Love: The Science Of The Future!

Scientists who embrace a materialistic philosophy cannot conceive of how the topic of LOVE could ever be considered an exact science, like physics, chemistry, astronomy or biology. In fact, church-going scientists would have serious doubts as well. After all, Love is not something that can be studied like matter, even though Love’s importance to our lives may get everyone’s confirming head nod.

Love is what separates a human being from a robot with artificial intelligence. It is not simply a matter of intelligence. Remove human affection and feeling from speech and you get the monotone sounds of an automaton.

Only recently have neuroscientists begun to suspect that emotion and feelings (derivatives of love) operate the cockpit of the human intellect. What we love (embrace) focuses our attention, introduces sensory data to the brain’s memory and more importantly, organizes the material and sensory data of the memory into a coherent system with real order and orientation. Human understanding relies on a person’s ability to put knowledge into some organized structure. The result of this psychical process to grow coherent structure spontaneously is a person’s worldview or value system. How we act in the physical world is determined by our value system. We value what we love.

Evidence that love is substantial and assists causal process is the fact that the quality of one’s love determines the living complexity of his or her worldview. A love of worldly things organizes the mind to value physical or bodily pleasure. A love of knowledge organizes the mind to seek and find pleasure in mental activity. Obtaining wisdom comes from a deeper spiritual love from the study of God’s tenets. This nobler love disposes information in the human memory to value putting others and God before self.

More and more scientists are coming to the conclusion that existence is relational. Nothing exists unless it consists of co-existing things from within and can co-exist with things from without. Nothing exists from itself (called the contingency argument). That is why the universe is unified.

The essence of Love is to unite.

I have written a new book Proving God, which demonstrates that Love must be an ontologically real primary causal force perpetually directing creation and evolution. I could go on and on but it is that time of year to lighten up and share more “lovable” information. So for those of you who would like to approach Love and Valentine’s Day from the customary tradition of romance, perhaps I can offer you a truly spiritual appreciation of giving gifts (candy), cards and flowers to those close to your heart.

Valentine cards represent communication and intimate connection between two souls. Giving candy symbolizes the sweetness of the relationship (love is indeed sweet). Giving flowers represents the beauty of anticipating a continued fruitful relationship and the “harvest” of shared love, since flowers precede the production of seeds and fruit, which represent all the useful things predicated from the quality of an individual’s love and sincere goodness.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Super Bowl Sunday and the human heart

I enjoy Super Bowl Sunday. I enjoy the festive atmosphere. I enjoy the chicken wings, pizza and libations. I enjoy watching great athletes performing great physical feats. I enjoy being with friends. I enjoy the commercials. And when you throw in the cheerleaders, rock bands and wardrobe malfunctions, Super Bowl Sunday seems to be the best single event the terrestrial world has to offer.

Even as a spiritual writer, I find that Super Bowl Sunday offers me real mental recreation and sanctuary from the difficult problems and various crises in the world. The entertainment of Super Bowl Sunday offers the real and very tangible benefit of recharging our batteries.

However, at times when I am not caught up in the hoopla, I will reflect on the spiritual significance of all this. Because inherent in the Super Bowl we can find a microcosm of the human predicament.

For one, most viewers will take sides—running the range from good-natured feelings to hostility and rage. Some viewers will drink and cheer while others will drink and throw their beer bottle at the TV screen. Some viewers will lose or make money on bets.

The athletes on the field are paid to knock each other’s heads off and inflict real pain. And many of them have become millionaires doing it. The average fan, who is constantly challenged to acquire new skills just to stay employed or stay “hireable” must reconcile the fact that what the world values most is not their God-given talents. But the hypnotic spell of Super Bowl Sunday transforms this cruel reality and ontological unfairness into something to be celebrated. A fan’s self-esteem can even become magically tied to the fortunes of his or her team rather than one’s intrinsic self-worth.

Then salt is thrown into the wound of this fan’s lowered self-esteem by the threatened lockout between owners and players over the issue of salaries. Here, the sports fan is forced to humbly watch millionaires arguing with billionaires at a time of worldwide financial crisis and unemployment.

