Can anybody help me find a logical explanation for this stuff?

[TjW]

So what you find convincing about mystics in general that their teachings are so similar, and what you find convincing about Swedenborg in particular is that his teachings were so different?

 

[wardenclyffe]

So, Swedenborg had some new ideas (maybe, I'm just taking your word for it that they were new) and others then copied him. If what he says fits in with what later mystics and spiritualists say, doesn't it seem like they read his work and just copied it? Imitation might be the sincerist form of flattery, but it doesn't make it right or true.

Swedenborg's ideas are obviously appealing to some. All the more reason to copy him. You are assuming that all mystics and spiritualists come up with their ideas in a vacuum. The reason there are patterns and that there are similarities might be that everyone's just copying each other. No spiritualist or mystic would admit that, because they'd lose their power to whomever they were copying.

And just because Swedenborg's ideas might be appealing, they still must be held to the same standards of proof that you would hold anyone else to.

Ward

 

[Akhenaten]

Yes, but you won't listen to them, which makes the whole exercise seem a bit pointless.

 

[Zanders]

Yes, but you won't listen to them, which makes the whole exercise seem a bit pointless.

What exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean that I won't follow the mystics, or that I won't follow the skeptics?

 

[Apology]

"salvation is available to people from all religions, regardless if they embrace the cross of Jesus Christ to reconcile them with God or not, as long as they are prepared to live a good life."

This is the only important thing that Swedenborg wrote. All the rest of it was just filler.

If you're prepared to live a good life, you don't have to read any of the other stuff about angels and saints and god and heaven and miracles of the sun. All you need to do is to live a good life--be kind to people, be honest, work hard, maintain your health to the best of your ability. There's no need for mysticism or magical thinking in order to do these very simple basic things. You shouldn't need anyone else to tell you this.

What exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean that I won't follow the mystics, or that I won't follow the skeptics?

I think what s/he is trying to say is that you won't follow logic and reason. You came here saying, "Guys, this really bothers me, help!" and we helped you. Then many of us told you, "If this stuff really bothers you, why don't you stop reading it." Your response was "Okay, I'm going to stop reading it, but just one more chapter."

I think Akhenaten has just gotten tired of "one more question, one more chapter" routine and feels you should have taken our advice and quit reading about this stuff a long time ago if it bothers you so much.

I don't speak for Akhenaten though, so I could have gotten it entirely wrong. Sorry if I got you all wrong, Akhenaten.

 

[fuelair]

How did this get to 9 pages? The OP and follow up were DOA on page one!!

 

[Akhenaten]

What exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean that I won't follow the mystics, or that I won't follow the skeptics?

I think what s/he is trying to say is that you won't follow logic and reason. You came here saying, "Guys, this really bothers me, help!" and we helped you. Then many of us told you, "If this stuff really bothers you, why don't you stop reading it." Your response was "Okay, I'm going to stop reading it, but just one more chapter."

I think Akhenaten has just gotten tired of "one more question, one more chapter" routine and feels you should have taken our advice and quit reading about this stuff a long time ago if it bothers you so much.

I don't speak for Akhenaten though, so I could have gotten it entirely wrong. Sorry if I got you all wrong, Akhenaten.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Zanders]

How did this get to 9 pages? The OP and follow up were DOA on page one!!

I wouldn't really say that it all was. The stuff on Swedenborg still can't properly be answered, but we are dealing with information that is old and makes it very hard to work with. It didn't look like anybody read the documents I posted that make it seem really strange. (I still find it impressive that he seemed to know when he would die, said that we wouldn't die until he finished his writing and had a stroke and died just a year after finishing it at the age of 84 when most people only lived to their late 50s or 60s.

While the other stuff might have been DOA, the Swedenborg stuff isn't as easy to debunk.

There is also this post I left that I am still curious about.

At the start of this thread I asked if I should just post all of my questions in this one thread or make separate posts about them, so I just decided to make this a dump of my questions. Most of them were bunk, but Swedenborg is still a mystery, and certain patterns and similarities in religious experiences are still odd.

Posting in this thread and forum actually did help me get more skeptical and critical, and I have gotten away from a lot of my credulousness. I just have trouble not backsliding every so often.

 

[Akhenaten]

Zanders, the best advice you've been given so far is to stop reading this nonsense. Continually reposting the same links and urging us to start reading it for you is getting a bit tiresome.

 

[Zanders]

So what you find convincing about mystics in general that their teachings are so similar, and what you find convincing about Swedenborg in particular is that his teachings were so different?

What I meant was that it was very unorthodox for Christianity, but his teachings fit with modern mystics and some older esoteric movements.

