The
body is the visible mind. The body is the form of eternity.
Topics include: | mental psychology
| theistic psychology | scientific dualism | Emanuel Swedenborg | immortality |
God | eternal marriage | heaven and hell | reductionism in neuroscience | theistic
science | dreams | consciousness | regeneration | spiritual development |
rationality | love and truth | body-mind correspondences | virtual
intersubjectivity | vertical community | dying/resuscitation process |
Avatar
Psychology
and
Mental Anatomy
Exploring
the Mental World of Eternity
Dr. Leon James
(leon@hawaii.edu)
Professor, Psychology Department, University of
Hawaii
With the collaboration of Dr. Diane Nahl (nahl@hawaii.edu)
Professor, Information and Computer Sciences,
University of Hawaii
April 2009, Version 67, Electronic book in progress
For a background and context to this book, please
see this previous online book:
The Organic Mind: Discovering the Mental
World of Eternity (2008) by Leon James:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/mental-psychology-p1.htm
Table of Contents
Table
of Correspondences between Physical Space and Mental Space
Affective
and Circulatory Systems
Cognitive
and Respiratory Systems
Neuro-Muscular
and Sensorimotor Systems
Synergy
between the Physical Body and the Mental Body
Discovering
the Mental World of Eternity
The
Laws of Providence and Permissions
Regeneration
and the Divine Psychologist
Why
This Is a Perfect World Despite Evil
Our
Anatomical Roots in the Vertical Community
Propositions of Mental Psychology
Diagram
1: Schematic Representation of a Human Being
Diagram
2: Schematic Representation of Male and Female Anatomy
Diagram
3: Two Stages of Male-Female Unity
Diagram
4: Formation of Man and Woman as Reciprocal Units
Diagram
5: Male and Female Anatomy, Part 2
Diagram,
6: The Vertical Community
Diagram
7: Anatomy of the Mental Body (celestial, rational, material)
Diagram
8 – Table Listing the Mental Bodies
Diagram
9: Synergy between the Physical Body and Mental Body
Diagram
10: Immediate and Mediate Influx
Diagram
11: Consciousness Prior and After Regeneraiton
Diagram
12: Mental Layers in Sequential and Simultaneous Order
Diagram
14: Mental anatomy of Husband and Wife.
Diagram
15: Ascending and Descending Development
Diagram
16: The 12 Anatomical Layers of Creation, Existence, and Reality
Diagram
17: Three Phases of Marriage
Diagram
19: Birth, Death, and Eternity
Diagram
20: Correspondences Between Physical and Mental Body Systems
Diagram
21: Maturation and Development
Diagram
22: Developmental Stages Before and After Death
Diagram
23: Maturation and Regeneration of Consciousness
Overall
Explanations of the Diagrams
Material
Thinking and Rational Thinking
Metanoid
Self-Witnessing and the Discovery of Sudden Memory
The
12 Anatomical Layers of Existence and Reality
Research Methodology in Mental
Psychology
Rational
Psychology vs. Empirical Psychology
Rational
Psychology and Rational Methodology
Celestial
Loves and Consciousness
Avatar Psychology and
Neuroscience
The
Body as Mind or the Mind as Body
II.
Conscious Material Mental Body or Avatar
IV.
Imagination-Fantasy Body or Avatar
VI.
Rational Mental Body or Avatar
VII.
Celestial Mental Body or Avatar
Anatomical
Components of the Mental Body
Diagram
8 – Table Listing the Mental Bodies
Readings
in Body-Mind Correspondences – Reductionist
Readings
in Body-Mind Correspondences – Dualist.
Discovering
the Vertical Community
Consciousness
and Intersubjectivity
Social
Forces and Group Dynamic Theory in the Virtual World
The
Classification of Interpersonal Attitudes
Behavior
Influence and Personality
Conflict:
A Field Dynamic Concept
Conflict:
A Field-Dynamic Concept.
Topological
Features of Group Space
Status:
Role Position and Role Setting
Research Methodology in Avatar
Psychology
Second
Life Affordances for Social Practices by Residents
Observing
Stages of Acculturation in Becoming a
Resident of Second Life
Stage
1: Discovering the Noticing Practices.
Stage
2: Discovering the Appraising Practices
Stage
3: Discovering the Value-Attaching Practices.
Stage
4: Discovering the Intentionality Practices
Stage
5: Discovering the Planning Practices.
Stage
6: Discovering the Executing Practices.
Data
Gathering Form Using the Model of Social-Biological Technology
Avatar
Psychology Self-Witnessing Report
Social-Biological
Features of Second Life Technology
Organic
Correspondences between Mental World and Virtual World
Illustrative
Research Project in Second Life
Observations
on Social Presence
Observations
on Mental Co-presence or Intersubjectivity
Readings
for Research Hypothesis 1
Visual
Observation of Typical Avatar Behavior.
Inventory
of Avatar’s Abilities
Experimental
Set Ups for Avatar Behavior Studies
(End of Avatar Psychology text)
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Introduction
On a
clear day you can see forever
1970
Barbara Streisand movie and song
Avatar Psychology
describes the relationship between the virtual world and the mental world.
Mental Anatomy describes the
organic components of the immortal mental body that we each possess since
birth.
What is Mental Anatomy
There
is only one physical world. Space is everywhere in the
physical world – between galaxies, between grains of sand, and between
electrons inside neurons in the brain. It is the same space since space is
unitary. All space forms one unit, one whole. Space cannot be divided. For
instance, the objects around you are in space. They do not displace space as
objects do when immersed in water. The space around you is the same space
around anyone on this planet, or on any other planet in the physical world. The
above facts or properties of physical space correspond exactly to the properties
of mental space. There is only one
mental world.
Your mental world and the mental world of the people
around you is the same mental world. A person on another continent half way
around the globe from you may not know that the physical space around them is
the same space around you here. You may
not have realized that your mental world is the same as other
people’s mental world. We don’t realize this because our daily material
thinking and consciousness is immersed in sensorimotor input and its physical
sociotemporal limitations. We are most conscious of what is immediately around
us, whether physical objects, or mental sensations, thoughts, and loves.
We can all elevate our consciousness to the rational
plane of thinking which is independent of physical limits. Rational thinking
and ideas allow us to become conscious of how the world as unit whole is
organized into parts and layers that correspond and interact. These concepts
are not available to our consciousness when we restrict our thinking to the material
organization of the physical world.
In our daily life we tend to oscillate across the
two layers of consciousness – material and rational. You can observe this
alternation by consciously monitoring and keeping track of your thoughts as you
carry out various habitual activities. When your thoughts are operating within
the lower material limits, your consciousness is limited in scope, and often
presents puzzles and contradictions that weaken our control over some
situation. For instance, you just got a phone call indicating you didn’t get
the job you applied for. Your affective system suddenly feels in turmoil. You
feel that intense loves and emotions are activated in you and they engender a
fury of thoughts that produce cognitive overload, confusion, and distorted
thinking. You keep formulating the sentence, “How can this be?” You had such a
good job interview. The man said you were on top of his list. You are conscious
of a series of anxious feelings and negative moods. Now you feel depressed.
Your stomach feels unpleasant. You hate that feeling. It makes you weak, like a
victim and a loser, instead of a winner. You begin to swear. You throw things.
You punch the wall. Someone walks in, says something, and you jump on the
person, verbally attacking them, as if the situation is their fault, and they
deserve punishment. That’s all you can think of doing. Your material consciousness is limited to the situation at hand.
Now a friend shows up. He understands. His
consciousness is in a rational state and he can interact with you from there.
He finds ways of reassuring you. He argues convincingly that being turned down
for the job may have nothing to do with you. There are circumstances that are
unknown to you. They dictate the choice for the job. He reminds you that the
interviewer found you more than just adequate and gave you a high evaluation.
He suggests that you might go back to see him for any openings that he might
know of. You might even end up with a better job. Besides, nothing is random,
he points out. For our lives to work at all, events must be completely lawful
and rational, completely controlled by an omnipotent omnipresent God. So you
begin to understand that being turned down for the job at this time is your
destiny, your biography. Your task is to elevate your consciousness to a
rational level so that you can get the bigger picture on yourself and life, and
your future in eternity. Now you begin to feel hopeful. You begin to take up a
rational view on your situation. Your
consciousness is elevated when you switch to a rational mode of thinking.
If
you cultivate this rational consciousness you will gradually minimize bad moods
and feelings of inadequacy, and the deeply disturbing sense of a lack of
control over your life.
Your thinking will be more rational. You will be
able to see rationally that there is only one mental world, just as there is
only one physical world, because the two correspond perfectly. Whatever is true
of the one is also true of the other, but only in correspondence, not in direct
terms. Consider the following table of correspondences between physical and
mental space:
Table of Correspondences between Physical Space and Mental Space |
|
|
PHYSICAL SPACE |
MENTAL SPACE |
|
Physical
space provides a medium or space that contains physical objects like
planets, plants, animals. |
Mental
space provides a medium or expanse that contains mental objects or
states like loves, meanings, and sensations. |
|
Physical
space unifies all physical objects by containing them in itself. There
exists only one physical world. |
Mental
space unifies all mental states or objects of all people by containing
them in itself. There exists only one mental world. |
|
Physical
space provides physical contact or closeness between all objects by propinquity
or propensity in interior structure or components. |
Mental
space provides mental contact or closeness with anyone and anywhere,
present and past, by means of similarity of loves, ideas, and sensorimotor
operations. |
|
Physical
space allows a physical geography within which displacement and travel
is possible, allowing exploration of new grounds and areas. This allows
access to new resources that are indigenous to each locale, and their use for
construction of living structures, artifacts, and cities. |
Mental
space allows a mental geography within which our consciousness can
navigate, and thus experience new sensations, new thoughts, and new loves
that are proper to each mental zone. This allows the construction of mental
communities with people who have similar and compatible loves, and
consequently ideas. |
|
Physical
space allows an indefinite variety of objects, arrangements, structures, and
properties of physical objects, their properties and uses. |
Mental
space allows an indefinite variety of experiences, meanings, principles, and
values, consequently unique lives and personalities. |
|
Gravity
is the principal force in physical space. It pulls particles
together to form objects, planets, and galaxies. |
Love
is the principal force in mental space. It binds people
together to form couples, groups, and societies. |
The above comparison list allows you to recognize
the correspondences between physical and mental space. The idea of distance in
mental space has to do with similarity of sensations, thoughts, and loves, and especially
loves because thoughts and sensations
are produced and determined by loves. Similar loves can be co-present
within the same geographic space of consciousness in the mental world. Opposing
loves cannot be co-present because they repel each other, like positive and
negative electronic charges. Love for winning by cheating cannot be together
with love for playing fairly.
Every
feature of the physical body is matched by a corresponding feature in the
mental body. This
body-mind correspondence in all particulars provides mental psychology with a
grounded empiricism and objectivity.
This anatomical
methodology was lacking in the proposals of the influential cognitivists of
the nineteenth and twentieth century, like Freud, Jung, Chomsky, or Lakoff. But it was
present in the unique work of eighteenth century theistic scientist Swedenborg, as for instance
in his book Rational Psychology
(1742) and related works on brain anatomy.
The body-mind correspondences are a sub-part of the
universal physical-mental correspondences that fix the dualist world into
discrete layers in concentric circles around the mental sun of eternity. We can
measure the physical world with various simple and complex physical
instruments. Science in the negative bias mode of monism has succeeded over
many centuries in constructing basic charts of the physical world at various
levels of magnitude from neutrinos to galaxies, and from anatomy to
biochemistry. These operations are objectively discovered correlations of events
within the same discrete degree, namely the natural or physical world. This is
the outermost layer or degree around the mental sun. The laws of
correspondences between the natural and mental degrees provide a methodology
for all theistic science (see the work dualist and theistic physicist, Dr. Ian
Thompson, e.g., http://www.beginningtheisticscience.com/
|| http://www.theisticscience.org/papers/smn3b.html
|| http://theisticscience.blogspot.com/ ).
Mental
psychology, theistic
psychology, and theistic
science are among the new theistic dualist disciplines that are now being
evolved by the founding generation. This new evolution of science makes room
for rational methodologies based on
correspondences. The modern literature on consciousness and neuroscience
has not provided a fully successful proposal because of the bias of reductionism. This self-imposed
limitation has resulted in charts and taxonomies of the neuro-muscular and
bio-genetic systems of the physical body and its correlated operations. With theistic science and mental psychology
it is possible to upgrade the research methodology from correlation to cause-effect relations. This new
possibility has come to light through the unique work of Swedenborg.
What is Avatar Psychology
Avatar psychology describes how people in different physical
locations have real interactions online with each other (see “distributed
computing”) through an information produced digital avatar that sees and moves
around in a virtual world populated with the avatars of other owners (sometimes
called “players” or “users”). Each person uses and controls their own avatar in
a “virtual” world that is displayed on the computer screen of each owner. Avatars
can be made to look like any person, object or animal. In the virtual world of Second Life most avatars are humanoid
and are made to look young, attractive, and well dressed. Avatars interact with
each other in dyadic or group activities such as attending a lecture, visiting
a museum or exhibit, shopping for avatar clothes in elegant malls, or dancing,
skating, exploring grottos, etc. “Inworld” relationships in Second Life are formed on the basis of wanting
to share interests, whether personal, recreational, professional, educational,
artistic, or commercial. To communicate with each other through the avatar
interface, owners type to each other in the local chat window or in instant
messaging. There is also a voice chat facility that is used less often.
Avatar psychology examines various theoretical and
practical issues of interest, as for instance:
Do features of one’s avatar
transfer to the owner?
This has been reported by some owners regarding how they
stand or walk with the physical body in “real” life. With the digital avatar
body on screen, the manner of standing and walking can be controlled (or
“customized”) by the “AO” or scripted “animations” and movements that owners
can install, “wear,” or “attach” to their avatar in order to “override” the
built in script that comes with all newly born avatars. Owners can also manage
the avatar’s primary body shape and facial appearance, called the avatar’s
“shape” and “skin.” Besides the primary facial features there are also animated
facial expressions that can be managed through customized animation devices called
HUDs that can be invisibly worn by the avatar. The older an avatar is the more
it tends to be endowed with customized appearance and behavior. Through this
process of customization every avatar acquires a quasi-unique appearance and
behavior style that represents the human owner in some way. Others
inworld can also notice the projected persona of each avatar in terms of
behavioral interactions on screen as well as verbal interactions in local chat
or voice chat.
It is possible that we are influenced in some way by
how our avatar looks and the personality it projects inworld. The avatar’s personality
is not fully in control of the owner because its behavior is partially a
response to situations inworld. The owner’s performance of managing the
avatar’s social presence is adaptive and spontaneous. Unexpected things happen
around the avatar, and the owner reacts by engaging the affordances with the
keyboard and mouse, such as moving the avatar towards or away some object, camera
zooming in on an object, clicking on an object or avatar, typing in the local
chat, or IMing an avatar (“instant messaging”). These
behavioral actions are adaptive, and respond to practices of owners inworld, also
called “Residents” of Second Life.
Due to this unpredictable and adaptive feature of
avatar behavior, owners can be impressed
by their own avatar. This applies to both appearance, movement, and personality
or behavior style. For instance some avatars boldly approach another while
others stay at some distance. When watching their own avatar owners can spontaneously
take on features of their avatar’s walking, standing, and sitting style. They
may not be fully aware that they are doing this, but once in a while they
suddenly become conscious while their physical body is modeling their digital
avatar.
It is also possible that our personality development
can be enhanced in various ways by the virtual
intersubjectivity we possess with our avatar. Our avatar becomes a second
consciousness that is created by virtual loves and virtual ideas. There can be a seepage effect whereby the
virtual reality and the physical reality become somewhat mixed up with each
other.
How are virtual loves and ideas
different from real life loves and ideas?
An example of a virtual idea we can have is the idea
of “buying a virtual luxury house,” which costs around five U.S. dollars in
2009, and inviting 20 friends from around the world to a party in your new
house – and all this within a few hours (or less). Another virtual idea is to
make the avatar look like a child and join a virtual family that has avatar
parents and siblings, who are living together in a residence to which other
avatars can “teleport” and visit. Romantic relationships and real life
marriages can result from avatar relationships.
In what way is virtual consciousness
different from real life consciousness?
Virtual consciousness is produced by virtual intersubjectivity, which can be
defined as the mental co-presence that we
can create with other human beings through our avatar bodies inworld. In
face-to-face interactions with our physical body we establish mental co-presence
by jointly defining the situation and what is going on. When several avatars
are present in one inworld location they can establish a virtual group intersubjectivity that is embodied in the coordinated
interactions, both visual and verbal (in chat). For example, if they are
attending a lecture or class, the avatars collaborate in co-constructing that
virtual event. One avatar (usually the host of the event) rezzes a platform
with seating conveniences while the arriving avatars take turn arranging themselves
on the chairs, which possess a script that makes the avatar sit in various
positions and attitudes while being there.
All social events inworld are co-constructed by a
group of avatar owners. Each avatar performs the action of turn-taking exchanges in such a way as to validate the shared
meaning that is embodied in the details of the exchanges. These details can be
uncovered and described by participants. For instance, as individual avatars
arrive upon the scene of a gathering place, they are each inducted or
incorporated into the group by greeting rituals in local chat. The avatars
already present take turns greeting the arriving avatar, who returns the
greetings or offers a comment. The initial greeting exchange requires the
collaborative effort of those present. It
is the overt interpersonal performance of these collaborative actions that
constitutes the existence of the objective event in the virtual world.
This coordinated interplay serves as reassurance to
all present that what is going on is indeed what each claims is going on, and
what they as a group, jointly claim to each other that it is going on. For
instance, an avatar can say, “Hi
everyone. I can’t stay long.” Or, “Couldn’t
be here last week. Missed you all.” This detail in the exchange validates
the shared claim that this is a type of virtual social gathering that has
occurred before with those present, and that members notice and keep track of when
an avatar is present or absent. The same may be noticed with leave-taking
rituals as avatars begin to leave or “teleport” out of the venue. The host
avatar is usually the last to leave.
(REMINDER: if you use Control-click, instead of just
a click, the page and diagram will open in a new window, and this is more
convenient as you continue reading the text.)
Avatar psychology is closely related to mental
psychology whose topics include:
- dualist
empiricism,
- theism or
God’s role in daily events,
- discrete
degrees of correspondences,
- immortality
and the mental world of eternity,
- mental
anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and genetics
- spiritual development,
inherited traits, character reformation, regeneration,
- eternal marriage,
soul mates, conjugial love,
- vertical
community, heaven (Grand Human), hell (Grand Monster),
- and others.
The
study of avatar psychology provides mental tools for more effective daily
self-management.
Nearly everyone finds it difficult or seemingly
impossible to avoid being immersed in negative emotions, anxiety, and depressed
morale or lack of enthusiasm. We experience the “highs” or high points of our
life as rare events, islands of “full potential” and self-confidence in an
ocean of problems, weaknesses, and disturbing challenges. Acquiring a rational
understanding of our mental life is enlightening and liberating. Mental anatomy puts a bright spotlight on
our immortality, giving rational proof and anatomical confirmation of its
reality.
The Mental Sun of Eternity
Nothing can be more familiar to human beings than
the mental world of eternity. The moment we are born and take our first breath,
our conscious life begins. We become “aware” as a human being, that we are a
human being. Our mental apparatus is all set to function and to provide us with
our developing consciousness as a living immortal individual. Our physical and
mental apparatus function together through the laws of correspondence. Every
operation in our mental apparatus or body corresponds to an operation in our
physical apparatus or body. The physical
body and the mental body are exact copies of each other and correspond with
each other point by point, in general and in particular. But they are
constructed out of different substances.
The physical body and all things physical on the planet
are constructed out of particles from the physical sun and other stars in the
physical universe (e.g., the original “Big Bang” clump of matter and
particles). This formation history of the physical world corresponds to the
formation history of the mental world. The “Big Bang” clump of physical matter
in deep space corresponds to the mental sun of eternity. Both are the source or
origin of all matter or substance existing in the two worlds. In the physical
world the particles that make up the elements and molecules of the physical
body are originally in the form of “heat,” that is, in the form of particles at
very high temperatures travelling at the speed of light. These particles can be
called “cosmic dust” and permeate all space. They have an inherent propensity
to “clump” together into larger and larger conglomerations, until they reach
the size of a planet. After some time this hot clump of matter cools down, and
earth as we know it is formed.
In the mental world the corresponding events take
place. Issuing from the mental sun of eternity are the particles of heat and
light that create a mental expanse around the mental sun (see Diagram 4). This mental world is filled with
the “mental dust” particles of heat and light issuing endlessly and
continuously from the mental sun into the mental world of eternity. These
mental particles have a built in propensity to clump together into either of
two arrangements. One is the [light/heat]
arrangement, or “light particle within
which is a heat particle.” This is the masculine arrangement. The other or
reciprocal arrangement is feminine: [heat/light]
or “heat particle within which is a light
particle.”
Mental objects, or organs, that are formed by
further compounding of mental particles, are always pure, not mixed. All mental
organs formed by masculine clumps or mental
genes [light/heat] are male. They
form the male mental body that corresponds to the male physical body. The
female physical body corresponds in its formation to the feminine mental body,
which contains the feminine mental organs that are constructed out of the
feminine mental genes [heat/light].
Hence it is that the consciousness of men and women are distinct from each
other. Man’s consciousness is the result of male mental genes [light/heat], while woman’s
consciousness is the result of female mental genes [heat/light]. Mental light in men create masculine intelligence,
while in women it creates feminine intelligence. Mental heat in women creates
feminine loves, while mental heat in men creates masculine loves. Men’s
consciousness is the result of masculine loves and intelligence. Women’s
consciousness is the result of feminine loves and intelligence.
A woman’s consciousness is born in the neuro-skeletal
sensorimotor system of her mental body. This conscious subjective operation is
the result of the marriage of mental heat entering her affective circulatory
system with mental light entering her cognitive respiratory system. With a man,
mental light enters his cognitive system on the outside and bonds with mental
heat entering the affective system on the inside. This bonding or synergy
produces the operation in the sensorimotor system that we call masculine
consciousness. (See Diagram 2).
The mental body corresponds to the planet and its
planetary objects, most completely and particularly to the physical body. The
masculine mental body and its consciousness correspond to the external parts of
physical objects that tend to be relatively tougher and colder than the inside.
The feminine mental body corresponds to the internal parts of planetary objects
that tend to be relatively softer and warmer than the outside. For example, the
outer tougher skin of a fruit corresponds to masculine consciousness, while the
fruit’s soft interior corresponds to feminine consciousness. In daily married
life, men tend to have their focus on external components of the marriage, such
as working away from home, while women have their focus on the internal
components of the marriage, such as managing the home and taking care of the
relationships and needs of the family. The larger, stronger, tougher physical
body of men in general corresponds to their mental body which is constructed
out of [light/heat] units, that is,
cognitive on the outside and affective on the inside.
Today in our modern world, and even more so in the
super-modern future of sociobiological
technology, the contrast in masculine and feminine consciousness may
express itself differently than the traditional and historical dictate: women are domestic while men are forensic.
Today you can observe men and women doing the same jobs up and down the
echelons in private industry, in the armed forces, in public office, and in the
home. Equal pay for equal work has not yet fully caught up to societal
practices everywhere, and the male dominated world continues as before, but in
a more civilized tone. Much physical and mental abuse is heaped upon women by
men throughout society, and within the family by fathers and brothers. I
believe that in the future true equality between men and women will be
established through the unity
model of marriage, which argues that when a man changes from being
self-centered and becomes wife-centered, his masculine intelligence is greatly
enhanced by and enriched by the reciprocal adaptation to feminine intelligence.
The enhancement comes from the anatomical fact that
men’s intelligence is exterior to their love, as shown above, while women’s
intelligence is interior to their love. In mental anatomy components that are
more interior are superior in consciousness, that is, closer to the
celestial-rational degree. The more
interior intelligence of women enhances and enriches the more external
intelligence of men. (See Diagrams). (REMINDER: if
you use Control-click, instead of just a click, the page and diagram will open
in a new window, and this is more convenient as you continue reading the text.)
The higher intelligence of women comes from the superior reception of mental
light with anatomical receptors that are more interior.
Similarly, men receive mental heat in more interior
components than women (see Diagrams). A man’s love is higher and deeper than a
woman’s love because the affective circulatory system of the man’s mental body
has more interior components for the reception of mental heat. Hence it is that
a woman’s love is enhanced and enriched by a man’s love when it is adjacent to
hers.
But most importantly, the man and the woman enhance
and enrich each other through reciprocal interdependence of their corresponding
anatomical systems in their mental bodies. A woman’s external feminine love
attaches itself to a man’s external masculine intelligence, and after that, a
man’s interior masculine love attaches itself to a woman’s interior feminine
intelligence. Through this entwisted anatomy the man and the woman soulmates
achieve an anatomical unity. She cannot breathe without his lungs, and his
blood doesn’t circulate without her heart. She cannot love anything without his
thoughts about it, and he cannot think anything without her loves for it. In
this way they become the conjoint self,
also called the conjugial couple.”
Mental light from the mental sun of eternity
corresponds to physical light from earth’s sun in the physical world. Mental
heat corresponds to physical heat. Sunlight issues from the natural sun and
travels millions of miles across space to reach earth in a few minutes. In
winter the sun comes to us at a more indirect angle so that earth receives sunlight
that is relative cold, deprived of its usual direct heat. In summer, when earth
angles more directly and closer to the sun, sunlight is hot. Light within
which is heat (spring, summer) in the physical world corresponds in the
mental world to the masculine mind when it has been regenerated and is
in an order that corresponds to the celestial arrangement. In winter the
correspondence changes to light in which there is less heat or no heat (fall,
winter), which corresponds to the unregenerate masculine mind in which there is
intelligence but less altruism.
Heat within which is light,
which is the feminine arrangement, corresponds to the regenerated mind
of an adult woman. Prior to this phase of her development, a woman is in an
unregenerate phase of growth in which she has not yet fully attained her
feminine consciousness. Women’s consciousness prior to regeneration in adult
life, is feminine heat within which is masculine light. A woman’s cognitive
organ within her affective organ, operates in the arrangement of masculine
intelligence and masculine thinking. There is an inherent anatomical
disarrangement that originates with inheritance and is stamped in through
socialization practices in a “man’s world,” which is a “male dominance” social
and mental environment. A woman’s consciousness experiences this inner conflict
or disarrangement, and gradually begins to construct a feminine interior in her
cognitive organ. At last she develops a feminine intelligence. Now all her
feminine loves are able to be consummated and fulfilled through her feminine
way of thinking. This restoration of inner balance allows the woman to be
prepared for conjugial union with her soulmate. Now it is her husband who
attaches his interior higher love to her interior higher feminine wisdom,
intelligence, and intuitive perception. (See phase 2 in the unity diagram (3).
Affective and Circulatory Systems
In particular, the circulatory system in the
physical body acts in correspondence with the affective system of the
mental body. Physical blood corresponds to mental love. Blood supplies
nutrition to the physical cells, just as loves supply consciousness to produce
our individual mental life, or existence as a self. Blood pressure corresponds
to the constancy of loves functioning as motives. A rise in blood pressure corresponds
to an intensification of motivation in the form of mental stress, or distress
such as fear, pain, or obsession. Physical states always correspond to mental
states in every detail. The system of blood vessels extends throughout the
physical body, reaching every cell through its minute capillaries. This
corresponds to the affective system of distribution of loves to the entire mental
body, our entire self. Everything in our personality must be supplied with one
of the loves by the affective system.
Think of the things you do, such as your work, your
studies, your friendships, your hobbies and activities. Each one of them
requires some love to keep it going. You would stop listening to music if the
“love for music” would suddenly cease to flow in your affective system. You
would be able to hear the music but not to love it, and you would not experience
emotions that you enjoy having. All mental states of enjoyment are caused by
loves. The sensation and consciousness of enjoyment is produced by the love
being present and activated. Love nourishes our conscious life, which is the
life of awareness as a human being. When you move your eyes while talking,
walking, or watching something, their physical movements correspond to the
loves that are activated in your consciousness. Every interest is a love being
fulfilled. You focus your physical eyes on objects or places that are selected
by your interests, or loves. Hence the eye movements in the physical body are
activated by the affective system in the mental body. This is true of your
other body parts.
The biochemistry of the circulatory system in the
physical body corresponds to the biochemistry by which consciousness is
produced in the mental body. Neuropeptides are chemicals secreted by various
organs throughout the body and they are carried by the circulatory system to the
organic receptors situated on the outside surface of the cells. These hormonal
productions of the physical body, supplying the cells with energy and vitality,
correspond to the operations of our affective system in the mental body, where
the texture and content of consciousness, is produced by the variety of loves
that feed the personality and character of the person. Every individual has
access to an unlimited variety of loves that are available for reception in the
affective system of the mental body.
For instance, think of the variety of loves that
activated you today, so far. In order to get your physical body moving out of
bed, you had to wait until it was activated by your love for getting up and
starting the day. If this love in your mental body were blocked from reception
in your affective system, you would not be able to move your physical body out
of bed. Think of how you got dressed. You had some choices and you chose what
you wore when you left your place. Every choice you made in the physical world
had to correspond to a love in your mental world. You liked this one but you
didn’t want that one today. To want something or to reject something is the
operation of love within our consciousness. When we walk we make constant
adjustments to the physical environment, avoiding collisions with objects and
people. Each correction or adaptation movement of the physical body is produced
by the corresponding love, such as, the love to get where you want to go, the
love to avoid colliding, the love to appear like a normal person in public, the
love to respect others, or else, the love to tease others, or to act
aggressively as a pedestrian.
To understand people’s behavior in the physical
world we need to know their hierarchy of loves in the affective system. For
instance, if you ask “Why are you not coming?” the answer you might get is, “I
don’t feel like it.” We avoid doing things in the physical world that
correspond to what we want to avoid in the mental world. This is acting
according to our feeling, according to our motivation, thus, according to our
desire or love. If you know someone’s loves, you have the power to influence
their behavior by arranging things that they love to do or to participate in.
Where do loves come from? Love is a mental substance
available in infinite variety in the mental world. In the physical world the
body has access to a nearly unlimited quantity and variety of substances that
nourish the circulatory system through digestion and inhalation. The mental
world contains all the loves that human beings are capable of having or
becoming conscious of. The affective system in our mental body is composed of
multiple organic receptors capable of receiving the mental substances that flow
into the mental body. Each individual is unique and has a unique arrangement of
loves that characterize that unique individual. Two individuals may be in the
same mental region and yet receive a different variety of loves from it. For
example, when walking people are conscious of different physical things around
them, paying attention to some things, ignoring other things. Each object or
scenery corresponds to a different love or appreciation, or perhaps dislike and
aversion.
Our thinking and language reflects the
correspondences between the physical body and mental body, or physical states
and mental states. For instance, we say that something is “the heart of the
matter,” when we mean that it is the central part of the argument or explanation.
Something physical “the heart” is used to refer to something mental, “the most
important part of the explanation.” Sometimes we say that there is “bad blood”
between them, by which we mean that they had a fight and never made up and they
resent each other. “Blood” corresponds to “love” and therefore “bad blood”
between them corresponds to “bad feelings” for each other. We use the physical
shape or symbol of the “heart” to indicate our “love” for someone because the
two correspond. We say that “he’s out for blood” (physical) when we mean that
he is filled with the feeling or love for revenge (mental). He is “cold
blooded” means that his emotions or loves are hostile. “She is hot” refers to
the “blood boiling” (physical), by which we mean strong emotions of attraction
(mental).
Cognitive and Respiratory Systems
The lungs and the rest of the respiratory system
include the diaphragm, ribs, throat, mouth, nose, and lips. These organs work
together to allow us to speak, which is closely related to breathing and the
diaphragm action on the lungs. Respiration supplies oxygen to the used (blue) blood
by which it is cleaned (red) and made ready to circulate again without stop.
The action of the respiratory system in the physical body corresponds to the action
of the cognitive system in the mental body. We stop thinking consciously
when our breathing is paralyzed. The cognitive and respiratory systems
correspond to each other in all actions. Faster breathing corresponds to more
agitated thinking. Uneven breathing corresponds to cognitive operations. These
include uneven flow of thoughts that fail to cumulate to a solution for the
moment. Shallow breaths correspond to hesitations or uncertainties. Fast
breathing corresponds to mental excitement and cognitive overload.
The physical substances we breathe in correspond to
the mental substances that operate our cognitive operations of thinking,
reasoning, imagining, visualizing, dreaming. Speaking (physical) and thinking
(mental) are correspondences of each other. We speak in words of sound
(physical) and we think in words of meaning (mental). The tone of voice and
other prosodic features of every day speech involve complex control mechanisms by
the respiratory system and organs acting in synergy.
Neuro-Muscular and Sensorimotor
Systems
The neuro-muscular system in the physical body includes
the bones, spinal cord, nerves, neurons, and the entire brain. This physical
system corresponds to the sensorimotor system in the mental body, which
includes sensations, sensory perception, stimulus receptivity, motor readiness,
reflexes, automated habits, and spontaneous reactions. Consciousness is the
awareness of the sensorimotor system in the mental body. The physical system
involves only chemical operations, while the sensorimotor system involves only
mental operations. For instance, hearing someone say “Hi” involves both the
physical body and the mental body. The neuro-muscular system in the physical
body carries the chemical and electrical information of the sound to the brain,
while the sensorimotor system in the mental body reacts to it by correspondence
producing the experience of hearing a meaningful word. The meaning is produced
by the cognitive system in the mental body. The sensorimotor “hearing” and the
cognitive “making meaning of it” also correspond to each other. And there is
also a reaction by correspondence in the affective system, which involves the
experience of loving it or not loving it, that is, feeling attracted to the
person, or wanting to avoid the person.
Consciousness is the awareness of sensorimotor
correspondences in the mental body. We are conscious of our environment, which
means that we are aware of our sensations (sensorimotor), and the thoughts
(cognitive) and feelings (affective) that correspond to them. The three mental
systems in the mental body work in synergy with each other, and with the three
systems in the physical body.
Summary and Recapitulation at: (control-click)
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy28/409b-g28-lecture-notes-p1b.htm#threefold-self
Please read, and then come back here.
Synergy between the Physical Body and
the Mental Body
Explanation of Diagram 9
- The
neuro-skeletal system detects the electro-chemical signal in the physical environment
- The
respiratory system reacts to signal detection
- The
circulatory system reacts to signal detection and respiratory change
- The receptive
sensorimotor system in the mental body reacts by correspondence to the
activity in the neuro-skeletal system of the physical body (double
arrow=correspondence). This involves the activity of noticing and
maintaining vigilance.
- The receptive
cognitive system in the mental body reacts to the noticing. This involves
meaning construction and appraisal (categorizing and contextualizing).
- The receptive
affective system in the mental body reacts to the cognitive and
sensorimotor activities. This involves value-attaching or evaluating, and consummatory
activities.
- The optimizing
affective system reacts to the evaluative affective system. This involves
becoming motivated to an intention of engaging the environment, or
modifying it.
- The
optimizing cognitive system in the mental body reacts to the optimizing
affective system. This involves planning and problem solving as directed
by the goals of one’s intention or motivation.
- The
optimizing sensorimotor system reacts to the optimizing cognitive system.
This involves staying ready for specific action and determining to engage
the environment.
- The
neuro-skeletal system of the physical body reacts by correspondence to the
optimizing sensorimotor system. This involves moving the muscles in
correspondence to the sensorimotor determination to engage the physical
environment.
- The action
of the neuro-skeletal system modifies the physical environment. This
returns to arrow 1.
- At the same
time, the respiratory system reacts to the activity of the neuro-skeletal
system. This involves breathing more rapidly to supply the circulatory
system with more oxygen to purify the blood.
- And the circulatory
system reacts to the respiratory system. This involves the heart pumping
blood supply to the organs and muscles.
Note the correspondence relations in Diagram 9:
1 and 4: sensorimotor and neuro-skeletal systems
(receiving modality)
2 and 5: cognitive and respiratory systems
(receiving modality)
3 and 6, 7: affective and circulatory systems (receiving
and optimizing modalities)
8 and 12: cognitive and respiratory systems
(optimizing modality)
9 and 10, 13: sensorimotor and neuro-skeletal
systems (optimizing modality)
Discovering the Mental World of Eternity
The mental world is organic, human, and living. It
is an expanse of mental space created by mental substance. Mental objects can
be constructed in this mental space and they are permanently alive or immortal.
Mental substance does not break down like physical matter which composes
physical objects. These break down over time and are not permanent. But mental
objects like loves, thoughts, and sensations are permanent since they made of
immortal organic substances that don’t break down. If you love something or
someone, that love is unique to you, uniquely adapted to you. It remains part
of your personality or character forever. Once you love something or someone
you are forever tied together. We can change our loves, or exchange one love
for another. This occurs in our consciousness. We are aware of loves we had but
we no longer feel. Loves we no longer feel are not active in our consciousness
but they still are attached to our personality. We can never get rid of them
permanently.
The mental world is organically organized from
center outward, which is the same as saying, from top down. This is because
what is at the center, or “central,” is also what is at the top, or “primary.” These
two correspond to each other. At the very center (or top) of the mental world
is the Mental Sun of Eternity. We can
“see,” or become conscious of, this Sun of eternity when we raise our
consciousness to the top level (or move within, to the center of it). Every
human being is born with two bodies, one physical and temporary, the other
mental and permanent. The physical body is structured and composed with
material elements that originate in the natural sun or star that is familiar to
us visually. The mental body is structured and composed of substances that
originate in the mental sun of eternity. These substances stream out of the
mental sun and into the three organic layers there. Our mental organs overlap
with this organic structure. Every human being is born with an immortal or
permanent mental body that is “strewn out” throughout the three organic layers.
In other words, we are able to experience the consciousness of sensations, thoughts,
and loves when we “navigate” the three organic layers around the mental sun.
It is called the mental sun “of eternity” because it
is not in the world of time. The physical world is in time and in physical
space, while the mental world is not in time and not in physical space. That
which is not in time and space is called eternity. Our sensations, thoughts,
and loves are mental objects, not physical. These mental objects cannot exist in physical space or time, just as physical
objects cannot exist outside time and space. As you are reading this text you
are having thoughts (I hope so). Where are those thoughts? They have to be
somewhere. There are two opposing answers – monism versus dualism.
The negative bias monism perspective in science
simply assumes or asserts (without proof) that thoughts are not real, or else,
that thoughts are nothing else than the brain’s pattern of electro-chemical
activity. In contrast, the positive bias perspective in science, which accepts
dualism as a premise (without proof), assumes that thoughts are real, but not
physical. This means that the physical world is not the only portion of
reality. There is a second portion called the mental world. Both worlds are
equally real. Thoughts are real, but they are not physical, and they are not in
time or physical space. Hence thoughts can’t be made of chemical elements
called matter and made of atoms and electrons whirling in space. Instead,
thoughts are made of mental substances, and these do not exist in physical
space but in mental space. We are all very familiar with mental space because
that is where our thoughts are. This non-physical space is called the mental
world of eternity. Our thoughts exist in the mental world of eternity and they
are constructed out of substances that exist in that world of eternity. This is
substantive dualism in science, and it contrasts with material monism.
What is true of thoughts is also true of sensations
and loves. These are the three categories of mental objects that exist in the
mental world of eternity. Our mental body operates through three systems called
the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor (as reviewed above). These mental
organs or systems are constructed out of the mental substances that fill the
mental spaces around the mental sun of eternity. An endless and infinite stream
of these mental substances come forth from this divine source. This is good
news for the human race. As immortal individuals each of us, we do not want to
enter the endless days of eternity contemplating being bored there, or worrying
that we’ll eventually run out of inventiveness or newness of experiencing. Such
a thought is depressing, and therefore it cannot be part of true reality in
eternity, which is called heaven, or goodness and joy. There is an endless
supply of an infinite variety of mental substances that feed our consciousness
and experiencing in eternity.
The three systems of the mental body are each
organically structured to function as receptor organs for these mental
substances. The affective system is a receptor for love substance while the
cognitive organ is a receptor for truth substance. These are the two primary
categories of mental substances. They are the building blocks for our loves,
thoughts, and sensations that make up our consciousness, our life as mental
beings. Love substance streams into our affective organ producing organic
operations that we subjectively experience as loves, feelings, desires,
motives, intentions, attractions. When we experience a love or feeling we are
conscious of its state of fulfillment as a love. Love substance has mental
properties that we experience when we ingest that substance through our
affective organ.
Our cognitive organ is a receptor for the other
category of mental substance called truth substance. When truth substance
enters the cognitive system it produces organic operations that we experience
as thoughts or thinking. Consider your own thinking in the course of the day.
This is going on in your cognitive system in the mental body. Your thinking consists
of a coherent sequence. When you are planning to go to the kitchen at the next
commercial break, your thinking sequence is adapted to the requirements of
physical spaces and objects. You can plan the sequence of steps that will get
you to the refrigerator and back with a cold soda can in your hand. Taking a
popcorn break requires somewhat more complex planning, and traveling by air to
a friend’s wedding requires even more complex flow of coherence, meaning, and
intelligence. What is it that allows your cognitive organ to sequence thoughts
and ideas in an adaptive rational arrangement called a plan or a project?
The ability to understand meaning and to operate
logically comes from the substance of truth that our cognitive organ receives
from the mental sun of eternity. The ability to feel, love, and become attached
to comes from the substance of love that our affective organ receives from the
mental sun of eternity. The affective and cognitive systems can conjoin
together to operate with perfect synergy. When this occurs a resultant effect
is induced in the sensorimotor system of our mental body. This sensorimotor
reaction is experienced as human consciousness. It is what we are. We are our
consciousness. The words “I” and “me” refer to this unique coherent
consciousness that is born at the birth of our mental body and continues
forever. We are born into eternity. That which is born into eternity is
necessarily immortal and permanent. This eternal permanence of the
consciousness of self is due to the eternal permanence of thoughts and loves
constructed out of truth and love substance. This substance in and from the
mental sun of eternity is a divine substance that is in God from eternity and
from God in creation and in time.
The mental world of eternity is created to be finite
and outside God in Essence which is the only infinite eternity of no beginning
and no end. The mental world of eternity had a historical or evolutionary
beginning called “creation.” But since it is created outside time the mental
world is also called eternity. The physical world in time is created in
correspondence to the mental world in eternity. The two worlds correspond and
one cannot evolve without the other. Even though planets in the physical world
have a limited existence, there are innumerable planets being born constantly
in the vast expanse of the physical universe. Planets are managed by God’s laws
of correspondence to evolve into a physical environment adapted to supporting
the physical bodies of humans. The mental world of eternity is managed by God’s
laws of correspondence to allow the endless evolution of individual human
beings contained in an immortal and permanent mental body which we have since
our birth into eternity.
Managing Our
Eternity
The mental world is constructed in organic top down
layers (represented vertically), or in concentric layers (represented
horizontally). The first layer below, or around, the mental sun of eternity is
called the celestial layer. When our
consciousness operates from this layer we are called quasi-omniscient angels. The expression “quasi-omniscient” refers
to the ability to know and understand anything we think about or wonder about. Our
celestial consciousness has the capability to access instantly any information
in the universe that we want or need under any situation. We cannot access our
celestial consciousness with full awareness until after resuscitation when we
are no longer connected to the physical body and world. Prior to this we
oscillate between the rational and the material consciousness.
The lowest or most external layer of consciousness
is called material consciousness, which involves loves and ideas that are
adapted exclusively to the material or physical world of time, space, matter,
politics, culture, economics. These are “earthly” issues because they concern
our welfare while we are attached to the physical body. All our motives and
thoughts are adapted to earthly and temporary considerations. Above the
material consciousness, and below the celestial consciousness, there is the
rational consciousness. It is intermediate between the order of things in the
physical world (material consciousness) and the order of things in the
celestial layer of the mental world (celestial consciousness after
resuscitation). This intermediate position gives rational consciousness the
unique human ability to perceive higher mental objects that exist in the
celestial layer of eternity.
The mental sun of eternity issues from the Divine
consciousness in God. Since God is infinite and indivisible the Divine
substances that issue from God’s consciousness remain God’s. God cannot give
away particles of Divine consciousness. This means that everything that is
created out of these particles of Divine consciousness retain the presence of
the Divine consciousness. This is the meaning of Divine “omnipresence” since
God is present everywhere within all objects constructed out of the Divine
substances. Hence it is also that our mental body is immortal since it is
constructed out of the mental dust particles that issue from the mental sun of
eternity.
The Divine consciousness is produced by God’s Divine
Love and the Divine Truth conjoining in God as in a Divine marriage. The result
of this marriage is the Divine consciousness, which is omnipresent and
infinite. Divine Love and Divine Truth are the two Divine substances, each
being infinite, and each flowing out of the mental sun as an aura of heat and
light. The Divine Love comes out as mental heat, while the Divine Truth comes
out as mental light.
Mental heat is received by the affective system of
the mental body. Mental light is received by the cognitive system. This
corresponds to the physical body which receives physical heat and light from
the physical sun entering our atmosphere. Plants receive nutrients from the
minerals in the ground. These minerals are particles of heat from the sun that
have cooled off over time. The physical sun spews out heat and dust particles
into the surrounding space. These heat particles cool off and coalesce together
until they form a large object called a planet. Every object on the planet is
therefore constructed of this original heat dust that issues from the physical
sun.
This corresponds to what happens in the mental world
of eternity. The mental objects that make up our mental body and its systems
are constructed out of the heat dust from the mental sun that “cool off” to
form the affective, cognitive and sensorimotor systems that give us
consciousness. Our mental organs are constructed out of the particles of mental
heat and light. Mental heat particles are captured and received by the
affective circulatory system. These provide the mental nutrients for the three
systems, just as the blood provides the natural nutrients for the physical
body. Mental nutrients are loves that exist in an endless variety in the mental
world of eternity.
The quality of ‘nourishing’ loves that we obtain
from mental heat is specific to the three consciousness zones. Celestial loves
are arranged in a hierarchy of loves that is governed by Ruling Loves.
The celestial
ruling love is the love of conjunction and community.
The rational
ruling love is the love of understanding truth.
The material
ruling love is the love of survival, dominance, and power.
Everything in our life and in our eternal future is
determined by our ruling love. After resuscitation there is a brief period of
self-exploration in which our ruling love rises to the surface of our
personality and consciousness. Prior to resuscitation people cannot show their
actual ruling love since it is often egotistical, and therefore harmful and
dangerous to others. This motivates people to hide their ruling love until it
is safe to express it and live it. This happens after resuscitation when we
realize that we are no longer attached to a vulnerable physical body. That
vulnerability and fear keeps people from expressing their ruling love.
But once the fear of retaliation and physical
punishment vanishes at death, we can allow our ruling love to emerge and show
itself. Now this ruling love is in the center of our consciousness and we
pursue it with passion and intensity. This ruling love now does the work of
rearranging the affective hierarchy of loves. Every sub-love that is not
compatible with the ruling love is laid aside, suffocated, and rendered unable
to function. From then to endless eternity, that ruling love determines
everything in our consciousness, and consequently in our environment – that is,
who we associate with in eternity and what kind of environment we live in.
When the ruling love is heavenly, we associate with
others who are also heavenly in their loves. People in the celestial
consciousness arrange themselves in collectivities or mental societies
according to the similarity of their ruling loves and sub-loves. There are two
such collectivities, one called the Grand Human, and the other called the Grand
Monster. These terms are chosen to reflect the quality of the ruling love in
each mental society. Since everything produced by mental heat and light is
human in quality or form, it follows that the mental body of each person has
the human form. Also, the mental society formed by many individuals constructs
itself in the shape of the human body. Finally the entire collection of all
mental societies arrange themselves into the human form, hence the names Grand
Human and Grand Monster (see Diagrams).
When the ruling love is hellish all those we
associate with are clinging to hellish loves. The similarity and compatibility
of these hellish loves arrange themselves into the form of a deformed human
being, hence the name Grand Monster.
We determine our eternal ruling love by our
cumulative daily life choices. Acting from inherited and acquired egotistical
loves and their enjoyments, creates a permanent hellish ruling love. Fighting
these character weaknesses through conscience and moral behavior involves us in
a mental process of character regeneration. This is a lifelong process of
changing our hellish loves by clinging to heavenly ones. After resuscitation we
are left with the ruling love we practiced since birth.
God’s Management Techniques:
The Laws of Providence and Permissions
The anatomical origin of human life has been traced
to the mental sun of eternity. To the ocular view of the celestial mental body it
appears as a brilliant sun of heat and light, inundating and immersing the
entire expanse around itself, which is called the mental world of eternity.
This expanse is not “nothing” or “empty” or the absence of something. It is a space
and sphere constructed out of the mental heat substance and mental light
substance that stream out of the mental sun in continuous and endless variety.
This flow never stops and maintains the expanse of eternity in a living organic
and evolving progression. This expanse may be called rational ether because it has substance (“ether”) that is living,
organic, human and rational. These properties are Divine-Human.
It makes no sense to attribute these properties to
the mental sun as something inert. All things in the mental world of eternity
are living because whatever exists there must start with the building blocks in
mental ether. There is nothing else to build with. In the physical world all
things are constructed out of matter, chemical elements, energy. There are no
other building materials. These things are called “temporary” with a limited
“lifespan” because they are constructed out of physical matter in time and
space. But in the mental world all things are constructed out of mental heat
and mental light substance, and these are living and immortal.
Everything
that is living must be immortal.
Living or aliveness is a Divine-Human property. All
Divine properties are immortal and eternal. The mental sun of eternity is the
entry point or exchange point, between God and creation. God is uncreate, and
all properties in God are uncreate. Life or living is a property of God, hence
life must be immortal. People often think that even if God is the origin of
life, once God activates a being into living existence, that being or
individual now carries life within itself. We feel that we are alive in
ourselves from ourselves. We feel complete as an individual, living and
thinking, and doing, and reacting. This is my life. Even if it originates from
God, now it is my life. God has given me this life.
However we need to realize by rational thinking that
this feeling of “my life is mine” is an appearance that God wills to have us
feel this appearance as real. God imposes that appearance on us. God hides from our view or knowledge that whatever
property is bestowed on us from God remains God’s property. This includes:
life, intelligence, rationality, humanity, love, truth, compassion,
inventiveness, curiosity, desire for knowledge, artistic perceptions, talent,
aptitude, the ability to have consciousness of sensations, etc. What is left as
our own if all these things are God’s? The answer is that nothing is left as our own, except the will to cling to any and all of
these Divine properties, and the consciousness we experience as a result.
Once we examine the rational
implications of God’s omnipotence, we begin to understand that the
operations in our seven bodies could not integrate into a unit, and could not
progress and evolve without direct and immediate determinism over every detail
of these immense operations. God must be a Divine-Human Operating System in the
mind of every person, causing every little detail to progress and integrate
with every other little detail regarding what we notice around us and what we
ignore, regarding what comes into our consciousness and thinking and what gets
left out, or regarding what kind of loves and emotions are allowed to move us
moment by moment, and situation by situation. God controls the environment of
the seven bodies as well as the operations within each body. And this is done
for every human being from birth to endless eternity, and since the beginning
of the human race to endless increase and multiplication. Even the concept of
“infinity” seems too small to imagine what Divine Rational computing power it
takes to keep all this going in a pre-selected direction and for a Divine
purpose and goal. This goal is to increase the happiness and intelligence of
the human race to endless eternity and evolution.
God maintains the unity of the entire human race
through its continuous expansion, immortality, and eternity. Every newborn
human being on any planet in the expanding universe, is an organic unit that is
inducted into the human race through the vertical
community. The networking and interconnectedness is total. Every feeling
operation in the affective circulatory system of the mental body, every
thinking operation in the cognitive respiratory system, and every sensory
operation in the neuro-muscular sensorimotor system, that is going on in
individual, reverberates and spreads like an expanding circular wave, to the
individuals who are nearby, then to more distal areas, and finally to adjacent
communities.
The entire Grand Human
contains the synchronized breathing of each society, and of each individual in
that society. The individual mental operations and emotions of all get
transmitted in some varying form to each. Everything about human beings is
coordinated to work synergistically. Every part enters into the whole and the
whole into every part. This kind of organic functioning unity that is
increasing forever in complexity and evolution must be kept on track by God’s
omnipotent management techniques and procedures.
God’s omnipotence implies direct and immediate
control of all things. How this is actually accomplished may be made clearer to
our understanding when we consider there cannot be two infinites, or else
neither would be infinite. There is only infinite because it includes
everything. If God gives life and intelligence to a human being, does not God
lose some of this infinity? Hence when God gives us life and intelligence it is
only an appearance that this life and intelligence is ours. The life and
intelligence in us is God’s, not ours. Instead of “our intelligence” it may be
more accurate to say “God’s intelligence in us,” or “God’s life in me” but not
“my life” literally (only so in appearance).
The mental heat from the mental sun is also called
God’s infinite love substance, and the mental light is also called God’s
infinite truth substance, which is the same as rationality substance since rationality
comes from truth. Love substance is received by the affective circulatory
system of the mental body, while truth substance is received by the cognitive
respiratory system. When love and truth are reunited in our willing and
thinking, they produce consciousness in the neuro-skeletal sensorimotor system
of the mental body. The love and truth substance are from God and therefore
remain God’s love and truth, but they are now outside God and in creation. This
means that God is present in creation through love and truth substance in our
mental body. Hence it is said that God is omnipresent and omniscient. These two
properties of God are effected through love and truth in creation everywhere.
Once we understand that God manages the events in
our mind and the events in our environment, we can realize to what extent each
of us is intimately involved with God, regardless of whether we acknowledge it
or know about it. God manages the events and the mental states of every person
from birth to endless eternity. This idea is taught in all the major religions,
which probably comprise the vast majority of worshippers. Children learn that
God knows and sees everything, including their thoughts and intentions. They
also learn that God requires us to live our life in a certain way, and if we
don’t, we will suffer negative consequences both in this life and in the
afterlife. Besides religious worship we also need to inquire scientifically and
rationally into God’s management techniques and requirements. Specifically, how
does God lead us to a heavenly life in eternity?
In order to understand this rationally we need to
realize that God manages the life of human beings in two ways—direct (or
immediate) and indirect (or mediate). Both are necessary to achieve God’s
purpose in creation. God’s immediate control is made possible by the love and
truth substance out of which all things are created and activated in the mind.
Love and truth are God’s Own in our mind, hence, God in our mind. Whatever is
God’s Own is God’s, and therefore God. The indirect or mediate control is
exercised by God through the organized anatomical layers of the mental world of
eternity that surrounds the mental sun.
The first entry point of love and truth in human
consciousness is through the celestial mental body (VII, layers 4, 5, 6). From
there they influence by correspondence the layer below called the rational
mental body (VI). God’s mediate influence over the rational mental body is
through the celestial mental body. Following this, God influences the material
mental body through the rational mental body from the celestial mental body,
thus connecting all the regions of the mind through mediate control. The result
of this system of control is that the mental layers are united into one
functioning unit. Ultimately all of humanity is controlled by God through both
immediate and mediate control mechanisms.