Money only travels in the direction that people place the most value in. You can see what kinds of things the world values most by where people spend their time and money. So if the world seems unfair it is actually the result of the poor choices we make. For the world to change, values must change. And for values to change, the human heart must change (this is the essence of all true religion).

Make no mistake. I will enjoy this Sunday’s Super Bowl. But then I will get back to the business of helping people to play a more important role in the world and increase their cosmic value in God’s universe. Who knows, maybe someday the world will see good people as the new superstars. They certainly would be the only ones with the talent to bring real positive change to this troubled planet of ours.

http://www.staircasepress.com

Time flies when you’re having fun!

We have all experienced happy events that seemed to come and go in a flash. Whereas, dull or painful events in our lives seem to stretch out for unbearable periods of time and last “forever.”

Einstein’s relativity theory demonstrated the phenomena of time dilation and contraction based on the speed of something traveling through physical space. But humans can experience time dilation and contraction while standing completely still—based on different mental states like happiness or boredom.

Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg said that the experience of time is not just physical or through space, but spiritual and non-spatial. He stated that when an individual is experiencing happiness in the heart, he or she is elevated into a higher spiritual state that is free of tedium. Time is only experienced when we are in our lower corporeal state of mind where happiness is displaced by some element of worldly impatience. When people experience delight and gladness they take no note of time. Impatience causes us to constantly look at the clock.

In other words, when we (our spirits) are occupied with something we do not love, we are forced to reflect on things that do not belong to our heart’s affection—they become tedious and we are drawn back into our mundane corporeal reality and physical time.

This transition between the physical realm of time and the spiritual realm of non-time is according to what we love (likes and dislikes). What we love is who we really are—the inner fabric of our souls. And, what we really are has everything to do with where in the spiritual world we ultimately find our eternal abode.

Because human spirit and human love is synonymous, the purpose of religion is to guide the heart to make the right decisions—to love God and the neighbor. God’s kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of mutual love. To reject these divine tenets of spiritual love and choose a more self-centered love lands you in a spiritual realm of similarly self-centered people. The result of such people living together is hell.

In the afterlife, people experience reality according to spiritual relativity, that is, through the quality of their hearts.

We control our own non-temporal reality.

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David Bohm, Swedenborg, Implicate Order and Bible Interpretation

The renowned 20^th Century physicist David Bohm (a protégé of Einstein) is quite popular with the spiritually-minded segment of humanity. Bohm is credited with having introduced the concept that the visible universe and its explicate order contains deeper orders of coherent structure. He called these deeper levels within the structure of reality (and action) enfolded or implicate order.

In a nutshell, visible and quantifiable phenomena not only contained deeper orders of structure and relationship (ratios of ratio) but these implicate orders brought us closer to total or universal order. Bohm had introduced a new way of looking at order and process. He proposed that in the formulation of the laws of physics that the implicate order be given primary relevance over explicate order. Thus, the causal arrangement of process in the universe should be looked at from a priori things (from within) into subsequent things (the outermost). His theory presents a powerful model of why the universe is a unified whole, and that fundamental reality consists of intelligence and consciousness. This is why spiritually oriented individuals like his physics.

However, Bohm was not the first to actually introduce the idea of implicate and explicate order to the world. Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg offered similar ideas two centuries earlier. Unfortunately, Swedenborg has been dismissed by much of the academic world because his novel theological claims were based on direct experience with deeper (implicate) orders of reality—like the spiritual world.

Swedenborg not only applied implicate order to the causal architecture of the universe but to biblical interpretation (exegesis) as well! Who would expect such a thing? He maintained that the Holy Word and its narratives were similarly structured to the top-down scaffolding design of the universe and its processes. This scaffolding meant that the stories of Scripture had deeper levels of meaning that brought us closer to total or universal order—God’s order.

