watch this spot for benji's take on the Clinton and Trump on Lauer's NBC vehicle, coming soon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC2n-MYkXBY
watching around a quarter hour or more of this, both sides of the fence, it's tighter than a mofo -- going to be a very close race, just look at my wedding photo why don't you
separately, ignore this section if you're totally not in the mood for arguments about potential afterlifes like reincarnation or eternal hell, whatever: It's basically some dialog between myself and a buddy who is a preacher in Swedenborg's 'new church'. Todd can fix my 50cc scooter Colleen, plus he's already helped me with some small things on my car, he's a good guy and so is his wife, she's Canadian so I can practice French language with her, my wife can play social tennis with her, whatever. I would totally alienate a buddy if I felt that it was more important to state my beliefs clearly even if that's obnoxious to whoever.
Todd says:
The common example people look to when trying to validate reincarnation via the Bible is that of John the Baptist. In Malachi 3:1 the Lord tells us, “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me” and that “I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes” (Malachi 4:5). However, John the Baptist is not Elijah himself, but rather he operates with the “spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17). When later questioned directly whether or not he is Elijah, John states, “No, I am not” (John 1:21). As a result we can safely assert that the Bible does not teach reincarnation.
I reply:
With regard to Elijah. It is common for Jews nowadays to celebrate him. Just because Jews don't understand reincarnation any more than moslems do is not a reason to put either on a pedestal. In fact, one look at their problems in the middle east shows you how far both are from Swedenborg's innermost spiritual heaven where spiritual wisdom is strongest. The Nazis didn't believe in reincarnation either and Elijah didn't save the Jews from hitlers gas tanks and genocide.
Swedenborg repeatedly discusses how embarrassed people are in the afterlife by their beliefs on earth which they recall perfectly well, ie with regard to cosmogenesis, etc. You're going to experience that yourself with regard to your idea about the soul being generated in the female reproductive organ which is incredibly ignorant and will certainly be a cause of embarrassment to you according to Swedenborg. Swedenborg states that soul personality's are not admitted to heaven until they are instructed and disabused of their false beliefs which are inadmissible in heaven. Your humble friend is happy to give you a headstart on that and save you some embarrassment, however that can't be forced into you like the Spanish inquisition forced Sephardic Jews to convert to 'christianity', Swedenborg rightfully asserts that freedom is essential to regeneration.
Eternity is a mighty long time and you would be hard pressed to write a thousand words on how you see your own eternity playing out. Don't you think you'd get bored of heaven and hell and eventually want to experience the challenge and potential for growth and mastery that only comes from life in the physical world? Be it this planet or some other similar one? What is it about heaven or hell that you wish would save you from the torment of monotony and boredom you would eventually find there? What do you expect to do there? Keep Jesus cool with a fan? Sing songs, play Nintendo?
Do you know that Swedenborg states that fools are rendered silent and move around lopsidedly and stupidly in heaven as they cannot foist their nonsense onto anyone there? That's what hell is for!
To eternity is a long time, easy to banter the expression, Swedenborg is short on explanations of how it plays out though.
You still have not explained why it wouldn't be better to gas all of earth's children and thus vouchsafe them safe passage to heaven For eternity as you whimsically put it. Maybe making mistakes and experiencing some hell is better than a planet where all human life is eradicated to extinction for the sake of saving people from hell like some kind of over protective mother. Maybe hitler and the nazis wanted to save the Jewish people from hell by stopping them from sinning excessively, maybe that's what they meant by final solution. Yes, it's puerile to entertain warped and stupid notions.
Yes sirree bob, you sure have some funny ideas! Here in Sydney we have an expression: if all of blacktown jumped off the Sydney harbor bridge, would you? I wouldn’t! All of America and china and india and Australia could go ahead and jump off it and I still wouldn’t jump off it! But if peer pressure did move me to believe something, then maybe that’s why reincarnation seems like something believable, since most of the world’s population believes in it anyway, Buddhists, hindus, etc
Why doesn’t sweedenborg talk about seeing and talking to Jesus in Heaven, since he is so fond of Him? And why doesn’t he mention the Buddhists and hindus in any detail? Why didn’t he visit some more advanced aliens’ heaven and get some technology from them so we can all travel around faster than the speed of light! Sure Sweedenborg is a great soul, a mahatma, as the hindus say, no doubt, and his revelations constitute a genuine case of mystical illumination which the buddists aspire to after their master Buddha achieved his own kind of illumination under the boddhi tree.
In short, everything of the nature of denial of reincarnation goes against the teachings of the gospels and there’s nothing in sweedenborg’s writings that I have seen that warrant it either. It was once fashionable to consider the earth as flat and today’s quantum physicists are in the fashion of considering travel faster than the speed of light as impossible also, this is all just ignorance.
