The In-Visible God

Read this post on my new blog: "A Sea of Glass and Fire"

These quotes – from many places – are all about the God of the coming, new age. The invisible God separated from the world is losing its effect on people. That invisible God can only survive by incarnating in the visible world of dust, sweat, and tears. The invisible will be present in the visible; the visible will be transparent to the invisible. But these authors explain my idea much better than I do:

I will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth, for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race, and why He interferes with the affairs of man.God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.These ideas are incomprehensible to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did. – Joseph Smith, The King Follett Discourse

Establishing contact with a God we cannot see is like trying to make eye contact with the limitless vastness of outer space, or like being on the lookout in mid-ocean but not being able to see anything but endless sky and sea. Establishing contact with a God we can see is like making eye contact with a person in the air or on the sea, whose arms then reach out, inviting us into an embrace. – Emanuel Swedenborg, “True Christianity”

Once did people say God, when they looked out upon distant seas; now, however, have I taught you to say, overman. God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will. Could you create a God? – Then, I pray you, be silent about all gods! But you could well create the overman. – Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”

There is some analogy between the relations established by the world of man with the divine world and by the human kingdom with the animal kingdom. Oxygen and carbonic acid are in-breathed and out-breathed by man. The plant-kingdom breathes out oxygen; man breathes out love — since the separation of the sexes. The Gods are nourished by this effluence of love.How comes it that the animals and man out-breathe love?The occultist sees in the man of today a being in the full swing of evolution. Man is at the same time a fallen God and a God in the becoming.The kingdom of the heavens is nourished by the effluence of human love. Ancient Greek mythology expresses this reality when it speaks of nectar and ambrosia. The Gods are so far above man that their natural tendency would be to subjugate him. But there is a half-way state of being between man and the Gods, just as the mistletoe is half-way between the plant and the animal. It is represented by Lucifer and the Luciferian element. – Rudolf Steiner, “An Esoteric Cosmology”

“The Survivor of Hathsin,” Yomen said. “He died. How is it that people worship him?Vin shrugged. “It used to be common to worship gods that one couldn’t see.”Perhaps, Yomen said. “I have…read of such things, though I find them difficult to understand. Faith in an unseen god – what sense does that make? Why reject the god that they lived with for so long – the one that they could see, and feel – in favor of one that died? One that the Lord Ruler himself struck down?” – Brandon Sanderson, “The Hero of Ages”

The continuing, direct operation of the Holy Ghost on those who are called to be God’s children implies, in fact, a broadening process of incarnation. Christ, the son begotten by God, is the first-born who is succeeded by an ever-increasing number of younger brothers and sisters . . . The indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the third Divine Person, in man brings about a Christification of many . . . The future indwelling of the Holy Ghost in man amounts to a continuing incarnation of God. – Carl Jung, “Answer to Job”

Satan in Mormonism and the Works of Rudolf Steiner

I haven't kept it a secret that I'm a big fan of early-twentieth-century esotericist and mystic Rudolf Steiner. He's a bit "weird," yes: he talks about reincarnation, Atlantis, and previous "planets" that the human race lived on before earth. But seeing as I'm a Mormon, who am I to judge? That's not to say that I literally believe in everything he says; I take a lot of what he says as a symbolic truth more than a literal one. I may get to some specifics later on in this post.

I bring him up today because I just finished a book of Steiner's called Love, Sexuality, and Partnership. It contains all of Steiner's remarks on sexuality, gender, love, and the relationships between the sexes, but what I found most interesting in the book was only obliquely related to those topics. Namely, his discussion of "Lucifer" and "luciferian spirits" struck me as similar to how we Mormons conceive of Satan and the role of evil in the world.

The Mormon take on Satan

Mormons, Satan doesn't have an entirely negative role. He's the embodiment of evil, yes, but as Mormon scripture makes clear, evil is necessary for good's existence. For instance:

"And it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves; for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet" -D&C 29:39

And this:

"Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other." -2 Nephi 2:16

Satan is kind of a "guarantor" of free will. Without Satan's enticings toward evil, we wouldn't have the contrast necessary to freely choose good. In a way, Satan or Lucifer is therefore what gives us independent being, since if we could onlychoose good, we would only be automatons or "robots" following God without any choice in the matter. By giving us evil, you could say that Satan is what ensures we're individual beings.

Of course, Satan's original plan was to deprive us of free will, so it's ironic that his efforts are now being used against his original intent. However, this doesn't need to involve contradiction. Satan leads us toward evil, and since the root of all evil is selfishness, it makes sense that he's the one who originally gave us an independent, free-choice "self." Since both free will and the possibility for selfishness come from the existence of an independent self, Satan can reasonably be the author of both evil and human agency.

Rudolf Steiner on Lucifer

Rudolf Steiner, on the other hand, said many of these same things. In Steiner's writings, Lucifer is the spiritual being who enabled the human soul to "descend" into the lower spheres of earthly incarnation. This is where the name "Lucifer," meaning "light bringer," becomes relevant--he is effectively the principle that transmutes the astral or "soul" world of love in to the physical world of light (reference Swedenborg's idea that heavenly light is not light as such, but comes from love). In his own words:

"Love and light are the two elements, the two components, which permeate all earthly existence: love as the soul constituent of earthly being, light as the outer material constituent of earthly being. However, for these two elements, which otherwise would exist separately throughout the great course of world existence, to become interwoven, a mediating force is needed that will weave light into love. This is where the luciferic beings come into play....The luciferic beings are at work wherever and whenever our inner soul, which is woven out of love, enters into any kind of relationship with the element of light in any form; and we are, after all, confronted with light in all material existence. When light touches our being in any way whatsoever the luciferic beings appear and the luciferic quality weaves into the element of love.”

Lucifer and his cohort of spirits are the force that connects the physical world of light to the astral world of love. As in the New Age conception that all things are made out of vibrating "energy," everything we experience in the physical world comes from light either "compressed" into opaque matter or rarefied into light proper. The world of light therefore corresponds to Swedenborg's "sensory" level of reality, which is "lower" in the spiritual hierarchy than his heaven, also a world of love. Lucifer is "the great physicalizer;" by tempting Adam and Eve, he brings everything spiritual down a notch into the dense, opaque world of physical "stuff." This nicely corresponds to Mormon doctrine, as you can see above.

