Pauli,

I will answer your questions with the assumption that you really are interested in the answers.  I have my doubts, because your thread reads like someone who wants to pick a fight with Don, makes up his mind before learning the facts, and then throws out random information trying to cause a conflict.   

I will enumerate my responses to your questions:

1.  Swedenborg's concept of the Last Judgement was not what you suppose it to be.  So your ridiculing of him saying it happened in the 1700s shows you don't get it.  You imagine all of us being judged and given a Heaven or Hell pass.  Swedenborg did not. 
His book he Last Judgement  speaks against the concept of a divine judgment during some future rising of the dead. Instead, each individual after death, goes through a personal last judgment in the world of spirits. Pauli, this is a poetic rendering of a spiritual concept, not a true judgement by a God with a long flowing beard.  Read his Last Judgement, and you will understand why he thought it occurred in the 1750s (in spirit).  Your comment that this was cartoonish therefore simply demonstrates your lack of understanding of his analogies about a spiritual awakening. 

2.  Swedenborg's scientific discoveries.  You state you could not find any or his friend was responsible for most of them.  This is is just absurd.  Swedenborg was one of the most prolific scientists of his age.  His patents and discoveries were numerous.  He is credited for being one of the first people to propose the concept of the neuron as a functioning unit of the nervous system.  He undertook an extensive investigation into human anatomy, which rivaled, Davinci.  Many references site his achivements prior to his conversion to being a mystic.  So this assertion of yours was false.

3.  Pauli, many of your criticisms then focus on how Swedenborg would respond to concepts from Monroe and Moen (i.e. the Disc, reincarnation, soul retrievals).  Pauli, this assumes that the Monroe/Moen model is correct and the gold standard by which everything is judged.  This is ridiculous.  While I hold Bruce in high regard, and appreciate TMI, many mystics and astral travelers do not believe in Focus levels, hollow heavens or the Disc concept.  So to say Swedenborg can't explain it, is somewhat meaningless. 

4.  Swedenborg has many concepts which mesh nicely with New Age and modern theories of the afterlife and consciousness.  When you say he did not believe in a trinity - quite correct.  A division of God (a unity) did not make sense to him.  Many Christians see the trinity as three aspects of one God, not seperate beings.  Swedenborg was not accepted by dogmatic christians because of this. 

5.  The criticism of not describing life correctly in other solar systems, our planets, etc. means, .......what?  ES was a man.  He never claimed to be God himself.   He related all he could understand in writing. 

Pauli, you make assumptions - that ES believed he was infallible (he never said that), that he knew everything, etc.  He was actually a humble, incredibly enlightened guy for the 1700s. 

Read Heaven and Hell, and then let's talk.  His interpretation of the spirit, spirituality, and his knowledge are truly inspiring.  I am not a christian, yet I love his explanations of our inner nature and his interpretations on love as the foundation of our being and unity. 

So you see this entire thread is based on faulty assumptions and really a desire on your part to pick a fight with Don.   I appreciate ES for who he was, but acknowledge that he was a man, who did his best to interpret his experiences, document them in great detail and share them with the world.

M

Pauli, here is my understanding of the answers found in his writings to your questions.

Although Swedenborg's theology was based in christianity, he summed up two main ways to express love as he understood it; love of one's fellow man, and love of God.  He saw God not as a trinity in reality, but as an ineffable flow of this love.  You either allowed the love to manifest in your thoughts and actions, or you chose to block it, or go the other way.

As to your questions:

1.  ES believed the last judgement occurred in the year 1757 - that this was done in the spiritual plane, and was not the hokey idea you have in mind taught by some churches.  However, he freely admitted that his interpretation did not fit with most ideas about it.  He felt that as people turned toward love, this would be the second coming of Christ (Christ being the embodiment of love).  All of this was meant to be seen not as a literal judgement by a guy with a long flowing beard. 

You may want to read his two small books about the last judgement - I think they are less than 100 pages. 

2.  He felt that the understanding he achieved about love was the real second coming of Christ.  Not so much a figure of a man floating down to Times Square as you might imagine.  Since Christ's message was love of other people and God, ES felt that his second coming would be the realization of this through his writings and direct experience.  Was that a bit self-important?  Perhaps.  But he was sincere.

3.  Do I deny the trinity?  Not sure why you ask me - since I'm Jewish, and believe in the unity of all things, I don't believe in such things.  However, ES, while he believed in the teaching's of Christ, also believed that the artificial separation of God into father/son and holy  ghost was not "real" and more like three blind men examining an elephant's trunk, ear, and stomach. 

As to his inventions, I can quote you from a biography  on ES:

"Queen Ulrika Eleonora and their surname changed to Swedenborg. Emanuel's scientific inventions include a dry dock of new design, a machine for working salt springs and a system for moving large boats overland.

