It is more than experiencing PUL, it is also a matter of tuning into one's spirit self. When one does so, one is likely to experience something that might be called PUL.

If one can get deceived while tuning into one's spirit self, well then, one can get deceived by pretty much anything.

Jesus tried to get people to tune into their spirit selves so they could find out for themselves, others tried to turn his words into a religion they can use to control others.

Saints Augustine and Anselm express the essence of the faith quest thus: "We do not seek to understand in order that we may believe; rather, we believe in order that we may understand."  In other words, we embrace our faith passionately but provisionally--passionately in the sense that total commitment to God is essential for receiving His blessings and establishing a self-authenticating connection with God, but provisionally in the sense that we remain a work in progress and so must acknowledge the ever present danger of significant error in beliefs and life practice.  But if we try to understand first, we never get to the intimate connection that makes all the difference and makes our faith convincing.

My encounters with Mormon leaders while I was a UMC pastor here in Colville are relevant to this discussion.  The Mormon church was visible from our church parking lot.  One day, the Mormon bishop came to my office in tears.  There had been a false rumor that my church's bell choir had performed in their church and some evangelical Christians were outraged by this compromise.  The bishop apologized for the misunderstanding and the resulting stain on our reputation.  I replied that if his church wanted our bell choir to perform in his church, that was all right with me; and if other Christians wanted to criticize us for that, I said I'd wear such criticism as a badge of honor.  So our choir did perform in the Mormon church.

Then the question arose as to whether the Mormon bishop might become a member of our interdenominational ministerial association.  I argued that we needed one Christian leadership forum in which there was no doctrinal litmus test for membership, so we could achieve greater mutual respect, find socially beneficial areas of mutual cooperation,  and learn to disagree agreeably in love.  I was overruled. 

So the Mormons invited all the pastors to a special service on the theme, "Are Mormons true Christians?"  Several members of other churches attended, but myself and a local Catholic priest were the only non-Mormon clergy in attendance.  The various speakers offered personal testimonies and doctrinal presentations that were essentially indistinguishable from a solid evangelical presentation.  I knew they were creating a misleading image of their beliefs to seek common ground, but I thought to myself, "If they really believe in and apply what they are saying here, then they can just as validly claim to be true Christians as any other church."  In that regard, their belief in a con artist like Joseph Smith and their absurd belief that God the Father and Jesus were once people living lives on another planet are ultimately irrelevant.

In return, the Mormons offered to attend an interdenominational critique of their beliefs in my church.  I declined because they had been denied admission to our ministerial association and I knew that such a dialogue would not be respectful.  But if this dialogue would have occurred, I would have stressed neglected Mormon teaching that satisfies the basics of the Christian Gospel and the grace- based life, not the bogus history portrayed in the Book of Mormon.

Blunt refutations of cherished core beliefs tend to produce a cognitive dissonance in which those refuted strive to believe in their faith even more strongly to suppress the nagging doubts sown. 

SWEDENBORG'S REJECTION OF REINCARNATION

No one here has challenged with examples of argumentation that Bruce, Monroe, or some other astral adept on this site has even remotely as evidential verifications as ES.  An honest spiritual quest must surely show cause why ES's astral insights are not at least equally or more compelling that those of New Age adepts. 

ES discovers that we are mistaken in our belief that our thoughts are isolated.  Our minds receive an influx from a endlessly changing array of good and evil discarnates who have not yet arrived at their ultimate destinations.  We are normally connected in this way to 2 good spirits and 2 evil spirits.  The particular combination of these spirits at any moment depends on our state of mind at that moment.  Neither we nor these associate spirits are normally conscious of the other.

What survives death indefinitely, says ES, is our inner memory which contains our inner loves and the patterns or approaches we've developed in reaction to life's experiences.  Inner memory is totally distinct from bodily memory of life's details which eventually fades after death and becomes quiescent.  ES's insight here is confirmed by astral adept Robert Bruce: "Memories of earthly life also seem vague [to the dead], much like how a half-forgotten dream is remembered by a living person.  Many spirits seem to be aware only of their present reality."

Occasionally, the bodily memory of spirits is activated and gives the connected person the impression that these memories are hers and that she must have reincarnated.   Ian Stevenson's celebrated research on the past life recall of young children is flawed by its failure to take this insight seriously.  In at least one of his cases, the child's alleged past life continued until well after he was born--a sure sign of possession.  If a discarnate spirit's bodily memory is completely restored, that memory can override the connected person's memories and create the experience of possession.  Robert A. Monroe [= RAM] creates such a possession during an OBE visit to Locale III: "I temporarily displaced him.  My knowledge of him...and his past came...evidently [from] his memory bank.  I have wondered what embarrassment I have caused him ("Journeys Out of the Body", p. 96)."

RAM's possession experience should have made him suspicious that his implausible astral past life experiences are bogus fabrications.  e.g.:

(1) his prior incarnation as a cave man pilot of a mentally controlled aircraft that is forced to dodge the spears of hostile natives (UJ 157): We are asked to believe in such a combination of prehistoric motifs and modern technology.

(2) a prior incarnation as a novice Christian priest who is invited  by his fellow priests to rape "a frightened young girl" who is tied down and spread-eagled: We are asked to believe that Catholic priests would order such an atrocity, that the victim is an earlier incarnation of his wife Nancy, and that the stabbings will cause her "exquisite ecstasy"  (UJ 154-156' cp. the earlier version in FJ 115-16)!

RAM's failure to address the credibility problems of these absurd "memories" is sufficient reason to mistrust the astral insights in his last 2 books.

ES discovers that discarnate heavenly souls readily grasp the significance of his insights, but humans confined to the world of spirits (= Focus 25-26) refuse to believe because they are unwilling to experience the inevitable belief system crash that would cause them to renounce reincarnation:
"I [ES] tried to convince them by many proofs that this is not true, but in vain (HH 246)."

In my next planned post, I will explain how ES's astral insights join forces with insights from channeling to refute Bruce Moen's doctrine of a Soul Disk comprised of frequent incarnations of the same human self.

Don

   

On page 157 of Ultimate Journey, Robert used the words "as members of a religious sect." Who knows what kind of group this could've been. This might've been before telephones and the internet existed. Therefore, sects would've had a lot of independence. Perhaps this sect had problems with people who were sexually immoral, and they wanted to avoid future problems.

I know the above approach sounds extreme, but sometimes people are extreme. How about sects that did human sacrifices?