An additional idea to understand is that God
exercises immediate control through two distinct principles of engagement
called the Laws of Providence and the
Laws of Permissions. One is for the
management of disorderly mental states called “evil,” while the other is for
the management of orderly mental states called “good.” Without knowing this
distinction it is not possible to answer rationally the question everyone has
been asking for centuries without having an adequate and fully rational answer: “If God is omnipotent and perfect in love, why does He allow evil and
suffering in human beings?” All the answers I have heard given all end up
more or less in the idea that God alone knows, or that we cannot understand
God’s ways, or that it has to do with giving us freedom, etc.
By considering God’s omnipotence and love in the
context of these two Divine management laws, we can understand that our
humanity (or humanness) lies in the ability to cling to God and through truth
from God. Our ability to love God makes us immortal and capable of conjugial
love in heavenly eternity. God cannot bring us to this eternal heavenly mental
state because only the clinging to it can get us there. To force us there
without our clinging to it would not make that mental state available to our
consciousness. It would be no different from a state of mental torture and
suffering, thus the opposite of heaven. Clinging to God is an ability we have
from birth but it is not actualized, or made functional, until we practice that
innate ability by clinging to God, or if we don’t know God, then clinging to
God’s orderliness and truth that every person has access to from conscience and
rational reflection.
Some people choose to practice this clinging to
orderliness and truth, others do not. For our modern generations everyone is
born with an inherited attraction to disorderly mental states, those that harm
us in the long run unless we manage them rationally. God has allowed these
“evil” mental states in human beings by means of the Law of Permissions. Only
those disorderly mental states are allowed that God uses to bring about a good
result for the benefit of all concerned or involved in that evil. Other evils
are not allowed to come into existence. This is the Law of Permissions. It is
for the management of disorderly mental states.
The law of Providence is for the management of
orderly states called “good.” Think about some of the good that has happened to
you today. You were able to open your eyes and use the ability to see around
you. This is good. You are able to read these lines right now because God is
managing your eye movements, your thinking about the meaning, and your motivation
to get through it or to memorize it. These events are orderly events managed by
God through the Law of Providence. The word “Providence” comes from “to
provide,” to indicate that God provides all the good we need moment by moment,
to continue living and progressing to a heavenly goal in eternity.
When you reflect on your day you will notice that
you typically oscillate between orderly and disorderly mental states. For
example, you are brushing your teeth – an orderly heavenly thing, and suddenly
you remember that your friend didn’t return your call yesterday. You start
swearing and feeling anxious in the stomach – a disorderly hellish mental
state. As another example, think about your snacks. One moment you are eating
and staying within your diet – an orderly heavenly thing, but minutes later you
are ingesting an extra candy bar and feeling guilty that you are not sticking
to your diet resolution – a disorderly hellish thing to do.
All day long we thus oscillate between orderly
mental states and disorderly mental states. God must manage both of these or
else chaos would be the result instead of a rational goal. The two laws of
Providence and Permissions allow God to do this continuous management. Now you
can think about the question of why an omnipotent God perfect in love allows a
baby to die, or a child to be molested, or a father to be killed in war, or a
terrorist to blow up innocent people, or a natural disaster that destroys towns
and brings on famine and sickness. These are the disorderly states that God
manages by the Laws of Permissions. God
allows only those evil events to take place that meet three rational and loving
criteria:
- it
maintains freedom to cling or not to cling to orderly states;
- every
detail of it can be turned into some good purpose to restore orderly
states in human beings;
- all human
beings must be able ultimately to benefit from every evil and suffering
that God allows.
The Laws of Permissions account for the existence of
the societies of the Grand Monster or
“hell.” God manages evil with evil, and good with good. After the
dying/resuscitation process everyone experiences an organic development by
which the orderly and disorderly mental states are physiologically separated.
All our traits are rearranged and placed under the command of the ruling love
we have been clinging to in our mental and personality development since birth.
There are two categories of ruling loves – orderly and disorderly, that is,
heavenly and hellish. Once our traits are so organized into a duality of
opposed ruling loves, we experience the necessity to cling to one or the other
ruling love. It is not possible to resist this process and every human being
undergoes it soon after the dying/resuscitation process.
What determines which choice we make? Clearly, few
other questions can be of greater importance to us since this choice is
permanent and forever. Do we choose a life in heaven or in hell? In order to
understand how we can prepare for that choice and manage our eternal future we
need to consider the process of regeneration.
Regeneration and the Divine Psychologist
It is clear from self-observation that we oscillate
between heavenly and hellish mental states in the course of a normal day, or
even hour. In one moment we resolve to stick to our diet plan and therefore not
eat desert with everybody else around the table (a heavenly trait or motive),
and a minute or two later we are eating the desert with everybody else, thus
giving in to a temptation we were trying to fight (a hellish trait). One moment
we’re in a good mood and humming a song (a heavenly emotion), and a minute
later we realize we forgot an important appointment, and we feel rage and
disgust against ourselves (a hellish emotion).
An employer treats his employees fairly (heavenly
trait), for the most part, but sometimes he allows himself to be discriminatory
for personal preference (a hellish trait). We may be honest most of the time (a
heavenly trait), but sometimes we cheat to gain an unmerited advantage (a
hellish trait). We can forgive and make peace from a sense of compassion (a
heavenly trait), or we can carry a grudge and try to hurt someone’s reputation.
We can be cruel and selfish, but also kind and generous. All day long we add to
the cumulative heap of good and evil impulses, altruistic and selfish motives,
kind and hurtful acts, wise and stupid words. Our life is an accumulation of heaven and hell within us.
If this process were left to continue unmanaged all
the heavenly traits would be destroyed or converted by the hellish traits and
we would become evil caricatures of ourselves and an image of the Grand Monster
or eternal societies of hell in the human mind. The good and the evil, or the
heavenly and the hellish, destroy each other, leaving what is destroyed, hence
bad and evil. Evil wins when good is not protected. It is absolutely necessary therefore for God to manage this heap so
that the heavenly is not destroyed.
Regeneration refers to a Divine therapy to
which every human being must submit in order to have heaven and hell
anatomically separated in the mind. This is accomplished
by allowing the opposing traits to be adjacent to each other, or to lie on top
of one another as in a heap of vines in the backyard composed of both pretty flowers
and tasty fruit berries, mixed with prickly and poisonous bushes. For awhile
they can be left to grow together because their roots don’t mix with each
other. God intervenes in our mental procedures to make sure that heavenly and
hellish impulses remain separated as to their roots. This process of separation
is effected by God but it proceeds in proportion to the individual’s
cooperation. God allows the individual to resist regeneration, in which case
the good and bad roots gradually interpenetrate each other.
God’s
role in the activity of our regeneration is called the Divine Psychologist.
In order to understand the process of regeneration
we need to consider two additional ideas, namely, temptations and remains. Experiencing
a temptation
refers to a mental state of conflict brought about by the Divine Psychologist through
having to face some threat by an outside event, or through interior reflection
accompanied by disturbing emotions. For example, while you’re watching TV you
realize that the volume is on pretty high, which is what you like when you
watch sports. But now you remember that your roommate and your neighbors next
door have complained that your TV is too loud. You feel a conflict. You feel
like turning it down for their sake, but you also feel like enjoying it the way
it is. This is a temptation state.
The
Divine Psychologist is now intervening in such a way as to maximize your
conflict. For example, the phone rings and the next door
neighbor yells at you because of the TV and calls you disrespectful names. You
feel mad like hell now. Your temptation doubles in intensity. You have the
impulse to make the volume even louder, to teach your neighbor a lesson. But
you resist. You don’t like the idea of being an obnoxious person that gives others
trouble. You now turn the TV volume down a little. You remember your big
brother who was always nice to everyone. Maybe you can be like him. Etc. Etc.
You can see from this type of reflection that we
experience alternating impulses moment by moment, some heavenly and kind, some
hellish and selfish. The Divine Psychologist keeps these two types of impulses
separated in your affective circulatory system. Just like the blue blood
containing cell waste is not allowed to mix with the red blood containing clean
oxygen. As long as the two don’t mix, the body can be nourished and survives.
The Divine Psychologist works with every person to
effect this separation. Conscience is a
mental organ that responds directly to input from the Divine Psychologist.
It’s like a Divine signaling system. Conscience delivers a good emotion when we
accept its judgment or prompting, and a disturbing emotion when we reject it.
People have to work hard to kill the voice of conscience in their mind, but
many do so anyway. Eventually they don’t feel it at all so that they lose all
ability to distinguish between good and evil, and between rational and
irrational. At that point, whatever feels good is defined as good, appears
good, and is seen as good. And whatever thoughts or ideas agree with this good,
is defined and seen as rational truth. There is no objective evaluation
possible within this framework. We are locked within our own opinion, whether
it is false or true.
The word remains refers to the collection of orderly impulses we experience in the course of our daily lives.
For example, we see a banana peel on the floor and pick it up to avoid someone
from slipping on it. What made you do this altruistic act? It had to be
preceded by an altruistic impulse prompted by your conscience or your desire to
be a person of integrity. All day we may have such good impulses and they would
merely be part of our history were it not for the happy fact that the Divine
Psychologist collects these good impulses and keeps them safe for our immortal
life after we undergo the dying/resuscitation process. Almost every moment of
living contains some remains of innocence, altruism, sociality, goodness. All
those heavenly impulses and affections cumulate and begin to fill out our
heavenly personality in the celestial mental body. Without remains we would not
have a coherent integration of the good impulses and affections into a Grand
Human personality.
The Divine Psychologist also collects our evil or
disorderly impulses that we have on a daily basis. Our evil remains make up our
Grand Monster personality while our good remains make up our Grand Human
personality. Following our resuscitation we undergo an intense period of
self-discovery through various experiences and events that the Divine
Psychologist arranges for each person to undergo. During this period we each
face ourselves. We see the Grand Human personality in us, and we see the Grand
Monster personality also in us. One personality is ruled by a heavenly ruling
love, while the other is ruled by a hellish ruling love. Now we have a clear
choice. Which one are we willing to let
go for the sake of keeping the other one. That choice determines our
eternal future, whether we join one of the societies of the Grand Human and
their heavenly life, or whether we join one of the societies of the Grand
Monster and their hellish life.
This
kind of orderly choice making has to be engineered by the Divine Psychologist
or else it would never work out.
For instance, what would happen if the Divine
Psychologist stacks the odds in favor of a happy life in heaven by filling up
our Grand Human personality with all sorts of heavenly impulses which we never
actually had, but could provide us with a happy eternal life. Such an approach
does not work out. For as soon as our consciousness enters our Grand Human
personality, now aggrandized by these additional loves, we would not recognize
those mental states as our own. It would be like visiting a neighbor’s house
for the week end and pretending that it is our home. Sooner or later the
pretense must stop. We don’t want to spend our lives in a home that we only
pretend is our home. And so the Grand Human personality would feel like a
mental trap or prison, and we would feel like we are in hell, not in heaven.
Hence you can see the importance of the work of the
Divine Psychologist in each of us. Without our remains of good impulses we
would not have an integrated heavenly personality in which our consciousness
can spend the rest of eternity. The Divine Psychologist works with us by the second,
by the minute, by the hour, by the day and night, to provide us with
experiences and events to which we can react with positive impulses. If you
examine your train of thoughts in various situations during the day you will
discover that some of these thoughts are negative and hostile or judgmental and
condemnatory, punishing and retaliatory. These kinds of thoughts are evoked by
negative and hostile feelings and reactions.
These negative ant-social feelings are ruled by a
ruling love that might be selfism, the enjoyment of revenge, the desire for
power and popularity for the sake of manipulation and domination, proneness to irrational judgment, etc. These
are evil loves because they connect the person to the societies of the Grand
Monster. The more cumulative connections we establish, maintain, and cultivate
with the societies of the Grand Monster, the stronger the tie and bond grows,
producing an organic root tying your material mental body to the material
mental bodies of those who already live in the Grand Monster.
When we resuscitate we feel an irresistible
attraction and bond with those societies, and upon our second death, we let go
of all heavenly traits, and happily enter the company of those with whom we
have been connected all along. Unfortunately the honeymoon does not last long
when we discover that everyone here desires domination, and enjoys revenge, and
thinks irrationally, without morality, without restraints. Then our life
becomes an endless series of evil mental states such as rage, insanity,
fantasy, fear, and suffering, and totally devoid of human feelings such as
sociality, compassion, love of truth, love of children and and
innocence, enjoyment of beauty and intelligence, etc. We can avoid this fate by
undergoing the process of character regeneration prior to the
dying/resuscitation process.
Regeneration
proceeds through new temptations and progresses through cumulative remains.
The Divine Psychologist arranges events so that we
can face spiritual combat against our
disorderly impulses. Only those temptations are given us that we are able
to overcome by means of our conscience. The Divine Psychologist does not expose
us to temptations that we can’t resist since this would be tantamount to
causing us to fail, to give in, and thus to strengthen the connection to that
negative impulse. During a temptation it appears to us that we are alone, that
we are fighting the mental battle on our own, and that we are putting up the
effort and power to resist the temptation through our own power and
determination. This is the appearance, not the reality.
The reality is that the Divine Psychologist has all
the power through omnipotence, which rationally means that we have zero power
on our own. To think therefore that we are fighting alone through our own power
is therefore delusional and irrational, thus disorderly and hellish. Instead,
we want to stay rational in our thinking, so we can understand that it is the
Divine Psychologist who wills it that we experience the appearance that we are
acting from ourselves and alone. This appearance is willed by the Divine
Psychologist for our sake, so that we may accept our life as free and
independent, so that we don’t feel like a robot that is merely activated by
God’s will.
Heavenly impulses lead to pro-social behavior,
altruism, community building, collective productivity, and organic evolution to
ever higher human potentials. Hellish impulses lead to anti-social behavior, selfism,
community breakdown, irrationality, destructiveness, and organic devolution to
lower forms of consciousness and life. The distinction between “heavenly” and
“hellish” traits is therefore organic, biological, and intrinsic. The
distinction is not arbitrary, moralistic, cultural, or idealistic.
What
about people who don’t know God, or who don’t believe that there is such a
thing as God? Or who believe that there may be a God but that things in the
world run on their own through the laws of nature that God created.
God is running everything in a person’s life through
omnipotence, and not by permission of the individual. God must manage the mind
of all individuals regardless of their beliefs and theories. Living is an
organic process. God manages the growth of plants without any cooperation from
the plants. God manages the wind, the rain, the random curve, and the animal
distribution in an area. God manages every possible detail in people’s lives
through omnipotence. People who do not relate to God, and people who deny God’s
existence, are just as dependent on their conscience as those who relate to
God. Conscience tells everyone between right and wrong, good and bad, and
sometimes between true and false. God maintains the conscience in every person.
God also allows every individual to reject conscience, and even to silence or
kill conscience in themselves.
Conscience is formed by God within a cultural
framework. People from different cultures and historical epochs have had each
their own community conscience, and yet if you examine the content of people’s
conscience from diverse cultures, they agree in all the basics. This is because
the one and only God activates and maintains the conscience of all individuals,
making sure that it contains only such loves and character traits that are
compatible with heaven. The result is that the Grand Human societies are
diverse but still compatible with good and truth. There is only one source of
good and truth, namely, the mental heat and light from the mental sun, and this
is God’s good substance and truth substance.
Why This Is a Perfect World Despite Evil
Now what happens when we give in to temptations,
throw in the towel in the inner spiritual fight of good vs. evil, declare
ourselves free from God's commandments, religious rules, or the dictates of our
conscience? Note that this non-theistic or negative bias attitude could be
temporary or permanent in any one individual. Note also that people who
practice a religion may do so spiritually or naturally. To practice religion naturally
means that you only let it affect your outward behavior and not what you are
thinking to yourself and what you are feeling. In other words, we play an
outward role of respectability and sincerity, but inwardly within our own
private consciousness, we maintain ideas that would not be considered respectable,
and emotions that would not be considered peaceful or sincere. We thus lead a
double life to ourselves.
It is common and normal to lead a double life at
times. As children we learn to survive and avoid punishment by being deceitful.
As adolescents we learn to hide our emotions so that we stay out of trouble. We
learn to feign sincerity, to hide our intentions, to carry secrets. All along
the Divine Psychologist has been managing and controlling what each individual
sees, hears, thinks, and feels. This total management control insures that the
person grows up with an integrated personality that is made up of both healthy
and unhealthy organic traits. The Divine Psychologist also saves the innocent
remains of every moment and organically grows the celestial mental body that
will serve the person in the Grand Human of eternity.
When we become young and mature adults we are given
a radically new power and responsibility about our future. It is the power of rational thinking that is not based on material
ideas. The Divine Psychologist gives conscious life to the rational mental
body that is based on correspondence with the celestial mental body (see diagrams). This is layer 7i or
the interior of layer 7, which is the rational mind (VI). This may be called
the interior rational layer of the material mental body. It is the highest form
of consciousness available to us anatomically prior to the dying/resuscitation
process. This consciousness is based on rational loves and rational thoughts
that correspond to the celestial order that forms our celestial mental body and
consciousness.
With the functional operation of the rational mind
we are able to form ideas and principles that are not sourced in the material
ideas of our spatiotemporal life in the physical body. Now for the first time
the Divine Psychologist can appear to us rationally. In other words, we are now able to understand the notion of
rational proof as opposed to empirical proof. God’s existence is now a
rational reality. Our rational mental body can see God’s rational mental body.
Prior to this new celestial-rational mental state we had a material
consciousness of God and God’s existence. In that state we spoke of our “faith”
and “intuition” or “inner feeling” etc. These feelings are still there in the
material consciousness of our daily life, but in moments of reflection or calm,
we can raise our consciousness to the rational mental body, and we can then see
God’s rational mental body.
But before we are activated in our
celestial-rational mind, our idea of God is material, not celestial. We can
then believe that what matters to God is how we act on the outside, whether or
not we treat people decently and meet our expected responsibilities to family,
career, and community. Certainly this is necessary to God, and we must all
achieve this kind of life. But it is not sufficient. Following the
dying/resuscitation process we are no longer in our outward personality (layer
9 or external part of the material mental body), which was tied by
correspondence to our physical body. These personality features that lay in our
outward personality include our culture, language, knowledge, appearance, and
habitual interaction patterns with others. What is left of you now is the inner
portion of the material mental body and the rational mental body (both exterior
or materialized, and interior or celestial-rational).
You can see from this that if you continued to lead
a double life in adulthood, when your outward personality is removed, your
consciousness falls into the mentality you maintained privately within your
mind. This inward personality may not be sane! What a shock! Does this mean
that we are collectively sane on the outside but crazy individually on the
inside? Yes.
All you need to do is to confirm this through your
own direct empirical observations on yourself in daily life. No one has this
data available on you. No brain scan or ethnographic interview can reveal it or
measure it. You are the only source of objective data on your mind because you
are the only observer available for that task. So if you want to test the
hypothesis given here, you can.
Observe what your thoughts are made of when someone
angers you or puts you in danger. Or when someone discriminates against you. Or
when you discover someone has been spreading malicious rumors about you, or has
obtained through deceit something that belongs to you. These are mental states
in which your inward personality becomes self-righteous and operates at a more
intense level so that you are able to monitor your thoughts, emotions,
fantasies, words, intentions, wishes, etc. Think now what would happen if this
irate, self-centered, irrational inward personality becomes your outward
personality without any check or restraint exercised by your rational mind.
This is what happens after the dying/resuscitation process. The crazy unchecked
inward personality becomes the crazy unchecked outward personality.
The process of regeneration is an organic function
that is activated through our conscious intervention. The first step is called
entering the state of reformation.
We review everything we believe, our principles and attitudes, our lifestyle
habits, our relationship interactions, all in the light of the new
celestial-rational understanding (layer 7i or VI)
that our conscience receives from the Divine Psychologist. Through this mental
activity we rearrange everything in our material mind to make each thing in
correspondence and compatible with the celestial order. When this task is completed
sufficiently we begin our regeneration. We are now armed with new knowledge
about our eternal future and our task at hand. In the light of this
celestial-rational knowledge and understanding we are able to fashion spiritual
truths for ourselves to serve in combat against our temptations. Every
temptation must be defeated with these celestial-rational truths. Without them
we cannot win all the battles. The Divine Psychologist is limited by the truths
we know or are willing to love sincerely.
If we remain in our material ideas of God and what
God wants of us, we make it impossible for the Divine Psychologist in our
rational mind to bring spiritual temptations to us because we would not resist
them -- which would harm our spiritual future in eternity. The only way we can
change our inherited selfish traits is to reject them freely and consciously, because
they are contrary to our life in the Grand Human. No other motivation can
succeed in altering how we think and feel inwardly, but only how we act and
talk outwardly. This is because we are in inward mental states after
resuscitation.
For almost three decades Swedenborg observed
thousands of people who were recently resuscitated after the death of their
physical body. He interviewed many of them concerning their knowledge and
beliefs about God. They all were still able to recall clearly their memories
from earth, which we can do for awhile after resuscitation, and before settling
into our inward personality, which is who we really are underneath our veneer. Swedenborg
discovered that people after resuscitation, thus in their immortal eternity
body, cannot hold on to their rules of conscience and their religious beliefs
when these were merely outward norms of
conduct that they followed by habit and lifestyle. In their inward personality they were of the
opposite disposition.
Because they now rejected all rules of religion, conscience,
morality, and respectability they felt completely free to feel, think, and do
whatever they felt like spontaneously, uncritically (See also: Section 7.0.4.1).
And because they had not undergone temptations and character reformation, their
inherited tendencies and loves for evil and cruel things now took over
completely, and they turned into an immortal life of hellish pursuits,
delights, and sufferings.
On the other hand, Swedenborg observed some people
after their resuscitation that had no religion of any kind, but had had a
strong sense of conscience and natural morality and respect for others, for
animals, and for nature. After their resuscitation, when they were told and
taught about God, they were instantly able to accept it and to understand it
rationally, and were able to enter the life of conjugial heaven to eternity. In
other words, the Divine Psychologist works with all individuals regardless of their
culture or belief, through their conscience and through the activation of their
celestial-rational understanding that is independent of culture, history, or
the physical world.
This mental state allows the individual to love
truth for its own sake and to love goodness as superior to loving evil. As a
result people in this mental state can progress and evolve in regeneration by
meeting the temptations of life and handling them through their conscience and
inner rational understanding. After resuscitation their love of truth and goodness
allows them to accept the new knowledge they acquire about God, and thereby
they can enter the Grand Human society with which they have bonded during their
life of love for the good and for the truth. Anyone who leads a life of love for the good and the truth is
organically bonded to the Grand Human. Anyone who does not have an inward love for goodness and truth is
bonded to the Grand Monster.
People look at crime, social disorder, human
unhappiness everywhere, and they conclude that either there is no God, or that
God is not omnipotent, or that God is both good and evil. These are all false
conclusions. In fact, society is perfect for its spiritual purpose or goal, and
God is maintaining it in perfect order for that purpose, since God is
omnipotent to carry out what He wants and plans. The difficulty has been for
people to see rationally that society and life on earth has a higher purpose
related to our immortality. Crime and disasters cannot reduce or take away from
this purpose. Crime and human selfishness do make our experience on earth more
ghastly, but this experience does not
interfere with why we are here. God will not allow anything to interfere
with this purpose.
The perfection of the world and of society
which is maintained and controlled by God, is that it gives people a life in
which at any moment they can begin their character reformation and preparation
for eternal happiness in heaven. No one is excluded.
Everyone has an equal opportunity.
God maintains our ability to do and to think evil
things just as he maintains our ability to think and do good things. If God took
away our ability to think and do evil things, this would not be a perfect world
because we could not regenerate our inherited character and we would be
compelled to a life of eternal hell.
At any moment of our daily willing and thinking, the
Divine Psychologist puts us up to a choice between choosing evil or good. The
cumulative moment by moment choices we make every hour, day by day, over the
decades of our life on earth – many millions of choices -- constitute our
character. This is the vehicle of our
immortality. After our resuscitation we are immersed by the Divine
Psychologist into an intense life of recapitulation and self-discovery. All
societal shackles are cast off in absolute liberty when we fully realize that
we are now immortal, in a world where we are free to exercise our desires and
loves whatever they are. Now at last, without social pressure,
responsibility, expectations, and rules of conscience, we can be whatever our
feelings and thinking prompt us to be -- purely selfish, totally egocentric,
wild and mad, cruel and obsessive, prompt to extremes and excesses of any kind
whatsoever. These feelings and imaginings now create a hellish environment
around us, where we continue our life with others who are similar to us.
When
we think about it now, it is clear that we should avoid at all cost from ending
our life on earth with a hellish personality on the inside, even if we have a
civilized personality on the outside.
God's purpose in providing revelation of spiritual
truths in the form of Sacred Scripture
allows us to see rationally that we must undergo regeneration of character in
order to have a heavenly life in eternity. And as well, to teach us the
techniques that are effective in this regeneration effort -- how we are to
cooperate with the Divine Psychologist to reciprocate. By acknowledging the
co-presence of the Divine Psychologist in our mind, by studying Sacred
Scripture through a celestial-rational understanding, and by reflecting deeply
on our conscience, we become spiritually enlightened so that we can acquire celestial-rational
truths with which to resist spiritual temptations and consequently to be
conjoined with God through willing what is good and thinking in accordance with
our rational understanding of truth.
The Vertical Community
See
Diagrams 6, 11, 13, 15, 19, 21, 22, 23.
(Reminder: shift-Click to get a new page
for the diagrams so you can look at them while reading the text below, after
adjusting the two windows. Or, you can print the diagrams.)
We are members of two communities, one in time and
one in eternity. The vertical community
contrasts with the horizontal community. Our physical socio-legal identity and
social presence in community is located in the context of our horizontal
community, that is, the surrounding locales, cities, countries, and world. Our
location in the horizontal community is marked by place and time of birth,
hence culture and language. Our vertical community is not in time and place,
not in culture and language, but in loves and thoughts, consequently in
consciousness. Those who are similar in loves have compatible thoughts, which
localizes them close to each other in the vertical community.
An analogy to the vertical community is a word
thesaurus. If you look at the classification
outline of Roget’s Thesaurus you will find certain concepts or ideas to be
near each other, being semantic neighbors
in their vertical classification area, as for example:
These five expressions or ideas are close neighbors
as indicated by their classification outline number. Contrast this semantic neighborhood
with a more distant zone:
Another every day system that reflects mental
geography are the subject headings classification systems that organize book
collections in libraries, and allow people to find the needle in the haystack.
When you “browse” the catalog, or the shelves of books in the library stacks,
you will find that books that are located close to each other share a specific
subject matter, and there are thousands of such categories in a large library
system. Physical location of books indicates their topical relationship to
neighboring books. In effect, you can inspect a shelf of books and see
different titles, content, and perspectives on the one topic or subject that
you are interested in. Thanks to the rational system of subject matter
classification, physical geography
corresponds to semantic geography. Or we can say “mental geography” instead
of “semantic geography” because what is semantic is always mental.
The
world of meanings is the world of consciousness.
Meanings are discretely arranged in each mental zone (see diagram 16). (Reminder: you can shift-Click to
have it opened in another window.) Divine Truth can also be called Divine
Meaning. Hence mental light from the mental sun is the source of all meanings
that we can experience through the cognitive respiratory system of the mental
body. The celestial mental body gives us
a consciousness of God’s meanings or truths, that is least distorted in the
human mind. This is called a celestial-rational understanding of Divine Truth
or Rationality. It is based on being able to discern celestial-rational or
interior-rational correspondences of Sacred Scripture. An appropriate form of
Sacred Scripture exists in each mental zone (see this volume: http://www.theisticpsychology.org/books/theistic/ch12.htm
)
God provides Sacred
Scriptures in each mental zone as a source of celestial-rational ideas that
are not in any way related to physical things. We are informed by God that
there is an afterlife in eternity and that we have an immortal body with which
we live our life in either heaven or hell, depending on how we live our lives
and what loves we cling to after death. This is perfect rationality because it
corresponds to God’s rationality as expressed in Divine Speech written down in
Sacred Scripture. What God speaks always has a literal exterior in each mental
zone, as well as a hidden interior that contains infinite wisdom arranged in
perfect rationality.
There is a hidden rational science in Sacred
Scripture and it can be reconstructed through the language of correspondences.
When we read Sacred Scripture in the meanings of its literal-historical sense,
our consciousness is formed in our material mental body (V) (or layers 9 and 8)
(see Diagrams). Even if we “universalize” or
“idealize” the literal sense into a principle or doctrine, it will remain an
abstracted expression of the literal. In other words, in all such doctrine, the
literal meanings are at their center.
In order to read Sacred Scripture at the celestial-
rational level (rather than the material-rational level), we need to use our
knowledge of correspondences to extract the
rational-level meanings that are hidden within the literal. Divine Speech
expressed in Sacred Scripture always has multiple layers of meanings since when
God speaks, all of humanity is addressed, thus all of the mental zones of
eternity, from top to bottom (see diagrams). The
content of God’s Speech – what God wants to reveal to us – are meanings about
God, reality, and ourselves. God’s meanings descend into the human mind
starting from the top, which give us celestial-rational correspondences of
Sacred Scripture. These meanings maintains our consciousness at the heavenly or
“angelic” level. God’s meanings in Sacred Scripture form people’s consciousness
at each anatomical level.
The content of our awareness or conscious life is
meaning, but not solely that. We are also conscious of our sensations and our
motor determinations and readinesses (movements, stance, tension, vibration).
The hierarchy of loves in the affective circulatory system mirrors the
hierarchy of meanings in the cognitive respiratory system. This correspondence
reflects the organic fact that the affective and cognitive systems develop and
operate interdependently Neither can operate independently of the other, just
as our blood could not circulate without our breathing. (see earlier section).
The Swedenborg Reports are unique because they give
us much empirical data about the mental world of eternity, as observed by
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1771) for 27 continuous years of living life in dual
consciousness. He was aware of his physical body and its surroundings while he
was also aware of the surroundings of his mental body, both material and
celestial. In about three dozen books of details Swedenborg described life such
as it is for everyone after the dying/resuscitation process. With his dual
awareness he was able to observe the vertical community and how we are connected
in our thoughts and emotions with those who are no longer attached to a
physical body. Swedenborg uses several terms to refer to people after
resuscitation, including, good spirits, evil spirits, angels, devils, genii, and
others. These terms are familiar to everyone from education and literature.
However it is not generally known that these are terms for people after the
dying/resuscitation process. They indicate the character of the ruling love of
the person, as will be seen below.
The influence of people on each other across the
dying/resuscitation dividing line was constantly observed by Swedenborg. Here
is one instance from the earlier phase of his observations in which he
discusses “influx” or the interacting influence in the vertical community. I
have added explanatory comments in square brackets [.].
Quoting from the Swedenborg Reports (published in
1753):
AC 6200. Because I have been living -
constantly, for nine years now - in company with spirits and angels, I have
been able to take careful note of the nature of influx. When I have been
thinking, the material ideas in my thought have presented themselves so to
speak in the middle of a wave-like motion. I have noticed that the wave was
made up of nothing other than such ideas as had become attached to the
particular matter in my memory that I was thinking about, and that a person's
entire thought is seen by spirits in this way.
[In our mental body we
can see each other’s affective-circulatory system and cognitive-respiratory system.
Hence we have visual sight of a person’s stream of thoughts and emotions.
(That’s a nice feature of our afterlife, don’t you think?)]
But
nothing else enters that person's awareness then apart from what is in the
middle which has presented itself as a material idea.
[We are aware of only a
fragment of an idea we are thinking about. And this fragment is the material
portion of the idea. Hence we are not aware of the rational or celestial
portions of our own ideas.]
I
have likened that wave round about to spiritual wings which serve to raise the
particular topic the person is thinking about up out of his memory. And in this
way the person becomes aware of that subject matter. The surrounding material
in which the wave-like motion takes place contained countless things that
harmonized with the matter I was thinking about. This was made clear to me
by the fact that from those things spirits living in a more perfect sphere knew
everything I had ever learned on that particular subject. It accordingly showed
me that spirits take in and absorb everything a person knows, while genii, who
are interested solely in his desires and affections, do the same to all aspects
of his loves.
[ Note these points:
(1) one idea or topic is constructed out of “countless things” or concepts and
sub-ideas. (2) People in the afterlife have access to each other’s memories,
knowledges, chain of thinking (cognitive system), as well as emotions and loves
(affective system). (3) Due to their specific loves, people specialize in
accessing either each other’s thoughts and reasonings (“spirits”) or each
other’s emotions and loves (“genii”). (4) This vertical interaction process
also operates across the dying/resuscitation divide so that spirits can access
our thoughts while genii can access our loves. However, this vertical
interaction process is not conscious either on our part, or on their part.]
[2]
Let the following example illustrate the point. Whenever I have thought about a
person I knew, an image of that person, like that which comes to anyone's mind
when his name is mentioned, presented itself in the middle. But round about the
image of him - looking like the wings of a bird that are moving up and down -
there was everything I had known and thought since childhood regarding that
person. Consequently the entire character of that person as it existed in my
thought and affection presented itself to spirits in an instant. The like has also happened whenever I have thought about any
city. From the sphere round about moving like a wave spirits knew in an instant
everything I had ever seen in it or known about it. The same thing has applied
to my scientific knowledge. (AC 6200)
This is the first time in the scientific literature
that an investigator was able to access the vertical community by direct observation.
Anyone with dual consciousness would be able to confirm Swedenborg’s
observations. Each of will be able to do so after we undergo the
dying/resuscitation process which takes about 33 hours, according to
Swedenborg’s careful observations for 27 years.
Where Do Thoughts Come From?
The phrase vertical community was coined in theistic psychology to designate the fact that God keeps the entire human race integrated in their mental operations and consequently in the breathing of the mental body. This is one of the most amazing scientific findings to be found in the Swedenborg Reports. We are connected or networked into an online synchronous ongoing vertical community through our mental body, which is the organ where thinking and feeling operations take place (see anatomical diagrams). When our cognitive-respiratory system is activated, we experience thoughts coming into our awareness. This is an anatomical or physiological process of the mental body. Now the big question everyone has been asking for a long time:
Where do thoughts come from?
No scientist in the negative bias mode of thinking has ever been able to give a rational answer to this question. One irrational theory is that thoughts don't really exist, and that only electro-chemical operations of the brain cells exist. This is called reductionism in science. Another irrational answer is that thoughts do exist, but only temporarily, while the electro-chemical operations of the brain cells remain active. According to this view, thoughts somehow “emerge” from these electrical activities. Another traditional idea in non-theistic psychology is that thoughts -- cognitive operations -- are memory images created by sensory input. The reason this explanation is irrational is that it equates a natural or physical operation in time and space ("sensory input") with a mental or spiritual operation in eternity that is outside time and space. Sensations and images are nowhere located in the physical body, which contains only neuro-chemical activity. Images and sensations are located in our mental body, which we have from birth, along with our physical body.
A rational answer to where thoughts come from, would have to assume the positive bias of empiricist dualism and acknowledge that the Swedenborg Reports deserve to be examined for their scientific merit. These reports present empirical proof of the reality of the vertical community from Swedenborg's three decades of daily observations in the world of eternity, being in a mental state of consciousness capable of communicating face to face, and conduct conversations and interviews.
The idea of the vertical community means that we are never alone in our mind, but
are unconsciously connected to the mind of others in the afterlife in a
vertical community network.
We have the illusion that our mental
world is an individual's world, while our physical and social world is
interactive.
We know that socially we are not alone in the world of our horizontal community. We may be physically alone in a room or in a swimming pool, but we are not alone in the city. We are well aware of our horizontal community that extends from house and neighborhood, to city and country, and the planet globally. We call it our horizontal community because it is located in physical space and time. But our vertical community is outside time and space, in the eternity of the mental world. There is only one mental world.
Every human being is born a dual citizen, with a physical body in time, and a mental body in eternity, outside time and outside physical space or energy. Our thoughts and feelings cannot be located in time and physical space for they are not made of physical matter or physical energy. Hence it is that we are born into eternity, which automatically makes us immortal.
A thought or feeling cannot die because "death" applies only to the natural world of physical time, space, energy, and matter. Our mental body grows as the physical body grows, and at the death of the physical body, the mental body continues its life in eternity. Swedenborg lived consciously in both worlds for 27 years, and was able to confirm by many observations and experiments, that every individual is resuscitated about 30 hours after the death of the physical body and then continues life forever in that new environment.
In Swedenborg's Reports we have the scientific fact, observationally confirmed, that an individual's mental world is actually a social world in which we are surrounded by many others who are in their mental world. While we are not aware of the vertical community, prior to resuscitation, we are fully aware of it after resuscitation when we are no longer conscious in the natural mind through the physical body.
Quoting from the Swedenborg Reports: [“man” = our state before we die; “spirit” = our state after we die]
TCR 475. Man does not know that in respect to his mind he is in the midst of spirits, for the reason that the spirits with whom he is in company in the spiritual world, think and speak spiritually, while his own spirit thinks and speaks naturally so long as he is in the material body; and the natural man cannot understand or perceive spiritual thought and speech, nor the reverse.
[Our mental body identifies with the physical body so fully that we believe we are the physical body. Neither spirits nor us are aware of this networked connection with each other, moment by moment for our entire life. Our physical body eyes cannot see them and their mental environment, while their mental body eyes cannot see our physical body and its environment.]
This is why
spirits cannot be seen. But when the spirit of man [= when we become
conscious in our mental body] is in
company with spirits in their world, he is also in spiritual thought and speech
with them, because his mind is interiorly spiritual but exteriorly natural;
therefore by means of his interiors he communicates with spirits, while by
means of his exteriors he communicates with men. By such communication man has
a perception of things, and thinks about them analytically. If it were not for
such communication, man would have no more thought or other thought than a
beast, and if all connection with spirits were taken away from him, he would
instantly die. (TCR 475)
This passage indicates that we have a conscious natural mind or mental body and an unconscious spiritual mind or celestial mental body. The conscious material mind (V, layers 9, 8, 7) thinks in a natural language composed of concepts and ideas that are material or time-bound and place-bound. The unconscious spiritual mind or celestial mental body thinks in a spiritual or universal and innate language of the thought. Hence it is that we are not aware of what's going in our celestial mental body which thinks in a spiritual language, not material or natural language. The spiritual language and thought is constructed solely with concepts and ideas that have “state” and “eternity” in them, and never time, place, culture, history, finance, politics, etc., all of which are tied implicitly to the physical world and its conditions and limitations.
These two portions of our mind are functionally connected and influence each other through the laws of correspondences, though we are not aware of this interconnection. Swedenborg's state of living in dual consciousness required that he be conscious both in his natural mind (or material mental body), and in his spiritual mind (or celestial mental body). Normally, we become conscious in our spiritual mind during the dying/ resuscitation process, when we lose our awareness of the physical body. Upon regaining consciousness a few hours later our natural mind and its material contents are with us, but our awareness of them gradually wanes because they are of no importance to us in the new environment of eternity. Instead, our consciousness is now filled with the urgent demands of our ruling love and its sub-loves. These were laying hidden and buried while we were attached to the physical body. Now our ruling love emerges with irresistible power as there is no longer anything physical, legal, or moral that can stop it from fulfilling its desires and anticipations.
The passage above also states that thinking in our conscious natural mind is possible only when our unconscious spiritual mind is in communication with other spiritual minds. This is the vertical community. If such communication were cut off, we would cease to think, hence, cease to be human. Our individual “private” thoughts and feelings are spiritually public social events, consisting of interactive exchanges with others in our vertical community. Swedenborg calls this relationship "communication with spirits" and "being in company with spirits."
Whether we live in heaven or in hell, and consequently experience the quality of life proper to each, depends on the habits and loves in our thoughts and feelings that we accumulate over a lifetime of daily choices. Our daily choices depend on the character of those with whom we share loves in the vertical community. The spiritual company we keep determines the character of our vertical community. This is determined by the character or quality of our loves. We hold these loves in common with them. This is what binds us together with specific people and societies in the Grand Human and the Grand Monster of the vertical community. The way each individual mind operates is a consequence of the character of the spirits in the individual's vertical community, moment by moment, as reflected in the person's thinking and feeling, from birth to endless immortality.
When we are regenerating the Divine Psychologist changes the connections we maintain with specific spiritual societies. We are faced with temptations that reveal strong hellish loves, providing us with enjoyments to which we seem to be very attached from inheritance and habit. For example, we hate being criticized even when it accurately reflects our attitude or behavior. This is a selfish or narcissistic love that is hurtful to self and healthy development. It is the love of adoring what is one’s own even when it is bad. When we cling to this love and resist giving it up, we are kept networked by the Divine Psychologist with vertical community societies that feed on this love and possess this love to enormous intensity and stupidity.
As we cling to the unconditional love of what is our own, we are bonding with those Grand Monster societies where this love is intensified from generations and centuries of cumulative practice and devolution. After the dying/resuscitation process we awaken to this ruling love, and we are spontaneously and irresistibly inducted into that society. We now carry on as one of them forever, feeding on the loves of those who are still on earth.
It is the same with all ruling loves that are hellish, such as the love of making people suffer, the love of dominating people for the sake of taking advantage of them, the love of robbing or stealing what belongs to others, the love of seducing and corrupting innocent girls or married women, the love of misleading others spiritually beliefs, etc.. When we are submitting or cooperating with the Divine Psychologist in our regeneration, we are given temptations to resist, and we can do so when we obey rational or spiritual principles of good and truth that we acquire through reflection and study. The moment we resist in freedom as-if by our own effort, a particular temptation by rejecting the hellish love it involves, in that moment we are reconnected by the Divine Psychologist to some specific society in the Grand Human that is populated by people who love the principle or truth by which we resisted this particular evil love. This process of anatomical regeneration of the mental body goes on throughout our adult life. And if it is not completed prior to the dying/resuscitation process, it is completed immediately afterwards.
Quoting from the Swedenborg Reports:
AC 50. (...)
Man is altogether ignorant that he is governed of the Lord through angels and
spirits, and that with everyone there are at least two spirits, and two angels.
By spirits man has communication with the world of spirits, and by angels with
heaven. Without communication by means of spirits with the world of spirits,
and by means of angels with heaven, and thus through heaven with the Lord, man
could not live at all; his life entirely depends on this conjunction, so that
if the spirits and angels were to withdraw, he would instantly perish.
[2] While man
is unregenerate he is governed quite otherwise than when regenerated. While
unregenerate there are evil spirits with him, who so domineer over him that the
angels, though present, are scarcely able to do anything more than merely guide
him so that he may not plunge into the lowest evil, and bend him to some
good-in fact bend him to good by means of his own cupidities, and to truth by
means of the fallacies of the senses. He then has communication with the world
of spirits through the spirits who are with him, but not so much with heaven,
because evil spirits rule, and the angels only avert their rule. [3] But when
the man is regenerate, the angels rule, and inspire him with all goods and
truths, and with fear and horror of evils and falsities. The angels indeed
lead, but only as ministers, for it is the Lord alone who governs man through
angels and spirits. (...) (AC 50)
HH 249. It is rarely granted at the present day,
however, to talk with spirits, because it is dangerous.
For then the
spirits know, what otherwise they do not know, that they are with man, and evil
spirits are such that they hold man in deadly hatred, and desire nothing more
than to destroy him both soul and body, which indeed happens with those who
have so indulged themselves in fantasies as to have separated from themselves
the enjoyments proper to the natural man. Some also who lead a solitary life sometimes hear spirits talking with
them, and without danger; but that the spirits with them may not know that they
are with man they are at intervals removed by the Lord; for most spirits
are not aware that any other world than that in which they live is possible,
and therefore are unaware that there are men anywhere else.
This is
why man on his part is not permitted to speak with them, for if he did they
would know.
Those who
meditate much on religious subjects, and are so intent upon them as to see them
as it were inwardly within themselves, begin also to hear spirits speaking with
them; for religious subjects, whatever they are, when man dwells upon them by
himself and does not modify them with various things that are of use in the world,
penetrate to the interiors and dwell there, and occupy the whole spirit of the
man, and even enter into the spiritual world and act upon the spirits there.
Such persons are visionaries and enthusiasts and whatever spirit they hear they
believe to be the Holy Spirit, when, in fact, such spirits are enthusiastic
spirits.
Such spirits
see falsities as truths, and so, seeing them, they not only persuade themselves
but also those with whom they inflow to believe them. Such spirits, however,
have been gradually removed, because they began to lure others into evil and to
gain control over them. Enthusiastic spirits are distinguished from other
spirits by their believing themselves to be the Holy Spirit, and believing what
they say to be Divine. As man honours such spirits
with Divine worship they do not try to harm him. I have sometimes talked with
them, and the wicked things they infused into their worshippers were then
disclosed. They dwell together towards the left, in a desert place.
Footnote
references: Man is able to talk with spirits and angels; and the ancient people
frequently talked with them (n. 67-69, 784, 1634, 1636, 7802). In some earths
angels and spirits appear in human form and talk with the inhabitants (n.
10751, 10752). But on this earth at this day it is dangerous to talk with
spirits, unless man is its true faith, and is led by the Lord (n. 784, 9438,
10751). (HH 249)
For additional detailed discussion on the vertical
community see this volume:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch5.htm#vc
Our Anatomical Roots in the Vertical Community
The anatomical diagrams give
a schematic representation of the vertical community into which every human
being is born through the immortal mental body. Our temporary physical body is
shown in the center (diagram 6) and it
corresponds to the immortal mental body. They are copies or models of each
other, one constructed in physical matter, the other in mental substance. The
bottom solid line in diagram 6 marks our birth and our first death. The upper
solid line marks our second death entry into the Grand Human societies called
“heavens.” The bottom solid line also marks our second death entry into the
Grand Monster societies called “hells.” The heavenly mental zones are marked
layer 4 (“Third Heaven”), layer 5 (“Second Heaven”), and layer 6 (“First
Heaven”).The hellish mental zones are marked layer -9, layer -8, and layer -7.
The vertical community refers to the continuous and ceaseless interdependence
and interaction that takes place between segments across all the anatomical
layers and zones of the mental world of eternity where humanity lives, exists,
and is conscious.
Our birth is marked at the bottom left, and we climb
up the years of development from childhood (layer 9e),
to adolescence (layer 8e) to young adulthood (layer 7e). We are not aware of the inherited anatomical
connections that influence and participate in our mental development. The
diagram shows that our anatomical layer 9e in
childhood is connected to the Grand Monster societies in layer -9. Layer 8e is tied in development to layer -8 in the Grand Monster.
Layer 7e is tied in young adulthood to layer -7 in
the Grand Monster. This is the ascending line of the development of the
material mental body from birth to adulthood. This organic maturation process
cannot go on by itself but must have the input and assistance from the Grand
Monster societies in each successive phase of development. The reason for this connection is that we are born in an unregenerate
organic state.
To balance out the dynamics, we receive the inflow
of mental heat and light through the interaction and assistance of the Grand
Human societies in layers 4, 5, and 6. These evoke heavenly traits in us called
remains. The
Divine Psychologist saves the remains of every heavenly love and intention that
we experience. At our second death these are integrated into a heavenly
personality that can join one of the Grand Human societies.
The Divine Psychologist also manages the external
events of our lives so that we may be faced with daily temptations to further
our regeneration. During these temptations the heavenly and hellish societies
to which our mental body is connected each pull us towards themselves through the
loves we cling to in the experience of the temptation. This is the “spiritual
combat” by which we cooperate with the Divine Psychologist who is effecting the
organic process of changeover in the hierarchy of our loves.
When we reach mature adulthood in our twenties we
have at our disposal a fully operational rational mind. The rational mental
body (layer 7) is a discrete degree above the material mental body (layers 9,
8). Our consciousness and meanings in the material mental body’s cognitive
respiratory system, is constructed solely from material concepts, that is,
concepts that have time and place in their interior structure or
presupposition. Think of an abstract concept like government or relativity
theory. “Government” is tied to place and time, hence culture and history. “Relativity
theory” is tied to energy, time, and the speed of light and other sub-atomic
particles of matter and energy.
Now let’s think of a concept that is not tied to
time and place. Consider the idea of “omnipotence.” It is not related to time
and place, or matter and energy. Consider the idea of “feeling guilty.” It is
not related to time, place, or matter, but only to mental states that are
organic. Consider the idea that “killing is bad.” This idea can be constructed
out of material assumptions involving time and place, or else out of assumptions
involving mental things in eternity. For instance, we can distinguish between
different types of killing, some bad and some good. For example, “killing for
the sake of subjugating a population or group” vs. “killing for the sake of
defending family and country from hostile enemies.”This distinction is based on
rational principles belonging to eternity, not material principles belonging to
physical conditions.
Note:
Further explanations on Diagram 6 above will be found at: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/mental-psychology-p1.htm#_Toc212519321
The rational mind extends from the material mind to
the celestial mind. The inner (or upper portion) receives all its assumptions
and meanings from the celestial mental body and the world of heaven through layers
6, 5, 4. But the exterior (or lower) portion of the rational mind receives all
its assumptions and meanings from the infernal mental body and the world of
hell through layers -9. -8, -7. Regeneration
hangs on the pivot between these two portions of rational consciousness.
If as adults we refuse or are disinclined to undergo
the regeneration process, we begin the process of devolution through the
hellish traits that anatomically bind us more and more to the Grand Monster
societies in layers -9, -8, -7. There is no opportunity to operationalize the
celestial mental body in layers 6, 5, 4. The celestial mind or consciousness is
not available as a choice during our second death. When we are in that state we
welcome the idea of joining the societies of the Grand Monster since our ruling
love is rooted therein. When we are free
to choose, we always choose according to our ruling love.
- The
physical world is a world of virtual objects instantiated in material
substance by mental correspondences.
- The mental
world is a world of real objects instantiated in mental substance by
celestial correspondences.
- The virtual
world is a world of virtual objects instantiated in digital substance by
rational correspondences.
- Correspondences
are cause-effect symbolic functions operating across discrete layers.
- The mental
sun of eternity is the first discrete layer,
being the entry point of God into the created universe. It is the source
of living love substance and living
truth substance issuing forth in
infinite diversity, and creating a living expanse of love-truth organic building blocks. This is the
organic sub-stratum, or infra-structure, of the mental world of eternity.
Everything constructed out of these building blocks is permanent or
immortal. The human self or being is constructed out of these immortal
substances.
- The mental
world of eternity is the second discrete layer. Every mental organ or
object contains these living Divine building blocks. At birth, a human being possesses a temporary
physical body constructed out of material substances, and a permanent mental
body constructed out of mental substances. The mental body has three corresponding systems. The affective
system in the immortal mental body is built to function as an organic receptor
for love substance. The cognitive system is built to function as an
organic receptor for truth substance. When these two systems interact they
produce the third system called the sensorimotor system. The operation of
the sensorimotor system in the immortal mental body is subjectively
experienced by human beings as consciousness
or being consciously alive as a unique person.
- The
experience of consciousness is specific to the discrete layer and
sub-layer. The highest consciousness experience that human beings can have
is called celestial
consciousness. It is the mental layer immediately below, or
outside, the mental sun of eternity. In this consciousness we merely react
to the inflow of love substance and truth substance, which come together
in a unique way in every person’s unique affective organ and cognitive
organ. This corresponds to the uniqueness of every physical body, and its
heart and lungs, or its circulatory system and its respiratory system. The
two systems in the physical body (circulatory and respiratory) correspond
to the systems in the mental body (affective and cognitive). These two systems acting in synergy produce the
third system called neuro-skeletal in the physical body, and sensorimotor
in the mental body. Consciousness
is the subjective experience of the operations of the sensorimotor system.
- The
physical body is the third layer.
- Love is a
living immortal mental substance out of which is constructed all goodness,
attraction, enjoyment, ability, and characteristic, and their uses and
benefits to human beings. Love is the only bonding force in the mental
world of eternity. It corresponds to gravity in the physical world. Love
is received by the affective organ.
- Truth is a
living immortal mental substance out of which is constructed all
rationality, intelligence, and knowledge. All meaning and cultural content
are constructed out of truth substance, which is received in the cognitive
organ.
- Love substance
is received by our affective organ in the celestial layer of our mind. It
unites with truth substance being received in the cognitive organ of the
celestial layer in our mind. Together they unite, as in a marriage, and
activate the sensorimotor organ (or system). This activation is
experienced by us as celestial consciousness.
Since love and truth substance in our celestial layer are received in purity, without contamination or distortion, the celestial consciousness that is produced in our sensorimotor system can be called quasi-omniscient consciousness or virtual omniscience. This refers to our ability to instantaneously know and understand everything about anything we think or talk about. Celestial consciousness is produced by divine correspondences in the first layer of existence. The Divine Love and the Divine Truth which are absolute in God exhibit their correspondence in created existence most purely in celestial consciousness. - Our rational
consciousness is a discrete degree below, or outside of, our celestial
consciousness. There are two sub-degrees in the rational mind. The upper, or
interior, degree of the rational mind faces upward to the celestial love,
celestial truth, and celestial consciousness. The lower, or exterior,
degree of the rational mind faces downward to the material mind. There is therefore a battle going on in
our rational consciousness, namely the battle between the celestial-rational
mind on the one side, versus the material-rational mind on the other side.
The celestial-rational mind is rationally pure and contains only correspondences
that are from the Divine.
- The
material-rational consciousness is produced by material-rational loves
married to material-rational appearances of truth. These are degraded
loves and distorted truths. Undistorted truths cannot act in synergy with
degraded loves. So the truth substance has to be distorted or modified by
the person in order to allow it to act in consort with the degraded love. The
undistorted Divine correspondences that create our celestial consciousness
cannot operate in the material-rational consciousness, but only in the
celestial-rational consciousness.
- The
degradation of love substance and the distortion of truth substance first
begins in the material mind, which is the lowest sub-degree of the mind.
It is closest to the physical body and world, hence most influenced by it.
The loves and ideas in our material mind accumulate through our
interaction with the physical world. We express mental properties by using
physical properties (e.g., heavy heart, bright future, hot under the
collar, etc.). Our abstract principles of science, law, theology, or
humanism are all based on time, place, identity, history, culture, science,
physical world. These are all material-rational ideas and loves.
An example of a material-rational love is the love of being first, best, richest, most popular. An example of a celestial-rational love is the love of being useful to others without consideration of whether we receive credit for it (see material and rational loves). - The battle
between material and celestial loves goes on until the dying-resuscitation
process. When the physical body is no longer in correspondence due to
death, we begin our conscious life in the mental world of eternity. This biological
process of separation or removal takes about 33 hours. We then awaken in
our new mental surrounds. We then undergo the final battle for our future.
Our experiences lead us to explore and discover our loves. One ruling love
then emerges and is acknowledged above all the others, being at the
center, and in total command. That
ruling love isolates and removes all sub-loves that are not
supportive or congruent. There then remains nothing active in our
consciousness but the ruling love and its sub-loves.
- There are
two types of ruling loves, those that can correspond to celestial loves,
and those that are in conflict to them due to selfism and materialism. Celestial
ruling loves produce virtual omniscience and heavenly marital happiness
between eternal soul mates. The loves that are contrary to this are called
infernal loves. When an infernal
ruling love is acknowledged by us and we allow it to take power over us, we
enter a negative psychological place called hell.
