Responding to the question: “Life in other planets? No, no way! This is a scientific impossibility. Other planets are just too hot or too cold to shelter life, or have an enormous gravity or are just made of gas and you can’t step on them.”
I’m not going to satisfy everyone today – a challenge to any reader of Swedenborg – BUT THAT IS USEFUL IN ITSELF! Have to stop and think this one through. Asks:
- How do you integrate it into your understanding?
- Do you dismiss ES’s writing altogether?
- Or do you look for what you can learn from it?
If you’re interested …
- The Worlds in Space (Earths in the Universe),
- Secrets of Heaven (Arcana Coelestia)
The idea of life on other planets is not so far fetched …
- Scientists are looking for extra-terrestrial life!
- It was a commonly held belief in Swedenborg’s day – Immanuel Kant
“How it may be with the dwellers on other planets and their nature we do not know. If, however, we carry out well the mandate given us by Nature, we can perhaps flatter ourselves that we may claim among our neighbours in the cosmos no mean rank.” (Immanuel Kant, Note 2, SIXTH THESIS, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View [1784], Translation by Lewis White Beck).
- Compared to the infinity of God, and the unlimited potential of heaven, the population of a single planet is insignificantly small (paragraphs 4,5)
“How would this appear to the Deity, who is infinite, to whom thousands, or rather tens of thousands, of worlds, all full of inhabitants, would seem trifling and almost negligible?” (Worlds in Space, paragraph 4)
“… there is no way that [the heaven of angels] with all its correspondences could have come into existence without drawing on the inhabitants of very many worlds.” (Worlds in Space, paragraph 5)
The problem is Swedenborg’s assertion that life exists on the planets of the solar system
Many different theories attempt to explain this:
- First planet from the sun – WHICH sun?
- Our fledgling understanding of dark energy and dark matter – other dimensions of reality?
- Spiritual world stands outside of time and space – if we can talk to spirits from the past, why can’t we also talk to spirits from the future?
- Are they spirits who become associated with these planets after death?
To what extent does it relate to the mythological origin of the planet names?
“What does it mean if someone is mercurial?
- … describes someone whose mood or behavior is changeable and unpredictable, or someone who is clever, lively, and quick.”
Also, its relationship to the European question – what about other people of other cultures, who do not know Jesus Christ, are they saved too? one can see the idea of life on other planets just as an extension of cultures on this planet (see this in paragraph 120).
[“In every other world Divine truth is made known by word of mouth … But this is restricted to family groups, for in most worlds the human race lives apart divided into families. [It] does not therefore spread far beyond family groups, and unless renewed by a succession of revelations it is perverted or lost.” (paragraph 120)
WHAT CAN WE LEARN?
What does Swedenborg himself say?
There’s an interest in alien life – 5thKind.TV has over 1 million subscribers on YouTube
We are external people:
- More interested in the technology of our hands than wisdom of the heart and soul
- Our use of writing (the spirits of Mercury teasing about knowledgeable paper – 28)
- Jesus came for the sake of the written Word (113)
- Look at the way we react to this question:
- We evaluate what we read based upon current, scientific, factual, accuracy.
- We tend to dismiss whatever doesn’t fit neatly into our [external] worldview.
… Because we need to be protected from the truth until we are ready to face the truth and ALL its implications.
The cherubim at the entrance to the Garden of Eden. [Cherubim are not from outer space! – another form of our externalism]
The cherubim on the mercy seat – the lid on the ark of the covenant (Exodus 25) – try to throw a stone at God, what would you hit?
Swedenborg’s purpose in writing:
“the purpose of his visionary powers was to reveal the nature of the spiritual world, and by his writings to guide his fellow men towards a better understanding of religious and spiritual matters.” (Chadwick’s Preface, p. viii)
“[Swedenborg] was kept in ignorance of facts about the natural world, and was allowed to persist in the false beliefs current in his time. … if he had been able to demonstrate [huge advances in scientific knowledge], his reputation would have become such that everything he said would have been automatically accepted. Yet he frequently insists that mere assent to a proposition is not the same as whole-hearted belief, …” (Chadwick’s Preface, p. x)
Recorded on Sunday 17 March 2024