Also:

Kathy:  Thank you for your postings.  You are inspirational.  Point taken again.

Don:  Re your reply #131, Sept. 20:  I understand now why you are as your are on this Board.  Your intellectual integrity is admirable.  I can't fathom where any negative reactions are coming from.

My guess is that Don does want to help.

The thing is, do people actually need Don to straighten them out?  And can such help be force fed?

I can see that Don greatly underestimates the wisdom of some of the people who visit this site.  No amount of academic study and detailed intelectual analysis can make up for experience. Not even close.  

Quote:

ES's breakthrough to astral exploration was facilitated by his prolonged dream analysis and, more importantly, by his exploration of the threshold between sleeping and awakening.   I have had 3 interesting experiences with this threshold: (1) When I was a teenager, my brother Doug was on the verge of awaking when he was frightened by the spectre of a tall form leaning over my bed across from his.  Doug initially thought it was my Mom, but when he called her name, the figure turned and proved to be a stranger.   He still swears that he was fully awake when he witnessed that spectre.   It seems more likely that he was fooled by the threshold between sleeping and awakening.  But then was the spectre an astral spirit or merely an imaginary dream figure?

(2) I have often awakened to a whirring sound as if I were rotating rapidly at the end of a washing machine cycle.   Was I re-entering my body after a forgotten OBE?   (3) I have also often awakened to the sound of someone shouting at me.  At first I would think someone was outside the house, but I would soon realize that the shouting was generated in this sleep threshold period.   But was I hearing the end of a forgotten communication from an astral spirit?  I remain skepical of any astral significance for (1)-(3), but ES's exploration of this threshold state often makes me wonder.  

I am also haunted by a discovery made by David Fontana.  Upon awaking, he was often frightened by an occasional sense that an invisible stranger was in his bedroom.  Further exploration taught him that the stranger was in fact his own spirit returning to his body after a forgotten astral adventure.

ES's exploration of this threshold state was a key to his later breakthrough as an astral adept.  But there was another decisive factor that I recently discovered by perusing Ernst Benz's biography:    

"At Easter, 1744, Swedenborg fell off his bed and found himself gazing into Jesus' face, radiant with warmth and love.  This was a new starting point for his individuation, culminating a year later in spirit vision and a commission from God to give humankind a new religious revelation.  This combined an esoteric view of God, heaven, and earth with a strong desire for a pietist reform of Lutheran orthodoxy (p. xx)."  

Lutheran orthodoxy would dismiss him as a heretic, but his revelations ultimately made him the father of modern spiritualism and astral projection.

Don

Paul, to answer your question, I've browsed a great deal of material on ES.  As for full book reading, I've read (1) his classic "Heaven and Hell," (2) William Van Dusen's inspiring book on ES's life, mysticism, paranormal experiences and teachiing--"The Presence of Other Worlds," and (3) Robert Kirven's, "Angels in Action: What Swedenborg Saw and Heard."  (4) Right now I'm working my way through a thick scholarly biography of ES: Ernst Benz's "Emanuel Swedenborg: Visionary Savant in the Age of Reason."  So far, I've enjoyed Van Dusen's book the most. 

RETRIEVALS:

One of the things that has bothered me about ES is his failure to mention the possibility of performing retrievals.  His astral insight that new discarnates in the World of Spirits gradually ascend to a heaven or descend to a hell may already imply the use of retrievals. because ES describes the role of astral schools and makes it clear that astral progress is ultimately a matter of choice and of achieving the right energetic for ascent.   But now I've  found a passage in Benz that seem to imply that ES even retrieved some evil discarnates in Hell:

"The devils he converts change before his eyes, lose their bestial form, and regain their human faces (Benz, p. 327). 

I hope to track down more references to ES's retrievals.

Don

Don,

Leave if you must, but as I said, there is an in between road of posting selectively and not getting involved in anyway in personality conflicts.

Consider this.  I would not have read Swedenborg if it were not for your posts.  Also, think of the over 2000 registered people on this site.  Most don't post, but many read.

I still think that much of what ES wrote was colored by his own conscious interpretation.  What he calls "angels," looked excactly like human beings, and indeed were discarnate human beings.  Robert Bruce has had astral experiences, yet he would not label the heavens as Swedenborg did.  He saw these angels as spirits/people.  Bruce's encounters with real angels were much more rare.  Swedenborg claimed Angels could only move with difficulty from one plane or heaven to another, because of disorientation.  Bruce claims that Angels can easily travel to the highest or lowest planes at will.  We bring our beliefs into this interpretation you see.  Is Swedenborg's version of heavens the "right" one? I'm not sure, but his thought and amazingly scientific mind had to interpret what he saw.  I am still new to his writings, so I will reserve further judgement for now.

Matthew

Amen! Paranoid Android.

Quote:

I have decided to reactivate this old thread for two rwasons:
(1) I expect to create a new thread soon that integrates insights from Swedenborg with those of other astral adepts.  There are several newbies on the board who are very interested in retrievals and the quest for verification of spirit contact.  As you can see, this thread has become too vast for a quick practical read.  So here is an index of my posts which try to express the  most important and interesting Swedenborgian issues:

On page 1, read posts 2,5, 7-9, 13-14.
On page 2, read posts 16 and 19
On page 3, read post 34
On page 9, read ost 129
On page 10, post 139.

(2) In this thread, I have celebrated Swedenborg as the most gifted astral adept I have yet discovered.  But I do want to offer two criticisms of his work:

(a) ES reads his astral insights into the Bible.   But his biblical interpretions would be embraced by no modern Bible scholar.  They are worth reading as astral insights into postmortem conditions, not as valid interpretations of ancient texts.

(b) Even before his astral explorations, ES believed that spiritual beings inhabit the planets of our solar system and other planetary sustems.  It is easy to  forget that some of the best philosophers (e.g. Kant) and astronomers (e.g. Kepler, Huygens, Fontenelle) of his day agreed with him on this point.  ES claims to encounter and converse with beings from other planets in the World of Spirits.  I suspect there is life in other solar systems, but I reject ES's claim that there is intelligent life in other planets in our solar system.  Perhaps, future space research will discover microbial fossils on Mars.  I can hear someone speculating that intelligent life MAY exist on our other planets in a different dimension.   Both OBE adept Robert Bruce and medium Gordon Phinn claim to have seen an alien base on the other side of the moon.  [Phinn often used to post here.]  Despite this, I consider ES's claim about our solar system an example of how even he can be deceived by his spirit contacts.  I doubt the next NASA space flight to the moon will change my mind.

Don

Greetings,

Regarding this quote from above:
" Both OBE adept Robert Bruce and medium Gordon Phinn claim to have seen an alien base on the other side of the moon.  [Phinn often used to post here.]  Despite this, I consider ES's claim about our solar system an example of how even he can be deceived by his spirit contacts.  I doubt the next NASA space flight to the moon will change my mind."

Please consider that some of these 'sitings' are done with non-physical senses, even if later discussions use 'sight' as a frame of reference.  I'd count our Bruce, R. Bruce, G. Phinn, ES, and maybe some NASA personnel like Edgar Mitchell to have seen above Earth's ionosphere in such a way. We can't see what they saw if we stay planted on terra firma.

As for ES having an over-sized 'ego' that has been adopted by his followers, we can't expect that he was fault-free. Faultless souls rarely incarnate. ES, Thomas Merton, and other 'saints' devote their excellent but not perfect lives to ideals that will help a large number of souls to improve. Merton never claimed to be perfect, I know. And not everyone resonates with their emphases.
So we learn what we can and let the rest go.

Love to Don, Doc, Dude, and all!
Betson