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Thread: Swedenborg: The Father of Astral Projection

  1. #31
    Berserk Guest
    Why? CF, obviously not all who allege an NDE truly encounter a Being of Light (BL). Some are either too sick or too disoriented to distinguish their hallucinations from real spirit contact. Others may be lying to gain attention. That's all I'm saying. The only way to make allowances for liars and the deluded is to focus on the pattern of identifications of the BL.

    As for your second question, the party that greets the NDE patient varies in its make-up (discarnate friends, relatives, etc.). So we have no right to assume that the same Being of Light shows up for everyone. For example, many do not experience this Being of Light as brighter than the sun. The Being's varying radiance may already point to many different light beings associated with the greeting party.`

    In atheist Howard Storm's NDE, the Being of Light (Christ) implies that He manifests to non-Christians under different identities and symbols, though He is in fact the historical Jesus of Nazareth. According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, the historical Jesus did not go around publicly proclaiming Himself the Messiah. Rather, He waited for His disciples and honest seekers to make that discernment for themselves. Thus, Peter is the first disciple to acclaim Jesus as the Christ and does so late in Jesus' public ministry(Mark 8; Matthew 16). But Jesus notes that "flssh and blood" has not revealed this to Peter. In other words, Jesus Hiimself never previously told Peter that He was the Messiah. I believe the Risen Lord follows the same practice with most decent non-Christians. But as one study shows, Jesus does reveal His true identity to atheists who are ready to handle it. This does not mean that the Being of Light is always Jesus. That probably depends on the percipient's religious orientation and level of spiritual development.

    Don

  2. #32
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  3. #33
    Berserk Guest
    Brian is a Christian missionary to Ethiopia who is an acquaintance of my parents and regularly visits their church. The NDE experienced by his ex-Muslim friend Ahmed is as significant as any I've ever encountered. Ahmed was dying of AIDs in a hospital in Addis Ababa. One day, a young Christian couple was making the rounds, praying for the sick. When they arrived at Ahmed's bed, he was irate when he realized they were Christians. He would later admit, "I wanted to kill them, but I was too weak to react!" Later that day, Ahmed experienced an NDE. A luminous figure entered his hospital room and quietly laid hands on him without speaking. To his horror, Ahmed realized that this man was Jesus--not Muhammad, Allah, or an angel. One can hardly argue that Ahmed projected this identity onto the Being because a visit from Jesus was the last thing this Christian hating imam was expecting.

    Ahmed's health immediately improved, although tests revealed that he still had AIDs. He rallied enough to gain release from the hospital and immediately sought out the Christians. Again, hands were laid on him for healing in Jesus' name. This time he was completely cured and subsequent medical tests confirmed this miracle.

    At this news, Ahmed went "berserk" with joy. He immediately went to nearby mosques and boldly proclaimed his healing and his resulting new faith. Because his prior role had been to train Muslim leaders, his impact was profound. Many Muslims were directed to him by visions which instructed them to seek out Ahmed to hear the truth. Others were healed in response to the prayers of Ahmed and his growing band of recruits. Soon they were able to convert 3 mosques into churches.

    His Christian mentor, Barry, was concerned about the danger to Ahmed and his converts. They were unphased by their severe beatings and death threats from Muslim radicals. But when Barry urged Ahmed to take a more low key approach, Ahmed simply mused, "Oh well, I was already as good as dead from AIDs." Now Muslims struck back with lawsuits to regain control of their mosques. Worse, in his missionary zeal, Ahmed was neglecting his marriage and putting his wife's life at risk. She was willing to accept his Christian conversion, but not his neglect. Barry convinced Ahmed to enter marriage counseling to save his marriage. Ahmed is far from perfect, but his deathbed experience is a remarkable testimony to the impact of a luminous visit from Jesus during an NDE.

    This Ethiopian NDE reminds me of biblical hints that God would want a highly varied response toe NDE Being of Light.

