A little early but just in time, today, January 27, we are celebrating Emanuel Swedenborg’s birthday. Countless number of books have been written about Swedenborg, a scientist, philosopher, public servant to the King, inventor, astronomer engineer and most of all a mystic, who explored higher levels of consciousness. The most remarkable thing about Swedenborg is that he invites us into that world. Jonathan Rose and co-editors Stuart Shortwell and Mary Lou Bertucci called him the, Scribe of Heaven in a recently published work. Today our community will reflect on Swedenborg and his influence on the great minds of Western civilization and most importantly, for us, how his writings inspired us. I could not fit all the books on the table. Here I show a small sampling of his books and a few written about him and a small sampling of books written by people who profess to have experienced an awakening as a result of exploring Swedenborg’s writings. It is worth noting renowned authors and artists such as Emerson, Balzac, Blake were influenced by Swedenborg.
Circle Community a sharing, praying studying community come together to support each other along life’s journey. Swedenborg’s journey into the spiritual world has profound implication for the way we live our life right now. We’ll show a show portion of movie Splendors of the Spirit to get us in the mood for deeper reflections about own experience of living our religion.
My father found Heaven and Hell translated into Hungarian, a miracle in itself, during the aftermath of a bombing raid in Budapest in WW2. Our family did not know about a church based on his theology. His writings became for me a guide to discover internal states of heaven and hell. Church affiliation and formal study of theology came decades later. The passion for exploring hidden treasures in his writings sharing those insights in non-theological wrappings is my life’s work. Vaishali in her 09/16/11 Huffington’s post writes of Swedenborg as “the quintessential one-stop shopping for “afterlife” wisdom.” See more of her article here, You Haven’t Lived Until You’ve Died: Emanuel Swedenborg and “the Afterlife”. Much more can be found in researchers’ findings and Near Death of Experiencers discoveries of the parallels to their experiences in Swedenborg writings.
Today, we celebrate with gratitude not just Swedenborg the mastodon of science and mysticism but the mystery of our own life.
Come and join us this afternoon at 4:30 if you are in town. The location of our get-together is posted in Meetup.