But Steiner also writes that Lucifer grants us a level of individuality that would be impossible without evil:

" Through Jehovah, human beings were predestined for a group-soul existence; love was to penetrate into them gradually through blood-relationship. It is through Lucifer that the human being lives as a personality. Originally, therefore, human beings were in a state of union, then of separateness as a consequence of the luciferic principle that promotes selfishness, independence. Together with selfishness, evil came into the world. It had to be so, because without the evil, human beings could not lay hold of the good. When human beings gain victory over themselves, the unfolding of love is possible. Christ brought the impulse for this victory to humans in the clutches of increasing egoism, and thereby the power to conquer evil. The acts of Christ bring together again the human beings who were separated through egoism and selfishness. The words of Christ concerning acts of love are true in the very deepest sense: ‘Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me.'"

In this conception, Jehovah gives a oneness without individuality and Lucifer gives individuality but alongside selfishness. A dialectic then starts to become clear: Jehovah's principle of absolute unity and Lucifer's principle of necessary, though selfishness-inducing, independence don't mix well. We need a third, reconciling principle, and that's what Christ's atonement accomplishes. In the Book of Mormon's language, Christ reconciles the demands of justice (the consequences for those who followed their Luciferic independence from others) to the claim of mercy (the reach of divine oneness or love).

Steiner also writes that the "Fall of Man" involved a descent from "world-consciousness" into "self-consciousness." This is what Jung and others call the "participation mystique," where animals and undeveloped people completely project their minds outside of themselves onto their surroundings; Satan extinguished this participation mystique by giving us both self-awareness and selfishness, both consequences of having a separate "self" in the first place. Swedenborg also says this in his Secrets of Heaven: human beings were originally "one" with everything surrounding them, and the fall inherent in leaving the "Garden of Eden" brought us to a spiritual place where a separate "ego" began to develop up and against the world. Separateness--and with it, death--entered our perception at this point, since only a being that perceives the world as separate can really die. Death, after all, is only a withdrawal of a person's innermost being from the outer world, and a person who sees no fundamental barrier between inside and outside or spirit and matter wouldn't really know death at all.

Steiner says quite a bit more about Lucifer when he writes:

“As you know, the luciferic spirits have remained stationary at other levels of evolution and bring something foreign into the normal evolutionary process. They are deeply interested in seizing hold of us and preventing us from gaining free will because they themselves have not achieved it. Free will can be gained only on earth, but the luciferic spirits want to have nothing to do with the earth; they want only Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon evolution and nothing beyond this."

"Luciferic spirits" are stuck in their spiritual evolution. They never descended to this physical world, which is a view that Mormons share. Steiner writes that they're stuck in the state of "Old Saturn," "Old Sun" and "Old Moon," which is a particularly weird notion of his. But he writes somewhere that these previous "planets" which human souls inhabited at earlier stages of their spiritual evolution correspond to different spiritual states. That is, "Old Saturn" and "Old Sun" are the human habitation in the "spirit world" before human beings incarnated here, while "Old Moon" is the prior human habitation in the "soul world." When he says that Luciferic spirits are stuck on the Old Moon, he's therefore just saying that they still live in the soul or astral world, which is a notion not at all far removed from Mormon doctrine.

To give a final quotation from Steiner's works, take this passage:

“Now Lucifer has the tendency to mix these two worlds [the soul world and the physical world, as above] with each other. In human love, whenever a person loves in the physical sense world for himself with a trace of egoism, it occurs because Lucifer wants to make physical love similar to spiritual love. He can then root it out of the physical sense world and lead it into his own special kingdom. This means that all love that can be called egoistic and is not there for the sake of the beloved but for the sake of the one who loves is exposed to Lucifer’s impulses.”

Since he is the guarantor of individuality, Lucifer wants us to become individuals as fully as possible--far more than we should. Instead of our using the physical world to encounter another in his or her own being, he wants us to only love them for our own selfish purposes. Selflessness is anathema to Lucifer; Jehovah's group-soul existence (mentioned above) rubs him entirely the wrong way. Lucifer wants us to see all things as mere means toward our self and our selfishness, and while Steiner says that a degree of self-concern is good for spiritual growth, "love ought to be directed to the self only in order to place it in the service of the world: the rose should adorn itself only to adorn the garden." Love is important; self-consciousness is important. However, love should only be directed at self-consciousness so that it can service the world. The self should be a means, never an end.

Conclusion

I take Steiner as a way that Mormons can fertilize their own faith with new perspective. As I said above, I don't take everything Steiner says at face value. Far from it, actually--he's far too confident in the literal reality of his intuitive experiences for his own good. But I love what I can discern from his intuition "beneath" his words, since I think that stuff is all gold.

A Deep Symbolic Reading of Helaman 5

I've known for a while that the Book of Mormon has more secrets buried in it than readers have discovered so far. When I read the Book, it's basically an endless treasure trove of insight, but not just in terms of what I can pull from the Book's teachings or literal story. There is also a lot of undiscovered value in the "nuances" of the Book of Mormon, what isn't directly said by the text but rather slips by almost undetected. The Hebrew poetic forms scholars have found in the Book of Mormon are an example of this insight "hidden in plain sight." I think I may have found another one, and if a Google search is anything to go by, I don't think anyone has had my idea yet.

The Book of Mormon as Image-Based

My new perspective on the Book of Mormon is this: it is written in a style distinctly attuned to images. Though the Book of Mormon's English text at times struggles to lucidly get across its meaning, beneath the awkward language there is a great deal of symbolic, imagistic language. And I don't mean just in the places where it's obvious that the Book is using metaphors. The seemingly plain descriptive prose the text uses also evokes images far beyond what it's literally describing. Think of how often the Book of Mormon uses the phrase "in the midst of," for instance--it's not exactly a metaphor, yet it "resonates" with many symbolic meanings. And in my experience, these subtly evocative images in the Book of Mormon come in three main categories: spatial images like "in the midst of" or "descending out of heaven;" bodily images like "stretch forth thy hand" or "gnashing their teeth upon them;" and material images like "filled with the Holy Ghost and with fire" and "humbling oneself to the dust." These categories also often combine, as when the multitudes in 3 Nephi 11 both lower themselves (spatial) and lower themselves to the dust (material). When considered in this scope, the possibilities for interpreting the Book of Mormon's text become endless. With an eye to these barely noticeable images in the Book, one can potentially read the Book of Mormon without focusing entirely on either its historical context or its internal narrative but on the metaphorical themes composing it, its imaginative composition. This would be a textual reading with an eye to the Book of Mormon's depth, looking deeply into the text to see what makes it up, what makes it so naturally powerful. If you read my post on the resurrection, you'll know what I mean when I say that this kind of a reading would reveal the "matter" in the Book's text, what "matters" in it as substantial and significant.