The value of a scientific model depends upon its explanatory and predictive powers. Swedenborg provided volumes of evidence to show that these deeper levels of meaning within Scripture do indeed exist. These discrete levels of order not only offer greater explanatory insights into the mysteries of faith, they allow one to predict with self-consistent precision, the deeper meanings of all its stories. Swedenborg maintained that it is these “implicate” levels of Scripture that offer lawful and rational proof of its sanctity, inerrancy and authority.

Swedenborg’s discovery that Scripture and Nature consisted of the same causal patterning principles is what inspired me to write my second book Proving God, which is my attempt to unify science and theology. I feel I have succeeded in this most important topic for a troubled, post-modern world.

http://www.provinggod.com

Is Science Proving Swedenborg’s ideas?

A physicist friend recently sent me a link to a New York Times article called Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally. You can access it at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02science/02angier.html

Recent scientific research seems to validate the amazing discoveries of the 18^th Century scientist/theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg claimed that there was a causal link between physical and spiritual realities. He called this link correspondences. The essential idea of correspondences is that the natural world is a physical analog (metaphor) of the spiritual world. Since an individual’s heart and mind is a man or woman’s spiritual reality, the physical body is lawfully designed to respond to one’s feelings, thoughts and mental abstractions (higher order realities) in a corresponding (embodied) way.

Apparently, this topic is part of a growing and highly popular field in Psychological Science called embodied cognition. I will share several examples from the article.

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen discovered that when participants were asked to contemplate future or past events, their bodies had measurable and corresponding reactions. Those who thought of the future leaned slightly forward while those thinking of the past leaned slightly backward. In other words, an abstract concept such as time found its physical equivalent in body posture.

At Yale, a test was conducted where participants were each given a packet of information concerning an imaginary person. Group A was given a warm cup of coffee with this packet and Group B received iced coffee with the packet. You guessed it. Group A had warmer feelings towards the imagined individual while Group B’s impression was frosty. Furthermore, at the University of Toronto, participants who were asked to recall memories of times when they felt socially snubbed seemed on average to believe that the room they were in was five degrees cooler than those who were asked to recall times of feeling social acceptance.

Swedenborg claimed, two centuries earlier, that psychological love corresponded to physical heat. We even use this similitude in our language—such as experiencing a “warming of the heart” or feeling the “heat of passion.”

This psycho-physical parallelism even extends into issues of morality. Another study showed that participants who dwelled on personal bad behavior such as adultery were more likely to ask for an antiseptic cloth afterwards (to cleanse themselves) than those who dwelled on their good deeds.

Swedenborg took the idea of embodied cognition (correspondences) into theology and biblical interpretation (exegesis). He claimed that the sacred rite of Baptism was a symbolic language for depicting a cleansing of one’s negative inner qualities. In fact, the entire Holy Word had this symbolic language of correspondences incorporated into the structured scaffolding of its narratives.

In another experiment researchers determined that the sensation of “weightiness” influenced the importance participants placed on certain issues. Those holding heavier objects placed more importance to the issues that their minds were being associated with. It is a common lexicon that things we perceive as important carry more “weight.” Weight and importance correspond. Powerful ideas affect the human spirit just as natural objects—with lots of mass—can affect the physical body.

Similarly we can feel miles apart from people who are physically close and very near to those who are miles away. What this means is that the body and mind are aware of another reality that makes use of an entirely different kind of metrics (standard of measurement). Swedenborg boldly stated that the spiritual world contained these non-physical metrics—measurements, boundaries and parameters that represent the quality of one’s love and its derivative thoughts (non-material trajectories).

My first book Sermon From The Compost Pile shows the reader how to employ this symbolic language of embodied cognition or correspondence to all things in the physical world of nature so that one can find spiritual wisdom right in their own garden or backyard.

My second book Proving God offers further insights to where this new science of embodied cognition can take us. It is the lawful and rational means by which science and theology will be ultimately unified!

http://www.innergardening.net

http://www.provinggod.com

It’s Swedenborg’s Birthday!!!

