Are there negative spiritual influences at work in our lives? How do they operate, and what can we do about them? Join us as we discuss Swedenborg's accounts of his spiritual experiences and what he learned through them.

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"This is so that we can be reformed and saved, for without freedom there can be no reformation or salvation…. The reason we cannot be reformed unless we have some freedom is that we are born into evils of all kinds, evils which need to be taken away if we are to be saved. They cannot be taken away unless we see them within ourselves, admit that they are there, then refuse them and ultimately turn away from them. Only then are they taken away. This cannot happen unless we are exposed to both good and evil, since it is from good that we can see evils, though we cannot see what is good from evil….” Heaven and Hell 597-598

“...all in hell, how many soever they may be, when viewed in the ordinary light of heaven, appear like each other, and also speak alike, so that you would believe them to be one and the same person, when yet they are innumerable…”

“When [evil spirits] are applied, then they induce agony of the spirit, by means of tedium, which they increase and inspire continually, and thus they add impatience, which begets the greatest suffering and induces such weakness of body that [the man] can scarce raise himself from bed. This was shown me by this means: when they were present, such a weakness took possession of [me], and when they were removed, it ceased, in proportion as they were removed. They also employ many arts, so as to infuse weariness and thence weakness." -Spiritual Experiences 4587

“Evil spirits stir up our falsities and evil, as mentioned. From our memory they stir up everything we have ever considered or committed since childhood. Evil spirits are able to do this with such consummate skill and malice that words cannot describe it.” Secrets of Heaven 751

"While I was going to bed the evil spirits overhead attacked with a plan to destroy me, deliberating to call forth against me all of hell, and all evil and treacherous spirits whatsoever…. It also seemed as if I were being let down among them—for otherwise they were overhead, in fantasy lifting me up into their midst, so that I was now surrounded by them…. When they had clung for some time to these fantasies, perpetrating whatever they were able, while I lay in safety, fearing nothing, only reflecting on the things they were up to, finally upon realizing the fruitlessness of their effort, they withdrew, admitting that it was of no use." -Spiritual Experiences 3851

"Spirits complained that they could no longer be present. Because I was abiding in the higher knowledge of faith, it was not permitted to entertain objections. They said that then they have nothing by which they can lead—saying also, by which they can mislead—for by their objections they very much mislead mankind." -Spiritual Experiences 3614

“These combats are carried on by means of truths of faith which are from the Word. We must fight against evils and falsities from these; if we fight from anything else, we do not conquer, because the Lord is not in anything else.” -Secrets of Heaven 8962

Is the human race ever going to be happier, more loving, and more wise than it is now? What would that future look like? Join us as we discuss Swedenborg's accounts of his spiritual experiences and what he learned through them.

This is an audio-only version of video-based show, and the podcast may contain references to visuals from the original episode. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN0c1q_Ca2M

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“The Word compares truth in the human mind to a city and also refers to it as such.”

“‘The holy Jerusalem’ means the church that is going to take the place of the one that is ours at the present day. Its ‘light’ is the truth of faith and resulting intelligence. Therefore it is likened to ‘a jasper stone, shining like crystal’… The wall of the city is described as jasper because ‘the wall’ means the truth of faith protecting the church.”

“‘And twelve gates.’ This symbolizes all the concepts of truth and goodness by which a person is introduced into the church.”

“‘Three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west.’ This symbolically means that concepts of truth and goodness...are provided for people who possess more or less love or affection for goodness, and for people who possess more or less wisdom or affection for truth.”

“Each gate was of one pearl because all the concepts of truth and goodness symbolized by the gates and by pearls relate to a single concept, one that is their containing vessel, and that single concept is a concept of the Lord.”

“Truths present within knowledge on the level of the senses act as a foundation. These truths are described in John, in the Book of Revelation, by the precious stones forming the foundations of the wall of the Holy Jerusalem coming down out of heaven.”

“The city's length, breadth and height are said to be equal in order to symbolize the fact that everything connected with that church springs from the goodness of love. For length symbolizes the goodness of love, and breadth the truth emanating from that love, and height symbolizes goodness and truth together in every degree.”