- Managing
our loves becomes therefore one of the most important activities we will
ever have, since it has serious consequences
for our welfare and happiness to eternity. What can be more important? This
management process is called character
regeneration. This lifelong process continues throughout our life and
is advanced through the process of temptations. God assumes the role of
Divine Psychologist in our mind and supervises the process of character
reformation through temptations. The Divine Psychologist arranges the
physical and social environment to present us with daily temptations
between material-rational principles of action and celestial-rational
principles.
- Truth
substance is the infrastructure that
sustains rationality and intelligence. The cognitive organ of the rational
mind operates from and with truth substance. Truth substance in the
rational mind can be covered over with material appearances. This is what
we then see in our material-rational thinking and consciousness – we see
the appearances of truth, not truth itself in purity without the covering
we put on it. The process of
“interpreting” and “reinterpreting” truth is motivated by the love of
self, or selfism. Truth substance in our cognitive organ, as it is in
itself without covering, is called celestial-rational
correspondences of Divine Truth. But when it is covered over by means
of material ideas and interpretations, truth in our cognitive organ is
called material-rational
correspondences of Divine Truth.
- Since every
human beings inherits the biological tendency to think in material-rational
correspondences, people grow up to become adults who live their life
through a material-rational consciousness. As a result, a hierarchy of
loves is established in people’s character and personality which are
justified by material-rational principles of beliefs, religions,
philosophies, politics, art, literature, or the online world. Society
reflects the inner clash of belief systems that justify competition and
conflict as a way of interacting with each other, rather than cooperation
and peace. Whenever celestial-rational truth is covered up by material-rational
appearances of truth, there is a gradual and inevitable degradation of
life towards the most negative and irrational distortions of truth and
corruption of love. This is called the “hells” in the human mind.
- Absence of
truth substance through the distorted coverings of appearances of truth is
called destruction and death. This refers to the destruction of happiness
and rationality called the “heavens” in the human mind. Since our
character is filled with appearances of truth in the form of distorted
coverings (or interpretations), we are attached to many loves that are
infernal, which means loves that gradually and inevitably lead to hell in
our mind. In order to stop ourselves from sliding into our own mental hell
and living it in eternity, we must regenerate our inherited character
loves that take us there. This
requires engaging in mental combat called temptations.
- Before the
Divine Psychologist brings us into a temptation situation we must be willing to prepare for
battle by acquiring mental weapon systems that help us overcome
temptations.
These weapons are constructed by the individual out of truth substance in the form of celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Truth. During the temptation we make use of these weapons of truth. For instance, when we are tempted to lie or cheat in order to gain something we want, we are faced with a conflict of loves. On the one hand we are attached to the idea that we deserve to have this object or situation, even if we need to lie or cheat to get it – which is a material-rational principle or self-justification.
On the other hand we are attached to the idea that selfish loves will rob us from a happy eternity – which is a celestial-rational principle. The Divine Psychologist puts us into a perfect mental balance between these two opposing loves. By holding on (or “cleaving”) to the heavenly love of peace in eternity, we are willing to let go of the hellish love of aggrandizing ourselves at the expense of others.
Gradually, over the course of our adult life, we continue to be exposed to these types of temptations every day. As our love for understanding celestial-rational meanings grows and intensifies, we are regenerated more and more in our character loves. At death and resuscitation our ruling love of celestial-rational meanings then takes over, giving us the life of heaven in virtual omniscience. Others who also acquired such a ruling love, then form harmonious communities of heavenly societies or Grand Human, where couples live in eternal love and endless mental development. - When we are
in dream consciousness we possess
a dream body with which we may enjoy
enhanced sensorimotor abilities such as flying, seeing through walls,
teleporting instantaneously to another location, not being dependent on
eating or breathing air, socializing and chatting face to face with other
dream bodies, experiencing intense sensations of pleasure or pain, happiness
or fright, riches or poverty, alone or with another or with many. These
enhanced powers of consciousness in the dream body are the product of the
marriage between loves in the affective organ with ideas and images in the
cognitive organ.
The dream environment or world is constructed by the sleeping person’s loves and ideas acting together. Some loves we have cannot marry or act together with the ideas and images we have when awake. But when we are in sleep mode we construct ideas and images that are in harmony with those loves, and the two can get together, producing the dream environment and its consciousness. - The
particular consciousness we are living is localized to each discrete layer
in the mental world. The three systems in our mental body provide us with three
discrete layers of consciousness, along with sub-layers in each. The three
principal layers are the celestial, the rational, and the material. Our
consciousness in the celestial layer gives us quasi-omniscience.
- Human
life is mental life. There exist an exact point
by point correspondence between the physical body and the mental body. Every
single operation or event in the mental world has a precise correspondence
with a single event in the physical world. Without this precise and synchronous
corresponding action of the two, there would be no physical world, no
mental life, no self or consciousness, no immortality.
Since human immortality depends on these precise laws of correspondence between the mental and the physical, it is provided by God that the physical universe will never cease to exist. Further, the physical universe with its stars and planets will continue to expand and multiply endlessly, to correspond to the endless multiplication of human beings in eternity. The more human beings are in eternity the more the human race can continue to evolve endlessly to perfection, thus, toward God. The closer human beings evolve towards God, the higher and greater is our consciousness, thus, our happiness, love, and rationality. This ever higher consciousness reverberates across the mental world of eternity, entering the individual consciousness in every immortal and unique mental body (or mind, or spirit). - The mental
world is organic because its building blocks – love and truth substance,
are organic and spiritual, that is living. All living objects are organic.
All organic objects develop, evolve, and progress on a continuous basis.
This never ceasing change or organic life occurs in two discrete and
opposing modalities or directions of life. One is in correspondence with
the order or arrangement of love and truth substance billowing forth from
the mental sun of eternity, and forming an environment for all mental
objects in which to exist.
These mental building blocks are of the Divine substance, providing for the existence of the two worlds. These building blocks have an inherent organic life and immortality of their own. It is the Divine life itself forming the substance out of which the two worlds are built or constructed. This Divine order is known to us as the consciousness of heaven that is produced by love substance being received in our affective organ and truth substance received in our cognitive organ. This heavenly consciousness contains the eternal development and evolution of our love, goodness, rationality, and marital happiness. - The
reception of Divine love and truth is automatic and spontaneous with every
human being through the mental body. Love substance enters our affective
system in the celestial layer of the mental body. Truth substance enters
the cognitive system in the celestial layer. Love substance seeks truth
substance to be united to, as in a marriage of soul mates. These two
substances are conjoined or married in God.
When love and truth substance enter the created mental world of eternity, through the mental sun, there is a separation or disunion between the love and the truth. The affective organ and the cognitive organ operate independently. They have to arrange themselves in such a way as to coordinate their action. There is an irresistible urge or impulse for the love substance in the affective organ to seek out and re-arrange the truth substance in the cognitive organ. A union can then be formed between love and a suitable truth.
The love substance and truth substance, now re-united, can produce a living offspring or an organic product that we experience as our consciousness, our very own life, our self. This is our immortality. This is what matters to us more than anything. Everything we want depends on this immortality. But there is a way of losing it! - Losing our
immortality refers to losing our organic eternal life that consists of ever
increasing marital happiness and rationality. The expression “to die” or
“to be destroyed” refers to losing this eternal happiness and rationality.
But “losing” is the consequence of “choosing.” Amazing as it may seem, we each have a strong urge to destroy our
eternal development and happiness. People accomplish this
self-destruction by changing the order of life that is inherent in the
inflowing love substance and truth substance. This modification is a
corruption and a distortion, which gets the mental body going on a downward development or progressive
devolution.
- When people
awaken from the dying/resuscitation process, they begin consciousness in a
new medium or modality, with new abilities, and a new order and social
environment. The laws of correspondence produce an outward environment
around the mental body. This outward objective life or consciousness is
populated with other mental bodies that are similar or related through the
operations of the affective and cognitive systems they each have.
For instance, people who choose to hang on to the love of possessing status over others, hang out with other people who have this love. They form a community or mental society in which they can practice with each other all the plans and intentions that support this love of status over others. People may be stuck in such a society forever, unless they choose to let go of the love of status. Their unwillingness to let go of that love no matter what the consequences are, binds them together into an eternal hell. It is called a hell because the organic unity or consciousness produced within such a society is contrary to the order of its own interior building blocks, which are heavenly. - The
activity of striving to maintain disorder, or a contrary order, to one’s
own building blocks, results in progressive deterioration of
consciousness. It gradually sinks deeper and deeper into total and radical
opposition to love, truth, and beauty. This results in greater and greater
immersion of their consciousness into what is contrary to Divine order,
namely, selfishness, arrogance, insanity, irrationality, delusion,
cruelty, bestiality, hatred for anything good or true, hatred of God,
hatred of innocence and children, hatred of the marriage bond and fidelity,
love of mad fantasy, love of misery, love of ugliness, love of war, love
disunion, love of deception, attraction to deformed human faces and
bodies, love of depriving others of their goods, rights, and freedom, and
many more.
Our hellish consciousness is the active opposition and inversion of our heavenly consciousness. After resuscitation we continue life on the same course of loves that we had organically developed and grown since birth. One organic order leads to immortality in heavenly consciousness. The other order organic order leads to immortality in hellish consciousness. Managing this outcome ahead of time is therefore the most important task we have now. - Mental
development since birth requires mental feeding, just as the physical body
requires heat, air, water, and food on a continuous basis. The mental body requires the things
that correspond to these physical things. “Heat and food” in the circulatory
and digestive system of the physical body correspond to “love substance”
in the affective system of the mental body. “Air and water” taken in
through the throat and respiratory system of the physical body correspond
to “truth substance” in the cognitive system of the mental body. “Mental
air substance” corresponds to “physical air substance.” The cognitive
organ operates when it “breathes in” or receives the mental air that is
made of truth substance. If you were to prevent love substance from
entering the affective organ, our consciousness of all loves would
instantly vanish and no longer be in existence. Without loves in our
affective system, the system stops operating. We fall into unconsciousness
forever, as if non-existent.
- Love and
truth substance enter the mental body on a continuous basis from birth to
endless immortality. The result is
that we are able to have the consciousness of having affections and ideas.
To be alive as a person or unique individual means to be conscious of
loves and ideas that are our very own. If we got our loves from another
person we would not feel these as our own love, but their love. We would
feel like we are possessed by them, by their love, doing what their love
wants, not what we want.
This would be eternal hellish slavery to others. It would make hell possible in our mind, but not heaven. For heavenly consciousness to exist in our mental body we must develop and evolve our own loves from birth onward, but mostly beginning with young adulthood when we start asking and figuring out what we want, each of us as a unique individual. We continue gathering many loves that we hang on to. A unique personality or collection of loves and ideas shapes itself around us. This collection of loves matures and becomes the basis of who we are as a free self.
When we resuscitate our mental body is well advanced in possessing and hoarding its collection of loves that we have accumulated through our daily choices until the dying process put an end to it. If our collection of loves can be organized into a heavenly collection, we can join a mental society in a heavenly environment. But if the collection of loves in our mental body refuses to be organized into a heavenly order, because it is in a selfish or hellish order, then we join a mental society in a hellish environment. This is the organic process of love and choice. - The
above proposals represent a medical or organic definition of God, heaven,
hell, and immortality.
Every human being is born into the mental world of eternity. Every individual is a complete actuality. Each of us is complete, and there is only one mental world of eternity into which we are each born with an immortal mental body. It follows that all human beings “overlap” as it were, each of us being a complete mental world as well as living in it. Hence each of us has the same mental sun of eternity at the center, or at the top, of their being or soul.
Whenever our consciousness ascends to the highest layer of our organic mind in the mental body, which is called the celestial layer, we can see the mental sun shining towards us from the appearance of a distance similar to what we see when we look at our sun with the physical eyes at mid-morning. It is in this highest mental layer that our reception of love and truth substance is pure, because uncorrupted by our selfishness, and undistorted by our material ideas or principles. These celestial meanings and principles can be accessed in our rational consciousness through the operation of correspondences. - We cannot
have celestial consciousness until after the physical body and material
mind have been removed from our personality, thus not until after
resuscitation. However we can be conscious of rational ideas and
principles that correspond to the celestial consciousness. For example, people
might come up with the idea that to be selfish is often better for us than
to be altruistic all the time. This may be called a material-rational
proposal or principle. It requires rational thinking in order to come up
with it, or in order to understand it when we hear about it from others. But
the rationality we use in this type of thinking is based on material ideas
and experiences. For instance, people might point to the case of others
who have tried to be altruistic and ended being punished for it. This is a
material objection, based on the physical experiences of people that we hear
or read about.
- Now we can
also look at the situation from a rational perspective that is not based
on material facts, but based on celestial ideas such as the mental sun of
eternity, God, immortality, eternal mental body, love substance, and truth
substance. These celestial facts and principles create our rational
consciousness that is non-material, hence not contaminated by meanings and
assumptions based on time, place, history, socialization, identity, culture,
education, science, literature. The
content of the conscious celestial-rational layer provides a consciousness
in which we have a perception of the heavenly mental state. No
“rational” argument or proof can be presented that is final and conclusive
forever, until we acquire this perception or consciousness of heaven as a
mental state that we already possess in our mental body.
- The
physiological or medical process of regeneration,
or character reformation, is
initiated during adulthood by
our love for the heaven we perceive in our celestial-rational layer. Our
celestial-rational thinking is a discrete degree above our material
thinking, and greatly enhances our ability to explore the rational zone of
the mental world of eternity.
We may at first only get a brief glimpse of it, but this experience is so deep, delightful, and impressive that it changes our lifestyle orientation and puts psychological pressure on us to “clean up our act” in order to obtain that heaven for ourselves. We know what we have to do when we start thinking rationally, and loving to do that more and more, instead of hating it. Our material consciousness before it is regenerated, either hates the celestial-rational or denies its existence or reality.
When we are in the usual material consciousness of our daily activities, we have the ability to compel ourselves mentally to think more rationally. No one lacks this ability. The Divine Psychologist guarantees through omnipotence that that no human being can lose the ability of thinking rationally. When we approach this rational thinking out of curiosity or love for truth, we begin to see our life in a more actual or real perspective.
If we are committed to thinking rationally we can figure out that our real life is our mental life and that we need to look at ourselves as mental beings, not physical.
Our future lies in the mental world of eternity, not in the physical world of time.
Rational thinking also allows us to figure out that this reality could not function unless an omnipotent and omniscient God made it happen, taking care of every detail. Rational thinking shows us that God cannot control the whole without controlling every part.
And through this rational approach in our thinking we discover that we can talk to God and that God is present in our mind as the Divine Psychologist who is managing the mental events that keep us evolving and surviving in a healthy state. God as God manages all physical events, while God as Divine Psychologist manages all mental events. - On the other
hand, we can give in to a love of materialism, elevating it above the rational
and celestial. In this mentality people believe in “rock bottom” reality,
thinking that what is material is more real than what is mental. They
compare thoughts and imagination to “castles in the air,” thus not real. Real
things are physical and what Is not physical is not real, or not as
real.
This material limitation in human thinking prevents growth in the celestial layer of the mental body. When materialism is valued in our thinking by unconditional love or respect for it, we are constructing the basis for our material-rational consciousness. We may oscillate for awhile between mental states of material-rationality and mental states of celestial rationality. But as we mature into adulthood we begin to favor one over the other, and by the end of the operation, when we are facing the dying-resuscitation process, we have evolved a mental physiology that is based primarily on either a heavenly orientation of altruism and rationality, or based on a hellish orientation of selfism and insanity.
Day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute, our choices of living cumulate, some into heavenly pile, some into the hellish pile. The Divine Psychologist insures that in this process of oscillation none of the roots or loves in the two piles come near each other, for this would mean their mutual destruction. - People
sometimes say about someone that he was a hurtful man, often ruthless, but
that he tried to make up for it with other traits such as being supportive
of family, supportive of charities and volunteerism, and having engaged in
military or government service. The idea here (which is material) is that
the good things a person does should be weighed against the bad things,
and sometimes there can be a balance.
zzzz But a rational idea of this is that our hellish loves cannot be counterbalanced by our heavenly loves, and that whichever we hold on more strongly, that is what we will end up with, and all the heavenly loves that are contrary, will be dropped or killed. After resuscitation the mental body cannot support both because one wants to destroy the other. They are organically opposed. The mixture of both loves cannot continue as before while we were still attached by correspondence to our physical body. Now the mental body is freed from connection to the physical world and no longer tolerates the mixture. If the ruling love is heavenly, all the hellish loves are put to rest. And if the ruling love is hellish, all the heavenly loves are put to rest. Thus we become a pure individual, either purely good, altruistic, and rational, or purely bad, selfish, and insane. - Consciousness is the substance of life.
It is produced by the joint interaction between loves in the affective
organ and ideas in the cognitive organ. The result produces the
sensorimotor organ that carries consciousness. Operations and
modifications in the sensorimotor system of the mental body are specific
to each layer of the mental world. Our individual mind or mental body
overlaps with other mental bodies since there is only one mental world of
eternity where mental operations can exist. Hence the discrete layers of
the mental world of eternity will also be the discrete layers of each
mental body or person. Consciousness has different properties at each of
these layers. The highest consciousness human beings can achieve is called
the celestial degree of layer. The layer below that is called the rational
consciousness, and the lowest is called the material consciousness. Our
consciousness moves up and down these discrete degrees and their
discrete-sub-degrees. When our consciousness is stuck for a long time in
the material layer, we lose control over our moods, experiencing large
swings, and we become slaves to our material loves and its faulty reasoning
process. We show symptoms such as lower productivity, lowered capacity,
weakness, depression, irrational and irresponsible behavior, cruelty,
selfishness, egotism, deception, hypocrisy, manipulation, addiction,
lawlessness, self-destructiveness, and so on. These negative and unhealthy
behavior patterns and personality habits are the result of the material
consciousness which has an organic built in progression towards greater
and greater chaos. After the dying and resuscitation process, this
consciousness remains as the only active layer, producing what is called the
consciousness of hell in one’s mind.
- In
contrast, the rational consciousness that is above the material
consciousness, has the capacity to progress in either direction, evolving
upwards towards the celestial consciousness, or devolving downwards
towards the material consciousness. To evolve upward we need to acquire
celestial meanings or ideas in our cognitive organ that can attract a
celestial love to unite with, producing the elevated consciousness. We can
consciously acquire and provide such celestial meanings as companions to
celestial loves that inflow into our affective organ. The more such
celestial meanings we acquire and love, the more our consciousness comes
near the celestial layer. It will be in this layer to eternity after the
dying and resuscitation process. The celestial consciousness produces what
is called heaven in our mind. This heaven is maintained as a marital pair
in eternal happiness possessing quasi-omniscience as celestial avatars of
the Omniproprium. We no longer have a self of our own, as we had before in
the lower forms of consciousness. Our celestial self is a virtual self in
which we prefer not to have anything whatsoever that belonged to our self
from before. We act as if we have no self of our own, and willingly become
a consciousness produced by God’s loves and God’s truths now active
uncorrupted and undistorted in our mental organs. This is our heaven in
eternity.
- It makes
obvious sense that it is to our greatest advantage to manage our adult
life in such a way as to regenerate our character from a hellish to a
heavenly love and consciousness. The rational mind is well suited for this
spiritual battle for our eternal future. The rational layer of
consciousness can alternate between a material mode and a celestial mode
of representation. This alternation, or up-down oscillation in
consciousness, is the key to managing our future in eternity. The material-rational
consciousness tries to justify selfism through material meanings and
principles of reasoning. As part of this reasoning process, one thinks
that there is nothing but self. Human beings can only rely on human beings
and their desire to conquer and survive. God is rejected as a possibility
because only what is material exists or is real. Selfism and
discrimination are justified by various lifestyle ideologies. Doing good
is seen as a counterbalance to doing evil. This makes evil acceptable or
unavoidable. But the celestial-rational meanings and reasoning process see
through all these materialic assumptions and
inaccuracies, and recognizes that God is omnipotent, which necessarily
implies that no one has any power on their own to do anything, not even to
breathe or think. The celestial-rational consciousness is able to figure
out the rationality of God’s omnipotence and understands that our self is
virtual not actual. I cannot move my eyes, recall a name, or finish a
sentence on my own, but do these things through God doing them through me.
God honors me as a consciousness with a free agent. My celestial-rational
consciousness makes it obvious to me that it is God’s omnipotence that
maintains my sense of freedom. Just as the sense of freedom of a two-year
old is maintained by the parent without the toddler’s awareness, when the
parent directs and moves the child’s direction of movement, or moves a
dangerous object out of the way, or lifts the child toward the object it
is reaching, etc. Throughout this activity the child only senses of being
free and doing what it wants. This conscious sense of freedom is necessary
for our consciousness as a human being, hence our eternal happiness in a
heaven. God manages everything in our mind and in the two worlds so that
we are made capable of achieving this heavenly state of consciousness.
This is a perfect world since nothing can exist or occur that does not
contribute to this ultimate purpose of life and the world
- How do we
know what is genuinely or truly heavenly or celestial, and what is hellish
or infernal? How do we separate what is real and accurate from what is
theory that may not be correct? Which theory or morality system is real
and true, and which are misleading and erroneous? How do we know if an
idea is material-rational or celestial-rational? The process of
regeneration creates an ever clearer and more definite perception and
understanding of this critical difference between material and celestial
thinking in the rational mind. It helps to identify the ruling love that
directs all thinking in these two contrastive modes. The ruling love in
the material-rational thinking is the consciousness of selfism, while the
ruling love within the celestial-rational thinking is the consciousness of
altruism. From this begins the sequence of thinking that leads to
justifying hell or justifying heaven.
- The lower
the level of consciousness, the less we are able to recognize rational
truths that are based on celestial meanings and ideas of God and altruism.
At the material level of thinking about God and the afterlife we have the
idea of heaven on earth, this being a physical heaven, not a mental one.
This physical heaven in the afterlife has to be earned by being member of
a physical community of practice. Without physical worship, there is no
spiritual payoff. God and heaven are bound up in material notions of
earning one’s place through physical membership, ritual, history, and
following leaders and guides who, we are told, see things we don’t see, or
sense things we don’t, etc. All this is going on in the material
consciousness. Rational consciousness is excluded. Individual
understanding is set lower than group leadership and group formulation. Hence
obedience is required even without understanding. But in our rational
consciousness we can see that the afterlife of eternity is a mental world
(some people use the term “spiritual world”). The world of eternity is in
our mind. Heaven and hell are in our consciousness. Hence in order to
prepare for this mental life in eternity we need to manage our mental
things, our loves, our ideas, our consciousness. This is what eternal life
is made of. And so we can understand that membership and physical ritual
will not change our loves. We will remain such as we have been, living the
same loves, experiencing the same consciousness. Hellish loves will take
us to a hellish consciousness and life. Heavenly loves will take us to a
heavenly consciousness and life. Since we are born with inherited hellish
loves, and since we acquire new ones of our own, it follows that character
regeneration is necessary for a heavenly eternity. Ridding ourselves of
selfish loves and enjoyments makes room for acquiring altruistic loves and
enjoyments. Our heaven is made of these. We live in them. We are them. We
must acquire them prior to dying and resuscitation, and it takes years for
the process to unfold. It does so to the extent that we are willing to
cooperate in the process. This means managing our temptations in spiritual
combat.
- Consider
the material-rational philosophy of “might makes right.” Does it? No,
because there is a future accountability to the loves that bind us to
selfism. Whatever loves we practice, we are bound forever to them. The
only way to escape this viral bond is to get rid of the virus, which in
this case is the enjoyment of a selfish love that hurts others. From a
higher rational consciousness however, we can see and understand that
unless we willingly destroy this enjoyment, the love cannot go away. It
stays forever, acting on us, as does every love we cling to. Selfism has
many sub-loves such as the thoughtlessness of cruelty, the contemplation
and performance of infidelity, the love of deception or getting away with
things, shallowness of personality with an involvement that centers on
self in everything such as art, literature, knowledge, music, dance, etc. Self-involvement
is contrary to rationality since self-involvement leads at the end to a
life of hell. Self-involvement is an antidote to happiness. Altruism
refers to one’s involvement with others in a positive or beneficial way. Altruism
leads us to focus on acquiring skills that are valued by the community due
to their usefulness. For example, some athletes may train very hard in
order to gain fame and riches. If they don’t obtain these, they are
depressed and stop trying to work on their skills. They are operating with
a material consciousness. Other athletes train hard in order to compete in
fair competition for the best athlete. This is their strong motivation. If
they don’t win, they are happy for the winner who proves to be the best.
They are happy to participate in a good process, to be part of the process
of fair competition. They feel validated by that participation in honesty
and earnestness. This is their true reward, what they value most about it.
This is their love, why they are doing it. They are operating with a
rational consciousness. A material consciousness cannot create a heavenly
community, cannot survive in it, but a rational consciousness can and
does. The material consciousness of selfism within earth bound conditions
destroys a mental community of altruism that is dependent on mutual and
reciprocal support. Selfism cannot be happy in a heaven of altruism, hence
cannot exist there, or reach there.
- Heaven is a
mental consciousness in our celestial layer. It is created by love
substance and truth substance. Love is spiritual heat. It corresponds to physical
heat and gravity in the natural world of matter and time. If you suddenly
removed gravity or heat from the physical world, what would happen? First
there would be a dissolution, so that no two particles could cling to each
other. No object could therefore exist. All movement would cease. No
organic process or life could exist. All coherence would cease. There
would be no universe left. Corresponding things would occur in the mental
world if you removed the substance of love. No two ideas could be bound
together to make up an assertion. Thus, no knowledge would be possible. No
activity could occur as the body would not be able to move without
motivation or love energy. All social life would cease. All mental states
would freeze and disappear. Consciousness would cease. Without love there
is nothing. This love is what is called altruism. Divine love is altruism.
This love is to love others, not self. Altruism is the desire to make
others happy through our own skills and choices. Altruism is married to
justice and honesty, and together they produce perfect human beings. When
we turn altruism energy into selfism, altruism perishes and selfism takes
hold in our loves.
- Why could
we not have been born into the mental world alone? Why do we need this
temporary physical body and the natural world around us? The answer is
that the physical world is needed in order to train our mental organs to
function and in order to provide our consciousness with social content. Our
temporary physical body provides us with contact with the physical world
and its laws of order. Our mental body is being trained by correspondence
with the physical body. The two bodies are exact copies of each other in
anatomy, physiology, and genetics – but not in composition. The physical
body is composed of physical building blocks from the natural sun, while
the mental body is composed of mental building blocks from the mental sun
of eternity. Once our mental organs are trained to operate and filled with
content, we can mature our loves and thoughts during adulthood, and all
the way to old age. This mental maturation process allows us to develop
the rational and celestial layers of the mental body. These are the two
layers in which is contained our heavenly consciousness. The purpose of
this initial connection to the physical world is to provide us with the
opportunity of developing our material consciousness (loves and ideas),
after which we can develop our rational consciousness through
regeneration. If we do not develop the celestial-rational mind through
regeneration, the celestial mind cannot function after the dying and
resuscitation process. Hence we awaken and must remain in the material
consciousness. This consciousness can be adequate while connected to the
physical body, but it is inadequate after resuscitation. When we are in
the material consciousness after resuscitation, we sink into a state of
insanity and savagery called hell in the mind.
- Everything
therefore depends on successfully managing our regeneration! Can you think
of anything that can be more important to you?
- Why then do
most people reject dualism, reject the idea of resuscitation, reject the
idea of heaven and hell? The answer is that it is impossible for our material
consciousness to perceive the reality of dualism, the mental world of
eternity, and God’s direct management of our mind through love and truth
substance that make up our affective and cognitive organs. These ideas
require rational meanings and rational content to think about, to figure
out, to see objectively as the empirical reality. The idea of being “born
into eternity” requires a rational way of thinking that is free from the
materialism imposed on us by the sensory organs of the physical body that
reflect the physical world and its limitations of time and place. The idea
of living in a mental world is a rational idea devoid of material
counterpart. The material idea is that we are living in a physical world
and that our sensations and thoughts are in our physical body or brain. When
we die, that’s it. No brain, no individual. This is a perspective limited
by physicalistic ideas bound in the empiricism of the senses. What is
outside this empiricism is considered not real or “just the imagination”
or “just a dream” etc. The rational thinking can begin when we consider
dualism in the positive bias. We set aside the limitations of the negative
bias of monism and materialism. We allow our thinking to work without
these limitations. Rational thinking is then possible. The positive bias
says that dualism is possible and that we need to investigate it as if it
existed. This assumption allows us to start making scientific proposals
about the mental world of eternity.
- We are
discussing scientific proposals in the positive bias science. We are not
discussing dualist ideas from other sources such as religion, philosophy,
the literature on spirituality, or science fiction. Scientific proposals in the positive bias mode have specific
methodological requirements that must be met. First and foremost is
the requirement of rational theory, demonstration, and proof. An instance
of this that you are somewhat familiar with is geometry. It makes rational
proposals about the existence of planes and points in a mental world, then
proceeds to give “proof” of facts about this mental world of geometry. Other
scientists can verify the logic of the proof or demonstration, as long as
they are willing to accept the initial proposals about the existence of
planes and points in the mental world. With this acceptance, or positive
bias, scientists are able to verify the proofs of geometry others are
presenting, and can do research in the mental world of geometry to
discover more facts about it and its properties. These scientific
discoveries about the mental world of geometry are useful to us in the
physical world because there is one to one correspondence between the
physical world and the mental world, so whatever is discovered about the mental
world will have a corresponding property in the physical world. Knowing
this can then be applied for uses.
- The current
proposals I am making about the mental world of eternity also requires the
positive bias. This means that scientists who want to do research in this
area need to adopt the positive bias on dualism in order to evaluate its
scientific proposals. Various proposals on dualism have been made in the
literature, as for instance the proposals of Descartes that are being
echoed somewhat in the history of modern psychology. However dualism has
been rejected in psychology since the 19th century.
Contemporary neuroanatomy and cognitive science reject dualism and
associate all our mental life with the activity of the physical brain. However
there is going to be increasing pressure in the future on scientists to
adopt the positive bias on dualism given the fact that psychologists in
the negative bias have not been able to unify psychology into one science.
Instead psychology remains composed of various factions and approaches
that do not recognize each other or each other’s research and
methodologies. This fragmentation shows in the relatively low levels of
success psychology has achieved in applying itself to societal and
personal problems such as crime, depression, mental illness and
counseling, ineffective training and instruction methods, ineffective
conflict resolution knowledge so that society continues to suffer from
discrimination, wars, abuse of women and children, terrorism, genocide,
drug addiction, violence, sexually transmitted diseases, etc. These
numerous failures can be due to the inadequacies of the negative bias in
psychology which prevents rational proposals from being researched and
evaluated.
- Scientific
proposals of dualism need to be holistic and internally consistent. The
proposals ought to add up to a holistic explanation of all the major facts
about the mental world. In this case, what makes my proposal rational,
holistic, and consistent is the introduction of the assumption of correspondences
as the basis of all cause-effect mechanisms or actions. This is a fundamental departure from
Descartes and all other proposals of dualism in the history of science.
The only other scientific work that has proposed the cause-effect
mechanism of correspondences is that of Emanuel
Swedenborg (1688-1772). The operation of body-mind correspondences can
be observed and investigated by researchers (see my earlier work).
Another methodological component of my proposal is that the mental world
is organic and anatomical. This is essential for the proposal to be
scientific. Science requires that if the existence of a function is being
proposed, it must be based on some organic structure, which means a
synergistically functioning anatomy. Every human mind is a mental body,
and every mental body is in the mental world, and there is only one mental
world, and this is anatomically defined and described. This achieves the
requirement of holistic proposals. Nothing is left out, and all of it is
integrated with what is already known in the negative bias. My proposal is
not denying or rejecting any of the already existing psychology. I am
adding a new dimension to it in the positive bias so that we may be able
to do cumulative research on body-mind correspondences and regeneration of
our character.
- The material
consciousness, its thinking, and its loves or intentions, is necessary for
our mental development to adulthood. The negative bias is a natural part
of this development. But once we attain adulthood and full mental
development, we are capable of functioning in rational consciousness as
well as in material consciousness. Our first forays in rational
consciousness is “impure” or “spurious” because we are basing our rational
ideas and proposals on material concepts and assumptions. These initial
impure proposals are not truly rational, but they appear to be because the
material ideas have been “abstracted out” or “bracketed out” so that the
concepts that are left appear free of the physical world, but they are
not. Hence these are called “material-rational” proposals and ideas. At
this level of thinking it is possible to make various quasi-dualist
proposals that the material consciousness accepts as appropriate. For
instance, at this level of thinking people have proposed ideas about God
and the afterlife that contain physical limits. For example, it is
expected that when we resuscitate from death we come back into the
physical world. Heaven and hell are imagined as physical tortures. God is
associated in terms of physical events, physical rewards, physical
punishments.
Or to take another example, people make proposals about the mental world with physical ideas and mechanisms, such as the idea in cognitive science today that the mind is an “epiphenomenon” that “emerges” from the brain and rests on it. So no anatomy is provided for the mental organs other than the brain. There is no legitimate way of explaining how we interact with others mentally in the mental world, or how we form friendship or bonds with others that is not merely physical and temporary. My proposal gives specific explanations of mental development in relation to mental anatomy and regeneration. I give a medical or anatomical definition of heaven and hell, and I specify the mechanisms by which we communicate with God to effect regeneration. My proposal specifies the dying and resuscitation process and the continuation of mental development in our immortality. None of these topics are available for discussion and analysis in the negative bias psychology, nor in any previous dualist proposal other than that of Swedenborg. My proposal gives a scientific definition of God in terms of the mental sun of eternity and how God operates in our mind through love and truth substance that compose the building blocks for our mental organs. This rational concept provides the scientific definition for our immortality.
No other proposal has given a successful scientific account of God, the human mind, immortality, and the physical world. It is important to reclaim God for science. Historically and traditionally, God has been abandoned to religion and spirituality, with the result that God has been banned from public education in democratic countries today. It makes sense to separate religion from state and government because government is for all the people, and religion is sectarian. Different religions exist and they are conflictual and divisive in society because they participate in politics as part of their religious practice. Science is free of such disputes because it deals with universal ideas and methods that are above sectarianism, above politics, and above personal interpretation. God must be reclaimed for science through the proposal of substantive dualism, such as this one. - Our mental
body seeks experiences through surrogate mental bodies in virtual worlds. These
include:
** a dream body for the dream world
** a fantasy body for the fantasy world
** a virtual body (or “avatar”) for the virtual world (or “digital world”)
** a celestial body (or “angel”) for heaven
** an infernal body (or “spirit”, “demon”) for hell
Since there is only one
mental world, with one mental sun of eternity, these surrogate bodies and
virtual selves are in that one mental world. For instance, in virtual worlds we
gain our consciousness by maintaining one or more avatars. Since our virtual
self is behind each avatar we maintain, there is only one avatar we have, and
all the others are “alts” or alternate avatars feeding our one virtual self. Currently
we maintain different avatars for different in-world interfaces. But in the
near future we will be able to have just one avatar that will move across all
the virtual world platforms and interfaces available. It will then be more
obvious that there is only one virtual world and every human being has an
avatar in it, whether activated or not. This is our virtual presence in digital
information spaces. The consciousness we have through our avatar in the virtual
world is different from the consciousness we have from the other surrogate
bodies of our one mental body.
We are most familiar with our dream avatar that gives us consciousness in the
dream world. All human beings experience the dreaming consciousness through
their dream body. You may or may not recall seeing your dream body in one of
your dream episodes over the years. When the dream world environment is
constructed out of our material
consciousness in the mental body, the content of the dream is like a video of
the physical world. Things may be presented in a surrealist context that appear
to alter the properties of the physical world. Dreamscapes and dream events are
instantiated through the laws of correspondence. Loves and desires in our
affective organ are constantly longing and seeking for ideas in our cognitive
organ that they can conjoin with. Dreamscapes and dream events are produced by
these loves finding ideas to conjoin with.
It is similar with daydreams or fantasy content that we produce through our
fantasy body. The “imaginary” world or environment is produced by our rational consciousness in the mental
body. When our fantasy body constructs fantasy situations, fantasy people, and
fantasy events, from a material-rational
consciousness, the content of the fantasy is idealized. An idealized rendition
of the material world appears rational, but when analyzed, it reveals material
ideas within it. Idealized material characters and events are produced by
children at play, and by writers and directors of drama for the consumption of entertainment.
But when our fantasy body constructs fantasy situations, fantasy people, and
fantasy events, from a celestial-rational
consciousness, the content of the fantasy is visionary and representative of
heavenly life in eternity.
- The virtual self establishes social
presence through the appropriate management of an avatar and its alts. For
instance, when first becoming a Resident of the virtual world called
Second Life, one acquires a generic avatar. One can easily spot “newbie”
avatars by their facial and body features that appear cartoonlike,
including the clothing. The generic clothing that male and female newbie
avatars wear are identical and robotic. After a few hours of experiencing
their avatar consciousness people develop the desire of managing their avatar
appearance, to make it more personal to who they want to be in the virtual
world of Second Life (SL). The material-rational consciousness idealizes
the appearance of one’s virtual body. In-world observation in SL reveals
the diversity of idealized selves in the human race. In SL most of the
avatars appear as beautiful, well formed, attractive, and healthy looking
male and female individuals in prime life. This is the constructed and
idealized vision we have of our virtual body. Making oneself look
attractive, even sexy, through modifying our avatar body shape and
selecting clothes, is a principal mechanism for establishing social
presence in SL. There are a minority of people who operate in their ideal
within an oppositional or contrastive visibility, so that their avatar
appears in the shape of an animal or object, even a mere cloud of white
smoke. Another minority in SL appear as medieval warriors carrying
defensive and offensive weapons wherever they go. There are “vampire”
groups, “afterlife” devilish groups, bondage-servitude partnerships, and
other forms of traditional idealized humans.
Social presence requires visibility and communication. The attractive appearance of the avatar body of the majority of SL Residents is the result of the fact that social presence is more intense, satisfying, and successful when their consciousness of themselves and others is formed by very positive avatar bodies. When Residents look at an avatar they respond emotionally to its appearance. Sometimes an avatar appears on the screen that evokes the emotion of repulsion or even disgust. When Residents see a very attractive avatar they may experience an emotional need to become more conscious of its virtual sphere. Several practices have evolved as to how this is done. A common practice is to right click on the avatar’s body, or on the name tag that always appears above the head. This brings on a Profile window giving the birth date of the avatar, the Groups that the avatar is a member of, and various other details about the avatar that the Resident owner has chosen to list there. There is also a button for delivering an instant message to that avatar’s IM chat window. There is also a voice chat option allowing Residents to talk to each other while continuing to manage the movements and appearance of their avatars on the screen.
Communicative interaction and visual co-presence are possible through the avatar body for people who are distant from each other both geographically and culturally. A significant industry and economy in-world has developed within the first five years of SL’s existence. The free download software interface called the SL browser, has hundreds of technological affordances for building and creating virtual environments. Anyone with a penchant for design for buildings, clothes, art, interaction scripts that make avatars move in a certain way and dance, can use the software to create things that people want to buy for their avatars, their friends’ avatars, or for themselves in the physical world. Exploring the in-world of SL through Search links and teleport Maps reveals an endless succession and variety of places such as buildings, shopping malls, yard sales, fancy fashion stores, fun rides, gorgeous gardens, art and history galleries, streets and city blocks. This rich virtual environment is cumulative, produced by the hundreds of thousands of Residents that spend hours in-world every week or month. Hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in the form of Linden dollars (L$) exchange hands among the Residents for these objects and services. - The virtual
consciousness that we have through our avatar body is a mental venue for
establishing bonding forces with other people through their avatar bodies.
The social organization of the virtual world is formed by the practices that
Residents perform through their avatar. Right clicking an avatar’s body
allows us to penetrate the social and psychological sphere of that avatar.
For instance, we can read the avatar’s Profile statement which often
explains what the Resident is looking for through the avatar body (e.g.,
friendship, new experiences), or is not interested in (e.g., role playing
games, or sex talk). You can also inspect the names of the Groups that the
avatar belongs to. This list reveals the avatar’s body extensions or
virtual networks it is attached to. Each network node or “Group” is
indicative of the loves and ideas that are married in the Resident’s
mental body. For example look (below) at this
sample of Groups found through the Search engine in SL.
Diagram 1: Schematic Representation of a Human Being
(see explanations at:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/mental-psychology-p1.htm#_Toc212519327)
Diagram 2: Schematic Representation of Male and Female Anatomy
(see explanations at:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy28/409b-g28-lecture-notes-p1b.htm#anatomy)
Diagram 3: Two Stages of Male-Female
Unity
(see explanations at:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy28/409b-g28-lecture-notes-p1b.htm#anatomy)
Diagram 4: Formation of Man and Woman as Reciprocal Units
Diagram 5: Male
and Female Anatomy, Part 2
(see
explanations at: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/mental-psychology-p1.htm#_Toc212519324)
Diagram, 6: The Vertical Community
(explanations
at: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/mental-psychology-p1.htm#_Toc212519321)
Diagram 7: Anatomy of the Mental Body (celestial, rational, material)
Diagram 8 –
Table Listing the Mental Bodies
|
Name |
Discrete
Layer |
Description |
|
CELESTIAL VII |
4 |
Celestial—interior
rational |
|
5 |
Celestial--external-rational |
|
|
6 |
Celestial--interior-material
|
|
|
RATIONAL VI |
7i |
Rational—interior
or celestial |
|
7e |
Rational—external
or materialized |
|
|
MATERIAL V,
II, II, IV |
8 |
Material--abstract
|
|
9 |
Material--corporeal
|
|
|
10 |
“Spiritual
body” |
|
|
PHYSICAL
BODY I |
11 |
“Limbus”
|
|
12 |
Physical
body |
Diagram 9: Synergy between the Physical Body and Mental Body
(see
explanatory
note above)
Diagram 10: Immediate and Mediate Influx
Diagram 11: Consciousness Prior and After Regeneraiton
Diagram 12: Mental Layers in Sequential and Simultaneous Order
Diagram 13: Layers
Diagram 14: Mental anatomy of Husband and Wife
Diagram 15: Ascending and Descending Development
Diagram 16: The 12 Anatomical Layers of Creation, Existence, and Reality
|
ANATOMICAL |
DISCRETE DEGREES OF LOVE |
ACCOMPANYING DEGREES OF MEANING |
CONSCIOUSNESS |
|
1, 2, 3 |
Divine
Love |
Divine
Wisdom |
God
|
|
4, 5, 6 |
Celestial
loves |
Celestial-rational
meanings |
Heavenly |
|
7 |
Rational
loves |
Rational
meanings |
Rational |
|
8, 9 |
Material
loves |
Material
or natural meanings |
Material
or natural |
|
10, 11, 12 |
temporary
and permanent body coverings) |
||
Diagram 17: Three Phases of Marriage
Diagram 18: Dual Citizenship
Diagram 19: Birth, Death, and Eternity
Diagram 20: Correspondences Between Physical and
Mental Body Systems
|
AFFECTIVE circulatory
/ cardiovascular /digestive / endocrine |
COGNITIVE respiratory
/ pulmonary circulation / diaphragm / thoracic cage / mouth |
SENSORIMOTOR ORGAN nervous
/ skeletal / muscular/ integumentary / |
||
|
|
|
|
||
|
The physical body and the mental
body correspond to each other in structure and function. By studying
body-mind correspondences we can construct charts of the mental world of
eternity. Knowledge of mental physiology can assist us in mental navigation
and regeneration. |
||||
Diagram 21: Maturation and
Development
Diagram 22: Developmental Stages Before and After
Death
Diagram 23: Maturation and Regeneration of Consciousness
Overall Explanations of the Diagrams
Anatomically,
everything about men is made of [truth/love] mental genes (i.e., truth outside
with love inside), while women are made of reciprocal [love/truth] mental genes
(love outside with truth inside). This anatomical
reciprocity in their immortal mental body makes it possible for the two to
form a mental unit of one. This means that her external material loves are
conjoined to his external material truths, and his interior rational loves are
conjoined to her interior rational truths (see Diagram
2).
The
male physical body (bottom left of diagram 3) is the outermost component of a
man living on earth. A discrete degree inside this outermost shell of matter is
the mental body. We cannot see the mental body with our physical eyes because
physical eyes can only sense physical stimuli or objects. The mental body is a
discrete degree within, which means one cannot merely go from the physical to
the mental in a continuous path or line. The mental cannot “emerge” from the
physical because a higher discrete degree cannot emerge from a lower, there
being no path between them. This idea makes sense only if you take into
consideration the idea that God created layers in the mental world and the
physical world, and these layers are in discrete degree relations to each
other.
An
analogy to discrete degree in physical terms would be the idea of
transportation from one place to another. Transportation on earth is in
discrete degrees when we consider land, water, and air. If you travel by car as
far as you can get across an island or continent, you arrive inevitably at the
coastline. You can drive no further. Transportation on land ends there.
Transport by water is a discrete degree different from transport by land.
Instead of a car one needs a vehicle that works for water, like a boat or
submarine. Likewise with air transport and space travel, one needs an airplane
and a rocket.
In
a similar way the mental world of eternity is layered by discrete degrees. This
means that each degree or anatomical layering is going to be different in
crucial ways from other layers. The same operations cannot take place in the
same way in different layers. The layer of the mental body is a discrete degree
within the layer of the physical body. Since discrete anatomical layers cannot
interact directly there is another mechanism that functionally and
operationally ties the layers together. This operational law is called the law of correspondences.
Each
discrete degree is called an environment or zone. The zones in the mental world
of eternity expand from the top down. This is called successive order or sequence of discrete degrees. The same
arrangement can be transposed representationally into a simultaneous order or
arrangement of discrete degrees (see for example this diagram on layers).(REMINDER: if you use
Control-click, instead of just a click, the page and diagram will open in a new
window, and this is more convenient as you continue reading the text.)
The
mental body actually has three discrete sub-degrees, namely, from top down,
celestial layer, rational layer, and material layer. During our daily
activities here on earth our consciousness operates in the material layer,
which is closest to the physical body. Our material loves in the affective
organ seek out thoughts and reasonings that are material bound or sense bound,
and the two together give us our material consciousness in daily living. But we
do not just operate in the material zone with material ideas and material
loves. At some moments during the day our consciousness can rise to the
rational degree so that we become aware of a new dimension to existence and our
life. From rational thinking we can look down a discrete degree below and
recognize whether the material thinking corresponds to the rational thinking,
or is contrary to it, which means that it corresponds to the inverse or
opposite to the rational. The rational
mind can look down upon the material mind and guide it to think in a way that
agrees with the rational.
In
this way our material thinking in daily life is less influenced by the
appearances given through the limitations of the physical senses. For example,
in time of war men of honesty and honor rise to defend country and family. When
in battle and engaged in killing the enemy, the soldier who is immersed in
material consciousness, experiences enjoyment when killing enemy soldiers.
After the kill, he experiences enjoyment and pleasure in pillaging, destroying,
even raping the victims. But the soldier who rises above this material
consciousness thinks about what he is doing in a rational way. He responds to
rational loves, not material loves. There is universal compassion in rational
love, and the desire to harm no one, and to acknowledge and respect all
humanity and its diversity under God. When a soldier is in a rational
consciousness, he does his job well, killing effectively, but he is not
enjoying it, and he instead, wishes to spare him the agony of suffering. He
kills effectively to kill, not to maim and prolong the suffering.
Anatomically,
material consciousness is external to rational consciousness. The external
layer of the mental body is adaptive to the physical body and environment. Our
material consciousness is formed out of these external loves and truths. These external
or “lower” forms of the affective and cognitive systems are adapted to the
physical environment of time and space. Material consciousness is based on
ideas that are inherently “materialic” and
“monistic.” This means that we deny the existence or reality of God and the
mental world of eternity because we cannot comprehend that such a thing can or
would exist. Our material loves and ideas are bound to earth and to the physical
conditions of life. People who hold to a religious creed of the afterlife have
material ideas about it, as for example the idea that the afterlife will be
back on earth, this one or some other one that is like it, though perhaps more
perfect than before. This is a material idea of the afterlife and is conjoined
to the material love of physical things. In the material consciousness we
experience the “rational” as less real than the “material” which is based on
the physical. Hence for the afterlife to be “real” it must exist in a physical
world with a physical body.
But
the rational consciousness we have at a more interior level of our mental body,
sees the rational as real and eternal, and sees the material level is temporary
and of no lasting value. Our rational ideas include the idea of God and the
dual world. Rational thinking understands that the afterlife is in the mental
world outside the physical world and time. This mental afterlife is also called
the “spiritual world” which is defined as outside the physical world of place
and time, that is, in eternity. “Theistic substantive dualism” refers to the
idea that God created a world of physical matter in time, and a world of mental
matter in eternity.
Mental
matter, or substance, originates from the mental sun of eternity which is God’s
entry point into created existence (see Diagram 1). Mental heat is love
substance and mental light is truth substance. Love and truth substance are
united in God in infinite diversity and are the building blocks of the created
universe. Mental heat and light issue from the mental sun and create an expanse
or sphere around itself. This sphere is composed of mental dust particles
composed of love and truth in endless variety. Love particles are attracted to
truth particles when they match or correspond to each other, forming a bond or
marriage as with lovers and conjugial partners. This force of “love striving to reunite with its truth,”
is the basic energy of existence, creation, and all life. It corresponds to the
“unity of one” that is formed out of two minds, in the conjugial couples that
live in their celestial consciousness in eternity.
The
bond and energy of love operates in the affective circulatory system of the
mental body. Our ruling love determines our “heart and character,” or
- who we are as a
person,
- what kind of
things we are capable of doing,
- what we would
never do,
- what we actually
do despite our words,
- what we would do
if we had complete freedom to do it
- what we really
intend and what we are really hoping for
- what we cling to,
desire, and love, but are afraid to express or confess it
- etc.
Our
heart and character is our ruling love. For instance, in material consciousness
we are attached to success and money. What is this attachment, this love? Sometimes
it is selfishness and egotism. We want the money and success so that we have
more power to obtain what we really want, to get away with what we really want
to do, which otherwise we could not. “Important” people are treated better and
have special privileges. The focus is on what “we” want to do, what “I” want,
what I need, how I see it, what I think it should be.
Material Loves
Some
of the material loves that are
married to these self-centered ideas include:
- The love of money
and power for the sake of winning and staying ahead of others
- The love of fame
and influence for the sake of imposing our own ideas on others
- The love of honor
and glory for the sake of making a mark on history
- The love of
warfare for the sake of being allowed to legitimately torture the enemy
- The unconditional
love of one’s children, loving the bad along with the good in them, for
the sake of family and blood
- The love of
surviving at any cost for the sake of self-preservation
- The love of working
hard to win for the sake of the pleasure and honor of being on top
- The love of self
for the sake of self above the love of community
- The love of coming
out on top for the sake of satisfying oneself regardless of good and truth
- The love of
fulfilling one’s obligations for the sake of praise and reputation
- The love of
obeying the law for the sake of staying out of trouble
- Etc.
When
our consciousness is rooted in material loves that have not been regenerated
our thinking adjusts itself to those loves, resulting in material thinking.
This type of thinking reduces all rational ideas into material abstractions.
For instance, when we think about the possibility of an afterlife we can only
think of a material heaven and hell. Our cognitive inventiveness is guided by
our material loves to come up with ideas and principles that are compatible
with those loves, and at the same time puts on a filter of perception that acts
like a smoke that clouds the vision. In this way the material loves can create
a material consciousness that is incapable of seeing or perceiving rational
ideas that are rooted in celestial order and meaning.
As
a result of this, material loves cannot regenerate themselves. With our
inherited negative traits we would be condemned to an eternity of hell from
birth onward were it not for the activity of the rational mind that is situated
in the rational mental body (VI), anatomically located just above the material
mental body (V). What is anatomically situated “above” is also more “interior,”
which means superior in functioning and potential, because it is closer to the
mental sun. “Closer” corresponds to “less distorted reception” and “farther
out” or “lower and external” corresponds to “more distorted reception” due to
the filter of material loves.
When
we are willing to raise our consciousness to the interior rational mind (7i) we think with meanings and concepts that are
celestial-based. Not one idea in the interior rational mind is material. This
results in an entirely different way of thinking, called rational thinking. The
thoughts and principles of rational thinking cannot be united with material
loves. Our material mental body has no conscious awareness of what is a
discrete degree above itself (or what is a discrete degree within itself). When
our material consciousness hears about regeneration the idea we have is that
God regenerates us and that we don’t have to do anything except let God do the
work with omnipotence. Our role is to submit and be passive. However this idea
is seen differently in our rational mind.
Rational
ideas about God and us are based on God’s omnipotence and love. Every single
thing that exists or event that occurs is God’s doing through omnipotence.
Hence we can understand that God could regenerate every human being in an
instant, and place all people into heaven. There would be no need for the
existence of hells and suffering, for catastrophes and sicknesses, for
accidents and incompetence, etc. But there is! And God is omnipotent. Hence we
must look for a rational reason why God has not done this. Rationally we can
understand the idea that heaven is not a place where God can take us. Heaven is
nothing else but our heavenly loves. We only have that heaven where our
heavenly loves are. God cannot give us heavenly loves and compel us to believe
that these loves are our own loves. They are not. And that kind of heaven is
not something we would call a heaven. The only heaven that we can call our
heaven is a heaven where our loves are. The home of our own loves. Our
happiness is our loves. Someone else’s loves cannot make us happy.
Hence
it is that God cannot transplant people into heaven, or reward people by
bringing them to heaven. But we cannot accept this when we are in our material
consciousness. We can only think of heaven as a place of reward, a place where
we can find things we love and like. Notice: “things” we love. So for instance
if we love ice cream, there will be limitless access to it. If we love sex,
there will be limitless access to that. If we love luxurious houses and great
art, we will have that in our heavenly dwelling places. The material filter
does not allow us to perceive that to love these things is to respond from
material loves, not heavenly loves. In our rational consciousness we can
perceive that ice cream, surfing, car racing, promiscuity, popularity, social
power, leadership position, business success, etc., are not going to create a
heaven in eternity, but a hell.
A
good exercise for you would be to figure out why this is so, or how this is.
Why are these things incapable of creating a heaven in eternity?
Our
rational thinking is based on celestial-rational correspondences. These
meanings are the most interior that we can have, and they are infinite in
number or complexity. We can spend an eternity living in these celestial-rational
correspondences of Divine Rationality or Truth. We receive these meanings with
the mental light that streams into celestial mental body. In our rational
consciousness we can contemplate these celestial meanings and understandings.
We can see that our loves are called “heaven.” Celestial loves are organized by the ruling celestial love, which is
the love of others for the sake of God’s good in them.
When
we raise our consciousness from the material to the rational we can perceive
the celestial truth that we are to love God’s good in people, but not their
evils. Sometimes people discuss “unconditional love” as the love we can have
for a person as a totality. Often people say that they have such a love for
their children, or for their spouses, or soulmates. But from a rational
perspective free of material ideas, we can see that it is wrong to love both
the good and the evil in a person. It is wrong to love evil. To love evil
because it belongs to a loved one, is a material idea that comes from a
material love.
The ruling material love is the
love of self for the sake of self, and the love of others for the sake of self.