    "Do you Israelites think you are more important to me than the Ethiopians? asks the Lord. I brought you out of Egypt, but have I not done as much for other nations, too? I brought the Philistines from Crete, and led the Arameans out of Kir (in modern Iraq--Amos 8:7)."

    God's confrontation of Israelite exclusivism is prompted by their neglect of social justice and compassion for the needs of the poor. Amos's prophetic word implies that God reserves the right to communicate under different symbols and mythologies to peoples from other cultures and religious backgrounds. Indeed, this implication is already implicit in God response to Moses at the Burning Bush at the very foundation of full-fledged Judaism. Moses doubts the Hebrew slaves will believe in his mission and asks what divine name he should give as his authorization. God refuses to provide a name and instead evasively instructs Moses to reply: "Tell them, I will be whatever I will be has sent you (Exodus 3:14)." In the Ancient Near East, people believed that a god's name adequately expressed the god's essence. So God's evasive reply to Moses amounts to a warning not to lock Him into a doctrinal box.

    God is similarly evasive for the same reasons on two other occasions. When Samson's father, Manoah, asks for the divine name, his question is brushed off: "Why do you ask my name? You wouldn't understand if I told you (Judges 13:1?" In Jacob's visionary experience of wrestling with God, his request for God's name meets with similar evasion: "Why do you ask me my name (Genesis 32:29)?" To me, the various identifications of the Being of LIght in NDEs are exactly what biblical revelation would lead me to expect.

    Don

  4. #34
    Berserk Guest
    IX (1) SWEDENBORG'S DISCOVERY THAT PAST LIFE RECALL PROVIDES
    NO EVIDENCE FOR REINCARNATION:

    ES discovers that we are mistaken in our belief that our thoughts are isolated. Our minds receive an influx from a endlessly changing array of good and evil discarnates who have not yet arrived at their ultimate destinations. According to ES, we are normally connected in this way to 2 good spirits and 2 evil spirits. The particular combination of these spirits at any moment depends on our state of mind at that moment. Neither we nor these associate spirits are normally conscious of the other.

    What survives death indefinitely, says ES, is our inner memory which contains our inner loves and the patterns or approaches we've developed in reaction to life's experiences. Inner memory is totally distinct from bodily memory of life's details which eventually fades after death and becomes quiescent. ES's insight here is confirmed by astral adept Robert Bruce: "Memories of earthly life also seem vague [to the dead], much like how a half-forgotten dream is remembered by a living person. Many spirits seem to be aware only of their present reality."

    Occasionally, the bodily memory of spirits is activated and gives the connected person the impression that these memories are hers and that she must have reincarnated. Ian Stevenson's celebrated research on the past life recall of young children is flawed by its failure to take this insight seriously. In at least one of his cases, the child's alleged past life continued until well after he was born--a sure sign of possession or at least some form of tempororary spirit merger. If a discarnate spirit's bodily memory is completely restored, that memory can override the connected person's memories and create the experience of possession. ES discovers that discarnate heavenly souls readily grasp the significance of his anti-reincarnation astral discoveries, but humans confined to the world of spirits (= Focus 24-26) refuse to believe because they are unwilling to experience the inevitable belief system crash that would cause them to renounce reincarnation: "I [ES] tried to convince them by many proofs that this is not true, but in vain (HH 246)."

    Robert A. Monroe [= RAM] creates the sort of transitory possession that ES has in mind during an OBE visit to Locale III: "I temporarily displaced him. My knowledge of him...and his past came...evidently [from] his memory bank. I have wondered what embarrassment I have caused him ("Journeys Out of the Body", p. 96)."

    RAM's possession experience should have made him suspicious that his implausible astral past life experiences are bogus fabrications. e.g.:

    (1) his prior incarnation as a cave man pilot of a mentally controlled aircraft that is forced to dodge the spears of hostile natives (UJ 157): We are asked to believe in such a combination of prehistoric motifs and modern technology.

