Song For the Forgotten

Below is a Swedenborg's Description of those who Use Ideology for the Sake of Hate and their spiritual State.

 (The word 'remains' refers to innocence sotred in our soul from childhood that allows us to receive God).

those who persuade themselves in regard to any subject,

confirm themselves in such persuasion

by everything which they imagine to be true,

even by what they find contained in the Word of the Lord;

for while they cling to principles which they have received,

and have become persuaded of,

they make everything favor and assent to them.

And the more anyone is under the influence of self-love,

the more firmly he holds them.

When a man is of such a character

that he immerses the truths of faith in his insane desires,

he then profanes the truths,

and deprives himself of remains,

which although they remain cannot be brought forth,

for as soon as they are brought forth

they are again profaned by things that are profane

for profanations of the Word produce as it were a callosity,

which causes an obstruction,

and absorbs the goods and truths of remains.

Therefore let man beware

of the profanation of the Word of the Lord,

which contains the eternal truths wherein is life,

although one who is in false principles

does not believe that they are truths.

The Great Purpose of John the Baptist

When we look into the spiritual/historical purpose of John the Baptist a deep sense of God’s wisdom emerges. When pressed by the priests John identifies himself as the fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; Make straight in the desert a highway for our God”. On an earthly level the last sentence is a reference to the roads that were built by the Romans through the rough terrain so that kings could travel in their royal chariots. These roads eventually made it possible for everyone to access new lands and connect new people and places. This is the metaphor for the purpose of John. John was the trailblazer of the way out of darkness. He was the means of transition between the old dying church, and the new Church to come.

John’s whole life seems to have been one of great focus, preparing for the brief, but profound period before Jesus began his public ministry; and he carried out his mission with great intensity. He became well known and was much talked about, long lines of people came to hear him and be baptized by him. He Baptised the people with water, and proclaimed the coming of the Messiah; and he called people to repentance. He was like an Olympic athlete that trains for decades for a great race that takes a short time to run – the was the original ‘spiritual athlete’.

John’s job was no less than to re-establish the means of conjuction between heaven and earth. This had to be done for it is a universal principle that the internal (heaven) must have a foundation (earth) upon which to rest, and the connection between them is accomplished by correspondences. The use of the Jews for correspondence had come to an end. They no longer served their purpose as the representative people, and without a church on earth that acknowledged the Lord there is no means for humanity to receive heavenly wisdom. The last sentences of the Old Testament in Malachi are:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (Malachi 4: 5,6).

To curse the earth does not mean that God chooses to do this but that the people had so seperated themselves from God that they were at the end, they were about to be destroyed forever by evil because of their own choices. The same thing is said in many prophets when they say phrases like, ‘the destruction to come’, the ‘day of wrath, and vengence’. It would have been over for humanity, but God sent ‘Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day’. By Elijah here is meant John the Baptist as the Lord himself explains in the gospels. The reason He calls John Elijah is that they both represent the Word as to the Lord. Turning the heart of the fathers and children refers to the renewal of the church John’s actions will bring about. On these points Swedenborg quotes the prohpet Zeph and writes:

“In that day there shall be the noise of a cry, that the great day of Jehovah is near, that that is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, that in the day of Jehovah's wrath the whole land shall be devoured, and that He will make a consummation with all them that dwell in the land (Zeph. 1:7-18)”.
      From all this it is clear that unless a way had been made ready for Jehovah when He was descending into the world, by means of baptism, the effect of which in heaven was to close up the hells and guard the Jews against total destruction they would all have perished.

John, his actions, his preaching, his baptism, served the purpose of establishing the new means of conjuction with heaven. Because he was the agent of this change even the things he wore and ate had essential meanings by correspondences. Correspondences have to be acted out in reality, in the physical world, and John established baptism with water as the new means of correspondence. His was the external baptism that prepared the people to later receive the internal baptism of Jesus. The baptisms performed by John and the men and women that willingly received it made it possible for angels (under the guidance of the Lord) to be present with, and protect those willing to receive it. Heaven and earth are distinct from each other, but they must always be connected. As said above, earth is the foundation of heaven; and for both to exist they must be in union, which is done by correspondences.

It is perhaps astounding to hear that heaven needed people to participate in correspondences in order for the angels to have access to protecting the people from the emminent darkness. The way correspondences work between heaven and earth could be compared to an electrical current in a wire that must have a grounded node to connect to; John and his actions along with those who responded to him established the earthly node. Or it could be compared to a river that had gone dry with only water holes left in the river bed. With no water between the holes the fish could no longer move from one hole to another. John’s actions began to reconnected the holes with water. The people baptized by John were the beginning of the new Christian church, they were the people able to hear and receive Christ’s message. Whether he did this exclusively I don’t know; it seems to me the disciples contributed to the external baptism, but John’s was the primary beginning.