All material loves are ruled by
this one love. They support it, believe in it, justify it, feel self-righteous
about it. This ruling love puts up a cloud of smoke to prevent rational ideas
from being perceived. All “good” is defined as that which agrees with the
ruling love, and anything that disagrees with it, is called evil and false.
This kind of thinking cannot reform itself, cannot regenerate self. Only
rational loves can compel the material thinking into change. With the change of
thinking comes new material loves that are compatible with the celestial order.
These material loves have rational loves within them. For example, when we are
in our rational mind while filling out our income tax returns, we experience
the joy of paying taxes for the sake of supporting the government’s work. We
see money as an instrument of God for creating a society that can help people
regenerate and prepare for the afterlife of eternity. We consider it a
privilege to be able to contribute to this celestial use by paying our legal
taxes. We have to pay them, but we can feel unhappy about it (material
perception), or we can feel joyful and blessed (rational perception).
Rational Loves
Here
are some examples:
- The love of
discovering correspondences for the sake of knowing truths
- The love of
understanding God and dualism for the sake of cooperation and obedience
- The love of undergoing
character reformation or regeneration for the sake of heavenly life
- The love of paying
taxes for the sake of providing services to the needy
- The love of
exercising mercy towards the enemy in war for the sake of respecting their
human rights
- The love of
parenting children for the sake of only what is good in them
- The love of
community for the sake of a greater love than the love of the individual
or self
- The love of
honesty and sincerity for the sake of good and truth
- The love of God’s
order for the sake of good and truth
- The love of
avoiding what is contrary to good and truth for the sake of God and
heavenly life
- The love of what
is just and fair for the sake of what is good and true
- The love of making
one’s wife happy for the sake of their joint happiness
- The love of
fulfilling one’s obligations for the sake of sincerity and integrity
- The love of
obeying the law for the sake of community life
- Etc.
If
you study the list of material and rational loves, contrasting them, you will
notice that material loves are forms of love of self (egotism, selfism), while
rational loves are forms of love of community (altruism, sociality). Rational
consciousness is above material consciousness because rational loves and ideas
focus on the world of eternity, immortality, and permanence, while material loves
and ideas focus on the world of time, death, and impermanence. The rational
represents and characterizes the “humanness”
of human beings, while the material represents and characterizes the “animal” aspect of human beings.
Our
material consciousness is in itself sub-human and is similar to that of
animals. People love animals, and especially their pets, because they can
identify with the animal mind through their material mind or consciousness. The
consciousness of our pets is devoid of all rational ideas and loves. We cannot
explain to them the difference between a news story on TV and a soap opera.
They cannot learn to know about income taxes or religion. Animals do not have
the mental anatomy that reaches the rational level of consciousness in the
mental world of eternity. Animals cannot see the mental sun of eternity as
humans beings can. The mental dust that fills the mental world of eternity is
composed of love and truth particles. The mental regions further out from the
mental sun as a center are filled with mental dust particles that arrange
themselves in clusters and forms that are “materialized” and less
“rationalized.”
As
the clusters of love and truth particles become more and more compounded, they
become less and less rational, and more and more “material.” The consciousness
we have in the outer or lower regions of the mental world is made of these
compound particles that are material and “rigidified” in comparison to the
“flexible” and “rational” consciousness that is composed out of simpler and
purer clusters of mental dust. The highest form of human consciousness is above
the rational, and close to the mental sun. Celestial loves and their ideas are
purified correspondences of the Divine loves and truths. These are the most
rational, hence the most human. Love and truth substance within the mental sun
itself are perfect and infinite in rationality and consciousness.
The
highest form of human consciousness is therefore the purely rational. This is
also called the celestial consciousness. After resuscitation we rise to the
highest level of consciousness in proportion to our loves and truths. Rational
loves and rational ideas give us the celestial consciousness of conjugial love
and of the universal mental community called the Grand Human. If we underwent
the work of regeneration and character reformation, we resuscitate with our rational
consciousness, and this is capable of activating the celestial mind and its
celestial consciousness. We then live in a heaven with our soul mate amidst friends
in splendid surrounds.
But
if we did not undergo character reformation, we resuscitate with our material
consciousness. These material loves and ideas are adapted to the physical world
and its conditions. Material ideas and loves are not suitable for healthy survival
in a mental environment that is structured on what is rational and altruistic. The
ruling material love of “always me first” surrounds itself with irrational
ideas that justify the outlook of selfism and selfish ways of acting towards others.
This egotistical ruling love bans all altruistic loves and all ideas and
principles of rationality and truth. As a result, the person now becomes an
“evil” caricature of their former selves. Their material consciousness after
resuscitation gets rid of all remains of rational consciousness. This new type
of person is called a “devil” in comparison to the rational person in the
celestial consciousness called “angel.” Humans in the “devil” state of mind
live together in “infernal” societies called “hell.” Together and universally
they form the Grand Monster in the mental world of eternity.
Material Thinking and Rational Thinking
The
three levels of human thinking are called material, rational, and celestial.
The rational thinking, being in the middle position, acts as a go-between
uniting the celestial and the material by being able to look up to the
celestial, or look down to the material. Hence our mental anatomy includes a
material-rational level of functioning, and a celestial-rational level. Prior
to the dying-resuscitation process our celestial thinking is not directly
accessible to our conscious rational mind. Nevertheless, our conscious rational
mind can arrange its meanings and principles to correspond to the celestial
mind. It is the celestial mind in which human beings are complete in their
mental development. Our ability to
arrange our rational meanings and understandings in the celestial order
provides us with a source of new powerful human potential.
When
we reach maturity in young adulthood, an important internal mental task facing
us is reformation of our thinking from material-rational meanings to
celestial-rational meanings. This is a massive clean-up job known in
allegorical literature as the Twelve Labors
of Hercules:
Inner Meaning: As philosophical,
moral, and eventually allegorical overlays came to be applied to his
death-cheating superhuman exploits, behind their outer, literal meaning, the
Hercules figure came to represent an inner mystical tradition, and thus the
labors could be interpreted in terms of the spiritual path.
From
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Labours
The
ancients or pre-moderns were experts in what was then known as the “science of
correspondences.” This was confirmed by Swedenborg when he visited their mental
habitations in their own secluded celestial regions of the Grand Human. The
most ancient generations were socialized into the everyday practice of the
science of correspondences. Today as moderns, we can introduce the science of
correspondences in early public education and add it to the basic information
literacy skills every human being needs.
All the world’s Sacred Texts are
written in celestial correspondences (see my extensive analysis here). This is because Divine Speech is
always addressed to the entire human race and first enters human consciousness
in the celestial mind. The Sacred Scriptures in the Grand Human is written
entirely in celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Truth and gives people
in that consciousness a state of knowledge and wisdom called quasi-omniscience.
The
celestial-rational consciousness in our conscious rational mind gives us the
ability to rearrange our material meanings to make them fit with the celestial
order. The knowledge of correspondences
allows us to explore the celestial-rational world, which is the world of our
future in heaven. Above all, this knowledge gives us the ability to
cooperate with the Divine Psychologist in the lifelong process of regeneration
or reformation of character.
Our
material loves have to be reformed by our rational loves, and our material
principles have to be reformed by our rational principles. We can develop the
ability to live in both material and rational consciousness at the same time,
throughout the day’s activities. It is like creating a biographical video of
our daily life. The rational thinking looks down on the material thinking and
is able to evaluate it, whether it is rational or irrational, wise or foolish,
beneficial or hurtful, ethical or unethical, good or bad, right or wrong. This
is called metanoid perception.
Our conscience is located in our
rational consciousness.
Everyone
is conscious of that portion of our rational mind called “conscience.” In the
word “conscience” we see the root “co-“ meaning “together,” and the root
“-science” meaning “knowledge.” The word “together” refers to the human race in
totality. All human beings have a built in anatomical organ called conscience.
The content of conscience is universal and independent of time, place, culture,
and mentality. This is because the conscious celestial-rational mind
spontaneously reacts by correspondence to the celestial mind itself. And the
content of the celestial mind is the correspondence to Divine Truth and
Rationality. Conscience is the
expression of God’s truth in our conscious rational mind.
We
can expand our conscious access to the whole rational mind by paying attention
to how we do our every day thinking by spontaneously using the language of correspondences. For
instance, when we think about a career we use the image metaphors of moving
with the physical body, such as “moving up” or “getting ahead” to refer to
being “promoted” to more advanced responsibilities. Self-witnessing your
thinking on the daily round of activities will show you that you constantly
make use of the physical body when talking about the mental body or mind. The
reason of this is that the two bodies act in correspondence with each other.
(Note:
For additional discussion on self-witnessing one’s thinking see the article on
my discovery of sudden memory.)
Metanoid Self-Witnessing and the Discovery of Sudden Memory
It is possible to focus on many of the thousands of acts of willing (affective) and thinking (cognitive) that we perform every day. Note that normal social life does not require this kind of self-witnessing and self-knowing. Society requires that we know things outside of ourselves, like the history of our country, or the multiplication table, or how to read instructions and write messages. But there is no social, legal, or professional requirement that we monitor our feelings, motives, thoughts, and interior dialog with ourselves.
Once in awhile, if we get called on the witness stand in a legal context, we might have to report on some of our willing and thinking. We are asked, Why did you do this? Or, What did you decide then? Or, Were you in love with her at that time? Etc. It is required by law that we answer honestly, but knowing the answer is not a requirement. In that case we reply, "I don’t remember," and the court accepts it. But the court does hold us responsible for knowing things outside of ourselves, such as, Did you see him or not? and, Were you ever contacted by this person, etc.
And yet, for our eternal fate in the afterlife, this external knowledge is not at all crucial, and will only last us as long as we are connected to the physical body, while the usefulness of the interior knowledge will last us to eternity. Clearly, the interior knowledge is immeasurably more important than the external knowledge, and yet, prior to our reformation, everyone favors the external knowledge, and pursues it, hardly paying attention to the far more crucial interior knowledge, which is knowledge about the character of our willing and the content of our thinking all day long. Swedenborg points out that
The knowledge of a thing must come first in
order that there may be a perception of it. (AC 5649)
Having practiced the self-witnessing discipline for almost four decades now, I am able to say various things about it that may be useful to others. An amazing discovery was the existence of "sudden memory" which refers to the stream of thought that is our actual mental life in the material mind. This stream of thought is the outward form of our affections or loves. The quality of our affections is the result of the particular spiritual societies with which we are in contact as the sequence of thoughts proceeds moment by moment. When we perform self-witnessing we are able to "tune in" to the stream of thought while carrying out one’s routine tasks all day long. This is not like meditation and deep reflection which are activities that occur when we stop our tasks and sit seemingly doing nothing, thus disengaged from the surrounding pace of events. I shall explain the difference further.
The stream of inner thinking accompanies every outward act, and this a characteristic of human life. Every person is able to tune in and listen to the interior sequence or “wave” of thoughts, and become aware of it. What is amazing is that the instant one tries to reflect on what was snatched from the stream, it is mostly gone and unavailable to conscious inspection or reflection. One has the experience of simply not being able to remember what it was. It’s quite unsettling. How do we get hold of the mental stream or even, some of it, long enough so we can examine it in greater detail? You may be familiar with this experience when, upon awakening, you are still affectively filled by the sphere of your vivid dream, but the instant you try to reflect on what it is so you can put it in words, it remains unavailable to the conscious mind, staying just out of its reach—like the "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon when you’re trying to think of a name or word you know but can’t quite think of it.
The tip of the tongue (TOT or Tot or Presque vu) phenomenon is an instance of knowing something that cannot immediately be recalled. TOT is an experience with memory recollection involving difficulty retrieving a well-known word or familiar name. When experiencing TOT, people feel that the blocked word is on the verge of being recovered. Despite failure in finding the word, people have the feeling that the blocked word is figuratively "on the tip of the tongue." Inaccessibility and the sense of imminence are two key features of an operational definition of TOTs
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_of_the_tongue
Psychology teaches that there are two types of memory: short term and long term. The first lasts for several seconds—like the phone number we look up and then dial. If we wait more than a few seconds to dial it, we have to look it up again. We move things from short term to long term memory by repetition and rehearsal with the motive to recall it later. So you can memorize things in this way and place them permanently in your long term memory where you can recall it when you want to. Sudden memory on the other hand, seems to work for a second or two and then it’s gone. This is why I call it "sudden" memory—suddenly come and suddenly gone in our conscious awareness. This is the reality of our stream of consciousness under normal conditions.
But self-witnessing skills allow you to snatch things from sudden memory and put them into short term, then long term memory where the record of the thoughts can be analyzed and evaluated.
I discovered that trying to think in words and sentences slows down the stream of consciousness so that it’s easier to become aware of what it is. This is somewhat like giving a "blow by blow" description to an imaginary tape recorder of what one is thinking, observing, and reacting to. It seems to slow the stream down for awhile, enough so that one’s short term memory retains more of it, so that one is able to get a fix on what the topic is and its semantic direction. In short term memory we can be aware of the thinking and evaluate it. Once in short term memory we can put it into long term memory by mentally rehearsing it, or by making a physical record of it such as a written or recorded note. The mental discipline of self-witnessing pays off because it gives conscious access to one’s normal everyday affections and thoughts.
Daily self-witnessing practice enables us to exert rational control over our interior dialog, our daydreams, and our emotional reactions to events, moment by moment, all day long. Self-witnessing reveals sub-conscious attitudes and hidden interests. It gives us the capability of exerting control by consciously choosing to stop or to interrupt a particular line of thinking, feeling, and emoting. I use the expression "self-regulatory sentences" for silent verbalizations or instructions that we can give ourselves to control the stream of thinking: e.g., "Stop it. Why are you wasting time thinking these useless things?" Or: "That’s not a nice thing to think." Or: "How low can I get to be so fascinated by that sort of thing?" Etc. This gives people greater conscious control over their mental life allowing them to clean out the mental pollution that reigns in it from heredity and culture. (See section on The Practice of Renting Out Your Mind and see the Web search results for “pollution of the I”)
It is not possible for humans to do anything without the normal accompanying thinking stream. Try it. Start doing something, and then try to continue doing it without thinking anything at all. Being without thoughts. Your physical body will stop all movements and you will be frozen in matter, like Lot’s wife becoming a pillar of salt. When people stop thinking they fall into a coma so that their physical body can do nothing. To think continuously non-stop is the normal biological state of a human being.
The expression “renting out your mind” refers to giving up some control over the content of our consciousness. In our modern lifestyle it is easy for people to give up control over most of the content of their thinking. For instance, when people sitting in a waiting room, they watch the TV screen or read a magazine that is on the table. The content of their consciousness during the waiting time will be almost completely determined by the program or article. They get into a car and immediately switch on the radio or some personal media device. These will select and determine much of the content of their consciousness while driving. As soon as they get home they watch TV, or walk around with an audio device plugged to the ear, or read the newspaper, etc. This is normal behavior for our generation. As a result everyone needs to assess objectively what proportion of their consciousness is determined by self vs. others. This can be done conveniently by keeping notes or an audio recording of a Thinking Log in which you identify the proportion for that episode or hour (e.g., “Got absorbed in watching 3 hours of TV. Proportion: 10 percent my choice, 90 percent movie choice.”)
By monitoring and controlling the content of our consciousness, we take charge of our material mind. The higher or more interior rational mind gains control over the material mind, which is made to submit through temptations. The result of the temptation is that rational principles of altruism prevailed over material principles of selfism. After this, the material mind is obedient to the rational mind and there is no longer a conlict or resistance. But this applies only to the specific type of love involved in that temptation. Since we have numerous loves, it takes a lifetime of temptation experiences to render the material mind completely obedient and willing to arrange itself by correspondence with the rational mind, and thus the celestial mind. This is called the regenerated person, or the regenerated mental state. However it is a process that is actually never fully completed.
If we fail to take charge of the content of our material consciousness we give up the choice that we each have at our second death. This is when we enter the final place of living in society with either those in the Grand Human or those in the Grand Monster. This all important choice is given up when we give up control of the content of our consciousness. This content is formed by the loves and enjoyments we had when renting out our mind others who make the choice for us. The accumulation of loves so formed over a lifetime cannot be tossed aside at that final choice because love has a powerful determining hold over our thinking, especially so after the dying/resuscitation process. By monitoring and managing the content of our thoughts we make the choices for those loves that are going to make us truly happy, from within, to eternity. With those loves we can enter our heavenly life in company with our soul mate in a society of peaceful neighbors and devoted friends.
Have
you listened in on yourself lately?
We cannot trust the reputation or opinion we
have of ourselves, for this is subjective, biased, and self-serving. The check
mark we place on self-rating scales are inflated or deflated in accordance with
our vanities: How good am I? How often do I get mad? Am I ever unkind or gross?
What kind of mistakes do I make? How happy are the people around me with my
conduct? Etc. To answer such questions
objectively and accurately we must witness our life.
To react to what we observe is to make an evaluation of our willing and thinking. This evaluation is from a rational level, looking down, while the stream of thinking that we are observing is from a material level. An analogy might be standing on a bridge and looking down on the flow of a semi-transparent river and inspecting its contents—stones, fish, debris. These things represent the content of our mind—knowledges, truths, and falsifications of truths. The flow of the river is the sequencing of the thoughts, their reasoning and coherence. What do you think is holding the stream of thinking in a coherent or meaningful sequence or direction? A related question is this: What allows people to think logically and to solve a problem logically? Where does logical thinking come from? And note as well that people also think illogically.
The answer anatomically is that when the material mind is in correspondence with the rational mind it then thinks logically, as if spontaneously out of nowhere. But when the material thinking is unwilling to arrange itself to agree with the rational, it thinks illogically from itself. It s own logic is not capable of recognizing that its thought sequence is not logical. For example, when we are suddenly emotionally challenged, as when a stranger on the road insults us, we “fly into a rage” and “see red” like a bull. We cannot see that our rage makes us illogical and dangerous. We think sequences of thoughts that falsely or inadequately represent the situation. We make quick judgments that turn out later to be wrong. The material consciousness has no objective knowledge of itself, but only a subjective one from within. In that mentality, whatever we love we call good, and whatever ideas agree with that good, we call true and logical.
The only solution for the material mind is to let the rational mind decide what is good and true. The rational idea of good and truth corresponds to the celestial idea of good and truth, and this corresponds to Divine Good and Truth. Prior to reformation and regeneration our idea of good and truth is not aligned with the celestial idea of good and truth. Reformation is the effort we expend in separating things in our mind that correspond to the rational-celestial, and those that do not. We thus establish a conscious celestial-rational mind and consciousness. This is the mentality we need to effect regeneration. Without rational loves and truths the material mind cannot face spiritual combat. Only higher principles can give us the intensity of love and motivation for
The 12 Anatomical Layers of Existence and Reality
(This
is Diagram
16 in the anatomical charts)
|
ANATOMICAL |
DISCRETE
DEGREES OF LOVE |
ACCOMPANYING
DEGREES OF MEANING |
CONSCIOUSNESS |
|
1,
2, 3 |
Divine Love |
Divine Wisdom |
God |
|
4,
5, 6 |
Celestial loves |
Celestial-rational meanings |
Heavenly |
|
7 |
Rational loves |
Rational meanings |
Rational |
|
8,
9 |
Material loves |
Material or natural meanings |
Material or natural |
|
10,
11, 12 |
temporary and permanent body
coverings) |
||
The
mental sun of eternity (see Diagrams) is the entry point of God’s
Divine Love into creation, existence, and reality. God creates, constructs, and
manages every detail in existence through the interior structure or
constitution of every object and property. In God’s consciousness infinite
things make one. In other words, God integrates everything into a rational
system or coherent and organic unit. God creates 12 substantive layers that are
organic and evolutionary through interior constitution. God builds from within
outward, or what is the same, from top down, through a series of discrete
degrees or substantive layers.
Each
layer is non-overlapping because it is constructed from a different substance
conglomeration. All objects within a layer or “universe” are proper to that
layer and cannot mix or touch adjacent layers. However the layers are
functionally connected by the laws of correspondences. There is therefore a
sequential order of discrete degrees, which is top down (or from center
outward), and a simultaneous order of discrete degrees, which is from center
outward as in concentric circles. All events in a lower degree are effects
caused by the corresponding events in the immediately adjacent upper degree. In
this way God maintains omnipotent control over all things that have existence
in the created universe.
Every
human being is born into these 12 layers, develops sequentially across the
layers, but functions simultaneously at maturity. The organ of the soul
contains the unique mental genes of each immortal human being. It is located in
layer 3 and is not accessible to our consciousness. It has been called “God’s
abode” with human beings. The highest conscious life we can have is called the
celestial or heavenly consciousness. It exists in three modalities called
interior-celestial-rational (“Third Heaven”), spiritual –rational (“Second
Heaven”), and spiritual-natural (“First Heaven”). Our consciousness gains
access to the celestial degree of life starting at our second death when we
enter the Grand Human society of our love.
Our
rational consciousness begins when we reach maturity at young adulthood. It is
at that time a materialized version of the rational, and this is not actually
rational but only appears to be. The true rational begins when we undergo
reformation and become enlightened by realizing the reality of dualism, the
afterlife, eternity, God, heaven and hell. This rational is in correspondence with the
celestial-rational and forms our new character and personality through the
process of regeneration.
When
we acquire the celestial-rational arrangement in our rational thinking we are capapble of undergoing spiritual temptations. God in the
role of our Divine Psychologist, manages the details of our character
reformation through temptations that we are given to face in daily life. We
then must use the principles of rational truths that we have acquired through
the celestial-rational meanings and ideas. These principles include the idea
that we must fight against our temptations as-if of our effort and suffering,
but knowing all along that it is God who is managing and effecting through omnipotence.
God wills that we live the experience that we are alone, fighting by our own
effort. Without this, we would not fight. And we must fight if we are going to
make our choices in freedom. When we choose in freedom, we choose according to
our ruling love. This remains with us to eternity and can make up our heavenly
life of happiness and conjugial bliss with a partner.
Note
from the table (Diagram 12) that all the degrees of creation and reality begin
with God’s Divine Love, which is the mental heat that continuously streams out
of the mental sun of eternity, and creating the 12 anatomical layers of
existence around itself. Divine Love is the source and origin of our celestial
loves, and these are the cause of our rational loves, which are the cause of
our material loves. Love is therefore the power that drives and determines the
whole of creation. God rules through Divine Love that is within our celestial
loves. These are the organic operations of the affective circulatory system of
the celestial mental body (V). These operations are the cause of the operations
in the affective system of the rational mental body (VI), which causes the
events in the affective system of the material mental body (VII).
Loves
construct the thoughts in the cognitive respiratory system. One can think of an
idea as the cognitive embodiment of a love. We cannot see the love, but we can
see the idea. This is why meaning is called mental light. But feeling is called
mental heat. Heat is visible as light. Heat is the substance; light is the
form. Heat within is the interior structure of light on the outside. Love and
ideas together have the power to instantiate the actuality that is our
consciousness. Celestial loves give us a heavenly consciousness which is
quasi-omniscient. Rational loves give us the awareness of celestial
consciousness, so that we can have it available to us now, while we are still
attached to the physical body. After the dying/resuscitation process this
rational consciousness allows to access our celestial consciousness. Without
this intermediary operation we would not be able to bridge the gap between the
natural-material life on earth, and the spiritual-celestial life in eternity.
Mental Content in Eternity
To
be happy in an afterlife of eternity people must have a mental environment
filled with content and meaning. What would a dream be without content or
meaning? Nothing but darkness of consciousness, so that a dream would be an
experience no different from a no-dream. Where there is no mental content, there
is no heaven. The content of the afterlife begins with everything that
is in our mind at the death of the physical body. Upon resuscitation a few
hours later, our consciousness of the mental environment, of the people, and of
the events that are going on around us, is similar to the natural content that
we have acquired during our connection to the physical body. This is made of
our experiences, memories, knowledge, involvements, and plans. Everything that we have ever sensed,
thought, or felt through the physical body is permanently recorded in the
mental events we had during those experiences and to which they correspond.
This is why the environment around
us in eternity is similar in content to the environment around us here. You know this is true of our
dreams. The content of our dreams consist of objects we are familiar with in
awake states, such as people, houses, animals, clothes, beaches, mountains, food,
flowers, etc. This is also the content of our celestial mental body (VII) or layers
6, 5, 4). The societies and cities in the heavens of the Grand Human consist of
ideally beautiful and harmonious architecture, art, as well as orderly and
peaceful interactions between citizens who love their neighbors more than
themselves. In contrast, the societies and cities in the hells of the Grand
Monster consist of perversely ugly and disharmonious living conditions, as well
as disorderly and warlike interactions between citizens who love themselves
more than their neighbors.
Although
the content of your dream may be similar to the objects around you when you are
awake, we know that the content in each case is made of different substances.
When we are awake the physical objects around us are made of matter such as
mineral elements, gasses, atomic particles in spatiotemporal arrangements and
motions. These physical elements or materials are called “inert” and as we all
know, cannot be easily manipulated or built from scratch. But the objects in
our dream world are made of mental stuff called “substance” to distinguish it
from “matter.” Things made of substance are mental things, while things made of
matter are physical things.
Mental
things made of substance are easily constructed, instantiated, or rezzed in the
mental environment. We do not feel any effort of construction when we are
constructing our dream filled with mental objects. It is a spontaneous process
or activity governed completely my our loves. Each love has the power to
construct thoughts and images that it finds pleasing and consumable or pleasurable.
This is the consciousness of it. The
pleasure or enjoyment in our conscious awareness is the organic embodiment of
love in the sensorimotor system of the mental body. It is called our
“living experience.”
Every
mental event is an object constructed of immortal substances (mental heat and
light substance). A thought or idea is a mental object. An imagined castle is
also a mental object (as in “castles in the air” – which refers to unrealistic
thinking). Prior to our separation from the physical body through the dying/resuscitation
process, our inventory of mental objects is in a disorder or disarray. The
mental states in our celestial layers (VII or layers 6, 5, 4) are mixed
helter-skelter as in a heap or in a soup. The mental states in our inherited natural
layers (V and VI or 7, 8, 9), are hellish prior to regeneration and character
reformation. After resuscitation, our mental physiology goes through
spontaneous organic operations of new mental experiences that involve us with
other people whom we encounter. This spontaneous change process ends in the
complete and total separation of heavenly and hellish traits, loves, and
enjoyments. All the inherited and acquired hellish loves are assembled by the
Divine Psychologist in one hierarchy ruled by a chief selfish love, and all the
regenerate heavenly loves are assembled in another hierarchy ruled by a ruling
altruistic love.
Our
two personality halves are now complete opposites of each other. Now the two
opposing ruling loves engage us simultaneously so that we are pulled in
opposite directions simultaneously. This process feels like dying and losing
all life. We feel the urgent necessity of making a fateful decision. We either
face our hellish ruling love, turning our back to the heavenly ruling love, or else
the reverse: we face our heavenly ruling love and turn our back on our hellish
ruling love. There is no in between compromise possible because a ruling love
does not allow a contrary love to exist within its vicinity or hierarchy of
loves.
In
this process of ultimate and final choice of our eternal destination, the
individual feels a strong love and attraction to the ruling love that is
acquired during life through the physical body. This ruling love now powerfully
directs our free choice to decide which side of ourselves we are going to give
up. Whichever side we choose, the other side is rendered motionless and as-if
dead, unable to start up again in our consciousness. It is laid to rest
forever. This final choice and
separation is called our second death. At this point our consciousness
becomes this ruling love and we find ourselves in company with others who have
a like ruling love. This final state of life in endless eternity is called
either heaven or hell, depending on its content.
It makes rational sense therefore
to want to prepare ourselves for that fateful choice that is to last us to
endless eternity. It’s a big difference whether we
live our eternity in the irrational disarray of hostility and savagery in our
hellish mental states, versus living in the rational order, happiness, and
friendship of our heavenly mental states. This choice is something we must
manage now and throughout the rest of our life “on earth.” The process by which
this management is achieved is called regeneration. This involves clinging to
rational loves, which provide us with rational-celestial truths and principles
by which we can resist temptations and cumulate progress towards complete
separation from inherited material traits and enjoyments that are “evil,” that
is, contrary or opposed to the celestial arrangement (layers 6, 5, 4).
The current research methodology in psychology has
developed and matured in the 20th century. It is based on the
philosophy of monism and the negative bias in science against dualism. God is
excluded. The afterlife is excluded. Anything mental is excluded, unless
redefined operationally in terms of brain activity and measurement. Personality
is redefined in terms of physically measurable behavioral activities, while
consciousness and thinking are reduced to neuro-chemical operations in the
brain and body. This attitude and perspective is called “reductionism in
science.” Some people like to use the phrase “scientific objectivism” or
“realism.” Others who oppose objectivism have proposed a mentalism that is also
reductionist, though in a different way (see Lakoff, Johnson, and others in the
Readings on body-mind correspondences).
The
exclusion of dualism, the afterlife, and God is a philosophical decision that
can be called a “bias” since it has not been proven, and most scientists would
not even try of proving it. It is just an assumption, an
orientation, a mutual agreement or “creed” to exclude from science certain
topics and issues, when they cannot be measured by physical behavior or
measurement. All disciplines of science have such “departing assumptions”
that are merely accepted and not proven or provable. It is like a
“constitution” or like the ethical by-laws adopted by a profession or
community. No scientist is expected to prove that there is no God or afterlife.
It is just excluded from any human behavior and explanation of human behavior
that is kept within the framework variously called “objectivism,” “positivism,”
“physicalism,” “realism,” or “behaviorism.” This
philosophical “monism” may therefore properly be called a “bias,” as in the
“reductionism bias,” or the “negative bias.”
Similarly, the exclusion of monism by accepting
dualism instead, is not provable, and therefore can be called the “positive bias” in
science. We thus have a historical and
intellectual paradigm clash between the negative bias in psychology and the
positive bias in psychology. The negative bias denies the existence of purely
mental phenomena, the afterlife, and God as explanatory concepts in human
behavior. The positive bias in psychology asserts the existence of two worlds
in which we live, namely, the physical world through our temporary physical
body, and the mental world of eternity with our immortal mental body (see
anatomical diagram 1).
The reason that the negative and positive paradigms
clash is that the negative bias paradigm requires physical measurements
to establish the existence of a phenomenon. This requirement automatically
excludes anything that is not physical. For instance, God is excluded
because there is no physical measurement of God available. Also, life after
death is excluded because there is no physical measurement of anything after
death. Likewise, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness are excluded, unless
they can be reduced to physical measurements. In other words, it is logically
impossible to prove physically that something non-physical exists.
Think carefully about this: it is logically
impossible to prove physically that something non-physical exists.
This is why dualism starts with the positive bias,
which is the assumption that there are two worlds, one is physical in time, the
other is mental in eternity. The time/eternity dualism is therefore the
departing assumption. The current
proposal of mental psychology is called substantive dualism based on
correspondences. The history of psychology keeps track of dualism, as for
instance tracing the modern beginnings of monism to R. Descartes (1596-1650).
This is historically ironic because Descartes is also known for his strong
advocacy of dualism, which was that human beings have a physical or material
component in the body, and a purely mental or “spirit” component in the “soul.”
This is a traditional body-spirit dualism that runs through the history of
literature since its beginning thousands of years ago.
E.
Swedenborg (1688-1772) was the first modern psychologist who advanced
dualism to a scientific status by describing the “spiritual world” of eternity
as the mental world where are to be found mental objects such as sensations,
thoughts, and feelings. Swedenborg was the first scientific mental psychologist
who worked out the details of substantive dualism. I call this dualism
“substantive” because it specifies the substance, or mental material out of
which mental objects are constructed, and how these mental objects interact
with each other. In his books such as Rational
Psychology (1742) and related mental physiology works, Swedenborg proposes the laws of body-mind correspondences that play a
major role in mental psychology today.
In my adaptation of Swedenborg’s
theistic mental psychology to modern psychology, I have retained all the
major elements he has confirmed by direct observation over a period of 27 years
during which he was able to be fully conscious and functioning in both worlds.
The positive bias includes the assumption of the
operation of the laws of correspondences. These
cause-effect laws are required for a scientific approach to substantive dualism
in psychology. In other words, it is assumed that every phenomenon
involving the physical world and body in time, is called an “effect,” while the
cause of each physical effect is a phenomenon involving the mental world and
body in eternity. Mental events are
therefore the cause of all physical events.
The cause-effect laws of body-mind correspondences
can be discovered empirically, as I have described in various places (e.g.: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/correspondences.htm).
(REMINDER: if you use Control-click, instead of just
a click, the page and diagram will open in a new window, and this is more
convenient as you continue reading the text.)
Once the assumption of dualism is granted (without
proof) there is a variety of data sources and data management procedures that become
available to mental psychology. For the past fifty years
I have developed and applied empirical data management procedures involving the
following approaches to mental psychology:
- Self-witnessing
methodology
- Body-mind
correspondences
- Systematic
discourse analysis of Sacred Scripture in world religions
- Diagramming
theoretical constructs to show the formal connection between all the independently
defined concepts, and to verify whether they are consistent and in
agreement with each other (e.g. the anatomical Diagrams
in the current volume)
- Specification
of particular developmental phases applicable to all human behavior and
growth (e.g., twelve phases of development in marriage, or six phases of mental
development and spiritual growth or regeneration)
- The
production of autobiographical
records such as journals, letters, neologisms coined,
daily round archives,
cognitive maps, transcript
analysis, and others.
- Demonstrating
the applicability of the theory in different behavior domains (e.g., the ennead
matrix applied to threefold
self, unity
model of marriage, driving
psychology charts).
- Demonstrating
that the theory can explain problems and issues better than prior
theories and proposals (e.g., providing a consistent medical
definition of heavenly and hellish traits, or providing rational
explanations of human puzzles that prior theories have not been able to
provide)
- Demonstrating
that other researchers and scholars
can contribute to the explanatory system in mental psychology by
following similar steps of analysis
- Dream analysis using body-mind
correspondences
- Analysis
of avatar consciousness in virtual worlds as indexed by avatar behavior
practices (see Section below)
Additional research approaches will no doubt be
developed by future researchers in mental psychology.
I want to note here that all the major assumptions
and principles in mental psychology that I have proposed, can be found
confirmed by the direct empirical observations recorded in the Swedenborg Reports (18th
century) (see my detailed descriptions in the Theistic Psychology
volumes).
I have it made it possible for readers and scholars
to explore my data management efforts in mental psychology over the past four
decades, by making available on the Web much of my scientific thinking and publishing
since 1960. The following topical directory links will give you access to
almost all of it:
- Links to
Full Access Recent Online Books by Leon James
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/booklist.htm - Directory
of Full Text Articles and Books Online (1960-2008)
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonarticles.html - Scientific
Neologisms Coined by Leon James in Psychology For the Period 1958-2008
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/neochartp1.htm - Swedenborg
Encyclopedia of Theistic Psychology
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss.html - Dr. Leon
James Home Page Hawaii -- up since
1996
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leon.html - List of
Publications by Leon James
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonpublish.html
Examples of data applications can also be found in
the reports of my students over the past thirty semester. Consult this list of
links that connect you to more than 200 student reports in spiritual
psychology, theistic psychology, and mental psychology:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/swedenborg.html#students
Rational Psychology vs. Empirical Psychology
The science of psychology exists in two modalities,
negative bias and positive bias. The negative bias psychology developed in the
twentieth century. I have personally witnessed this
development since the 1950’s when I began my
training as a psychology researcher, writer, and professor (see my article on
Historical Autobiography: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/pun/ccp1.html)
The negative bias mode of psychology is strictly
empirical and physicalistic, some people use the word “behavioristic.” I call
it a “negative” bias because it denies without any proof the existence of real
things that are not physical and natural. For instance, God is not admitted as
a scientific cause-effect reality. No scientific explanations are allowed or
sanctioned unless they involve a physical operation, record, or measurement. Since
no physical measurements are available to define or “operationalize” the
concept of God, it is excluded as a possibility. The faithful practice of this
negative bias in science insures that no knowledge of God can enter science.
The negative bias is a difficult to maintain when it
is examined rationally. The principal argument against the negative bias is
this: What if it is wrong?
The negative bias against the existence of God
hasn’t been proven and no proof will ever be given. This is because giving
proof is a logical process, and one cannot give proof of an illogical assumption
or idea. If God exists, and if God is not physical, then no physical
measurement of God is possible. To insist on a physical measurement of God is
therefore illogical. This illogical assumption cannot be proven. Hence it
remains a negative bias. The consequences of psychology maintaining the
negative bias are unfortunate. As will be discussed later, the ability of
psychology has remained relatively modest and small in the major applied areas
of improving instruction, training, parenting, marriages, societal social ills,
mental problems, addictions, low productivity and inventiveness, conflict
management, and so on. We should carefully examine the possibility, and I think
the likelihood, that psychology’s unspectacular record of effectiveness is due
to an important extent, to the strict reductionist empiricism of the negative
bias methodology.
According to the science of psychology today, and
for the past century, there are no mental objects such as sensations, thoughts,
and feelings in their own right. These are called “epiphenomena” or “emergent
phenomena” tied physically to neuro-chemical operations in the brain. The
“mind” is not a real object but a word actually referring to the operations of
the physical brain and body. This position is called “reductionism” because it
“reduces” two worlds to just one. The mental world of the mind and
consciousness that we all experience as our self and our life, is therefore an
illusion, an abstraction, an idealization, in short, not real. The word “real”
is reserved only to physical measurements.
If
however the negative bias position is wrong, then science has illogically cut
itself forever from finding out the true reality.
The positive bias in science is actually the
reciprocal of the negative. Here it is assumed without any proof, that God
exists and that reality actually consists of two worlds, one physical in time
and space, the other mental or spiritual outside time and space, which is
called eternity.
Now in order to make this definition of reality into
a scientific premise,
assumption, or principle, it is required that a scientific account or
elaboration be given, along with the mere assumption of two worlds. According
to regular polls carried out over the past half-a-century, the majority of
people, including scientists, declare their belief that God is real. Since the
majority of scientists believe in the actual reality of God, it is obvious that
scientists have to pretend that there is no God when they write up their
experiments and apply for research grants that is explicitly or officially run
by negative bias rules. I use the expression “academic schizophrenia” to refer
to this intellectual pretense. I myself have practiced it for several
decades of published works in sanctioned or “approved” journals.
I believe that scientists, including myself, have
put up with this academic schizophrenia because they don’t have intellectual
weapons that are effective against the negative bias. Everyone is socialized
into the idea that God is for religion and is for our afterlife concerns, and
therefore it should not form part of our concerns in this life in the physical
world. Hence God has been relegated to a mere belief system. This is
unfortunate for science because it limits its future effectiveness in helping
people and society to improve their condition. If we assume that God is a reality, and if we define God as omnipotent,
then it is obvious that God must be actuating every activity, movement, or force
in the world.
Here is where the scientific thinking and
methodology takes over to insure that a rational and comprehensive account or
theory be provided for the empirical consequences of this assumption. In order for the assumption of an
omnipotent God to become a scientific premise it is required to present a
rational proposal about the method or mechanism by which God manages all forces
and events in reality.
This has been provided in mental psychology, and
everyone is invited to examine the scientific adequacy and completeness of its
theories and methods. The following is a list of specifications for what a
rational psychology should be in its dualism and in its scientific and
theoretical methodology. If you examine my entire proposal you will see that
all of these requirements have been met.
(1)
It
is required that the explanations in mental psychology about the existence of a
non-physical God be comprehensive, so that they are able to deal with most of the
obvious issues that come up upon examination and analysis of such an idea.
For
instance, explanations about:
God’s relationship to
reality.
God’s activities in the physical world, and their purpose.
God’s relationship to daily life and mental development.
God’s relationship to the afterlife, immortality, heaven, and hell.
God’s relationship to marriage and love.
God’s relationship to Sacred Scripture, religion, morality, history, culture,
society.
God’s relationship to animals, plants, hurricanes, wars, evolution, the Big
Bang and its future.
(2)
Since two worlds are assumed, it is required
to define human beings biologically and organically as being born with two
bodies that correspond to each other, point by point, in structure and form,
but not in substance. Biological systems are organic, have a structure or
component parts, adapt to the environment, and develop and evolve over time.
More
specifically:
The physical body is
born in the physical world of time and disintegrates at death, while the mental
body is born in the mental world of eternity, and is immortal or permanent. The
mental body contains our mental organs that operate and produce our threefold mental
life of sensations, thoughts, and feelings. The sensory organs of the physical
body and brain contain neuro-chemical messages or signals that activate by
correspondence the sensory-motor system of the mental body. This is what gives
us the sensation of consciousness of our environment. The sensations, thoughts,
and feelings are mental events, not physical. Mental substances cannot exist in
the physical world, and physical matter cannot exist in the mental world. Right
from birth our mind and self is the mental body, not the physical. When the
physical body is detached by the dying process, the mental body is
“resuscitated” or “awakened in consciousness,” and the person continues
immortal life in the mental body in the mental world of eternity.
Since the mental body
is constructed out of organs acting as a system, its life must be explained as
cumulative and developmental. Mental life must also be defined as healthy or
unhealthy. For instance, “heavenly” mental states are healthy and in the
arrangement of positive evolution,
while “hellish” mental states are unhealthy and oppose or disrupt the normal
arrangement, creating a path towards cumulative
devolution. Personality development and “spiritual growth” is either in the
modality of mental evolution or of devolution. This medical or biological
definition of heaven and hell is in contrast to the religious or moral
definitions, which involve “judgment” and condemnation by a higher power (God)
or principle (karma).
(3)
It
is required that the proposal of mental psychology be based on human anatomy
and what is already known about the physical body. The “organic” mind is to be
defined as a threefold system of organs in the mental body (affective,
cognitive, sensorimotor), corresponding to the three in the physical body
(circulatory, respiratory, neuro-muscular).
In
particular:
The requirement of a
body-mind correspondence serves as an empirical methodology for first observing
facts about the physical body, and second, showing how the mental body acts
precisely in the same manner, but in the mental world. Body-mind
correspondences are actually cause-effect laws between mental or spiritual
phenomena and physical phenomena. It is necessary to show and discover these
correspondences empirically. In mental psychology data are gathered about the
universal fact that all humans describe mental events in terms of physical
events (e.g., “He’s got a good head” meaning, he is intelligent).
Data are also gathered that show that Sacred Scripture is written in the
language of correspondences, so that when these are applied to the literal
meaning, one obtains the corresponding mental meaning. It is shown in mental
psychology that the correspondential meaning of Sacred Scripture from several
religions refers to mental anatomy and development. This amazing consistency
across centuries and cultures, is strong empirical evidence that the
assumptions of mental psychology, as stated in this list, are confirmed by empirical
evidence.
(4)
It is required that mental psychology qualify
as a cumulative scientific enterprise that allows other scientists and
researchers to discover new knowledge about its topics and issues. To achieve
this it must provide a valid methodology that other scientists can practice for
the conduct of cumulative, professional, and institutional research.
For
instance:
Mental psychology in
the positive bias modality has evolved over many centuries. The history of
psychology “dates back to the
ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece,
China and India.”
An
empirical confirmation of the assumptions and principles of mental psychology
can be found in the Writings
of Swedenborg (1688-1772). He advanced scientific understanding of the
relationship between the brain and personality, and of the physical and “spiritual”
body, through a God-given unique ability and special mission, to report as a
scientist what he could observe about the afterlife when given the amazing
ability to be conscious in both worlds simultaneously, which he was for 27
years, and described in about 30 published volumes, that have been translated
since in many languages and studied by interested scholars and scientists such
as myself. Mental psychology in its current modern version (2009) is learnable
as a body of knowledge by college students who acquire the ability to give
rational and anatomical solutions to new issues that they had not yet been exposed
to in readings.
(5)
For mental psychology to be a universally
acceptable science, its explanations and principles are required to be
consistent with common sense as well as rational sense.
In
particular:
The negative bias of
monism and reductionism lacks credibility to the vast majority of people on the
planet who worship God as a central reality of life. Besides flying in the face
of people’s common sense, the negative bias in psychology also lacks rational
sense. Compare physics or chemistry or biology to psychology, and you’ll see
the obvious contrast. A science has a rational and coherent structure at the
core around which a framework is extended through research. New elements in the
framework must conform to what is already known about the core. In psychology
there is no such coherence, agreement, or acceptance of a core among the dozens
of “schools” and “approaches.” Hence the negative bias empiricism has not produced
a rational system.
In contrast, the positive bias theism and dualism is a rational system
analogous to geometry, mathematics, logic, or linguistics. These disciplines
are sciences, have a methodology, a cumulative history by independent scholars
and researchers. These rational sciences also have applications in engineering,
law, economics, meteorology, and others.
Mental psychology is a rational science,
deductive in its procedures, and empirical in its confirmations. It starts
with the positive bias assumption of the existence of an omnipotent God, and proceeds
with logical conclusions from this assumption. These conclusions must then be
explained theoretically and consistently. Finally, they must be extended into
the practice of daily living.
Topics and issues of
daily concern that must be explained rationally and fully by mental psychology
include:
Inherited traits;
consciousness; mental development; personal interaction with God; character
reformation; good and evil; right and wrong; lifestyle morality; spiritual
beliefs; Sacred Scripture or Divine Speech; gender and marriage; dying and the
afterlife; heaven and hell; inhabited planets; psychic phenomena and
witchcraft; and some others.
(6)
Explanations in mental psychology are required
to be cause-effect functions or relations, in contrast to behavioristic and
empirical psychology in the negative bias mode, which is correlational, rather
than cause-effect.
More
specifically:
In the positive bias
mode of theism and dualism, there are two discrete worlds, each real, and they
are constructed to act synchronously or interdependently in such a way that a
particular mental phenomenon is the cause, while its corresponding physical
phenomenon is it effect. All explanations in mental psychology must be dualist
and must specify synchronous cause-effect activity based on mind-body
correspondences. For example, goal directed walking in daily life is the
physical effect, while our motivation
in the goal is the cause. In the
negative bias empiricism, the goal motivation is reduced to brain activity. The
walking and the brain activity are correlated empirical facts. Physical
measurements of neural activity in the brain are correlated with physical
measurements of muscular activity in walking. No cause-effect relationship can
be offered in the negative bias mode, only observational correlations, at both
the general level, and the specific or micro level. At all levels of
observation, measurement, and explanation, only these correlations are provided
in monist “physicalistic” or “materialic” science
(some people use “positivistic”, but I think this could be confusing).
From a rational
perspective, it is reductionist and inaccurate to designate the brain activity
as the “cause” of the muscular activity of walking, when it is merely an
observational correlation. As it was well known to authors prior to the 20th
century, the causes of natural events are located in “spiritual” events, and
ultimately in God, who is called the First Cause. To take another example,
consider what is the cause of your car going faster when you press the gas
pedal. A monist or material perspective would identify the cause of the car
going faster as the greater amount of fuel injected into the combustion
chamber, when the gas pedal is pressed down. But a dualist perspective sees
that this is only a mechanistic correlation. The idea of “more fuel” and “pedal
press” are correlational observations of what happens when this happens. The
cause must always be in a discrete category away from the effect, or else it is
not a cause but a correlation. The cause must be in the mental world, while the
effect must be in the physical world. In this case, the cause is the mental
desire to want to go faster, while the physical effect is the foot pressing the
gas pedal. In mental psychology, all physical behavior is required to be
related to causal mental behavior (‘motive or desire” and “body act”).
In general, dualist rational
systems in science provide true cause-effect explanations between the two
worlds, while monist empirical systems provide correlations at the physical
level. Cause-effect functions are always deductive,
while correlational functions are always inductive.
Deductive relations are top-down cause-effect rational “control” mechanisms,
while inductive relations are bottom-up idealized abstractions, rather than
control mechanisms.
In Summary
A dualist and theistic mental psychology that is also
scientific, rational, and researchable, is required to provide rational ”systems”
explanations of all its concepts and measurements. These involve specifications
and definitions of:
(1) Comprehensive,
top-down control of phenomena in the two worlds
(2) Biological,
organic development and evolution
(3) Body-mind
correspondences, empirically discoverable
(4) Valid
methodology for research by other scientists
(5) Acceptable
to common sense as well as to rational analysis and reasoning
(6) Cause-effect
relations across discrete degrees of correspondence (mental-physical)
It is my claim that mental psychology, as I have
presented it in the context of modern psychology, meets all of these
requirements. Anyone examining what I have presented can verify the accuracy of
this claim.
The following list of questions represents areas of
ignorance for the negative bias psychology as long as it restricts reality to
what can be measured physically (“data”), and to explanations that are
abstracted from physical measurements (“grounded theory”). In contrast, mental
psychology includes both physical and non-physical measurement procedures, and
therefore can elaborate definitive and rational answers to all of these
questions:
- Is there an
afterlife?
- What
happens during the dying and resuscitation process?
- What are
the chief mechanisms or instruments by which God manages the universe?
- What is
God’s purpose in creating the universe?
- If God is
perfect and omnipotent, why is there suffering and evil in existence?
- What is the
soul, and what is its relation to the mind or spirit?
- Do we have
a body in the afterlife? Is it functional like this one?
- How do we
locomote in the mental world with the mental body, since there is no space?
- Is there a
heaven and a hell, and who gets to go to either?
- What is
“daily” life like in heaven and hell? Are there cities, jobs, a
government?
- Is Sacred
Scripture really Divine Speech? It seems so pedestrian and ordinary.
- Where does
gender come from? What is the ultimate difference between male and female?
- Why is it
more exciting and interesting to explore “hellish” experiences in
comparison to “heavenly” or “saintly” ones?
- Is there
such a thing a s “sin” and “karma”?
- Who gets to
decide what is absolutely good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, moral vs.
immoral?
- What
accounts for the fact that half of all marriages end in divorce? How can
this be remedied effectively?
- What is
love? Where does it come from? How important is it?
- What is
freedom? When are we free? What does God have to do with it?
- How do we
decide who is a good person? What is good?
- What is
rational? What does the rational have to do with our eternity and our
relationship to God?
- Are there
angels and devils? Who are they? Where are they?
- What is the
source of our feelings, thoughts, and consciousness?
- What makes
people unique?
- Why does
each religion have a different idea and name for God? Why are their Sacred
Scriptures so different from each other, even opposed? Is there not only
one universal infinite God?
- Is there
human life on other planets? What determines this?
- What are
vices and virtues, loves and lusts? Is there an objective way of
identifying them?
- Why doesn’t
God appear at the United Nations and declare Himself to the world? Would
this not be the most direct or effective way of getting people to know
that there is in fact a living God who is aware of us and wants a
relationship with us?
- Why does
God want a relationship with individual human beings? Is God in the mind
of everyone? How can we connect with God in our mind?
- How does
our mental body develop as the physical body grows and matures? What
governs the developmental steps? What is the role of God and of heaven and
hell, in this cumulative organic mental growth process?
- And many
more.
It may be difficult to believe that one discipline today
can have answers to all these life issues that have puzzled writers for
thousands of years. And yet the ability of mental psychology to do this can be
confirmed by studying the material I have brought forward for consideration
(see the current notes (this document) as well as the prior materials which are
listed and linked above.
Mental psychology has this amazing explanatory power
because it is a rational deductive system from the top to the bottom. The “top”
refers to God and the “bottom” refers to physical measurements and objects. Mental
psychology is designed to fill in all the in-between. For instance, the
instrument by which God creates building blocks for things that exist, is
specified as the mental sun of eternity. Scientific
knowledge in mental psychology is advanced through the empirical investigation
of body-mind correspondences as they occur in people’s daily thinking and
talking. These same correspondences also appear in Sacred Scripture samples from all major religions.
The knowledge and method of correspondences allows
us to fill out the details of the mental world by relating them to the details
of the physical world. What cannot be measured physically (mental world
phenomena), can be specified and built up by rationally extracting
correspondences from its physical counterpart. For instance, by studying and
measuring the operations of the circulatory system in the physical body, we can
fill out and specify the organic operations of the affective system in the
mental body. Similarly with the respiratory and cognitive systems, and with the
neuro-skeletal and sensorimotor systems.
The method of mental-physical correspondences (some
people say “natural-spiritual” correspondences), applies to all features of
life in eternity. For instance, mental navigation and displacement correspond
to physical navigation and displacement. Physical geography and astronomy are
exact correspondences of mental geography and mental astronomy. Government
structures in physical societies correspond to government structures in mental
societies. Additional methods of rational inferencing are available from
correspondences with the virtual world and the dream world (see next Section on
avatar psychology, which is a branch of mental psychology).
Dualist Empiricism
A basic and essential feature of mental psychology
is that it is “grounded” in dualist empiricism.
I also use the expression “substantive
dualism” (see my article on Substantive Dualism: Swedenborg's Integration
of Biological Theology and Rational Psychology at http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/dualism.html
The empiricism of dualism had not been discovered
until the 18th century writings of E. Swedenborg, as mentioned
before several times above. The reason is that no scientist before him had the
scientific ingenuity of “imagining” or “reconstructing” life after death.
Absolutely nothing was known about mental states after death. Only fragmented
fantasies by various sorts of writers can be found in the history of the past. Today,
checking with a Web search engine on the afterlife, heaven, and hell, one finds
an endless stream of fragmented speculations and imaginative accounts, but no
empirical facts or observations. Mental psychology, grounded in rational
empiricism and organic anatomy, has constructed a rational “systems” account of
the human body, the human mind, and the afterlife of eternity.
This top-down deductive rational system is extracted
by logical reasoning from the initial positive bias premise, namely that an
omnipotent God exists (see my article on:
Ten Rational Conclusions Derived From the
Proposition That God Exists, at:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1p1.htm#conclusions
and
Theoretical Implications of God's Omnipotence,
Omniscience, and Omnipresence, at http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/omnipotence.htm
In general, thinking within the perspective of rational empiricism in dualist mental
psychology, we need to extend explanatory theory by staying within the
following derived principles. All future
extensions and developments in dualist empiricism must be consistent with its
initial assumptions and principles, a few of which are summarized in the
following listing.
- The mental
world that is familiar to us all, is the mental world of eternity. I often
refer to this proposition as “discovering the mental world of eternity.” I
consider this my greatest discovery in fifty years of science (see here: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/neochartp1.htm).
- The mental
sun of eternity is the instrument by which God constructs and manages all
things created outside and from the substances streaming out of the mental
sun.
- Broadly
identified, there are four distinct layers, zones, or levels in the
created universe, which consists of the mental world in eternity and the
physical world in time.
- The mental
sun and the mental world are living human-divine organic entities broadly
called “love substance” and “truth substance.” These living human-divine
components constitute and create the anatomical layering of the two
worlds.
- The organic
layering of the mental world is by “discrete degrees” of existence, so
that there is no direct or substantive exchange between layers. Instead,
the events at each layer communicate or function together through the
built in laws of correspondence. These laws are empirically discoverable.
- The first
mental layer is “at the top” or “at the center”, both models applying
synchronously (vertical and concentric arrangements). The mental sun is at
the top or center of the mental world of eternity, creating it as an
expanse out of the substances from itself streaming out. The operation of
the physical or natural sun (or star) corresponds to the operation of the
mental sun. In both cases the sun creates an expanse around itself, and fills
that space with the substances from itself.
