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

Are heaven’s angels in agreement with quantum physics?

Yes and no. Terrestrial scientists are not even in agreement as to what is really going on in the quantum world. That is why several different models have been developed over the last 80 years to express different interpretations.

While scientists do agree that the quantum micro-world represents a strange realm where primal entities exist in a non-local state of potentials (superposition), they are unsure whether this state is something strangely physical or completely non-material. Adding to this difficulty, scientists cannot grasp how the indeterminate and schizophrenic world of quantum froth (wave/particle duality) gives birth to the determinate properties of larger scale systems (like solar systems and galaxies). What is the causal connection between these opposing situations?

Simply throwing up one’s hands and chalking up everything to irreducible chance means there is no rational reason for why the universe is structured so rationally and orderly. Which is awkward since science believes it has reasoning on its side (rather than faith and religion). Furthermore, if scientists cling to the notion that the universe appeared out of nothing (ex nihilo) then creation could not have had a physical cause!

If the laws of physics ruling the universe on the fundamental level of reality, emerge out of a non-material, pre-space and pre-geometric realm beyond time and space, then you open a door for God to enter into the equation.

So if angels actually exist they would live in a non-local realm and would know which approach to quantum physics was most correct. Angels would have first-hand experience in observing creation and causal process from non-material first principles.

For assistance in helping us understand angelic perception, I believe that scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg offers us the most complete and rational approach. He claimed that angels perceive dynamics, process and action totally removed from their involvement with time and space. While most scientists who cling to materialistic philosophies see action devoid of time or space as impossible, Swedenborg offered an abundance of rational approaches to this problem. By the way, eminent physicist John Wheeler theorized that spacetime might have arisen out of a pre-geometric realm.

Swedenborg would have described Wheeler’s pre-geometry and the Spiritual World as one and the same thing. This means that he would have identified pre-geometry as spiritual forms resulting from spiritual forces and activity. To form a picture of this non-material realm we merely need to focus on our own thoughts. We can be standing at a bus stop in winter but our mind may be on a Caribbean beach. Our thoughts have real trajectories, directionality, and targets. Mental activity is non-physical and not constrained by physical laws. More intriguing, thoughts can be arranged into real order and coherent structure, giving rise to human understanding and belief-systems (worldviews). This non-physical structure and order is oriented towards our life-choices and values.

To sum all this up, Swedenborg claimed that complexity (including bio-structure) emerged from non-material complexity in a non-spatial and non-temporal realm. An Infinite Creator, like God in heaven, certainly fits the bill for representing a non-physical source of irreducible complexity. Nature’s incessant drive for self-organization comes from a creative, unifying force from the non-physical realm of heaven. This force, or first principle in the universe is LOVE!

Everyone can agree that the essence of Love is to unite. Love unites people as well as creates the non-physical structure of our worldviews from the values we choose. What we love, we value. Similarly, all order and orientation in the physical universe comes from Love’s non-material endeavor to unite things into coherent structure.

Love in heaven corresponds to harmonic principles in the physical universe.

So, physicists will be challenged in the future to see that within their idea of quantum foam lay deeper worlds of order and process—including non-physical process. Physicist David Bohm had similar ideas of a hierarchical or layered design of reality.

This is just a small taste of the issues I will be tackling in my upcoming book Proving God. It will be available mid-March.

http://www.provinggod.com

I believe in Santa Claus!

Yes, I am all grown up. But the more I look into the spiritual symbolism represented by Santa Claus the more I believe He is fundamentally real!

Let us start with Santa’s characteristics. He has a long white beard. This symbolizes wisdom (an aged and experienced mind) expressed in outward acts of goodness from purity. All true wisdom is acting from love. Santa’s jolly laugh, rosy cheeks and ample girth (fat symbolizes goodness) are all further outward signs of the inner qualities of his big heart.

Santa’s outfit is red and white. Red symbolizes love and white symbolizes purity, which are spiritual features.

Santa lives at the North Pole. Scientifically speaking, the North Pole represents a singularity. You can’t go further north than the North Pole. A singularity represents a boundary where spacetime ends and physical laws break down. Hence, Santa lives in a realm beyond space and time (like heaven) so his actions are not constrained by the laws of physics. Thus, Santa can perform miraculous things—like deliver toys to every child in the world in a single night and from a single bag! So Santa not only portrays a kind of omniscience (wisdom), but omnipresence (can be in many places at one time) and omnipotence (his bag of gifts never runs out).

Santa’s love is spiritual because it is angelic and inclusive!

Santa’s mode of transportation is a big sleigh driven by reindeer that can fly above the earth. These magical creatures symbolize higher ideals that can soar above the lower and common values of the everyday world. A sleigh symbolizes doctrine or belief system—the mental vehicle that transports us in life.