An Image-Based Reading of Helaman 5

I'm going to introduce this kind of textual reading by using it on one of the Book of Mormon's most evocative chapters: Helaman 5. It depicts two Nephite missionaries, Nephi and Lehi, converting fellow prisoners in a Lamanite jail through a kind of miraculous flame. The relevant part of the chapter begins when Lamanite guards go into the prison so that they might "slay" Nephi and Lehi:

And it came to pass that Nephi and Lehi were encircled about as if by fire, even insomuch that they [the Lamanite guards] durst not lay their hands upon them for fear lest they should be burned. Nevertheless, Nephi and Lehi were not burned; and they were as stuanding in the midst of fire and were not burned. And when they saw that they were encircled about with a pillar of fire, and that it burned them not, their hearts did take courage. For they saw that the Lamanites durst not lay their hands upon them; neither durst they come near unto them, but stood as if they were struck dumb with amazement. (Verses 23 through 25)

The first sentence in this paragraph combines the "spatial" and "material" images from the schema outlined above: Nephi and Lehi, the protagonists of the story and its main concern, are "encircled about as if by fire." While not dwelling on the phrase "as if" (which turns up quite a lot in the Book of Mormon and therefore requires a blog post to itself), the "encircling by fire" combines the spatial image of a circle with the material image of flame. One the one hand, circles evoke feelings of completeness, centeredness, and the incarnation of infinity in finitude (see my post "One Eternal Round" for more on this image), while on the other hand fire conjures associations of, among other things, a transformation of matter, a kind of "purification" that lets some parts of that matter ascend while letting others burn to a crisp. When you combine these two aspects of the image, the circle of flame around Nephi and Lehi becomes seen as a "forceful centering" of those in the prison. The fire uses its transformative power in service of the circle's centeredness on Lehi and Nephi: it turns the attention of everyone there on the two missionaries by making them the sudden objects of everyone's concern. And though this concern occurs at first as a fear of being burned, it's still doing what fire does best--transformation and transmutation, in this case of the prison's balance of power. Here, the guards reverse roles and become prisoners; the flame burned away the prison's old context and left a new one in its place.

Speaking of which, it's interesting that this scene should take place in a prison of all settings. Prisons are naturally enclosed places, often dark and away from where the sun can fully shine in. Moreover, a prison in pre-Columbian America would have been naturally earthy or associated with the images that come with dirt, mud, and dust. Fire would then feel out of place in such a setting, which makes the contrast in this chapter all the more striking. One almost gets the feeling that the fire is burning away the prison itself, as if the whole purpose of this chapter were to present an image of what is "inside" earth becoming freed from it. This is actually a reasonable reading of the text, since the classical imagination saw fire as a way to free the latent air or "spirit" within a matter like wood and get it to ascend as smoke. Wood is the spirit's prison, and so fire has always been the "jail-breaker" that it appears as in Helaman 5.

However, when the passage goes on to say that the fire encircling them is actually a pillar, a new spatial image adds itself to the mix: verticality. A pillar of fire is not only a circular flame; it's a circular flame that extends indefinitely upward. The pillar's verticality naturally raises the question: what does the pillar vertically extend to? Tall objects connect the "above" to the "below," as in the case of a ladder, a tower, or even a natural pillar. Interestingly enough, the image of a pillar itself evokes associations with "structural stability," something that contrasts with developments about to occur in the text. But for now, it should suffice to note that the pillar of fire resonates with the symbolism of fire I've extracted so far from the text: the pillar, as what connects the below to the above, actively relates the "height" of spirit to the earthy ground. This image evokes the idea of material transmutation even more: whereas earth is naturally "horizontal," the pillar's verticality--when combined with fire's ascensional nature--further brings out the way fire naturally transforms what it touches. Whereas before those in the prison were bound to a horizontal (a temporal?) point of view, a pillar of fire again forcefully changes their perspective, not just toward the center, but upward as well.

After Nephi and Lehi speak to the prisoners there, the narration continues:

And behold, when they had said these words, the earth shook exceedingly, and the walls of the prison did shake as if they were about to tumble to the earth; but behold, they did not fall. And behold, they that were in the prison were Lamanites and Nephites who were dissenters. And it came to pass that they were overshadowed with a cloud of darkness, and an awful solemn fear came upon them. And it came to pass that there came a voice as if it were above the cloud of darkness, saying "Repent ye, repent ye, and seek no more to destroy my servants whom I have sent unto you to declare good tidings. (Verses 27 through 29)

Here, the symbolic theme of fire vs. earth continues. Both the walls of the prison and the earth itself shake, giving the reader a sense that the solid stabilities of the prior reality are beginning to falter. Fire is burning away the rigidity of an "earthy" way of being where there is no translucency and no ascension. Earth as "only" earth is naturally dull, languid, and opaque--it is the opposite of spiritual life's goal for ascent and a transparent "seeing through" of idols. So in reality, it is the fire itself that causes the prison to quake; flame robs the building of its stability by letting that stability evaporate as spirit.

The way the fire forcefully refocused the prisoner's attention becomes more apparent here. Whereas before that change of focus was only implicit in the way the fire called attention to Nephi and Lehi, now everything outside the flame becomes dark. Could it be that this "cloud of darkness" just refers to the prison's natural light, now seen as dim only because of the fire's brighter light? It wouldn't be the first time a religious writer had used such an image: Emanuel Swedenborg describes how earthly light (as opposed to heavenly light) looks like thick darkness from the perspective of heaven, since the former is material and the latter is spiritual. Combined with the associations of a prison, I think a similar reading of this text could be fruitful: by the light of the fire, the prisoners see their imprisoned state more clearly than before. Prisons are naturally dark, yes; but they are all the more dark when a bright light like a flame illuminates it from within.

This awesome depiction of Helaman 5 was made by a fellow named Joshua Cotton. Kudos to him!

On that topic, when the chapter speaks of a voice coming as if from "above" the cloud of darkness, it gives more evidence for my reading of the text so far. The voice comes from above; that is, it transcends the "horizontal" limitations of a perspective attuned to imprisonment, earth, and earth's inherent opacity. Moreover, this image strongly corresponds to a similar image in the anonymously written medieval work The Cloud of Unknowing, which discusses another "dark cloud' (which the book is named for) surrounding the believer when deep in prayer. The cloud is actually God's manifest presence as it appears from an earthly perspective, and so the author encourages the reader to progress to the point where they see it as a kind of light. But until that point, the author actually says that God appears "above" the Cloud of Unknowing and invites the reader to pierce through it to Him with a fervent impulse of love" much like the prisoners in Helaman 5 will soon do to great success.