- The mental world is therefore a rational ether filled with living
organic building blocks that are suitable to construct organic subjects
that constitute a “human mind” or unique individual. In this rational
ether there floats around particles of “love substance” and “truth
substance.” These have a built in propensity to seek each other out and
re-unite, as they are united in God, but exit separately from the mental
sun into the mental world or rational ether.
- There are
two arrangements of the living human-divine mental dust that form
themselves into mental genes or building blocks. One is the masculine
arrangement, namely, a love particle surrounded or contained within a
truth particle. The other is the feminine arrangement, namely, a truth
particle surrounded and contained within a love particle. The mental genes
of each person are contained in an initial “packet” or conglomerate,
called the “soul.” There are therefore male or masculine souls and female
or feminine souls.
- The second
major layer or expanse, below or around the mental sun, is the celestial
zone, layer, or discrete level. The consciousness we have when we are
located in this layer is called a celestial consciousness, and is
the highest or closest human beings can get to the mental sun and God. Our
consciousness in this layer is initiated at our second death, which is in
sequence of development after the first death.
- The third
major layer or degree of the mental world is called rational consciousness.
The affective and cognitive systems of the mental body function at this
level through undisturbed correspondences from the affective and cognitive
systems of celestial consciousness. Rational consciousness exists at two
sub-levels or sub-degrees within the rational degree itself, one higher or
more interior, the other lower or more external. The higher more interior
rational zone functions in correspondence with the celestial
consciousness, while the lower more external rational zone functions in
reverse correspondence relative to the material consciousness below it.
- The fourth
major layer or degree as we proceed downward from the mental sun, and
outward in circumference, is called material consciousness. The
affective and cognitive systems of the mental body function at this level
in correspondence to the material world that we experience through the
physical body, which is still lower and more external than the material
mind. Material consciousness can potentially be rearranged to be in
correspondence to the rational-celestial correspondences, instead of the
physical-material correspondences that are in reverse arrangement to the
celestial, and therefore to the human-divine in the mental sun.
- Mental
growth and spiritual development consists of two phases, unregenerate and
regenerate (see Diagrams). From birth to
adulthood the person progresses towards the maturation of the physical,
material and rational zones. The celestial zone is not matured until the
second phase, which starts in adulthood and ends with the
dying-resuscitation process. The second phase begins with the reformation of our ideas from the
material-rational consciousness, which is external, looking outward and
down towards the physical world and correspondences. After reformation,
which can take a few months, regeneration of character begins through
facing and fighting temptations brought to each person at the right moment
by God, who in this role is called the Divine
Psychologist. Regeneration
consists of the anatomical rearrangement of material loves and ideas into
the celestial rational arrangement that is in correspondence with the
celestial and the human-divine. Before regeneration our loves are selfish
and our ideas irrational or materialic.
Regeneration proceeds throughout one’s lifetime on earth while still
attached to the psychical body.
- If
regeneration does not proceed prior to the dying-resuscitation process,
the person is consciously awakened in the mental body without the celestial layer being functional or active. People
who are in this mental situation undergo therapeutic experiences designed specifically
for each person to allow the individual to discover their ruling love.
Part of this process is therefore the anatomical or surgical separation of
material and material-rational loves that can correspond to celestial
arrangements, and material loves that cannot correspond to the celestial.
When this separation is completed the individual undergoes the second
death, which is a process that inserts the person into one of the numerous
societies that form the two mental conglomerations of the afterlife: the
Grand Human conglomerate of celestial consciousness, and the Grand Monster
conglomerate of infernal consciousness.
- The Grand
Monster conglomerate is the location, depository, and origin of all selfish loves “married” to
irrational ideas, and producing the infernal consciousness called “hell.” In this retrogressive
and progressively devolving human consciousness, people live in a fantasy
environment that spontaneously arranges itself to be opposite to the
celestial arrangements of altruistic loves married to rational ideas.
People in the infernal consciousness experience all the emotions of hell
known to humankind – hatred, fear, anxiety, vengeance, greed, egotism,
deception, depression, lower productivity and inventiveness, stupidity,
arrogance, inability to be rational, etc.
These “hellish” human mental states congregate and coalesce with each other, arranging themselves in an infernal hierarchy of bad to worse to the still worse. This endless devolution of negativity and depravity robs them of the last shred of their humanity, becoming an insane raving savage and sub-human individual. The variety of these insane mental states were known throughout history and receive in the literature such names as devil, demon, genii, siren, succubus, satyr, dragon, snake, scorpion, vampire, etc. Each of these names or roles corresponds to a particular hellish or “infernal” ruling love, with its hierarchy of hellish sub-loves, called “minions” that serve and do the work for the ruling love. - The Grand
Human conglomerate is the location and depository of all altruistic loves “married” to
rational ideas, and producing the celestial consciousness called “heaven.” In this positive and
progressively evolving human consciousness, people live in a rational
environment that spontaneously arranges itself to be consistent with the
celestial arrangements of altruistic loves married to rational ideas.
People in the heavenly consciousness experience all the emotions of heaven
known to humankind – altruistic love, reliance on God, mental peace, compassion,
forgiveness, generosity, harmless, honest, enthusiastic, higher
productivity and inventiveness, wisdom, humility, the ability to be remain
rational, etc.
These “heavenly” human mental states congregate and coalesce with each other, arranging themselves in a celestial hierarchy of good to better to the still better. This endless evolution of positivity and wholesomeness enriches their humanity, becoming an “angel” person that possesses the highest human virtues and power. The variety of these heavenly mental states were known throughout history and receive in the literature such names as angel, saint, hero, inventor, discoverer, leader, founding father, chivalrous knight, muse, princess, fairy, lamb, horse, dove, flower, song, etc. Each of these words or roles corresponds to a particular heavenly ruling love, with its hierarchy of sub-loves, called “ministers” that do the work for the ruling love. - The fifth and final or outermost layer,
at the very bottom of the universe, is the natural world and our physical
body. This endlessly complex anatomical marvel is nothing but a copy of
the mental body, and constructed out of inert matter, or elements that
originate in the sun, or other stars. While the mental body is constructed
out of living and immortal components from the mental sun, the physical
body is nothing but inert matter. The marvelous structure of the temporary
physical body is a replica of the permanent mental body.
The physical is made of inert matter. As a result it is not possible for the physical body to contain mental operations or states such as sensations, thoughts, and feelings. These mental events can only exist in the mental world. The dying-resuscitation process, which takes about 33 hours, is a Divine surgery by which God separates the physical body from the mental body. These two bodies are intertwined, organ by organ, nerve by nerve, fiber by fiber, and cell by cell. Only Divine omnipotence with infinite wisdom is capable of performing such a complex and delicate task on a routine basis day by day, forever, as the human race continues to expand endlessly into the future evolution. - The Grand
Human and the Grand Monster is an instrument used by the Divine
Psychologist to manage every person’s daily consciousness and eternal development.
For instance, consider what happens with you when you experience a
temptation like
“Should I have this extra beer before I drive home or not?” or,
“Should I keep quiet about that or should I lie to have my way?”
God must manage all our temptations in order to make it a positive growth process, rather than a devolving negative one. When we give in to a temptation that God has arranged for us, our mental growth is interrupted and we begin a downward or backward slide into unregenerate consciousness, which originates in and is fed by the societies of the Grand Monster. When we resist a temptation, our regeneration progresses, and we are better off. There is a lifelong series of temptations that the Divine Psychologist arranges and manages for each individual who is willing to submit to the process of regeneration. Those who are not willing to submit, quickly fail all their temptations, embracing a hellish personality that ties them forever to a particular infernal society in the Grand Monster. Everyone ends up where their love is.
There is therefore an involvement and participation of the Grand Human and Grand Monster societies in eternity whenever we evolve towards heaven or devolve towards hell. This involvement in the mental state and fate of every individual is called “the vertical community” (see more here: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/vertical.html )
Rational Psychology and Rational Methodology
Rational
psychology is the scientific exploration of the mental world of eternity.
The empirical exploration of the mental world is
possible. Objective observation of the mental world is possible because every
human being has the spontaneous ability to make such observations. Since there
is only one mental world, and every human being is mentally present in that world,
therefore the events that take place in the mental environment are objectively
observable by all who are present. Consequently, rational psychology can be an
empirical science.
Ordinarily in daily life, people’s focus of
awareness, or consciousness, is relatively abstract or “idealized.” There is
only a general level of integration of the sequence of events into
comprehensible units called “episodes” or events. For instance, review in your
mind what you were doing about one hour ago. Pick a segment of about two
minutes in that hour. Now describe it to yourself: e.g., “I was putting on my shoes when I remembered that I forgot to turn on
the coffee machine. So I went to the kitchen, turned it on, and walked back to
the bedroom, finished putting on my shoes, and then the phone rang.”
Now examine one of these events, say: “finished putting on my shoes.” This is
an idealized summary or abstraction of the actual event. How would you describe
this event in more detail? For instance: “I
picked up the shoe and sat on the bed. I slipped it on. I tied the lace. I got
up.” This description is also idealized, consisting of abstract summaries.
You can see this when you try to describe the details of one of these
sub-events, e.g., “I tied the lace.”
You might construct some description like this: “As usual I had trouble with tying the laces for this pair of shoes.
They are too long. So I have to double tie them and it doesn’t always come out
right and I have to start again. This time it was OK right the first time.”
Now you might think that this is pretty detailed
actual rather than abstract and general. But you can see that it is still just
as abstract as before when you try to describe a sub-segment of the
sub-episode, e.g., “it doesn’t always
come out right.” This is clearly a very broad abstraction when you start
“unpacking it” by starting to outline just some of the things that are actually
summarized in this little statement. For instance you might describe the
history of emotional involvement that you have had with tying your shoes, all
the way back to when you were a little child and various adults tried to teach
you how to do it. Some of these teaching exchanges were traumatic and upsetting.
And then you might want to describe all the times over the years that your shoe
laces would come untied, at the wrong time, like when you were running, and
what happened then, etc. etc.
From this type of analysis of just one of your
little descriptive self-statements, you can see that there is a whole history
of occasions and episodes, emotions and thoughts, which are tied into it, and
form an organic part of it. All this unitizing wholeness of the series of
episodes together gives it its actual meaning, actual experiencing, or
consciousness. If you keep going with this analytic process, analyzing
sub-parts as you go into more detail about an event, you will discover the
amazing conclusion that the description
of an event or episode can be unpacked endlessly. There is never an end to
the unpacking that remains.
This conclusion can be extended into a universal law
of the mental world, namely, that every
mental episode or event is tied into the network of all episodes in the mental
world of eternity.
The mental world of eternity is united whole entity.
Every mental event is tied to all other mental events and an endless regress
and progress that includes the entire human race, past, present, and future.
This amazing rational structure of the created universe reflects and
corresponds to God, specifically the universal idea that “in God infinite
things make one.” This is a rational way of understanding the idea that God is
infinite. God is not merely infinite. God is a Divine Human Person in whose
mental life infinite things are organized and arranged into a rational whole or
unit. This Divine mental consciousness is organic and substantive. This organic
living substance is the source of an endless variety of mental heat and mental
light particles that flow out of God into the mental world through the mental
sun of eternity (see Diagrams).
The mental world, which is the environment for our
mental life, is an immense expanse of rational ether or space that the mental
sun forms around itself, and fills that space with mental dust particles of
heat and light that form themselves into male and female gene units (see Diagram 2). These are the building blocks for
male and female mental bodies containing the affective circulatory system, the
cognitive respiratory system, and sensorimotor consciousness system (as
discussed above). Surrounding the
mental world of eternity from the exterior is the physical world of time and
matter. The physical world is therefore the container within which is located
the mental world of eternity, within which is located the mental sun, which is
God’s aura and entry point into the created universe.
It is most basic to understand that since God is
infinite and Divine, it is not rationally possible for God to give away a
portion or particle of Himself, or to get rid of it so that it is no longer
His. If this were possible, God would no longer be infinite since there would
be a part that is not God’s which would no longer be part of the infinite. This
destroys infinity. So it is not possible. Hence
it is not possible for God to give away the construction blocks out of which
everything that exists in the mental world of eternity and in the physical
world of time.
This leads to the astonishing realization that if
you analyze what anything is made of, you will find that the inmost framework
or substance is God’s heat and light substance, hence God Himself. God’s heat
substance is also called love substance, and God’s light substance is called truth
substance (see Diagrams).
The framework of reality is therefore Divine love
and truth. These are living eternal substances. They are the basis for the
reality and existence of human consciousness. The affective circulatory system
of the mental body is constructed out of love substance, while the cognitive
respiratory system is constructed out of truth substance. Love substance
entering our affective organ gives us the heat of life, its energy, its power,
its abilities and virtues. Truth substance entering our cognitive respiratory
organ gives us the light of life, its consciousness, its rational awareness and
understanding.
In addition to this immediate and direct co-presence
of God within the inmost framework of our being and consciousness, there is
also an indirect co-presence of God in our conscious awareness. It is most
important for us to understand this distinction between God’s two types of
co-presence with each individual of the human race. The immediate and direct
co-presence is unconscious, but it is rationally knowable. The mediate and
indirect co-presence with God is conscious and we can become aware of it. When
we do, then God’s co-presence and new role is referred to as the Divine
Psychologist.
God
as the Divine Psychologist in our conscious life is vastly more of a Divine co-presence
than God in the unconscious interior framework.
God the Divine Psychologist is in active
collaboration and dialog with the person. We
enter this state of co-presence with God when we acknowledge reality as
theistic dualism. I have attempted to describe the features of this
reality in several recent online books on theistic psychology, mental
psychology, avatar psychology, and rational psychology (see this directory for access).
Empiricism in theistic rational psychology is
objective, interpersonal, and cumulative. The mental world is an environment in
which we can objectively perceive objects and events. The perception of the mental
environment involves the sensorimotor neuro-skeletal system of the mental body.
Our individual consciousness can move through various zones in the mental
world. There are several such zones created by the mental sun around itself:
- Celestial mental
zone
- Rational mental
zone
- Material mental
zone
- Physical
world and body with chemical senses
This entire whole is a Divine-Human rational system
created by Divine love and truth, and maintained by them in existence, moment
by moment. In other words, the created reality cannot live by itself but must
be kept alive by continuous injection from the inmost (God through mental sun)
to the outmost (physical matter). The mental sun of eternity continually
injects and maintains all things in the mental world in a rational arrangement that is consistent with the purposes of Divine
love. (see diagram
16)
Because this entire whole is a rational system, and
because we are within it looking around at it, we are capable of describing it
as a reality that is around us, within which we exist, and which we can
describe and understand through our rational thinking abilities. We can thus
reconstruct reality and the universe by diagramming the details that we can
observe, and arranging them in a rational, theoretical, and scientific account.
This account is a cumulative science that any researcher can contribute to and
be part of when using appropriate rational methods of investigation.
There are three steps in this process: if you think it, title it and diagram it
in such a way that you can tell it to others. It is only in the telling that you can gain your own interior
understanding of it. Consciousness is a process of sudden memory: see
my prior articles at:
- Community
Archives and Records
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/updates/lee/Section5.2.3.html - Discovery
of Sudden Memory
http://www.theisticpsychology.org/articles/early/enactment.html - Sudden
Memory Components
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/LEONJ/updates/lee/section8.1.2.html
We can take full credit for everything we write down
from our own thinking (under copyright protection), but we cannot take full
credit for everything we think. There is
no copyright protection for what we think. There are no laws about mental
events. All individuals in prison can think freely within their own mental
privacy. What we think is sourced in the
mental world of eternity and belongs to a living whole, which is the mental
life of the human race.
Take a minute or two of quiet reflection with your
eyes closed, body relaxed, and the breathing slow and regular. In this physical
position your mental body can loosen its identification with the physical body,
and thus for a few moments gives you a certain freedom to rise above the
material ideas that are rooted and limited through the physical body.
When you put yourself in this reflective mental
state, with the physical body quieted down, and the physical environment not
directly intruding by noise or activity, your consciousness can awaken at the
zone above the material mind called the rational mind (see diagram 16 and
related diagrams). At first this rational mind is
tainted with the material ideas and abstractions, and therefore must be called material-rational. But with more reflective practice you can become conscious of a
rational thinking that is not tainted by the material limits of the physical
body and world. This is not a method of the traditional “meditation” in which you try
to rise above thinking. Rather, it is a method
of thinking in the rational mode (see
level 7i in prior work on The Organic Mind: Chart of the Anatomical Layers of the Mind
at:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/mental-psychology-p1.htm#_Toc212519314
)
Where
does this purely rational thinking
come from?
Celestial Loves
and Consciousness
It is thinking that corresponds to the celestial
mind (V) (or layers 6, 5, 4) that is immediately above the rational mind in the
mental body (diagram 16). The celestial zone is
immediately surrounding the mental sun of eternity. That layer of the mental
zone of eternity is organically constructed in a more interior arrangement so that its reception of love substance
from the mental sun is unfiltered by selfism, as it is in the material mind
that is not yet regenerated
or rearranged in the order consistent with the celestial.
The rationality of celestial thinking in the
cognitive organ is guided by celestial loves in the affective organ. The ruling
love of the celestial consciousness is sociality or mutual bonding. Selfism is opposite to this love and breaks
up bonding and community formation. The Divine purpose for all that exists
(“reality”) is to keep up the endless evolution of bonding forces in the human
race, in which each individual is immortal and born into eternity. All the layers
of the mental world are available to every individual, and are located within the mind of every individual. Each person
chooses the consciousness layer at every moment of life by clinging to and
activating various loves in the affective organ. Our ruling love arranges all
the other loves in a hierarchy that is obedient to itself. Ultimately it is our ruling love that determines our eternal future and
happiness.
The celestial ruling love of altruism, sociality,
and community arranges thoughts in a rational order that is an image and
correspondence of the order called Divine Wisdom. Hence it is that when our
consciousness is in the celestial layer of the mental world, we have the
experience of quasi-omniscience and quasi-omnipotence (see prior treatments as
in the Organic
Mind). God can give us more interior things when we are co-present through
our ruling love of altruism and community bonding. The more interior things are
closer to the order of Divine Love and Wisdom. Hence our consciousness reaches more interior levels of existence the
more we evolve into our celestial layer.
The first and primary bonding in altruism and
community is the dyadic conjugial couple of soul mates united by conjugial love
(see also Diagram 3).
This begins on earth with the physical body and is
called the “spiritual marriage” in prior
work. See also Diagram 4 ). The
celestial layer can influence by correspondence the lower rational layer – if
we cling to rational loves more than we cling to material loves. We can
consciously set aside the ruling love that supports our negative bias and our materialic thinking that is ultimately rooted in the ruling
love of selfism. We can decide to cling to another ruling love that is provided
by God, namely the unselfish love of bonding with one’s conjugial partner. This
is actually possible only when it is a sincere love so that we are prepared to
engage in “spiritual
combat” against the temptations
that God brings into our mind and into our daily life.
To the extent that we are sincere in this combat of
reformation of character, to that extent we can be “regenerated” by God into a
“new human being” that is celestial in nature, instead of material. We are born
into a material mind and natural life through the physical body. Our mental
body completely identifies with the physical body until the dying/resuscitation
process which occurs about 33 hours after the physical body is “dead” or
completely non-functional in all ways. At that moment the mental body is
liberated from that identification and surgical interconnection in all its
fibers and cells. Our consciousness then becomes suddenly aware of the environment
or surroundings in the mental world of eternity into which we were born since
the beginning but had not been conscious until after resuscitation. Now we
discover that we can see and relate to all the other people who have left the
physical body since the beginning of the human race. Quite something to look
forward to, don’t you think?
Emanuel
Swedenborg (16668-1772) was the only scientist in modern history who had a
dual consciousness simultaneously in both worlds from age 57 to 82, when he
passed on permanently. He confirms by actual experience and observation that he
was able to see and speak to many historical figures he knew about from the
world literature and had lived hundreds of years before Swedenborg. He also
confirms by observation many other propositions of mental psychology, including
resuscitation, mental sun, second death, correspondences, Grand Human, Grand
Monster, conjugial couples, vertical community, and more – see the extensive
presentations in my online work Theistic Psychology).
When we are resuscitated in the dying process we
begin our conscious life in eternity. Again it is our ruling love that
determines everything. The mental objects and people around us must conform to
this ruling love. If it is a selfish ruling love then we are surrounded by
selfish people who make our life miserable. The only time we gain some
enjoyment is when we can make their life miserable. In this way we live an
endless life of mental “hell,” trapped by our own unwillingness to let go of
the selfish ruling love and all its supporting sub-loves. There is an endless
variety of selfish loves and sub-loves or “affections.”
Similarly, there is an endless variety of altruistic
loves that build community, from the couple to the neighborhood, to an entire society,
and to all the mental societies in the Grand Human
that form the mental world of the universal human race. Human loves and thoughts
exist in this immense mass of human beings who are so united and bonded that
even the breathing of each person influences the breathing of the entire mental
society, and from there the entire collection of mental societies. The loves
and thoughts reverberate across this massive intersubjective human network or “humanopshere.” The reverberations or “tremulations”
have their distinct pattern, with higher or more interior loves and thoughts
reverberating to lower more exterior thoughts and loves. This is the source that exerts its influence on our rational and
material thoughts and loves.
Consciousness and Conscience
Consciousness is the exploration of reality. Conscience
is the voice of our rational mind. Consciousness is to be conscious of the
environment through the body. Conscience is the voice of God speaking through our
rational mind when it is arranged to correspond to the celestial mind and its
order of loves and meanings. Conscious awareness of our sensorimotor system
provides us with our consciousness. We use our sensorimotor system to inform us
of the environment, that is, to make us conscious of it. The operation of the sensorimotor
system is therefore our consciousness.
Since there are discrete anatomical layers or zones
in the mental world, it is necessary that we be equipped with an avatar body
that is rezzed within the environment that belongs to each discrete degree of
existence. In our daily consciousness we rez our conscious material mental body
whose sensorimotor system provides us with contact with the physical body and
its world. When we get into a reflective mood and are able to keep the physical
body quiet and relaxed, we rez a rational avatar and move around with it in the
rational world. When we sleep we can rez our dream body with which we can live
in a strange topsy-turvy world for awhile. All day long we can take time out
and rez a fantasy avatar while we are having an absorbing daydream or reading
an absorbing novel.
When our consciousness is in the material avatar we
can reason abstractly with material loves. For instance, our love of becoming
famous and rich for the sake of its rewards (a material love) can direct our
thinking into planning a career and acquiring the knowledge it requires,
including the many long hours of study it takes to prepare for exams and getting
an academic degree or a license to practice. These persistent mental efforts towards success are sourced, directed,
and determined by the material loves we cling to. Our life’s enjoyment and
satisfaction depend on these loves being fulfilled in our consciousness.
Our
loves desire consummation and fulfillment in existence, and they reach that
matured state when the events hoped for come true.
The consciousness we experience when our hopes come true is the happiness and
joy of our loves. Our loves find their fulfillment in that consciousness
itself. A love at last feels like it exists only when it is consummated in our
consciousness.
When we reach maturity or adulthood as a human
being, we become conscious of a new conflict in our consciousness. This is the voice of our conscience echoing the
meanings of the rational mind. Conscience is a rational island or mountain
on the vast ocean of the material mind. Our daily consciousness in the material
mental body or avatar is bonded with the physical body, so much so that we believe ourselves to be the physical body.
Selfism vs. Altruism
Our material consciousness is made of material loves
in the affective organ married to material thoughts in the cognitive organ, as
discussed before. When these loves are not yet regenerated they are in the order
of selfism, thus contrary to altruism and rationality. Selfism opposes
altruism.
Selfism
is the love of things for the sake of self alone.
If something does not benefit self, but only others, selfism hates it and is
unhappy. Altruism is the love of things
for the sake of others as well as self. If something benefits
others, altruism loves it, even when it does not benefit self. If something
benefits self alone, altruism is unhappy. Until adulthood selfism and altruism
occur to us in different situations. Once we are mature we are led to settle
into the ruling love of one, or the other. If we settle into selfism, all
altruism is gradually suffocated and dies in us. If we settle into altruism,
all selfism is gradually suffocated and dies in us.
For instance, if we strive towards being in
altruism, then when we hear that someone wins the lottery, we feel happy for
them. Or when the opposing team wins because they played a better game, we can
feel some happiness for them because they worked so hard to win fairly. But
selfism hates it when the opposing team wins, and even passes on to hating the
opposing team as well, as for instance by ridiculing them or falsely accusing
them of something.
Conscience is a rational voice or awareness in the
material mind when it is anatomically hooked to respond to the rational mind,
which in turn anatomically responds to the celestial mind, which in turn responds
to God through the mental sun of eternity (see diagram
16). This is why some people refer to conscience as the “voice of God
within the person.” The Divine Psychologist manages the voice of conscience as
an effective tool to prod us into regeneration. God cannot force people to
regenerate because if that happened we would no longer feel free as an
independent individual. We would no longer be able to be happy and explore
reality from love and interest. To be forced to be good would be like being in
a mental prison. It is not possible for a perfectly loving God to impose this
cruel fate on anyone. Therefore God
cooperates with the ruling love to which the person insists on clinging.
God’s cooperation with a person’s ruling love is
conditional. Only that is allowed to occur which God can turn into ultimate
good for all concerned, even the entire human race. In other words, God’s
omnipotence and omniscience allows the imposition of limits on selfism and
irrationality. For instance, in the hellish mental states of the Grand Monster,
people are unable to give vent to their evil fury upon others. God uses the
people there to counteract each other so that only some of their wicked plans
come into reality, and only to the extent permitted. God manages evil things
just as much as He manages good things. Without this there would be no
omnipotent control, and creation would not be a perfect eternal system.
Using the avatar body we can explore each zone of
the mental world of eternity. For instance, we explore the dream world with our
dream body using the “mouselook” camera action (we
can see everything but we don’t see ourselves). We see other dream bodies. It
may surprise you to learn that these avatar bodies are not “just a dream
vision.” They are the dream bodies of
other sleeping people! What an amazing discovery! Even more amazing is the
idea that when you are reading a novel, your fantasy avatar is there in the
novel and believes itself to be there in the novel with the characters. It is
the same when you are watching a movie. If the movie is absorbing, you totally
identify with the fantasy avatar you rez to witness the events in the story. Children
at play clearly exhibit this phenomenon of identifying totally with the fantasy
avatar that they rez in the mental play they are performing with themselves.
The voice of conscience allows us to become aware of
our rational avatar. We can learn to explore rational consciousness through
this avatar. We can explore the rational zone of the mental world of eternity.
The lower end of this zone is tainted with material ideas, but the interior
higher end is pure rational, forming a perfectly harmonious correspondence with
the celestial consciousness. For this to become reality in our mind we must
face temptations in daily life and fight to overcome them as of self, but rationally
knowing that it is the Divine Psychologist who is actually managing the events.
When we are sincere in this realization, we experience co-presence and love for
God, and with that comes the ability to acquire all heavenly powers, virtues,
and intelligences. From a selfish and material person we become a peaceful and
useful neighbor and companion. In the spiritual marriage of the regenerating
conjugial couple we can find a vehicle for enlightenment and productivity that
is inventive and useful to society and through that, to self.
The Body as Mind or the Mind as Body
First this:
Consider this conversation between the leader of an
interplanetary explorer fleet and one of the fleet commanders (taken from a
story by science-fiction writer Terry Bisson as
quoted in “How The Mind Works” by Steven Pinker, W.W.Norton,
1997)
“They're made out of
meat.”
“Meat?”
“There's no doubt about
it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our
recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat.”
That's impossible. What
about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”
“They use the radio
waves to talk. But the signals don't come from them. The signals come from
machines.”
“So who made the
machines? That's who we want to contact.”
“They made the
machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”
“That's ridiculous. How
can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat.”
“I'm not asking you,
I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and
they're made out of meat.”
“Maybe they're like the
Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that
goes through a meat stage.”
“Nope. They're born
meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which
didn't take too long. Do you have any idea of the life span of meat?”
“Spare me. Okay, maybe
they're only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei.
A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”
“Nope, we thought of
that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei.
But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through.”
“No brain?”
“Oh, there is a brain
all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat.”
“So ... what does the
thinking?”
“You're not
understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat.”
“Thinking meat! You're asking
me to believe in thinking meat!”
“Yes, thinking meat!
Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you
getting the picture?”
The above is quoted in
Networks as Mind and Self in Cyberpsychology
by John Suler
http://www.enotalone.com/article/2456.html
When we are immersed in the level of
material-rational consciousness (V or layer 7e), we
construct two types of materialic reduction of the
rational. One reductionism in science is empirical or bottom up. This means
that we start from the physical brain or body anatomy and pull the mind down into it, reducing mental objects and events to physical objects and events,
namely, electro-chemical spatiotemporal operations in neurons. This bottom-up reductionism is evident in
most of the neuroscience literature today.
Top-down
reductionism is to start from a mental object
or event, reducing it or leveling it to physical operations in the brain. This
definition is advanced in linguistics, philosophy, and those in theology who
want thereby to become “scientific.” Neuroscience and cognitive science today
are strictly physicalistic or monist intellectual systems. Hence current
popular expressions such as “philosophy in the flesh,” “biology of ethics and
morality,” or “molecules of emotion and the body mind,” become efforts of reducing
and pinning down dualist ideas (mind is real) to monist methodology (mind is
body).
Mental psychology offers a discrete alternative to
these reductionist approaches, avoiding
reductionism by defining the human being as being born with two bodies, one in
each of two discrete worlds. Our temporary physical body and our immortal
mental body are point-by-point copies or models of each other, but in different
substances and worlds. They also function together synchronously through the cause-effect laws of
correspondences that integrate the physical and mental worlds as
synergistic systems. Every operation or action of the physical body is the effect, whose cause is in the corresponding operation or action in the mental
body. This cause-effect interaction or correspondence provides mental
psychology with an objective methodology, making it possible for it to remain
scientific and part of science as a whole.
The attempt to locate mental events in the body is seen
as a necessary step for all the mental
disciplines that strive to be scientific, like linguistics, philosophy, psychology,
theology, sociology, pragmatics, and others. Locating mental events in the physical body is scientific reductionism,
while locating them in the mental body is scientific dualism.
Without
the anatomical concept of a mental body one automatically falls into
reductionism.
Proposing the existence of the mental body saves the
Western intellectual and scientific enterprise, and brings it into harmony with
Eastern philosophies and ancient perspectives on reality. The evolving
social-biological technology is bringing to light the reality of dualism, which
has been known to humankind since the beginning of the race. The discovery of the mental body and its
anatomy marks the death of reductionism in science. Not the death of
neuroscience, but only its reductionist bias. Dualist neuroscience has a bright
scientific future, taking up all the body-mind correlations it has already
uncovered, and going forward to the neuroscience of the mental world of the
afterlife. This makes possible the true science of cause-effect relations between
the immortal mental body in eternity and the temporary physical body in matter
and space.
Reductionism in neuroscience is the idea that
thoughts and emotions are embodied in the physical
body. Thoughts and emotions must indeed have an “embodied” presence in order
for them to be anything and to exist. But this embodiment is their presence in
the mental bodies (II to VII), not
the physical body (I). Physical molecules don’t have emotions and are not
themselves emotions, but they correspond to emotions in the mental body.
Sensory and neural activity in the physical body correspond to sensations and motor
determinations in the sensorimotor system of the mental body. Mental events
are organic operations of mental organs constructed out of immortal substances
and molecules from the mental sun of eternity (see Diagram 1). Mental psychology specifies the
correspondences between the three physical systems and the three mental
systems, namely, affective/circulatory, cognitive/respiratory, and
sensorimotor/neuro-muscular.
The human awareness of meaning, rationality, and
consciousness is defined as the operation of the sensorimotor system in the
mental body. “Mental light” from the mental sun of eternity produces human
consciousness or self-conscious awareness of meaning, rationality, and its
conceptual elaborations that are variously known as theology, morality,
literature, science, common sense, conscience. Mental light is received by the
cognitive respiratory system in the mental body, and mental heat is received by
the affective circulatory system. Together they produce the consciousness in
the sensorimotor system. (See Diagrams)
The end of reductionism will allow the realization
that death does not mark the end of science. The dying/resuscitation process is
a medical procedure. The mental progression towards the second
death is a biological process of organic development. The process of
organic induction of an individual into the Grand Human or Grand Monster is
available to our rational analysis. Locomotion and social interaction in the
afterlife follows specific laws. Spiritual sociology is the scientific study of
how people congregate in the mental world of eternity and establish communities
within which people follow certain interaction rituals and activities.
Spiritual linguistics is the scientific study of correspondences in semantic
structures in cognition after separation from the physical body.
Dualist mental anatomy specifies the correspondences
between mental body events and physical body events. Many useful correlations between “mental”
events and physical events in the body have been established by reductionist neuroscience
and genetics. For instance, it is known that materialic,
corporeal, or sensory bound thinking (V or layer 9 and 8) is correlated with
activity in the mid-brain or lower brain regions, while rational and “higher
order” thinking (VI) is correlated with brain activity higher up and in the
frontal cortex or “new brain.” These correlations
are present due to the correspondences that activate together both types of
events. The mental events take place in the mental body when it is in
correspondence with the neural events in the physical body. The mental is the
cause, the physical is the effect.
It may seem contrary to physicalistic appearance to
designate the mental as cause of the physical, instead of the other way round.
It appears from the physical evidence that if people ingest alcohol (apparent “cause”),
they will then feel a change in mental state (apparent “effect”), which they
may enjoy and may want to return to again and again by repeating the drug
ingestion. However the situation is more complex than this simple minded view
of how it appears to be. For instance, what causes the person to ingest the alcohol?
This answer requires the identification of a mental event. Possibly people want to experience the specific mental
state that they know is correlated with the ingestion of alcohol. Ingest x
amount of alcohol and you will feel y type mental states, sometimes called
feeling good, feeling high, or being drunk, etc. This is an observation of a
correlation between a physical event (ingesting alcohol) and a mental event
(feeling high).
So it is a mental event in the affective circulatory
system of the mental body (wanting to feel high) that is the cause of a
physical event in the physical body (ingesting alcohol), which is correlated
with another mental event (feeling high). Here is a general representation of
cause-effect chain:
biologically
inherited predisposition for enjoying altered states of consciousness(A)
à figuring out how to get a particular
drug into your system (C) à
physically ingesting it and suddenly experiencing distinctly different
physical sensations(S) àattributing the sensations to the drug(C) à feeling good (A)
What about ingesting a drug unknowingly (somebody
slipped into your glass), does it not lead to mental events such as feeling
high?
biologically
inherited predisposition for enjoying altered states of consciousness(A)
à suddenly experiencing distinctly
different physical sensations(S) àattributing the sensations to being sick or
poisoned(C) à
feeling awful (A)
The difference shows that the physical drug does not
cause the good feeling.
Consider what happens when the physical body is
injured or sick. We can observe that symptoms of physical deterioration such as
organ malfunction, hormone imbalance, pain, dizziness, blurred vision, extreme
weakness, or difficulty in breathing, are correlated with mental states
such as emotional distress, rage, panic, fear, anxiety, helplessness, impaired
thinking. Specific physical symptoms are correlated with corresponding mental
states. Blurred vision and difficulty in breathing correlate with impaired
thinking. Organ malfunction, hormone imbalance, and pain correspond with
emotional distress, rage, and fear. The chain of causation is as follows:
biologically
inherited predisposition for experiencing emotional distress of various types(A)
à the occurrence of corresponding
types of injuries or sicknesses in the
physical body à
experiencing the sensations of some injury or sickness (S) à experiencing emotional distress
corresponding to those sensations (A)
The law of correspondence is the primary method of
management that God built into the creation of the two worlds. We can assume
that the earliest generations of humanity on this earth enjoyed a life in the
physical body that was free of injury and sickness. Nature was entirely
friendly and benign because people’s mental states were good and community
spirited. But at some point selfishness began to be practiced for the sake of
experiencing selfish emotions, enjoyments, and pleasures. For example, people
began to seek out the mental sensation of cruelty. This affective mental state
(A) is produced by willfully inverting the incoming impulse of altruism into
its opposite. Once selfish and cruel enjoyments began to be practiced God
collected those committed to them into an afterlife of hell where they could
practice on each other. Those who chose to cling to altruism were collected
into an afterlife of heaven. In this way was formed and continues to be formed,
the societies in the Grand Human and the Grand Monster (see anatomical diagrams).
Today we are born into inherited disorder of the
mental body. The myriad of people who have been inducted into the Grand Monster
are completely dependent for their survival on disorderly things in the
physical world that have arisen or were caused by negative mental states to
begin with. Humanity can eliminate earthquakes, famine, pestilence, or other
natural disasters befalling populations by zzzz
Definition of Avatar
Avatar
refers to a sensorimotor surrogate or “body” that can function in a new medium,
and with which the person or “owner” identifies, that is, treats “as-if” it is
one’s self. As a result, the person’s consciousness is enhanced through the
avatar. The person is aware of the things that are accessible to the medium or
environment in which the avatar exists.
According to historical and literary sources the
word “avatar” is from a Sanskrit word meaning “incarnation” of mental spirit
into a physical body. In the religion and literature of Hinduism many spiritual
incarnations have occurred and continue to occur. See for example the following
Web source (Wapedia):
Avatar or Avatara
(Sanskrit:
अवतार,
IAST
Avatāra), often translated into English
as incarnation,
literally means descent (avatarati)
and usually implies a deliberate descent from higher spiritual realms to lower
realms of existence for special purposes.
The ten
avatars of Vishnu, (Clockwise, from Left upper corner) Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Vamana, Krishna,
Kalki, Buddha,
Parshurama, Rama
and Narasimha, (in
centre) Krishna
1. Avatars of
Vishnu
2. Other kinds of Avatars within
Vaishnavism
3. People who have been considered
avatars outside the orthodox tradition of Hinduism
4. Criticism of Avatars in
contemporary Hinduism
5. See also
6. References
7. External links
From:
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Avatars
The idea of mind incarnating in body, or
“incarnation,” is anatomically explained in avatar psychology, where it is
called body-mind correspondences (see Diagrams).
The discussion below will show that what has been called “spiritual
incarnation” can be understood as the act of putting on one of the seven
avatars or avatar bodies that human beings and God possess through the anatomy
of the mind and body, and how these produce consciousness.
The purpose or motive we have when our mind
undergoes incarnation into an avatar is to assume upon ourselves, or to put on,
the consciousness of the avatar’s sensorimotor system. In this sense we are
incarnating or “rezzing” a body that is suitable for activity in a specific world
or medium of interaction with others and with objects in that world. Our mind
can now identify or assume the new identity with a new consciousness that is
produced only in that medium or world and only through that avatar body. Our mind is anatomically coupled to that
body. It will be shown that the coupling consists of re-attaching the
sensorimotor system to the avatar body.
Now our affective circulatory system and our
cognitive respiratory system are attached to the avatar’s sensorimotor system.
In the virtual world, it is still us, invisible behind the avatar at the
keyboard in our private rooms, and it is us because it is our loves and our
thoughts that direct the activity of our avatar. But now our loves and our
thoughts are activated in concert with a new sensorimotor input, and new living
environment in a different medium of space and object. The information
technology is going to grow more and more into a social-biological
technology.
Increasingly people’s relationships and work will be
avatar-mediated in a digital environment. We need to understand how this
ubiquitous computing and continuous networking is going to affect human
consciousness. How are we to prepare for it? What are the dangers? How do we manage
this new consciousness for a better human being? How does avatar-mediated
intersubjectivity grow into an information community? More and more people are
now discussing and writing about these new issues that face society, as you can
see when searching for terms like cybercultures,
cybercommunities, cyberpsychology, avatar psychology, e-learning, virtual
worlds, immersive worlds, games, Second Life, and many more.
A human being has access to several avatar bodies,
each suitable for a different modality of consciousness. Hence avatar bodies
serve to enhance human consciousness or awareness of an environment or world. People
“rez” an avatar body by actually doing it when needed. They do not have to
actually know or focus on the source of their consciousness. The avatar rezzing is automatic. An
avatar may not ever be rezzed by its owner but it always exists regardless of
it being used or not. All human beings can explore and navigate through the
seven worlds or modalities of consciousness.
The Seven Avatar Bodies
The social-biological
technology is inexorably drawing people into the virtual world. People
undergo a process of organic induction
into the virtual world. They eventually will discover two amazing things. One
is that there is only one virtual world. The other is that that everyone has a
virtual avatar, whether they use it or not. It’s part of the human race. This
awesome discovery came to me in 2008 when I became a resident of the virtual
world of Second Life.
(REMINDER: if you use Control-click, instead of just
a click, the page and diagram will open in a new window, and this is more
convenient as you continue reading the text.)
The context that justified this insight was my
awesome discovery of the mental world of eternity. I
have been researching and studying Swedenborg’s
Writings since 1981 and have written several online books on the “spiritual
world of the afterlife” in relation to psychology. And yet, strangely, it was
only after 2000 that I began to see that the spiritual world of the afterlife
is nothing else than the mental world of eternity where we are now, into which
we were born, and from which we will never leave. More specifically, my
discovery was that there is only one
mental world, and that it is the world of eternity.
From the point of view of psychology this discovery
is as critical as Freud’s discovery of unconscious motivation and Jung’s
discovery of the human archetype. This may sound like hyperbole – until you
allow yourself to discover your 7 avatar bodies. The main purpose for making
this online book available and using it in my teaching, is that it can lead
people to discover their mental anatomy and to explore their avatar bodies.
Every human being is born with them (see Diagrams). The discovery that there is only one mental
world, and that it is the afterlife of eternity, is a discovery that must be
made by each person.
Anthropologist-linguist Tom Boellstorff writes about
this in his book Coming of Age in Second
Life (2009):
…virtual
worlds highlight the virtuality that has always been part of the human
condition. …virtual worlds make us “even more human” (Levy 2001)...online
worlds draw upon a capacity for the virtual that is as old as humanity itself,
but aspects of selfhood and society within them are novel. Virtual worlds do
not lead to an erasure of the human: as one Second Life resident observed, a
virtual world can act as “another platform for the human OS [operating
system].” They do, however, transform what human can mean, recalling how “we
have used our relationships with technology to reflect on the human” (Turkle 1995).
From: Tom Boellstorff,
Coming of Age in Second Life, 2009:238.
It is my instructional hypothesis that people who discover
and explore their seven avatar bodies can use them for discovering their loves
and preferred modes of consciousness. Knowing this, gives people the ability to
manage their daily efforts in character improvement and increase in human
potential. Effective management in this lifelong and life struggling endeavor
requires methods and principles. This is what you’ll find in this book.
Human beings by birth have seven avatar bodies
available to their consciousness:
I.
physical body
II.
dream body
III.
imagination-fantasy body
IV.
digital body
V.
material mental body
VI.
rational mental body
VII.
celestial mental body
We have these seven bodies from birth as a human
being. Each is an anatomical structure and has the three anatomical systems
called the affective circulatory, the cognitive respiratory, and the
sensorimotor consciousness that is adaptive to its own realm of receptivity, activity,
and operation (see anatomical diagrams).
The seven avatar bodies are operational simultaneously through various phases
of human development. When we are infants our avatar bodies are not yet adapted
to conscious functioning. The celestial mental body actively but unconsciously
participates in the infant’s progression of stages. The mental heat and light,
or love and truth substance, from the mental sun of eternity inundate the seven
avatar bodies through a vertical series of discrete anatomical degrees (see Table 8).
The celestial avatar body is the first in line to
receive love substance (heat) in the affective circulatory system and truth substance
(truth, rationality) in the cognitive respiratory system of the celestial
mental body. This produces the quasi-omniscient angelic consciousness in the
highest modality called the Third Heaven. The co-action of the interior
rational celestial loves and meanings is called the celestial marriage. It
represents the conjoint
self of husband and wife in conjugial love.
Whatever
activity is going on at one discrete degree or layer becomes the cause of its
corresponding action in the immediately lower degree.
By means of this law of sequential order
God maintains all events and functions in a simultaneous
discrete order.
Note: this distinction is explained and discussed in
a number of places online. You can google or yahoo the expression, or you can
examine these sources directly:
Simultaneous and
successive anatomical features by Leon James
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/LEONJ/anatomy.htm
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/mental-psychology-p1.htm#_Toc212036230
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing3.htm#successive
http://www.theisticpsychology.org/books/theistic/ch9.htm#successive
Discrete
Degrees in Successive and Simultaneous Order Illustrated by Diagrams by Rev. N.C. Burnham
http://www.theisticscience.org/books/burnham/index.htm
The celestial mental avatar (VII) reacts to the
Divine Love (heat) and Truth (light) without distortion by selfish loves and
self-centered ideas. Our celestial avatar body is completely obedient and
receptive to the Divine inflow through the mental heat and light from the
mental sun of eternity (see Diagram
1). The celestial marriage of the affective and cognitive operations
produces our celestial consciousness (also called “angelic”), which
instantiates a mental environment of peace, beauty, and art called the human
heavens. In religious literature for the past twenty centuries it has sometimes
been called the “Kingdom of God” which is “within” the eternal human mind.
It is clear from this that it had been known for
thousands of years now that the afterlife of eternity (“Kingdom of God”) was
the same as the mental world we are in now (“is within you”). But the knowledge
and understanding of this critical feature of human beings was lost in history,
especially since materialic science over the past two
centuries has been so aversive to discussing the afterlife and God. (See my
discussion of the positive and negative bias in science at: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1p1.htm#topic1
)
The rational mental body (VI) of the infant is
reactive by built in anatomical correspondences to the celestial mental body
(VII) and its operations. This too remains unconscious to the individual until later
in childhood. By the time the infant has grown into a young adult of 20 or so,
the rational mental body (VI) is capable of producing consciousness or
conscious awareness of the rational zone of the mental world and its
environment of rational objects.
The material mental body (V) develops simultaneously
by reacting to two sources. One is the rational mental body (VI) immediately
above. The other is the physical body (I) immediately below.
The
anatomical arrangement in terms of top down sequence is as follows:
- God through
mental sun
- Celestial
mental body (Third, Second, and First modalities)
- Rational
mental body (upper celestial and lower materialized modalities)
- Material
mental body (sense-bound, fantasy, dream, and abstract modalities)
- Physical body
(“real” world) and “digital” body (virtual world)
The material consciousness is in between rational
consciousness (above) and physical consciousness. This is not the same as the
physical body since so-called “physical” consciousness is mental, not physical.
It is the mental conscious awareness of the operations of the physical body. The physical body and the material mental
body are exact point by point correspondences of each other. Every
operation in the circulatory system of the physical body is exactly the same as
a corresponding operation in the affective system of the mental body.
The idea of point by point correspondence refers to all
the levels of structure of the human body: overall anatomy, single organs, particular
cells, their physiology, biochemistry, genetics, and beyond. Avatars are exact
replicas of each other but in discrete degrees of relative operation and
functionality. Our celestial avatar body achieves the highest consciousness
possible for human beings and is closely dependent on God’s avatar bodies. The
celestial is also called the “interior rational” which is dependent on God’s
Divine Rational. (For a discussion on God’s Incarnation, viewed from the
Western Christian perspective and in relation to mental anatomy as discussed
here, see my article The Scientific
Meaning of Christmas: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/christmas.htm
The lower or external modality of the material
mental body is called the “corporeal” mind. It is closest to the physical
avatar and identifies with so completely that our conscious impression is that
we are the physical body and were we to lose it we could not continue to exist.
But the upper portion of the material mental body is called “sensuous” or
“scientific” because it is less concretely sense-bound and data bound than the
corporeal modality of function. The higher modality of the material mental body
is capable of abstracting the sensory input from the physical body. In this way
it can form principles and gain management control over physical events. The
abstract or “scientific” modality of the material mental body is directed by
the rational mental body. Without this rational direction from the rational
mind, we would not be capable of pragmatic action in accordance with our goals
in the material mental body and the physical world.
I. Physical Body or Avatar
for exploring the physical world until the
dying/resuscitation process. While we still have our physical body our material
mental body identifies with it completely so that we actually feel ourselves to
be the physical body. This identification is so strong that we imagine that if
we lost our physical body our self would cease to exist. This perspective or
philosophy is called “reductionism.” But when we raise our consciousness to the
rational mental body we can see that there are two worlds, one physical, the
other mental. This scientific dualism is also theistic because the mental world
is constructed out of mental ether supplied by the mental sun of eternity. This
is the source of Divine love substance and Divine truth substance. These two
substances form the building blocks of mental ether and the mental body.
Without the concept of God there is no explanation
for love substance and truth substance since these are living substances that
exist only in a person or Divine being. Human loves are of a discrete degree
different from animal loves. The difference is caused
by the mental anatomy of human beings, especially the rational and celestial
mental bodies. When the material mental body is left to itself it is in the
same degree of intelligence and loves as animals, but more advanced in
evolution and on a higher “branch” of the species tree. But no matter how
advanced this material evolution gets -- and it may go on without end! – the
animal and material mind or consciousness will forever remain material. Its
thinking will be material. Its loves will be material. This is the effect of
anatomy. It provides functions and limits beyond which that anatomical
structure cannot go.
This is also why the material mental body is also
the locus of the human hells – all the hellish loves and enjoyments, all the
hellish thoughts and insanities, all the hellish consciousness. The human hells are in every human being because mental objects and
places are “appearances” or external representations and correspondences of
interior loves and thoughts. The material mental body does not become a hell
until after the dying/resuscitation process by which our physical (I) and
virtual (V) avatars are “killed” or separated from the material mental body.
From the first death to the second death, the material mental body undergoes
physiological changes by which it is made ready for the next phase which is
permanent.
If prior to the first death, the material mental
body has been “regenerated” or rearranged in the order of the rational mental
body, then the celestial mental body has been prepared for induction into a
suitable or compatible the Grand Human society or “heaven.” There is no further
need for the material mental body and it becomes physiologically inactive or
inert. But if regeneration of the material mental body did not take place prior
to the passing into the afterlife of eternity, then the celestial mental body
is not anatomically ready to be inducted into the Grand Human societies. The
material mental body remains the sole locus of consciousness since the rational
mental body has been completely materialized. Material consciousness by itself
is adapted to life with a physical or digital avatar, and is consequently not
suitable for the mental world of eternity which requires rational loves and
rational thinking.
Material loves and material ideas when left to
themselves unmanaged by rational loves and ideas, create a hell in the human
mind. After the second death the person’s material consciousness becomes a
human hell. The material mental body then takes on the appearance of a devil,
demon, satan, succubus, vampire, siren, etc. These hellish
characters are “archetypes” within each individual. The material mental body
now identifies with one of these archetypes and surrounds itself with other
material mental bodies who are in the same consciousness. Together they create
the societies of the Grand Monster by collaborating in the co-construction of a
hellish outward mental environment in which they play the infernal roles of
their choice. The material mental body in the rational ether of the mental
world after death is activated by infernal or hellish loves and the ideas of
insanity that serve the goals of these loves.
Note:
You can read an eyewitness account of the conditions of life in the human hells
written by Swedenborg. This book titled Heaven and Hell
(1758) is well known in the literature and has been translated in many
languages: http://www.swedenborgdigitallibrary.org/contets/HH.html
II. Conscious Material Mental Body or Avatar
for exploring the material zone of the mental world.
It has three “alts” or surrogates that operate in three sub-zones of the
material mind: dream body (III), imagination body (IV), and digital body (V).
The focus of our consciousness, or conscious awareness, is in the conscious material
mental body (II) when we manage our daily activities. It has two modalities of
operation. The lower modality called “corporeal” and is sense-bound. The
thinking is sense-bound and the consciousness is sense-bound or limited by what
pertains to sensory input (time, space, energy, matter, place, sequence). A
higher modality is called “abstract” or “scientific” (IIi)
consisting of higher material ideas and reasonings that are based on
idealizations or ideal representations of the concretely sense-bound ideas (IIe). We alternate between these two modalities in
different situations or challenges we encounter in daily life.
III. The Dream Body or Avatar
for exploring the dream world while in the mental
state of sleep. When we “put on” the dream body we are inworld surrounded by mental
objects that are representatives of objects with which we are familiar through
the physical body. Putting on the dream avatar means that our conscious material
mental body identifies totally with the dream body, which is one of its regular
surrogates. The dream is therefore experienced as completely “real.” When our
conscious material mental body (II) stops identifying with our dream avatar,
the dreaming ceases. When awakening from the state of sleep our conscious
material mental body can recall from memory parts of the dream.
Our dream avatar can be mentally co-present with
other dream avatars, in which case we see or interact with them in a conjoint
dream world. This is a mental co-construction by those who are socially co-present
through their dream body. This conjoint dream world is also called dream
intersubjectivity.
IV. Imagination-Fantasy Body or Avatar
for exploring the world of imagination, fantasy, day
dreams, recreation, literature, theater or movies, art, aesthetics, music,
dance, sports, inventiveness, curiosity, insanity, obsession, and more. The
material mental body rezzes the imagination avatar many times a day, and in
multiple daily situations and tasks. As children our consciousness might spend
the greater portion of the day in the fantasy or play-acting body, and the
greater portion of the night in the dream body. This indicates that the
material mental body (V) and its surrogates or alts (II, III, IV), have to
undergo organic development before consciousness can begin functioning in the
rational mental body (VI).
Diagram 7 (Do a
control-click) shows that “loves” instantiate appearances and objects in the
mental environment, thereby forming our consciousness. When asleep, the
material mental body (V) rezzes the dream avatar and identifies with it, that
is, puts on the consciousness of the dream world. This mental world contains
objects and appearances, thus, an “external” environment for the sensorimotor
system where we place our consciousness. In other words, loves construct
consciousness through the appearances and objects of the “external”
environment.
In the mental world these external environments and
objects – scenes, landscapes, cities, people, animals, plants, movie theaters,
dance halls – are instantiated or rezzed by our loves. In still other words, loves
in the affective circulatory system in the material mental body create the
external mental environment that “impresses” our sensorimotor system and
produces the living experience of consciousness (or conscious awareness).
This awesome power of love is truly amazing! We have
this power through our loves. It is good and smart to choose our loves well.
The loves that create a heavenly environment will bring the experience of peace
and thriving, continuing a progression or evolution towards ever further
organic human potential. But human beings have the option, maintained in force
by God, to adapt the inflow of heavenly mental heat and light from the mental
sun (diagram 7). We are able to invert and convert every incoming love into its
opposite, thus into a corrupted or negative love, and we can invert every
incoming truth into a falsity or absurdity. And in that case we are loading up
on negative loves in the affective circulatory system of the material mental
body. This is equivalent to breathing in or ingesting poisons that enter into
the blood stream of the physical body and corrupt or contaminate every organ
and its cells.
Heavenly positive loves seek out and come together
with thoughts and ideas of truth, creating a rational consciousness and a
sensorimotor environment of community, peace, mutual love and respect, mutual
enhancement in inventiveness and productivity. The communities of heaven
construct an intersubjectivity that is continuously evolving and producing a grander
and grander environmental reality for our consciousness. This is called an
eternal heaven where we reside forever with our celestial mental body in
conjugial love with our soulmate and best friend. This united couple – the
conjoined self – is the eternally evolving organic human form, sometimes called
“angels.” As celestial being or angels, our
consciousness is quasi-omniscient.
