Why Some People in the Afterlife Don't Know They're Dead -- Swedenborg and Life

All right, I'm glad you guys are here. I'm really glad to be doing this. Welcome to another episode of Swedenborg and Life. We have a lot of fun things to talk about today. Those topics include. Number 1. Why some people in the afterlife don't realize that they've died. 2 How our five senses translate into the spiritual world and 3, How heavens's light affects our minds. That sounds like pretty ambitious content to have answers to, but we are going to try our best aided by the writings of Emmanu

el Swedenborg. We are going to dig in there and see what we have to find. My name is Curtis Childs. I am with the Swedenborg Foundation and we have with us a special guest today. Author Peter Rhodes. Peter how are you doing today. Very good, thank you. Good, alright. Peter is a favorite of mine in terms of authors of spiritual content. I want to say it on the air I really dig the stuff you do. I loved your books and your videos and all that. They have been one of the things that have really stuc

k with me as a tool. Hey man, I can use this and it really gets results. So thank you very much and thanks for coming on the show today. Thank you. So Pete is going to help us and we are going to read a book called Our Life After Death by Emmanuel Swedenborg. You guys can download it and read along. This is a download link. You can type that in if you really want to or open up the description of this video. It is in there. Grab it and you can read along with us. However, we got the text side of

things right, but I would like to get the mind right too. Because the mind is important. One way we can do this is tuning out the hell mindset and tuning in the heaven mindset. Swedenborg's most popular book, that this book is an excerpt of is called Heaven and Hell. As you describe them they are mindsets in a way. Pete, lets start by talking about the mindset we can tune out of and avoid. Which is the hell mindset. What makes up the hell mindset as Swedenborg describes it. My experience of it i

s that the hell mindset is those concerns that are directed mainly toward you. How do I look? How do I come across? So there is an anxiety with that. There is a worry with that. There is a contraction in your gut. That sort of thing. We use the word hell, that is an old old word. We could call it anxiety or worry or concern or fear. That headset doesn't express itself very well. It is not intuitive. It is not responsive. It is not very joyful. It is an unpleasant place to be. That has been my ex

perience of that mindset. And unpleasant for the people around us when we are in that mindset. Some may call it ego. By pushing away those kinds of things and just kind of consciously, when those bubble up we put them aside. That is how you turn away fro the hell mindset. Then there is the other side, which is letting in the positive. Letting in what he would call heaven. And what is your experience is this heaven mindset? Well at first I find that I'm sort of powerless over that negative headsp

ace and for me I have to surrender that and ask for help and the first thing that comes up is that replaces fear is a trust. A trust that whoever the creator is,I happen to believe it is God, or the Lord, whatever you want to term it, that power that creates my very life is a loving power. It is a power that has wisdom and that it wishes for good things so when I surrender my negative concerns about myself and the world I try to surrender myself to a power that can take that and do something ben

eficial to others. And he can do that through me, without any concern for myself. I am able to make that transition with the help of what I consider is God. Then I start to move in to a responsive place where I am having a good time. I find that that immediate kind of lightness with dropping all this baggage. How are things going to turn out for me? How am I going to look? When your just thinking about the task at hand. And when we come in with that sort of mindset we'll actually, Swedenborg say

s, absorb this information better because we are looking towards usefulness. With that in mind lets get to the text. We have the pdf Our Life After Death. We are on page 29 if you guys are reading along. There you can see it. SO, I'm telling the truth. The chapter is entitled We Leave Nothing Behind Except Our Earthly Body. Repeated experiences proved to me that when we move from the material world into the spiritual, which happens when we die, we take with us everything that pertains to our cha

racter except our earthly body. In fact when we enter the spiritual world, or our life after death, (I just want to point out the this little "our life after death" is where this book got its title from), we are in a body as we were in this world. Since we don't feel or see any difference, it seems as if nothing has changed. Now our body is spiritual, though, which means it has been separated from earthly matter and purified. Furthermore, when anything spiritual touches and sees something spirit

ual it is just like something material touching and seeing something material. So when we have become a spirit, none of our senses tell us we are not in the body we inhabited in the world and therefore we do not realize that we have died. There is a lot in that paragraph that we could go after but I want to start with that last sentence where he says "therefore we do not realize that we have died" and we titled this show today why some people in the afterlife don't know that they have died. And

the way that he, Swedenborg, talks about it is kind of that not only are there similarities between the next life and this life that would kind of lead somebody into that, but that even the view of life or the convictions about life that we have adopted are so central to who we are that even people who are shown, oh, you are in another life. If they really have grasped on to sort of this ego based mind set they can return even after seeing amazing things to sort of how they were before. I was ju

st thinking, Pete, that that is kind of how we are in life isn't it. Even if we experience something like some great compassion or love for someone pretty quickly we can get stuck in our old ego route. You know what I mean? Yes, I've been to various workshops, three-day four-day, weekend workshop, TIck-dat Han (sp?) and people like that. And in that space you get into a sort of elevated way of experiencing life and you think this is great I am finally free from my concerns of self from fear. And

