Dr. Raymond Moody predicts my new book

Last night I was listening to Coast-to-Coast AM with host George Noory on my radio. I was delighted to hear George interview guests Roy Abraham Varghese and Dr. Raymond Moody.

Roy Varghese has authored several books on the interface with science and religion. This topic is of keen interest to me because I belong to two organizations with that same goal—Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) and the Swedenborg Scientific Association (SSA)—plus I have written my own book on this important topic of growing interest and debate.

Dr. Raymond Moody is known worldwide for his research on near-death experiences. Both guest contributed their views of what lies on the other side.

While Dr. Moody does not know I am launching a new book, Proving God: Swedenborg’s Remarkable Quest For The Quantum Fingerprints Of Love, I have been informed that he does know about Emanuel Swedenborg’s books on the afterlife and what lies in the spiritual world.

Moody predicted on George Noory’s show last night that new rational approaches would emerge over the next few years to show that life beyond the physical body could be proved by human reasoning (as opposed to faith). This is exactly what my new book accomplishes. It discusses the afterlife from a scientifically plausible model.

I was disappointed in last night’s interview that no mention was made of Swedenborg’s accomplishments. He was the greatest pioneer in history for describing afterlife phenomenon, including unique descriptions of the geography, minerals, flora, fauna and human societies that exist in the non-physical realm of the spirit. These observations are valuable to any discussion about the afterlife because Swedenborg was a notable scientist of his era.

Dr. Moody has always been impressed by near-death patients of all faith systems, including atheists, describing similar phenomena—like entering into a tunnel of light—and not being able to put these experiences into words of terrestrial language. The “light” these people experienced was not physical light. Rather, these individuals felt bathed in love and new knowledge! Moody felt that his challenge as a scientific researcher was to find some kind of rational approach to these phenomena—which he sees coming in the near future.

My new book addresses Dr. Moody’s challenge head-on. I explain how causal processes, dynamical magnitudes and even human life can continue in a realm beyond time and space. In fact, the spiritual world is the origin of all natural laws operating in the physical world.

I hope this subject interests you. If it does, please visit http://www.provinggod.com

Spiritual Complexity Theory

One of the newest branches of study is the science of complexity. Some call it a scientific revolution in the making. Complexity theory deals with study of how simple elements in nature spontaneously organize into complicated structures, ranging from galaxies and ecosystems to the human brain.

As physicist M. Mitchell Waldrop, author of the book Complexity puts it, nature has an “incessant compulsion for self organization.” It is as though the universe has a yearning for order. Order means rational and intelligent structure.

While complexity theory poses a challenge for a science that embraces a materialist philosophy that rules out purpose in nature, it offers very little knowledge about how the natural world can help us discern the glory of God.

Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg may well have provided the theological dynamics behind nature’s endeavor to grow structure spontaneously. He stated that “endeavor” was a spiritual force and not a force that could be ascribed to inert matter.

Even more profound, Swedenborg claimed that order, structure and complexity glorified God’s Divine Love and Divine Wisdom.

How?

If we contemplate organized structure, we will observe that all complexity consists of two opposing and ridiculously improbable functions supporting each other—differentiation and unity.

Complexity evolves into new orders of structure, as new things become both increasingly distinct and increasingly unified. Differentiation and unity exalt each other. Put another way, complexity involves subordination and coordination of successive (differentiated) process that gives birth to the dynamics of simultaneity (uniformity). All group structures (systems) consist of successive events creating wholes.

Swedenborg showed that this scheme displayed God’s divine nature and character because Truth distinguishes and Love unites. So nature’s endeavor towards self-organization is creation becoming a more perfect image of the Creator. Even the human mind follows this design because the human intellect both discerns information (thinks) and unifies what it values (loves) into real structure called a belief system or worldview.

This is where religion enters the picture of complexity theory. Swedenborg goes even further by stating that the purpose of religion is to allow for the human heart and mind to self-organize into non-physical bio-complexity capable of living in a spiritual realm (heaven). When we adopt Gods tenets of truth and love into our lives, we create spiritual bio-structure. This new structure serves as a spiritual body for the soul and survives the death of the physical body.

Swedenborg’s spiritual complexity theory takes the trajectory of evolution all the way to the spiritual world (sorry Darwin). God’s PURPOSE in creation is to create a heaven from the human race. Human evolution exalts God’s Love and Truth by creating angelic bio-structure.

This is just one of the challenging issues I address in my upcoming book Proving God in my humble attempt to unify science with theology.

http://www.provinggod.com

How to make yourself the center of the universe!

The answer is simple. Become an angel!

Many people already believe that the universe revolves around them. But this kind of self-importance and egocentricity is a one-way deal and doesn’t work. To be at the center of everything requires a movement in two directions—the world not only has to be focused on you, but you have to be focused on everyone else.

That requires angelic love.

Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg described every angel as occupying the center of heaven’s form. If this seems scientifically implausible, just contemplate all the living cells in the human body. Each cell works for the benefit of the whole body and the whole body works for the benefit of each of its cells. So every cell, according to utility and service (analogs of love), represents a center in its biological kingdom from which forces proceed outwards and return back.

The same holds true in God’s heavenly kingdom. Every angel directs his or her love to all the others and all the others direct their love back. So, only by living an angelic life of mutual love can an individual truly become the center of everyone’s attention (including God’s attention).

To do otherwise, and have everything focused only towards oneself also has its analogy in the human body. It is called cancer.

The cosmic scheme of mutual love is God’s wise plan for order in the universe. You are important in this plan to the degree that you make others equally important to your life. That is the only source of true peace and happiness.

Happy holidays to all my readers!

http://www.staircasepress.com

We can be touched by a hand or a mind

All awareness and perception represents some kind of sense of touch. Through our sensitive skin we can feel someone touching us. We sense taste when objects touch our tongue. Smells, fragrances and odors touch organs of sensation in the nose. Sounds touch sensitive structures in the ear. And light (electromagnetic waves) touches receptors in the retina.

Interestingly, each of these distinct senses allows us to be touched by things at increasingly further distances. But the human mind can also be touched by a minister’s sermon or an inspirational message (something an animal cannot experience). When one considers that the mental ideas and concepts being communicated by a sermon (or any other human communication) are not restricted by the physical laws of spacetime, then one must assume that the human mind is sensitive to a non-material realm. (If the human mind operates from quantum processes, as some physicists theorize, then its dynamics are certainly non-local.)

We can like or dislike the way things feel, taste, smell, sound or look. We also can like or dislike ideas and ideologies. We can embrace or reject God.

Science is said to deal with factual objective data, not values. Yet every distinct function of human sensation is tempered by a value (which is a derivative of love representing some perceived goodness). Even a scientist seeks to find truth from the good that will come from it (whether for personal reward or to genuinely help society)!

What the Neo-Darwinian synthesis overlooks is that deep within the brain’s neural substrates, the human mind has more interior sensory capacities. Pioneering researchers in neuroscience are now suspecting that the neuron itself contains deeper levels of cognitive architecture—to explain the higher operations of reasoning and abstract thought. The point is that human evolution has its trajectory towards a non-physical realm through a choice of values.

Religion (untainted by human prudence) is God’s strategy to allow human bio-complexity to properly adapt to a non-physical world (heaven). This is accomplished through humans who adopt spiritual values, which in turn, subordinate and coordinate an individual’s deepest inner fabric according to heavenly order and life.

If this topic interests you, visit http://www.provinggod.com

The Descent and Ascent of Process

If we contemplate for a moment about the actions of our lives, we will discover that there is both a “downward” and “upward” trajectory (involution and evolution) within the fullness of a completed task.

A conscious human action starts from some intention, passion, or disposition of the will. From the endeavor of the will, causal process descends into forms of thought that allow us to intellectually see how to reach our goal. The goal is finally reached when this process, started in the will, descends into the actions of the physical body.

Science calls this top-down causation. However, what is not taken into account is that when a goal is reached the process turns back “upwards” through the human psyche to its primal soil or causal principle. This can be verified through direct human experience if we are observant and mindful.

The will starts from a recognition that a certain goal is a delightful pursuit and harmonious to its values. The will then adapts the ideas of the mind to match its disposition. In other words, all thoughts and ideas are mental forms (embodiment) of the will’s desires. Bodily action is the full outward manifestation of the will and thought within time and space. But once a goal has been achieved through the physical body, its success is verified higher up by the human intellect then rises to the delight in the will where the whole process started.

What materialistic science needs to understand is that first principles return to first principles. Causal process descends from a non-physical and non-local beginning through discrete (non-continuous) steps and returns back up through those same steps to a non-physical dimension. (Some forward thinking physicists acknowledge that the mind operates outside of time and space).

According to scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, this down-and-up causal trajectory is a mirror image of God’s purposeful action within the scheme of creation and evolution. Creation begins from a non-physical realm (God’s heaven) and descends, through increasing lawful constraints into inert matter. Evolution starts from inert matter and ascends through more complex life forms with increased intelligence and consciousness—until we get to the human race, which has the God-given capacity to return to heaven.

This universal patterning principle is what gives process coherence, order, and allows the universe to be self-consistent. It would take a book to explore this subject more deeply, so I have done just that. The book is Proving God and will be available in Spring 2010.

To find out if such a book would interest you, take a peek at:

http://www.provinggod.com

Catching up to God

In a previous post titled “Spiritual Gravity” I talked about the well-known law of physics that states that once something is set into motion it seeks out its equilibrium—the condition whereby it finds stability.