Along with performing baptism John called the people to repent, or change their hearts, by which the people began to understand and believe that Christ was the Messiah and to have more caring hearts for others. Those that heard his message, repented, and allowed themselves to be baptized where initiated into the new church, that is, into the community of love and charity. To acnowledge who Jesus was in heart spiritualy brings people into his presence and protection, whereas before they were seperarted by the darkness. This was joyous good news - for they were emerging from a dark nightmare. On this critical time Swedenborg writes:

The baptism performed by John represented the cleansing of the external man; but baptism as practised among Christians at the present time represents the cleansing of the internal man. That is why we read that John baptised with water, but the Lord baptises with the Holy Spirit and with fire. So too John's baptism is called a baptism of repentance. The Jews who were baptised were nothing but external men, and the external man cannot become internal without faith in Christ. It may be seen in the Acts of the Apostles (19:3-6) that those who received John's baptism became internal men, when they accepted faith in Christ and were then baptised in the name of Jesus (AC 690).

John's baptism prepared the heavens so that the Jewish people could continue, when God Himself came among them…They were prepared by being enrolled in heaven and counted among those who at heart waited and longed for the Messiah, as the result of which angels were sent to become their protectors” (TCR 691).

All of this shows how great was the role of John, and how real the historical danger was for the Jews. The separation between the Jews (and humanity in general) and God and his Word had grown too far. There are examples of this from the past, for instance the unrepentent people of Ekron, Bethshemesh merely looked upon the Ark of the covenant – and were ‘cursed’ perishing on the spot. (The Ark represents the power of the Word). Uzzah also died when he touched the Ark. The Jews at the time of Jesus were no longer protected by being the vastated representative people, so the same would have happened to the religious leaders, and many of the people, and eventually the whole planet if it were not for the urgent and merciful actions of John the Baptist to establish a new connection that brought them the protection of heaven.

To understand the significance of John’s role further we will now examine some of the specific correspondences in John’s appearance and story.

Confession of and Working with Loneliness

It is amazing to observe what happens when I feel loneliness. I go out enough and do things, but I also stay in, and at least try to do my creative things. Sometimes I get tired and overwhelmed and just feel alone, but still the loneliness is not empty. I pick up the guitar and start playing something and a lot of passion comes out, and I create new music and words, or play songs I learn and enjoy it. With this comes a desire to share, and I imagine sharing as I jam it out, and then I try to develop it into a song.

      Or when I write, sometimes it is hard and I just don't have the mental energy, and I just have to relax and watch TV or be sexual. But when I engage my writing it carries its own thread; there is a strong sense the material is connected to the heavens. I don't say that to be grandiose, I think it is the nature of the Word. It all has to do with the Word and searching out essential things about it and communicating them to an audience. I feel compelled that I need to do this; it’s a good thing.

      Basically I am seeing, (which is also true of anxiety), that inside the loneliness there are many colors and messages to be found and mined. There is a richness in searching the feelings of it, but also important to seek out others.

        When I want to share in the moment I think of sharing with someone I know, because we can work in harmony on music and I know she has an inner understanding of the Word, and could relate to what I feel. She can help me, and share with me toward my goals, and I desire to help her with hers.

      I still think of sharing with another woman too, mostly because you know the most about me, and the other is not 'mine' to presume on. I am sharing this because of the psychological struggle to deal with loneliness. I can spend time in the richness of my inner life, but then want to share the value of what I discover, and there is no one there, and I am back to loneliness. Its Ok, I keep trying.

Part Two: Possession and Exorcism in Scripture and History Before and In the Time of Jesus

There were many other practices of a magical and malevalant character that were based on using the power of evil spirits, gods, or the power of the sender themselves. The purpose of these practices were usually to curse others, or to protect oneself from a curse. A common example of this throughout the mediterranean world is the practice of “the evil eye”. The gesture of pointing with the finger and staring was regarded as maleficent (Ogden p. 212). Below are a few examples of the evil eye from Biblical, apocryphal, and historical sources:

Do not eat the bread of one having the evil eye, do not desire their delicacies; for like a hair in the throat, so are they. “Eat and drink!” they say to you; but they do not mean it. You will vomit up the little you have eaten, and you will waste your pleasant words (Proverbs 23:6-8).

Remember that an evil eye is a bad thing. What has been created more evil than the eye? Therefore it sheds tears from every face (Sirach 31:12-13).