The opposite is the case with negative loves. They
create a sphere or world of “hell” in our consciousness. Every object in hell
is injurious, every exchange between people who are mentally co-present in
states of hellish loves. What makes a love hellish is its organic opposition to
heavenly loves and spontaneous intense aversion for truth and rationality that act
together with the heavenly loves. The mental states of hell are point by point
correspondential opposites to the mental state of heaven. Heaven loves the
neighbor and God. Hell loves self, plots against the neighbor, and hates God.
Heaven is a healthy evolution towards better and better. Hell is an insane
devolution and corruption towards worse and worse. Organic structures cannot
stand still. To live, they must evolve continuously, or else devolve
continuously.
The awesome mental or “spiritual” battle between
heavenly and hellish loves has been in the consciousness of human beings for
many generations, as is documented in the world’s written literature for the
past few thousand years. The good ruling love battles against the evil ruling
love, and the two have an army of supporting loves lined up behind them and below
them. The method of “regeneration” is provided by God to every human being, by
which God “regenerates” the material mental body and removes from it the evil
loves that are encrusted in it from inheritance, and also from a life of
materialism unchecked by celestial
rationality (see diagram 7 and surrounding diagrams).
This continuous battle between good and evil in the
human mind has been discussed in the world literature and in the oral
traditions of many cultures, both “primitive” and “advanced.” The protagonists
in this battle were the angels and the “fallen angels” who come in different
types identified in the Western literature by names such as demons, devils, satans, satyrs, sirens, succubi,
warlocks, zombies, vampires, belzebub, dragon, dagon, etc. Angels also have an apparent cast of characters
like Gabriel, Uriel, Rafael, etc. These names are
representatives or symbolic correspondences to specific varieties or types of
mental states that are hellish or heavenly. The societies of the Grand Monster
(“hell”) and the Grand Human (“heaven”) (see diagrams)
are organized altogether in the overall shape of the human body and its organs
and systems. The angelic societies together as a unit appear as a handsome or
beautiful human being that has both male and female properties. The infernal
societies form a unit which appears as a deformed human being.
V. The Digital Body or Avatar
for exploring
the virtual world. The introduction of computers in our daily lives
continues to increase and expand. The social-biological
technology known as “virtual world” is quickly drawing in millions of
people who spend a portion of their lives inworld, living as a “resident”
through their digital avatar. The technology is almost at the stage where
people could cross interface platforms with the same avatar, which increasingly
brings the realization that there is only one virtual world and everyone has an
avatar there, whether they use it or not. Anatomically, people can have many
“alts” but only one avatar. Alts are merely surrogates of the one avatar body,
allowing it to appear in inventive shapes and forms.
The digital avatar body is constructed out of
information bits. When the owner logs on with the appropriate software
interface the avatar is there waiting on the screen. The conscious material
mental body (V) moves the avatar body using appropriate input devices such as a
mouse, keyboard, joystick, or other electronic devices wrapped to the physical
body and capable of transmitting muscle movements and of receiving sensations
from the muscle movements of another owner with whom they are in “contact” by
means of the computer interface and communication networks.
The conscious material mental body can identify or
“put on” the avatar consciousness through a physiological process called absorption. People at their keyboards
and workstations become absorbed or intensely involved in the virtual
environment and events. This is accomplished by restricting one’s perceptual
focus to the visual and motor activity of the digital avatar. In effect, we
become the avatar. This has been called by some “the
imago effect.”
The issue of identity in relation to our avatar body
has been discussed by many. Here is one that is found in Steve Wheeler’s blog,
posted February 2, 2009 and entitled The Embodied Self (http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/search?q=avatar
)
(Quoting Miller and Arnold) “Our own research
has shown that the psychology of identity and self presentation on the Web is
best understood in terms of how people draw on those same signifiers of who and
what we are as are used elsewhere: use of photos, claims made of achievements,
hobbies, geographical origins, etc. We argue that when people enter into
cyberspace they bring with them expectations, challenges, and vulnerabilities
from every day life experience and the experience of
managing an identity in various circumstances, and here was just another mode
(or exciting new theatre) to explore and to play out being oneself” (p 58). [Connected Minds, Emerging
Cultures)
Miller
and Arnold are here arguing that the self we project into cyberspace has all
the components of our real life self, but that there is the potential for
fantastic or even outlandish new representations of that self, within the
affordances of the virtual environment. This of course, implies that all of the
outworkings of people's avatars (the gender bending,
species swapping, age reassignment, fantasy representations and so on) lay
inert within the person's psyche, and are enlivened (or made possible) within
say, Second Life as the environment gives
them licence and utility. (Steve Wheeler)
And anthropologist Tom Boellstorff writes:
“Without
wishing to engage in hyperbole, we may be on the verge of another massive
transformation linked to technology, the creation of societies on the Internet:
“for the first time, humanity has not one but many worlds in which to live” (Catronova 2005:70). This could involve new forms of culture
and selfhood, ones shaped in unpredicatable ways by
actual world sociality: “We do not really understand how to live in cyberspace
yet” (Sterling 1992:xiii). (…)
I
will develop a theory of this virtual worldview as techne,
and of the person who engages in techne not just as
homo faber (“man the maker”) or homo ludens (“man the player”), but above all as homo cyber. The
human online. The virtual human.” (Coming
of Age in Second Life, p.25).
This “virtual human” is the digital avatar body (IV)
(see Diagram 8).
There is now the dawning realization in human
consciousness that we are each born with a virtual or digital (informational) avatar
as part of our mental anatomy, and that there is only one virtual world in
which all the avatar bodies exist and can give virtual consciousness to human
beings.
When we identify with our virtual avatar body we are
able to perceive other avatars as real. When we are active and living “inworld”
we know in the back of our material mind, which operates the keyboard through
the physical avatar’s body that the owner of the avatar that we interact with at
the other computer, does not at all look like the digital avatar we are looking
at. We know this when we compare how our own digital avatar body looks like,
with how our physical body looks like. And yet the imago effect of identifying
with our avatar body and its camera perceptions, is so powerful or insistent to
our sensorimotor system, that it is difficult for the conscious material mental
body (V) to resist the impression that we are actually interacting with the
avatar whom we see on the screen.
It is similar to the mental state of sleep during
which the material mental body puts on the dream body and fully identifies with
it. This is why the objects and events in dreams are real to the dream body.
When we put on the digital avatar body we are coupled organically to the
technology. There is a synergistic fusion between human and machine. Through
our digital avatar body we have social interactions in the virtual world. These
include such things as meeting other avatars at a prearranged place and time
inworld, walking together, shopping together, riding vehicles, dancing, hiking,
or doing domestic things in a virtual house located on a virtual real estate
for which we pay real money for rent or ownership. I have heard from a number
of residents in the virtual world of Second Life, that they have met their
soulmate and partner there. Avatar-mediated romance is not unusual, including
weddings and marriage.
I have heard from a number of residents that they
have been “burned” in romantic relationships formed in the virtual world and
carried out solely through their digital avatar bodies. Identification with the
virtual avatar is so powerful that one feels attraction to the other person’s
visible avatar and the conversational style they sustain with each other. Age
verification requirements are now in force, but not gender. An owner is allowed
to rez inworld an avatar of any appearance, or gender, or whether human,
animal, or inert. Nevertheless, in Second Live specifically, the realism is so
powerful that the majority of virtual avatars look gorgeous and handsome. The
importance of avatar appearance is so valued that the production and sale of avatar
body shapes and clothes constitute a growing multi-million dollar industry in
Second Life.
VI. Rational Mental Body or Avatar
for exploring the rational zone of the mental world.
The mental sun of eternity inundates the mind of every person with mental heat
(which is God’s love substance) and mental light (which is God’s truth
substance). Truth substance enters our cognitive system through the rational
mental body. This gives us the ability to think rationally and to understand
celestial ideas (VII). When we are in the consciousness of the material mental
body in its higher modality (IIi) we have the ability
to rearrange our thinking in accordance with the rational mental body (VI)
which is arranged in the order of the celestial mental body (VII). We can
reason things out rationally (VI) without having to be bound to material
reasoning that is situation based or sense-bound (IIe).
The rational mental body has a lower modality that
is called material-rational (VIe – “e” for external),
and a higher modality that is called celestial-rational (VIi
– “i” for interior). Material-rational thinking is
fundamentally material and sense-bound, while celestial-rational thinking is
fundamentally rational. The material mind differs from the rational mind in
critical ways – see the discussion in the Organic Mind: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/mental-psychology-p1.htm
.
Or, take another example of rational thinking that
is above material thinking. We can think about God’s omnipotence and evil in
terms of material-rational consciousness or in terms of rational consciousness.
When we try to think rationally with material ideas we only come up with a
rational that has been “materialized.” This material-rational thinking tries to
apply rational rules using ideas based on the order of the physical world. We
look at the existence of evil things around us and in us, such as natural disasters,
wars, sicknesses, selfishness, cruelty, brutality, crime, abuse, fraud,
suffering, death of innocent children, etc. The material consciousness wonders
why these evil things exist if God is omnipotent and could use His infinite
power to stop these evil things from happening. Why doesn’t He? Either it is
because God cannot stop all evil from existing, or God is both good and evil
since He is responsible for everything. This is thinking with material ideas.
Or, we can reason rationally without relying on
material ideas, that God can prevent evil through omnipotence, but chooses to
manage evil by allowing some of it, and not allowing much of it that people
would love to do but they do not succeed. God prevents them from succeeding.
God decides which evil will be allowed to be done, so that it can occur. In
other words, God manages evil through the Divine Laws of Permissions (or Allowances).
Only that evil can come into existence which God can turn into good for all
concerned. This is a rational idea that explains why there is evil in the
world. God uses evil to assist people in
regeneration, and thereby makes it possible for people to disconnect
themselves from inherited enjoyments of evil. Only that evil is permitted by
God to occur that can be turned into occasions for good, for the good of the
regeneration of the people involved and affected by the evil. Other evil is not
allowed to occur or come into existence. Hence evil is a means towards good in
God’s management plan and goal.
God allows some evil for the sake and welfare of
human beings. To eliminate all evil by omnipotence would prevent many people,
perhaps all people, from regenerating, and this would condemn them to a life in
hell after the dying/resuscitation process. These ideas are purely rational,
and they are relatively meaningless or “purely” abstract to the material mental
body. But to the rational body it is
easy to see the reality of God’s management principles. Mental light issues
from the mental sun and is captured by the cognitive respiratory organ of the
mental body (see Diagram 7 – reminder: use
Control-click to open the diagram in an adjacent window).
VII. Celestial Mental Body or Avatar
for exploring the celestial zone of the mental world.
The celestial zone of the mental world is called “heaven” and also the Grand
Human (see diagrams). The dying/resuscitation process
is called the first death. After about 33 hours we awaken in the consciousness
of the material mental body. This is called the resuscitation zone of the
mental world. Without the physical body, the material mental body is at last
able to be conscious of the surroundings of the mental world. We can now
interact with others who are in their material consciousness following their
first death.
Then follows the second death which is marked by an
organic separation of incompatible ruling loves and their sub-loves. If we opt
to hold on to our celestial loves in our celestial mental body, then our material
mental body enters a non-functioning state. If we opt to hold on to our
material loves in our material mental body, then our celestial mental body
enters a non-functioning state. The material mental body after the second death
is called “hell” or the Grand Monster.
Avatars of different owners can interact with each
other as long as they are “rezzed” (or put on) in the same modality or world.
Avatars cannot interact across modalities or worlds. The behavior of avatars is an outward expression of the owner’s loves in
association with the owner’s ideas.
Our physical body (I) is related by correspondence
to our mental body (II, VI, VII) from birth to first death. At our second
death we either enter the Grand Human with our celestial mental body (VII),
in which case the unregenerate material mental body (IIe)
and the materialized rational mental body (VI) are rendered nonfunctional, or else
we enter the Grand Monster with our unregenerate material and corrupted
rational mental bodies (V, VI), in which case the celestial mental body (VI) is
rendered nonfunctional.
For more details on this organic development see: Diagram 6 above and the Diagrams in the chapter on
Divine
Psychotherapy.
Anatomical Components of the Mental Body
The mental body has three anatomical systems:
- affective
circulatory system (loves, feelings, intentions,
desires, needs, values),
- cognitive
respiratory system (thoughts, reasoning,
imagination, memory, knowledge, understanding),
- sensorimotor
neuro-skeletal system (sensations, motor
determinations, expectancies, adaptations, motor readinesses, perceptual
filters – which all together synergize as our consciousness).
The material
mental body encompasses the dream body, the fantasy body, and the digital
body. Until the dying/resuscitation
process, or first death, the material mental body strongly identifies with
the physical body. We are not aware of the mental world of eternity that
surrounds the mental body because we are so intensely focused on the sensations
in the physical body. We actually see our physical body as our very self. We
cannot imagine not having the physical body and still having the life of a
human being. We imagine that if we lose the physical body we have nothing to
live in. This kind of thinking is materialic and does
not take into its awareness the reality of dualism and eternity. It is only
when we raise our consciousness to the rational mental body that we can
understand dualism and the mental world of eternity.
Whatever is not material, the material mind cannot
see. The material mind can only see material things. Hence all our thoughts and
in the material mind are material thoughts. Consequently, every thought we
have, every concept we know, is time-bound and place-bound. For instance, try
to think of a word or concept that does not include time, place, matter, or
history. Suppose you say: house. This concept contains matter, space, and
history or location. What about: government. This concept contains history and
place. How about: learning theory. This concept refers to an explanation
advanced by an author in a book or journal. Keep going and you’ll become
convinced that most ideas and words we use in daily life are material ideas.
When we reason with material ideas we arrive at conclusions that are
time-bound, place-bound, and culture-bound.
When we construct abstractions based on material
ideas the abstractions will appear rational, and yet they are material within.
Hence this kind of material/rational thinking can also be called fake rational
to contrast it with pure rational. For example, consider the moral principle of
self-defense when killing someone. This is the idea of kill or be killed. It
appears to be an abstraction of reality. It appears to be a principle that is
universal and true. It is integrated with the “philosophy of selfism” or the
principle of the survival of the fittest. But this material/rational idea is
not a true rational idea since the principle is based on material ideas and
assumptions about what is reality. It ignores dualism and God. It ignores the
rational idea that God sets limits on when we can kill, and if we go outside
those limits we suffer consequences, both individual or personal, and communal
or societal.
But when we raise our consciousness to the rational mental body we are able to
think and reason with ideas that are free from time, place, and culture. We can
think about God’s omnipotence and our afterlife in the mental world of eternity
where there is no time, no place, no matter, no history, and no culture. What
is left? To the material mind, nothing is
left. It is total disappearance and extinction. But the rational consciousness
is aware of a different world which our rational avatar can explore.
For instance, we can explore the rational world of correspondences. The “Science of
Correspondences” was known to the ancient civilizations, and was revived by Swedenborg in
the 18th century. Dictionaries of correspondences have been
available since then. See these specific works available online full text:
Dictionary of Correspondences: http://books.google.com/books?id=FfaO3jELr3oC&pg=PA7&output=html_text
Correspondences in the Bible
|| Physiological Correspondences || Science of Correspondences || Correspondences in Swedenborg || Body Mind Correspondences in
Symbolism
The laws of correspondences insure that the discrete
layers of the mental world and the physical world remain connected and acting
synergistically as a synchronous unit. An analogy would be to think about an
electric circuit, that we all have in our houses and offices. Electricity does
not ‘flow’ in the wire when the circuit is not closed. In order for the light
bulb to alight and give light in the room, electricity must flow through the
circuit to which the bulb or lamp is connected by the wiring. When we turn the
light switch “On,” we close the
circuit, and the electricity will flow and light the bulb. The moment the
circuit is broken again (“Off” position), the electricity stops flowing in that
circuit and the bulbs turn dark, along with the room.
It is similar with the laws of correspondences that
connect all the discrete layers of the universe from top (God through mental
sun) to bottom (physical body and world). For
an event or object to exist anywhere, all the layers must be connected from top
to bottom.
Let us recapitulate these anatomical layers and
identify the exact connection between the various ways of referring to each
layer, depending on the context and focus:
Layers 1, 2, 3: God, Mental Sun of Eternity,
organic souls (unconscious)
Layers 4, 5, 6: Celestial mental body (VII)
Layer 7 Rational mental body
(VI)
Layers 8, 9, 10: Material mental body (V) (with II,
III, IV)
Layers 11, 12 Physical limbus and body (I)
The layers are explained as anatomical charts in the
Organic
Mind book (Arabic numbers 1 to 12) and in this Section of the current book
(Roman numerals I to VII).
Diagram 7 shows
the anatomical components of the mental body.
Diagram 7 shows a most amazing feature of the mental
world of eternity, which is, that loves
in the affective organ have two critical organic functions, as marked in the
diagram by the two arrows that connect loves to thoughts, and to the mental
environment of appearances. Loves have the function of directing and selecting
thoughts in the cognitive organ. Loves also instantiate the mental environment
around the mental body. These are called “appearances” because they are real
mental objects that “make their appearance” around the mental body. In our
consciousness we can see them or be aware of them through our sensorimotor
system. This is shown in diagram 7 by the arrow linking the mental environment
to conscious awareness.
We can see from this that loves are the all in all in everything that exists in the mental world
of eternity. There is an area where everyone is familiar with the amazing
“rezzing” ability of a love, which means to instantiate an environment of appearances around us as if it was
real. While we are in the mental state of sleep, our material mental body is
unconscious of the physical environment, but conscious of the mental
environment. Through our dream body we become conscious of the dream world and
its environment. Our dream body can walk around in the dream and can experience
intense emotional reactions to the appearances we perceive and the events we
participate in through our dream body. The wall feels solid and our dream body
can be held imprisoned or chained. We can be with the dream body of a loved one
and enjoy embracing each other. We can eat food that tastes real. We can enjoy
trips, outings, people, adventures, and we can feel terror and panic. Everything is real to the dream body.
When our consciousness is awake in the conscious material mental body (V), the
dream body’s dream world (II), seems like it is “just a dream, nothing
really.” But to our dream body and its consciousness, the dream environment is
real and solid, happy or terrifying.
People who appear in your dreams are real people
whose dream body has been “summoned” to co-presence with your dream body by
your matching loves and intentions. Similar
and compatible loves create mental co-presence or intersubjectivity. People
who cling to similar loves after the dying/resuscitation process find
themselves together or socially co-present in some “corner” or situation of the
mental world. Mental societies in the Grand Human
and Grand Monster are formed through such love alliances and harmonies,
either between heavenly loves or between hellish loves.
You can see now that loves can instantiate or
project real mental objects in the environment of the mental body, and these
can be seen, noticed, and interacted with through the sensorimotor neuro-skeletal
system of the mental body. In the dream world, the material mind (V) uses one
of its surrogates called the dream body (II). In the virtual world, the
material mind (V) uses the surrogate called digital avatar body (IV). In the
world of imagination and fantasy, the material mental body (V) uses the
imagination body (III). In the rational world, the material mental body (V) uses
the surrogate known as the material-rational modality (Ve),
but the regenerated person uses the celestial-rational modality (Vi). In the
celestial world of heaven and hell, the
celestial body uses three surrogates or avatars called the first heaven, the
second heaven, and the third heaven, which is the highest and closest to the mental
sun of eternity. The following is a
summary of mental bodies and their surrogates:
Diagram 8 – Table Listing the Mental Bodies
|
Name |
Discrete Layer |
Description |
|
CELESTIAL VII |
4 |
Celestial—interior rational |
|
5 |
Celestial--external-rational |
|
|
6 |
Celestial--interior-material |
|
|
RATIONAL VI |
7i |
Rational—interior or celestial |
|
7e |
Rational—external or materialized |
|
|
MATERIAL V, II, II, IV |
8 |
Material--abstract |
|
9 |
Material--corporeal |
|
|
10 |
“Spiritual body” |
|
|
PHYSICAL BODY I |
11 |
“Limbus” |
|
12 |
Physical body |
Body-Mind Correspondences
The reality of body-mind correspondence provides
mental psychology with a scientific biological methodology. It makes possible
such new scientific developments as theistic psychology, biological
theology, embodied cognition, philosophy
in the flesh, molecules of emotion, virtual
world, avatar consciousness.
See also: discussion above on Propositions
See also: What are correspondences: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/correspondences.htm
See also this interesting brief article on the human
form by Jarvis: http://www.theisticscience.org/biology/humanform.html
Readings
in Body-Mind Correspondences – Reductionist
- Theological Ethics and
Neuroscience On Morality and the Embodied Mind by Arne Rasmusson and Benoni Edin
http://www8.umu.se/religion/personal/arne.rasmusson/TENS.pdf
- Molecules Of Emotion: The
Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine (Paperback) by Candace B.
Pert
See also: Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind Audio CD or MP3 download - Johnson,
Mark. Body meaning …?
- Lakoff,
George. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.
- Lakoff,
George and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh:
The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New
York: Basic Books, 1999.
- Imaging
Place as Imaging Thought by Richard Smyth
http://institute.emerson.edu/vma/faculty/john_craig_freeman/imaging_place/about/research_ensembles/smyth/smyth.pdf - Networks
as Mind and Self in Cyberpsychology by John Suler
http://www.enotalone.com/article/2456.html - Seeking
a Foundation for Context-Aware Computing by Paul Dourish
http://www.dourish.com/embodied/essay.pdf - Embodied
Interaction: Exploring the Foundations of a New Approach to HCI
by Paul Dourish
http://www.dourish.com/embodied/embodied99.pdf
Readings
in Body-Mind Correspondences – Dualist
- Ian
Thompson. Theistic Science. Blog at: http://theisticscience.blogspot.com/
- Ian
Thompson. zzzz
The
Virtual and the Actual
The “virtual world” (Second Life) is often
contrasted with the “real” world (first life). Residents insist that their
activities in Second Life is also real, just not the same way. Boellstorff
prefers the contrast “virtual” vs. “actual,” both being real:
In
short, “the virtual is opposed not to the real but to the actual. The virtual
is fully real in so far as it is virtual . . . the virtual must be defined as
strictly a part of the real object” (Deleuze
2004:260; see also Friedberg 2006; Lévy 1998; Massumi 2002; Virilio 1994). As a
result, I do not oppose “virtual” and “real”; I refer to places of human culture
not realized by computer programs through the Internet as parts of the “actual
world.” “Actual” is also imperfect, but I find it the best provisional term and
additionally one used fairly often by those in Second Life. As discussed in the
final chapter, I could speak of “actual worlds” in the plural, since human
experience offline is shaped by cultural specificity, but for simplicity’s sake
I will refer to a singular “actual world.” The limitation of “actual” is that
synthesis, artifice, and fabrication are constitutive of all human sociality,
from language to kinship, from agriculture to desire, from governance to
ritual. They are not distinguishing features of virtual worlds but a key point
of continuity between them and the actual world. The Oxford English Dictionary
notes that “actual” comes etymologically from “act”; as indicated by the term
“actor,” it can refer to something “exhibited in deeds.”18
Virtual and actual are both the place of homo faber,
the human as maker (Bergson 1911; Tilgher 1930).
Coming
of Age, Chapter 1, online at http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8647.html
Boellstorff argues that the “virtual human” has
always existed. That is, the virtual is a normal, actual, and real part of the
human mind, every individual mind. He uses virtual as a general term for the
capacity to use imagination, with which people have entertained themselves in
drama, art, literature, and the fantastical. The mental anatomy of the seven
avatar bodies discussed above shows the distinction between the modalities of
the material mental body which include the dream body (II), the
imagination-fantasy body (III) and the conscious material body (V). The virtual
digital body (IV) is associated with the physical body (I) because the virtual
world is a physical medium.
The resolution lies in understanding that the
affective system of loves and the cognitive system of thoughts and images
remain constant across the mental avatars at each level. It is the person’s
loves and thoughts that activate the dream body, the imagination body, the
dream body, and the material mental body. The body is only the neuro-skeletal
sensorimotor system.
The reductionism of neuroscience, psychology, and
medicine is on its way out now that technology has initiated the age of
immersion in virtual world. Soon people generally, and experts specifically,
will come to the realization that there is only one virtual world, as there is
only one mental world. It appears that there are multiple platforms and
interfaces of virtual “worlds” but crossing virtual world platforms and
interfaces with one avatar is already going on to a limited extent. Soon the social-biological technology will prove to
us once and for all that there is only one virtual world. Every human being is
in that virtual world through our material mental body, which has several
modalities of experiencing sub-worlds of the mental world – namely, the digital
avatar body (IV), the dream body (II), the fantasy-imagination body (III),
besides our conscious daily awareness which is in the material mental body (V).
Consider the difference between the
imagination-fantasy body (III) and the digital body in the virtual world. One
is real, the other is not. The digital virtual body is real and actual, but the
fantasy-body is not real, not actual. You can see the difference when you think
about the virtual world in contrast with the fantasy world. Our avatar in the
virtual world sees other avatars and interacts with them. Are these real
avatars? Yes. Are these real interactions that actually occurred? Yes. But not
so for the fantasy world. The characters in a novel are not real but a figment
of the imagination, and the events are not actual, but made up. Do you see the
difference?
What about the dream world? Is it real and are the
events actual? Yes. It may surprise you that the characters in your dream are
real while the characters in a novel are not. The difference is determined by
the anatomy of our mental body. Our conscious material mind or mental body is a
living anatomical structure that exists in the mental world of eternity. The
mental world appears to be like the physical world, but not really so, once you
begin to consider the differences. The physical and mental worlds appear to be
alike. Our imagination and our dreams recreate the content of our consciousness
through the physical body. Hence we construct our dreams with people, cities,
trees, animals, dancing, running, eating, swimming, flying, etc. These are the
things are contained in our conscious material mind which has been entirely
formed by or filled with sensory input through the physical body.
The mental world appears to us as alone, private,
dark, empty. Where is everybody when I close my eyes? I only have my own
memories, my own thoughts, my own desires and loves. If we work with the
hypothesis (or principle) that there is only one mental world, the puzzle is
even greater – Where is everybody? Is anybody out there? If people at death
wake up in the mental world of eternity called “the afterlife,” then where are
all those billions or trillions of people who died since the beginning of the
human race?
Discovering the Vertical Community
Consider again the anatomical features of a human
being (see Diagrams). Since the mental world does not
have physical space and physical matter or energy, everything that exists in
the mental world overlaps with everything else. Things that exists in the mental
world cannot have physical structure, and the spaces between the objects cannot
be physical spaces. Think of the objects in your dreams, as for example, a
horse that your dream body is riding on a beach next to your friend who is also
on a horse. Now your friend’s dream body suddenly rides off and disappears in
the distance. You are thinking that you can’t talk to her any longer, and you
feel disappointment. This is a dream obviously based on the analogy of the
physical world. But the actual reality is that your friend riding off is not
more distant physically, but only gives you the appearance that there is real
distance involved.
Meanwhile your physical body remains quasi-inert,
and your consciousness is anatomically detached or functionally uninvolved in
the sensorimotor input that comes from the physical environment. This is
exactly the freedom needed by our material mental mind to alter its
consciousness. All day long our material consciousness is totally absorbed by
the sensorimotor input of the physical body, a mental state that we call “being
awake.” When “fall” asleep, we fall away from the physical world and fall into
the mental world of eternity. Our consciousness moves away from the physical
world and becomes more involved and attached to the mental world. That’s when
we actually “light up” so that suddenly our consciousness is filled with the
sensorimotor world of our dream body.
Now we CAN see those others who are also in the mental
world of eternity, who are no longer tied to and absorbed by the sensorimotor
world of the physical body. We see them as our dream body sees them, thus with
limited consciousness and understanding of what is actually going on. The other
dream bodies we see appear totally real and actual, and they are fully so – to
the dream body in a dream world. Those other dream bodies are NOT figments of
your fantasy, as when we are in the consciousness of our fantasy mental body
while being absorbed in reading a novel we intensely enjoy. The novel’s characters are unreal and the
events are not actual, while the dream bodies are real, not fictitious
characters, and the events are actual exchanges that took place with real
avatar bodies.
One of the great discoveries Swedenborg (1668-1772) made
while being conscious in both worlds simultaneously, is the fact that dreams
are co-constructed by the sleeper’s material mental body and the mental bodies
of people in the afterlife who are in the mental vicinity of the sleeper’s
dream body. The following is an entry in the daily record book he kept of his
“spiritual experiences” for more than two decades. This entry is from the raw
notes translated from the Swedish and Latin. Subsequently, Swedenborg wrote two
dozen learned volumes filled with treatises and rational explanations of his
dual consciousness that lasted 27 years. He had an impeccable reputation as a
scientist, high level civil servant, and a devout Christian with high personal
integrity.
In the following passage Swedenborg takes note of
his realization that our mental functioning, namely our thoughts and feelings,
are in continuous interdependence with the feelings and thoughts of others to
whom we are connected from birth onward. This mental connectivity may be called
our vertical
community, to distinguish it from the horizontal community in physical
space to which we belong through our physical avatar.
[I add my comments in square brackets]
SD
2951. WITH WHAT DIFFICULTY MAN [=our conscious
material mental body] CAN BE PERSUADED
THAT HE IS RULED THROUGH SPIRITS [=that we are co-constructing our
consciousness with others, not alone] .
Before my mind was opened [=suddenly acquired dual consciousness], so that I could speak with spirits,
[=interacting with those in the afterlife]
and so be persuaded by living experience; for many years previous, such proofs
existed with me, that I am now astonished, that yet I did not come into
persuasion concerning the Lord's government, through spirits=[only
gradually did he realize that the vertical community is God’s management
mechanism for networking all of the human race] (…).
Afterwards,
also, many visions, when my eyes were closed, and light miraculously given; and
spirits sensibly (flowed).[=when his physical body was
relatively inactive with eyes closed, he could see the environment of his
celestial mental body. Thus he had “dual” consciousness in both worlds
simultaneously—material mind (V) and celestial mind (VII)] It was as manifest to perception (sensum)
[=he perceived the environment of those in the afterlife through the
sensorimotor system of his celestial mental body] as the corporeal senses. [=his normal daily consciousness through
the sensorimotor system of the material mental body, which identifies with the
physical body and its environment]
Many
times (occurred) infestations through various modes, by evil spirits, in
temptations. [=some of those in his vertical
community that he interacted with were hostile. He perceived that this occurred
during “temptations”—see regeneration] Then, afterwards, when those things were
written to which evil spirits were averse, [=while he was taking notes in
his record book, those with him in his celestial mental body were objecting to
what he was writing down, as it was reflecting badly over them] so that I was so obsessed as nearly to be
overcome with horror.[=they were able to infuse negative emotions that
intensely disturbed him] Fiery lights
were seen. Speech in morning-time (was heard), besides many other things; until
a certain spirit addressed me in a few words. I was greatly astonished that he
should perceive my thoughts, and afterwards wondered greatly when [my mind] was
opened [=when he was 57 until his passing on at 84] so that I could converse with spirits; [=have dual consciousness] in like manner the spirit (was then
surprise)] that I should be astonished.[=they apparently were no longer
aware that people in the physical body are ignorant of the vertical community] From these things it may be concluded with
what difficulty man can be led to believe that he is ruled by the Lord through
spirits, and with what difficulty he recedes from the opinion that he lives his
own life from himself, apart from spirits. - 1748, August 27.
I
formerly perceived, after speaking for some months with spirits, that if I were
remitted into my former state, I could have fallen into the opinion that [these
things] were phantasies. (SD 2951)
CLJ
35. It has pleased the Lord to open for me the eyes of my spirit, and to keep
them open now for nineteen years; it has been given me to see the things which
are in the spiritual world,[=mental world of eternity and the
afterlife world] and also to describe
them. I can affirm that they are not visions,[=consciousness in the fantasy
body (III)] but things seen in all
wakefulness." [=consciousness in the material mental body] (CLJ 35)
[For many additional
statements Swedenborg makes about his dual consciousness, see the
collection in my Theistic Psychology
Index Volume (18)]
In the last two paragraphs,
Swedenborg realizes that without dual consciousness one tends to conclude that
the vertical community is a fantasy, since there is no material evidence for
its existence. The evidence returns however, when consciousness returns to the
celestial mental body. This is what he had to say to some “spirits” he was
talking to:
SD 3058. ((((At last I spoke with
them where they were, in (that) very high (place), representing to me,
[=people in the afterlife often communicate with each other by projecting “representations”
of their thoughts into visible environmental scenes and objects that correspond
to their meaning] that because in the
state of the body [=prior to undergoing the dying/resuscitation process] they were such as not to believe in spirits,
[=materialic thinking] nor that anyone could speak with spirits; they then thought in a
similar manner because they were in that state. [=material consciousness of
the material mental body that identifies with the physical body and its world]
I told them that we should believe
in (our) senses - for instance, in sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch, and the
thousand varieties (of my experiences), lasting now almost three and one-half
years, - a thing to be believed, because it is so, (and) that I now write the same
in their presence, which no man could do unless he was at the same time with
spirits [=being in a state of dual consciousness, aware in
both worlds]; for thus to write these
things cannot be given by anyone in another manner; at length they for once confessed
that it is the case, that I speak with spirits. - 1748, September 5. (SD 3058)
From the last paragraph it is evident that those in
the afterlife are unable to communicate consciously with those still connected
to the physical body. The vertical community is not available to our awareness
or to theirs. In other words, we are connected to each other between the two
worlds, but God keeps us unaware of this direct connection and interaction. In
his later theological
treatises Swedenborg explains that God does not allow conscious
communication in the vertical community to prevent “spirits” in the mental
world of eternity from obsessing the material mind of those still attached to
the physical body. This kind of “spirit obsession” was permitted in
pre-scientific societies, as evidenced in ancient literature. Swedenborg’s
modern mind and environment (18th century Europe) had to be prepared
“since childhood” for his special Divine mission at age 57, otherwise the
experience of dual consciousness would have hurt him mentally. (See the distinction
between external
vs. interior obsessions in my Swedenborg Encyclopedia of Theistic
Psychology.)
Even without dual
consciousness we are able to realize the reality of the vertical community by rational proof. Our rational
mental body is able to form its consciousness out of material input below
(level 7e) or out of celestial input above (layer 7i) (see Diagrams). The
materialized rational thinking sees the idea of a vertical community as
abstract or idealized, hence unreal, while the celestial-rational thinking sees
it as actual and organic, hence real.
In the mental world of eternity there is no physical
time nor physical space, nor matter or energy. These are physical things that
occur only in the physical world. There are no mental things in the physical
world, and there are no physical things in the mental world. But the two are
connected and act synchronously through the laws of correspondence. Further, although the two worlds are distinct in
structure, they are alike in content. At birth we have our seven avatar bodies as part of our mental and
physical anatomy. The material mental body (V) and the physical body (I) are
virtually and correspondentially coupled until the dying/resuscitation process
separates them forever. Only then is the conscious material mental body freed
from this identification process, and for the first time, we “awaken” in
consciousness to the environment and people of the mental world of eternity,
which sometimes is called the “afterlife” and the “spiritual world.”
The expression “our life on earth” is not a literal
reference since earth is physical while our life of sensations, thoughts, and
feelings is mental. But it appears to us that we are “on earth” because we,
through our material mental body (V), identify with our physical body, “seeing
and hearing through it” as it were. Hence people have used the expression “the
spirit sees through the body” to refer to this identity which our mental body
(“spirit”) experiences with our physical body. The anatomy of the mental body
allows it to experience consciousness in different modalities through this
process of identifying with the avatar body in a different modality.
In other words, the material mental body can
alternate in consciousness by “rezzing” or instantiating an avatar body with
which we can identify, instead of the physical body. For instance when we are
“daydreaming” we are identifying with our imagination/fantasy body (III) which
operates in fantasy “land.” Every individual has a personal fantasy world or
mental zone in which we create imaginary situations, made-up conversations,
pretend worlds, in which the characters are not actual or real, and the people
and things there are mere “chimera,” mere “visions,” unsubstantial ideas and
plans that are “castles in the sky” or “smoke in the eyes.”
But it’s different with the other mental bodies.
They each operate in distinct worlds that are anatomically shared with all
other human beings. There is no way of getting rid of the other bodies that are
also there. This is obvious with our digital avatar body in a virtual world
(IV). The moment we rez there, others appear, and sometimes intrude. It
seems less obvious with our dream body because most of us are told since
childhood and through education, that our dreams “aren’t real” and as we grow
up we form material and reductionistic ideas
about dreams as “just” dreams, not real. So we begin to think of dreams in the
same way as we think of fantasies. We thus confuse the distinction between our
fantasies and our dreams.
What Dreams Are Made Of
While the fantasy world is not real, the dream world
is real, as real as the rest of the mental world of eternity, namely heaven and
hell, and in between. This cannot be understood unless you think about the
mental world as unitary, in the same sense that we think of physical space as
unitary—it is the same space whether we go out into distant galactic space, or
whether we go inside a molecule and watch the particles whirl and collide in
that relatively tiny space. There is only one mental world as well, which is
the expanse around the mental sun of eternity. There is no physical space
there, but there is the appearance of space so that we have the consciousness
of walking around there in a body and seeing other people with their avatar
bodies, just as we do in Second Life
or World of Warcraft.
Swedenborg walked around in the mental world for 27 years, even while he was
still attached to his physical body. He confirms by thousands of observations
and experiences that he can see and interact with anyone who has “passed on”
into the world of afterlife through death, even people who preceded him for
centuries whom he knew about from the world’s ancient literature.
Regarding dreams and visions (not fantasies),
Swedenborg makes the following empirical
observations and informative comments: [my comments appear in square
brackets]
AC
1976. There are three types of dreams. The first type comes from the Lord
mediately by way of heaven; such were the prophetical dreams spoken of in the
Word. The second type comes by way of angelic spirits, especially those who are
situated in front and above, over towards the right where the paradise gardens
are. This was the source of the dreams that members of the Most Ancient Church
had, dreams that were instructive, 1122. The
third type comes by way of the spirits who are close to a person when he is
asleep. These too carry spiritual meanings. Delusory dreams however come
from a different source. (AC 1976)
AC
1977. To make me fully aware of the way that dreams flow in I was put to sleep
and dreamt of a boat approaching that was laden with delicacies and savories of
every kind. These were stowed away in the boat, out of sight. On deck stood two
armed guards, as well as a third man who was the captain. The boat was passing
by into a kind of arched dock; and with this I woke up and thought about the
dream. At that point the angelic spirits in front and above me over to the
right addressed me. [=Swedenborg was in his dual
consciousness, aware of his dream while his physical body was asleep, and aware
of what was surrounding his conscious material mental body. Through this body
he could see others around him.]
They
declared that they were the source of this dream. [=they
could not see his physical body, only his mental body] So that I would know for sure that they were the source of it I was
brought into a state where I was so to
speak both asleep and awake at one and the same time. In a similar way they
introduced different things that were pleasing and delightful, for example, an
unknown tiny creature which was transformed into an object with blackish and
shining rays which shot into my left eye at a fantastic speed. They also
presented human beings, and also small children variously adorned, and other
things besides whose delightfulness was indescribable. I spoke to those angelic
spirits about these things also. This took place not just once but on a number
of occasions, and each time they taught me by word of mouth.
[2]
Those in whom such dreams originate are angelic spirits at the entrance to the
paradise gardens. They are commissioned also to keep watch over certain people
who are asleep, to prevent them being molested during that time by evil
spirits. They perform their task with very great delight, so much so that they
vie with one another to be there, and they love to fill man [=material
mental body attached to the physical body prior to death] with joys and delights such as they see within his affection and
disposition.
Those
who have become angelic spirits are drawn from those who during their lifetime
took delight in and loved in every way to make other people's lives delightful.
When a person's hearing has been opened far enough [=this
is our interior hearing, or hearing done with the rational mental body] he hears as from afar a sweet rhythmic sound
like singing coming from these spirits. They declared that they did not know
from where such things as these, and representatives so beautiful and
delightful, came to them all in a moment; but they were told that they came
from heaven. They belong to the province of the cerebellum, for the cerebellum, as I have learned, remains
awake even during periods of sleep when the cerebrum is sleeping. …(AC
1977)
AC
1979. I have been allowed very often after dreams such as these to talk to the
spirits and angels who had been the source of them. They have told me what they
had induced, and I what I had seen. But it would take far too long to report my
experience of all these things. (AC 1979)
AC
1980. It is worth mentioning that when I have woken up and have related what I
had seen in a dream, and this has entailed a length of detail, certain angelic
spirits, other than those referred to above, would at that point say that such details were in exact agreement with
and identical with the things which they had been talking about, and that
absolutely nothing was different. Nevertheless it was not the actual details of
their conversation but the representatives of those details into which their
ideas were thus converted and changed in the world of spirits, for angels'
ideas are transformed in the world of spirits into representatives.
Consequently
every single thing which they discussed was so represented in the dream. They
went on to say that the same discussion could have been transformed into other
representations, and indeed with endless variation into either similar or
dissimilar ones. The reason they had been transformed into the representations
seen in my dream lay in the state of the
spirits surrounding me and therefore lay in my own state at the time. In short,
very many different dreams may come down and present themselves from the same
discussion and so from a single source: The reason for this, as has been
stated, is that the things in a person's memory and affection are recipient
vessels, in which ideas are varied and are received as representatives
according to the variations in form which those ideas take and according to the
changes of state which they undergo. (AC 1980)
AC
1981. Let one further similar experience be related. I once had quite an ordinary
dream, and having woken up I related it all from start to finish. The angels
said that it coincided exactly with what they had been discussing; not that the
things they were discussing appeared in the dream, but instead things
completely different, into which the thoughts in their discussion were
transformed, yet in such a way that they were representative and correspondent.
Not one detail was missing.
I also spoke to them about influx, about how
such things flow in and are varied. There was a person of whom I had the idea
that he was governed by natural truth, an idea which I had gained from the
things he had done in life. Among the angels a discussion was taking place
concerning natural truth, and therefore that person was represented to me. What
he told me in my dream, and the things that he did, as well as the order in
which these things came, were representative of and corresponded to their
higher source, namely the discussion taking place among the angels. Yet what he
told me was not anything like or the same as what the angels were discussing.
(AC 1981)
AC
1983. Evil spirits have a strong and burning desire to molest and attack man
when he is asleep, but at that time man is especially protected by the Lord,
for love does not sleep. Spirits who molest are punished piteously. I have
heard their punishments more often than I can repeat. These involve being torn
apart, as described in 829, 957, 959, which is carried out below the heel of
the left foot, lasting sometimes for hours on end. Sirens, who inwardly are
witches, are those who especially lie in wait in the night, and then try to
worm their way into a person's inward thoughts and affections. But as often as
they try to do so they are foiled by angels from the Lord and at length are
deterred by means of very drastic punishments. 'These sirens have also spoken
to others in the night, when they have
impersonated me so perfectly and imitated my speaking so accurately that no one
could tell the difference, and in so doing have poured in filthy thoughts
and suggested ideas that were false.
[2]
I was once sleeping very soundly, in an altogether sweet repose. When I awoke
certain good spirits began to accuse me of having molested them, so violently,
they said, that they thought they had been in hell; they put the blame on me. I
answered them that I knew nothing whatever about the matter, but that I had
been fast asleep and therefore could not possibly have been the one to molest
them. At this they were dumbfounded and at length realized that those sirens
had been up to their tricks. Something similar was also demonstrated to me
after that so that I might know what that band of sirens is like.
[3]
These sirens are mainly females, who during their lifetime have studied how to
attract male companions to themselves by interior devices - by worming their way in through external allurements, by
captivating the baser mental instincts in all sorts of ways, by penetrating
into each one's affections and delights, but with an evil motive, namely that
of manipulating. Their nature is such in the next life therefore that they seem
to be able of themselves to do anything. They take in from others and think up
for themselves different devices which they absorb with ease like sponges
soaking up water, filthy or clean alike. They accordingly soak up and practice
what is profane as well as what is holy with the intent, as stated, of
manipulating. I have been allowed to perceive how foul they are inwardly,
polluted by adultery and hatred. I have also been given to perceive how
overpowering their sphere is. These sirens force their own interior thought and
feelings into a state of persuasion, so that these may go hand in glove with
their exterior thought and feelings towards the things they intend. In this way
sirens compel and lead spirits to think as they themselves do.
[4]
No reasonings are in evidence among them, and yet they employ a whole mass of
reasonings that are breathed into people's evil affections by applying
themselves to those persons' natural instincts. In this way they gain entry
into the baser parts of the minds of others whom they lead on and by persuasion
either overwhelm or captivate. There is
nothing they study more than how to destroy conscience, and when they have
destroyed it gain possession of people interiorly and even obsess them, though
the individual is not conscious of it. Nowadays
external obsession is not allowed as it once was in former times, but internal
possession by spirits such as these does take place.
People who are devoid
of conscience are obsessed in this way.
The interior aspects of their thought are insane in a very similar way, but
those aspects are concealed by and covered with an outward propriety and
presence of honesty displayed for the sake of personal position, wealth, and
reputation. This they can even recognize for themselves if they pay any
attention to what they think. (AC 1983)
Consciousness and Intersubjectivity
God’s goal in creating and managing the
universe is to evolve a unified intersubjectivity of an ever expanding human
race.
The method or venue by which God achieves
this goal is communication, interaction, and networking involving all
individuals.
The Grand Human is the name for the conglomeration
of communicative networks between all human beings who love and cling to
heavenly virtues, values, meanings, and arrangements. Since the beginning of
the birth and evolution of the human race on this and other planets, there have
been a massive number of human beings that are continuously expanding the
societies of the Grand Human. This also true for the Grand Monster, which is
the conglomeration of human beings that love and cling to hellish loves,
meanings, and arrangements, and these are always the opposite of the heavenly
arrangements.
Here is an important distinction to figure out and
understand clearly:
The
ruling love in heavenly consciousness is the love of building community,
intersubjectivity, and unity for the sake of promoting the happiness and joy of
others. Their happiness and joy are felt in ourselves and
becomes our own happiness and joy. We are happy when we see them happy. This
heavenly ruling love is called altruism
or goodness.
The
ruling love in hellish consciousness is the love of breaking down
community, intersubjectivity, and unity for the sake of promoting one’s own
happiness and joy. We are happy only when we perceive our
own happiness and joy in them. Their own happiness and joy is not felt like our
own. When they are happy in their own right, we are not happy for them. We can
be happy only if our own happiness is promoted and enhanced by them. This is
egotism, selfism, and selfishness.
In God infinite good things make a one with infinite
rational things to produce the Divine consciousness, also called the
Omniproprium. See this article: Our Relationship to the Divine Psychologist
at http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/cd.htm
This is the “cosmic” unity known in the world’s
literature for millennia. Every love longs to conjoin with its rational
“consort” to produce the unity of “marriage.” A love in the affective organ can
conjoin, or perform synergistically, only with an idea in the cognitive organ
that is compatible with or “agreeable” to the love. The marriage of heavenly loves and affections, often
called “virtues,” always involves rational thoughts and principles.
Similarly, the marriage of hellish loves
and affections, often called “lusts” or “vices,” always involves
irrational thoughts and principles. Virtues promote community and altruism, and
through that, the happiness and joy of others. Vices promote the breakdown of
community and the pursuit of selfish loves, and through that, the unhappiness
and suffering of others.
The definition of heavenly loves as those that
promote community building through rational ideas, is in sharp contrast to the
definition of hellish loves as those that promote community breakdown through
irrational ideas.
The force of community or unity is the central and
ruling force in the universe. This comes from the fact that there is a unity of
infinite heavenly loves and rational ideas in God, from whom all substance
originate through the mental sun of eternity. The outpouring “efflux” of mental
heat and light fills the mental expanse with rational ether. This “mental dust”
is endless in variety and constitutes the building blocks of all things (see Diagram 4). The central force of unity is
imparted to the created universe and its objects through these componential
building blocks, in the male and female arrangement. Male building blocks are
units of mental light within which there is heat, while female building blocks
are units of mental heat within which there is light.
The force of unity therefore begins in the elemental
building blocks that issue from God through the mental sun of eternity. This
first level is called the genetic level of unity. At a more compounded
and external level there are formed the male and female mental organs within
the threefold mental body system (see Diagram
1). This is the force of unity that fixes and maintains the existence of an
immortal individual from birth to endless eternity. It is called the anatomical
level of unity. At a still more compounded and external level there are
formed conjugial couples through regeneration and the unity model (see Diagrams 2 and 3). This is the conjugial level
of unity. At a still more compounded level there are formed individual mental societies within the
Grand Human and Grand Monster (see Diagram 6).
This is the community level of unity. Finally, there is the universal
level of unity that forms all the individual mental societies into just two
conglomerates, the Grand Human and its opposite, the Grand Monster.
There are accordingly 5 levels of unity in the
universe: genetic, anatomical, conjugial, community, and universal. The
consciousness that is produced by the universal level of unity is Divine
consciousness, thus restricted to God alone. Only to God does the entire human
race form a networked unity. This level of unity corresponds to the human body.
Hence it is that the Grand Human societies are arranged in the form, structure,
and function of the perfect “angelic” or celestial mental body. The whole is an
image of the part, and the part is an image of the whole. I call this
whole-part relationship synecdoche
(see this article and this
one). In the literature on the history of ideas we find the idea that a
human being is a “microcosm”
or an image or form of the universe; and hence the universe was depicted in the
form of the human body.
The idea of the unity of the universe is the chief
rational concept in mental psychology. Nothing unconnected can have existence
(as was argued by Swedenborg). In other words, when something comes into
existence it has undergone the process of incorporation or “induction” into the
entire whole that already exists. This is discussed in the psychology of
learning literature as the primacy
effect. This is the chief organizing principle in all organic systems.
Whatever comes first, forever influences what comes after. Whatever comes
first, is at the center of everything that comes thereafter. For instance, in
the history of democratic countries the “Founding Fathers” formulate and adopt
the nation’s Constitution, which then governs or limits any laws that future
governments can make. Another example is that of a stone, wood, or fabric that
an artist or designer might use to fashion some object of art or clothing. The
final object will be made out of the original matter, which is the primacy of
the artist’s decision at the start of the project. When you examine a human
embryo and its growth process (e.g., here or here), you can notice the
primacy effect operating through a process of cell differentiation and division
out of the one first original “primacy” cell in the fertilized egg.
The unity and connectedness of all things in
existence are therefore built into existence at each level of construction of
reality (genetic, anatomical, conjugial, community, universal).
Intersubjectivity
is used in mental psychology to refer to the built in unification process in
human consciousness. All human beings come into existence at birth with an
immortal mental body that matures fully after the temporary physical body is
detached through the dying and resuscitation process. Our first experience of
intersubjectivity is the consciousness of self in infancy. It has been pointed
out in child psychology that an infant first gains the awareness of self by
noticing that its hand moves in correspondence with the mental intention we
have in voluntary movement. Sensorimotor awareness is our first or primacy form
of consciousness. This awareness is established through the synchronous action
of the affective organ (feeling of wanting to move, reach, or grasp), conjoined
to the idea or thought in the cognitive organ that the sensation of grasping an
object means that there is an object separate from self.
The infant’s cognitive organ has to supply the idea
of “object separate from me” in order for the affective organ to want to grasp
or reach. It has been pointed out that this process may initially be
unintended, so that the child observes its moving hand “collide” with
something. There is also the contrast between colliding with something that is
sensed as being one’s own, like touching the face or sucking the thumb, or
colliding with an object that is not sensed as one’s own, like the bottle or
the mother’s hand.
Intersubjectivity
is the conscious experience of mental co-presence.
When you receive and read an email or text message
from a friend, you are “connecting” by “communicating.” The physical act of
“staying in touch” corresponds to the mental act of constructing
intersubjectivity. Couples who are in love with each other can be seen to touch
each other continuously, especially during the dating and honeymoon phases.
These physical phases correspond to the mental phases of conjunction or achieving
unity – something that takes a long time and develops gradually, as does all
organic growth.
Dyadic intersubjectivity is the basis for the
building of communities and societies. Two workers as a team can accomplish
more than one individual can. To become a dyad the two people must be able to
communicate or “touch each other” mentally. Typically this involves face to
face co-presence of the two physical bodies. But you can also “reach out and
touch someone” by calling the person on the phone, or meeting their avatar in a
virtual world where they can interact and communicate.
Conjugial intersubjectivity is the establishment of
eternal unity in the threefold self of a man and woman (see Diagrams).
Practices in marriage vary cross-culturally, but in general, all marriages can
go through phases of greater intimacy and intersubjectivity. The male
dominant phase of marriage creates physical, social, and family
connections, but it leaves the husband and wife in separate intersubjective states, not with each other but with
others, especially of the same gender. The equity
phase creates cognitive intimacy between the couple as they jointly define themselves, their
relationship, and their activities. Finally, the unity
phase creates affective intimacy as they give up any independence, and
become bonded or conjoined to eternity. One cannot feel, think, or do anything
without the other’s contribution and co-action. This is true conjugial
intersubjectivity. I call it the conjoint
self.
All unity and conjunction in both worlds comes from
the force that strives to unify into a whole or unit at each level of reality
and existence. Love takes the lead in the unification process. It is primary,
while idea is secondary. Love in the affective system creates the “consorting”
idea in the cognitive system, and the two conjoined produce consciousness in
our sensorimotor system. Intersubjectivity is this interactive consciousness
produced by co-presence or co-action. The arrangement of mental co-presence in
the world of eternity is determined by the ruling love that we remain with
after resuscitation.
The mental societies of the Grand Human and Monster
are arranged in the human form according to the correspondence of their ruling
love, which becomes the primary love after the second death. No other love can
remain that is not compatible with the ruling love. Hence each of us in
eternity becomes our ruling love. If this love is heavenly, our mental body
appears to others as perfect in form and beautiful in appearance. But if our
ruling love is hellish our mental body takes on the appearances of deformity
and ugliness. Our outward appearance is a correspondence of our inner ruling
love. (See the story of the Picture of
Dorian Gray).
When we interact through an avatar we are building
intersubjectivity through the affordance of the virtual world. The
social-biological technology of Second
Life is a venue for constructing, enlarging, and maintaining a horizontal
intersubjectivity that encompasses anyone from anywhere around the globe. The
formation of sub-collectivities in Second Life Groups correspond to the
formation of intersubjectivity in mental societies in eternity. Contrast these
two lists of Groups from two different avatars in Second Life:
|
Group Profile of Avatar 1 |
Group- Profile of Avatar 2 |
|
Assault Commanders - AF Training. Warriors of the afterlife SL National Police Department, Secret Intelligence
Division (SID) Galactic Alliance Defense Alpine Executive Center Damnation Island Ambassadors of Gor Black Caste of Laura Slaves of Laura Gorean
Administration Network |
Virtual Builders Alliance Association of SL Academic Research. Library: Academic Avatar Librarians Book Discussion Circle Miami Nights SL Skydivers Association Black Souls Rhythms Phat
Cats Romance Connection Urban Square Plaza Red Rock Mesa Arts Cooperative |
Similar loves create similar interests in particular
topics, which create compatible forms of intersubjectivity. A Second Life Group
connects people with similar loves so they can form and grow a new group
intersubjectivity. This is how they help consummate each other’s loves, hence
happiness and joy.