Years ago I was invited to a Swedenborgian Church to give a talk on Emanuel Swedenborg to honor his birthday. I have made a serious study of his scientific and theological ideas and have built a reputation for being able to convey these ideas in novel and imaginative ways. My address to the church focused on the symbolism of a birthday cake, especially how its ingredients and its baking offer insights to real transformative, spiritual growth. (Rumor has it that my speech was later reprinted in their national publication The Messenger).

This was an easy task because one of Swedenborg’s major gifts to the world was the extraordinary discovery that all material things on earth represent physical analogs of spiritual and heavenly realities (called correspondences). Therefore, a birthday cake’s ingredients could provide symbolic and tangible insights for obtaining spiritual wisdom and a heavenly life.

Swedenborg was born on January 29, 1688. He was both a scientist and theologian. This year I have been invited back—not to give a talk, but to discuss possible plans for promoting my new book Proving God at the church at some future date. My new book shares so many of Swedenborg’s intellectual gifts (both scientific and theological) with the world that it is quite ahead of its time.

This, too, was an easy task because Swedenborg’s science and theology is still very much ahead of its time. I am well aware that many individuals will find it absurd that the ideas of an 18^th Century thinker can surpass the New Paradigm science or post-modern transformative religions, but they are all in for a big surprise.

Swedenborg offered amazing insights as to how science and theology are united. God and science are one! His insights included identifying the first causal principles of the universe, solutions to quantum gravity, a comprehensive model of human cognitive architecture and its multi-leveled substrates and functions, creation and evolution from non-local and non-temporal beginnings, and the scientific principles behind God’s eternal activity of salvation.

In a nutshell, my upcoming book explores Swedenborg’s remarkable premise for spiritual causality—that the laws and forces of nature have their origins in non-physical spiritual laws and forces.

A birthday cake with 322 candles puts out a lot of light. So I have simply written a book to help prepare those for a future time when Swedenborg’s birthday cake will throw out even more light.

Happy Birthday, Emanuel Swedenborg!

http://www.provinggod.com

New Paradigm Bible

While most physicists are content with working out their daily problems through either quantum mechanics or relativity theory a smaller number of them, who concern themselves with foundational issues, see problems on the horizon. I sense a growing uneasiness among these researchers in that unifying these two pillars of science has been unsuccessful.

Some scientists suspect that the answer of unity lies in a yet undiscovered and deeper theory. String theory, while mathematically promising, depends on old paradigm classical structures (strings) and its extra dimensions cannot be empirically proved.

Theologians seem to be faced with a similar challenge. While most of the clergy are content with their denomination’s doctrines, some theologians are bothered that the Christian witness has lost its sense of wholeness and unity. Since all doctrine is formed from God’s Holy Word, some theologians suspect that a deeper exegesis (interpretation) is needed that will provide new frames of reference without doing violence to the historical sense of the narratives.

So, currently there is no unity in physics and no unity in Christian doctrine.

I follow these things because I attended seminary and belong to two organizations consisting of scientists, philosophers and theologians who are attempting to unify science and theology. They are the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) and the Swedenborg Scientific Association (SSA).

It is useless trying to unify an incomplete science with an incomplete theology. Furthermore, science and theology use two different languages. It is into this fray that I have chosen to dive headfirst, the result of which will be a new book entitled Proving God that will be launched mid-March.

My strategy is to show that the Holy Word is also a scientific document. Thanks to the visionary insights of scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, my book offers new frames of reference by which biblical exegesis can be expanded to express the universal patterning principles of top-down causal process, the arrow of time, quantum gravity, multi-leveled realities, the emergence of matter and spacetime structure from a non-local, non-temporal and non-material realm (pre-geometric spiritual world), evolution of consciousness, the science of salvation and even bring various mysteries of faith within the cognitive ballpark of human reasoning.

Swedenborg’s discoveries offer a New Paradigm Bible for the post-modern world. Proving God will offer new frames of reference for the serious thinker and seeker with which Sacred Scripture can be interpreted through a more rational scientific language.

