Emanuel Swedenborg, as a scientist, discovered that all things and processes, on all scales, proceeded by the same rules. In this way, he provided a model for how all laws and phenomena in the universe could be grasped as being unified and having orientation. Then, Swedenborg anticipated another scientific curiosity.
Some of the most celebrated physicists in modern times have expressed amazement that mathematics works so well describing the physical universe. Mathematics is a creation of the intelligent human brain but the universe had its own separate (and supposedly) non-intelligent creation. This insight has caused some theoretical physicists to wonder if the human brain works the same way as the universe works!
Wow!
Swedenborg not only worked with such an assumption two hundred years before other scientists, but he took this dynamic to another level. He saw universal nature as a perfect mirror or theater representing The Lord’s heavenly kingdom and spiritual laws.
(While Einstein believed that the laws of the universe represented God’s thinking, he did not connect this thinking to spiritual symmetries and values.)
Today’s scientists cannot explain why it is that blind physical nature can offer us such a rich supply of metaphoric and abstract ideas by which mental and spiritual lessons can be potently communicated through observable and mundane physical phenomena—like using the term “light” to convey a mental epiphany.
Swedenborg said that this physical/psychical relationship was more than mere metaphor—it represented the lawful top-down order of causation whereby mental and conscious realities found their termination (lowest level of stability) in physical or spacetime realities. In other words, the physical universe is sustained and maintained by non-physical forces and laws! This top-down relationship and symmetry is more than simple metaphor. It is the correspondence and inwardly consistent correlation between two ontologically distinct realities.
Because of this relationship, Swedenborg discovered that he could tease spiritual and religious doctrine out of observable processes and relationships in the natural world. He even took this insight to yet another level. He discovered that the narratives of Holy Scripture were written in a similar multi-level construct! He determined that God’s Sacred Word contains three unique substrates—a literal (natural) meaning, a higher psycho-spiritual meaning, and a highest, divine meaning.
Swedenborg wrote dozens of books to offer evidence of this top-down causal relationship inherent within the architecture of the Bible’s stories. However, these ideas are so unexpected to the habitual modern human way of thinking and current education that it will take a long time to gain acceptance.
I have written three books to help promote these unique ideas that enhance and elevate the contemporary human worldview and belief-systems from the status quo. For now, with all the worldly concerns and allurements grabbing the attention of the human heart and mind, I am simply unable to break up the “unplowed ground” of human consciousness and am merely “planting seeds among thorns.” (Jeremiah 4:3)
Truth is going to have to transcend money in advancing our sense of well-being and real worth to society!
