This topic has been much on my mind of late, but it is a difficult one to write about.  We all know about life in the physical world.  There are many variations of people out there.  Our laws, codes of conduct and civilization keep the inner natures of many of us in check. While riding a train in the Manhattan area, I scanned many faces.  One very different from another.  Loving people mingled with violent ones.  Yet what held the violent ones back from acting out on their current nature?  It is the mask that we wear.  The complex mixture of upbringing, civil laws and penalties, which serves to restrain the more savage and destructive impulses.  Freud described this as the superego - sort of an internal parent telling our ego not to act that way.

Yet in the afterlife, and in the mental planes, this mask is gone.  We are, to a great extent open books.  This is why, a sadist or a serial killer can not "fake" his way to a heavenly plane.  His true nature or the core of his/her soul is there for all to see.  Since spiritual growth is proportional to how loving a soul is, a sadistic or destructive person will not be found in "the park" of focus 27 or the higher planes of love.  Indeed, many have wondered how people could voluntarily consign themselves to a hellish plane rather than be sentenced there.  With the mask of earthly civility stripped away, the soul simply seeks out others who share its loves, likes and dislikes (the law of attraction).  From an earthly perspective, you may cringe and say "how can one willingly go to a hell where people con each other, beat each other, etc.?" But to that soul stripped of its need to be in a mixed community in C1, it seeks its true nature and surrounding.

But where does our rational mind fit into all this?  In many journeys to the mental planes, such as lucid dreaming, we do not act with rationality.  Common dreams are high on symbolism, yet we often seem to be present and not particularly able to reason and sort through things.  Even on this board, there is almost a unanimous agreement of logic/rationality that love or PUL is the driving force behind God and the universe.  How many of us know this, may strive for it, yet do not act out love anyway? 

Swedenborg reports talking with spirits who were great learned men in their day, who wished to show off their knowledge of languages, and learning - yet to him, they spouted pathetic, misguided gibberish.  Their motivations while on earth were based on ego, and not on love, and when they passed on, it seems that their knowledge and rationality deteriorated.

The rational mind may, to some extent convince people to go to church or temple - being schooled in the golden rule may help people to act our of charity on a rational basis, even if they don't do it from a deep seated sense of love and compassion.  As such, while on earth, the rational mind appears to be able to assist with spiritual development.

Does this rational mind melt away when we die?  Or is it preserved in relationship to the amount of love we have in us  I have heard that immediately upon someone's death, they are very much like they were when alive - with the rational mind intact.  Gradually, Swedenborg and others note that there are later stages of death where the soul expresses its core essence and then moves on to a realm appropriate for itself at that time.  Suppose one understood that one was moving toward a hellish plane and that if one acted out of love, and moved in that direction one would instead move toward focus 27.  A logical decision would be to start to act more lovingly.

It seems that for many, the melting away of the mask of civilization and the expression of their core essence trumps the rational thought that they should move in the direction of love. 

So my question is: does our earthly rational mind persist when we die, and to what extent can we use it?


Matthew

Interestingly you have used the word "mask". I think our spirit core is the actor, which is eternal, within us. Our rational mind is merely a character that dissolves away upon crossing over. The eternal actor holds many memories of the time spent in this lifetime or act, but when the mask comes off the actor rejoins his or her mates at the corner pub. The actor will remember moments that stand out in this life, but in the great scheme of things it was a performance in which much knowledge was gleaned that will benefit the next performance. An actor with free will: There is nothing more dangerous or enlightening in all the world.

Hi Kathy,

Yes, I agree.  The state of being of our core spiritual self, is, with retrospection an emotional gestalt of being rather than a rational state of affairs.  If you practice loving acts done rotely or because it is expected but don't FEEL it, you are not becoming a more loving spirit. 

So the issue is not just what do you think, but how do you feel.  What is your sincere emotion? 

On earth, our rational mind can lead us in the right direction, and with what the buddhists call "right action/iving" it certainly can impact on our karma and various future events.  Yet, it is more dutiful and done less out of a deep seated feeling of PUL and emotion.

I suppose that if I can reason here, on earth, i will be able to reason elsewhere.  I have heard it said that as you lose contact with earthly objects/experiences your frame of reference and logic change accordingly.  Swedenborg talked about deceased people who, for the life of them could no longer understand linnear time.  For them, it was a matter of moving from one state of being to another.  Sequential time was a mystery to them.  Common things we take for granted such as tactile sensations or how our earthly bodies react are lost in the afterlife or replaced with "spiritual equivalents."  As such, our logic and rationality adapt to our new universe and senses. 

What interests me is the complex way that upbringing, schooling, etc. create these societal masks that we wear, which dissipate rapidly after we die.  You hear this in the news with the serial killer who neighbors describe as a "family man" and one who coached little league (etc.).  How does one reconcile the violence with the other behaviors?

I take some comfort in knowing that enough people have conversed with deceased people to know that there is a rational mind left when we cross over. 

It seems to me, the mask or veneer of civility which falls away is not our true rational mind itself, but sort of a civil gatekeeper (superego). 

Matthew

But, Matthew, it's now unclear to me what you mean at all with "rational mind".

Is it versus emotions? Is it the "core" itself? Is it the cause-effect-understanding as I noted? And if Swedenborg is right with this "switching" rather than "happening", (which I found to some degree is correct), what can "rational mind" mean at all?

Spooky

Matthew-

The thing is, I don't think ES was saying that the gibberish meant that they had lost their rationality, which is what I thought you had concluded.

Instead, the point was that without love, all the rationality in the world is essentially meaningless.

When they were conversing with each other in the afterlife, I presume they were making perfect sense (to each other) in the same way they did while physically alive. 

But when seen from a higher realm, it came across as nonsense pretty much as a metaphor for what was lacking in their true essence.

True knowledge is not rationally-based.  I recall many NDEs where the person says that for a split second, they "knew" everything, that all mysteries were revealed in a crystal clear manner.  Yet when they returned, they could not recall any of it.  Probably because all of it was alien to our intellect.

R