“The earliest people, who were heavenly, did actually see
everything they looked at on earth and in the world around them, but
their thoughts were devoted to the heavenly or divine attribute it
symbolized or represented. Vision was just a means." (Secrets of Heaven, 241)
According to Swedenborg, the earliest group of people to inhabit
the world saw everything in it as a symbol that represented heavenly
realities. When they saw a mountain, they didn't just see a large hunk
of rock--they saw implicit in it a representation of mankind's
coming-close to God. Likewise, he says that when this people saw bodies of water, they understood them to represent divine truth, and when they saw the sun
they understood it as a representation of God Himself. In
that respect, their attention didn't rest upon any concerned thing in
itself; rather, they would see it as a window through which they could
discern a unique aspect of God and Heaven. He even goes on to say that they understood the world through these symbols like we understand a
person's vocal sounds through the meaning inherent in them, to the point
where it likewise required no effort on their part.
Honestly, Swedenborg's claims are not that outlandish. The
ethnologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and later Carl Jung made the well-known claim
that primitive people (that is, cultures similar in kind to what we can
assume that Swedenborg meant by the "earliest people") engage in what
they call a "participation mystique" (mystic participation) with the
objects, animals, and people around them. This essentially means that
they don't divorce their inner psychic life from their life in the
world--what goes on "inside" and what goes on "outside" completely
overlap. Just as Swedenborg's first people "saw through" everything to
the spiritual realities underlying them, Jung and Lévy-Bruhl claim that
primitive humans see through every outside object to the symbolic
processes occurring in either an individual or a collective soul.
Moreover, the fact that nearly all mythologies share in the same
basic archetypes and images also provides support to Swedenborg's claim.
Whether in tribal or more developed contexts, the sky god is almost
always male and a father, and the earth goddess is almost always female
and a mother (this even shows up in our language: the root for "matter"
is "mater," as in "maternal"). And as Jung often pointed out, archetypes such as "the wise old man," "the hero," "the trickster," and "the
Shadow" occur repeatedly not only in mythology, but also in literature
and pop culture. Again and again, one sees the proliferation of these
archetypal symbols in both our culture and those of others, and it gives
the impression that Swedenborg's claim of our innate connection to a
world of divine symbols may not be so crazy.
And Swedenborg claims exactly that: that our native heavenly world
is an innately symbolic place, where a state of mind cannot occur
without the projection of an image that corresponds to it. Moreover,
that world "symbolizes with" ours, for Swedenborg repeatedly asserts
that one draws closer to something in the spiritual world the more
similar in state to it one becomes. And it is this divine faculty for
symbolic association that his "earliest people" used to see through the
physical world, for by doing so, they would come into contact with the
heavenly reality that symbolically underlies them.
Nor is this symbolic perspective entirely alien to Mormon thought.
Not only does Alma the Younger speak of people receiving God's image in their countenances (Alma 5:14) or Joseph Smith speak of "all things [having]
their likeness, [...] that they may accord one with another--that which
is earthly conforming to that which is heavenly" (D&C 128:13), but
one can even understand the central concept of priesthood ordinances in
such a symbolic way. According to this perspective, a priesthood
ordinance such as the Sacrament is a symbolic manifestation of a
heavenly reality, relating to that reality much in the same way that a
spoken word does to its meaning. Christ's body and his sacrifice shine
forth from "behind" the bread and water, and if we have but eyes to see,
we can discern their manifest presence in the ritual sustenance.
Indeed, one could say that our emphasis on ritual ordinances
actually invites us to see the world in symbolic terms. If there is
something more to the Sacrament than a paltry meal, and if a priesthood
blessing is more than just a bunch of sweaty palms, the world must be
innately more than the common literal perception of it suggests.
For just as an ordinance may convey divinity, nothing stops you from
seeing a divine hand in an outwardly insignificant act of kindness by a
stranger, or even from seeing the countenance of a dead family member in
someone alive (as routinely happens when we do ordinances for the
dead).