I'm expansive, breathing well and you think this is going to last forever. You are close to the people who are there. My experience has been it doesn't take very long to get back to my natural state of being. I think God works on our natural state of being and he makes our progress in a slow manner so we can feel that it is our own progress. Whereas we have these environments you can go into, like an Ashram or something like that, you can feel a change pretty rapidly but when you go back to you

r old environment you also go back to your old mental and emotional environment as well I believe. Swedenborg will often talk about that we bring the life we have made here, we bring it with us. And the mindsets we have don't just dissipate. You were talking about it there. We can take little vacations of different kinds while we are on this earth and we get transported temporarily to a different mindset but it doesn't stay because there is this core that has been cultivated for much longer. One

of the things we can be doing in the world is trying to shift that mass a little bit in a positive direction. We put in a little effort and then you slowly..I think I've heard you describe it like you are turning a tanker. It doesn't happen all at once, right? Right. A big ship. You can turn the wheel quite rapidly but the ship itself takes some time. We have a lot of momentum going, at least I do. I've had attitudes from childhood. They have been reinforced. I have opinions and judgements. So

when I want to do spiritual work and change my direction I can do a lot of work. I can do meditation. I can do a lot of reading. I can do a lot of praying. And I believe it does make a change. I don't feel a rapid change. In the 60s maybe if I used marijuana or stuff I can feel a rapid change. But that is not mine. That is something that is brought into the brain and into the chemical part of you. The real part of change for me has been slow but significant. I find that as you start to turn away

from self and turn towards, what they say, love of God and love of the neighbor, that gradual turn, although gradual, can be very significant in how you experience other people as well as yourself. The way that Swedenborg is describing, even the dying experience, which we talked about a few times ago, a few episodes ago, is very intense. You are surrounded by angels. They tell you are in the next life. And this is how things are. You have all this love, as people mention in near death experienc

es. That has an impact on you for a while but if it is not accepted into your life, or it is contrary to what you kind of made your life, you will slowly be returned and because of, as Swedenborg is describing it, there are similarities in the next life. You can actually get back into a mode of life that is close enough that you don't even remember anymore where you are. Swedenborg would often have the bizarre experience of talking to spirits in the afterlife and then telling him there is no aft

erlife. We are just living in the world. He had to remind them, don't you remember when you saw those angels and all that. Not that if you get back to that you can'r from there grow out and re-realize where you are and what has happened. It just goes to show that the mindset is a powerful thing and the more that we work on it here the better chance we have of moving forward. If you are just joining us or if this is your first tie watching us were chatting about stuff but we want to hear what you

have to say to. So if you want to leave us questions or a comment you can do it in the YouTube comments sections or if your on Facebook leave it there. We'll find it. Or if you want to share an experience. Maybe if you have had some kind of out of body experience or encounter with the spiritual world or you encountered someone who you didn't know that they were there. In the mean time we are going to keep going through the text. So let's get back to the pdf here. So, OK, down to the end of 29.

As spirit-people (that just meaning people who have passed into the spiritual world after death) we possess every outer and inner sense we had in the world. We see the way we use to; we hear and talk the way we used to; we smell and taste; we feel it when we are touched just the way we used to; we want, wish, crave, think, ponder. are moved, love and intend the way we used to. Studious types still read and write the way they did before. In a word, when we move from the one life into the other, o

r from the one world into the other, it is like moving from one physical place to another; and we take with us everything we possessed as human beings, to the point that it would be untrue to say we have lost anything of our own after death, which is only a death of the earthly body. And he really hammers this point home that..he doesn't obviously mean that you take your car with you or you take your video game collection. It would be nice, but what he is talking about is the things you take wit

h you are the internal things. The personality traits. What makes you you. And those have the potential to expand and get different there. But they are not gone. Certain parts can be dormant or change and you can certainly be making progress, but he is saying that what you are...and really that is why life is like it is, because why would we live this whole life with all nuances if what we were doing here didn't have an importance to the next chapter, right? Well I think Swedenborg talks about o

ur spirit actually is in the spiritual world, if we don't call it another world or somewhere else, the kingdom of heaven is within you. So most of my life during the day, although might be driving through the city or I might be on vacation in a paradise type place most of my life experience is in my feelings and my thoughts and my affections and my emotions and that is what I am experiencing most of the time. I can be in a very beautiful place and feel depressed or anxious. I can be down in the

subway in Philadelphia and feel very happy and content. So if I really reflect on my day it isn't so much physically where I have been or what I've done, what I have seen, but emotionally. SO I think when you leave the physical body you really very comfortable because that is where you have been spending most of your time anyway so it just feels very natural to you. I don't spend a whole lot of time paying attention to my physical body, as long as it is not in pain and so forth. But I do spend a

lot of time experiencing, expressing and hearing other people express there affections and emotions and thoughts. So I believe that is the spiritual world. It is the world of thoughts and affections. And we are already there most of the time we just happen to have a five sensed mechanism that can help us experience this external work. But that is a very thin veneer of who we are and what experience most of the time. Yes, that popular saying comes to mind we are spiritual beings having a physica

l experience. There is sort of a nativeness to the spiritual world when you get there because you have been having this dual citizen experience. And I really agree that you can be anywhere and your mind...you're on a vacation on a tropical island but you have packed your mind and brought it along. You have the power to destroy happiness anywhere that you go. There are times when you can be in a very mundane place and you just feel really good. This is really worth noting because we so often..we

gear our lives toward, if only I had these external changes then I would be happy without realizing how much the internal experience trumps the external. Let's take a look at a couple of questions that people have here and let's see what they think about the topic. This is the first one from Mark from YouTube. Do spirits excite the urges, compulsions and addictive behaviors in people because they need a connection to the physical world to enjoy those pleasures after death? What Mark is referring