The next few paragraphs repeat the same images multiple times. Specifically, the voice calling them to repentance speaks three times, a number which is neither accidental nor insignificant. The voice also says at one point that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand," which also has important implications. While one might reasonably say that the voice refers to the imminent coming of Christ to the earth, I find it more likely that the "kingdom of heaven is at hand" for the prisoners there at that moment. That is, through the fire's transformation and its subsequent revelation of spirit, those there are coming closer to God. It is a refining fire, as others have noted not a few times.

The story continues by describing a particular prisoner's deeds:

Now there was one among them who was a Nephite by birth, who had once belonged to the church of God but had dissented from them. And it came to pass that he turned him about, and behold, he saw through the cloud of darkness the faces of Nephi and Lehi; they did shine exceedingly, even as the faces of angels. And he beheld that they did lift their eyes to heaven and were in the attitude as if talking or lifting their voices to some being whom they beheld. (Verses 35 through 36)

So far, we have read this chapter as concerning the purification of earthly or earthy limitation by fire. Earth is a naturally dark substance, and so when fire illuminates it from within, that darkness becomes apparent in the light of something "brighter." When the text says that the Nephite "saw through" the cloud of darkness to the faces of Nephi and Lehi, we can also read that "seeing through" as connected to the dichotomy between earth and fire. As Gaston Bachelard and James Hillman repeatedly point out in his works, the archetype of "earth" is one that naturally tends toward literalism and idolatry. 

Earth wants to block the divine light from coming through, and so it takes effort for one to "see through" earth's elemental opacity toward the inward reality it would conceal. Here, the Nephite imprisoned until now in earth makes that effort requisite to look past earth's opacity toward what lies within it. And the fire he finds there--which is both "round" and "vertical"--thus at once offers refinement, wholeness, and transcendence. Likening this procession of images to real life, we could read it as the way a person living their life suddenly sees it as a prison, only to see something bigger, brighter, and more complete beyond (and yet within) it. This "something" is what the Spirit brings: fire's purification, circularity's completeness, and verticality's connection to "the above."

As the story continues, the Nephite cries to the other prisoners so that they can also look to Nephi and Lehi in the midst of the flames. They ask why Nephi and Lehi appear to be talking to someone else, and the Nephite (now named Aminadab) says that "They do converse with the angels of God." Then comes the climax of the chapter:

And it came to pass that the Lamanites said unto him, "What shall we do, that this cloud of darkness may be removed from overshadowing us? 

And Aminadab said unto them, "You must repent, and cry unto the voice, even until ye shall have faith in Christ, who was taught unto you by Alma, and Amulek, and Zeezrom; and when ye shall do this, the cloud of darkness shall be removed from overshadowing you. 

And it came to pass that they all did begin to cry unto the voice of him who had shaken the earth; yea, they did cry even until the cloud of darkness was dispersed. And it came to pass that when they cast their eyes about, and saw that the cloud of darkness was dispersed from overshadowing them, behold, they saw that they were encircled about, yea, every soul, by a pillar of fire. And Nephi and Lehi were in the midst of them; yea, they were encircled about; yea, kthey were as if in the midst of a flaming fire, yet it did harm them not; neither did it take hold upon the walls of thre prison; and they were filled with that joy which is unspeakable and full of glory.

The cloud of darkness "overshadows" them: it acts as a "shadow over" them, veiling them from whatever dwells above. This cloud acts as a visible representation of the opacity proper to earth and its literalism; it's an obstacle to "seeing through" the world to heaven, its light, and its fire. So when Aminadab says that they must repent to disperse the fire, he's effectively saying that one must turn toward the fire in the midst of earth (or rather, the Spirit in the midst of matter and everyday life) in order to break free from imprisonment in earth's literalism and idolatry. More practically, this means that you have to turn toward the manifestations of God in your life (appearing in it like a pillar of fire) to stop feeling like that life is a prison.

And they do this to incredible results. They "cry unto the voice of him who had shaken the earth," or rather, they cry out to the God whose fiery reality made their earthy reality seem lesser by comparison. And when they do this, they "cast their eyes about" (i.e. in all directions or even "everywhere"), and all they can see is the pillar of fire. The prison--while still there--is no longer a prison per se. The prison's limitation and finitude instead have the fire's inward infinity inside it. Or in other words, the fire has burned away finitude's opposition to infinity--because the fire "opens up" to heaven with its verticality, the finitude of whatever "prison" one may be in (a job, a family, a relationship, or even a body) reveals itself as just a "container" for an inward limitlessness.

Moreover, since "every soul" is encircled about by a pillar of fire, we can assume that the aforementioned purification, centeredness/completeness, and verticality proper to that pillar have become applicable to everyone in that situation. Where before they were stained with dirt, now they are clean; where they had been de-centered and incomplete, now they are complete and whole in themselves; and where they had been before been exclusively "horizontal," now they are also "vertical." And while this revelation might strike some as frightening or even painful, the fire "did harm them not," meaning that their openness to the flame let its effects come upon them without the pain that comes from resisting it.

Finally, "the joy which is unspeakable and full of glory" suggests that they have entered a reality where words and speech no longer apply. This is nothing unfamiliar to mystical religion: Swedenborg talked about how much wisdom he learned in the higher heavens simply could not descend with him back to the world; Rudolf Steiner similarly speaks of the knowledge of higher worlds as incompatible with earthly memory; and Ludwig Wittgenstein writes in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that "Whereof one cannot speak [what he says lies "beyond the world"], thereof one must be silent." Aminadab, Nephi, and Lehi have reached a state that words (as least words of earthly speech) can't capture. The words themselves are prisons, ones that can't explain everything within them. Words may describe the fire (as they do in the chapter) but those words will always be inadequate; they're "bigger on the inside."

The chapter finishes with the following passage:

And behold, the Holy Spirit of God did come down from heaven, and did enter into their hearts, and they were filled as if with fire, and they could speak forth marvelous words. And it came to pass that there came a voice unto them, yea, a pleasant voice, as if it were a whisper, saying, "Peace, peace be unto you, because of your faith in my Well-Beloved, who was from the foundation of the world. 

And now, when they heard this they cast up their eyes as if to behold from whence the voice came; and behold, they saw the heavens open; and angels came down out of heaven and ministered unto them. And there were about three hundred souls who saw and heard these things; and they were bidden to go forth and marvel not, neither should they doubt.