When one looks at what is excellent with an envious eye he fills the surrounding atmosphere with a pernicious quality, and transmits his own envenomed exhalations into whatever is nearest to him (Heliodorus (3^rd c.) Thea.i.140).

Self-bewitchment is most frequently brought about by the streams of particles reflected from sheets of water or other mirror-like surfaces; these reflections rise like vapor and return to the beholder, so that he is injured by the same means by which he has been injuring others (Plutarch, Quaest. Conv. 682F).

Magic was not employed secretly by individuals (as we would tend to imagine today), but was publicly used by tribal leaders, kinship families, and kings in official activities for the purpose of destroying others. Kings of Isreal made public displays of divination, such as endowing magic powers to their arrows and shooting them toward the enemy in order to curse them. Public curses were also solemnly uttered against enemies before battles. These were believed to possess great power. Local and larger gods were invoked for this purpose, but it was also believed that individuals possessed the power to curse. David and Goliath cursed each other before battle. The ultimate curse was called the herem. It was a vow of total destruction on the enemy and everything he possessed, with the malicious intent of leaving no spoil.

These practices and many others paint a dark picture of the spiritual state of the time. The stifling, growing presence of evil in the historical and New Testament times corresponds to, and is a real manifestation of the terrible imbalance occurring in the spiritual world. All historians describe the strange nature and preponderance of evil spirits before the time of Christ, but do not address the cause of it. The long decline in the religion of humanity, the over accumulation of hereditary evil, and the resulting imbalance is the cause. In this imbalance evil spirits were able to wreck havoc and possess people in a way that is not normally allowed by the Lord’s divine order. There was a cruelty in the society that was commonplace.

Lets examine the nature and origin of these evil spirits as Swedenborg describes them in the spiritual world. The worst of these are called the genii, also known as naphelim, and anakim:

Those before the Flood who perished are in a certain hell beneath the heel of the left foot. Shutting them in is a rock enveloped in mist which is a projection of their dreadful delusions and persuasions, and by which they are segregated from all other hells and kept apart from the world of spirits. They are continually pressing to come up out of there but can never get beyond the attempt to do so. For they are such that if they were to enter the world of spirits with their dreadful delusions and with the choking and toxic effects of their persuasions, they would deprive every spirit they met, apart from good ones, of his ability to think. And if the Lord by His Coming in the flesh had not freed the world of spirits of that abominable crew the human race would have perished (AC 1266).

He further describes his personal experience of the genii while being protected by the Lord and His angels:

Presently some were let out of that hell; but the Lord made such a disposition by means of intermediate spirits and angels that they could do me no harm.

Their persuasions are of such a nature that they extinguish all truth and good, so that those into whom they flow can perceive nothing whatever, and after that cannot think; and therefore the other spirits were removed. When they began to flow in I fell asleep. Then while I slept they flowed in by means of cupidities, and this with such violence that if awake I could not have resisted them. In my sleep I was sensible of the vehemence of it, which I cannot describe, save that I afterwards remembered that they tried to kill me by a suffocating afflatus, which was like a terrible nightmare. (AC 1270).

One can imagine the havoc these spirits cuased when given free riegn during the imbalance. This is why there was such a paranoia and obsession amongst the people to rotect themselves against spirits and the dead. In the present day possession is not allowed as it was back then. In normal times it is a law of the Lord’s divine order that spirits cannot compel people on earth to their will, which means they are not allowed to possess. But this law was superceeded during the imbalance. It was an awful situation to live in, but the people grew up in it and were used to it, and didn’t know the difference.

We get a pictue of a practitioner of magical arts that was common in the streets of the city in the book of acts with a man called Simon.

For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed.  And there was great joy in that city.  But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries. But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done.

Simon is an example of the many magical practitioners that practiced among the people, but apearantly he was one of the better ones. He demonstrates the false leadership the people were seduced by, particularly in that they thought his power came from God. The episode gives the impression of a strange passivity the people operated under, which I think is a function of the imbalance and resulting partial loss of freedom. In this state there is a kind of niavita which I think results from being compelled by evil as I described above. This scripture also demonstrates how easily the people would have profaned in that it shows how inclined they were to magical arts. Simon himself changes his mind very easily (though perhaps not very deeply) when he sees the real work of Philip and Peter – implying he was run by evil spirits like a puppet. He reminds me of the Wizard of OZ in that he is dealing in deception and playing with evil, but he is not all bad in his heart. When Peter shows up a moment later on the scene he deals with Simon with great power and love. Simon sees Peter’s ability to heal the people of evil spirits, and Simon proposes to pay Peter that he might have these powers. He rejects this and assesses him severely and accurately, ‘your heart is not right with God…I see you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by inequity’. Yet Peter does not give up on him, but asks him to repent and pray, and there seems to hope that Smon will come around.

