insight is independently confirmed by channeled material from deceased Oxford professor F. W. Myers.  Myers confirms the truth of the widely espoused "as above, so below" principle.  Myers reveals that dinosaurs existed in the spirit world before they became physical and that their prior existence as spirits was essential to their emergence on Earth.    If ES  had known about dinosaurs, he would no doubt agree.  He reports:  "This whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world--the natural not just in general but in detail.   So whatever arises in the natural world is called `something that corresponds'.  It must be realized that the natural world arises  from and is sustained in being by the spiritual world exactly the way an effect relates to an efficient cause (HH 89)." "Now because every single thing remains in being from the Divine,...and every single thing from that source is inevitably a representative of the real thing by means of which it has come into being, the whole visible universe is therefore nothing else than a theater that is representative of the Lord's kingdom.  And this in turn is a theater representative of the Lord Himself (AC 483),"  So ES does not simply believe that God spoke and "Poof!" life appeared.  For ES, Nature provides a mechanism whereby the Lord's life reaches down to ultimates [evolved states] and returns to Himself through higher and higher "uses" (DLW 180, 316).  Both evolution and some form of reincarnation are at least consistent with this scheme of things.  ES reveres biblical truth but insists that the Genesis creation story cannot be taken literally.  He precedes Darwin by almost a century and inevitably makes mistakes in his speculations about the development of life forms.  But he anticipates the general drift of modern evolutionary theory.  He recognizes the tiny lichen on a rock as a  developmental prelude to emerging forests.  He believes that each order of plants gives birth to a corresponding order of animals (WLG 30).  He traces the modern human species back to a primordial prehuman stage (SD 3390).  In my view, he anticipates and corrects a flaw in the evolutionary principle of natural selection.  Natural selection assumes that chance variations create genetic advantages that improve the chances of survival.  ES accepts the role of randomness in creation, but insists that the Lord controls chance or probability distributions (AC 5508).  His anticipation of evolutionary theory a century before Darwin is yet another confirmation of the validity of his gift of astral projection. In my next planned post, I will discuss how his views on the origin and development of life forms find confirmation in modern scientific experiments. Don

An excellent post from Tom of Montalk. Blessings and Love Carl

On the Historicity of Jesus

11/16/2011
↳ matrix

This Research Note is for those who need clarification regarding my position on the historical existence of Jesus Christ, since I mention Christ quite a bit in my Gnosis articles.

Did Jesus actually exist? Common answers include:

    A) Yes, he was everything the Bible says he was. Jesus was God’s only begotten Son, whom the Lord sent to die for our sins.

    B) Yes, but he was just an ordinary man, at most the leader of a Jewish rebellion against Roman authorities.

    C) No, Jesus was a complete fabrication assembled from various pagan sun-god myths of the time.

The first is based solely on the word of the Bible and associated texts. It’s my observation that those who believe the Bible or any religious text is 100% the “Word of God” are reasoning from programmed and unquestioned root assumptions and flawed logic. But if that gives them moral strength in life, then good for them.

The second “historical” or “factual” interpretation ignores all the occult, metaphysical, and spiritual dimensions of the Christ phenomenon that indicate there is indeed something to it. This is a popular view held by atheists and secular historians who have an overly narrow definition of what constitutes proof. The actual scholarly research on the historicity of Jesus is interesting and has been the subject of many books, but it’s very limited and doesn’t do enough sleuthing into the metaphysical to get the bigger picture.

And the third fails to separate the historical and occult “signal” from the religious and political “noise” when it comes to the institutionalized portrayal of the character we know as Jesus Christ. Typically this view is held by those who hold a grudge against organized Christianity for its manipulative, spiritually oppressive nature. That includes those who have been clued into the ritualistic pagan aspects of Christianity, as showcased by Zeitgeist, Acharyah S., David Icke, and others. I agree with their observations overall, but it seems they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Instead of doing the usual academic routine (discussing Tacitus, Suetonius, etc…) here I will give a more holistic, abductive, nonlinear line of reasoning. My view on the matter is as follows.