If you count “eight” reindeer, then the symbol of Santa and his sled represents the approach of a new beginning (an eighth day corresponds to the beginning of a new week or cycle). If you add Rudolph and his shiny red nose to the pack, the symbolism goes further to represent a holistic (nine) perception (nose) of reality from the principle of love (red) and truth (shining light).

That Santa cares about children being “good” is the same message that God gives to the world. And Jesus while on earth urged everyone to be like little children (which symbolizes innocence). Even the tradition of children sitting on Santa’s knee symbolizes that in order to receive our proper gifts we must be willing to be in obedience (sitting) to living a life according to the higher ideals of goodness. A knee, which connects the higher part of a leg to the lower part, represents the connection between higher spiritual ideals to the lower worldly mind so that we can walk in righteousness.

That Santa slides down chimneys is also a symbol with great spiritual significance. The hearth represents the human heart. Therefore, Santa delivers his gifts if we let him into our hearts. We let him into our hearts by being good. Gifts symbolize an increase in the goodness of the heart because they represent sharing.

That is why Santa places the gifts under the Christmas tree. A Christmas tree is representative of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden that God planted for the human race, which symbolizes our heart’s harvest of the fruitfulness of God’s love and wisdom.

I believe in Santa Claus because I believe in God. The evolution of the Santa Claus character within the human psyche over the years was a process directed by God’s providence and the angels of heaven, whose job it is to lift our minds to wonderful and miraculous things.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

http://www.staircasepress.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

Barry The Blood Corpuscle

Once upon a time there was a blood corpuscle named Barry. He lived and worked with his blood brothers and sisters to maintain the operational health and integrity of their human host. This included rushing to the face when their human host was angry, leaving the face when their host was frightened, going to the stomach when their host was hungry and entering the various muscles as needed.

Barry and all his other blood buddies had to make sure they were perfectly attuned to the thoughts and wishes of their host or the entire organic system would quickly come to ruin. Most of the time it was a pretty straightforward job.

Then one day Barry and his platelet pals were given a strange new order from the host’s brain. They had just left the liver on their return back to the heart when they received orders to take a detour. Barry’s usual path took him to the heart where he would then be pumped into the lungs. This normal route allowed him and his pals to ditch old, unhealthy and heterogenous substances they had picked up along the way and to freshen up with a new supply of oxygen. That always felt great.

The lungs served to scrutinize the worthiness of the materials Barry and his friends were carrying. Again, this process was to assure that the quality of the blood corpuscles would perfectly reflect and correspond to the quality of their host’s heart and mind. But now they were being told to change their normal routine.

Apparently, their host was at that moment telling a big fat lie for the purpose of deception. Barry and his fellow corpuscles now had to find a way to imitate this diversion through taking a new direction in the body. What made this particularly challenging for Barry is that their host was spouting high-sounding, noble ideas, which involved the host’s intelligence but cleverly hid the intentions of the heart.

Barry and his company of corpuscle-friends were given orders by the brain to take a detour from the heart, passing immediately through the aorta and vena cava before returning back into the lungs. Barry realized that by going to the lungs through a less direct path, he was mimicking his host’s efforts to keep his thoughts refined yet separated and abstracted from his heart’s quality. This tricky maneuver permitted the host to communicate high-sounding ideals while sparing the heart’s intentions from coming under any direct self-scrutiny.

Over time, the host’s deceit became habitual and Barry was less able to jettison the hazardous materials from the host’s body because they now mirrored the toxic proclivity of the host’s heart. Barry noticed that he and his pals were getting thicker, heavier and stickier. Barry also noticed that the host was suffering from bouts of melancholy. If this was allowed to continue, Barry and his friends would eventually be forced to form dangerous clots in order to faithfully mimic the poisonous principles that were adhering to and “gunking-up” the host’s value-system.

Then one day a miracle happened.

Barry and his red-blooded buddies suddenly found themselves receiving directions to begin traveling through the coronary vessels of the heart in a new way that allowed them to pass rigorous inspection in the lungs not once, but two or three times, before being pumped out the ascending and descending aorta and back into the rest of the body. Barry and his cousin corpuscles felt happiness and levity again as they were able to expel their noxious substances with greater zeal.

Barry learned from what was going on in the brain that their host had found God again and began a new life of introspection, incorporating spiritual principles back into his life. It was because of this new endeavor of intensive introspection by the host that Barry and his platelet pals could again take their chemical baggage to be properly inspected by the lungs, bringing new life and vigor to the entire hemoglobinic community and ultimately to their human host.

http://www.staircasepress.com

Where will human evolution go next?

Evolution shows a real trajectory towards increased bio-complexity yielding greater intelligence and consciousness. The human race and its complex brain structure represent the cutting edge of this trajectory—so far.

Based on the evidence that evolution has provided us it would be a safe bet to assume that life’s continuing trajectory will be towards further increased intelligence and consciousness. After all, the human brain is still gathering more knowledge about the world it finds itself in.