Since the universe exists as a dynamical process, everything finds its stability in motion.  Planets “fall” towards the sun while the sun is itself falling towards its equilibrium within a galaxy of stars—also seeking their common equilibrium through space.  So as one cosmic concentration falls, others have to constantly try to keep up.

God is the prime mover.

So ultimately, everything in the created world must try to “catch up” and find stability in God’s Holy activity. But the physical universe tries to catch up with God’s perpetual influence not only by being constantly on the move, but through finding stability within new units of complexity and self-organization.

If there were no Creator-God, all things would simply fall to the “bottom” (entropy). But since everything is being moved by God and is trying to keep up with God, the so-called “bottom” must keep rising to a higher plane of order and thermodynamics. This creates new orders of organization in the universe (reverse entropy).

The evolution of bio-complexity on earth is the continued endeavor of things in dynamical process to catch up and more perfectly mirror God’s Holy qualities. These qualities become more apparent as nature brings forth higher-levels of organic structure. For instance, the higher the degree of complexity we see in evolving living structure the more we see a perfection of reciprocal cooperation. Every cell lives for the welfare of the entire body and the compound body lives for the welfare of all its cells.

How is the evolution of bio-structure representative of Nature’s incessant striving to catch up to God? God is Infinite Love. The essence of love is to unite and share. Increased organic complexity is the result of increased unified sharing. Nothing new comes together without perfecting reciprocation. In this way evolution attempts to catch up to God by perfecting an image and likeness of LOVE.

This physical analog of love becomes even more God-like as it evolves into the psychical realm—that is, through the evolution of increased intelligence and consciousness. Human subjective experience allows creation to find its equilibrium in acts of kindness and goodness. Reverse entropy now moves from increased thermodynamics to its equivalent psycho-spiritual dynamics.

Religion is God’s strategy to offer guidance for the human heart and mind to find stability in spiritual love. This will allow the human spirit to ultimately find its proper equilibrium in God’s eternal kingdom of mutual love, called heaven.

http://www.provinggod.com

A God Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, even before there was any time or any space, there lived someone with Infinite Love and Infinite Wisdom. This wonderful Person was called God.

In spite of all this inexhaustible love and wisdom God was alone.  God’s love and wisdom were like the rays of a sun that had no world or planets to shine on. God then decided to create a physical world—because real love needs something outside of itself, and not itself, to love.

To accomplish this God had to turn infinite qualities into finite things. This first involved a concentrated effort to distinguish different values of Infinite Love into finite forms or parcels, called Truth.

These various forms of love became spiritual substances and constantly changed to reflect all of God’s innumerable thoughts and divine plans. But even this effort did not create time, space or matter. The measurements and durations of these holy actions and forms were not yet physical. They were like ideas that changed into new ideas expressing a standard of measurement (metrics) according to different values.

God began to combine these quantities and qualities (measures) of love into more complex forms according to affinity, then concentrated them into points of pure endeavor. These points or units of effort no longer simply changed from one value or state to another but could change their placement and move out from themselves. Not only could they displace their position, they could do so in a way that turned the values and relationships between God’s love and truth into their proper physical equivalents—that is, to corresponding measurements, proportions and scales within the constraints of spacetime.

These points of pure effort created time, space and fundamental matter by self-organizing themselves and their trajectories into entities that described real centers, peripheries, diameters and poles. The beginning of physical creation was the process by which potentialities and tendencies gained coherence and stability through the subordination and coordination of motion (kinetic energy).

These newly-created physical units and entities continued to reflect and respond to God’s perpetual influence of love and continued to form new relationships, aggregations and complexities. This incessant drive to form new levels of order is a derivative of love, which is a living influence that constantly seeks to unite all diverse things. This is why the universe is unified and its laws are bio-friendly.

This process of self-organization and generation of more complex structure continues with the emergence and evolution of life. Organic life is simply form and structure capable of more perfectly receiving God’s living force. As nature evolves, it strives to become a more perfect mirror image of God. But God’s love is not a one-way street. Real spiritual love is reciprocal. For love to find its fullness in time and space, a special creature must evolve with a brain and mind (subjective experience) that could not only recognize a Divine Being, but could become a creature that would ultimately have the ability to love God in return.

This mutual love and special conjunction (called God’s covenant) allows an Infinite God to flow into and “eternalize” the finite human acts of sincere love—so that a heaven could be created from the human race. God’s great wish for creation is that we can all live happily ever after.

http://www.staircasepress.com

In honor of Veterans of Spiritual Wars

Today is Veterans Day. On this important day, Americans pay particular tribute to those special individuals who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend their country with their life.

I would also like to remind you that God has asked us to lay down our lives as well. But God wants us to fight a different kind of war and make an even deeper sacrifice. This war is not fought against others or on foreign soil. This war takes place even closer to us than our homeland. It is waged on the battlefield of our very own personal turf—within our hearts and minds.