to here is Swedenborg's idea, and it isa actually very fitting to what we were just talking about, that we are in the spiritual world right now. That our spirit is there. Swedenborg said that, in the spiritual world your spirit is there and it is not in a vacuum. It is in that world and it is being affected by other people in that world. Mark is asking about, where do our urges come from? I want to do this. I got to have another one of these. Is there a spiritual influence there. What comes to

mind I was talking to someone who worked with schizophrenic people or people with various mental illnesses in a correctional facility and he was learning that a lot of them would report that spirits or voices would very much prompt things. Swedenborg, now that I'm thinking about it, will write about it...he says, I was walking down the street and the spirits with me tried to get me to buy this thing or that thing. He was more open to that world then most of us are. He did say that there is a spi

ritual influence on things and that affects things. Pete did you have any thoughts on that? I am a recovering person and certainly know what addiction is in my own life. I personally feel that there are societies of spirits around me that is there love, those addictive behaviors and addictive ways of thinking and being. I believe they really want to manifest in the external world. That is where they get there greatest delight. If they can do it, but they can't do it directly because they are not

in this world but they can do it through the spirits who also at that time are in this world and have a body. SO I think they are really urging you to..it is sort of like someone imagining something, a great meal or a beautiful woman or something. Imagination is pretty good but they really want the physical experience. I think the societies that those various addictions want to use man so they can vicariously experience the man or woman externalizing it at the lowest level of creation. A natura

l physical form. And there is a certain pleasure they get from doing that. To me, those urges and desire are not created from within me they are brought to me. I probably am prone to those societies that are my personal addictions. Yes, I feel they are very much involved in wanting you to participate in that and then getting some kind of pleasure when you do it. Also, giving you their pleasure of that particular behavior. So, yes, I feel very closely related to societies are involved in those ki

nd of urges and those kind of desires and obsessions. Yes and one of Swedenborg primary goals and sort of spiritual rebirth or regeneration is to come to realize that things don't necessarily originate in you. To stop taking ownership of everything. This is my anger. Not to not take responsibility for it but to say this is flowing through me, but just to make that distinction. This is something to accept or reject does a lot for the ability, at least for me, to kind of differentiate myself from

that. And it makes you feel a little bit like, OK, I don't want to be working for these guys. It sort of gives you an extra motivation to push harmful things away. So thanks Mark for that. All right let's get to our next question. This is from Ivy. Do we get to recognize those we once lived with when we re-unite? This is from Facebook. That would be re-uniting in the life after death. I would say that, based on a large body of experience, Swedenborg's included, yes. We did talk last week about h

ow what we look like gradually changes in the afterlife. Your spirit comes to look like an image of who you really are inside. Yet, he does talk about people meeting up in the next life, recognizing each other. Pete, you have probably read near death experiences where people say, I met my grandmother. She looked young but they still new it was her. It seems to me that, yes, we do get that kind of re-uniting. Is that sort of jive with what you read? Yes, I think we do recognize them although spir

itually, I think over time, I think someone who has been in that state for a long period of time we may not recognize then immediately but if we had an affection similar to the affection we had when we were on this earth I think we would recognize them. My mother died when I was very young and I've had a number of times in the dream world and there are dreams I had which seemed very much an ordinary dream and there are other dreams that seem a little more then that. A couple of times I've seen m

y mother. She is very young. It isn't so much a physical experience, but there was an immediate recognition of not only her but also re-experiencing our relationship in a much improved manner. So I think we recognize each other. But the true qualities we had may gradually be changing over time and we may be attracted to qualities of other people that we thought were our friends. We find our friends were different then we had thought they were on this earth. This more interior way of experiencing

each other you start to recognize there are things going on with people we may not have known about on earth and we don't recognize that part of them as it manifests. The lasting connection is if you share values or you share something that is deeper. I appreciate you sharing that experience with your mom and in dreams. I always like to hear peoples experiences of any kind. It makes me think of in dreams I'm sure everybody watching has this, you can we were at my house, it didn't look like my h

ouse but it was my house. Or even we saw so-and-so. They didn't look like...you can very much know what you are dealing with in dreams even if externally it appears differently. I wonder if some of that recognition you were talking about, peter, was like that. So lets take another question. It looks like we got two that are about a similar subject. The first is from SFwill. These are from YouTube. Are there other animals in the spiritual world or just humans? And from Autumn Gray. Do you believe

animals are equally as important to God as humans? Obviously in some ways we have more restraint, but in other ways, I believe animals are better than us. Thanks for those questions. One thing I want to say the idea of something being more important or less important to God would sort of seem like God only has so much love and care to go around.I would say that with the God Swedenborg describes and the God I would think would be God, there is an infinite supply of love and wisdom. So everything

is fully attended to as much as it possibly can. That whole, sometimes animals can be better then us. I do think that if a person hurts somebody or harms someone, oh, that's a bad person where but if a bear does it you think, oh, it is just being a bear. Pete, have you read that in Swedenborg where he talks about because we have the choice to do things to intentionally be cruel, where animals are going by instinct or by a more immediate reaction. Where we can actually, as Autumn was saying, we

can actually be worse then animals. I definitely think we can take what God gives us, which is his love, and his love is supposed to go out and make others happy. And we are meant to be experiencing that as our heaven which we are created for but if we take that love and turn it towards ourself we have this opposite reaction to other people rather then wishing to do well to them we wish to hurt them or protect ourselves by hurting them and animals I don't believe have that. If a lion is eating s