But the question arises: if we have become disconnected from our
natural capacity to discern heavenly realities through the physical
world, what can we do to get it back? The answer is very simple, and I
can give it in one word: love. To echo The Little Prince's resounding
maxim, the eyes are blind to higher spiritual realities, and one can
only discern them with the heart. It is by cherishing, nurturing,
protecting, and caring for the beloved that one can discern the
spiritual realities exemplified through him or her. Indeed, one can say
that by shedding the light of care upon this person, one "frees" the
latent spiritual realities from their hiddenness within him or her, for
love really is a process of unveiling the hidden spiritual
potentialities within a person. Of course, it doesn't even have to be a person--I believe that animals too can be discerned in such a way, as anyone who has loved a pet will know.
Nor are even inanimate objects excluded from love's "freeing"
effects. Just as one can find God in a piece of bread or a small cup of
water, nothing prevents you from "seeing through" an everyday physical
object to the spiritual realities latent within it. This, at least,
makes sense of Joseph Smith's exhortation to:
"Let the mountains shout for joy, and all ye valleys cry aloud;
and all ye seas and dry lands tell the wonders of your Eternal King!
And ye rivers, and brooks, and rills, flow down with gladness. Let the
woods and all the trees of the field praise the Lord; and ye solid rocks
weep for joy!" (D&C 128:23)
In a very real sense, we can bring the inanimate to life through
our attention and care for it. The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard
says volumes on this subject in his work The Poetics of Space (link),
where he speaks of how one's childhood home has a living character that,
though lost, can come to life again through our feelings of intimacy
and at-home-ness. In the same work, Bachelard pens these moving words
about the freeing of the material world from its literal confinements:
"When insomnia, which is the philosopher's ailment, is
increased through irritation caused by city noises, the hum of
automobiles and trucks rumbling through the Place Maubert causes me to
curse my city-dweller's fate, I can recover my calm by living the
metaphors of the ocean. [...] If the hum of cars becomes more painful, I
do my best to discover in it the roll of thunder, of a thunder that
speaks to me and scolds me. And I feel sorry for myself. So there you
are, unhappy philosopher, caught up again by the storm, by the storms of
life! I dream an abstract-concrete daydream. My bed is a small boat
lost at sea; that sudden whistling is the wind in the sails. On every
side the air is filled with the sound of furious klaxoning. I talk to
myself to give myself cheer: there now, your skiff is holding its own,
you are safe in your stone boat. Sleep, in spite of the storm. Sleep in
the storm. Sleep in your own courage, happy to be a man who is assailed
by the wind and wave. And I fall asleep, lulled by the noise of Paris."
To me, the most unfortunate fault of modern humanity is its
unwillingness to leave the literal perspective. For without a
perspective that symbolizes meaning out of the literal world, that world
will remain dead. But that is not its destiny. Out of the seemingly
immovable world of parking lots and queues of people at the grocery
store, we should instead discern a divine drama enacted at every moment
and in every seeming insignificance. My desk is not just a chair--with
my love and attention it becomes a throne or a cathedral pew. Likewise,
in my friend's compassion I can see Christ Himself reaching out to the
young woman caught in adultery, and in my significant other I may
perhaps discern both her latent divine individuality (talked about in this post) and the feminine aspect of divinity (talked about in this post).
But there is more to be said. The scriptures speak of a time in
the indefinite future when all things will return to their original
state, uncorrupted by the accidents of this world. In this, the
resurrection, the physical and the spiritual will completely coincide
with each other. The spiritual and the physical then finally
meet together as equal partners, ready to take their places side by side
in the eternities. But how does this happen? The science of a
resurrected world is not very clear, but Swedenborg gives us another
perspective to consider: that just as the ancient peoples saw the
heavenly realities through the world's seeming opacity, we are destined
to do so again. Then Christ Himself will step out from behind his veil
of shadows and reveal to us that He had always been there with us, for
even now He says that "I am in your midst and ye cannot see me" (D&C
38:7). Then all the hosts of heaven will unveil themselves and fall
upon our necks, just as we will fall upon theirs (Moses 7:63). Finally,
the earth will reveal itself as what it always was for those who had
eyes to see: a great Urim and Thummim, "a globe like a sea of glass and
fire, where all things for [our] glory are manifest, past, present, and
future" (D&C 130:7-9).
I look forward to that day, and I look forward to the miniature
versions of it that happen every time I show love to a person, an
animal, or even a cherished object. For this is our duty: to show love
to God's creations, and, by doing so, setting them free to dance before
us in the light of God.