If those weren’t compelling enough arguments for you, be aware that sweedenborg reports that in heaven the angels marvel and are shocked by the beliefs of the people of the Christian church, especially given they have the bible to read. He further states that there is only a ‘slender hope’ in heaven that anything good will come of the Christian church. Neither did he state that he had a mission to found a new church, he merely states the truth: that God has seen fit for him to witness various aspects of heaven and hell and report it.
Finally: the balance of facts. You know that the ancient Egyptians were one of the most advanced civilizations on earth, they had primitive batteries and light bulbs, made excellent beer, had the number pi written down in their pyramids to thousands of decimal places, they had advanced culture and art in many practical fields of human existence such as sculpting, furniture making (carpentry), fashion such as jewellery, etc........... reincarnation was a common belief with the masses there same as it was in Palestine during the time of Jesus’ ministry which is self-evident in the gospels. The Egyptians believed, taught and represented in their hieroglyphs that the soul of the man (it’s ba and ka) would be weighed and measured (depicted by a heart in hieroglyphs) against a feather – representing truth ‘maat’ in Egyptian). Sweedenborg rightly points out, perhaps, that hell is founded on adultery. Jesus stated something like just by looking at a bikini hottie on the beach and lusting after her is committing adultery in the heart. Therefore, I would think it’s better to be pure of heart and not an accidental adulterer or adulterer by intent, and not profess a belief in reincarnation, perhaps, then to be a believer in reincarnation and by a serial adulterer which is the case with some people.
A man’s ka and ba undergoes various changes ‘to eternity’ so a soul personality may profess a belief in reincarnation in one lifetime, and then not believe in it in a future lifetime, generally just due to the common belief of the time. Certainly in north America, north of mexico it is more commonly believed that it is good to carpet bomb southeast asia and not profess a belief in the law of eternal return than the contrary, that isn’t necessarily a good thing though, but religions and beliefs change.
You understand that sweedenborg talks about the old church and how faith and love were alive and well there and he gives names of various gradations of these ancient races of man as they appear in genesis. What sweedenborg church people do not understand, generally, however, is that these tribes are the same ones referred to by mystics that write of ancient atlantis and Lemuria. Lemuria was a supercontinent that was sunk under the pacific ocean by volcanic fire. Only Australia, California/Oregon/western Washington and a few other places remain of it today. Australia’s aborigines are relics of the ancient lemurian races. Some of these races, spanning millions of years time, were so advanced that they manifested the same goodness and purity here on our Earth as do Angels of very high levels of heaven such as sweedenborg’s first or second level of heaven (where souls are wiser than the outer levels). This is what sweedenborg’s ancient church (on earth) refers to (in a small part), however sweedenborg doesn’t go into detail about it.
Sweedenborg is not the only mystic to achieve illumination and therefore great wisdom, we already mentioned Buddha. Jacob Boehme is another prominent case. Sweedenborg states that the muslims generally go to heaven and many catholics, generally to hell. But I would bet my bottom dollar, sooner or later, sweedenborg will reincarnate as some modern day American that professes Catholicism as his religion due to his childhood education and upbringing. Regardless, you can see if moslems get into heaven with their jihads and chopping off of hands and polygamy, certainly Buddha and the Buddhists are going to heaven!
Todd says:
When we look to an eastern view of reincarnation we can quickly see the Bible discounting it as a legitimate possibility. Matthew 25:46 specifically tells us that believers go on to eternal life while unbelievers go onto eternal punishment, with the key word being “eternal”. Similarly, Jesus told the criminal on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43), and mentions nothing along the lines of, "You will have another chance to live a life on this earth."
I reply:
As stated to you yesterday in person, my understanding is that Jesus did not get a pass from his dad in Gethsamane when he pleaded to avoid the bitter prospect of cruxifixion. Instead he went off to eternal punishment: getting cruxified on the cross. I told you that my understanding is that this is the punishment he faced for actions he perpetrated as a conqueror and virtually invincible reformer/general: alexander the great. This is not something i’ve read somewhere but something that has occurred to me personally, whether true or false. The notion that Jesus is paying for the sins for millions of souls on earth that incarnate after him, such as you and I, is only true in the sense that they have some direction from Him on how to act in their own lives, including turning the other cheek and letting their enemies best them.
So you see, eternal punishment applies to everyone, even the son of God. That is why he is punished on the cruxixion: because you’re right about eternal punishment. The notion that Jesus is the only son of God is not actually true in absolute terms. Putting aside countless other planets where this scenario has played out, on our own planet, the famous chinese philosopher Lao-Tse is said to have been born of immaculate conception. Most likely this was one of Jesus’ earlier incarnations. There is a black-skinned sage, Jasper, also said to have been born like this and the Hindus feted Krishna was also born in this manner, to a virgin mother. The notion that only Jesus was born to a virgin mother is a white supremacist notion and utterly fallacious, along with the notion that Nazis are doing jewish children a favour by gassing them to death and thus saving them from hell.