It’s a lot easier to hijack something than to fabricate it. Instead of inventing a totally non-existent character of Jesus Christ and selling that product to the masses, it makes more sense that the authorities would consolidate already existing paradigms into a single system. The purpose of such a system would be to portray these authorities as divinely sanctioned.

Assimilated paradigms included Mithraism, Greek Neo-Platonism, and Judaism. For instance, the solar/zodiacal elements in Christianity came from Mithraism and related pagan systems. But these are just auxiliary additions, not the core nucleus of Christianity. The nucleus is the original Christian system, which existed alongside the other elements prior to their combined assimilation into an organized religion.

All of these elements were then glued together by the authors of the New Testament, who added various rationalizations, logical sleights of hand, fabricated backstory, and gaudy superstitious elements to create a belief system that would appeal to the widest audience. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were variations of the same story further customized for Greek, Jewish, and Roman audiences.

Thus the New Testament is a patchwork of truth and lies. The original pre-assimilation Christianity is buried in there somewhere. How can it be found? By stripping away the rationalizations, sleights of hand, superstitious miracles, pagan symbolism, etc… This is done the same way one approaches any potential source of disinformation; you look for logical fallacies and attempts at persuasion that would play into a negative agenda. When those are removed, only the following remain:

    The wisdom-teachings of Jesus, including sayings and parables. These do not benefit any human authority, their spiritual worth is self-evident, and they correlate with metaphysical/occult principles.

    The Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus gave Buddhist-like alternatives to the ignorant form of morality and justice espoused in the Old Testament. The spiritual truth of these is also self-evident, or at least testable and observable in life.

    Stories of Jesus healing people and casting out demons. These “miracles” are entirely performable by anyone today with the proper knowledge. Healing and negative entity removal are common practices. Contrast this with walking on water, turning water into wine, or bread into fish, which are cheap tricks inserted by the New Testament authors to wow the superstitious.

Another reason why not everything in the New Testament is fabricated, is that there are portions that seem to be reported as given, without commentary, and with an unstated sense of befuddlement, as if the New Testament authors themselves didn’t know what to make of it and simply passed it along. For instance, Jesus healing a blind man by mixing spit with mud and putting it on his eyes. Such an act possesses an internal logic that escaped the authors, but is logical to anyone who understands etheric energy and its role in healing. There are elements in both the Old and New Testament that are too obtuse, mysterious, or inexplicable to the audience to serve a persuasive function. Fabricators write to ensnare the widest audience, meaning everything they write is done with design, purpose, and intent, so as to be loud and clear for the intended target. Obtuse descriptions go against that principle, indicating they are externally sourced, and the authors were probably just passing along eyewitness testimony, oral tradition, or folklore.

Similarly, since organized Christianity was engineered to control the masses, if it were entirely fabricated it would make no sense that there should be elements in the New Testament that undermine or fail to substantiate such control. That these elements exist, and are in conflict with other elements, suggests the authors were forced to include them. That can only be because they were attempting to hijack an already existing burgeoning movement whose contents they could not suppress and instead had to absorb.

And as it turns out, the only elements in the New Testament that subvert or fail to validate the Church/State are the aforementioned sayings and parables of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, and the healing/exorcism examples, which scholars have determined are the oldest and thus most original parts of the New Testament. Everything else, including Jesus being born of a virgin, dying for our sins, being the only begotten son of God, the Twelve Apostles and betrayal by Judas, perhaps even the story of crucifixion and resurrection, etc… serve the negative agenda in some way, or else are derivations of Mithraic/Pagan/Occult symbolism added on after the fact.

It’s unfortunate that what defines the modern fundamentalist Christian mindset is belief in precisely these artificial, deviatory, ultimately un-Christian elements, often to the ignorance of the true portions. Example: street corner fundamentalists who push John 3:16 but ignore John 14:12.

And it’s equally unfortunate that those who rightly observe that the modern version of Jesus Christ is a hoax end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater and say that no Jesus of any type ever existed. If that were true, then where exactly did those sayings, parables, teachings, and healing accounts come from? They didn’t come from the Church/State, as they were already circulating before being assimilated and don’t serve the Church/State in any way. And they weren’t pure inventions of folklore either since folklore merely embellishes history; as much as Santa Claus is made up, he is based on a real Saint Nicholas, though one who was very different from the Santa we know today. Whether Jesus Christ or Santa Claus, something with a historical basis passed over into oral tradition and folklore.

