|
How to be Happy in Heaven or Hell,
and why Heaven is Better
Guest Address
for Sunday, August 13, 2000
Copyright 2000 by Carl J. Schroeder
Scripture: Proverbs 3:9-18; Romans 14:14-23
Good morning. Welcome to the Swedenborg Chapel, my name is Carl and I am the guest speaker for this Sunday August 13, the eighth month of the year 2000. Yes, the year 2000 is already almost 2/3 passed us by, and we didn't vaporize or melt or blow ourselves up. The world spins on, and we just didn't get off the hook that easily. All of us here did survive the millenium, and life continues to be just what we make of it. There is joy in our world, and there is misery, and there is still an abundance of resources with which to fuel each of these just as we prioritize. Happiness studies have become fashionable in modern sociology, because psychiatrists have discovered the joys of studying function as well as dysfunction. And the studies are showing conclusively that happiness is not related to income. Poor people have just as much potential to be happy as the rich. Only those in extreme, life-threatening poverty showed any correlation between wealth and happiness. So for most people on earth, and certainly everyone sharing these thoughts with me here today, happiness is up to you. You can find something to make you happy if you choose.
Since the dawn of human imagination, people have conceived of the places where our personally chosen lifestyles have run their courses to absolute conclusions. These have been traditionally called heaven and hell, in order to denote a desirable and an undesirable outcome respectively. While few people today believe in literal heavens and hells, we all still share that capacity to wonder - what if I continued the way I am going, what kind of world would I end up in? In our modern times, we are uniquely faced with the urgency of this question, because our world is so small, and the effects are so large. We have circumnavigated and met ourselves again, and every human function is multiplied by 6 billion to make global impact a reality. We must concern ourselves today with the concepts of sustainability, international law, and human welfare, more so than any culture has ever had to before. Surely our necessitated global responsibility will make us so much wiser, and I expect that our civilization will stabilize to a very conscionable prosperity in time, something quite supportive of a heaven here on earth. But at least for now, the threats to our happiness can be so overwhelming, including human-exacerbated pollution, disease, famine, drought, and more, that we can seriously wonder, was it so bad for me to have pursued the things that made me happy? Was I needed somewhere else, did I shirk a duty? Was that home, that car, that friendship, that job, that banquet, that paycheck, that manufactured good of an electronic era, all the things that I worked for, just a lot of tickets into hell?
Ascetic traditions would answer blithely yes. There, that settles it, all you people who wanted the things that I gave up long ago are to blame, you're so unevolved, now you go renounce your lives as well while I prepare us all for heaven. What they expect to have or do in heaven we don't know, since the ascetics have already renounced most everything except perhaps the compassionate service of helping others to get the things that they don't want. What would someone who gives to the poor do if and when there were no more poor to give to? I guess they'd be stuck, become rich and damned. But while some of us might enjoy less clutter than others, such irrational asceticism is not convincing to any of us for long. We like the things that make us happy and/or wealthy, there's nothing wrong with that.
On the other end of the spectrum, there is the new age old wealth patter, in which highly paid motivational speakers proclaim that if we do what we love then the money will follow, etc. Well, thanks to our social scientists, we know now that wealth doesn't correlate to happiness, so the better advice might be, don't stop doing what you love even if you aren't making money at it, or even if you are. If this seems simple or tautological to prescribe, then look around, many people are unhappy from exactly not doing this suggestion. Most motivational speakers are simply demonstrating the career track of the motivational speaker, a.k.a. cheerleader, who can indeed make the big bucks but is doing what most of us would not love to do, and this includes posturing, sloganeering, and shouting publicly.
So the proper relationship between wealth, luxury, and responsibility is being endlessly debated by endless cults of economy and philosophy, and the outcome of the world is still at large. 6 billion people are searching for their happiness, and whether or not those pursuits are professed to be protected or even tolerated by the governments, societies, and religious of their upbringings, nothing is going to stop them. One of the most frequently searched for terms at giant world wide web search engine Altavista continues to be pron, which is just porn nervously mistyped. Most of the world's 6 billion people are seriously anxiously wondering whether they're going to catch heaven or hell for their pursuits of happiness, and whether the ride will be over any time soon. So it doesn't even matter if heaven and hell are literal or metaphorical, happiness is real.
You can ask yourself; don't I have a right and a purpose to pursue happiness? If I try to be good to others in my pursuit of happiness, then why should I be threatened with a dysfunctional world in which to do what I must do? I have survived the millenium, and half the people around me were covertly or overtly cheering for the end of the world to come so that the game might be ended and all the scores tallied. Was it heaven, was it hell, where am I going to... 6 billion people demanded to know! But what can heaven and hell be anyway but states of mind, what were those apocalyptic people thinking of? Are humans so unkind and judgmental, or just fearful and confused?
Well sure enough, I'm having fun with a lead-in here to some answers to these questions and more, straight from the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th century scientist, philosopher, and Christian theologian on whose works this chapel is based. All his life Swedenborg sought to resolve the big moral and cosmological debates of all time. In his 50's, Swedenborg became able to see and converse with spirits and angels, but you don't even have to understand that ability to enjoy the following story. Swedenborg was a consummate teller of the moral tale. This episode is number 461 from his classic volume on marriage and pleasure, called Conjugal Love. I'll keep my editorializing to a minimum so you can enjoy the story, but I will make some strategic interjections along the way.