In daily life the people lived normal lives, receiving satisfaction and pleasure from their work, the enjoyment of nature, relationships, business, and regular activities. But it was a time of true apocalypse. The whole earth would have been gradually consumed in darkness, and heaven too, if the Lord had not come. This was not the first time that the universal church of humanity had come to an end, (another was the time of the flood and Noah). How all the universe changed after the coming of the Lord is a subject of great significance, and it will be described in part in a section below.

Realizing why the Lord came, and the darkness He faced, gives the observer of history and the Bible, key insight into the life of Jesus. To understand redemption, we must understand what we were redeemed from. Otherwise it is not possible to fully understand the mighty work that Jesus acccomplished from his own power.

Part one: Possession and Exorcism in Scripture and History In Times of Jesus

To see the darkness Jesus faced gives the observer of history and the Bible, key insight into the life of Jesus. To understand redemption, we must understand what we were redeemed from. Otherwise it is not possible to fully understand the mighty work that Jesus acccomplished from his own power.

Matthew gives us a good picture of the dire darkness on the Land and how Jesus and the disciples work diligently against this tide to bring hope.

As they went out, behold, they brought to Him a man, mute and demon-possessed. And when the demon was cast out, the mute spoke. And the multitudes marveled, saying, “It was never seen like this in Israel!”

But the Pharisees said, “He casts out demons by the ruler of the demons.”

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease (Matthew 9:32 - 10:1).              

In each of the gospels it is told several times of people being de-possessed, and in general it is told that Jesus and his disciples healed multitudes of the sick and demon possessed. We learn a lot from observing the nature of these encounters. They give us a window to see how Jesus subjugated evil spirits not only on earth, but in the spiritual world. In each encounter the evil spirits recognize the divine power in Jesus and beg for mercy. There are profound principles at work here that have to do with the very purpose that the Lord suffered himself to be born on earth. In order to battle with an enemy a person must be with them in close quarters, hand to hand, or sword to sword, so to speak, and so it was with the Lord. God in his essence could not come into the presence of people, spirits, or angels, because the divine fire of his love and truth would instantly destroy anyone, just as it would destroy a man to come too close to the sun. Humans were further separated from God and heaven because the accumulation of evil caused a dark cloud between heaven and earth. The dark cloud was due to the overabundance of evil spirits in the spiritual world that resulted in an interference of influx to the earth. These evil spirits built false heavens that grew bigger and bigger. God suffered Himself to be born on earth for in this way He could be accessible to humantiy without doing harm. By being born on earth Jesus had access to evil forces, and evil forces had access to him. Jesus had access to them because He was born from a human mother, and anyone born on this earth has hereditary evil passed on to them; we recieve hereditray evil from the body of the mother, and from the soul of the father. Since Jesus soul was from God, and therefore divine, He did not receive evil from the father, only from the mother. Because he possessed hereditary evil in his body Jesus could be tempted and attacked by evil spirits. God in his purity cannot be tempted. Swedenborg informs us that Jesus was doing the work of putting evil spirits back into their place in the spiritual world on a large scale. He tells how on sight hundreds of evil spirits who had made a siege on heaven would run and seek refuge in caves. The light from Jesus was like scalding water to them; the atmosphere of love from him caused them to not be able to breath as if they were in a vacuum.

For instance, in the Gosples even the Pharisees accept that Jesus removed evil spirits, for that was the recognized common mode of healing; they tried to discredit Him by saying he removed demons ‘by the ruler of demons’, further indicating the dominance of evil in their lives. Because of their lust for power the spiritual leaders led the people deeper into blindness for their deepest desire was to maintain their power; they wanted to kill the light in Jesus. The common people saw Jesus differently; they marveled that “it was never seen like this in Israel”. In reality the miracles of Jesus were pure and wondrous, and done with a deep, tender love.

It is frequently told in the Bible that Jesus, and His disciples after Him, performed exorcism, and depossesed people, which is to say they removed evil spirits. It is even more often told that they healed the sick. People in these times were going about their normal lives, performing their work, trying to better the lives of their family, but the darkness was a dominant factor in their life. It effected their daily lives in almost every way. Biblical historians inform us that there were exorcist and healers on city block corners as common as barber shops doing business, apparently some were sincere, and some worked dark magic for their clients.