In this last bit, many entities come "vertically" to the prison: the Holy Spirit, "marvelous words," "a pleasant voice," and angels from heaven. I think it's appropriate to read the pillar of fire--which has an intrinsically vertical component--as a kind of bridge between earth and heaven. The Spirit, angels, voice, and words all come across that bridge, able to go between heaven and the finitude of "earth" using it. Likewise, I think the fire in our hearts or the "burning in the bosom" is this same kind of bridge: it allows revelation, peace, and divine assistance to come down from heaven. Moreover, this can happen even if we are in the "prison" of our life's finitude, since the fire doesn't ever tear it down.

A Resurrection that "Matters"

Resurrection has always puzzled me. As if the scientific problems with a resurrected body weren't issues enough, the notion of going back to a physical, limited body seemed distasteful. Why would anyone want to be in this one human body forever and ever? Isn't eighty years in it quite enough? As the desirable thing Mormons paint it out to be, it didn't strike me as very appealing. And other questions arise: how does the resurrected body "work?" Is it temporal or timeless? Is it somehow infinite and if so, how? All in all, resurrection seemed altogether too "fuzzy" a concept for me to put much stock in.

But a fuzzy concept also leaves room for interpreting that concept. While the traditional notion of resurrection might strike me as distasteful, I've stumbled upon a conception of it that rubs me the right way. I'm going to give it here for your reading pleasure

What's the Matter?

In a similar way to my reincarnation post from earlier this month, I'll start by asking: "what is resurrected?" It's certainly not the physical "stuff" that makes me up right now, at least not in a literal sense; all it takes to go against that idea is the remembering fact that the matter in my body circulates in and out over a cycle of x many years, leaving none of material that originally composed it. No, I think that what is really resurrected isn't my physical body at all. Despite what others might say, I don't think that matter in its deepest sense is just composed of atoms, molecules, and chemicals--it's broader and deeper than that. The real nature of matter reveals itself in our language. When we ask "what's the matter with you?" or "this really matters," our words are more than just fluff. "What's the matter" is matter, in its real sense: the impressions, feelings, hopes, and dreams that our lives are built out of. This matter--what matters--is the substance of our convictions, what really means something to us, what gives weight to the stuff in our lives.

You can discern that matter if you're perceptive enough. When walking into a room, ask yourself: in what way do I feel different from how I feel in other rooms? When talking to another person, try to pay attention to the different "flavors" of interaction that come out between you. And when reading a book, notice the different feelings and emotional impressions that seem to "waft" from the pages. In each of these cases, what you're noticing is the matter of the situation, "what's the matter" there. And I used words like "flavor" and "waft" above quite deliberately--Emanuel Swedenborg described how auras--an analogous concept to what I'm talking about--are an awful lot like smells. For instance, he gives examples of this concept deep in his multi-volume work Secrets of Heaven:

Some have indulged in mere physical pleasure, without developing any neighborly love or any faith. Their aura smells like excrement. The same is true of those who have carried out a life filled with adultery, although their stench is even worse....When an aura of charity or faith is perceived as a smell, it yields intense pleasure. The smell is sweet, like the smell of flowers, of lilies, of different types of perfume, with unlimited variety.

Dream Matter

These auras are ways that the "stuff" underlying the situations in my life can come into sight. Likewise, this is the "stuff" which dreams are made on, quite literally: when I see my childhood house in a dream, there I'm seeing its matter, the colors, shapes, and textures that rendered it emotionally significant to me. So too with my friends and family: in dreams, I see what matters to me about them, for good or for bad.

Dreams "harvest" what matters in my life and shows it to me at night. So when Alma the Younger wrote that "that which ye do send out shall return unto you again" (Alma 41:15), he could thus just as well have been talking about this deeper matter. Moreover, Rudolf Steiner wrote somewhere (and I'm paraphrasing) that sleep is analogous to death. When I sleep, my body becomes still and I lose consciousness. But more than this, in sleep I go to a place in many respects like the spiritual world. As with Emanuel Swedenborg's descriptions of that world, in dreams I can go to places and make things appear with the power of desire and thought. Moreover, dreams speak using the symbolic language that both Steiner and Swedenborg say is characteristic of the spiritual world.

The Matter of Resurrection

If dreams harvest the deeper "material" of my life, could the same be said of "what dreams may come" after death? With death, I likewise conclude that this world of molecules and atoms is just food for the world of "higher" matter, of matter that matters." To use another image, this world is a fertile ground where seeds from that higher world can mature into fruit-bearing plants--the soil is just there so that the seed can have the nutrients it needs to realize itself. Or to use yet another image, this world is a mirror by which a higher being--made of higher matter--can see and realize itself as an object.

It is this higher being that gets resurrected, and the resurrected body is the aforementioned mature plant or image in a mirror. To my understanding, resurrection is the process by which a nascent being of this "higher" matter comes into itself, using "lower" matter as a foil. That higher matter's infinity (read: unboundedness) needs limitation and finitude to realize itself. To use a parable, the rushing fullness of water is useless unless it has a limited vessel to contain it, and an empty vessel is useless unless it contains the fullness of water. In this process, infinity and finitude meet and enter into marriage--both are worthless without the other. And the resurrection proper happens at the consummation of that marriage, when the boundless matter of infinity--again, what really "matters"--realizes its own nature in the looking-glass of finite, lower matter. In that consummation, infinity contains itself in limitedness and finitude realizes its own endlessness. The bounded and the boundless meet and become one.

But here's the real question: when does resurrection happen? If I'm being completely honest, I'll say that resurrection occurs whenever the "matter that matters" completely sees itself in the world's material. The last two Christmases have been like this for me. On both days, I experienced a closeness with my family that rarely comes on other days These were moments of love and joy when I saw what really mattered right in front of me--the matter of eternity laid bare, evident for me to see. But it also happens when I look into my girlfriend's eyes and time seems to stop--there's just us and what matters between us. These are a kind of resurrection--matter raised out of the drab obscurity of atoms and molecules to see itself perfectly.

But what about the resurrection, that ultimate consummation of the world's purpose toward which we're all heading? Well, I've had intimations and intuitions of a big change coming. By and large, the world is suffocating in the fire of desire--we want infinite satisfaction from finite objects and bodies, which, of course, can never happen. But, whether through pain or disappointment, we'll eventually realize the futility of this quest. At this point, the resurrection will happen when we stop clutching at the glass of the lower matter's mirror and instead see through it. We don't really want the literal matter of wealth, titillating bodies, or exciting new gadgets: we want what matters--spiritual matter, the matter of eternity, revealed for all to see. And it will happen, I have no doubt.