What can be said from all the above, is that there once existed a mystic, a sage, a spiritual rebel, who performed healings, taught a certain system of spirituality, and gave prophetic knowledge about the origins and fate of the world. He left behind a legacy that propagated through folklore and secret oral transmission. A cult grew up around this figure and his legacy began to snowball. Within a half century it was co-opted into serving as the nucleus of an engineered religion, and the rest is history.

Therefore we must turn to the sayings, teachings, and parables that predate the writing of the New Testament. Scholars have given these a name: the “Q” source (Q for Quelle, German word for “source”, thus a generic title) which is a hypothesized document containing the original sayings of Jesus. Of course it’s ridiculous to think it had to be a document since it could just as well have been a secret oral tradition. In any case, the closest thing we have to the “Q” source is the Gospel of Thomas, which is a collection of the purported sayings of Jesus. There is some dispute over when it was written. Even if written later, the content indicates it is a setting down of an older oral tradition.

Over 80% of the Gospel of Thomas can be found distributed throughout the New Testament, but padded and deviated with the aforementioned artifices. The Gospel of Thomas contains all the meat and none of the dressing found in the New Testament. It is fundamentally subversive to the religious power structure, and it is of Gnostic disposition, including the 80% that are in the Bible. Thus the New Testament contains a Gnostic nucleus. The rest contains a mix of genuine wisdom from other sources and corruption with malicious intent.

The historical context and timing of these teachings, as well as their spiritual content and direction, says something about the role of the original Jesus Christ. It’s very similar to the role of other avatars such as Gautama Buddha. As I proposed in my Gnosis series, Jesus was an advanced soul who incarnated as a human in order to become a living vessel for a higher divine intelligence. There is a difference between Jesus the man and Christ the higher consciousness that became active in him, and can become active in us. The end goal of his legacy was for each of us to do likewise, and that is the basis of Gnostic belief. It was his intent that we follow in his example and succeed him, whereas the corrupted version of Christianity demands we remain in his shadow on our knees.

The Gnostics, more than any other sect in history, have suffered the greatest and harshest persecution by the Church. It is both ironic and expected that those who were closest to the original Christian teachings would become the greatest targets of those who hijacked the teachings. The greatest threat to any simulacrum is the original.

Two well written posts, Don.
(until your last paragraph where you started using that daft acronym. What does PUL mean again? Proctological Ultrasonic Lithotripsy? um, oh yes, I remember now, its Moen site talk for love.)

Here are some points that I thought might be worth thinking about:

♦ A person's astral body or immediately-after-death-body is their personality body (their mental-emotional body) and includes at its base the foundation layer of values/treasures/beliefs.
♦ Their astral body naturally gets pulled to the plane that resonates sympathetically with it.
♦ As the astral planes are a creation resulting from and representing people's beliefs/values/perceived priorities, the astral planes have changed immensely since Swedenborg's time.
♦ Christian reincarnation rate has been very low and slow compared to people evolving in other races/cultures/religions because the nature of forgiveness (the base/central virtue taught in Christianity) dissolves interpersonal entanglements/bonds which draw people together and into repeated incarnations. Compare world birth rates and rates of repetitive patterns of individual/social cycles.
♦ Those Christians who "get" the teaching and apply it well in life, have less powerful entanglements to attend to and are more free to incarnate or not, and when they do, are more free to choose their life pursuits.   
♦ Most Christians did not / do not prepare to reincarnate from their astral plane back to re-birth because it is incompatible with their belief, so they well "black out" first. And then treat each life as a one off, with only a two option result - hell or heaven, which (together with forgiveness dissolving interpersonal bonds) accelerated western progress immensely.   
♦ If Swedenborg was as accomplished at leaving his body and second sight as he seems to have been, then he was describing not only the astral planes surrounding the Earth and how they were at that time, but also venturing beyond them to higher dimensions, I mean like the universe's equivalent of Earth's astral planes, and higher further than that. These are dimensions and heights that most mystic/occult readers and even most contemporary astral projectors are not aware of or comprehensive of. Swedenborg might have been describing scenes, laws and universal/cosmological mechanisms that are way beyond the comprehension and understanding of most of his readers.
♦ The nature of Christianity is such that during its initial accelerating stage (the first 2000 years) Christians have little chance of remembering past their past lives. Only now are they/we beginning to do so, due to the religion settling into cruising speed.
♦ Swedenborg - assuming his abilities and understandings were true - would have understood the workings of the Christian religion well enough to not disrupt it, and would have reported on its behind the scenes workings according to how it was working and meant to be working and moving towards at that time. He certainly would not have thrown a spanner in the works and risked slowing it down before time by introducing the reincarnation concept.
♦ And today, as much as in Swedenborg's day, most people's seeming past life recollections may well be interference from others, and from their own fanciful thinking, and both.  