    (2) a prior incarnation as a novice Christian priest who is invited by his fellow priests to rape "a frightened young girl" who is tied down and spread-eagled: We are asked to believe that Catholic priests would order such an atrocity, that the victim is an earlier incarnation of his wife Nancy, and that the stabbings will cause her "exquisite ecstasy" (UJ 154-156; cp. the earlier version in FJ 115-16)!

    RAM's eincarnation memories are as implausble as his alleged discoveries of aliens in flying saucers who visit earth not to do genetic research, but to collect jokes (UJ 48-50). In my view, RAM's failure to address the credibility problems of his absurd past life "memories" is sufficent reason to mistrust the astral insights in his last 2 books.

    Don



    [

  5. #35
    Berserk Guest
    IX 2) A SWEDENBORGIAN CRITIQUE OF THE NEW AGE CONCEPT OF THE
    GROUP SOUL

    New Age reincarnationism is often associated with the concept of a soul Disk or group soul comprised of many manifestations of one's soul throughout history. ES would view this as a perversion of what actually happens:

    "Kindred souls gravitate towards each other spontaneously...for with each other they feel as though they are with their own family (HH 44),"

    "There was a kind of angelic face that appeared to me, and this varied according to the qualities of affections...that were characteristic of the individuals in a particular community. These variations lasted quite a while, and through it all I noticed that the same general face remained constant as a basis, with everything else being simply derivations and elaborations from it. So there was shown me through this face the affections of the whole community...Not many individuals leave their own community to go to another because leaving their community is like leaving themselves or their life...(HH 47, 49)."

    "Sometimes a whole angelic community appears as a single entity in the form of an angel, a sight that the Lord has allowed me to see. . .Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are nothing but angelic communities that are given these names because of their functions (HH 52)."

    Similary, in classical channeling, the group soul is not like the Monroe/Moen soul Disk composed of multiple selves of the same soul unit. Rather, the group soul is composed of originally distinct kindred souls with the same purpose. Yet this channeled conception might easily be confused with the soul Disk concept. For example, consider this quote from Paul Beard's synthesis of astral insghts from classical channeling, in his book, "Living On," p. 135:

    "The group as a whole is in a real sense a soul also, a group soul, and [the discarnate person] is in very truth part of this soul. The bond, the common purpose, will not all be seen in a flash....[but] will be carried out gradually, until the various parts are gathered together and made a whole."

    This alternative understanding may be the key to solving a significant contradiction between Bruce Moen and Robert Monroe. Moen claims to be part of the same soul Disk as Monroe. But Monroe is astrally informed that he has only one parallel incarnation--a female one. He is also told that "she would seem like a long-lost sister (UJ 174)." Moen reports no such intimacy in his earthly encounter with Monroe. Perhaps, Moen, Monroe, and even this unknown female are distinct and separate souls destined to participate in a group soul in this Swedenborgian sense. If so, there is no such thing as retrieving portions of one's self.

    The group soul in the Swedenborgian sense gets rid of the the troubling notion of parallel incarnations from a timeless astral realm. Consider the contradictory nature of the Seth entity's perspective on the timeless interval between lives. In "Eternal Validity of the Soul" Seth says, "There is no time schedule, and yet it is very unusual for an individual to wait for anything over 3 centuries between lives, for this makes the orientation very difficult, and the emotional ties with the earth have become weak." But Seth assumes that time is irrelevant for entities between lives. The earth ties can only become gradually weakened if there is in fact a passage of time! A real contradiction!

