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What the Chapel Means to Me
Some thoughts from Lars Wiberg
During the late 60s, the Bollingen Foundation had begun publishing Carl
Gustav Jung's collected works translated into English. He wrote mostly in
scholarly German, and the scholarship survives translation dauntingly. It
is heavy going for this non-psychologist who is not under any sort of
professional obligation. But I did have the interest, and luckily the
volumes would appear at odd intervals with plenty of time in between for me
to have read the last one. I found that I had a marked affinity for Jung's
approach to what he originally termed "Analytical Psychology," and I
suppose that the concept he named the "collective unconscious" would have a
lot to do with my having been so attracted. Anyway I plugged ahead.
My wife Betty recalls how often I would remark that, despite the innate
satisfaction that I got from Jung's theoretical approach, I always felt it
to be too static - - too much of a picture with not enough animation. Jung
himself felt a need to account for this and expressed a view that the
motivating forces behind his body of theory were produced by tension
between opposites. This meant little to me at the time; it took Swedenborg
to account for what Jung may have meant, and I accent the "may have"
because, although we know that Jung read extensively in Swedenborg, we have
no idea from anything he wrote whether his "tension between opposites" has
anything to do with what we understand to be the interplay between the
Divine Love and Wisdom.
One day Betty handed me a book saying she thought it might hold the key to
what it was that would animate Jung's works although it had nothing
whatever to do with Jung. The Book was The Presence of Other Worlds by our
good friend Wilson Van Dusen. I practically inhaled the text, and shortly
thereafter visited our Swedenborgian Bookstore on Newbury Street in Boston
where I met Rafael Guiu and bought Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell , a logical
choice inasmush as it was heavily quoted by Van Dusen. What revelation!
Immediately the missing energy that concerned me began to appear, and I was
struck by the astonishing compatibility and lack of contradiction between
what I had read in Jung and what I was starting to read in Swedenborg. I
was, and still am, in great awe of the vitality inherent in Swedenborg's
writings; it is so ingrained that it never fails to impress even the
seasoned reader.
Contact with Ray Guiu was (and is) invigorating. It was such a pleasure to
visit the bookroom. I soon bought the Rotch edition of Swedenborg's Works
at a terrific bargain! Betty had visited Swedenborg Chapel and met members
of the congregation and had gone in to the Bookroom to hear Eugene Taylor
lecture. I was mainly reading, but soon attended a worship service
conducted by The Rev Wilfred Gould Rice. What an experience to enter the
Chapel for the first time! I had never in my life experienced such
immediate spiritual immanence upon entering a place! Later I would
experience some of that feeling upon visiting Church of the Holy Trinity in
Kristianstad, Sweden, where my ancestors worshiped. However, the numinous
experience at Swedenborg Chapel remains unique in my experience.
After several years of regular attendance at worship I was baptized into
the Christian Church by The Revs. Wilfred Gould Rice and F. Robert Tafel
and therupon became a member of the Cambridge Society of the New Jerusalem.
(Interestingly, Betty and I are the only married couple for whom Rev. Rice
performed the sacrament of adult baptism.)
I am extremely fortunate to have been led to my newfound spiritual home.
There are those who will both continue, and rise along the way, to preserve
as best they can the sanctity of Swedenborg Chapel whenever it needs to be
defended from desecration. I am privileged and honored to serve at this
time among these blessed souls.
Lars-Erik Wiberg, February 2001
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