crossbow

It seems to me that the most important word in Pure Unconditional Love (PUL) is Unconditional. It is easy to love something or someone if they look beautiful or they agree with us or even do what we want them to do. But unconditional love is the kind of love demonstrated by the forgiveness of a grieving mother for her son's killers or a man empathising with his brutal oppressors. It is the love which says whoever you are, whatever you have done you are worthy of love too (including demons !). NDEers seem to experience this - whatever the apparent madness and brutality of the world its foundation is love. The one thing PUL is not is wishy-washy or flaky, on the contrary it is the most inspiring and evolved force there is.

I think that there are likely to be evolutionary forces involved in spiritual development, but then, of course there is the intent and free will of the individual consciousness to consider.  So, while over time in the physical world, the course of evloution is easy to map and inevitable, we can see some hold outs; animals which haven't changed much or evolved over millions of years of earth time (such as the modern alligator).  In spirit, it is likely the same.  So if love is the force behind spiritual evolution, people will progress only as rapidly as they allow their mind, intention and spirit to be attuned to this force (love).  Some may progress more rapidly and others may stay, willingly shunning love and evolution for a long time.  Yet if the law is "as above, so below," then one could imagine that even the darkest of spirits would evolve in their own way and time. 

As to PUL, it is a force, a state of being of acceptance, grace and gratitude - not a gooey feeling on Valentine's day.  It has little to do with reciprocation (a tough concept).  One of the best quotes I have seen about love came from a guru I know nothing of named Osho: 
"If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.”

M

DocM,


Quote:

So, while over time in the physical world, the course of evloution is easy to map and inevitable, we can see some hold outs; animals which haven't changed much or evolved over millions of years of earth time (such as the modern alligator).  In spirit, it is likely the same.

..and chances are if encountering an alligator, better to walk away than trying to pick the reptilian flower, no matter how lovely the teeth might shine in the sun. Let it be. Just like what the alligator may choose to do when encountering a cat, go back to the river and have a nap instead, with the eyes open.


Quote:

As to PUL, it is a force, a state of being of acceptance, grace and gratitude - not a gooey feeling on Valentine's day.  It has little to do with reciprocation (a tough concept).

If language dubs the unforgiven, the bigger fish can be appreciated later, as there is much more to forgive until then. A tough concept as well - one might not be ready for one's little boy getting raped, later found hanging in his room and absolutely forgiving that. That isn't a graceful nor a gooey example, but I forgive anyone reading this for thinking that is offensive. Hope you can forgive me too, but I'm likely to do it again. But it could be worse. One doesn't just simply walk into Mordor.

Some bloody good posts above, Matt, Don, Bob.

Some points I would contribute:

As above, so below; as within so without. It is a fractal universe, and everything we see is representative, is an imprint, is a tip, is an aspect of greater multidimensional realities. 
Love is the draw of God. That makes love a force of evolution.
As all creation is of and in the mind of God, so love is of and from the heart of God, and is God's wish for his creation, his heartfelt wish that life proceed with ease, with minimum suffering towards its destiny. 
But freewill is free choice, free intellect and free direction, and can chose to go in any direction for any reason of tis own, including away from God. This enables freewill to learn and grow unlimitedly by being and becoming conscious knowledge itself.
And love is for freewill, to light and guide and ease the way, but not to coerce or force the way.
And God's love is for freewill, and love will last as long as freewill takes to learn, and to return to where it came.
Love is light and warmth too.
Freewill may venture anywhere, toward or away from God, upward, downward, inward, outward, it may evolve by unfolding its own heart, or may involve like an ectotherm, the coldblooded ones who gain heat from their environment and do not generate it themselves. 