My opinion was a little silly though. There are many reasons why teachings can be similar without any mystical unity needing to be the reason. I found a post somewhere saying that Swedenborg's teachings had amazing parallels to Baruch Spinoza, of whom he never mentioned. Spinoza was not a mystic and never claimed to gain his information through any deep spiritual insight, he was just a philosopher.

 

[TjW]

What I meant was that it was very unorthodox for Christianity, but his teachings fit with modern mystics and some older esoteric movements.

My opinion was a little silly though. There are many reasons why teachings can be similar without any mystical unity needing to be the reason. I found a post somewhere saying that Swedenborg's teachings had amazing parallels to Baruch Spinoza, of whom he never mentioned. Spinoza was not a mystic and never claimed to gain his information through any deep spiritual insight, he was just a philosopher.

Maybe they were the same person. Did anyone ever see them together?

 

[Akhenaten]

Maybe they were the same person. Did anyone ever see them together?

There's a story about Spinoza's clothing being found in a phone box not far from where Swedenborg rescued 197 people from a burning building.

I had a link but I eated it.

 

[TjW]

If Spinoza wore glasses, we may be on to something here.

 

[Zanders]

This is the only important thing that Swedenborg wrote. All the rest of it was just filler.

If you're prepared to live a good life, you don't have to read any of the other stuff about angels and saints and god and heaven and miracles of the sun. All you need to do is to live a good life--be kind to people, be honest, work hard, maintain your health to the best of your ability. There's no need for mysticism or magical thinking in order to do these very simple basic things. You shouldn't need anyone else to tell you this.



I think what s/he is trying to say is that you won't follow logic and reason. You came here saying, "Guys, this really bothers me, help!" and we helped you. Then many of us told you, "If this stuff really bothers you, why don't you stop reading it." Your response was "Okay, I'm going to stop reading it, but just one more chapter."

I think Akhenaten has just gotten tired of "one more question, one more chapter" routine and feels you should have taken our advice and quit reading about this stuff a long time ago if it bothers you so much.

I don't speak for Akhenaten though, so I could have gotten it entirely wrong. Sorry if I got you all wrong, Akhenaten.

Well, I just wonder if anyone has given some of the later links I posted a reading. I know that this thread was a total mess and there were a bunch of random links flying everywhere, but around the end I narrowed it down to one collection of documents on the life and character of Swedenborg.

Instead of posting links and begging people to read, I can point out a few things that make it seem so odd to me.

One of them is the fact that Swedenborg being a liar absolutely contradicts every single thing written about him by people that had met or known him. He himself acknowledged some of the claims made about him in letters that can be seen in the documents I linked to. I also posted some keywords that should be looked for in a post a few pages ago.

Along with that, Swedenborg never started a religion himself. He never organized a church or anything like that, the Swedenborgian church was established years after his death by people that found his writings worth following. He said that most religions were already a path to God, he just wanted to clarify the true meaning.

Swedenborg also had his first unusual experience on Easter, so if he did snap, he picked a symbolic date to do so. I understand that Easter has origins as a pagan religion, but the date was still a powerfully symbolic one.

Along with all of that, Swedenborg seemed to know when he would die, and died shortly after finishing his magnum opus. He lived to be 84 back when most people died in their 60s. I have never seen anyone as old as he was around that time, and he traveled all over the place and was in very cold climates. He lived just long enough to finish his summarizing work, almost like he was meant to.

I know that there aren't believable miracles today, but he even had an explanation for why that is. If you search Google for "Swedenborg miracles cease" you can see more actual quotes from him on it.

Actually, does that last part not kind of contradict his experiences, since miracles were supposed to have been stopped? Funny how he was an exception. A post I read on his wikipedia page's discussion page said that "Sw himself said that miracles don't happen these days. Sw had noticed that he "always" had good weather on his boat journeys abroad but said that he didn't think too much about it, because the Lord does not let miracles happen these days...", so that kind of makes you wonder. There seems to be a contradiction there.

 

[Akhenaten]

Zanders, it's becoming painfully obvious that you don't really want a logical explanation for this stuff at all. You want more than anything to believe it, and that's certainly your right, but it's all nonsense, especially the rubbish about miracles.

If you want to go on believing this hooey then go right ahead, but please stop pretending that you're doing anything more than spamming us with it.

 

[wardenclyffe]

Along with all of that, Swedenborg seemed to know when he would die, and died shortly after finishing his magnum opus. He lived to be 84 back when most people died in their 60s. I have never seen anyone as old as he was around that time, and he traveled all over the place and was in very cold climates. He lived just long enough to finish his summarizing work, almost like he was meant to.