How Reincarnation and an Afterlife could both be True

I'm going to be honest: part of me really hopes I get to be reincarnated someday. Not only does it lessen the anxiety of having only one life to prove myself, but it also means I get to look at the world from a new perspective. Essentially, then, reincarnation would mean that I'm not only me: I'm all sorts of lives from all over time and space. But of course, most think reincarnation would mean that my personality here on earth, as it is now, will eventually vanish to morph into somebody else. If reincarnation is true, tough luck if you want to talk to Abraham Lincoln after you're dead: right now he's just a used car salesman in Seattle with no idea of his former life.

That's what most people think. However, I think I've figured out a way that reincarnation and the idea of an afterlife could both be true at once. And this possibility rests on the answer a simple question: if I reincarnate, what is reincarnating? It's a given that my physical body is going to become dust one day, and there's no getting around it. But I am not that body, since both reincarnation and western religion assume that some spiritual identity survives death. But what if my spiritual identity--that is, my personality as "Christian Swenson," who all my friends and family know and love--has something even "higher" and "realer" living within it? What if that identity is actually more like a mask than a being in itself, meaning that whatever "puts it on" can go on to live other lives?

If this is true, whoever wore that mask wouldn't be "me"--by definition, I am my identity, my sense of being the person I've grown up to be. Rather, that underlying figure would be who is "living me,"the animating presence acting out my life like an actor acts out a role. And who's to say that there aren't multiple such "actors" living out my life? What if I'm complex marionette that needs multiple operators to get it to function right? In that case, my underlying "being" would come from multiple places, multiple centers of activity.

I'm going to take a leap and call these hypothetical actors "archetypes." They would be the living presences acting out my life, and I would be the way they come into actuality. Examples of these archetypes are manifold: the son, the daughter, the mentor, the friend, the jokester, the annoying neighbor, or even the man and the woman. They interlock and interpenetrate, combining and recombining with each other in near-infinite combinations.

So if this is true, the archetypes or combinations of archetypes "living me" could very well come to earth again to "reincarnate." The animating presence behind my life could pick up another body after I die, or even before I die. Heck, this would mean that I could even meet myself! But even if this is true, there's nothing to say that my personality as it is right now wouldn't exist in eternity. My life, my distinct way of living in the world as "me," will always be--its animating presence just goes on to live other lives, all without ever "leaving" me. And who's to say that I can't let in other archetypes into my being in that state? Swedenborg may have alluded to this when he said that angels in heaven often consensually let another angel "step inside" his or her identity, letting the first angel experience "what it's like to be" him or her. And of course it's only temporary--they part as easily as they came together, only enriched by the experience.

Anyway, this was some fun brainstorming. Don't take any of it too literally, though--thoughts like these are best kept loose and malleable. And if you're curious about these, check out Rudolf Steiner's works, where he says something like this. Carl Jung also hints at this possibility in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

The Fire within Being

I recently decided to revisit one of my favorite books ever, The Poetics of Reverie by Gaston Bachelard, and I discovered something that I found remarkable. So obviously I decided to make a post about it!

In the chapter called Reverie and Cosmos, he quotes an extraordinary passage by an obscure French writer named Henri Bosco. Speaking of fires burning in a hearth, he writes:

These fires have such a power over our memory that the immemorial lives dozing beyond the oldest memories waken within us at their flame and reveal to us the furthest countries of our secret soul. Alone, on this side of the time which presides over our existence, they brighten days previous to our days and unknowable thoughts of which our thought is perhaps often only the shadow. In contemplating these fires associated with man by millenia of fire, one loses the feeling of the flight of things; time sinks into absence, and hours leave us with no jolt. What was, what is, and what will be becomes by founding for itself the very presence of being; and nothing else in the enchanted soul distinguishes it from itself except perhaps the infinitely pure sensation of its existence. One affirms in no way that he is; but there still remains a faint gleam that he may be. Would I be? one murmurs to himself, and he no longer holds to the life of this world by anything but this hardly articulated doubt. The only human element that remains within us is warmth; for we no longer see the flame that communicates it. We are ourselves that familiar fire which has been burning at ground level since the dawn of the ages, but from which there always rises a living point above the hearth where the friendship of men keeps watch."

When I read this I was dumbstruck by its beauty. What's more--it makes sense, though I can barely explain why! But I want to try explaining that passage here, even if I don't do it justice.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just the echo of something far more real than I am. I get "glimpses" of that reality, mostly just the hint of a thought that intimates far more than it actually "says." These thoughts paint a picture of a life beyond life, one that is nevertheless nestled within life like a walnut in its shell. And what is this life like? It is warm; it is bright. Like a fire, I get the impression that it sustains life from within, linking things together as they share in its warmth. And I can feel that warmth anywhere. When I read a fiction book, for instance, I get a sense of the characters' presence, a distinct "feel" about them that I can't explain in any meaningful way. It's like the sensation of a color, but more the way the color--or a sound--makes you feel. Maybe I could explain it better by saying that what I feel in these books is their emotions, but it goes even deeper than emotions. I feel what the emotions grow from.

I guess the best way to explain it is to simply say that what I feel is fire--a warmth emanating from within everything: people, animals, books, ideas, or even inanimate objects. It comes through especially strong in scripture, almost as if the words there were an open door to the fire's heart. And I find that if I let this fire "lead" me--that is, letting it teach me where to go by what it shows me--I find the ideas I need to find and meet the people I need to meet. I sometimes wonder if the fire is simply leading me to the parts of my being "scattered" throughout the world, almost as if the fire has been "gathering" me.

And the fire also contains wonders. I get impressions that there are hidden universes dozing in even the most mundane things, that the fire in a book or a flower could open up to worlds beyond worlds, and forever on ad infinitum. And when I lose myself in that book or meditatively contemplate that flower, the fires in our depths meet and mingle; it becomes one flame, one depth.

Then I get a thought: could the fire which "reveals the furthest countries of my secret soul" be something we've all heard of before? Could it be that this flame--concealing worlds within even the most mundane things--is actually what we Mormons call the pre-mortal world? I think there's good reason to think so. I believe that when I gaze into the eyes of a loved one, I see into the deepest parts of their soul. In that warm intimacy, our co-mingling depths experience that which those depths spring from: the being of God Himself, the fire from whom all our flames spring.