This important turf is that upon which our spirit dwells. This spiritual ground consists of the principles we inwardly stand for and defend. It is a battle between choosing God’s tenets of spiritual love for others or favoring our own selfish motives.

When one belief system is victorious, the other dies away. This death happens before physical death. In the Bible, this process is referred to as the death that needs to take place before the “second death.”

When false principles and a life that opposes God’s wisdom is rejected during our terrestrial existence we will have nothing to fear when the physical body dies. Our life choices determine the quality of our spirit and therefore the quality of our eternal abode. This is the true meaning behind the Christian concept of being “reborn.” In order to obtain heaven, one must first be reborn. And in order to be reborn, something must die.

But victory does not happen overnight (as some Christians suggest). We must ask for God’s help and bravely battle our negative inclinations throughout our entire lives (otherwise our convictions would not be genuine).

So today I would also like to honor those who, throughout human history and from many different faith systems, have fought the greatest battle of all and sacrificed their old ways for a new spiritual way of living. These good-hearted people often go unnoticed.

http://www.staircasepress.com

Spiritual Gravity

It is a well-known law of physics that once something is set into motion it seeks out its equilibrium. This is what occurs to all dynamical things that come under the universal force of gravity.

Physicists are still trying to grasp the concepts of gravitational order (the spontaneous self-organization of gravitational systems like galaxies and solar systems) as well as quantum gravity.

Gravity is seen as something continuous – getting stronger or weaker but never representing a discrete unit (as quantum physics would require). Thus gravity and quantum physics are at odds with each other and the best brains in the world have yet to find a satisfactory means of unifying the two.

Perhaps the answer has already been given in the discoveries put forth by scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. He believed that action could find its equilibrium not only within units of distinct quantities but also units operating within distinct QUALITIES of space!!! Action could be physical, mental and spiritual according to the type and number of inertial constraints ruling their trajectories.

It is beyond the scope of this blog post to provide all the details of Swedenborg’s multidimensional theory but it spans everything from inert physical matter to the ontological reality of spiritual substances. (Today’s 11-dimensional string or membrane theories only provide a physical account of the universe and leave out transcendental principles.)

My main point is, Swedenborg showed that the activity of the human mind also seeks out its proper equilibrium. The mind finds its “trajectory” and equilibrium in reaching goals. Human goals are based on values (which are derivatives of love).

Many serious physicists believe (as Swedenborg did) that the human mind operates outside of time and space—and quantum physics informs us that dynamical things can indeed be non-local and non-temporal. Therefore, if the human mind finds its equilibrium in reaching its chosen values, then spiritual gravity is LOVE.

If this were not so, then it would be hard to imagine how angelic activities could find coherence and order in the non-physical spiritual world. Those who adopt God’s principles of mutual love find their equilibrium in heaven. While those who have contempt for others have their equilibrium in another, opposing realm. One’s love determines one’s “place” in the spiritual world. Put into scientific language, one’s love adapts and bends the fabric of reality into its own disposition.

That is why religion offers a value system. Religion is God’s lawful strategy to help the human race find their ultimate equilibrium in eternal blessedness and peace.

I have written a new book Proving God that attempts to put all Swedenborg’s pioneering ideas into a scientifically plausible model. It will be available in Spring 2010.

Feel free to browse http://www.provinggod.com for more info.

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL

Most everyone will recognize that the above statement represents one of the commandments of the Decalogue. However, few have taken the time to probe this divine law beyond its literal and obvious meaning.

The Ten Commandments, in fact, contain three distinct levels of meaning. Take the issue of theft (the seventh commandment) as our example. There are three levels of stealing. We can steal physical things, psychical things, and even divine things.

If the commandments were only to be taken literally then a mother stealing bread for her hungry children would be eternally damned to hell. Many of us correctly sense that this would be an injustice coming from a God of Infinite Love and Mercy. So there must be more damning ways to steal that would justify separation from God.

Because all humans are spirits living in physical bodies, God’s commandments were wisely designed to guide our physical and spiritual realities. We can become spiritual thieves by robbing people of the means to salvation—either by distorting God’s teachings or even persuading other people that God’s laws are meaningless.

On the highest level of thievery, one can steal from the Lord. This stealing involves taking God’s power and claiming it for oneself. (We certainly experience individuals who try to act like God in the world through their dominance, possessions and imagined self-worth.)

But each form of stealing also depends on the motive within one’s heart. One could even steal someone else’s bread from a principle of contempt and hatred for others as well as contempt for God (and what God stands for). So one can steal physical bread and practice thievery on all three levels!

This is why the Lord said that loving God and love towards the neighbor contain everything relating to all Ten Commandments. One does not wish to steal or do ill (on any level) when one sincerely loves God and the neighbor.

http://www.innergardening.net