omething he isn't being cruel. He isn't being vindictive. He is just eating something to support his family. I've been watching YouTube. The favorite YouTubes I watch are the animal ones where you can see how much affection these animals have. Not only for their owners but often for each other. Amazing ones recently about a raccoon taking care of a cat. Scratching him and so forth and for me I'm getting to see love in a finite form. The finite form happens to be an animal rather then a human. I

think we are somewhat different. We can reflect. So there is a kind of heaven and a kind of spirituality we can experience that the animals can't. Bur God is love and love is life and animals are alive and expressing those loves. They certainly are in there heaven. Whether they can be in the same heaven we're talking about, which takes some discernment and understanding and recognition of a mental state. I'm not sure about that. Don't know. I recently saw a video of a pig saving a goat. Did you

see that one? A goat is in the water. So everybody is kind of like, you know, there are too many cat videos on the internet but they are all amazing. There is this goat that is in the water and he is , ahhh...ahh..., that is my goat impression. He can't swim. He is not having a good time. I guess the dude who owns him has a pig around and also you can hear him talking to the pig. Go out. And this pig goes out in the water and pushes the goat over towards the shallow part and gets him out and the

n just runs out. It is incredible. Animals are cool. Is my point there. Also, the first question was are there other animals in the spiritual world. Short answer, yes. Swedenborg describes that as packed with animals of all kinds and some that we don't even get the pleasure of seeing in this world. So those are a couple of questions. If you want your questions or comments to be up, just make them. Put them on the YouTube comments there. We'll get them up. We'll have a couple of more times for th

at, before we are done. So lets get back to the pdf. We are in the middle of the paragraph here. This is Swedenborg talking about what we take with us to the next life. We even take with us our earthly memory since we retain everything we have seen, heard, read, learned or thought in the world from the earliest infancy to the very end of life. But since the earthly objects that reside in our memory are beyond our power to retrieve in a world that is spiritual, they become dormant there, the way

they do when we are not thinking about them. They can however be retrieved whenever it so please the Lord. But I will have more to say soon about the earthly memory and its condition after death. The way that I see this and Pete I'd love to hear if think of this in the same way, here we are memory is staying with us the whole time. We are kind of haunted by it. Past events are always popping into the consciousness. It is very hard not to ruminate on them. But there it almost seems like the stora

ge system is better. You can access memory but it doesn't happen involuntarily. There is less of going over the past. Is that seem to ring true? Well I think for me a lot of going back into my memory and going back into the past and even into the future are personal concerns. Some personal sense of presence. And I think when you get in the spiritual world gradually you are relieved of that personal way of viewing everything. It is all about me. How does it impact me? We are free from that. So th

at whatever resources in your memory or in your mind or in your emotions they can be utilized. If they are needed at the time for a positive reason. But I don't believe we go back any more just to feel guilty or ashamed or embarrassed or anything like that. Those things have been made quiescent. And we will really be free to express good emotions and good loves. But just like going into your work shop you may not have used a saws-all for many many years but if you have a need for it you can go g

et it and oil it and use it. I think when we have a need for a memory, if it serves, then it will be available to us. But since we are in a spiritual world most of the natural world memories are going to be used very much. But if there is a need for that then they are available. I think I take that. I spent a lot of time going over memories and it is not very productive. It never makes me feel, like, oh I am so glad I thought about that. We are going to return to the text and if you are just joi

ning us we are on page 30 of Swedenborg's Our Life After Death. Feel free to leave your questions and comments just in the comments section there and we'll try to...we want to talk about what you guys want to talk about and we want to learn from you. Obviously I'm not an expert on anything I feel like and certainly not the life after death. So I want to hear from all kinds of things from you guys. We very much appreciate the questions so far. So lets get back into our pdf. People who are focused

on their senses - I just want to hover over this phrase for a second. Swedenborg often talks about this and it kind of has a connotation beyond what it sounds like. Superficial might be a good word to describe it. Your focused on external things. That is where it starts and ends for you. SO he brings this up a lot. There one of the characters. Pete, that while your here. I think I got this idea initially from you, whenever he is talking about people who do this or people who do that. It is the

kind that can exist in any of us right. My own personal point of view is why would scripture or why would God through scriptures or revelation be talking to me about other people? Why would he talk to me about people who are selfless if I'm selfish or talk to me about selfish people if I'm selfless? I don't believe he wants to gossip. So I believe he is really talking to me about various things within myself. I am a microcosm. I have all sorts of states. And any state that exists in the externa

l world in a small way exists in myself. So I can go from being very happy and content and suddenly I spill something on myself I can go into anger. So there are parts of me that are totally focused on the senses so my natural corporeal part of me which is only part of who I am. I'm also spiritual. I'm also mental. I'm psychological. But the natural body seeks pleasure. Avoids pain. And that part of me is incapable of looking at or focusing on spiritual things because it has only natural concern

s. But that isn't the totality of who I am or anybody else. He is really talking to me about states within myself that can't be elevated so that I don't waste my time trying to elevate my natural mind into spirituality. I also turned and found there is also spiritual sides of me that have interest in things other then my natural corporeal body. To think of it that way. These are all states I can potentially be in or am in sometimes when I bump my head or something or I spill something and that's

