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DocM
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Brendan said: "This could explain the total lack of change or personal development of the local inhabitants that is reported by explorers in these realms."
Brendan, I was planning to start a thread about this on my own, but I think this is as good a place as any, so why not conserve space on the board? The question is, why are people so fearful about the various concepts of heaven and hell? Here, you hit the nail on the head. It is the issue of gravitating toward one's position in the kingdom of God for eternity. If it is a hell, the idea of eternally being caught in one scenario, like Sisyphus is appalling. For those who don't know, Sisyphus is a greek myth:
As a punishment from the gods for his trickery, Sisyphus was compelled to roll a huge rock up a steep hill, but before he reached the top of the hill, the rock always escaped him and he had to begin again (Odyssey, xi. 593). The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to the mortal's hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus. Sisyphus took the bold step of reporting one of Zeus's sexual conquests, telling the river god Asopus of the whereabouts of Asopus' daughter, Aegina. Zeus had taken her away, and regardless of the impropriety of Zeus's frequent conquests, Sisyphus unmistakably overstepped his bounds by considering himself a peer of the gods who could rightfully report their indiscrections. (Edith Hamilton's Mythology, 312–313). As a result, Zeus displayed his own cleverness by binding Sisyphus to an eternity of frustration.
What bothers me, as well as it does you, is that when reading Swedenborg, one sees that immediately after death, we are exactly as we were in the world. But after a life review, we tend to lose the outer aspects of our memories and activities and focus in on the inner ones (our true natures, not the mask we put on to be accepted in society). Those who loved themselves over God tend to follow their baser natures and associate with others who feel the same. One gets the feeling, in this system that an eternity is spent in a heaven or hell, without hope of change. A sadist is drawn to a hell of sadism where acts are perpetrated on him/her and on others - again and again. This lack of change is quite disturbing, much like the myth of Sisyphus.
However, we also hear from mystic sources "as above, so below." And that angels (discarnate humans) know of their existence not by reckoning time, but by moving of one state of being to another (see my Swedenborg quote in Dave's thread/discourse on "time.") This tells me that nothing in the spiritual world is set in stone for eternity - unchanging. It also tells me that your "bot" hypothesis is likely to be wrong. Those who have had contact with the deceased seem quite clear that they are not talking with mindless automatons.
We also hear of helpers and angels continually working on assisting and rescuing others in the spiritual planes. Again, this is a dynamic view of a spiritual existence, which has within in it a sea of constant movement and change - not the mindless drifting of automaton "bot" souls.
It is essential to understand if a spiritual/afterlife existence is an eternal proposition. My readings and experiences lead me to say it is not, because the nature of our earthly existence is one of constant learning/flux and change, and it is logical that these thought processes found in our earth lives continue when we have passed over. We hear of spiritual contact, where deceased loved ones tell living relatives that the grief of the living is "holding them back," in progression in the spirit world. Holding them back from what? Certainly not from an eternity of mindless repetition.
M
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Marijuana, the subconscious, and "Heaven/Hell"... (Read 4847 times)