Love in man is a heartfelt wish for others that they may learn and grow with a minimum of suffering. Love does not control, it only wishes well.
Love flows through men's and women's hearts when the wish within our heart is atuned with the wish of God's heart. Then the love we feel and send to others is His love.
Helpfulness is what we do in light of love. 
Forgiveness is love regardless; it is that part of love we can direct to things distasteful; it is that part of love that can be directed in any direction, and is that part of love that gives us no excuse to not love anyone and everyone in spite of everything.

Love is not like. Love and like are irrespective of each other. As hate and dislike are irrespective of each other. Like and dislike have nothing to do with love or hate. They are different mediums on different planes and different scales.
When that is realised, then one does not have to proclaim one's love to be "unconditional".

One can love whom one dislikes. One does not have to like to love.
And if one comprehends and practices love, then one does not hate whom one dislikes.
Hate is the desire to hurt or see hurt of another.
But those who cannot comprehend love; those for whom love is just an extension of like; and hate is just an extension of dislike, being of the same spectrum; they cannot dislike without hating, for their love and their hate are just further reaches at the ends of the same stick as their like and dislike. Their love is just a stronger grade of like; their dislike is just a lesser grade of hate. 
They cannot see the difference between disliking and hating someone, except by grade, they cannot comprehend that someone (like me) can dislike someone or a group and its culture, and can criticise them, without ever wanting to hurt them or see hurt or harm come to them, or never want to oppress them, and can and does love them, and would also fight for them, though certainly not for their cause. 
Because they know their dislike is a grade of hate, and they know no other way to be or that it could be, (and because they know hate, murder and oppression does not sell in a caring society) they portray themselves as the caring people who like everyone, except their opposition and critics whom they portray as haters. They exemplify what Freud called projection. Their hate has to come out somewhere, so they release it where they think it makes them look virtuous, by directing it against their own race and culture, and feigning racial and cultural guilt, as if they think that makes them seem elevated above the rest.    

They are the cold blooded ones, the human crocodiles, no love, no warmth, the ectotherms.
And they have even more need for the true sun's light and warmth than do the endotherms who generate and give of their own heat.   
      

crossbow

p.s  Of course Bob doesn't need forgiving for making a perfectly valid statement. Keep making them Bob.

I cringe at the glib manner in which the expression "send PUL" is thrown around on this site.  I wonder if any poster here has ever actually achieved it.  "Pure" implies inner purging of all motivational impurities and, for almost all of us, ego's subtle influence invariably prevents this glorious possibility.  "Unconditional" implies that we enthusastically continue to long for the evil other's ultimate happiness and success, no how much that person has harmed us or our children.  Who is capable of that lofty state of consciousness--and how often?  I think the astral experience of so-called PUL is usually little more than a  taste of ecstasy or euphoria that includes temporary and highly condtional good will for others.  The expression "PUL" should dropped as pretentious and applied to the ideal for which we strive, but achieve only as a pale approximation. 

Don

I tend to agree with Berserk above that PUL is a big ask for most humans; as Mathew has said the tough thing is the lack of reciprocation. But I also believe that we shouldn't beat ourselves up about that. When I step onto a golf course I know that the chances of me ( an average club hacker) of shooting a 63 are practically nil but that doesn't stop me trying to shoot the lowest score I can. I think PUL is a quality that we can nurture and develop to a large extent but knowing I will never be a Tiger Woods in PUL terms doesn't mean I shouldn't try to improve my game. I see no reason why using such PUL as I have managed to develop in afterlife matters cannot aid me on my way. Some PUL is better than no PUL at all !