it. Back to what we were talking about initially with heaven and usefulness. If we are reading in that way we are looking at things in ourselves there is a use to that. We can work on ourselves and do that. If we are just thinking of, oh yay, these people are like this, ha ha, that is not helping anything. Interestingly Swedenborg says that angels do accuse people. They like to put a good interpretation on things. The negative spirits that love to accuse people of evils. I felt like that was wo

rth taking a look at. Keep our mindset good). People who are focused on their senses are quite incapable of believing that our state after death is like this, because they can't conceive of such a thing.Such people can think only on the material level even about spiritual matters. And if we are thinking about it as a state like you were just mentioning, that really applies there because I find that I fluctuate through times of thinking, oh this is all very plausible. I do think there is life aft

er death. It seems to be...Other times it's like, I don't know if there is anything. This is pointless. You definitely notice that you go deeper in and you go way out to the periphery states. And it is just good to kind of differentiate those. This means that anything they do not sense - that is, anything they do not see with their physical eyes and touch with their hands - they say does not exist, as we read of Thomas in John 20:25, 27 ,29. SO there Swedenborg is referencing the scripture. To g

et in to his treatment of the Bible and what he sees in there and the symbolism is a whole another 100 shows. He wrote volumes and volumes of stuff. In brief there is a symbolism to everything. The Thomas in there, he is talking again about these states we can have or we can fall into. So let us get back to some questions. I know you guys probably have some thoughts on the whole thing. If any of you want to leave a question or a comment do so on YouTube below there. Or go to FaceBook, wherever y

ou found this video, we'll try to find it and put it up because we love hearing what you have to say. From YouTube, Jack. Does Swedenborg make a distinction between spirits and angels? Could an angel be confused and think he/she is alive? Thank you very much. My thought is no and angel could not be confused because the differentiation between spirits and angels is one of mindset. An angel is a person like you or I who is open enough that God has brought enlightenment or whatever you want to call

it. A better grasp of what is really going on with life and opening up to kindness. Everything that makes the mind thrive. You would think someone who is in the angelic mindset wouldn't be in that kind of obscurity although he does say that even angels go through seasons like we all do and they have times when they are in a dimmer light. pete, do you have anything to add to that? Not much. Sometimes I think angels are so much in the present moment and what they love and what they believe and wh

at they are doing is one and that is their very life. They are not so much wrapped up in time and space. So the very thought, am I living or am I in the world or am I in heaven I think that probably that thinking doesn't occur to them a whole lot. Because they are so much in the stream of living. One definition of use is love in action. And we are a form of God, a unique form of his affection and when that is acting I think often those kinds of thoughts aren't taking place because they are one w

ith there love. Whereas earlier on when i have various concerns of self, that is more apt to happen in my own thinking. How am I doing, where am I? Have I died? AM I in the present world? I think part of my mind will have those thoughts but the higher part, the angelic part, I'm just guessing, probably doesn't have that kind of thinking going on. The kind of thinking we often involve ourself in. It makes me think of that he says that heaven has this component of usefulness to it and it sort of..

. the mindset on the one side, Ok, what is going on with me? Where am I? What's happening with me? The other mindset, the angelic one, is how can I help? What can I do here to help? That would let you dwell on those sorts of things less. So, anyway, thanks for the comment. Let's get to...This is from Rafe. This is from YouTube. I have a spirit lover. She doesn't hurt me and helps me grow towards the light. I have other spirits who protect me amy children, and have quite a few times. But how do t

hese things fit into a Swedenborgian world view? I think that they..well, Swedenborg, was up until his 50-somethings relatively like everyone else. He was just seeing, hearing and experiencing what was going on in the physical world but then he had this opening, he called it an opening of his spiritual eyes. Suddenly he was confronted by this constant presence of the spiritual world and of spirits there so he would be in conversation with spirits. Seeing spirits sometimes. Even while going throu

gh activities of daily life. He didn't have to meditate or something. It was always present to him. So he was constantly in a relationship with spirits and it sort of sounds like what was being described in this comment. Pete, do you have any thoughts on the closeness of the spiritual and physical world as Swedenborg and others describe it. I think what the questioner had brought up is we are a very close to and involved with spirits and in fact that is there use, a great deal of there use is to

be of help and protection to people who are still in the natural or physical world. I'll even take it down, I'm going outside and suddenly I realize you forgot to get your towel your going swimming and I just send a thank you to whatever spirit reminded me to go get the towel. We are surrounded by spirits all the time. Our focus happens to be natural but we are in conversation and being infuluence by spirits. That is our thinking and our affectional life so I certainly think we have friends the

re. I don't know about lover. I don't know quite how I would experience that but yes I think there is a very intimate relationship and we are living it every moment. And we have a lot more friends and influences then just the physical friends or fellowship we have on this earth. That is good. Just knowing that my popularity goes up. I have more friends then I think I do. I have 3 or 4 total friends. Do we have another question? Yes we have one more. Death4Us says, When people in the afterlife se

e us in this realm do we look like ghosts/dead to them? Do we freak them out? Which is a fair question because some people will get freaked out by them. The one thing that comes to mind for me is Swedenborg says, as we were talking about earlier in the show (it's just funny to think about spirits saying "do you think humans really exist?", "I swear I saw a human this one time", "No you didn't see one it was just the light in your cat") Swedenborg describes that we are dual citizens. We have a sp