“Because the Africans are of this character, a revelation has at this day been made to them, which is spreading in all directions from the quarter where it originated, but has not yet reached the seas...I have heard the angels rejoicing over this revelation because by its means communication is opened up with the human rational” True Christianity 840

“The same ones who were there, afterwards related that they have long had revelations from heaven, and that thence was their religion, and that it has been promised them that many things should be revealed to them, and, finally, touching God. They knew many things about heaven and hell which Christians are ignorant of. It was perceived that those in the earth, with whom there is thence communication and influx, were about the region of Africa, partly also in Asia, rather near the Indian Sea, but not in the immediate neighborhood of the sea.” Spiritual Experiences 4774

“However, [the angels] themselves have only slight hope for people of the Christian church, but more hope for a people distant from the Christian world and removed from its intrusions. They are the kind of people who can accept spiritual light and become heavenly, spiritual individuals. The angels also said that deeper divine truths are being unveiled to these people at the present day and are being accepted with a spiritual faith—that is, in their lives and their hearts.” Last Judgment 74

“Anyone who knows anything of the Lord's coming, and of the New Heaven and New Church, thus of the Lord's kingdom, should pray that it may come...” Revelation Unveiled 956

What were people like spiritually in the earliest times? Have we changed much since then? Join us as we discuss Swedenborg's accounts of his spiritual experiences and what he learned through them.

This is an audio-only version of video-based show, and the podcast may contain references to visuals from the original episode. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IPGEzj9GAg

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Those who are nearing the end of their lives are often reported to say poetic, unusual things in the hours shortly before death. Are these communications just nonsense? Or do they hold a hidden message?

This is an audio-only version of video-based show, and the podcast may contain references to visuals from the original episode. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwUKMHyGar8

Dr. Raymond Moody is the Best-Selling Author of twelve books including Life After Life—which has sold over 13 million copies world-wide, as well as numerous articles in academic and professional literature. Dr. Moody has received numerous awards including the World Humanitarian Award in Denmark in 1988. Dr. Moody is a leading authority on the 'near-death experience'—a phrase he coined in the late seventies. The New York Times calls him "the father of the near-death experience." Dr. Moody has appeared on Oprah, Geraldo and many other mainstream TV programs.

Dr. Erica Goldblatt Hyatt is an assistant professor and department chair of psychology at Bryn Athyn College. She has a doctorate in clinical social work from the University of Pennsylvania and has worked with adults and children coping with terminal illness, the seriously mentally ill, and individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Visit 'Research into the Communications of the Dying' here: https://www.facebook.com/finalwordsproject

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How does the spiritual world work? Is there anything like it in the physical world? Join us as we discuss Swedenborg's accounts of his spiritual experiences and what he learned through them.

This is an audio-only version of video-based show, and the podcast may contain references to visuals from the original episode. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdV8rxVHT2o

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“In the spiritual world, all union takes place by means of attentiveness. When anyone there is thinking about someone else because of a desire to talk with her or him, that other person is immediately present. They see each other face to face. The same thing happens when someone is thinking about someone else because of a loving affection, but in this case the result is a union, while in the former case it is only presence. This phenomenon is unique to the spiritual world. The reason is that everyone there is spiritual. It is different in the physical world, where all of us are material. In this physical world, the same thing is happening in the feelings and thoughts of our spirits, but since there is space in this world, while in the spiritual world there only seems to be space, the things that happen in the thoughts of our spirits come out in actions there.” Divine Providence 29

“Angels can recognize the nature of our unique essence on the basis of nothing more than a brief conversation with us. From hearing the tone of our voice angels sense what we love; and from hearing what we say, angels sense our level of understanding.” True Christianity 778

“Because individual thoughts contain so much, just a single word produced by thought reveals to angels what a spirit or a person is like. This too was confirmed by experience. When the mere word truth was spoken (which was done by a large number of spirits one after another), I could instantly hear whether the word was hard, rough, soft, childlike, treasured, innocent, full, empty, unsound, insincere, closed, or open, and to what extent. In short, the actual quality of the underlying thought was audible. And this was only at a general level. What about at the level of detail that angels perceive?” Secrets of Heaven 6623

“When we are being faced with our deeds after death, angels who have been given the task of examining look searchingly into the face and continue their examination through the whole body, beginning with the fingers first of one hand and then of the other and continuing through the whole. When I wondered why this was so, it was explained to me. The reason is that just as the details of our thought and intention are inscribed on our brains because that is where their beginnings are, so they are inscribed on the whole body as well, since all the elements of our thought and intention move out into the body from their beginnings and take definition there in their outmost forms...” Heaven and Hell 463

“Truth is the form of good, that is to say, when good is formed so as to be perceived intellectually.” Secrets of Heaven 3409