And there's lots of precedent for this in the writings of spiritual teachers. Emanuel Swedenborg taught that God appears to the angels in heaven as a bright sun, illuminating that whole spiritual country with its warmth of love and its light of truth. But he also taught that human beings have a microcosmic version of that same sun: the aura:

"The angels went on to say that all angels have this kind of aura around them because the Lord does, and that the aura around the Lord is similarly derived from him. This aura is their sun, or the sun of the spiritual world."

Basically, the physical world shines out from the spiritual world and ultimately from God. From this perspective, auras are just the evidence we feel of that eternal fire's warmth and light of that eternal fire as it shines through the people and things we encounter in the world.

The philosopher-esotericist Rudolf Steiner also said something like this. He writes in his Foundations of Human Experience that what we see through our perception is the "reflection" of life as it was before birth. In other words, the things we see in the world are the evidence of something that existed "prior" to their existence, and he writes that when we see them we're using our will to bring them into the actuality of something "after" our life. Think of that--perception as resurrection!

I guess that if this "fire within being" means anything, it's that we get to our origins not by going into the past but by going into our depths. There is a fire at the heart of being, one which opens up into life before life, life within life. So I think that perhaps the pre-existence didn't happen chronologically before this life; maybe it rather exists within this life as the flame expressing itself through our thoughts, actions, and perceptions, that of which we are perhaps only a shadow.

Reflections on Rudolf Steiner's "How to Know Higher Worlds"

The history of my intellectual life has basically just been a series of encounters with different mystical teachers. My interest in mysticism started in 2008 when I first listened to an Alan Watts lecture. After a few years gorging myself on his anarchic take on mysticism, I encountered the more subtly powerful worldview of Søren Kierkegaard in 2012. Then came Ludwig Wittgenstein and Emanuel Swedenborg in 2013, who helped me connect mysticism to analytic philosophy and religious imagery, respectively. In early 2014 I came across the contemporary Mormon thinker Adam S. Miller, who further helped me to appreciate my faith's depth, and later that same year I discovered the psychologist James Hillman, who combined the playful anarchy of Alan Watts with the depth and respect for symbols found in Swedenborg. 

All of these thinkers came at the time when I was ready to read their works. If I had read Swedenborg in 2007, I would have almost surely found him too "weird" for me. However, my exposure to Alan Watts and the subsequent infusion of Wittgensteinian pragmatism helped me appreciate Swedenborg's teachings in a way that unlocked his inner riches.

I think I may have come across another figure like this. His name is Rudolf Steiner, and just for reference, here's a picture of him:

If I needed to encounter mystics like Watts and Wittgenstein to swallow Swedenborg's teachings, Rudolf Steiner is yet another (big) step toward the mystical. Though he was also a social and educational reformer, an architect, and a philosopher, he is most well-known as a mystic, esotericist, and founder of the spiritual movement called anthroposophy. And what a mystic he is.... He talks about things ranging from auras to chakras to the spiritual nature of dreams, and even though they might strike the modern person as a bit "out there," his writings have done more than most mystical works to satisfy both my intellect and my spiritual sensibilities.

All rambling aside, I wanted to use this post to talk about a book of his I just finished: How to Know Higher Worlds:

Briefly put, this book outlines ways that a spiritual seeker can "open her spiritual eyes." By giving practical advice for both basic and more advanced levels of spiritual attainment, he teaches the reader what it's like to begin to see spiritual realities, to "know higher worlds" potentially as well as we all know this one.

I think the best way to talk about this book online is to give a brief overview of his steps toward true spiritual perception, along with some remarks connecting those steps to Mormon doctrine, Swedenborg, and maybe others. 

Knowing that, Steiner begins his book by explaining that the first step toward spiritual perception is a kind of reverent attentiveness to the physical world. Giving a description similar to how I would define "mindfulness," he explains that we must observe the world around us from a detached, peaceful perspective. Especially important for this goal is the act of “[allowing] what we have experienced—what the outer world has told us—to linger on in utter stillness," something I have only recently begun to do in any significant sense. To do this, you have to pay attention to the world; don't dart from one experience to the next, never satisfied or content, but stay with an experience or a sensation long enough to let it "speak to you."

Another way to explain the same process is that we should “learn to distinguish the essential from the inessential.” Doing this involves getting the right enough perspective to see what in our experiences belongs to their essence, that in them which speaks from their "deepest" parts. This has everything to do with an emotional kind of perception, or at least a perception reminiscent of the way we experience emotion. For instance, he once writes that the "initiate" to higher knowledge should pay attention to the state of being a sunrise induces in the soul and compare it to the state of being that a sunset produces there. He argues that this kind of "feeling-perception" allows what is essentially the "soul" of the experience to speak to us. To me this makes perfect sense; there is a distinct emotional impression I feel around Christmastime, which is very different from the corresponding impression I feel around April or May every year. Though the skeptic might argue that these just "come on top" of the bare physical phenomena, I find that Steiner's argument resonates with a deep intuition on my part.

Philosophically speaking, you could say that what goes on when I perceive this way is that the "deeper," more essential parts of me are connecting with the deeper and more essential part of what I'm seeing. Swedenborg explains something similar in his spiritual works, where he says that there are earthly, spiritual, and celestial sights that perceive things on the earthly, spiritual, and celestial levels. Especially interesting when compared with Steiner is Swedenborg's insistence that a "celestial" sight sees the "purposes" or "loves" inherent in things, whereas an earthly sight only sees the "results" or physical manifestation available to everyone. He often notes on this point that a celestial angel can discern a person's whole character by a quick inspection of his face, or else his tone of voice. What is Swedenborg's celestial sight other than a perception of what is "most essential" in things, a perception of emotion, which is a term more or less synonymous with "loves" as used in Swedenborg?

Steiner continues by explaining that, after you have learned to dispassionately observe the "essential" in both sights and sounds, you will eventually learn to discern something like "colors" surrounding a physical object. Though not colors per se (more like a sensation similar to what I feel when I see a certain color), he gives the example of "a kind of spiritual flame" surrounding a seed, "felt as green-blue at its center and as yellow-red around its periphery." Though he uses the term only occasionally, this is pretty obviously what modern New-Agers, energy-workers, and others call an "aura."

Though the common-sense reader might find the idea of auras distasteful, let me give a few items of evidence for their existence. First, know that Swedenborg talks about them. Deep in his multi-volume work Arcana Coelestia or Secrets of Heaven, he writes that: 

"There are as many auras as there are moods and combinations of mood, which are countless. Our aura is like an image of ourselves projected outside us. In fact it is an image of everything inside us." (Secrets of Heaven 1505)

Using Swedenborgian terminology, the aura is an external projection of one's inner loves, which are more or less synonymous with emotions, as mentioned above. He writes elsewhere that you can theoretically discern everything in a person's state of being as represented visually in this aura, which is an idea that Steiner repeats almost exactly in his book. It's also worth noting that Swedenborg thinks auras are a part of the spiritual world, and so any perception of them is necessarily nonphysical.