If these subjects interest you, please visit http://www.provinggod.com

Cinderella and Spiritual Enlightenment

The term “Fairy Tale” refers to a story that doesn’t portray real characters or real historical events. Fairy Tales are the inventions of the human creative imagination and therefore should not be confused as literal or empirical truth. But do they represent an ontological reality of a higher order?

Having studied the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg for more than 35 years I have verified for myself that God’s Holy Word contains a symbolic language that offers further revelations about divine order and the process of salvation. Swedenborg claimed that this symbolic language was a part of the cultural fabric of more remote civilizations and became more obscure as humankind descended into materialistic ideologies. Ancient mythologies represent fragmentary remains of this once universally understood language.

Thanks to Swedenborg, and my heart’s passion for abstract thought, I have become sensitized to this symbolic language. One picks up on things that are in agreement with one’s love. My heart and mind most definitely have detected evidence of this symbolic language in Fairy Tales! The reason why such far-fetched stories have a powerful effect on the human psyche is that they address the psyche (and human spirit). Even without a comprehension of the symbolic language in Fairy Tales they reach our subconscious mind with staying power.

Let’s take a deeper look at the story of Cinderella. If this famous Fairy Tale contains a deeper symbolic language, then the characters and places depicted will represent the theater of the human heart and mind – especially the challenges of inner growth (spiritual evolution),

Cinderella lived in a house that has been annexed by “outsiders.” Her mother and father are deceased and the house has been taken over by a mean stepmother and her “ugly” daughters. Symbolically speaking, a house represents the quality of a person’s spiritual abode. That Cinderella’s hereditary parents are dead and a stepmother has moved in and taken over means that a new and foreign influence has entered into her soul’s house.

The stepmother is mean to Cinderella and favors her own “ugly” daughters.  Symbolically, the female gender represents the affection or love of some worldview. This tells us that a harmful influence and its derivative (and ugly) offspring are threatening Cinderella’s soul and its rightful goodness (birthright).

Things look grim until a fairy godmother appears. A fairy godmother and her magical powers represent angelic and heavenly power. This angelic power is evidenced by the symbolism of turning a pumpkin into a carriage, mice into horses and her rags into a beautiful gown. Pumpkins are foodstuffs and “goods,” Therefore, the fairy godmother’s turning a pumpkin into a coach, represents turning goodness into doctrine or vehicle to carry one through life. Turning mice into horses represents transforming something small and insignificant in one’s mind into a greater capacity for understanding—which pulls one’s heart and belief system in the right direction.

This is all done so that Cinderella can go to the ball at the castle and meet “Prince Charming.” A castle represents the Kingdom of Heaven and a prince symbolizes the truth and strength of goodness (what else would be charming to Cinderella’s soul and its confirmation of such truth?). So this is the proper direction for her soul.

That Cinderella’s spell runs out at midnight means that the heart and mind cannot stay in this rarefied and enchanted state until the prince can enter into a permanent relationship with her. That the prince finds her glass slipper symbolizes that whoever’s foot it fits he is to marry because of spiritual affinity.

Certainly the prince should have been able to recognize the face of the woman who had caught his attention at the ball. So a glass slipper must add another dimension to the story. A foot represents the lower or foundational level of the human heart and mind—everyday life. A glass slipper represents the clarity of truth, which can allow higher spiritual knowledge to be transparent to one’s corporeal or worldly nature. Therefore, the prince, who represents a primary principle of heavenly truth, must find a partner who has lived a life guided by such transparency. That person would be the perfect “fit.” Cinderella’s “ugly” stepsisters represent fraudulent qualities.

The story of Cinderella is the story of the marriage of good and truth—a spiritual and heavenly marriage—that can take place in each of our hearts and minds. We each have a Cinderella and Prince Charming within us representing the best qualities of human volition and discernment. The phrase “living happily ever after” refers to eternal life in heaven, which results from such an optimum marriage.

I have been able to apply this symbolic language to other Fairy Tales as well. What do you think?

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Alien microbes on earth?