With PUL, love is defined and measured by two absolutes. An Average Club Hacker isn't a Purely Consistent 63 Shooter. A bit of a PC63S he is, both golfers, but .. why?

It's comfortable to say one loves the night when remaining inside the park with all the 27 tree lights on and all the friends fearing the dark gather to bolster the love. Love for the whole might turn out to be different once eyeing what the whole consists of. And no reciprocation when loving the whole, as seen from a distance, can be different when, up close, people around you doesn't partake in an alternating back-and-forth movement. Very limited experience gained.

I don't know about the MOST humourous match EVER, but found it funny enough
http://goo.gl/Qr53WE

Don,

My thought is that PUL is a label and like any other label people ascribe interpretation based on their knowledge, understanding and experience.  Since each of us is unique, I'm sure the understanding of PUL is unique to each of us unless of course we all had the exact same experience in regards to it, so it's no wonder there's so much variation in meanings.  Mine is likely different than yours or anyone else's.

My understanding is that God/Source/Consciousness exists as PUL in its purest state and God/Source/Consciousness generates an aura that we can experience as awe-inspiring bliss, ecstasy, euphoria, supreme happiness, peaceful silence, or any other number of labels we can come up with to describe what this aura feels like.  In my experience, PUL is a tangible substance, and not an emotion, but so much more... in a class all its own.  One would have to experience it to know and understand it the same way I do.  And of course many people have experienced this.  I don't think it's an uncommon experience, just one that is difficult to describe with our limited language.

This tangible aura/substance/essence of PUL is also generated by Beings of Light and when we are OOB and come into close proximity to them we can feel this aura of PUL radiating from them.  We, each and every one of us, is a Being of Light, a soul created of this same substance of PUL.  Even though we are currently incarnated, blended with a human form, an ego, this same PUL substance can and does up well from deep within us, even at the oddest moments and others around us can feel it as well. I think most of us don't experience this substance of PUL on a regular basis because we identify more with the human form, beliefs, fear, etc.  Perhaps if we were to identify with the soul... the part of us that is not incarnated PUL would be more readily expressed.

Kathy

Well said Kathy. 

Perhaps talk of PUL is kind of cheap as per Don's post, but i see it as an ideal, and like anything in life, focus has it's own kind of power and facilitating effect. 

The more we focus on an ideal, the easier it is to build it up within, provided we are using our will, choice, and actions to back up our desire and intent.

  It's kind of like, the more you want to be a good car mechanic, the more you practice on cars, read about car maintenance, think about them, etc, the easier and more automatic it becomes. 

  It also doesn't hurt to ask for help in this process, like asking Source, Christ, and the purely Creative Consciousnesses for help and guidance.

Just be sure you really do want help to become more attuned to that state of consciousness and beingness, because my experience is, sometimes help comes in the form of intense challenge and testing.

  There is a process of purification, and those serious about growing up fully get tried by Fire so to speak, because to become PUL, you have to burn out the hindering dross to get to the gold at the core.  While connected to a body and in this dimension, this can be a very intense process. 

  But once that gold starts to shine forth, life's buffeting storms and trials tend to have less and less effect on you, or at least you tend to recover faster and more fully.

   But even He, even towards his full completion and overcoming of the World within and without, still felt intense suffering and loneliness, if albeit temporarily. 

 

Thanks Justin.

However, I don't disagree with what Don is saying and I don't think he would disagree with what I said.  And like you mention, it is a process of purification.  To me that means letting go of fear so the PUL from deep within can emerge naturally.

K

Lights of Love wrote on Feb 7^th, 2014 at 12:35pm:

Thanks Justin. However, I don't disagree with what Don is saying and I don't think he would disagree with what I said.  And like you mention, it is a process of purification.  To me that means letting go of fear so the PUL from deep within can emerge naturally. K

  Certainly.  But letting go of fear, etc, is a big subject unto itself.   

   Interesting that a lot of people don't like to and rarely talk about death for an example.  It seems a lot of people have fear about death, and would rather repress the topic than deal with it consciously and out in the open and upfront.   

   This is true with a lot of other subjects that could cause fear in humans.  Repression is the norm, and openly talking about and dealing with a difficult subject can indicate that a person actually has very little fear about same. 