The other bit of evidence I can give for auras is simply the fact that I have seen them. Ever since I started my kundalini yoga practice, when I both relax my gaze and focus it on the area around a person's head and shoulders I can usually see a sort of "glow" extending an inch or two away from the edge of their body. It's sort of like the after-image you see when a bright light suddenly goes away, except that, instead of following my eyes and their motions, the aura always follows the person. I have talked to about five other people--all of whom I deeply respect, and few of whom know each other--who have had the same experience, especially (and this is unanimous) in sacrament meetings at an LDS meetinghouse. I have gone beyond this and seen a big, full-color aura once or twice. The main time this happened I was standing out on my front step talking to a friend very late at night, when all of a sudden I could see a purple (or "almost-purple") cloud extending a foot to a foot-and-a-half around him. In sharing these experiences I'm aware that others might think I'm crazy. But in answer to these potential critiques, I'll quote Swedenborg's response to similar worries, which vicariously works as mine: "none of this worries me; I have seen, I have heard, I have felt" (Secrets of Heaven 68).

After a digression on the spiritual "anatomy" of chakras, Steiner goes on to explain that the next significant development in spiritual perception occurs in the initiate's dreaming life. He first points out that dreams are actually events in the physical world (either around me while I'm sleeping or in my memory) seen as they are reflected in the spiritual world. Thus, just as a dream involving current food poisoning might manifest as an alien infesting the stomach, a dream about the end of the world might signify a major change in the life of the dreamer (that is, the end of your world). I greatly sympathize with this take on the dream, partially because it resonates with my own experience, and partially because Swedenborg says something very similar. In any case, Steiner writes that the next phase in the spiritual seeker's development is the emergence of the same kind of spiritual-symbolic perception one has while dreaming in everyday, waking life. In this state, the dream's kind of symbolic perception sometime "overlays" my physical perception, to the point where these symbols disclose a thing's or being's essential nature.

Though he merely explains that this occurs (as opposed to giving a how-to), he explains that the phase after this involves a meeting with two spiritual beings called "Guardians of the Threshold," in turn. The first guardian is essentially the "fruit" of my life, a being assembled from all the good and bad desires, thoughts, and actions I undertook throughout my time on earth. When I meet with him, I realize that he is a sort of "mirror" for my actions, a way I can see them as external to me. This becomes all the more significant from the fact that--from this point onward--I am continually aware of this being's presence and appearance. 

This reminds me--to an extent--of Swedenborg's explanation that angels in heaven (or devils in hell) always face their "ruling love," that desire which drives all my other desires. In heaven, since that ruling love is good, it appears in God, whom all the angels thus face and who appears (at least in this respect) as a sun. It also means that, whenever I see another angel, I only see the part of them that shares in that love. That is, I only see the part of them that consequently faces me. One could also compare this notion of the Guardian of the Threshold with certain the way certain students of esoteric Islam understand the resurrection body. Such a comparison is fruitful for Mormonism, but the consequences would take much too long to explain (see Henry Corbin's Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth for details as to this idea).

The second and final Guardian of the Threshold, on the other hand, is essentially my "true self." Explaining that by the transition inherent in this meeting, "our own being begins to become transparent to us," Steiner says that this second guardian stands over the gateway to the very heart of existence “like the cherubim with the flaming sword before the gates of Paradise.” But there's a catch: this being tells us that we can't ascend to that highest world yet, but must stay in a lower world and--like a Buddhist bodhisattva--help all the beings remaining in the world ascend.

Here we come to perhaps the biggest issue with Rudolf Steiner for a believing Mormon--though it's not clear that this is the case for a being who has met this second guardian specifically, he generally believes in reincarnation. Nevertheless (as other Mormons like Felice Austen have tried to do--see her blog Progressive Prophetess in the sidebar to the right), I think it is possible to productively reconcile the idea of an afterlife with that of reincarnation. The key for this synthesis lies in the personal worldview of psychologist Carl Jung, perhaps best exemplified in passages like the one below from his Red Book: 

"[The figures we experience through tumults upsetting what is familiar in our soul] are the dead, not just your dead, that is, all the images and shapes you took in your past, which the ongoing life has left behind, but also the thronging dead of human history, the ghostly procession of the past, which is an ocean compared to the drops of your own life span. I see behind you, behind the mirror of your eyes, the crush of dangerous shadows, the dead, who look greedily through the empty sockets of your eyes, who hope to gather up through you all the loose ends of the ages which sigh in them. Your cluelessness does not prove anything. Put your ear to that wall and you will hear the rustling of their procession."

From Jung's perspective, those who did not live their life's goal completely enough return to the world to--at least partially--live it out vicariously through the living. He later writes that he imagines there are many dead figures hoping that we live a certain way, perhaps subtly pushing us in one way or another, to help us live out their unlived potential, to answer questions they could not. Not only does this conception of the afterlife resemble Swedenborg's, who wrote that each of us have at least four spirits (two angels and two devils) with is at all times that entice us one way or another, but it also resembles our notion of "work for the dead." Especially when considering that Jung's Red Book actually uses the phrase "the salvation of the dead," it seems apparent to me that--if an ordinance I undergo can vicariously affect a dead spirit--I at least have the potential to help those who have died through my actions while alive. Does my assistance for the dead extend beyond mere ordinance work? I certainly think so, especially considering Jung's statement above.

In any case, the idea of dead that act out their unlived potential in the living certainly sounds like reincarnation, at least from a certain perspective. If a spirit who has died exerts an influence on me and has their progress toward salvation riding on my actions, can't we say that--at least partially--that spirit has "incarnated" in me? Though this means an idea (distasteful to some) of our bodies as host to many spirits at once, it's not like that doesn't reflect our experience. How often do we feel overcome by an impulse that seems alien to us, either for good or for bad? Don't we all absentmindedly hear fragments of sentences in our heads, especially when we're tired? Though it sounds exotic, I surmise with Swedenborg that these phenomena are the evidence of spirits within us, or perhaps more palatably, of spirits close to us in the spiritual world.

In any case, the meeting with the second Guardian of the Threshold is pretty much the end of How to Know Higher Worlds. It's a really good book; you should all read it. I felt the Spirit quite a lot while reading it, so I feel that it's true in its essence. That's it for now, though. Bye!