I like physicist Paul Davies. I quote him several times in my upcoming book Proving God. I like him because he is not afraid to take on issues concerning God and creation. He has written a couple of books that address the issues of existence and why the universe has a rational and orderly structure. He discusses God not just from simple faith or belief, but he explores “purposeful creation” from the framework of science.

Now he is theorizing that microbes from outer space may be living in our backyards, or even in our noses! While this is a wild idea, Davies still proceeds with all the caution of a true scientist. There is some real scientific evidence for exploring such possibilities.

In a nutshell, meteors from outer space have shown possible signs that they harbored microbial activity within their mineral makeup. Microbes on earth can survive the greatest environmental extremes found on earth. Microbes are nature’s best-designed and best-engineered organic forms for space travel as “escape pods.” And they can eat practically anything.

I suspect that other planets and other solar systems have exchanged organic life forms over a period of several billion years with the earth. The problem is that no one knows what to look for in a microbe that would flag its extraterrestrial origins. Even if an alien microbe started out consisting of strange and novel elements, it could easily adapt to the earth’s environment over long periods of time and take on more of its features.

What I like about such scientific conversations is that it opens up our worldview of reality to embrace a paradigm shift—a broader one.

Life on other planets suggests that bio-complexity is not a rare or chance occurrence. Some scientists believe that the universe may even be teeming with life.

Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg went even further. He not only claimed that the universe was teeming with intelligent life, but that they all were humanlike and acknowledged a Supreme Being.

I predict that in this century we will find evidence of other intelligent beings in the universe plus powerful evidence that our current theological systems are incomplete.

http://www.provinggod.com

A rotten apple spoils the barrel

The well-known phrase above uses a truth in nature to convey a psychological lesson. A bad apple not only spreads bacteria and fungus to the rest of the batch, but a rotten person can send a lot of good people astray and towards ruin.

The human mind has this instinctive talent to use physical or natural scenarios to offer insights into an assortment of human predicaments. The phrase “a chain is no stronger than its weakest link” also contains this physical/psychological parallelism. This parallelism between two distinct realities is also called “metaphor.”

A moviemaker makes use of the power of metaphor when portraying an evil character moving around in the dark shadows. In this case, the physical surroundings are used to magnify the character’s inner quality and heart. This allows the audience to gain dramatic insights about the invisible motives of such a character.

The best definition of a metaphor is using visible things to help describe invisible things. I find it quite intriguing that nature accommodates herself to offer deep insights into the human psyche.

Scientists dismiss metaphor as a sloppy tool for finding truth, but when the going gets tough, even they will resort to using metaphor to help others form a clearer picture of their theories.

But is metaphor the result of happy coincidences or does it have more to do with the actual structure of reality? According to scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, metaphor, allegory and analog are a language containing both symbolism and science. He called this language the science of correspondences.

His scientific explorations led him to discover that the physical universe is a mirror image and analog of mental processes. He didn’t stop there, either. The world of nature also portrays profound spiritual lessons—if one knows how to interpret them.

For instance, what is the difference between the phrase, “a rotten apple spoils the barrel” and the biblical verse “Jacob took stones for pillows”? Obviously they describe different physical scenarios, but according to Swedenborg’s worldview they make use of the same symbolic language.

Let’s briefly touch on the parallelism represented in Genesis 28:10,11. Stones represent various forms of knowledge, which make up the principles we stand for. These principles form the ground and support for our spiritual life just as rocks and stones of the mineral kingdom support and provide a foundation for physical life. Using stones for pillows makes absolutely no sense unless we look to metaphor. The knowledge and ideas of one’s worldview and faith (spiritual stones) are that which provide the mind with the most comfort and rest. The metaphor works!

If Swedenborg is correct, then Bible interpretation and its derivative theologies have only scratched the surface of God’s revealed wisdom! Swedenborg further claimed that this sacred symbolic language was one of the strategies by which the Lord would make all things “anew.” This knowledge can completely change how we view the world and the narratives of the Holy word!

http://www.provinggod.com