There are four basic types of heavenly consciousness:
Monadic:
consciousness of self as equal to others.
Dyadic:
consciousness of another human being as neighbor, and of God as Father or as
the Divine Psychologist.
Community:
consciousness of a collection of human beings forming a united group through
reciprocal recognition of similarity, through feelings of mutual love, and
through a history of personal and meaningful interactions.
Hellish
consciousness is the reversal or inversion of heavenly consciousness.
Monadic:
consciousness of self as superior to others.
Dyadic:
consciousness of another human being as one’s victim or slave, and of God as
Tyrant or Enemy
Community:
consciousness of a band forming a united horde through the reciprocal
recognition of the same lust in each other, while at the same time each is
plotting to double cross all the others.
The community of heaven and the community of hell
are polar opposite to each other. When we raise our consciousness to the
celestial-rational level (see Diagram 1),
our thinking corresponds to celestial correspondences. Our eternal future after
the dying-resuscitation process comes to a new immortal beginning at our second
death, in which phase we pass into one of the Grand Human societies that
constitute the celestial zone of the mental world of eternity. We enter that
mental state by forming an organic unit with our conjugial spouse.
This is the newborn conjoint self that lives by the
Omniproprium. We have the sense, the consciousness, the living experience and
awareness, that we are not functioning from our own ego. We do not have the
state of conflict or uncertainty of “What shall I do now. What’s next. Let me
see.” Etc. There is no ego reaction, no ego defensiveness, nothing to hold up
or assert or persuade. No attitude problem. No unfulfilled longing. No vague
anxiety. No doubt, conflict, regret, shame. All these ego reactions cannot
exist in our celestial consciousness. They are left behind in the material
zones.
In this conjoint unity phase our community
relationship expresses itself through our interactions with neighbors who are
likewise conjugial couples, each unique, each making a unique contribution to
the society by their mental co-presence. The heavenly community consciousness
is closely networked so that one couple’s idea and feeling reverberate across
the celestial network to every other couple in the society. This occurs within
every society. At the same time the overall reverberations of each society is
communicated to all other societies. The Grand Human is a conglomeration of all
such societies arranged geographically to represent the shape of the human
body.
It is convenient therefore to identify the location
of a society in the mental world by reference to the anatomical organ of the
Grand Human where they are located. If we were able to mentally travel to these
societies as in an air ship, we would be able to see the Grand Human from a
distance out in rational ether, which has the appearance of space and terrain,
as on our physical continents. We might then set our landing target to the
right hemisphere of the brain, or to the big toe of the left foot, etc. You can
do this virtually now at the Visible Body
Web site, which I highly recommend: http://www.visiblebody.com/
The mental geography of the Grand Monster is
parallel and opposite to that of heavenly intersubjectivity. The circulatory
system of the Grand Monster feeds the affective organ of every person whose
consciousness clings to egotistical loves. The Grand Monster’s respiratory
system supplies the insane thoughts that form an infernal “marriage” with the
egotistical loves in each individual’s mental body. The consciousness of hell
produces an endlessly grotesque and deformed intersubjectivity, going through
phases of an endless devolution towards greater bestiality and lesser humanity.
The endless evolution of heavenly virtues and the
endless devolution of hellish vices together constitute the consciousness of
the human race. God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence allow this
bivalent consciousness of good and evil for the sake of humanity itself, which
depends on freedom of love. The devolution of hellish mental states is
maintained within the human zone so that no society or individual is allowed to
devolve below their level of humanity and freedom. All individuals in hell are
in that state because of their love. God maintains their freedom of expression
in the ruling love they choose to cling to. God provides a human mental
environment in the Grand Monster in which they can pursue their loves in
freedom. No one is allowed to fulfill loves that deprive others of their
freedom to cling to the loves of their choice. There are laws of order that God
maintains in the insane hellish mind. Hell has to be managed just as much as
heaven. Otherwise both would collapse and the human race would cease to be in
freedom, and therefore being human.
(to be continued)
See
also:
Intersubjectivity in Virtual
World and in Mental World (2008)
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/mental-psychology-p1.htm#_Toc212519322
See
also:
The Perizonius Thesis
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/perizonius.html
Social Forces and Group Dynamic Theory in the Virtual World
(based on an earlier
version: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/LEONJ/leonpsy/instructor/society/societ3.html
)
The Classification of Interpersonal Attitudes
The attribution of
reward value to an attitude object (thing or person) is expressed in a very
large number of ways, and it helps to have a system for classifying them. One
method consists of pairing particular interaction moves with their effects on
others. Leary (1957; reported in Newcomb et.
al.,
1965) attempted to classify such antecedent-consequents pairs into major
subdivisions. For example,
|
Category |
Antecedent
Move leads, advises manner |
Consequent
Reaction invites respect or obedience |
You may evaluate the generality of this classification scheme by asking your-
self two types of questions: (i) Does the functional
relation between an antecedent move and the indicated consequence make sense to
you, relative to your experience? For example, when you act shyly in a group
(category 5), do the others respond by being arrogant or by acting as a leader?
(ii) Do the eight categories of antecedent moves cover adequately the various
ways you can interact with others? For example, when you disagree with someone,
are you giving advice (category 1) or being unconventional (category 6)? And is
it followed by obedience (1), rejection (6), hostility (-7), or all of these?
What about laughing or making jokes: can they not be taken differently at
different times or by different group members?
Another method of approach to classifying functional
relations in inter- action processes, is to identify the group conditions that
visibly affect attraction among members. Thus, reciprocation
is often found as a condition for expressing and feeling attraction; that is,
if you ask people in a group to rank each other on attractiveness, you find
that the choices tend to be, on the whole, reciprocal. If A feels an attraction
towards B, B will be more probable to pick A as one of his attractive choices.
Another condition that affects attractiveness of another is perceived
attitudinal support. For example, if you perceive similarities of
interests and values with person B, it is likely that you feel attracted to
that person; you expect support, worthwhile collaboration, and sharing of
activities. Reciprocated attraction and perceived attitudinal support are group
dynamic conditions that create attraction forces; these forces are calculated
as resultants of motivational needs and rewards. That is, in terms of
"cognitive dynamics," a person will feel attracted to an attitude
object if he attributes to that object (or person) sources of rewards, as in
reciprocation of interests and support.
Field
theory notation can conveniently be used to chart the
course of relationship formation in groups. The simplest group is the dyad, or
two- person group. The relationship between A and B in a dyad can be
represented by indicating the attraction values Possible in such a situation.
thus:
|
Week 1--------------- |
-->Week 5 |
In this diagram (based on the notation system
presented in Newcomb et al, 1965 we can see the various attraction
structures that are possible initially in the formation of a dyad
(Week l) and the changes in group structure that may occur over time in the
group's life space. The three initial structures that are possible are
indicated by ++ (a-c), -- (d-f), and +- (g-i). This
means that A and B can both feel positive towards each other (++ type
structure); they can both feel negative towards each other (-- type); or A may
feel positive towards B, while B feels negative towards A (+- type structure).
With time, and continued opportunity for further interactions ("Week
5"), the attraction structure can change as plotted in the above matrix.
For example, an initially ++ type structure may change into a +- (b) or -- type
(c), or it may remain the same (a) and so on. In terms of field theory
predictions, we would expect the ++ type structure to be most stable since A
and B both feel advantages to the relationship and are likely to continue to
reward each other. With the -- structure, A and B are likely to break up their
relationship because of the aversive or negative consequences experienced by
both. The +- structure is unstable and is likely to turn into a -- type (i) or a ++ type (h).
When we consider the case of a triad, the attraction
structure becomes more complex. In the triadic arrangement, three dyadic pairs
exist, thus:
Here you can see that the AB dyad has a ++ type attraction structure; AC have a
+- relationship; and BC have a -- relationship. The most stable triadic group
structure is that of a fully reciprocated attraction pattern where each of the
three pairs relate to each other-through the ++ type structure. Thus, balanced
structures are those in which group members reciprocate
attraction
and tend to be stable over time. Imbalanced structures on the other hand, are
divisive and will tend to break up over time.
Larger groups create more complex relationship
structures which can be diagrammed by the technique called sociograms. Let us take an example
using a "pentad", i.e. a five-person group:
In this illustration, we can note three sub-groups in terms of their attraction
structures. There is a triadic clique composed of A, B, and C; there is a
dyadic coalition between B and C; finally, there is a
monad, E, who is an isolate and does not enter into a relationship
with the other four individuals. Clique structure (or the formation of
coalitions), is formed as a result of several identifiable factors
("variables" or "parameters"), the most important of which
are, (i) frequency of interaction; (ii) propinquity;
(iii) demographic variables; (iv) distribution of members' attitudes; and (v)
personal characteristics.
Since there are many expressions people use for
describing others, it is useful to have techniques for classifying these. One
method (described by Leary, 1957) is to classify attitudinal expressions by
pairs of antecedent moves and their consequent reactions (e.g. acts
shyly--->invites leadership). A second method is to map "attraction
structures", i.e. making a graph that shows who is attracted to whom, the
attraction clusters found then serve as classification types. As well,
attraction structures affect group dynamics since some structures are less
stable than others. Clique structure in groups is affected by the on-going
cognitive dynamics of its members (e.g. their attitudes and personalities), as
well as by the conditions of the members' interactions (e.g. frequency,
propinquity).
Behavior Influence and Personality
The word personality derives from the
Greek "persona" meaning "mask'' - i.e. as worn by actors in
Greek drama. Thus, implicit in the concept of personality is the idea that a
"person" wears a 'social mask' during interactions with others and
that this public face
is worn or 'put on' for the benefit of others. Sociologist Erving Goffman has
written extensively (e.g. Goffman, 1959; 1 963) about this put on and calls it
"face work", i.e. the 'work' a person does in interaction with others
in "presenting" the self as an entity possessing a "face"
and needing protection, respect, and legitimization by others.
The psychological conception of personality always
implies learning;
that is, personality is viewed in terms of its etiology
- the issue of how a person comes to develop habits, attitudes, beliefs, style,
and so on, which are viewed as its structural components.
"Learning" refers to behavioral changes a person exhibits as a result
of experience,
or interaction with the environment. The psychologist's interest in the study
of personality revolves around the idea that behavior is predictable if we know
things about the individual's personality. This possibility exists because a
person's behavior in one setting or in one set of circumstances is usable to
predict his behavior in another set of circumstances. Personality thus serves
as a unifying concept for understanding behavior, and hence predicting or
controlling it.
Neurosemantics
(see: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s2000/banaag/semantic-satiation.htm
)
The behavior of all organisms is based on the same
based on the same basic principles, of which the first, is Russian physiologist
I.P. Pavlov's "dog reflex paradigm":
You see in this famous diagram, the most basic of
learning processes called, conditioning.
You hold a dog in straps; you place some food in his mouth and you collect the
saliva in a tube; you also sound a bell. Now you have to do this in precise time relations so that
the clang of the bell, or buzz of the buzzer, sounds off not later, nor
earlier-, than approximately half-a- second (we're being very imprecise) after
food is squirted (perhaps) in the dog's mouth. At any rate, those who have
spent a lifetime doing this have uncovered an amazing set of facts dealing with
the conditionability of our organs:
salivary glands, eye blink, galvanic skin response, knee jerk, pupflary dilation, eye movement, hand removal jerk, head
orienting response, startle response syndrome, muscle tension, heart rate,
electroencephalogram (EEG), penile erection, vasilary
dilation, to name but a few off the top of our heads.
When one realizes that the above short list is
intimately involved with our sympathetic, parasympathetic, and voluntary
activities, one gets the idea of the full importance of Pavlov's discovery.
Indeed, this relatively simple mechanism of contiguity (or timing) is at the very
base of our social existence: our movements, our breathing, our bladders and
intestines, our blood pressure and muscle tensions, our digestive processes, in
short, our well- being in health, body. and therefore mind, is entirely
at the mercy of contiguity or contingency!
Of course, it works both ways. If noise makes your
muscles tense, music (or some
thing) will make them relax. If criticism squirts acid in your stomach,
praise strums tingles on your nerves. If, today, you buy brand X because your
hand automatically reaches towards the conditioned picture from T.V., tomorrow,
you reach toward Y, (away from X) because last night's commercial unconditioned
you first ("extinction"), then,
reconditioned you (still "conditioning"!). Thus it is that
we have counter-propaganda to undo what propaganda has wrought, and we have
"diet programs" (or clinics) to dishabituate ourselves
from earlier habits. The criminal is a recidivist, which means that he recedes
or regresses towards his former
anti-social habits because the stimuli in his local environment prompt him back
to his old ways. Hence the idea of rehabilitating, which means tooling
the person up with new and better habits (for the criminals, drug addicts,
psychotics, maladjusted, etc.).
Here we can see the relationship between the
stimulus-response (S-R) paradigm and behaviorism: behavior is a function of the
environment, and, manipulating the environment influences behavior.
"If the individual responds in a way that
produces a stimulus that has reinforcement value, he has provided himself with
a reinforcing state of affairs" (*Staats, 1975,
p. 60). This idea is called "self-reinforcement" and the stimuli that
hang together as "little responses" in the brain are called self-concepts.
Thus, if you are asked to give a set of descriptive terms for yourself, you may
come up with conditioned labels such as "a
nice girl," "a man of integrity," "a lazy student,"
"a good worker," "devoted mother," "gullible
consumer," and so on. These conditioned self-concepts hang together in
conditioned clusters called complex processes, which form the
basis of your personality structure, Ego-strength,
and emotional adjustment.
Complex processes of conditioning are still
responsive to the same basic laws as the simple salivary reflex of the rat
shortly before it enters the goal box where the pellet of food will be found
and eaten--whereupon the reinforcement catastrophe precipitates the rat's
nervous system into re-hook- ing-connections. The
proof: on the next run, the rat runs the maze faster and with less errors. A
few more reinforced runs and the animal's score is perfect. The re-hooking of
its brain is complete: it now has acquired a fairly-complex skill thanks to the
contiguity
between the reinforcement and the behavior. Now the rat begins to salivate long
before the goal box: these are preparatory or anticipatory
goal responses (the term was coined by Clark Hull, famed
Yale psychologist, during the 1930's and 1940's).
These little "rG's,"
as they were known when we were in graduate school, became smaller and smaller
(with age), until they could no longer be detected by gross instruments.
However, when the instruments were improved, they could still be detected. Even
if the goal box was removed, these little rG's kept
firing in the brain for a long, long time. There was almost no forgetting-- or,
as learning theorists would say, resistance to extinction.
Charles E. Osgood, one of the world's best known
scientific psychologists, and former President of the American Psychological
Association, made a valiant attempt to map the action of these little rG's. He contended that thinking is really the firing of rG's in the brain. These rG's are
tiny remnants of the original motor and sensory responses that conditioning has
established. The sight of an apple gets conditioned to salivary and other goal
anticipatory responses including chewing, swallowing, holding, licking, and
enjoying yourself all over. As you get older, the mere sound that spells apples
in your ear can elicit consummatory responses. As a result,
the pleasantness of the experience of eating the apply gets transferred to the
word itself, and maybe even to the giver of the apple, and perhaps apple
stories. This is called stimulus generalization.
When I was in college at McGill University during
the 1950's, famed neurophysiologist Donald 0. Hebb
taught the introductory course in psychology. How one did in that course
determined whether one could go on to major. The competition was keen, the
lessons learned well. LAJ made it and went on to write an honor's thesis that
traced the hypothetical network of the neurophysiological basis of the mind. He
took the matter quite literally and reasoned as follows: if the little rG's are tiny neurophysiological responses associated with
reinforcement of overt responses, then those rG's were actually an archaeological record of prior reinforcement history!
One could map a person's habits, attitudes, predispositions, meanings by
measuring the little rG's the person has firing in
the brain (these were called cell assemblies by Hebb who was
interested in studying the phase sequences of their firings in
the brain). If meanings are little rG's and rG's function in clusters and patterns, then we have a new
field in psychology that we may call neurosemantics (see my Ph.D.
Dissertation: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s2000/banaag/semantic-satiation.htm
)
But how to measure the little rG's?
Some psychologists (e.g. Hebb, Milner, Bindra,
Olds--at McGill) went right in there and implanted electrodes into the rat's
brain; these were attached to galvanometers and the electrical activity of the
area could be measured. Of course this was too gross a technique to be used for
the study of human symbolic processes and LAJ was
delighted when his research director at McGill, Dr. Wallace E. Lambert,
introduced him to Charles Osgood. Dr. Osgood had invented an instrument he
called the semantic differential (SD). This
marvelous tool was designed to measure the all important little rG's. It was- a simple tool. Have a subject look at an
object, person, event, or word (stimulus) and have him respond to it in some
agreed-upon manner: reaching, pushing, pulling, tightening, whatever. Give the
subject two clear and incompatible choices: either pushing or pulling, lifting
up or pressing down, reaching toward or away; then, suddenly show the stimulus.
If you arrange things so you can measure and record the speed and strength of the
agreed upon response, and you vary stimull
systematically, you can then map a person s little rG
s!
That's because, Osgood argued, the overt responses
you can see and measure are caused by the little rG's
you can't measure. This one-to-one relation between the inside of the brain and
the outside peripheral muscles became known as the neobehavioristic
paradigm (see Steinberg and James, 1971).
My very first publication
(Lambert and James, 1960) was an application of Osgood's semantic differential
technique to Hull's contention that little rG's in
the brain behaved as gross motor responses. Hull had demonstrated that when a
response is repeated its habit strength ("SHR")
increases; however, there occurs also a smaller counter-force called reactive
inhibition ("IR") which builds with each
repetition of the response. Ordinarily, this causes no problems, because in
between the responses, IR "dissipates with time." Reactive inhibition
was thought of as a negative drive caused by the
organism's resistance to repeat motor responses, IR "due to physiological
fatigue, or to conditioned fatigue, called boredom or satiation. Lambert and
James (1960) argued that if Osgood was right and (I) attitudes, emotions,
feelings, and meanings were conditioned little rG's,
and if Hull was right and (ii) repeating a response satiated it, then it could
be predicted that repeating a word over and over again would satiate the tittle rG's that fired each time
the stimulus was repeated. The satiation effect could be measured using
Osgood's technique of response speed: if the little rG's
decrease in strength, then the motor response should also slow down. In a
series of studies prepared for his doctoral dissertation (James, 1962),
I proved Osgood's contention, and Hull's. A word
repeated loses some or all of its meaning. Furthermore, the effect, which LAJ
called semantic satiation,
generalizes to other words that are related to it. He also showed that if a
number is repeated prior to its use in a timed addition task, it takes
relatively longer to add up the answer, presumably because the number's
functional value was reduced as a result of the repetition of the little rG's.
I also showed that bilinguals repeating a word in
one language satiate the meaning of its translation in the other language. LAJ
proposed that semantic satiability may be a personality trait; that is,
individuals differ in their susceptibility to being satiated. For example, some
people avoid reading a book twice, while others like to read it over and over.
Ditto with movies. I suggested that children and the elderly appear to like
repetition (James, 1967).
A test of this hypothesis was made by correlating
subjects' scores on a foreign vocabulary learning test ("paired-associates
task") and degree of semantic satiation shown on words after their
repetition. The correlation was significant, indicating that a common trait of
satiability could be responsible. I proposed that repetition could be used as a
tool for helping stutterers (James, 1966). If it was true that stuttering
behavior was a disruption of articulation of certain words due to their extreme
emotional significance, then by repetition, one could satiate the little rG's that are responsible for the extreme emotional response
to the threatening word. This hypothesis was later tested by a doctoral student
in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois, but I no longer remember
the details.
However, unbeknownst to me until much later, a South
African psychiatrist by the name of Wolpe (1954) had
developed Hull's concept of reactive inhibition as a psychotherapeutic
technique for the treatment of emotional problems. He used the terms reciprocal
inhibition and systematic-desensitization. The
subject imagined repeatedly the feared situation until the little rG's that mediated the fear response got satiated, i.e. desensitized.
There was skill necessary in the process of discovering stimulit
to imagine which would be gradated and not too overwhelming. By starting with
"low fear stimuli," the subject could go up a hierarchical list in a
systematic manner, until at last, he can imagine just about anything about the
feared situation without anxiety. The moment of truth comes when the subject is
back in the field, face to face with the elevator, airplane, cockroach, or sex
object. The technique has been acclaimed for problems of impotence, acrophobia,
claustrophobia, and general free floating anxiety.
My work on semantic satiation landed me a job with
Osgood at the University of Illinois in 1960. Five years later I assumed the
co-directorship of an international project headed by Osgood. The project was
known as "the generality
of affective meaning systems" and its purpose was to show that the
little rG's were basically the same in people all
over the world (see results cited in Jakobovits, 1966; Osgood, May, and Miron, 1975).
Osgood's life work culminated in the discovery that
people everywhere shared the same basic types of little rG's,
the three most important by far being, Evaluation, Potency, and Activity (EPA).
Osgood viewed these three basic types of responses as deriving from evolution
and the necessity for the organism to adjust to environmental changes: is the
stimulus dangerous or benign (Evaluation); is it strong or weak (Potency); is
it fast or slow (Activity). If an animal or human being adapts to these three dimensions of
stimulus variation, survival is assured. Words, labels,
symbols, and their more complex derivatives--statements, slogans,
ideologies--reflect this basic three- dimensional world of emotional
differentiation. The world around us is but a complex
expression of "Is it good or bad, strong or weak, fast or slow," and
these are but functional complications of sucking the milk, chewing the apple,
running from the bear, and caressing the loved one. Osgood's genius lies in
inventing new graphic tools that can map cognitive dynamics. The field of
neurosemantics, as we'd like to call this search for the little rG's, has a bright future ahead as many science fiction
writers have anticipated (see e.g., brainwashing techniques in the Korean War;
subliminal advertising; mass hypnosis; memory banks; biofeedback; learning
languages in your sleep; lie-detectors; etc., etc.).
Personality is a unifying concept used to refer to a
person's many social presences; it is an abstraction from the actual ways in
which a person behaves in various social circumstances. "Personality"
presupposes acquisition of habits, and implies social stimuli acting as
triggers for a person's involvement in a situation.
"Neurosemantics" refers to the hook-up
between social stimuli and physiological and neuronal reactions; the latter are
called activation, affect, or emotion. The Hullian-system
treats conditioning of physiological states in terms of reflexes; the Hebbian system treats the conditioning of neurons in terms
of patterns of firings in the brain. Experiments by Osgood have shown that
humans in all cultures investigated have an emotional/affective world made up
of three main universal dimensions, thought to be related to people's
evolutionary adjustment to survival techniques. These are Evaluation, Potency,
and Activity.
Conflict:
A Field Dynamic Concept
We shall now explore
some contemporary ideas or-concepts which attempt to deal with and explain
human behavior in terms of a field dynamic system. In trying to understand the
basic issues involved in such an attempt at accounting for behavior, you should
keep in mind the following background notion: an individual is defined as a
system in itself surrounded by other systems. This gives rise to inherent
factors (inside the individual as a system) and environmental factors (outside
the individual as a system). The inherent aspect generates the concept of needs
while the environmental factors generate the concept of goals. In simple
terms, an individual moves and changes as a result of needs that push it into
various directions. The direction that results in need reduction
or need satisfaction is called goal-direction.
Successful goal-direction (i.e. the attainment of goals that reduce drives
or needs) is called adjustment. Today, the field of mental health
organizes knowledge about what leads to or facilitates adjustment.
Adjustment is a concept closely
associated with Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest in that lack of
adjustment, is seen as producing pathology, abnormal behavior, and ultimately,
reduced capacity to survive. As a result, the field of mental health is
practically oriented: how do we teach people to adjust better in the face of
lack of success, problems of survival, and resolution of conflicts. The
field-dynamic concept-of conflict and conflict resolution is a
very general theme we encounter in all discussions of personality and human
interrelationships at the level of self, dyad, and society. We will review some
of these ideas on conflict starting with the presentation given in *Arkoff (1968).
The following diagram depicts the basic nature of
the concept of conflict.
The environmental influences are represented as
"the field" within which the individual occupies a position (Person
A). The inherent influences are shown as "needs" within the person.
By definition, needs are drives to act. We say that needs
produce a vector or directed force, called impulse
or impulse to act. For example, your foot goes to sleep as you're sitting in
class; you are aware of adjusting your position by moving; the need (sensory
pain) produces the impulse to move your limb to relieve the stress. Now suppose
you're in a situation where you cannot move or don't want to move: you
experience frustration.
We say that some barrier in the environment blocks
or inhibits the act and leads to frustration of the need state.
Conflict represents a state of predicament: several needs are aroused
simultaneously and you cannot reduce them because they are mutually
incompatible or conflicting: to move in one direction reduces one need while at
the same time the action produces another need which requires an opposite
direction. What happens in such situations and how does the individual resolve
the conflict? To answer this question we need to look at the type of conflicts
there are and see whether they fall into common patterns. *Arkoff
(1968, pp. 95-97) summarizes the various conflictual situations that have been
described by psychologists. The following diagram shows some types of conflict
and their resolution pattern:
As you can observe, there are three basic types of
conflict situations: approach-approach; avoidance-avoidance; and
approach-avoidance. The approach- approach conflict situation (1) shows the
person (P) caught between the impulse to act toward goal one (left of P) as well
as toward goal two (right of P). Since the two goals are in opposite
directions, the resolution of the conflict consists of first moving towards one
goal, then towards the other. In both cases, the person experiences rewards;
the conflict is one of an abundance of riches. In the second type (2), the
person is being repelled simultaneously by two different and opposite goals:
moving away from one pushes the person closer to the other, and vice versa.
Whichever the person does, frustration is the result; the conflict is one of an
abundance of problems. Finally, in the approach-avoidance type of conflict
situation (3), the person is simultaneously attracted and repelled by the same
goal: moving away arouses a conflict which makes the person move away-again.
The resolution lies in restructuring of the field whereby
the person changes involvement and new impulses begin to operate. In general, a
social field is analyzable as a complex composite of multiple combinations of
the three types described here.
This kind of description presupposes that the amount
of conflict experienced in a situation is directly proportional to the distance
between the person and the goal: like electromagnetic forces, goals are centers
of great energy, attracting and repelling at a distance. For example, you're
lying in bed trying to wake up. The approach element operates in two opposite
directions simultaneously (approach-approach): goal one, which is positive,
attracts you by wanting to stay in bed a little longer; goal two, also
positive, attracts you in the opposite direction: you want to get up to finish
a project you started the day before. If you get up, you move away from one
desired goal (lying around); if you stay in bed, you move away from another
desired goal (getting on to your project).
At the same time as this approach-approach conflict,
there is in the situation an avoidance-avoidance conflict: to stay in bed is
not desirable because it reinforces a tendency or habit you'd like to get rid
of; but getting up is not favored because it means you will have to clean up
your kitchen before you can eat breakfast and get on to your project. Thus,
getting up is both desirable and undesirable. Caught in this web of conflicts,
pulls, and pushes, your response is to do both at different times: yesterday
you lingered in bed, today you jump up, tomorrow, who knows.
Psychodynamic theories of conflict make various
inventories of them and describe the different responses people exhibit when
they are seen as involved in a particular conflictual setting. The accompanying
diagram lists some of the terms reported by *Arkoff
(1968) that are often discussed in the psycho- logy of adjustment and mental
health.
In the next diagram, I summarize some of the results from an experiment by
(Geer, 1965, presented in *Arkoff, 1968, p. 113). A
group of college men
(N=161) and women (N=109) gave ratings of the degree of fear conflict or
anxiety that-different objects and situations evoked when thinking about them.
Several propositions can be made based on the
distribution of scores in the graph. Thus, some animals are more
"scary" than others, and some situations are more fear producing than
others, as imagined by the subjects in this experiment. In general, college men
report less fear than women when thinking about animals and situations. In DRA data
reported by students in this course (Spring 1978), women more often than men
report "cockroaches" as a source of fear. Of course, a distinction
ought to be made between reported fears (as a summative
assessment of one's tendencies) and measured fears (as actual responses
and behaviors recorded by the witness in particular situations). As we all know,
early sex role behaviors standardize sex-typed claims about fear responses:
boys are taught to inhibit expressions of fear while girls are
reinforced for sensitivity and helplessness, i.e. the overt expression of fear.
If you ask people to complete sentences such as
"What would happen if you (etc.)...", then ask others to answer,
you'll find in both cases that people tend to imagine common results to common
situations, especially if they're asked to be ''realistic" in their
imaginings. I call these standardized
imaginings to indicate that they form part of one's necessary social
competence skills on the daily round. Standardized imaginings originate in
socialization, in education, in the mass media, and in restricted fantasy
("realistic daydreams"). Standardized imaginings mediate common
reactions to social stimuli: fears, interests, hobbies, and so on.
Conflict: A
Field-Dynamic Concept.
Human behavior seen as the outcome of social forces,
is a perspective in social psychology, known as "field theory." An
individual is a "system", surrounded by systems (other individuals)
and embedded in systems (sociocultural environment). "Adjustment" is
a Darwinian mental health idea that sees the individual's behavior in terms of
the organism's eternal quest for stability, survival, or ascendency. A measure
of adjustment success has been the person's management of his own inner
(psychic) conflicts. Conflicts are negative "drives" that activate
and energize the individual to seek their relief, reduction, or extinction.
Need reduction acts to reinforce the behavior, i.e. it becomes habitual
(habits, skills, styles). When need reduction is blocked by circumstances
("barriers in psychic space"), frustration ensues. Frustration acts
as another negative drive.
According to one well-known model, all conflicts are
divided into one of three types: approach/approach; avoidance/avoidance,
approach/avoidance. The standardization of imaginings in a community (i.e.
"What would happen if...") is fostered by socialization, education,
and the mass media. This would account for the similarities in people's lists
of their fears, interests, hobbies, fantasies, favorite things--i.e. biographic
items.
The Group as a Social Milieu
Lewin was interested in
the
mechanisms of individual change in behavior, attitudes,
habits, and so forth. By knowing this mechanism it would be possible to
influence individuals towards change in particular directions. Lewin was thus,
first and foremost, a social engineer; he coined the term
action
research, by which he meant research that involves a
direct outcome in community life - industry, freedom, democratic distribution
of decision making, education as a means of fostering humanistic values, and
the like. Partly as a result of these activities, American social psychologists
since the Second World War have been officially involved in what Lewin called
"cultural reconstruction" - anti-discrimination investigations such
as the effect of ideology on personality, intelligence, and economic
opportunity.
In all of this work, reviewed throughout this book,
the idea of field forces predominate. Lewin's
general influence was great in terms of intellectual stimulation; however, the
details of his topological methodology were not adopted to the same general
extent and, in our opinion, still remains to be applied to its full potential.
This book attempts to re-introduce into the mainstream of social psychological
work this neglected feature of Kurt Lewin's field theory conceptions (see
References for Lewin's work).
I have already discussed some of the features of
Lewin's diagramming technique of representing a person as a field or region
differentiated by layers of personality or sub-regions. Now let us see how this
idea leads Lewin to derive group properties from the personality structure of
its members. One such derivation concerns the homogeneity
(vs. heterogeneity) of a group, that is, the distribution of personality types
within the group. In the following diagram, group A is depicted as having a
homogeneous composition of members with an "open" personality
structure, while group B has members with a "closed" personality
structure; in both cases, however, the homogeneity is equivalent:
As can be seen, group A is composed of three
individuals whose personality structure is similar in that the outer,
peripheral areas are accessible to interaction, whereas in group B, the three
individuals share the similarity of being accessible to each other at the most
peripheral region only, as shown by the shaded area.
Lewin was particularly interested in how the group as a whole becomes itself a
region ("group") containing sub-regions ("members"), and
how the composition of sub-regions (personality of members) thus forms the
character of the group region. For example, how does communication
within a group vary as a result of homogeneity, size, and situation? Are there optimal arrangements
possible which improve communication and task effectiveness? Manipulating group
composition, size, and situation thus become major independent variables
for action research.
Here is a prediction: individuals who exhibit a more
open personality structure are more likely to be affected by a change in
situational factors than individuals whose outer personality layers are less
accessible. This can be diagrammed as follows:
The diagram depicts a greater movement in A than in
B (longer arrow) as a result of a change in the situation (I to II). Lewin
argues that A changes more than B because he is more open or accessible to
outer influences; where- as B tends to carry within his internal personality
characteristics, being more fixed, less influencible
by situational changes or interventions.
Lewin noted that when a number of individuals get
together as a group there emerges as a result of the group status, a new
element of force or influence called group values and group
standards. These are held together or unified into a
system ("group region") through a psychological milieu called belongingness.
By accepting belongingness to a group, the individual member at the same time
accepts a new system of values, beliefs, and standards (norms
of behavior, rules, expectations). This group identification is also referred
to as a we-feeling
- exploited in many group situations where belongingness becomes a force or
pressure acting upon the individual to change in a particular direction (e.g.
Alcoholic Anonymous, political conventions, religious revivals, organizational
morale, etc.).
A prototype experiment based on the
above-conceptions is that of R. Lippitt and R. K.
White, at the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, and described by Lewin
(1948, p. 73) as an example of "experiments in social space." Two
groups of children, aged between ten and eleven, were assigned a task of
constructing masks. The independent manipulation was set as the leadership
style such that one group had a democratic leader, while the other
had an autocratic leader. This meant that
the two leaders followed opposite rules of interaction with members: the
democratic leader initiated less actions than the autocratic leader, and as
well, allowed group members to contribute to the decisions in the execution of
the task. The interest of the investigators now focused on the dependent
effects or consequences of type of leadership.
It was found that the democratic group atmosphere
produced less hostile domination, less demands for attention, less hostile
criticism, more frequent co-operation, more praise, more constructive
suggestions, and more" matter-of-fact submissive behavior of member to
member." In the autocratic group, two clearly differentiated levels of status
emerged: the leader vs. the rest of the group; greater tension was observed;
stronger barriers existed separating the members from the leader; individuality
of members was less apparent, as was the we-feeling; little spontaneous
sub-grouping occurred; banding together to exclude a particular-individual also
occurred.
Of central importance in this study is the idea that
the group effects that were noted were not attributable so much to individual
differences in membership composition (personalities) as to the group
atmosphere created by the differing leadership styles. In other words, individual behavior
in a group-setting was a function of group milieu. Change
the milieu, and you change the character of individual behavior, no matter what
the individual personalities may be. Personal style and productivity in
planning are thus outcomes of social climate. This sociopsychological view or,
cultural anthropology, became Lewin's main theme in his action research: how to
affect individual behavior and style of living by manipulating the group.
Clique Structure in Groups
Frequency of interaction is a
"group parameter." Think of several groups you belong to: home,
classes, friends, work, T.V. audience, and so on. You can rank order them on
the basis of parameters such as size, composition, types of activities, and so
on. Frequency of interaction is another: in some groups it is very high (ball
games, cocktail parties, etc.), in others it is low (large lecture class,
waiting in line, etc.). A general law accepted by social psychologists states
that frequency of interaction in a group increases the likelihood of reciprocal
attraction ("++" structures). This appears to be a very general
principle of field theory and may be viewed as the sociodynamic inverse of the
Second Law of Thermodynamics. As you no doubt know, the theory of universal
dynamics requires that all isolated systems run down over time; that is,
randomness increases and organization breaks down. Thus, it is necessary to
import forces outside the system to keep it from running down. The opposite
doctrine is posited in sociodynamics: individuals brought together by
situational circumstances exhibit maximum disorganization in the initial phases
of interaction. As time goes by and the frequency of interactions between them
increases and cumulates, they begin to form group structures of the ++ type,
thus increasing, not decreasing, degree of organization. In summary, physical
systems tend to run down over time while social systems tend to run uphill, as
it were.
Propinquity is a positional concept
and expresses distance among the objects in a region. "Neighborhood"
is one such instance of the field concept of propinquity. Whyte (1956, quoted
in Newcomb et al, 1965) showed that residential layout in a suburban
development is a major determiner of participation in social gatherings.
Membership at various social events in a neighborhood--party, bridge, baby
shower, gourmet society--tends very strongly to be composed of individuals who
live next to each other, relatively speaking. Marriages in large cities tend to
occur most frequently between men and women who live close together.
Demographic variables influence
attraction structures, degree of inter- action, communication, and so on. Age,
sex, nationality, ethnic background? neighborhood, schooling, major course of
study, religion, family status, occupational prestige--these are some of the
many population characteristics that help organize people's associations with
each other, the probability or likelihood of interaction, and the type of
attraction structure in interpersonal relationships (see Section 1).
The distribution of members' attitudes, interests, and values
exerts a definite influence on the coalition structure in larger groups. It is
said that birds of a feather flock together, and this sociodynamic doctrine
summarizes the overall effect on group structure that can be traced to
similarity of attitudinal expressions. "Postacquaintance
structuring" can be predicted on the basis of "preacquaintance
attitudes" (Newcomb et al, 1965, p. 317).
Finally, personal characteristics exert a
strong influence on group strucutre and interpersonal
relationships, as indeed we already know. Some traits are considered
attractive, desirable, or admirable, while others evoke disapproval, rejection,
or censure. "Popularity" is a group dynamic concept that expresses an
individual's high attractiveness position in a group, and is based on the
extent to which the individual possesses personal characteristics that are
judged by group standards (norms) as desirable or attractive. Popular
individuals tend to be focal points or leaders of cliques and are thus highly
influential in group life.
In summary, group structure reflects the character
of interpersonal relationships. These in turn determine attraction structures,
cliques, and coalitions. These are built up over time as a result of continued
interactions These interactions are strengthened and made more stable by
frequency, propinquity, demographic overlap, shared attitudinal similarity, and
perceived favorableness of personal characteristics.
Field Dynamic Theory
A central theme
that-runs throughout this course of study is the idea- that community
creates social organization, and social organization is or acts like a force
field. This is the idea that we have tried to capture in
giving it the label of sociodynamics. The idea that a-social
environment is a field force was not invented by the producers of Star Wars:
it is an idea popularized by Kurt Lewin, starting in the 1930's.
It has become customary in textbook surveys to elect Lewin to the prestigious
position of "founder of group dynamics theory."
Also mentioned is a mathematical system Lewin used,
called topology, which attempts to deal in
detail with the formal characteristics of the social field force. Lewin's
writings include influential articles on "conflict resolution",
"minority groups", "group morale", "social
space", "cultural reconstruction", "acceptance of
values", "action research", "conflict in industry." No
doubt because Lewin was a refugee Jew fleeing Nazi Germany, his articles on
"3ringing up the Jewish Child" (published
in 1940) and "The Special ease of Germany" (published in 1943 shortly
before his death) focus on the dangers to a society brought on by
anti-democratic institutions. a result, much of the work of social
psychologists since 1940 has been concerned with the issue of official
authority and its manifestations in "blind"
obedience, conformity, prejudice, propaganda, and class conflict.
Lewin is associated with two schools of thought in
social psychology; one is cognitivism, the other gestalt
psychology. The German word gestalt is
usually rendered in English as configuration. This idea came from
work done by German psychologist Max Wertheimer in perception. Wertheimer
popularized the idea that we perceive wholistically first, and
only later, realize the components as a result of analysis. This idea was
considered radical because it went against the prevalent notion that
"complex wholes" are built up from "simpler elements" - a
position promulgated by the British associationists
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (chiefly Hume and the Mills
brothers).
Lewin's theories reversed this trend and established
through his- personal charisma and writings the wholistic
or gestalt view, adopted subsequently by his many followers and admirers -
Gordon Allport, Ronald Lippitt,
Fritz Heider, Dorwin
Cartwright, Stanley Schachter, Kurt Black, Roger
Barker, L. K. Frank, John French, Leon Festinger, and
many others whose names dot the textbook and professional literature (consult
References in any Social Psychology textbook).
Lewin's holistic method of analysis carries him to
the view that a society is a sociological region, a whole that encloses
institutions and settings. Within this region, there are sub-regions marked off
by boundaries, and each boundary
encloses its own particular state of force or field. Thus, a dynamic tension is
created between the sub-regions. This dynamics is understandable only if
the overall region is taken into account as a context; the latter was called the
"general cultural atmosphere" (nation, ideology, philosophy of life,
etc.).
By "dynamics", Lewin meant in particular
the characteristics of totality (i.e., as a system) and predictability
(i.e., what leads to what). In the dynamic system of a community, Lewin sees a space of free
movement, by which he meant to indicate the availability
to the individual of channels of locomotion in three dimensions: bodily,
social, and mental. He isolated two factors which produce dynamic
barriers to locomotion across social regions: lack of
ability and social prohibition (taboos and rulesl. Barriers or restrictions reduce mobility in space,
across social groups, and in mental development. Boundary lines thus segregate
individuals and affect their accessibility to available resources in the
society.
These ideas are quite familiar to us through the
social analyses we are exposed to in the mass media. We know, for instance,
that the federal government, through its national legislation, is constantly
attempting to democratize the boundary lines across social groups, to eliminate
restrictions based on race, religion, sex, and age, and thus to make more
resources available to more people. We have witnessed, in the experience of the
current generation, federal legislation in education which attempts to remedy
and compensate for the discrimination in employment against those whose
"cultural- ly disadvantaged" environment
has "robbed" them of the democratic right to opportunities for
developing their skills and "intelligence" (or literacy).
I can recognize in these attempts the ideas of
Lewin: the dynamic nature of society; nationalism as a general cultural force;
the elimination of barriers against locomotion; the importance of cultural
background on abilities; and the function of counter-rules (new legislation) to
combat and neutralize social prohibitions based on group affiliation. As well,
it is easy to notice the interplay of forces ("dynamism") when groups
or "political forces" are in opposition against each other. Several
cases come to mind from the current "national scene" (region): the
anti-abortion movement, the pro-feminist movement,
the repeal of legislation giving equal opportunity to practitioners of the
"gay lifestyle," the fight against federal restriction on natural
health products, and many more. In all of these events, we recognize the
dynamic and wholistic social psychology of Kurt
Lewin.
Topological Features of Group Space
Lewin's terminology gives us the possibility of
analyzing in schematic form, some of the important
(predictive) elements of behavior in social settings. Interpersonal relations,
group forces, and personality structures are translatable through Lewin's
system into diagrams that schematize the forces acting in a region, whether
geographic (country, neighborhood, office), social (member vs. non-member of a
group), or "mental" (cognitive dynamics - attitudes,
preferences, problem solving style, etc.). We may familiarize ourselves with
Lewin's topological system (geometric
diagrams) by looking at how he takes the notion of social distance
and gives it a strict operational definition in terms of these topological
diagrams.
"Topological" is a word made up of
"top" (= surface, e.g., the surface of the planet) and "-ology" (= study of). Topological psychology uses
concepts from geometry and algebra, as does "field theory" in
physics, geophysics, and astrophysics. In its non-mathematical version, Einsteinian Relativity Theory has been adapted for use in
most sciences. Of close import to social psychology are the field theories of
behavior in Lewin, Pike (Young, Becker & Pike, 1970), Barker
("ecological psychology", 1968), Ouspensky
(1974), and Thom (1975).
The conceptual element that universally
characterizes field theory is the relativity of basic forces acting upon
physical bodies. This means (i) that physical bodies
move as a result of forces, and (ii) that these physical forces are relative to
time and space, i.e., sometimes they are felt "ON", sometimes
"OFF". This relativity of the forces is therefore also a variability
across time and place. Here lies the enormous utility of
relativity theory, in that events in time and place as viewed by us, the
participant-observers, are analyzable as influences coming from forces outside
our region or sphere of perception and
operation.
These basic forces may be seen to operate at either
the-macroscopic level (time zones; eras; regions ) or microscopic (organs;
genes; nuclear particles). For example, your mood today may be seen as a
consequence of what day it is (calendar = macroscopic level) or, what you've
ingested (digestion = microscopic level); the calendrical
influence dervies from community life (workday or
not) and the ingestive influence comes from planetary
life (biology).
Both types of influences exert themselves through
forces acting: in the field you are surrounded by, externally and internally.
The notion that basic and universal field forces vary across regions
(time/place "local" systems) and are therefore "relative"
contains an apparent contradiction: on the one hand, the forces are universal
(basic), on the other, they are also absent in some regions localized
by time, place, and internal condition (or speed). We quite naturally wish to
say, But if the forces are universal how can they vary with local conditions??
It is this very paradox that gives field theory its pragmatic power or utility
because it leads us directly to the following, obviously useful, principle:
Movement
and change within a system is influenced by independent outside pressures.
Some examples might help in understanding the
enormous applicability of this principle.
In time keeping, the relativity principle showed why
and how our clocks lost time so that, over the centuries, "leap
years" were needed to keep the summer in June (northern hemisphere).
Today, some crystal vibrations gives us a steady source of impulses that are
"accurate" in millions of a second over centuries! The difference
comes from the topological properties of clocks, the sun, and the motion of
microstructural elements. In each of these three cases (regions; local
conditions), the universal forces have been altered or made relative to the surface
properties of the system: what appears to affect the clock and the sun's motion
across the sky (gravity; speed; available lines of motion across the surface)
does not appear to affect the pulsations of the crystal and its internal
workings. The outside, independent, universal forces have been altered by the local
conditions.
Now take an application in the reverse direction: local
conditions have been altered by outside, independent, universal forces.
Assume we are dealing with two independent systems, such as a central
region, separated by means of a boundary from a peripheral
region, thus.
Instances of this arrangement are familiar in everyday life. For example, you
put something in a box, now it can no longer-be seen. The central region, or
inside the box, is independent of the outside as shown by the fact that you can
"hide" something inside the box. Ditto for any covering
or boundary separator: skin; balloon; umbrella; etc. To get away from physical
barriers, we can think of psychological ones: you bang up the car but you don't
tell anyone. Here you are isolating a piece of information, fact, or item of
knowledge, by enclosing it within a protected region, one that covers up the
information.
The cover up is an act that is functionally
equivalent to putting a thing in a box. Note that the boundary erected
around a region (box; information) functions to alter the previous
accessibility of the item. "I won't tell" and "Leave me
alone" are psychological boundaries a person erects which function to
reduce the person's accessibility. The opposite is true in "I like
you" or "Oh, you went to Kailua Hi, too, what year?" where the
speaker uncovers a boundary which makes him
more accessible to the other person.
Lewin's system capitalizes on the topological (=
lines of accessibility of "configuration") properties of psychological
space as observable in human interactions. The idea that the same principles of
dynamics govern the stars, the atoms, and the mind, is both modern and ancient.
Many believe that mathematics is the universal language
(notation system) that is capable of rendering the facts as they are, whether
we deal with functional systems of numbers,
particles, or emotions and imaginings.
Boundaries in Field Theory
The concept of "field" in field theory
entails two necessary and sufficient features: boundary and tension.
It is easy to see the universal applicability of field theory in our
contemporary world. Thus, we conceive the universe around us as a space separated
into regions, where each region is defined by a boundary marker or contour. For
instance, if we look around us, the surrounds are populated by objects, and
each object is separated from its surround by a contour, i.e. each object is self-contained.
If we examine photographic preparations made through a microscope device, we
see that the surface of objects is actually a composite of separate smaller
objects called crystals, cells, molecules, and particles.
Each of these micro- structures behaves like an
object in that it is self-contained, i.e. separated from the surround by a
boundary or contour. Biological organisms are actually composites of smaller
bio-chemical units such as cells, genes, and protein clusters. Cells are
contained by a surrounding membrane, and objects within a cell are themselves
contained by their own boundary membrane (e.g., nucleus, food particles, etc.).
There are several ways of demonstrating the field
theory principle that a boundary sets up tension, and therefore, creates a field.
One simple method is to consider the effect of semipermeable
membranes. Cheese cloth and other separator devices provide common instances;
if you force a liquid through such a device, the solid particles that are suspended
in it (dissolved) separate out, letting some of them through, while keeping
others on "the front side." The same principle is used when the
fishermen make a net with holes of a particular size: the net sets up a
boundary which separates relatively large objects (bigger fish) from small ones
by entrapping the former and letting the latter "through." In
general, any action of separation sets up a tension, i.e. a differential force
which creates grouping, sub-grouping, selection, and interaction.
Gestalt psychologists Wertheimer, Kaffka, and Kohler have been influential in drawing
attention to field theory concepts in perception. Their work, done during the
first two decades of this century, is reported in most elementary textbooks in
psychology. As you-may already know, they have explored in detail various
phenomena of the perceptual field, such as "the
laws of good gestalt": grouping, completion, figure/ground,
phi-phenomenon, illusions, and the like. A simple demonstration of grouping is
given by arranging dots in various patterns on the page, and observing the
phenomenological effects that ensue:
In this diagram, six dots are placed in the box; there ensues a spontaneous
perceptual phenomenon whereby we perceive the six dots as falling into two
groups of three dots each. Note also that each sub-group organizes itself into
a figure, in this case, a triangle. Though there is no actual contour for the
triangle, the three points act as if they were joined by lines forming a
geometric shape. To illustrate perceptual gestalt field principles, let us look
at another illustration:
In this diagram (based on Kanizsa, 1976) you
experience what has been called a subjective or virtual contour. Here,
the dynamic properties ("tension") are apparently set up by the
arrangement of lines: the S-shaped contour is the phenomenal resultant of the
tension set up by the lines in the perceptual field. Another example of
subjective contour is given by the "pressure" to complete the figure
outlined incompletely:
In this diagram (also based on Kanizsa,
1976), you can observe the phenomenon of experiencing a subjective surface,
i.e. the white triangle that appears to be superimposed on top of the partially
completed triangle.
The preceding illustrations demonstrate the powerful
effects generated by arrangements of visual shapes. They show that line
boundaries set up tensions that create a perceptual field in which surfaces,
shapes, and con- tours appear to interact and affect each other through laws of
perception.
The term social organization refers to an
arrangement of social objects. As in the case of visual perceptual fields,
particular arrangements occur which set up a tension as evidenced by noticeable
consequences in interaction and reciprocal effects ("forces"). We can
illustrate these social facts by considering several examples from everyday
life. One common example showing the creation of a social field through lines
of separation is the phenomenon of erecting a physical barrier in a setting. A
ball game setting is created by dividing the field of action into two sides or
camps, and further sub- dividing each camp into smaller regions (e.g. goal
line, scrimmage line, etc.) By setting up regions ("surfaces") marked
off visually by boundary lines, and allocating differential rules within them,
the tension of a ball game is created; the interest in any match
that plays itself out, lies in the players' adjustments to the forces created
by the differential rules that apply to each zone of play.
Another common example is the tension of forces set
up in a social setting when new boundaries are introduced or old ones removed.
For example, you spend half an hour in a doctor's waiting room. At first,
you're alone in the room. The surrounding field is empty of other persons. You
look around, read, slouch in your chair, scratch, etc. Suddenly the door opens,
the boundary line changes, and a new person enters the field, and occupies a
spot (chair). You immediately experience a change in tension: new field forces
are now impinging on you. You show this in your behavior: you sit up, you
smile, you inhibit scratching yourself, you talk. Your involvement has
undergone a change as a result of the introduction of a new barrier in the
field. Now the-person leaves the waiting room. A barrier is removed and your
involvement and your behavior change accordingly.
Consider another common instance. Students in a
large class are instructed to form teams. They meet in small groups of five in
front of the class. The arrangement has now switched from one large
audience-group ("the class") to a number of small teams. You are a
participant; as you switch your membership status, you alter the
social tension you experience. Your perceptions are affected, your feelings,
your topic focus. Now the teams are instructed to choose a leader.
Good luck, bad luck, or your own maneuverings land you the job; as a result, your status
has changed. Your role behaviors are now called into play: your perceptions are
switching focus, your interactions take on new patterns.
Now you might talk more and initiate more
suggestions; as well, others' perceptions of you change as they view you in a
more central position. Now your team is
instructed to investigate the phenomena of social attitudes by expressing
views, exchanging observations about each other, etc. The new task and topic
introduce new tension; the forces show themselves in the group's behavior. For
instance, individual A talks more and his interventions have an effect on
others. Soon you observe a new social organization in the group: individual B
openly supports A's actions while the others openly oppose him. Now your team
structure has altered considerably: where there were four members and you, the
leader, there is now a three-way split: you; coalition one (A & B); and
coalition two (C & D). After a while, the teams break up and students
resume their customary seats. Again the social field has changed: you either
return to previous conditions, or else, you may have permanently altered the
field as you've formed new relationships in the audience.
Multiple Membership in Groups
In actuality, a person belongs to several groups
simultaneously. This may be portrayed as follows:
This diagram shows a person (P) holding simultaneous memberships in three
groups: family group, professional group, and political group. An example might
be "a Republican Doctor, father of two." Now
one can derive various predictions: the person's life style will be affected by
his simultaneous, multiple membership to the extent
that we can note phenomena of role conflict, role strain,
and role variation. This means that P's
behavior will vary in expected ways across situations: as a family member, i.e.
as father, P will exhibit such role behaviors as economic provider and parental
disciplinarian; as doctor, he will behave according to the rules and practices
of the medical profession; and as a Republican, P will support some candidates
and reject others.
Within such a "life-space," P experiences forces and pressures that
create tension towards particular goals. This may be represented as follows:
Here you can note P in a life-space (unshaded region)
being subjected to various forces (arrows). The shaded areas a, b, c, d are inaccessible
regions, thus, P is under tension because his needs
are blocked and he is prevented from entering the regions where he would find
satisfaction of his needs. The diagram depicts P in a situation where pressure,
f, pushes him in the direction of shaded area + G, i.e. his "goal"
(see larger arrow, f). Within this field-force, the person's successful
adjustment to the situation depends on his ability to gain sufficient freedom of
movement so as to satisfy his needs and reduce tension.
This adjustment process will depend on the interdependence matrix of the group
or groups P is a member of. In a marriage group, for instance, P's movement of
freedom will be more constricted than in a political group, say:
Here,-the first diagram depicts two individuals who are very closely
interdependent; they share peripheral (p), medial (m), and central (c) regions
of intimacy, as in a marriage. The second diagram depicts a looser group of
four in which the individuals share only peripheral (p) intimacies, as might be
the case-in a political group. As a result, one would predict that tension in
situation A, the marriage group, would be greater than in situation B, the
political group, on account of the fact that freedom of movement for P is more
restricted, hence providing less opportunity for adjustment. By the same token,
certain other features of need satisfaction will be more easily met in
situation A, precisely those which derive from interdependence, i.e. security,
intimacy, affection, acceptance, trust, etc.
Field Dynamic Theory
Kurt Lewin popularized field dynamic theory in
social psychology (1930's and 40's).
His system was both "cognitivist" and
"gestalt" oriented. Basic to this approach is the idea that social
situations are perceptual "fields," and therefore a person's behavior
is seen as an outcome of the sociopsychological "forces" acting on
the person. Lewin's sociodynamics was three-dimensional, i.e. three kinds of
forces act simultaneously on a person--bodily, social, and mental. Thus a
person's behavior is defined as a movement or locomotion in these three
dimensions. Barriers to locomotion are set up as a result of two causes:- lack
of ability and social prohibition. These "barriers" are drawn
graphically as boundary lines separating "regions" in space, and
indicate restrictions to available resources in a society or group. This leads
to the important principle that movement and change within a social system is
influenced by independent outside pressures.