Healing the sick has more or less the same meaning as removing evil spirits, which the above scripture indicates. The Jewish people (and all the peoples around them) believed that illness, madness, disease, and even misfortune, were caused by evil spirits influencing, or possessing the victim, and consequently that healing was achieved by removing the evil spirits. This practice was held by all the different people’s in the mediternean, and beyond, at the time. Referring to the Jewish people Ogden writes: “They referred the cause of various pathological conditions, especially madness, leprosy, and plague, to ‘evil spirits’ who smote the sufferer, or entered his body. Other diseases, no doubt, were attributed to demonic animals, such as the seraphim, or flies” (Ogden, p.  ).

In ‘The History of Civilizaton’, C.K. Ogden describes how all the various peoples in the mediteranean had similar beliefs about supernatural influences, including the Jewish people. The ancient Arabs believed supernatural, mostly evil creatures called Jinns were present everywhere, and caused rustlings and disturbances along their travels. Jinn’s especially haunted abandoned villages where people had lived and died. Wherever they settled for the night Arab travelers made a sacrifice to the Jinn, for they feared the Jinn would avenge themselves upon them in a terrible way (possession, disease, plague). Islam in general had similar beliefs. They believed that demons would take their abode in wild beasts, especially birds of prey, serpents, lizards, and scorpions. Many of these influences are still alive to day, for instance when an Arab passes a ruin he will stuff his nose to prevent Jinn’s from entering his body. Or when imposing whirlwinds pass the desert it is believed Jinns threaten. The Bedouins believed in the existence of flying serpants, very similar to the Jewish seraphim. The great historian of antiquity, Josephus, tells the story that Herodotus is said to have found the bones of a seraphim in Egypt. Another fable tells of a seraphim like serpant that is used as one of the grim ingredients for scorceror’s magic, the intent of which was to raise the dead (Ogden, p.  ).

Ogden describes the dreadful fear of the Seraphim by the Isrealites, and the magical means used to combat them:

We find wholly similar ideas and practices among the Isrealites…The Isrealites believed that caravans crossing the desert were attacked by formidable winged serpents called seraphim. The only way to escape their fatal bite was to make a bronze image of them, which had the double virture of magic control over them and of a means of appeasing them (2 Kings 18: 4). These hybrid creatures were certianly not ordinary animals, for according to Isrealite belief they were the seraphim that proclaimed Jaweh’s glory in the Temple; they always retained something of their animal nature, being naked and winged (Ogden 239).

The Jews also believed the deserts were occupied by demons. They came to call Sodom and Gammorah the valley of demons. They felt anyone that dwelled among ruins was a despiser of invisible powers (Job 15:28). The Isrealites, like their neighbors, were in the habit of offering  sacrifices to appease gods and demons, especially when they needed to inhabit a place for any length of time.

In regard to the dead and demons one of the distinguishing qualities of the Isrealites are their sanctity and purity laws. There were many rules to be obeyed if a person touched the dead, or even if one was in the presence of the dead.  Although some of these rules were motivated by religious considerations, the real basis of them was the fear of demons and the dead. For instance it was unclean to be in a cemetery without proper rituals before and after. It was imperative that a dead person be buried within a day. The obsession over this had two main motivations: one, it was feared the dead person would not be able to enter Sheol, but would be condemned to be a homeless wanderer; and two, the living were terrified the unhappy dead would bring havoc upon them. When it was necessary to touch the dead, the person who did so would have to be ritualistically cleansed. The consequences of uncleanliness were dreadful; it meant a person took on unwanted spirits and demons, which amounts to loss of identity, even the loss of their soul. According to the belief, the people were powerless to escape these consequences. The washing of hands before meals, sacred rituals, and other activities was a frequent daily practice or all the people in the Mediterranean. Spiritualy all this is the consequence of the cosmic imbalance toward evil.

How it is that there is both a Duality and Oneness in life

I think it is useful to conceive how the universe has both the quality of duality and oneness at the same time. I view it in this way: it is implicit that there is a duality between heaven and hell, body and spirit, earth and sky, male and female, but this duality is contained in an overarching oneness. The overarching oneness can be defined in this way; The Lord is the one source of life and is love itself. Even though heaven and hell are opposing forces, there is still oneness, because in the higher sense heaven is life, and hell is anti-life, or spiritual death. That is different than each having its own source; if that were the case it would be a true duality. But the Lord is the only source of life, for heaven and hell; hell is an inversion of his life; hell’s reception of his life is in a perverse form. The duality is real, but it’s effects only manifest on the natural plane. In the natural plane it is possible to be in emotional/spiritual duplicity, but on the spiritual realm of heaven and hell everyone has a singular love, whether it be love or hate for the Lord. Either way everything that exists is defined by the quality of its relationship to the One – the Lord.