irit and a body and that normally he says that our spirit is not visible. Our spirit is in a community just like you might be in some city hear, your spirit is there with other spirits there but normally they can't really see but he says that when your deep in thought your external concerns have gone away you can become visible there. But your a little different. He says you just walk along deep in thought. Your not really responding. When someone talks to you disappear. Pete, do you have any th

oughts on us appearing to them and what they think of us, etc. I don't believe they see us with their spiritual eyes and that is what they have, but I think Swedenborg has said, and I have my own personal experiences, they can on occasion actually see through another humans eyes and see humans in the natural plane using someone else's eyes. Like I said my mother died when I was very young. I have had some experiences of having a feeling that she is looking at me through this other person eyes an

d that is a very strong feeling. I can't really explain that but Swedenborg talks about that on occasion that is permitted. I think when they see you in that situation they actually do see you as a human being because they are seeing through human eyes even though they are spiritual. And it all has got to happen through a mechanism. This world that we live in is so system driven that you can't..for us to have this on-line broadcast you have to have a lot of machinery that is really precise and w

e got it all barely working for today. There's a lot of systems. So for that kind of connection to happen the systems have to be in place. You can't like, here you go, you can see something. I had another thought about that. Swedenborg describes spirits being able to see through his eyes and wanting to be able to tell there loved ones. Hey, I'm here. I'm OK. That is what I think a lot people on the other side want to tell us. It is all right. It's OK. So lets get back to the text. The bottom of

page thirty. Nevertheless, the difference between our life in the spiritual world and our life in the material world is considerable, with respect both to our outer senses and the way they affect us, and to our inner sense and the way they affect us. People who are in heaven are far more sensitive mentally. That is, they see and hear and also think more discerningly that when they were in this world. This is because they are seeing in heaven's light, which vastly surpasses the the world's light

and they hear by way of a spiritual atmosphere that vastly surpasses the atmosphere of the earth. Now when he talks about heaven's light there is this thing that he brings up. Correspondences or that phenomenon on this world are reflections of a deeper reality in the other world. And we will be taking a look at that at the end of the show. So when he talks about heaven's light that actually is a force that is actually allowing you to understand in the spiritual world. Here, what light does for o

ur eyes, because the light are on in this room I can see much more clearly. In heaven light allows understanding in a much clearer way. Is that how you read his thing on heaven's light, Pete? I take it that is what they mean by being enlightened in regards to something. The experience of a ah-hah experience. And often we say, when someone finally expresses something or explains something to us that we have been struggling with and we finally get it the synapses made that is when we say, Oh, I se

e. Well we didn't see physically we were enlightened. A light around the understanding that lightened what we were struggling with and so we say, Oh, I see it. The light he talks about in that way. There is much more clarity in understanding ourself and others in community then there is when we are all wrapped up in day to day concerns of the natural body and natural mind. That is another way that we're in both worlds at the same time because you...the way he is describing it, when you get these

realizations, these ah-ha moments that is your spirit receiving this light from the other side. So let's take a look at the end of this paragraph, here. The difference this makes to their outer sense is as great as the difference we see in the material world between clear skies and the obscurity of a cloud, or between noon-day light and the dimness of evening. I think what he is saying here in the difference this makes to their outer senses because of the inner light they receive there the oute

r way that they experience the spiritual; world is a lot sharper and clearer. You get people saying, Oh, it was so much more vivid, more real there. I heard someone who had an experience say, this world is like a comic book compared to that one. I think it is because of these spiritual senses so heightened that that seems more real. So let's pick it back up here. This is the last paragraph that we'll be getting through today. Of course you guys are welcome to read on or catch up on any past epis

odes. You don't need us taking you through but hopefully this is making it fun. I always find that the more it is discussed the more it becomes accessible. I also really appreciate the questions and comments you guys have been contributing and we'll get to a few more of those before we are done. Let's take a look at the end of this gigantic paragraph that takes up nearly this whole page and some of the page before. Because the light of heaven is Divine Truth it enables angels to notice and disti

nguish between even the smallest things by sight. Just flying by this, he writes this whole book on the light of heaven being divine truth and this is part of what God is giving out in the spiritual world and there is all this power init and this potential so there is a whole rabbit hole to go down there but we'll just speed by it right now. Furthermore, their outer sight corresponds to their inner sight (their understanding) (so inner sight and understating are the same thing), since for angels

each sight flows into the other and they act as a single faculty. This is why both the outer sight of angels and their inner vision are so sharp. Their hearing corresponds in a similar way to their higher perception, which is a function of both their understanding and their will. So in the tone and words of others, angels pick up the slightest shadings of the speaker's emotion and thought - shadings of emotion in the tone, and shadings of thought in the words. Swedenborg describes that angels c

an know from one word everything about the kind of person you are. That there is just this...because they have this perception that is so tight they can get that. Pete, did you have any other thoughts on this outer sight before we move to our last question segment? Well, I just repeat, I believe the spiritual world that we're talking about is the world of thought and affection. And the affections, Swedenborg refers to, as the celestial world and the thoughts, which are forms of affection he refe

rs to as the spiritual world. When you are in that world, and that surrounds you, and all of your living is in that world then when we talk about sight and hearing we are really talking about understanding and affections so yes, an angels, by one word, because they are in the world of thoughts and feelings, just by one word by your tone, they know your affections by the word they know your thoughts. Because they are born and raised in that there briar patch, that is where they live. That is what