What differentiates the human brain from brains of other creatures is that it can take in the sensory data from the circumfluent world and find deeper meaning through mental abstractions. As physicist David Bohm once put it “…to recognize anything whatsoever is to see that as various ratios are related to an object, so are they related to our mental concept of it.”

Human consciousness and its intelligence can recognize and distill ratios out of nature that other animals are oblivious to. Furthermore, new mental insights and creative thought come from recognizing novel ratios and analogies within the subject matter (ratios of ratio). These new ratios and analogies lead to profound mental abstractions including mathematics.

Currently, science does not embrace the idea of “purposeful” design in creation or evolution. So God is not a part of the scientific equation. But what if it could be proven that God had anticipated the future trajectory of human intelligence and consciousness by providing special hidden substrata within sensory experience that would allow humans to discover deeper analogies and ratios?

Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg claimed that God indeed designed Sacred Scripture in a way that new analogies could be distilled (revelation) from the ordinary sensory experience of it various narratives. In other words, the stories within Holy Scripture have substrates built into their architecture in the form of higher levels of meaning and analog. It is in these substrates (sacred scaffolding) that God’s Word displays its authority, inerrancy and sacredness.

The caveat is that embracing such an unexpected reality in God’s Word requires an evolutionary “jump” in human cognitive function. Few scientists or theologians are mentally and emotionally disposed to hearing such things.

So I will keep writing my blog posts in the hope that human evolution will catch up to the cognitive level required for recognizing the deeper ratios and analogies of God’s revealed wisdom.

http://www.provinggod.com

God is love but is love God?

Traditional Christian theology embraces the concept that God “is love.” However, traditional doctrine holds that the converse is not true, that love is God.

The reason for this is that love is seen as an outcome or predicate of mental thought. So it is assumed that God, as well as finite humans, love objects and people from intellectual discernment.

Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg made the amazing claim that love was more primary than thought. In fact, all thought was generated first by some appetite, intention, goal or disposition (derivatives of love). Since our thoughts are the first things that we become conscious of, we fail to recognize that what we love or will is sitting in the cockpit of our cognitive function.

Swedenborg points out that if one removed affection from thought, the thought immediately dissipates. This is why when we lose our interest (affection) in a topic we change focus and move our thoughts in another direction.

This means that love is the very life and fabric of a man or a woman (what we love is the very essence of our subjective consciousness and spirit). In other words, life is love. Stated in another way, love is life and the deepest essence of “being.” This has theological implications for God, since humans are an image and likeness of the Creator.

God is Infinite Life. God’s love is that infinite life, essence and substance. God’s wisdom is the form which love takes to define its existence (just as human thoughts are the means by which our intentions start to gain detectable form).

Those of you who have been following my blog posts know that I have written a new book, Proving God. It is the result of my seven-year attempt to unify science and God. If God is love and love is God, then we can begin to understand the nature of God from rational first principles (and not just as a holy mystery).

The challenge then remains to show how love generates the forces and laws of the universe from a scientifically plausible theory. One of the big mysteries in science is nature’s incessant endeavor towards self-organization and complexity that brings about a unified universe.

Clue: the essence of love is to unite.

http://www.provinggod.com

What goes up must come down

Everyone can comprehend the reality that if you throw a stone into the air it will fall back to earth. This universal law of nature can be applied to our lives as well. The human mind can also rise up to noble and rarefied ideals but then come crashing down if it allows the physical body to succumb to the vanities and allurements of the world.

However, even a person who sustains his or her spiritual integrity must eventually come back down to earth in order to be truly useful to society. But in this second scenario the body is acting in conjunction with the higher ideals of the mind (so there is no crash).

According to scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg the growth of the human mind is based on God’s strategy of salvation. I have studied his ideas for dozens and dozens of years and noticed that this divine strategy moves in two opposite directions!

In Swedenborg’s book Divine Love And Wisdom he describes an upward trajectory in human mental growth. As children, we first develop our minds from an innate curiosity and affection for knowledge. Later as we get older, we seek to understand more deeply what we know in our memory. Finally, we seek from our understanding the things that most represent truth for us in order to acquire wisdom. It is at this stage when an individual is seeking truth and wisdom that the Lord God wishes to instill spiritual principles.

In Swedeborg’s biblical exegesis, the Arcana Coelestia (heavenly secrets), he describes a downward trajectory. This downward trajectory is symbolically expressed in the Genesis story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham, who was guided by God to go on a special journey, represents one who has been given spiritual principles. This wisdom is only intellectual and is not yet real spiritual wisdom until it affects the heart. In order to affect the heart, spiritual wisdom must bring forth a new activity in the understanding (rational mind) and a new activity in the body (from the corporeal/natural mind). The birth of Isaac and Jacob represent the downward trajectory and progeny of God’s wisdom bringing forth new activity in the human mind and bodily action (spiritual deeds).

Obviously, one isn’t really wise unless one acts wisely in the body and in the world.

People can acquire great knowledge and still act like fools.

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