As well, movement in a region is affected by
internal forces called "tension." Thus a boundary acts as a source of
tension, i.e. creates a field of local forces. An illustration of perceptual
field boundaries is given by the spontaneous organization of dots, lines, and
contours ("laws of good gestalt"). Another illustration is the
"action" created in a game region (e.g. football) when boundary lines
are erected and appropriate rules of conduct are marked off for each sub-region
(e.g. goal line). A third illustration is given by social interactions in a
setting: as you interact with others, groupings occur; these groupings constitute
new boundary lines that affect your subsequent interactions.
A person is typically a member of several groups:
e.g. father, Republican, profession, etc. This state of "multiple
membership"-creates role phenomena of conflict, strain, and variation.
Thus, social situations are representable as regions
in psychological space in which the sociodynamic forces of group membership and
role create "needs" whose fulfillment depends on the resolution of
tension and the re-drawing of boundaries.
Social Organization
Natural impulses seek
expression. This is the meaning of "organism". A living organism is
animated by bio-chemical reactions inside its skin-boundary called body.
These bio-chemical reactions summate (miraculously!) into a "coherent
whole" at the next level of existence: emotional life. Though emotional
reactions are grounded in bio-chemical processes, their organization is not
bio-chemical, as indicated by the fact that bio-chemists do not attempt to
predict or control the behavior of organisms, but only the latter's organs.
Instead, to predict and understand the emotional conduct of an individual, it
is required to take matters up for analysis at the next (discontinuous) level
of organization in the world, and that is social organization.
Social organization is an arrangement of
relationships between members of a group. Among so called "solitary"
animal species, social organization appears distant, such as some reptiles and
insects whose members meet for restricted time periods (for parenting) but
otherwise spend individual lives in solitary adventures. Social animal species,
on the other hand, can always be found living together and forming
relationships that endure over time. Therefore, social organization is
functionally motivated by the existence of regularized relationships among
members of a group. In other words, because relationships are formed by
individuals, therefore social organization emerges as an environment or ecology.
Relationship activity thus gives rise to social
organization. Action, reaction, interaction, transaction: these modalities of
behavior are implicated in relationship activity. For instance, parenting is a
form of relationship activity that produces protective, cooperative, and
educative transactions between the members of the family unit. "Family
unit" is a component of social organization, and you can see that it
emerges out of the relationship activity of parenting.
Parenting, mating, playing and other role
behaviors thus form the components of social organization.
By examining the features of role behaviors in a group one can produce maps of
its social organization. Such maps allow prediction of events in the history of
the group. For instance, we sometimes find it impossible to recognize the adult
individuals in an aviary since they appear to us identical in size, color, and
appearance; but if we know some of their role behaviors, identification is
instantaneously achieved by observing their transactions. Males mount
and feed females among lovebirds and
parakeets; mothers hang around the neighborhood. Mapping social organization in
a group through identifying role behaviors allows us to predict events and
relationship history: parakeet husbands and fathers in our aviary will not
protect the nest box against occupation by third parties, while mother
parakeets will fight rigorously and persistently when another adult female
approaches the nest box area.
Male lovebirds, on the other hand, will vigorously
attack any adult coming in the vicinity of the home box. Again, if you know
that banks are closed on Sunday, i.e., if you have a map of the social
organization of your community involving time and schedules, you can predict
some behaviors: a customer will not go to his bank on Sunday though you may
find him going there on other days; on the other hand, knowing that a robbery
took place at the bank on Saturday night, you might predict that the manager
will be found there on Sunday morning.
Role behaviors are recognizable when observing the
behavior of a group on a regular, day-to-day basis. One keeps track of activity
in the group over time, from morning to night, and from week to week. For
instance, in our aviary, activity can be noticed to vary across several daily
time zones as well as places in the birds' habitat. Mid-mornings, noontime,
mid-afternoons, and night time are relatively quiet periods in noise levels and
general movement. Within an active time zone, say early morning, the public
places in the community support a great deal of mixing and interacting, as
birds eat, exchange ritualized transactions, explore, fly around, play, chase,
build, and so on. As you observe the on-going hustle and bustle, you note that
some behaviors, such as fleeing, climbing, foraging for food, are engaged in by
all the individuals, whereas some activities are never acted out by some
individuals. You begin therefore the process of role differentiation
by matching activity type with individual bird.
Again, as you enter an unfamiliar milieu, say an
airport in a foreign country, your knowledge of social organization allows you
to recognize role behaviors and thus, predict behavior: you see people in
uniforms and other people; your baggage is lost; so, you approach a uniformed
individual because you predict he'll be more likely to respond to your needs.
Role Behaviors
The concept of role has field dynamic properties
that are familiar to all of us who live out our social existence in a community
context that assigns to every individual all sorts of duties and
responsibilities. Webster's tells us that
"role" is either a part an actor plays in a performance or a function
(office) assumed by someone. Tradition gives us in the concept of role,
the idea that a person "rolls around" on the daily round:
"role" comes from Indo-European *roto-, meaning running,
rolling,
and wheel, according to Webster's.
Thus, a fellow who is a big wheel in the community can be
expected not only to have big bank rolls stashed away, but as well, to
play a central role in decision making.
In field dynamic terms, role is a functional feature
of settings: role stands to behavior as force stands to movement. Social
settings are demarcated regions where sociodynamic forces impart movement and
change. The actors, participators, members, individuals form a population pool
for fil1inq the
positions (statuses): they are office holders in
institutions and bureaucracies- the police officer, the teacher, the plumber,
the father, the lover, the former president's neighbors' children's pet, and so
on. For example, the institution of domestic pets creates positions that
many individuals around us appear to fill so cheerfully: the role of neighbor
to a pet family (What is your relationship to dog droppings on
your lawn?); the role of loving parent to a cute puppy, the role of consumer of
pet care services; and so on. Question: How does the social setting help organize appropriate
behaviors? Answer: Through role prescriptions.
We are all familiar with role prescriptions. We
learn them at home by watching parents and T.V. (imitation; modeling).
We practice them with dolls, imaginary beings, and real playmates (role
interactions). We are taught the rules, procedures
appropriate manners, appearance, and decor, i.e., the rituals of the place
(locale) when as children, we are
taught to "behave": when as adults, we are shown the ropes and are
expected to follow suit, i.e., to conform to our role; and when we
get criticized for bungling the job by goofing off, doing the wrong things,
failing to be efficient, in other words, found wanting in our role
behaviors.
Social psychologists have examined role behaviors
from the point of view of social relationships in groups. A role is a gestalt
or whole that organizes many related as
well as independent sequences of behaviors, acts, skills, and the like. Through
social learning, imitation, modeling, training, conditioning, and other
behavior influences, we acquire social competence, knowledge or rules, and
habits of perception. From the moment you're awake in the morning to the moment
you drift off in sleep, you are enmeshed with your various roles on the daily
round. As the minutes of the day tick off, you move across physical regions,
from boundary to boundary, and across psycho-social regions, from barrier to
barrier, or access ritual to access ritual.
Whatever you do is always in a place and connected to some
function that you fill by being there. There is no way of
being anywhere without filling some role. This evidences the binding
nature of social setting (or place): our behaviors, both voluntary and
involuntary, conscious and unaware, are never solely centered in our thoughts,
emotions, or imaginings--we are literally rooted to the roles prescribed by the
position we find ourselves in; and there is never a time when we are free from
them, even in our dreams.
I use the expression situated
behavior or display to indicate that behavior is always setting bound.
Field theory is based on the idea that all movement and change in a dynamic
region is calculated as being the resultant of general forces set up by
tensions produced when boundaries are established. For
instance, you walk into class and look for your customary seat. Someone you
don't know is already occupying it. You sit in another seat. The human barrier
covering your territory has pushed you into another's seat. All of a sudden,
you get up, pulled by the sight of the student whom you know is the rightful
owner of the territory you're blocking. You look around, you can't stand still
because the eyes around you penetrate your life- space causing a storm in your
emotions. Finally you're saved: a friendly familiar face waves at you and
points to the empty seat beside him. You bolt in that direction, catapulted by
the repulsion you feel against standing there with the eyes upon you.
All social settings are thus dynamic regions in socio-cultural
space. rhe space varies in a
number of dimensions; for instance, geographic (your bed vs. the class), sensory
(all the private things we sense from our bodies), motor (stone-faced
vs. stoned face, for example), interpersonal ("the eyes"
vs. being alone), motivational (involved vs.
depressed), presentational (authentic vs. fake),
and many more. How many and which? That's the question that concerns social
psychology: in field theory terms, the dimensionality of social space is indicated by the
available lines of movement, i.e., given by the topology of the setting,
its surface features, its accessibilities, its access ritual, its role
prescriptions, its sanctions, rewards, and contingencies as set up by
consensus, agreement, contract, common sense, law and order, tradition,
customs, rules, prescriptions, expectations, and all the rest that turns a mere
place into a community daily round of roles within relationships.
I have discussed the effects that a group setting
has upon its members. Thus, irrespective of the particular characteristics of
the individuals involved, we note general forces acting upon the
"interactants" merely because they are in role positions. Thus,
whether A is talkative or quiet, a student or a professor, a mother or a
sister, the sociodynamic influences deriving from the group setting will be
operative: like attracts like, negatives repulse each other; frequency builds
attraction; unconventionality gets rejected; and so on. In field theory terms,
we can say that in sociodynamic settings, ethnodynamics becomes a context
for psychodynamics. This principle thus allocates a
structural arrangement between setting features ("ethnodynamic
forces") and the role behaviors that occur in them ("psycho-dynamic
forces").
Role behaviors can thus be studied independently of
psychodynamics. A good instance of this principle is to be found in the work of
biologists, in particular, the newer emphases in sociobiology
(Wilson, l975). We have a backyard aviary in which a
community of two dozen birds live, and share a daily round (see Bird Stories).
On many occasions, we've had the opportunity of observing highly differentiated
role behaviors on the part of individual birds. For instance, the role
behaviors associated with the activity of parenting the young (socialization)
give a visible organizing pattern to the conduct of the mother, the father or
husband, and the other adults in the community. If you saw a lovebird feeding
another lovebird, you can say with certainty that the two are related either in
the role of female mate or unweaned child.
This is because feeding is a role behavior performed by parent and male mate only:
husbands feed mates and children; mothers feed children. One never finds a
female mate feeding a male. Similarly, if you see a parakeet vigorously
defending its nestbox, you can say with almost
certainty that the bird is female, possibly, but not necessarily, a mother as
well. This is because the male parakeet, as husband, father, mate, does not
defend the nestbox against intruders. And most
commonly known, if you see two birds copulating, the one on top is the male.
Thus, the ethnodynamic forces acting upon
individuals occupying role positions on the daily round are quite visibly
influencing their behaviors though we know nothing about their internal
psychodynamics. This is equally true whether the
ethnodynamic context is that of general species related behavior (as in
feeding, parenting, copulating) or that of specific group related behavior. For
example, if you note a change in the behavior of A towards B, you can conclude
with confidence that there has been a change in the role relationship between
them.
Thus, if parakeet A regularly feeds parakeet B, a
youngster, and then one day, is observed to stop feeding it, you can infer that
a change in their relationship has occurred. Indeed, as we have observed
in-numerous instances, parakeet youngsters get weaned at one point in time,
during which an unstable effect can be noted; that is, the frequency of feeding
and approach behavior on the part of both parents gradually decreases; at some
point, the likelihood of an approaching youngster being fed equals the
likelihood of being pecked and chased away. This unstable pattern is naturally
conflictual, but at the same time, instructive; very soon, the
youngsters stop approaching their parents and start acting as adult members of
the community.
Thus, role behaviors can be investigated within the
context of a daily round and a pattern of relationships with others. Note that
the investigation of role behaviors is possible only within such a context;
merely observing the interactions is not sufficient. Their meaning or function can be
derived only through the backdrop (setting) of the daily community round.
This field dynamic principle is easily noted when
you travel or move across boundaries into regions that are unfamiliar to you.
As a "foreigner" your position in the setting contrasts with the position
occupied by "regulars.''
You can easily observe this effect in reverse when you consider the daily round
of a tourist on Oahu: here, the other occupies the position of
''foreigner" and you are the "regular". Similarly, a new
employee occupies a contrastive position to your own, as shown by the fact that
you have to teach the person the setting rules (starting times, break time,
work sequences, and above all, the distinction between what's required,
permitted, and forbidden.) Inhuman groups, particularly in
bureaucratic settings, this differentiation is mediated through language, oral
and written. There are written rules and unwritten ones; there are official
rules and unofficial ones. There are rules that apply to everyone-in the
organization, and those that apply selectively (depending on status,
relationships, seniority, etc.).
Status: Role Position and Role Setting
To illustrate the relationship between role behavior
and role setting, we can contrast the behaviors of the members of a family (triad)
at three different times of the day, thus:
This table represents a matrix of structural
elements composing the gestalt of "family". Three role positions
are evident; that of father, mother, and child. This universal theme plays
itself out in contemporary America through unequal status on the daily round.
Different role positions entail different role behaviors in the same setting.
Here, time of the day is the setting
parameter, though others could have been used (e.g., place, activity). Three
time zones are sampled, and the activity engaging the three members are
indicated. Box A in the table, contrasts roles between the two Parents in that
particular household. Box B indicates overlap in type of
activity, and box C shows a similarity in one dimension but suggesting
differences in many others (i.e., differences in the manner in which they carry
out the same activity).
Social psychologists use the term status
differentiation to refer to the "hierarchical"
relations one can observe among role positions in social settings. You no doubt
have observed many types of hierarchical structures in settings
where you are a regular: job, club, class, public places, and so on. For
instance, you're on the phone with airlines reservations and you want a front
row seat because your knee cast requires you to hold your leg as straight as
possible.
The airlines representative informs you that there
are no front row seats available. You insist on talking to "the
supervisor." He gets on the phone and assures you the seat you want will
be held for you. You have witnessed a very common consequence of bureaucratic
hierarchies: decision making power varies with status differentiation.
"Always get to the top" is a good advice when you want something
accomplished which does not fall in the routine category. This is because
bureaucratic hierarchies proportion power, or the ability to act,
according to status: the higher a person's position in the hierarchy, the
greater is his latitude for action ("discretion'').
Note however that additional considerations enter
into this relationship. Suppose that, in the story of the phone call to the
airlines, the Supervisor regretfully informs you that all the front seats are
gone. You hang up, and call your friend who knows a sales representative in
that airlines and promises you to call him. He phones you back half-an-hour
later and tells you the seat is in the bag! You've witnessed the consequences
of informal lines of power in a
bureaucratic organization.
It is clear, then, that social settings are
ethnodynamic regions demarcated by lines of relationships. These
connections function as access rituals making available or
denying rights and privileges in accordance with one's position in a network of
interrelationships. You can inventory your connections by
making a table as follows:
|
NAME |
AGE |
SEX |
ETHNICITY |
OCCUPATION |
RELATIONSHIP |
|
Martin J. etc. |
66 |
M |
Caucasian |
Store Owner Contractor Assistant |
Father Repairman Personal |
Data of this sort map your community connections. By inspecting such data
reported by members of a group, many ethnodynamic effects become visible. For
instance, data in the DRA contributed by students of this course, clearly shows
the effect of demographic parameters on a person's connections. Thus, ethnicity
is a primary selection factor for family connections (as you'd expect),
for job connections (as you'd expect in
many settings here), and for connections reflecting professional services
(not as strong a relationship as in the first two cases--again, as you might
expect). Age is a primary selector in
connections reflecting socializing with (the young associate
with the young) as well as for the category people I would ask for a recommendation
(in the 50's for the latter vs. in the 20 s for the
former, given UH undergraduates). With this category (...recommendations)
both age and sex play a primary role: men in their 40's,
5C's, and 60's are most often mentioned (doctors,
bosses, etc.). These relationships can be mapped in a matrix of the following
type:
|
Category of |
Dependent Parameters |
|||
|
Age |
Sex |
Ethnicity |
Frequency |
|
|
My Extended Family My Maturity a Recommendation etc. |
o |
o |
++ |
++ |
You can note that the interaction effects
between "category of connections" (the independent variable, here)
and demographic variables appear in the intersections. A strong positive
relation is indicated by "++", a weaker connection by "+"
(reverse signs for negative relation). A zero indicates that no relation was
observed ("mixed composition"), and the question mark stands for
"insufficient data." The dependent variable of "Frequency"
refers to the relative strength of the association as
given by the Witness' summative assessment (i.e., a rating
on "How well I know the person").
Communication Networks
Connectivity is a field dynamic
concept; it measures the lines of accessibility in a region. A door or a bridge
connect two geographic points and it is easy to see how it functions as a gate
or boundary (barrier) for controlling access. Similarly, relationship
connections reflect as well as maintain a person's access rights and privileges
in a community or group. The way in which configuration of associations affects
behaviors in a group can be made visible by mapping the lines of interactions
in a group, i.e., its communication network (who speaks to
whom when). For instance, Student Task Groups set up in this course during the
Spring l978 semester varied in size and in acquaintance
structure. Some task groups were small (N = 5 or 6) while
others were more than twice that size; some groups had members who knew each other
from outside class, others met only during infrequent meetings. The following
diagrams depict three types of groups:
Group pattern I shows a network that reminds one of
''a wheel": there is a central position occupied by Person
l; all interactions get channeled through this "strong leader" and no
interaction takes place between the other four persons. This meant that much of
the group's work depended on this one person When this person dropped out of
the group, the network disintegrated and each student worked independently, not
knowing what the rest of the group members were doing.
In pattern II, no one occupies the leadership
position, but individual 2 has a slightly more central role in that he
communicates with three members. Participant 6 is an isolate, being officially
a member, but not attending meetings. Pattern III is more complex as is to be
expected in a larger group. Three sub-groups are evident: (1 + 2 + 3), (4 + 5 @
6 + 7), and (8 + 9), in which members interact only within their own sub-group.
You can infer that individual 4 occupies a central leadership role in that he holds
the three sub-groups together. Members 10, 11, and 12 are non-participating
isolates. This group arrangement reflected the division of labor
arrived at through consensus early during the semester. Each sub-group used its
own self- designated tasks and allowed one person the role of informing the
chairman of the group (4) what had been accomplished.
Besides group size and connectivity structure, an
important factor that affects group climate is attitudinal distribution.
This refers to the systematic variations observable along a convenient index,
such as favorableness or unfavorableness towards
group goals and events. An example is provided by the distribution of scores
obtained on Daily Feedback Forms filled out by students of this course after
each class. The following graph illustrates this point:
The four patterns displayed by four different
students is evident upon inspection: Pl's attitudes are highly favorable
through the semester, while P2 is consistently less favorable throughout. P3
begins the semester with highly favorable attitudes but gradually becomes more
and more disenchanted; P4 exhibits the
opposite pattern. As you would expect, the overall classroom climate will be a
resultant of the distributions engendered and the number of students falling in
each pattern.
Social Organization
From the point of view of field theory, systems are
self-contained or "local" regions embedded in larger systems (called
"surrounds"), which in turn are embedded in still larger, so-called
universal (or "general") systems. The relation between systems can be
either continuous or discontinuous. For example, at one level of systems,
behavior is related to the biochemistry of organs, nerves, muscles; at another
level, it is related to emotions. Thus, behavior is related to biochemical
activity and to emotional reactivity, but the relation is discontinuous: emotions
cannot be predicted on the basis of biochemical principles.
On the other hand, the relation between emotional
reactivity and the expression of values is continuous: one is predictable on
the basis of the other. "Social organization" refers to a system whose
components are interrelated in a continuous fashion. These components are out-
comes of regularized interactions between individuals sharing a daily round. We
can say that relationship activity creates social organization.
Relationship exchanges can be classified
functionally on the basis of "role behaviors." For example, parenting
(a role behavior) creates the unit of "family" (a social organization
unit). Knowing role behaviors in a community setting allows us to predict individual
behavior; as well, it allows us to identify individuals (e.g. "since A did
x, he must be the husband of B"). This matching of activity type (= role
behavior) and personal identity is called "role differentiation."
Role is a functional feature of social settings,
i.e. social settings specify the type of activity (role) that is appropriate
for particular individuals (= role prescriptions). These role behaviors are
learned in socialization through modeling, imitation, conditioning, and
training.
The principle that behavior is a function of the
setting can be phrased by saying that ethnodynamic forces ("setting
rules") generate psychodynamic outcomes (role behaviors). The relation
between the setting and the individual is called "role position."
Thus during one's daily round, an individual moves from one role position to
another as he changes places over time (i.e. as he moves from setting to
setting). Role positions are organized in a hierarchical structure. Differences
in hierarchical positions in a setting are referred to as "status
differentiation." In bureaucratic settings, status differentiation is
related to power, decision making, and latitude for action (e.g., duties,
responsibilities, rights, and privileges).
Status differentiation can be expressed by mapping
lines of relationships. For example, by listing all the people you know and
interact with--i.e. your "community connections"--you are thereby
making a map of status differentiation or role relationship.
"Connectivity" maps out the lines of interpersonal accessibility in a
social region; these lines of connections are also called "communication
networks." The shape of networks in a group indicate the group's
interaction structure (who talks to whom, when). Size, connectivity structure,
and attitudinal distribution are three major group factors that determine
social climate (= status, role).
Written with the collaboration of Dr. Diane Nahl
Virtual Intersubjectivity
Mental co-presence is a state of shared
consciousness called intersubjectivity.
Prior to the dying/resuscitation process intersubjectivity is co-constructed
with others through the physical body and the digital avatar (e.g., computer
mediated collaborative work and social networking). The material mind before
death always identifies with either one of these two bodies. The physical body
is made of chemical elements in solid and liquid form, while the digital avatar
(and all its versions and alts) is made of information units in an electronic
medium. When our mental body is in a state of sleep it identifies totally with
the dream body that is rezzed in that zone of the mental world that supports
the life of dream states.
When the identification of the material mental body
with the dream body is loosened somewhat, it is possible to experience moments
of being awake within our dream. In that case we are in a dual state of
consciousness, aware of the experiences of the dream body, and aware of the
experiences of the physical body. In this case the material mental body
identifies partially and simultaneously with the physical body and the dream
body. Similarly, when being absorbed with activity with the digital avatar in
virtual world, the material mental body can identify partially with the avatar
that moves around inworld, and partially with the physical body that is typing
at the keyboard and watching the screen. This dual consciousness involves the
physical and virtual world synchronously (simultaneously) and has been called
the imago effect. It has also been discussed as “double consciousness during
play” – see this video trailer of a conference of virtual world game
developers: http://2007.sxsw.com/video/movie_window.2007.php?dir=2007_trailers&id=1098
Here is a powerpoint
presentation from that conference titled The
Imago Effect: Identity in Games by Harvey Smith: http://www.witchboy.net/articles/the-imago-effect/
See also this blog’s summary notes of that game
developers conference: http://hellonline.com/blog/?p=106
Here are some excerpts from those notes:
Games let you express
yourself either intentionally or through customization. Players love
self-expression. Game avatars facilitate self-expression.
Participatory culture
reflects a primal human drive. The future is in more and more customization.
Some players assume a
different persona. Some players express an idealized aspect of themselves.
Avatars and Archetypes.
Avatars are masks. Looking into your imago (your idealized expression) People
tend to gravitate toward repeating patterns – archetypes. Archetypes provide
for easily differentiated roles.
The archetype IS the
goal. Examples: Sam Fisher vs. Superman. People intuitively get archetypes,
they already think along those lines.
What do players
identity choices mean? Avatar choice communicates a sense of personal identity
or mood state. No objective meaning. Helps the player develop an understanding
of self.
Identity is
multi-layered. Double-consciousness during play. What’s going on in the
player’s mind while they’re playing? The immersive fallacy – the player is the
character but they’re also themselves. Leaving a blank slate for the player to
project onto.
Game characters allow
us to temporarily restructure our view of self. Game experience can be intense
and immersive but the avatar is still just a puppet. The player is aware of the
avatar being a fictional construct. Many aspects to identity during game play.
Player is aware of several things at once (achieving goals, own feelings,
avatar’s feelings…)
Identity Absorption.
Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics): My car becomes an extension of my body,
it absorbs my sense of identity, I become the car. “She hit me! not “her car
hit my car!
Identity is
constructed. Judith Butler (Gender Trouble): Core aspects of identity are
constructed. Coherence of gender categories seems natural. Constructed via
repeated stylized acts. Establishes the appearance of coherent gender.
Gender/sexuality are performative. Identity is constructed by repeated stylized
acts.
The relationship that owners have with their avatar
is a new kind of joint consciousness that can be called virtual intersubjectivity. People engage in real world social
practices through the avatars and the virtual world in which these avatars “are
born.” Avatars are real. They exist. People say, “Do you have an alt?” which
refers to an alternate avatar. A
human being can own or possess any number of alts, or alternate avatars. A human being has only one virtual world
avatar and numerous alts.
It used to be thought that there were as many
virtual worlds as there were games and software platforms and hardware
interfaces. Each was a different virtual world, like World of Warcraft, Second Life, There.com, Uni-verse,
Protosphere, Multiverse,
move online, etc. (see Freitas).
Today in 2009 you still need to acquire an avatar for each game platform you
are interacting with. Things are beginning to change so that soon we will be
able to use one avatar to move across all virtual world platforms. Then people will be conscious of the fact
that there is only one virtual world.
Once you acquire an avatar you begin your artificial
consciousness. Your avatar engages in social interactions with other avatars
who exist in the same corner of the virtual world where your avatar is located.
Avatars see each other and can inspect each other with powerful zoom cameras.
In Second Life, all avatars have a name tag above their head. Clicking the tag
or the avatar’s body, calls out a Profile window that contains information put
there by the avatar owner. When one avatar is in the visual vicinity of
another, the two owners can chat by text or voice.
Each owner sees only the other’s avatar. The owners
don’t see each other. They can however communicate through chat and through
instant messaging.
People now see a new consciousness which is
synergistically produced through the computer interface. Our real world
sensory-motor system is now no longer the origin or input of our consciousness.
We are connected to the avatar symbiotically through substituting our real
world sensory and motor activity, to the avatar’s world. The avatar is now
symbiotically linked to the human being and serves as the new sensory-motor
consciousness. This is an artificial or informational intersubjectivity that
owners have with their avatar. The real world (RL) social interactions are now
carried out through this virtual world information environment called Second
Life (SL), which people around the world can access through the new
socio-biological technology.
The purpose of avatar psychology is to describe this
new individual avatar consciousness, and the new community consciousness that
is currently beginning with our generation. The next generation in about thirty
years will have far more advanced technology, including three dimensional walk
through ‘holo-decks’ which will replace the current
chat rooms technology. People will have an option of using the mouse-key
technique of moving their avatar in-world, as we do now, or, they could don a
digital wrap around and get to places by walking or flapping their arms like
wings. They could also give a hug to someone who is half way around the world
and is wearing a compatible digital suit. These
“multi-modal” ways of interacting break the barriers of physical distance and
ability limitations. For the first time human beings will have access to a
new type of community consciousness that is based on the construction of an
intersubjective consciousness that is independent of the physical body and the social
identity that are locked in from birth and socialization.
Having real social interactions through an avatar is
different from having real social interactions in the physical body, or what is
called “face to face” interaction. They are both real but different due to the
sensorimotor venue. With the physical body the interactions are context-bound,
while with the avatar body our interactions are context-free.
Context-bound
interactions are constrained by the real life
setting features that are present in that locale, such as age and gender of the
interactants, their relative status, their identity, the physical setting,
social practices, legal rules, etc. In contrast context-free interactions are relatively open and exploratory, with
built in opportunities to cross all the contextual boundaries of physical
encounters. In their Profiles, it is common for avatar owners to write that “I am here to explore, to have fun. IM me if
you want to chat.” Or, “I love to
dance, to meet new people, to exchange ideas. I’m open to anything, as long as
you are sincere.” Evidently it is a common practice for Second Life
residents to seek each other out socially and to carry out joint activities.
In Second Life the in-world environment consists of
individual islands and lands that can be rented or bought from the platform’s
owners known as Linden Lab. Once
you rent a piece of virtual real estate you can build on it. You can shop
around to buy everything you need – houses, furniture, plants and trees, shop
exhibits, animals, and media equipment to project your posters, photos, videos,
iPods, or other presentations. You can announce the opening date of your shop,
yard sale, skating rink, dance hall, or classroom, and other avatars will show
up at your place. Residents use a Search engine to find things and a teleport
facility to get anywhere listed on the virtual map.
This sophisticated virtual environment provides a
virtual venue for context-free interactions between anyone to anywhere around
the world. It is all free, except the Internet connection service to your
computer. Two residents whose physical bodies are separated by thousands of
miles can experience the intimacy of dancing together through each watching
their avatar dance with the other. Avatars are animated by scripts that you can
purchase and make available to any avatar located in a certain place. There is
accompanying streaming music that one can turn on or off.
There are various ways of exploring this experience.
In the first situation two strangers meet through their avatars and carry out
an online relationship, which includes dancing together. In the second
situation a married couple is separated through travel and they meet and dance
in SL through their avatars. In a third situation a married couple in the same
room each login with different computers and meet in-world to dance and other
activities, meanwhile talking to each other from across the room.
The experience of meeting in online chat rooms is
more restricted because there is nothing else to do there but to chat. In
Second Life people meet in places to engage in activities such as walking
together through a grotto, a shopping mall, a museum, or else, attending a
class or a wedding party. Joint activities are possible only in the virtual
world.
The virtual world enhances human opportunity by
freeing people from physically inborn limitations to their appearance, and by
liberating them from socially imposed limitations to their identity.
The removal of the usual physical and social
limitations allows the exploration and emergence of interactional activity that
is produced by different loves and
interests than the ones one ordinarily pursues in the physical world. For
instance avatars can simulate sexual activity with each other while the owners
are chatting together. There is no risk of sexually transmitted disease.
Attempts at rape, abduction, or violence are not effective because avatars can
transport out of any place at any time. In this respect, women avatars are as
safe in-world as men avatars.
Our loves and interests are organic operations in
the affective circulatory system of
the mental body. There is an endless variety of loves
that are potentially active in the affective system of the mental body. This
endless affective activity is maintained in operation by the inflow of mental heat dust (or “love
substance”) that fills the mental world and in which our mental body is
immersed. Similarly, there is a corresponding cognitive activity that is
maintained by the inflow of mental light dust (or “truth substance”) from the
surrounding mental ether atmosphere.
The love substance from the mental sun that we
receive through the affective circulatory system supplies the mental “food”
that the respiratory sensorimotor systems need to function. Our love or
interest (A) energizes particular thoughts (C) that provide us with
consciousness of the environment (S). When we desire (A) to establish contact
with a friend we pick up the phone and dial (S) the right number (C). The act
of dialing is through the neuro-muscular sensorimotor system (S). It is the
effect caused by the knowledge of the friend’s number (C), and this knowledge
is aroused and maintained by the desire to establish contact (A).
The desire or love or motive to establish contact (A)
is an organic operation in the affective (A) system that is maintained by
mental heat from the mental sun. The cognitive (C) knowledge of how to dial the
right number is available through mental light from the mental sun. The
consciousness of loves and feelings (A), or motives and intentions (A), is
available through mental heat from the mental sun of eternity.
The activity of loves in the affective circulatory
system is unique to each mental body and individual consciousness. The same
mental dust particles of heat and light enter the affective and cognitive
systems of each mental body, but there occurs an adaptation process that is
unique to each person. Unique personality or self means unique adaptation to
the same input. In daily life with the physical body people normally oscillate between
undistorted and distorted adaptations to the incoming love and truth substance.
We experience this in our material consciousness as mood swings between
positive and negative mental states. In positive mental states we are conscious
of being confident, happy, content, hopeful, effective, peaceful, altruistic,
community spirited, striving to practice the personal virtues of honesty,
sincerity, dependability, productivity, usefulness, and a commitment to
rational and healthy lifestyles practices. These are the positive healthy “heavenly”
character traits that correspond to the celestial order that is built into the
mental dust particles of heat and light. Mental heat particles have a built in propensity
or striving for conjunction with mental light particles that correspond or are
compatible. This built in mutual attraction is constantly active in our mental
body, resulting in the affective “circulatory” system to work synergistically
with the cognitive “respiratory” system. These two together produce the
activity in the sensorimotor “neuro-skeletal” system, which we experience as
living consciousness.
Every love in the affective “circulatory” system of
the mental body remains as unused nourishment in the blood. These are potential
loves in endless numbers waiting to be born and live in consciousness. All
loves exist and live in our consciousness, and nowhere else. Loves continuously
strive to become actualized in consciousness, and some do and some do not,
continuing to wait in “potential” form. Those that are realized are called
consummated loves. These supply us with all the enjoyments and pleasures of
living. Loves that come out into existence in our consciousness are those that we
favor and cling to above other loves. It is our subjective attachment to
specific loves that ‘make it’ into our consciousness where they are
“consummated” in a variety of sensorimotor consciousness forms such as delight,
enjoyment, pleasure, contentment, relief, “good feeling”, “being in heaven,” etc.
Every person inherits tendencies to favor certain
loves and enjoyments. The list is long and different for each person. Think
about the foods and tastes you enjoy and prefer. Many of them are inherited and
you can observe a similar love with your family members and your larger ethnic
community of origin. When you travel you can observe more easily how people who
live together and intermarry, share similar loves for food, appearance, clothing,
architecture, language pattern, recreation activities like dance, singing, and
sports. These shared community activities and lifestyles are produced by their
shared loves. There is an overlap in group or community consciousness through
these loves and their actualizations in the consciousness of each individual, and
in their living and interacting together.
Your lifestyle loves are inherited and acquired in
your socialization. Some of these loves are “heavenly” and some are “hellish.” The heavenly loves
are undistorted adaptations from the inflow of mental heat particles into the
affective circulatory system. The hellish loves are distorted adaptations from
the inflow of mental heat particles into the affective circulatory system. People
oscillate between these two types of loves, clinging in one moment to an
undistorted adaptation to love, and to a distorted one in the next moment. One
moment we feel hopeful, positive, and pleasant to others; the next moment we
get a phone call, and suddenly we feel distressed, negative, and belligerent to
the people around. One moment we are thinking about how somebody likes us, and
we feel good, the next moment we think about how much money we owe on our
credit card, and we start thinking about the negative consequences and how
painful it’s going to be.
Undistorted
adaptation to mental heat particles in the affective circulatory system leads
us to think thoughts that are rational and consistent with positive
loves, such as the love of building and benefiting community, the desire to
maintain an altruistic orientation, the motivation to cooperate in the development
and evolution of the human race towards ever greater perfection.
But distorted mental heat particles in the
affective circulatory system leads us to think thoughts that are irrational and
consistent with negative loves such as the love of benefiting self
instead of building community, the love of egotism instead of altruism, the motivation
to sabotage the evolution towards perfection by clinging instead to traits and
enjoyments that lead to devolution and retrogression from more human to less
human.
While we oscillate in daily life between undistorted
and distorted loves, we are unable to clearly distinguish between what is
heavenly and what is hellish in our own character traits. There is an inherited and powerful tendency for each of us to think of
what we enjoy as being “heavenly” and good, and what we dislike or hate as
hellish and bad. The only way out of this mental trap is to raise our
material consciousness to rational consciousness.
Two discrete levels of consciousness are available
to us through the sensorimotor “neuro-skeletal” system of our mental body. The
lower form is called material consciousness (V), while the higher form is
called rational consciousness (VI). After resuscitation a third level of
consciousness becomes accessible called celestial consciousness (VII) (see Diagrams).
Second Life Affordances for Social Practices by Residents
Satisficing
Affordances
Visual scenery and auditory sounds surrounding one’s
avatar
Name Tag always in place above the avatar’s head
Visual appearance and movement style of avatars in
that location (zoom available for inspection)
Ability to see the location of other avatars who may
come and go
Seeing avatars who are grouping together, sitting or
chatting, while others walk by like strangers
Information Note Cards from owner of an object or
place to the visiting
avatar
YAH maps that also show the location of other
avatars in that location
Division of Buildings, Malls, Streets, Lands
according to Regions specializing in Services, Interests or Content
Profile information for each avatar
Receiving Newsletters, Announcements, and
Invitations
Price information of items for sale in shops
Help instructions and Support Wiki
IMessaging
text and voice
Optimizing Affordances for Normal
SL Practices by Residents
Downloading the SL application for free and immediately
becoming a
Resident, logging in and obtaining an avatar
Moving the avatar and controlling its direction and
speed (also Flying)
Dressing the avatar and modifying its appearance,
height, shape, etc.
Controls for camera location, zoom, and panning, using
mouse and keyboard
commands
Teleporting the avatar to linked, landmarked, or
mapped locations
Sending a teleport location for other avatars to
appear together in that Location
Creating a Landmark (bookmark) at the location of
the avatar
Joining Groups and Inviting Friends
Obtaining the Profile information of an avatar by
right clicking on it
Typing or talking in private or public channels with
Residents present in one area
Attending Conferences with other avatars by
professional Residents such as librarians, designers, fashion consultants,
models, motivational speakers, business meetings, etc.
Buying and selling SL currency called Linden Dollars
Buying things for the avatar -- clothes, skins,
appearance, gestures,
emotional expressions, AOs, and HUDs which are
attachments that provide special abilities, prims
that are used to Build in SL objects, buildings, meeting rooms, oceans,
fountains, movie theaters, gardens, classrooms, banks, etc.
Search engine by category including Daily Events and
Showcases
Building things for avatars, donating them or
selling them to other Residents for Linden Dollars (lands, buildings, malls,
skating rinks for avatars, grottos, replicating virtual cities people can
recognize and explore through the avatar, libraries, schools, credit courses,
counseling centers, entertainment, etc.)
Teaching a classroom of avatars whose Residents are
scattered at distant locations.
Using private and public IMessaging
and voice chat with any Resident online
Project YouTube, other videos, or movies within SL
Show Web pages within SL
Streaming audio sounds, music, and radio broadcasts
installed within each built location (shop, park, room)
Overall, SL is a technological affordance that makes
it possible for real social interactions to take place. It is a multi-user
virtual world that allows logged on users to interact with each other through
the avatar affordance that each user is given. The visual screen appearance is
that avatar interacts with avatar, but in fact it is a real user that is
interacting with another real user through moving the avatar or camera
movement, and through oral and written chat. These real social interactions in
SL are governed by user practices throughout the spectrum of society in first
life, which SL is modeling as a virtual environment for avatars controlled by
users. Users care about what their avatar looks like and avatar fashion and
shopping malls have a strong visible presence. Social identity in SL is
expressed through avatar appearance, facial expressions, gestures, movement,
grace, skills, and abilities. The motivation to acquire and maintain these
avatar properties involves social interactions with other avatar owners. A new
type of social interactionism takes place through avatars. I’m interested in
research that can keep track and assess this new type of social interactions.
In previous research Nahl formulated a social
biological perspective on technology. The affective and cognitive systems
operate together to manage the sensorimotor system that is symbiotic with the
interface. I started using this model to describe how we can better understand
the human-computer synergy in the virtual world known as Second Life (SL). In
my conceptualization the avatar is a substitute for the sensorimotor system in
the physical world. Users in SL (called “Residents”) manage their avatars to
transact with each other many types of everyday social activities such as
walking in shopping malls and buying things with SL currency (called “Linden
dollars”) that can be bought on Web sites or from banks located in SL.
The social biological technology seems to be more
evident in SL because the avatar in virtual world replaces the sensorimotor
system in the physical world. When visually observing what avatars are doing we
can have an objective index of both the cognitive and affective procedures
being practiced by the users who manage the movement of their avatars.
Describing why the avatar is doing something gives an index of the affective
procedures of the user. Describing how the avatar is doing something gives an
index of the user’s cognitive procedures. For instance, suppose the avatar we
are following around is sitting on a chair in a room with other avatars,
including one avatar playing the guitar on a stage and singing, (which is a daily
event in SL), then we have an affective index of the user who manages that
avatar. The user’s cognitive activity is indexed by the details in the
description we have when following the avatar, namely, teleporting to a known
location with a landmark at a particular local time in SL (which PST), sitting
on an empty chair available, turning the local chat and audio on.
The virtual world created by users in SL is
dedicated towards replicating the socio-biological environment of “first life.”
When users enter the world of SL they leave behind their ordinary physical body
and social environment, and put on an avatar agent in a digital world. To put
on the avatar users have to give up their physical sensorimotor system which
ordinarily serves as the interface between the physical on the outside and the
cognitive-affective on the inside. In the digital world of SL we need to put on
a digital sensorimotor system, which is the avatar. Now we can see, hear, and
touch digital objects in a 3D digital environment. Our affective-cognitive
system on the inside is now able to operate in a digital world through putting
on the digital sensorimotor system in the form of the avatar.
In SL users are creating an ever expanding social
world in which they can live, be active, and operate through their avatars.
Because avatars in SL are lifelike users experience a powerful urge or
motivation to identify with the avatar and to reify the social world in which
avatars live and relate to each other. One of the social practices of SL users
is to personalize one’s avatar. Massive effort is exerted to manage the
appearance of one’s avatar. A giant shopping industry exists in SL that caters
to the appearance of avatars, including skin tones and shapes, body parts,
clothing, fashion, accessories, etc., as well as to the appearance of the
environment, trees, flowers, buildings, art, gathering places, entertainment,
education, business establishments, etc.
Putting on an avatar sensorimotor system is an
indication of the increasing symbiosis in the human-computer relationship. The
social biological technology is becoming increasingly symbiotic as human life
becomes immersed in the metaverse. The affective-cognitive system operating
within is entering into a greater synergy with the outward physical technology
as we continue to put on more digital sensorimotor systems. Studying how users
behave through avatars in SL can give us better understanding of how to manage
the growth of the expanding social biological technology.
Observing Stages of Acculturation
in Becoming a Resident of Second Life
Second Life (SL) is a Web based application that
users download for free. It allows them to login and acquire an avatar that can
be controlled by the arrow keys and the mouse. The avatar on the screen walks
around any place in Second Life that has been developed for public use. Other
avatars can be seen on the screen, each carrying a name tag above the head. One
can obtain information about any avatar in view by right clicking on it and
reading the Profile information that has been provided by the Resident who owns
the avatar. Avatars can bump into each other or engage in written or voice
chat. They can give each other objects such as a note card with information,
items of clothing or furniture, or a HUD which is a device for making the
avatar make gestures and move so that one can see avatars, alone or in couples,
dancing to music that is broadcast at the place, or skating, sitting on a
Flying Carpet that is used for navigating around a place, facility, or one of
the many Regions of Second Life. Each Region and place within it has a Teleport
location so that avatars can arrive to any place they wish. There is a search
engine that provides teleport links, called SLURLS, to the search results.
Avatars shop for avatar clothes using Linden Dollars that the Resident Owner
can buy online at an exchange rate of 200 Lindens to one U.S. dollar (in
September 2008). Avatars also join interest Groups whose members receive email
announcements from that group. Random logins throughout August and September
2008 indicated that about 60,000 Residents are online at any one time. A total
of 1.2 million Residents login each month.
The search engine in Second Life indicates that in
September 2008 there were various Libraries active in SL. [add some more
details here]. Businesses. Real Estate. Banks. etc. add some brief details]
The virtual world in Second Life is an
intersubjective consciousness that mirrors the real world or “first life.”
People joining in 2008 are pioneers. Informal queries indicate that most people
have not heard of, and less have seen it. Thousands of people now sign up for
it with almost no idea of what to expect. New user acquire their avatar at the
first login and one is introjected suddenly into a new world that is
fascinating to explore. The virtual world is so absorbing that users postpone
taking tutorials, wanting to get going immediately, like new skates, or a new
bike, or a car. For the next few hours of online presence users continue to
explore haphazardly the control mechanisms by which they are able not only to
move the avatar but to use it as a vehicle for social exchanges such as
chatting, shopping, asking for or providing help, attending a conference,
making a business sale, skating in a romantic park, etc. These social relations
are integrated into the biology of the avatars. All objects such as shops,
shoes, jewellery, skins, libraries, learning centers,
beach side houses, classrooms, real estate offices, etc. are constructed by
users and designers active in Second Life. Constructed objects called Prims can be copied, given, sold, and used for digitally
building objects, buildings, shops, or parks, beaches, and lands.
The first few hours of becoming a Second Life
Resident is a period of acculturation. Users learn by participating in the
ongoing practices that create the meaningful and content filled
intersubjectivity in this virtual world. Self-witnessing data (Nahl, 19xx) was used to analyze the stages of acculturation
during the first few exploratory hours without tutorials.
Stage 1: Discovering the Noticing Practices.
When avatars arrive to the same location for a group
meeting, they plop unto the scene from teleporting. Frequently an oncoming
avatar plops on top of another, or in close proximity, either touching or
nearly. When avatars “touch” their bodies overlap in various ways. SL social
practices in standing and sitting distance, reflect those in the real world
with physical bodies. Four categories of avatar distance are practiced by SL
Residents:
Public
distance: Beaches,
fields, gardens, malls, streets, shops
Crowded
distance: Inside
smaller buildings or halls
Together
distance Group
gathering, sitting in a classroom, having a dialog
Close
distance Landing
on top of each other, dancing, skating, couple walking
Acculturating in SL involves becoming aware of
noticing practices. These specific noticing procedures are performed through by
owners through the artificial intersubjectivity they each have with their
avatar sensorimotor interface. Avatars can see distance from each other and are
expected to practice the distance categories in evidence to all. For instance,
if an avatar plops on top of another avatar or rezzes too close, the “normal”
behavior would be to move away as soon as rezzing is complete, an operation
that takes between 4 to 10 seconds. I saw an avatar land on top of the desk in
front of an avatar sitting on a chair at a conference meeting. He could be seen
standing there for about 60 seconds, which of course was visible to all
present. This was satisficed (SCA) by those present in various ways, e.g.:
“Why
isn’t he moving away! What’s wrong with him?”
“He
is not moving away. How annoying. It must be a newbie.”
“He’s
still there. Probably he is reading the chat window, so he’s not aware.”
Newbies are recognized when the social behavior of
their avatar is following a different procedure than the group norm in the
setting where the interaction takes place. Noticing practices are cognitively
complex and affectively urgent and intense for newbies, as well as for oldbies who are involved in a new bio-technical social
setting.
Noticing practices are interdependent with cognitive
and affective procedures, as is shown by the following data segments:
Feeling
foolish for not seeing the Search button after months of use
Feeling
foolish for not seeing the zoom slider on the Map window after months of use
Affective
load in exploring Menus
Selective
seeing to reduce affective load
Feeling
uncertainty, doubt, confusion, frustration at the meaninglessness of
explanations or names of buttons or options or tutorials
Motivated
to note and process the name of avatars in close presence
Motivated
to always notice how the avatar is dressed
Feeling
embarrassed when forgetting to notice if Talk is being broadcast in a place
Feeling
indignant that someone has declined one’s offer for Friendship
What is worth noticing is a satisficing issue whose
limits are set by the social practices in any particular setting in avatar
land. SL practices are different in public places, gathering places, libraries,
or hosted socials. Each place or social occasion has associated with it
specific “local” practices, as evidenced by examining discourse exchanges
recorded in Local Chat windows. For instance, see this
exchange.
Individual avatars recognize each other as belonging
“together” for some particular event or social occasion. There is formed a
self-consciousness of co-constructing a “group event.” This momentary avatar group intersubjectivity is added
on top of the permanent individual
artificial intersubjectivity each participant maintains with its own
avatar. To maintain co-presence each avatar contributes to the developing group
intersubjectivity. This requires precisely timed social interventions by
moving, sitting, or typing into the common local chat window.
Since there is such a magnitude of issues to keep
track of in the performance of group co-presence, the noticing practices of
Residents in SL are very complex. Affective load is high because the emotional
intensity and involvement are speeded up by the fast pace of multiple
interactions in multiple windows simultaneously. The ongoing social practices
determine the affective load and cognitive overload experienced in any one
situation. Overall, the affective and cognitive load of owning an avatar and
being a regular Residents, will be balanced out by the love and enthusiasm that
Residents have for living part of their lives in Second Life. High positive
motivation and reward counterbalance the relatively high affective and
cognitive load involved in active participation.
Noticing practices in avatar land are operated
within limits that are specified by satisficing procedures (A). The values (A)
shared by participants for specific occasions and events (S), set evaluational rating limits for what is
“enough” to count as ordinary membership by an avatar. This affective satisficing judgment (A) is
practiced in common by participants, once they are acculturated Residents. Any
avatar behavior or setting information that departs from this commonly held
limit, is immediately noticed as abnormal. However variations within this limit
are normal. For instance, one avatar may notice that another avatar has a new
skin or different hair. Other avatars may not notice this because the personal
change is still within the limit of what is ordinary. I once attended a
discussion seminar around a table when in plops an avatar sporting large angel
wings. He took several minutes trying to sit in a chair around the table. These
inept moves were satisficed by the others as strange and somewhat annoying. At
last the avatar shed its wings and sat in a chair. Carrying large wings to a
meeting is outside the limits of normal behavior for that setting. Similarly,
showing up at a dance gathering as a black cat or an egg plant is abnormal
avatar behavior. Sanctions include being left alone, not being talked to, being
asked to leave, being forcefully “ejected” from an area.
Stage 2: Discovering the Appraising Practices
How much are Linden dollars worth
When should I accept an offer of becoming Friends
Who is doing the talking to whom
What Region is this in
Stage 3: Discovering the Value-Attaching Practices.
Which objects are better designs so are worth more
How do others react when my avatar is just standing
there
I enjoy the ambiance in this place. People are nice.
Some avatars are rude
Etc.
Stage 4: Discovering the Intentionality Practices
I need to get emoticons for my avatar
I need to make an outfit box that I can easily put
on my avatar
I want to change the lighting to Daytime
I’m going to put voice chat on
I need to buy more Linden dollars
I’m going to join this Group
Etc.
Stage 5: Discovering the Planning Practices.
I can leave my avatar in this place for next time I
log on
I will find out when they have the next tutorial on
Building
I’m going to take a Snapshot of my avatar to upload
to my Facebook Page
Etc.
Stage 6: Discovering the Executing Practices
People sometimes reflect on the rapid pace of life
in the real world. As soon as they enter the avatar world of artificial
intersubjectivity, people experience an increase in pace by a magnitude of 4 or
5. Avatars are much faster than our physical bodies. They run and fly through a
street or large building, and they have a camera that owners can manipulate to
explore objects from afar, zooming in, and going around corners and inside
buildings. Avatars carry invisible HUDs and AOs attached to them by their
owners, that offer a menu of choices in animating the movement of the avatar,
such as gestures, facial expressions, stances, poses, rate of changing stances
and poses, personal radar system that displays the names of and distances of
all avatars within a specified range. There are also rules to keep track as
each place an avatar teleports to, has local rules regarding behavior of
avatars in public places, including displaying weapons, griefing or interfering
with the motion of other avatars in range, flying, building, etc.
These are only some of the things the avatar owner
needs to keep track in the artificial intersubjectivity, so that the rate of
information processing with artificial intersubjectivity is more intense both
cognitively and affectively. Additional cost in affective and cognitive load is
experienced with multiplication factors or intensifiers such as the social
demands of the situation in which the avatar is present. For instance, it is a
common practice in gatherings or meetings to use the Local Chat window, so that
whatever anyone types appears on the screen of everyone in range. This results
in a crisscross of dialog, or multilogue, which
requires the participants to keep track of several topical development strings
simultaneously, and respond appropriately to satisfice the practices of
sociality and budding friendships. There are even additional simultaneous
dialogs going on in separate chat windows, that are dyadic or personal, being
seen only on the screens of the two participants. The separate chat windows are
separated by Tabs indicating the other’s avatar name.
Participants have to keep track of all these strings
of topic exchanges, public and dyadic, and not make mistakes in sending a
comment to the wrong window, which can be embarrassing and a social faux pas,
perhaps even an offense. Happily, chat windows can be saved so that avatar
owners can later go over them at leisure. Some things need to be answered
immediately. For example, in a group gathering where avatars have been present
for awhile, an offer of friendship to someone present can be answered within
two or three seconds. If the answer does not arrive back quickly, or very
quickly, there is present a disturbing ambiguity of information, as exemplified
in these self-witnessing data fragments:
Cynthia
didn’t answer (S) my offer (S)for friendship. I’m wondering (A) why she hasn’t
(C)?
Arnold
declined (S) my offer (S) of friendship. I wonder (A) what’s (C) wrong?
Shall
I (A) offer friendship (S) to her (C)? I don’t know (A). I better (A) wait
(CS).
He
offered(S) me (S) friendship (C), but (C) I declined (S). Didn’t know enough
about him (CA).
Well
(A) if (C) she offered (S) me friendship(C), I’d accept (A) right away (S).
Data Gathering Form Using the Model of Social-Biological Technology
The six Stages discussed above can be assessed by
this concurrent self report form.
Switch between your SL browser and your word
processor as you accomplish an intended task inworld, or as you explore places
and activities. Answer each question by describing what actually is happening
in the event in terms of your perceptions, thoughts, reactions, and intentions.
Sometimes you need to reconstruct what happened by redoing it and noticing the
same thing as you experience it the second time.
Avatar Psychology Self-Witnessing Report
From: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy29/avatar-psychology-g29.htm
Date and SL Time:____________
Episode
1: You are doing something and you notice something.
E.g.:
You teleport to a gathering and you land on top of one the avatars standing
there.
- Noticing:
Describe what you noticed. How did it come to your attention? Were you looking for it or was it unexpected and new? What were you doing when it came to your attention?
E.g.:
The other avatar was just standing in the middle of the landing platform.
You’re supposed to move away immediately after you land. My avatar was still ruthing, but I could clearly see the other avatar.
- Appraising:
Explain what you made of it when you first noticed it. What meaning did you make of it? How did you interpret it?
E.g.:
I landed on top of the other avatar. It’s an expected event when avatars arrive
to the same place at the same time using the identical teleport address.
- Value
Attaching:
How did you evaluate it? Give answers to each of the following explaining why: Is it something useful to you or not? Are you surprised or not? Are you pleased or not? Are you grateful or not? Is it something you feel like telling others about it or not? Use rating scales.
E.g.:
On a 1 to 10 scale:
Embarrassing: 5
Humiliating: 4
Aversiveness: 6
Urgency: 7
Worried what others would think: 8
Other?:
I
felt humiliated and wanted to repair the situation urgently and immediately. I
was afraid what other might think about me because of it.
- Intending:
What intention are you forming as a result of evaluating it? Give answers to each of the following explaining why. Do you have the desire to do something about it? Do you intend to behave differently now? Are you motivated to do something with it? Use rating scales.
E.g.:
I need to act instantly.
I need to do something about it now.
Quick, what do I need to do.
- Planning:
Do you have a plan to do something about it now or in the future? Do you know a strategy by which to proceed? Will you be seeking more information for this plan?
E.g.:
I need to move away.
I need to hold the arrow key down.
I need to apologize in the chat window.
- Executing:
Describe how you engage the system using its optimizing affordances. What do you do in the interaction with the system – select options, press keys, give commands, search somewhere else?
E.g.:
Press the upper arrow, hold it down till I move out of the way.
Type “So sorry” in the local chat window.
Add additional comments and explanations here:
(end)
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