“We may gather how great angels' wisdom is from the fact that in heaven there is a communication that involves everyone. The intelligence and wisdom of one individual is shared with another: heaven is where everyone shares everything of value. This is because the very nature of heavenly love is to want what is one's own to belong to another; so no one in heaven regards his or her good as authentically good unless it is someone else's as well. This is also the basis of heaven's happiness. Angels are led into it by the Lord, whose divine love has this same quality. I have also been granted knowledge, by experience, of this kind of communication in the heavens. Once some simple people were taken up into heaven, and after they had arrived, they arrived also at an angelic wisdom. They understood things they could not grasp before and said things they could not express in their former state.” Heaven and Hell 268

How is heaven organized? And what does the body we all wear around every day have to do with it? Join us as we discuss Swedenborg's accounts of his spiritual experiences and what he learned through them.

This is an audio-only version of video-based show, and the podcast may contain references to visuals from the original episode. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX6ma_MZHKg

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“Several times I have been allowed to see that each community of heaven reflects a single individual and is in the likeness of a human being as well...it is worth noting that the more members there are in a single community and the more united they are in action, the more perfect is their human form. This is because variety arranged in a heavenly form makes perfection...and variety occurs where there are many individuals.” Heaven and Hell 68, 71

“The eye, or rather its power of vision, has a particularly strong correspondence with the communities in the other world devoted to the beauties of paradise. These communities appear high up, out in front, and a little to the right, where a lifelike display of gardens is presented to view. The gardens contain trees and flowers of so many genera and species that by comparison the number of different kinds on the whole planet is small. Every object in those gardens incorporates some element of understanding and wisdom, which shines out from it. You might even say that along with [the flowers], specimens of understanding and wisdom fill these parks. Those are the things that move the community members from deep inside, gladdening not only their eyes but also their mind...this heaven is divided into several heavens, to which every feature in the chambers of the eye corresponds.” Secrets of Heaven 4528

“A man I had known in bodily life-though I had not known his disposition or deeper feelings-talked with me several times in the other life, but only briefly and from a distance. He revealed himself in a general way through entrancing representations. He was able to create pleasures for the eye (such as colors of every kind and lovely colored shapes), to insert images of little children wearing beautiful adornments, as angels do, and to add many other attractive, agreeable sights. He worked by exerting a soft, gentle influence on a membrane in the left eye. By these methods he stole into the affections of other people, in order to please them and enhance their lives. Angels told me that people like this are associated with the membranes of the left eye, and that they provide a link with paradisal kinds of heavens, where truth and goodness are represented in the form of substance….” Secrets of Heaven 4412

“[Spirits and angels] in the universal human who correspond to the hands, arms, and shoulders are the ones with power, which they receive through religious truth that springs from goodness. People devoted to this kind of truth have the Lord's power, because they attribute all power to him and none to themselves. The more they disclaim any personal power, not with their mouth but in their heart, the greater the power they have. That is why angels are called powers and authorities.” Secrets of Heaven 4932

“Those Belonging to the Province of the Earlobe: There was a spirit with me who flowed rather forcefully into my thought, whenever I was treating about matters concerned with Providence (such as the concern that I might not receive a response from the printer); and each time I was driven into anxious thoughts about this matter. Then I was told that it was a spirit belonging to the province of the outer ear, and in fact the earlobe, or fleshy appendage hanging below the cartilaginous part, or rather, where the thick membranous cartilage is, who was doing this. And it was told that he had been of a mind in the life of the body that when he had prayed for something, and had not obtained it, he would become very indignant, and come into doubt concerning Providence - and yet, when he was outside of that state of mind, he still practiced piety, obediently, as the elders had instilled into him. These are those who are imbued with simple obedience.” Spiritual Experiences Minor 4813

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Is there a way for people with different opinions and beliefs to live in harmony? Could the human race actually be better off because of its differences? Join us as we discuss Swedenborg's accounts of his spiritual experiences and what he learned through them.