Jesus told the criminal he would be in paradise with him possibly because he thought the criminal would avoid hell for his sins, possibly due to paying compensation enough by being cruxified, can’t say. Regardless the gospels do not say that jesus died on the cross but that he gave up the holy ghost, which is the same holy spirit that descended in the form of a dove during John’s baptism of him. Jesus did not die on the cross but came near to death and then resuscitated himself to perfect health in the few days after he was retrieved from the cross by “Helios”, his mystery school of which he was the dean, consisting of 12 disciples (Iscariot was replaced), eacho of whom had 11 disciples of their own, his entire school consisting of 144 members. Jesus went on to live a very long and advanced life in the Mount Carmel region of northern Palestine, probably living over 100 years of age. Some legends have it that he married mary magdeline and had children with her however I don’t know anything about this myself so wouldn’t offer an opinion.
If you really are interested in the truth, get a copy of the Mystical life of Jesus by h. Spencer lewis, amorc books and the secret doctrines of Jesus by h. Spencer lewis amorc books. Sweedenborg states that many church people are not interested in anything about the church or its ideas but only with social standing or lifestyle that if affords. Each person, according to sweedenborg, is examined in the afterlife as to his true beliefs and true motivations and he keeps nothing a secret. I know personally that I will have to give an account in the afterlife of uncharitable thoughts towards others as often I absolutely hate people that force their mobile phone conversations onto me. I am heartened though, by Jesus’ example in the Temple where he gets ‘hands on’ and forcefully throws people out and manhandles people, although his constant scorn of the Pharisees and sadducees is heartening in this respect.
Todd says:
There are at least two ways in which the Writings address the issue of the chronology of the soul’s creation and consequent attachment to a body. The first is in reference to the actual moment of conception where we are told,
It is well known that a person's soul begins in the mother's ovum, and is after that developed in her womb, and is there surrounded with a tiny body, which indeed is such that by means of it the soul is able to function properly in the world into which it is born. (AC 3570.4)
Therefore a person’s soul does not exist in any form before conception, and cannot properly function in the world without a body. Further, that a soul stays with that person forever. The Writings give no credence to the idea that after death a soul can enter back into another body, in fact calling it an, “absurd notion that someone's soul can cross over into someone else” (TCR 171).
I reply:
The notion that the soul comes into existence due to the creation of a physical body is tricky. Swedenborg goes to lengths to equate heaven and goodness with the divine (the world of soul/spirit), and the evil and the hell comes from putting nature and the body before and above the soul and spirit. Saying a soul cannot exist without a body is folly because it puts nature above the soul for which the subscribers of that idea, hell will have to be paid. If you think the soul doesn't exist before birth than you're saying it's not eternal but finite, like the body is finite. You're denying divinity and therefore affirming nature and placing your chips on the odds (hell), not the evens (heaven). Gambling is evil anyway.
You mentioned in your van on Wednesday, the number of soul personalities in the world at present, inferring they couldn't have lived on earth before. In your email you mention the generation of a new soul personality by the action of a womb in creating a vehicle for the supersoul. Swedenborg defines the soul as the LIFE of the spirit. What he is calling spirit I am calling soul personality which we both agree survives death to eternity, experiencing heaven and hell, good and evil in the creation, which we might call eternity. It is not my understanding that a soul personality can survive even in hell to eternity, it can actually be destroyed in very wicked and irredeemable cases although this would occur on a cyclical basis with millions of earth years intervening. There are numerous spiritual egos or entities that abide in heaven or hell that are not incarnating on a planet as a baby, even once, or they are on the bench for aeons waiting their turn. Earth and other planets are supposed to be footstool kingdoms to heaven, witness the lords prayer. However humans have free will and are ignorant and create the hell themselves. Sweedenborg says this himself. The hell the nazis created saved no soul personalities from hell merely by killing their bodies before too much sin was commissioned, they will simply reincarnate and make mistakes and learn by trial and error. God isn't a pervert. If you're interested read this link, interesting arguments are raised as to why Swedenborg's spirits of planet mercury are dressed in European clothes from his time, answer because that's the spin his brain puts on it being an untrained seer. Your genesis of the soul in the womb quote from Swedenborg just demonstrates the fact that he missed out on training from mystery school but it makes little difference in the long run as he testifies well to the truth. The Jewish book of Genesis states the body is a living soul with the first breath which God breathes into the nostrils at birth. Only crazy republicans in America and ignorant and bigoted bible bashers and such like believe the soul fully occupies the fetus before breathing commences. The soul personality can make contact with the new family a few months before birth and prepare to say bye byes to its buddies in Heaven (by now it would have been freed from hell, if there at all), Swedenborg also states numerous examples where spirits go back and forth from heaven to hell 'to eternity' as you say. That was a very long answer and it's really not a joke, if you think it's poppycock that's your affair. God bless.
Link follows:
http://blavatskyarchives.com/psychicversusinitiate.htm
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