they do. So for us who are in the natural world that is quite something, but of them that is just there way, not naturally being, but spiritually being. That is a skill you can pick up if you put in the work to take the angelic path. Which is pursuing love for the entire human race. Easy as that sounds. All right, so we got a couple more questions. Let's get to at the end. The first one comes from YouTube, ragged07, I am disabled. Will my friends/family know me for my spirit because I will look

different? I had a NDE and that should be a book, but I was healed. Thank you very much for sharing a little of your experience there. I would say, yes, there would be a recognition because even in this world what we really connect to in each other is the essence or spirit even though you can't see it directly, you can kind of pick it up through the body. And I think, Pete, as you and I were talking about before that there is kind of this...we are seeing the affections and emotions in people so

we get a sense of their spirit even through the physical. I would think that that would translate. Do you think that would be true? Yes, absolutely. I think they would be recognized immediately from the affections. I think the physical is the least, the least amount of recognition is based on the physical. I think that is why blind dates don't work out because you get to know someone you know longer even see whether they are physically attractive or not attractive. It doesn't even occur to you.

That is not how you know them. So then someone meets them for the first time, they see them physically, they say, why did you recommend that person. Well for qualities that you have to get to know. You have to get to know there affections. You have to get to know the personality. What they love. When someone knows you in that way they are going to recognize you regardless of physically what may have happened or what may of not happened or physical disabilities or whatever it is. I had an uncle

who recently passed away but he had some physical challenges and I don't ever think like am I going to recognize him or not? I feel like I'm going to know him right away and I believe that some people who have reported experiences they always say the people that they saw in the afterlife looked really healthy and great but they always knew who they were. Thank you very much for that question. Let's move on to the next one. This is from Mark on YouTube. A lot of people don't speculate about life

after death. Is it better to not form beliefs about the afterlife in case they are wrong? I'd say that yes, it is not a totally harmless thing to for beliefs about the afterlife because I am sure that all of us have people that we feel like are causing problems in the world because of their belief in the afterlife. It is not a benign thing. You definitely don't want to be adopting beliefs that are causing you to short circuit basic decency in this world. If your afterlife belief are causing you

to not treat everyone with love and kindness. Not work on yourself and not care about the world then that could be a problem. As far as Swedenborg describes it I'd say that the main danger is tenaciously grabbing on to beliefs. If we keep a relatively open mind obviously right now we are doing this show where we are fumbling around trying to say the right things about stuff, there are much better teachers in the afterlife and everybody has the opportunity to be taught and it is only if, as we we

re discussing in the beginning, it is only if you really cling to something that that mindset becomes rigid. So I would say as long as your cool about it and just keep it pretty relaxed and keep humility, like I'm willing to be wrong about this, you should be OK. What do you think Pete? I would like to be able to hold all my beliefs really lightly and not invest myself in them. There is something that Swedenborg talks about that is pride in ones intelligence. If I start to fall in love with my o

wn concepts and my own thinking then I'm not going to be able to be lead beyond them. So I want to have some humility in regards to what I believe in the moment because beliefs change over time, hopefully they will continue to change over time. So holding them lightly and teachable and being open to new information and letting go of old information that no longer serves you. I think having that fluidity and subtlety is probably something you keep for eternity. They talk about children in the oth

er world that are very open and very childlike and very humble. I'm reminded of Swedenborg's quote "It is wisdom to recognize that what we know is next to nothing compared to what we do not know." That applies even angels. People who know the most things in the afterlife they know that it is like a bucket of water compared to the ocean. It is like nothing. As long as we can keep that. So we are trying to get to as many questions as we can here since we got Pete here, we're on a roll. So let's ta

ke another one. From Detah4Us again, What does it take for these people in the afterlife to know they are dead? Can we help them somehow? I like that question because I like the idea of helping. I would say I don't know. I don't know what we can do. I've certainly heard of a lot of people talk about like leading people into the light. I would guess, since Swedenborg says that we have spirits around us all the time, so the more that we get our facts straight and live in integrity the more that..t

he less that is going to help them...as we were talking in the beginning Pete, the less that is going to have them delving into fantasy and grabbing on to things. That could be a help in some way. That is all I could really think of for that. Do you have any further thoughts? I guess I'm taking the question of helping people who have passed to the other life and don't know they are dead. I think of course we have been saying that they are actually not dead they are really alive. They are more al

ive in a lot of ways then they were in this particular level of consciousness. In dreaming I know I used to do some lucid dreaming and Swedenborg says that if man has cause to reflect on something then they will recognize that they have passed from one world to the other world, the spiritual world, if they have cause to reflect. If they don't have cause to reflect it is because God doesn't find that particularly useful then they won't reflect and I don't think leaving them to realize that they m

ade that transition is probably very important to them. I may have misunderstood the question. I see what you are saying. It could be that they are where they need to be. I think it is all a combination of mysteries and little tidbits of things we know and here. Keep going, keep reaching for knowledge and see what you can find out because we do want to be as helpful as possible. Thanks for the question. Let's get to another one. This is from sfwill3 on YouTube. Do we still have bodily functions