This is an audio-only version of video-based show, and the podcast may contain references to visuals from the original episode. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNoAwJ1a9WQ

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“Further still, heaven is where the Lord is recognized, trusted, and loved. The different ways he is worshiped-in variations that stem from the difference of activity from one community to another-do not cause harm but bring benefit, because they are a source of heaven's perfection. It is hard to explain this in such a way that it can be grasped without resorting to expressions usually found in academic circles and using them to explain how a perfect whole is formed from a variety of elements. -Heaven and Hell 56

“Almost all who come into the next life from the world think that hell is the same for everyone and heaven is the same for everyone, when in reality there are unlimited differences and variations in either case. Hell is never exactly the same for one person as for another, nor is heaven—just as there is never one person, spirit, or angel who is exactly the same as another. When I merely entertained the thought that there could be two people precisely the same or identical, it aroused horror among those in the world of spirits and among the angels of heaven. “All unity is formed out of harmony among many,” they said. “The way that the many harmonize determines what kind of unity they have. No monolithic unity lasts, only the unity created by harmony. So every community in the heavens forms a single unit, as do all the communities—or the whole of heaven—taken together. The Lord alone makes this happen, and he does so through love.” -Secrets of Heaven 457

“One angel calculated only the most general kinds of joy experienced by spirits (in other words, inhabitants of the first heaven) to be around 478. This indicated how countless the less general kinds must be, and how innumerable the specific kinds that make up each general kind. And considering how many kinds there are in that heaven, you can see how unlimited must be the kinds of happiness in the heaven of angelic spirits and how many more yet in the heaven of angels.” -Secrets of Heaven 457

“In the heavens, all forms of perfection increase as numbers increase. This is because there is one goal for everything there and a unanimous focus of everyone on that goal. That goal is the common good; and when this rules, there is benefit to individuals from the common good and from the good of individuals to the good of the whole. This happens because the Lord turns everyone in heaven toward himself and in this way makes them one with himself.

“If there are to be all these elements in...heaven, it cannot be made up of the people of one religion only. It needs people from many religions; so all the people who make these two universal principles of the church central to their own lives have a place in that heavenly person, that is, in heaven. They enjoy the happiness that suits their own nature.” -Divine Providence 326

“Every community in heaven is growing in numbers daily, and the more it grows, the more perfect it becomes. In this way, not only is the community perfected, but heaven in general is perfected as well, since the communities constitute heaven.” -Heaven and Hell 71

Is it possible to see God? And would we all see God in the same way? Join us as we discuss Swedenborg's accounts of his spiritual experiences and what he learned through them.

This is an audio-only version of video-based show, and the podcast may contain references to visuals from the original episode. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOJxMGQWdy8

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“The sight of the body answers perfectly to the sight of its spirit and therefore to the intellect.” -Secrets of Heaven 4405

“As for the Lord's actually appearing in heaven as the sun, this is something I have not simply been told by angels but have also been allowed to see a number of times...the Lord does not appear as a sun in the heavens, but high above them, and not directly overhead but in front of angels at a middle elevation. He appears in two places, in one for the right eye and in another for the left, noticeably far apart. For the right eye he looks just like a sun, with much the same fire and size as our world's sun. For the left eye, though, he does not look like a sun but like a moon, with similar brilliance but more sparkling, and with much the same size as our earth's moon; but he seems to be surrounded by many apparent lesser moonlets, each similarly brilliant and sparkling. The reason the Lord appears in two places, so differently, is that he appears to people according to their receptiveness...the reason he appears to the eyes is that the deeper levels of the mind see through the eyes, looking from the good of love through the right eye and from the good of faith through the left eye. You see, everything on the right side of an angel or one of us corresponds to what is good and yields truth, while everything on the left side corresponds to that truth that comes from what is good.” -Heaven and Hell 118

“Since the regions are variations in the way angels accept love and wisdom, I need to say something about the variety that gives rise to the appearance. As I explained in the preceding section, the Lord is in each angel, and each angel is in the Lord. However...it looks as though the Lord as the sun were outside angels...when [angels] are engaged in the love for him that comes from him, they do see him straight ahead, so they are in the east or the west. When they are more engaged in wisdom, though, they see the Lord off to the right, and when they are less engaged in wisdom they see him off to the left, so they are respectively in the north or the south.” -Divine Love and Wisdom 125

“Since angels do not perceive an invisible Divine Being (which they call a formless Divine) but a visible Divine Being in human form, it is common practice for them to say that only the Lord is a person, and that they are people because of him. They also say that each of us is human in proportion to our acceptance of him.” -Heaven and Hell 80

“[There is] one God, who can be seen, within whom is the God that cannot be seen, like a soul in a body. This is the only way we can form a partnership with God, because we are earthly and we think in earthly ways; and such a partnership must be formed in our thinking and then in the desires that belong to our love. This occurs when we think of God as a human being.” -True Christianity 787

“While the created universe is not God, it is from God; and since it is from God, his image is in it like the image of a person in a mirror. We do indeed see a person there, but there is still nothing of the person in the mirror.” -Divine Love and Wisdom 59