  Also, i don't make the process of attuning to PUL all about fear.  It's certainly not all about that.  Fear is definitely a factor and a hindrance to same, but there is more to it than that.  Sometimes it comes down to simple will power. 

I'll give you an example.  I've been very slack with meditating up until recently, and was for a long while.  Recently, some realizations came wherein i realized if i really wanted to grow more that i would have to start to make this a necessity and habit.  No fear involved one way or the other, just old simple will power as they say.  Don't let self get over distracted by other activities, etc, make the effort, focus.  Now meditation doesn't cause spiritual growth and attunement to PUL, but done with the right intent and in the right manner, it certainly can facilitate the process or make it easier in ones life.

I'd like to add to what Justin said below. Before I do so, my guess is that Kathy understands that there is more to growing in PUL than letting go of fear.

Letting go of limiting ideas about love will enable a person to live more according to PUL.  Doing so wouldn't simply be a matter of letting go of fear.  It might be a matter of letting go of a concept based desire.  For example, if a man has the idea that he can experience love as best as possible only if he is with a woman he considers beautiful, then he'll limit his ability to experience love.  Love has nothing to do with a physical body or what a body seems to look like. Beingness does not need body-based imagery in order for love to exist in a way that is complete. Related to this, it kind of bugs me when a person speaks of meeting a light being that looks like a beautiful women. Perhaps they need to get over such a way of thinking. Certainly we are much more than human beings.

Another factor is understanding that a service oriented approach to life will help a person be in line with divine love, because divine love has a giving aspect.  Even though fear might play a role in a person not wanting to tune into what it means to be service oriented, personnel desires and false concepts about how fullfillment can be found might be the key factors that impeed a person's openess to finding out about the service to others aspect of divine love.




wrote on Feb 7^th, 2014 at 1:04pm:

Lights of Love wrote on Feb 7th, 2014 at 12:35pm: Thanks Justin. However, I don't disagree with what Don is saying and I don't think he would disagree with what I said.  And like you mention, it is a process of purification.  To me that means letting go of fear so the PUL from deep within can emerge naturally. K   Certainly.  But letting go of fear, etc, is a big subject unto itself.       Interesting that a lot of people don't like to and rarely talk about death for an example.  It seems a lot of people have fear about death, and would rather repress the topic than deal with it consciously and out in the open and upfront.       This is true with a lot of other subjects that could cause fear in humans.  Repression is the norm, and openly talking about and dealing with a difficult subject can indicate that a person actually has very little fear about same.    Also, i don't make the process of attuning to PUL all about fear.  It's certainly not all about that.  Fear is definitely a factor and a hindrance to same, but there is more to it than that.  Sometimes it comes down to simple will power.  I'll give you an example.  I've been very slack with meditating up until recently, and was for a long while.  Recently, some realizations came wherein i realized if i really wanted to grow more that i would have to start to make this a necessity and habit.  No fear involved one way or the other, just old simple will power as they say.  Don't let self get over distracted by other activities, etc, make the effort, focus.  Now meditation doesn't cause spiritual growth and attunement to PUL, but done with the right intent and in the right manner, it certainly can facilitate the process or make it easier in ones life.

recoverer wrote on Feb 7^th, 2014 at 5:03pm:

... it kind of bugs me when a person speaks of meeting a light being that looks like a beautiful women. Perhaps they need to get over such a way of thinking.

How about a fat ugly one?

Light bulbs look kind of fat, I wouldn't mind if a spirit being looked like a light bulb. :)


1796 wrote on Feb 7^th, 2014 at 10:54pm:

recoverer wrote on Feb 7th, 2014 at 5:03pm: ... it kind of bugs me when a person speaks of meeting a light being that looks like a beautiful women. Perhaps they need to get over such a way of thinking. How about a fat ugly one?

  I understand what you are saying Albert and i do agree, but have you considered the holism of what physical means in relation to consciousness and what consciousness means to physical? 

   That which we perceive as beauty within the physical, we do so far reasons that are not just necessarily body based. 