This has been dealt with extensively upthread. Many people lived to be in their 80s and 90s during Swedenborg's time. Was it as many as today? No, but there were still plenty.

An old, old man predicting that he will die soon is no big deal. Finishing an important work and then dying months later is no big deal.

You seem to be able to analyze the claims of others in other threads, but you seem to have a blind spot when it comes to your own interests. I suggest that before you post this type of thing, that you let it sit for a day or two and then read it as though someone else had written it. Then apply the critical thinking that you seem capable of---except when it comes to claims that particularly fascinate you for reasons unknown. These claims are little different from the other paranormal claims that people write about here all the time.

Ward

 

[Sledge]

You're not interested in a rational explanation. Why don't you take this nonsense to a woo forum where they'll fall over themselves giving you all the attention you want?

Zanders, it's becoming painfully obvious that you don't really want a logical explanation for this stuff at all. You want more than anything to believe it, and that's certainly your right, but it's all nonsense, especially the rubbish about miracles.

If you want to go on believing this hooey then go right ahead, but please stop pretending that you're doing anything more than spamming us with it.

Great minds, eh?

 

[Akhenaten]

Great minds, eh?

These writings are obviously connected in some way. I'm scared.

 

[Zanders]

Zanders, it's becoming painfully obvious that you don't really want a logical explanation for this stuff at all. You want more than anything to believe it, and that's certainly your right, but it's all nonsense, especially the rubbish about miracles.

If you want to go on believing this hooey then go right ahead, but please stop pretending that you're doing anything more than spamming us with it.

I am interested in logical explanations, but I feel that most people are missing the whole picture. It's easy to discard things like this without knowing all of the details about the person, and I feel that I need to look at it from a non-dismissive perspective.

I'd like to hear some people who have lived to their mid 80s from around that time, because everyone I looked at died much earlier, and at the most made it to their later 70s. (Yes, I am aware that this gripe is just neurotic.

I'm still confused as to how all of the stuff written about him came about, and then with what he himself wrote about it. Based on what everyone said, and what he took so much effort to write, he must have believed what he said and wasn't lying. But I wonder why he himself acknowledged some of the events.

Something that would be odd for a Christian at that time is his belief that there was no actual singular Satan. He came to this conclusion based on his observations when he went to the "spirit world". You think a very Christian man's delusions would conform to typical Christian themes like actually having a Satan or angels. He said the angels were just people.

There is also the fact that like I mentioned in a post on the last page, his beleifs seem pretty in line with mystical and modern spiritualist teachings, but he himself said that he never read any mystic writers. (this can be found by searching "Jacob Bohme" in the documents I linked you). Although a letter implied that he was familiar with hermetic writings.

He also mentioned odd breathing techniques that remind me of Indian practices sort of like Pranayama.

Earlier in this thread I just spammed links all over the place begging them to read, but now I can actually explain what I am trying to say myself in posts. I know this has changed to a thread about Swedenborg, but I know nobody wants me to make a whole separate thread for it.

 

[steenkh]

I'd like to hear some people who have lived to their mid 80s from around that time, because everyone I looked at died much earlier, and at the most made it to their later 70s. (Yes, I am aware that this gripe is just neurotic.

What about renowned architect Sir Christopher Wren, 90 (20 October 1632 – 25 February 1723) or clock maker John Harrison, 83 (24 March 1693 – 24 March 1776)?

I'm still confused as to how all of the stuff written about him came about, and then with what he himself wrote about it. Based on what everyone said, and what he took so much effort to write, he must have believed what he said and wasn't lying. But I wonder why he himself acknowledged some of the events.

If he believed what he said, would that make any of his claims true? Many people are deluded even today.

Something that would be odd for a Christian at that time is his belief that there was no actual singular Satan. He came to this conclusion based on his observations when he went to the "spirit world". You think a very Christian man's delusions would conform to typical Christian themes like actually having a Satan or angels. He said the angels were just people.

I really fail to see why this is interesting, except for a historian or theologian. Satan does not become real because someone thinks there are more of them, nor does the concept angels become real because someone thinks they are normal people.

There is also the fact that like I mentioned in a post on the last page, his beleifs seem pretty in line with mystical and modern spiritualist teachings, but he himself said that he never read any mystic writers.

Which would make him a first, but not give any of his visions credibility.

He also mentioned odd breathing techniques that remind me of Indian practices sort of like Pranayama.

So the man was versatile. Odd breathing techniques can enhance your ability to have hallucinations, but would there is no indication that this was anything more than hallucinations.