(in the spiritual world)? Urination, defecation, menstruation? Are there treatment plants? For the waste. So we are talking about potty and hopefully some kids have stayed up to watch this because we can get some of the youth viewership. I would say there is everything in the afterlife but things are a little different. Things are more meaningful then they are here. There is food as Swedenborg describes it but that food is emotional qualities, love and goodness are somehow manifested in it so I

would think that all these bodily functions that here we kind of think of we got to get rid of..there is a place for that because he talks about that this correspondence and that negative things in the afterlife correspond to various kinds of bodily filth. But as far as how that shakes down, like, we are here at this angelic conference, OK, can you hold that...I got to go poop. I don't know if that goes down. Peter do you want to take a stab at it? Well, I have absolutely no idea. I think there

is going to be something that corresponds to all those things, indigestion, urination. tThere is going to be a cleansing of your spirit. There are going to be thoughts and ideas that are mainly good but there are parts of these things that have to be changed and let go of. So I think there is something corresponds to all those things but the will be at a spiritual level. It isn't going to be at the natural level because it is a non-natural world. Menstruation, the idea of that there are cycles a

nd giving birth. He says that in the spiritual world there is not, you do not have babies but you give birth to what he calls goods and truths or ideas and feelings. Maybe there is some kind of process there where there is something comparable. The basic message that I get from Swedenborg is that things aren't here for no reason. We don't deal with them and not have to deal with it there. They have an expanded more pleasant role. But they are there. Did you have something. Yes, Swedenborg talks

about the spiritual world as the world of causes and the natural world as the world of affects. So even our bodily functions flow through the spiritual world to us. There is going to be something that corresponds because that is where all causes come from. Yes, that is good. OK, we have a lot of great questions. We're going to have to cut it off here with just one more. And we will try to, throughout the week, get to the rest of you guys by a text answer. And if you are watching this after feel

free to leave a question and we'll try to get to it next week or we'll talk to you in the comments. So let's do out last one. This is from Tonia on Facebook. My mother has said often that she wonders if my dad knew that he had passed because he was on Meds to put him in a comatose state. I feel like we all know. But this is only a speculation. I appreciate you sharing a little bit of your story there. I would think medication can be a really nice thing for someone who is in a lot pain. But it is

a physical thing. When we shed the physical we shed everything in that along with things that are including our mind from the physical. The way that Swedenborg describes it it seems that everybody, at least at the initial point of death, knows what is happening. Angels around them are telling them what is going on. It is only after that you can slip back down if that is what is useful for you at the time. But I would certainly think that everybody would have...wouldn’t blocked from that kind of

understanding or clarity by any circumstances in the physical world. Pete did you have anything to add there. Yes, I can say that any drugs are common to the state referring to the natural body or natural mind. The spiritual mind may be very lucid, very awake and very aware of that transition. Recently I've had a number of elderly relatives passing and although they may be in various stages of Alzheimer’s all of the sudden they are talking from and experience they are having. A lot of clarity b

ut it is in the spiritual world. Seeing things that I'm not seeing. So the divisions between the spiritual and natural, the natural may be comatose, the natural may be under drugs, but that doesn't mean the spirit is. The spirit is really where we live and experience life. You can be very very alive and very lucid even the body happens to be there physically doing nothing. Yes, I've heard it referred to as terminal lucidity and this is a phenomena that happens with people who are close to death

but have been not operating at full mental capacity, suddenly they are really with it. So I think that lines up with what you are saying there. I appreciate it. All right, as we wrap up here we've been doing a lot of talking about ideas and thinking so let's just dip slightly into the other side of things, sort of the emotional and experiential side in this segment we call Correspondences. We talked a little bit about what correspondences are this time and basically they are representation and e

xternal physical phenomena of these deeper spiritual realities and we can actually do a an exercise where we are observing with our physical eyes the physical phenomena that corresponds but thinking of the spiritual meaning behind it you can gain insight that way. Kind of have a connection between the two worlds. So what we are going to look at today is gardens. Swedenborg was a avid gardener in his day. That a garden corresponds to the mind. Swedenborg calls heaven the garden of God. Because pl

ants have to do with ideas and so a garden id order to idea. And we are kind of through spiritual practice making a garden of our mind. You at home are going to just watch about 30 or 40 seconds of images of gardens and if you can be watching the physical images but thinking this deeper reality of the order and organized minds that you are going to see in these images. Sort of an idea of something deeper. ANd of course you don't have to look at garden s on the screen on YouTube. You can go find

your own garden or one in the area and just open your mind to the potential, is this showing you something about the mind. I find that it's a fun experience. Hope you enjoyed it. We certainly have enjoyed having you guys here. If you want to support this show the Swedenborg Foundation is a non-profit 501 3c. Just open up the description of this video and you can make a little PayPal donation that will help just go to spread this show to other people. Very much appreciated. And, Pete, thank you s

o much for coming on the show. It has been a joy talking to you and thank you for sharing your wisdom and opinions and thoughts with us. Very much enjoy it. Do you have any closing thoughts on our topic overall for the day. Well, I just thank you very much for having me here. I guess what interests me in life is to find out where I am in the spiritual world, Which means where am I in terms of my feeling and my thoughts. There's neighborhoods there that are safe neighborhoods and not safe neighbo

rhoods and I want to gradually be moving to the nicest area in my spiritual life. Absolutely, and the more that we move to nicer and nicer areas in the mind the more your going to see the world getting nicer and nicer and all neighborhoods getting pulled up by that. Because really all the problems are caused by the human mind in different forms so it is up to each of us to kind of work on ours and bring it up and up. Thanks everyone. We'll be back next week, same time, so we hope you'll join us

then.