    Don

  6. #36
    Tempestinateapot Guest
    Don said:
    Occasionally, the bodily memory of spirits is activated and gives the connected person the impression that these memories are hers and that she must have reincarnated. Ian Stevenson's celebrated research on the past life recall of young children is flawed by its failure to take this insight seriously. In at least one of his cases, the child's alleged past life continued until well after he was born--a sure sign of possession or at least some form of tempororary spirit merger.
    I'm going to have to respectfully and heartily disagree with your conclusion here. It appears to me that you are making assumptions that time is linear. Linear time is an illusion that we have agreed to while in a specific incarnation. If you accept the idea that time is relative (Albert Einstein), and the Greater Soul's experience that everything is happening at once, overlapping incarnations are not a problem. Possession is the last thing that I would think of to explain time differences in incarnations. "Temporary spirit merger" is also an odd way of explaining the phenomenom. In the sense that an OverSoul is experiencing everything at once, and has complete knowledge of it's many distinct incarnations, you could beg the idea that on a macro level, the spirits are merged. But, the individual understanding and experience of each separate incarnation is of one continuous life, with birth, death, and all experiences between...all on the micro level.

    Relativity of simultaneity: two events that appear simultaneous to an observer A will not be simultaneous to an observer B if B is moving with respect to A.

    ES discovers that discarnate heavenly souls readily grasp the significance of his anti-reincarnation astral discoveries, but humans confined to the world of spirits (= Focus 24-26) refuse to believe because they are unwilling to experience the inevitable belief system crash that would cause them to renounce reincarnation
    I have experienced the "belief system crash" in ALL areas of metaphysics. I have come to the conclusion that the only thing I can know with absolute certainty is that "I" exist. Everything else is speculation, faith, and personal beliefs. We are affected by our personal "belief" filters while in the astral. If you look for demons, you will find them. If you carry fear with you into the astral, you can manifest fearful beings. If you look for Jesus, or a similar type of being, you will find them. Thoughtforms are as "real" as any human is. I would be interested in seeing any documented NDE case of a person who had absolutely no knowledge of the human or the light being Jesus, and still returned to life claiming that is who they saw. It would need the further test of being documented as a clear-cut clinically dead experience for me to lend it credence.

    I have had so called "higher" experiences in the astral. I don't think that I've ever read or heard of a higher experience than the experience of "Being God" and knowing all at once. This experience left my physical body a wreck as I wasn't energetically ready for it. Because of this experience (and similar ones), the closest thing that I can know (without getting into beliefs) is that there is no ultimate judgement, and that everything and every experience is possible.

    While I respect Monroe's and Moen's works, along with many other researchers in this field, it is quite clear to me that every one of their experiences were seen through their personal filters. These filters are based upon their own prior knowledge, both on earth and the before and afterlife of their human incarnation. I also extend the idea that personal filters are at play in Swedenborg's, Robert Bruce's, and my own personal experiences.

    According to ES, we are normally connected in this way to 2 good spirits and 2 evil spirits.
    In my experience, this is a very limited belief and dependent solely on ES's own personal filters during his out of body experiences.

    Robert A. Monroe [= RAM] creates the sort of transitory possession that ES has in mind during an OBE visit to Locale III: "I temporarily displaced him. My knowledge of him...and his past came...evidently [from] his memory bank. I have wondered what embarrassment I have caused him ("Journeys Out of the Body", p. 96)."

    RAM's possession experience should have made him suspicious that his implausible astral past life experiences are bogus fabrications.
    There are quite a large number of reported experiences that entail an ability of stepping into historical person's, contemporary person's, and one's own personal experiences (during this lifetime) as a way of experiencing. Because all possibilities exist at once, it's unlikely that any history is changed. One is merely experiencing one set of experiences that number into infinity. Again, the traditional "possession" is the last thing that I would think of in such a case. Also, again, you could beg the idea that this is an innocuous case of possession. But, with an infinity of possibilities, I think of it more as a case of picking the possiblity that you resonate with, rather than a possession and changing of the course of history. Similar to a virtual reality experience.

    We are asked to believe that Catholic priests would order such an atrocity
    I think we are all aware of the capabilities of all of humankind to do harm to another, and in a particular contemporary situation, priests have been known to perform atrocities on innocent children. I'm not implying that Catholics have the gold medal in atrocities, but you brought it up.

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