Every other week, for the next six, we will publish an article by Todd Beiswenger. Weird I; Weird II and then Weird III. In Weird I Todd introduces the concept of this series, which is to explore the weird sounding ideas of the New Church with an effort to explain or contextualize them. -Editor
Over the last 200 years or so, people accused Swedenborg of insanity, and many have thought the same about followers of the Writings. While we probably are not insane, I do think we have a track record of being a little weird. That’s what a comprehensive theology can do to you. However, I will go on record as to thinking that perhaps we are not as weird as we should be. More weird? As if believing the second coming has already happened isn’t weird enough, let us consider some of the weird ideas the Writings allow us to embrace.
I have found that starting with the concept that for every thing in the natural world there is a spiritual cause is a great place to find weird things to believe in. One person in particular, Barbara Brennan, believes in this so much she wrote a whole book about it, and she isn’t a card carrying member of the General Church. Her book, Hands of Light, reframes what our physical body is, to being the result of other “energetic” bodies that underpin it. Swedenborg talks of demons and spirits being forms of energy (Spiritual Experiences 167), but does not give us great detail about it.
Certainly the Writings talk of us having a spiritual body, but Hands of Light states we have a total of seven bodies, with each one corresponding to a different chakra. Since the number “7” has a great meaning and “correspond” is a good New Church concept, this must be true, right? Let me give you some better proof. We are told in Conjugial Love that “…a man's seed contains his soul in perfect human form, clothed with substances from the finest elements of nature, out of which the body is formed.”
What are these “finest elements of nature”? Brennan states that we have an “etheric body” which is between energy and matter, as well as a body that is formed from substances associated with feelings, and a mental body that is made from substances associated with our thoughts. These bodies exist in the physical world, but are beyond our normal sight, sight that “is so crude… and yet people who are sense-oriented think and judge in accordance with [this] sight, it is apparent how obtuse their minds have become, and thus in what darkness they are in respect to spiritual matters.” (Conjugial Love 418)
Where does all this lead us? With Hands of Light it takes us down a road of greater personal responsibility for our mental health. Her view is that so much disease is really a cause of a mental or emotional problem. What is happening is that something has gone wrong in one of our seven bodies, which has resulted in something going wrong in our physical body. Because these higher bodies are based off of emotional and mental substance, she sees that most of our problems are the result of us coping with something that happened in our life. To be clear, it isn’t that we are evil, so we get sick, but because we have blocked appropriate emotional and mental responses in our life due to some trauma. Maybe you were betrayed by a friend, and now you no longer respond to friends as you should, for fear of being burned again.
This is not to say that a bad mood is going to manifest in a brain tumor any more than one cigarette causes emphysema. A life long pattern of distorted thinking, or a pattern of emotional problems though could be the spiritual cause that has a not-so-pleasant effect on the physical body. If you believe that, then perhaps you are weirder than I thought.
Todd is a second year Theological School student who is happily married with one child. He holds a B.S. in Marketing from Auburn University and an MBA from Temple. Interests include Phillies baseball, fast cars, and stock trading.