(2) SWEDENBORG'S EVOLVING METHODOLOGY

Without knowing it, ES engaged from childhood in a meditation akin to Yogic and Buddhist practices.  He would relax, close his eyes, and focus in with total concentration on a scientific problem.  At the same time, his breathing would nearly stop and his awareness of the outer world and even bodily sensation would diminish to the point of vanishing.  He whole existence would focus on the one issue he wanted to understand.

What began as an intensely intellectual form of meditation ultimately progressed to an exploration of his dreams, the hypnogogic state, and later, trances.  The hypnogogic sate is experienced twice a day as one goes into and out of sleep.  Few people have the discipline and focus to explore the spontaneous wellsprings of mind that bubble up from this state.  ES learned to converse with its symbolic inner processes.  Those who really explore this state can linger for hours watching scenes and hearing things said.  For some reason, some people are primarily visual during this state, and others, like myself, are primarily  auditory.

When I awaken, I often hear a whirring sound like a washing machine completing its cycle and also hallucinatory voices, both known and unknown.  I wonder if the whirring sound signals recent astral travel erased from my memory.  During his hypnogogic state, David Fontana often experienced a combination of waking paralysis and a sense of a menacing alien presence.  Upon further experimentation, he discovered that the alien presence was in fact a dim memory of his soul returning from a forgotten OBE state!

In the hypnogogic state, something is said or seen  before there is any possibility of grasping its meaning.  For example, in this state ES gains this insight: "As to pleasure, wealth, and rank, which I had pursued, I perceived that all was vanity and that he is the happier who is devoid of such things. ..I seemed to hear a hen cackling, as she does when she has laid an egg."  ES later realizes that chickens are not very bright.  Symbolically, his mind is warning him that his insight is nothing to be proud of and must be only the prelude to far more profound insights.

The sphere which most people rule within their minds is relatively small.  Unlike ES, the average person would find it very hard to hold one thought, image, or intention in mind for even one minute.  In the hypnogogic state, one can watch thoughts form and be spoken without one's behest.  Further, the inner processes think faster and more cleverly than the meditator and the symbolic language spoken may not even be understood.  By inspecting feelings, associations, and the situation being symbolized, it is possible to penetrate the symbol. 

For ES these inner states suggest the presence of other spiritual beings interacting with our lives.  Those who scoff at this suggestion have rarely shared ES's determination to  use the hypnogogic state as a springboard for more vivid waking trance states and ultimately for visits to the World of Spirits, the Hells, and the Heavens.  By contrast, we generally experience such inner states merely as pieces of the unconscious self bubbling to the surface.  ES's communal notion of of the earthly self would embrace both perspectives as valid!

SWEDENBORG'S DISCERNMENT OF THE GENUINENESS OF HIS PARANORMAL ENCOUNTERS

As his consciousness expands from dreams and hypnogogic states to waking trances, conversations with demons and angels, and visits to the afterlife territories, ES actively seeks out ways of validating his experiences.  In all these psychic states, he begins to experience the little-known phenomenon called photism or orbs of light.   The meditator seeking guidance finds a signal system to guide him.  ES sees an affirming flame.  He observes: "Such a flame appeared to me so often, and indeed, in different sizes in a diversity of color and splendor, that during some months when I was writing a certain work, hardly a day passed in which a flame did not appear as vividly as the flame of a household hearth."    Most people who experience orbs are puzzled by by their significance.  ES tested the validity of his flame and soon discovered that it was "a sign of approval."  He could, for example, correlate it with his scientific breakthroughs.  Both by its color and warmth, his flame symbolizes love and feeling.  During his expanded awareness, ES begins experiencing his guiding flame during his daytime trances and visions as well.

Too many modern astral adepts tend to accept the entities they encounter at face value without rigorously discerning their positive or negative ambience.  ES's passion to encounter the divine reinforces his discipline and resolve to test the spirits by sorting out their quality and usefulness.  He even experiences automatic writing.  He'd feel his hand being seized by lower-order spirits and forced to write things about biblical figures that he didn't even approve of.  But his most impressive verifications derive from evidence that he can truly contact the dead and gain from angels information that at times cannot be gleaned from the minds of incarnate humans.  This evidence will be discussed in my next planned post.

Don

Don-

Occasionally I experience sort of a "blink-out" before going to sleep, in the hypnogogic state.

During that period, there seems to be some sort of conversation going on to which I am either a participant or observor.  When I come out of it, my reaction is always the same....."what the hell was that??!!"   Frustrating part is that I never can recall what the discussion was about.

Anyway, maybe as a result of reading your post, I thought about these hypnogogic states and sure enough, something happened which was a bit more than the usual.  For a long time I've been wishing my deceased father could make some sort of contact with me, and last night I heard my name called out by someone whose voice sounded very much like my dad's.

Well, that freaked me out.  I came to with a jolt, and my immediate reaction was to avoid such a contact.  Obviously there is a lot of fear, which in my case probably is why more contacts do not occur.  On the one hand I say I want them, but on the other hand I am still not comfortable with the whole notion.

I mean, if I were awake and something happened, that would be ok, but while in bed either asleep or in the process of going to sleep, there is a level of vulnerability that must be why I have that fear.  A sort of helplessness I guess.

Anyway thanks for starting this post, I look forward to reading more about this remarkable person.