In the field of biology, Swedenborg stressed on the importance of cerebral cortex. Apart from these, he drew feasible sketches of futuristic machines, including an airplane, a submarine, a steam engine, an air gun and a slow-combustion stove. Emanuel Swedenborg was offered the position of a professor in mathematics at Uppsala University, in 1724. However, he declined the offer, because he dealt with geometry, chemistry and metallurgy mainly, not maths."

Pauli, the information is out there, just explore on your own.  What beef do you have with Don that makes you try so hard to disparage ES?  Your misunderstanding about the last judgement and trinity is understandable because you didn't get the gist of his spirituality. 

What comes through loud and clear is that you have a beef with Don or something he wrote and not so much this fascinating explorer from the 1700s.

M

Pauli,

Your response is bizarre.  I am not familiar with the patent office in Sweden from the 1700s, but I have cited his extensive work on neurons, human anatomy, and other inventions - the specifics can be found in any reputable biography of ES.  You will find reams of information about him and it makes your criticism of his achievements appear bizarre.  Your statement that Polhem was truly responsible for all of ES's works is totally unsupported, yet you repeat it frequently. 

It is clear that ES was an interesting, intelligent and gifted man well ahead of his time both in a practical sense and in a spiritual sense.  In a way, your responses are similar to deniers of many factual events like the holocaust, 9/11, etc. in that even after admitting that ES made these anatomic investigations, mechanical inventions (which the history books have recorded), and was renown throughout the western world for his accomplishments and offered positions of teaching, etc., you have disparaged him without any real knowledge about him (since you refuse to read an in depth history or his actual writings). 

The other unusual part of your thread - and a reason I believe you should voluntarily remove it, is that it serves no useful purpose.  Several posters, including Don have mentioned that they find one or another issue mentioned by ES with which they can either find fault or disagree.  So no one is saying he is God-incarnate.  In that sense, you have a thread entitled "Swedenborg Flaws," that really is simply saying nothing new. 

M

Pauli,

You clearly have no sense of ES, or his accomplishements.  I don't have access to Swedish patents from the 1700s - I am not even sure for which inventions patents were required.  He was widely regarded for his published works at the time.  As I said, read a book man, and get some first-hand knowledge.  I know from my readings that he was a prolific scientist and inventor.  He published an anatomical text on the human cerebrum (brain), including detailed drawings and insights into the brand new concept of the neuron as an organizing cell and detailed drawings and descriptions of the exocrine glands long before Gray's Anatomy was made.  I suppose that is not worthy of note in the 1700s (ridiculous, right).  His research and accomplishements in multiple fields are clear-cut.  Could one look up patents from the 1700s?  Perhaps - not my cup of tea.  But open your eyes, and stop disparaging him just to suit your twisted agenda with Berserk.

M

Pauli-

Doc is right, you have a vendetta going against Don.  And it's beyond tedious.  I think you should devote your time sending PUL to aliens. 

And since you cherry picked Don's old posts, going all the way back to 2005, let's see how you like it when the tables are turned?

In May of 2011 you suggested that the CIA removed all the passengers of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 and put them into cold storage.  And then the CIA either transferred them into a morgue or stuffed them into the Pentagon to make it look like a plane really did crash into the building.

This kind of thinking reflects a mind that is clearly delusional and unhinged.  You apparently have never been to the Pentagon and have no clue about the heavily trafficked divided highway adjacent to the Pentagon that carries thousands of commuters each and every day.

So those people who saw the plane heading into the Pentagon that morning are either lying or perhaps were paid off by the CIA?  And the first responders who pulled out the charred bodies were also lying when they described the carnage?

You clearly need help Pauli.  Your connection with reality is severed and explains these kind of repugnant posts.

R

I'll answer you both below.

rondele wrote on Jan 29^th, 2013 at 2:13pm:

Quote:

Rondele and isee, it is Berserk2 who has urged me to go back and read his
old posts. He made no reservation to his posts, and urged me to go read
from the start of his Swedenborg-Astral-Projection-Father thread.

But go pick his post from 2008 or 2010, or perhaps from this month:


Berserk2 wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 4:28pm:

Berserk2 wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 10:35pm:

And, well...

I read through that thread.

I can inform you, it took more than half an hour.

For my money the statements: 'Swedenborg was a genius' and 'Swedenborg was not infallible' are not mutually exclusive. No self-respecting modern physicist would argue that since Einstein was an acknowledged genius his work cannot be improved upon. I don't see the problem here. However, I do find it find it slightly strange  when big statements are made about Swedenborg's superior verifications when there is no objective rationale for deciding (who decides that Swedenborg's famous fire clairvoyance 'trumps' say Monroe's fabulous card prediction in paranormality!? ) Surely its not about pontificating about what someone else thinks/thought, but, as Bruce Moen has always maintained exploring for one's self; getting one's own verification.

One advantage, though, I think that modern 'adepts' enjoy over historical figures is that we can question them or people with first-hand experience of them. For example when I wanted to know more about the Scole events I was able to ask Rupert Sheldrake about his impression of the session he attended - not something we can do with Swedenborg or his contempories !