   There is a deeper harmony and meaning to the perception of beauty even here, that relates to consciousness. 

    I'm not saying it's as simple as people with beautiful faces or what not, having beautiful souls--i think we have all had the experience wherein this was sometimes quite contrary, but what we experience as physicality is to some degree a symbolic reflection of that within consciousness and of what we call the nonphysical. 

  Also note that those individuals born with beautiful faces and bodies, and as they live very spiteful and selfish lives, well they don't tend to age gracefully whatsoever, and start to reflect the ugliness on the inside.  Vice versa, i've met middle aged and older people, who were not "lookers" when they were young, but seemingly because of the great and consistent beauty within, tend to age gracefully and become more pleasing to look at, both in an aura way and in a physical way too. 

  A more pure Light being, if they decided to manifest into this reality, could manifest in any way as far as looks go, if there is a reason or purpose to, but if they are just "translating" their energy here as is, they will be what we perceive as very physically beautiful, for that reflects and represents their beauty within. 

   I suspect, for example, that Yeshua's mother Miriam--his "twin Soul" according to one source, was quite physically and unusually beautiful.  I doubt such an evolved Soul had any attachment to having a certain kind of body and face as far as appearance goes, but maybe it was to some extent her Souls beauty writing itself into the physical clay some? 

    There is MUCH to this subject, and it's quite relative, but genetics are both of the Earth earthy (and thus don't have much to do with our individual consciousness/soul energy) but also influenced by our individual consciousness/soul energy. 

  Sometimes a more harmonious and beautiful Soul will choose an uglier body for reasons of growth or karmic balancing, or because they are just not that attached to same and that was what the opportunity presented, and vice versa lot of immature souls are quite attached to having great looking bodies, but even then, genetics and the physical is not as FIXED or set as we tend to think it is.  It's more a malleable clay than we realize and our Souls can and do influence same both automatically and sometimes consciously. 

For example, there are a number of what i consider high sources that talk about the reality and ability to keep staying young while connected to a body, even way past what people think they should live to age wise.  This can be an "outer indication" or symbol, of the consciousness who remains "young at heart" or rather loving, sweet, innocent, and pure. 

  Another example of the consciousness within, writing itself into or influencing the body physical, the "projected, symbolic image or reflection" of same.  And that's perhaps the best definition of what the physical is and means, it's a somewhat distorted reflection or after image of what consciousness is, expressed in a symbolic manner and form. 

    My sense is that as humanity goes through these Earth changes, and if we handle them right and grow to that golden age that so many different sources have talked about, that in living in tune with our spirits, and in harmony with the earth, attuning more to love, eating healthy and exercising properly, etc that the forms of humans many generations down the line will become somewhat slightly changed and refined, and great outer beauty will become the norm rather than the exception. 

Meanwhile, we have to work with what we got and the opportunities we have. 

  A good question is, what is beauty at it's core or essence.  I think "harmony" and balance is perhaps what both applies to both physical beauty and spiritual beauty.

  In astrology, the Planet Venus is most associated with physical beauty, good looks, etc.  Venus is also associated with inner character stuff that is related to kindness, tolerance, patience, sweetness, socialability, lovingness, harmony, and other traits we associate with closer to the spirit than not--aspects of refinement.

   It's interesting to note that often when Venus is very strong in  person's chart, particularly in relation to the Rising/Ascendent sign (and particularly when in the 1st House or conjunct the Rising degree), there is usually a lot of physical beauty or good looks, and tends to be more of those positive Venusian traits too.   But Venus does have it's dark side as well, and in a difficult chart wherein there is otherwise a lot of disharmony and the more selfishness and/or materialistic symbols are very strong also (Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Pluto principally), a strong Venus as well can indicate superficiality, manipulation, obsession with their image and beauty, behind the scenes gossiping and backbiting, laziness, over attachment to money/wealth, etc (traditionally negative "feminine" or Yin traits).

   

   

Those who value truth above all else recognise that truth is beauty and beauty is truth.
The ability to see things as they are is to see beauty, even if its ugly.
But for those who hate the truth and who cannot face things as they are, then lies, fantasy and delusion are the nearest they know of beauty. 

cb