So Swedenborg wrote:
"I once spoke with a newly arrived spirit who had thought about heaven and hell a lot when he was in the world. The term "newly arrived spirits" refers to people recently deceased, who are called spirits because they are then spiritual people.
As this person entered spiritual life, he began to think about heaven and hell, as usual, and he found himself happy when thinking about heaven, and depressed when thinking about hell. When he realized he was in the spiritual world, he kept asking about where heaven and hell are, and what each place is and what it is like.
People had told him, "Heaven's above your head, and hell's below your feet, because you're in the world of spirits now, which is halfway between heaven and hell. But what heaven and hell are we can't explain in a few words."
Then, because he had a burning desire to know, he fell to his knees and prayed devoutly to the Lord to be instructed; and at his right hand there appeared an angel! The angel helped him up and said, "You've prayed to be instructed about heaven and hell. Ask around and find out what happiness is, and you'll know." Having said this, the angel disappeared.
Then the new spirit said to himself, "What is this? 'Ask around and find out what happiness is, and you'll know heaven and hell are and what they're like?" He left that place, and as he wandered here and there, he asked people he met, "Please say what happiness is, if you don't mind."
So here we have this spirit, who is a lot like Swedenborg himself. He's inquiring, he's sought the truth all his life, and an angel has respected this by not giving him the answers to his questions right away but setting him on the right track to find out for himself. This would be a good procedure for all of us to remember, because answers are something to work for, and Swedenborg always emphasizes that good intentions must be put into action to yield good results. So let's ask ourselves now, what would I say happiness is? Please be honest and simple in answering, don't say what you think you should say, but say what has been true for you. [If you are reading this, jot some thoughts on a piece of paper]
It will now be classic Swedenborg for our admirable character to meet first with some follies, some shallow spirits who have instructively incorrect answers to his burning question for what is happiness.
And some said to the new spirit, "What kind of question is that? Who doesn't know what happiness is? Isn't it joy and gladness? So happiness is happiness, one way or another. We can't see any difference."
Others said, "Happiness is a light heart, because when your heart is light your face is cheerful, your speech is witty, you act playful, and you feel good all over."
Still others said, "Happiness is just to feast, eat fine food, drink, and get tipsy on noble wine, and then chat about different things - especially the diversions of love and sex."
Hearing all this the disappointed new spirit said to himself, "These answers are crude and uncouth. Those pleasures are neither heaven nor hell. I wish I'd meet some wise people."
And he left them and asked, "Where are some wise people?"
And then he was observed by a certain angelic spirit, who said, "I notice that you're burning with a desire to know what's broadly characteristic of heaven and broadly characteristic of hell. It's happiness, so I'll take you up unto a hill where, each day, people gather who analyze results, and people who look into causes, and people who explore the reasons- three groups. The ones who inspect results are called spirits of facts, or abstractly, the Facts. Those who look into the causes are called spirits of information, or abstractly, the Information. Those who explore the reasons are called spirits of wisdom, or abstractly, Wisdom. Just above these people, in heaven, are angels who view the causes in light of the reasons and the results in light of the causes. From these angels the three groups have enlightenment."
Now let me just say that I think there is a great significance to this division which Swedenborg has recorded. Human activity is partitioned into a trinity of Facts of results, Information of causes, and Wisdom of reasons, with angelic Enlightenment overarching and interconnecting the three. It should be noted that translations of this passage vary somewhat, and the Facts of results have also been called Empirical Knowledge or Sciences, and the Information of causes has also been called the Intelligence. The way I see it, the important issue is that each of us plans for the outcomes that we want in life by trying to find a cause for a chosen effect. The reason we do this is because we guess that this effect will give us a transcendent benefit, such as a health or happiness. We may choose the wrong causes for the effects we want, and by this we get failures. We can try but fail to be helpful, successful, giving, loving, etc. But God sees beyond our failures of misinformed causes and evaluates the reasons for what we did; God sees our intentions, and our intentions matter the most, because sooner or later we can all find the right cause-effect relationships to make our intentions happen.
God will also evaluate our effects in light of our causes, so if we have a devastating effect from a little cause with which we were experimenting, God will know what has happened and what we intended. This philosophy of cause-effect-reason can have big consequences for our modern world, in which the unexpected effects of technology have haunted us terribly. Our world is polluted for example by chemicals that were intended to make us healthy and well fed. Do you think that God would abandon us to our polluted state? I don't think so, and enlightenment says that there is hope for our world yet, if our intentions but take us there. We will need to put our relationship with God to work. We can seek out the new causes for new effects, and all for the good reasons in our hearts, by using our new enlightened minds to honestly interrelate all sides of the predicament. The future will not deny our present miseries, but holds all the answers we require. This will be the angelic evolution, a fourth state for us, beyond the Facts, the Information, and the Reasons alone.
So now, let us see what the causes, effects, and reasons have to say about what happiness is:
Then, taking the spirit by the hand, he led him up onto the hill to the group made up of those who explore the reasons and are called Wisdom.
The newcomer said to them, "Excuse my coming up to you. It's because from childhood I've thought about heaven and hell, and I've just arrived in this world; and when I did, some people I met said that heaven is above my head and hell is below my feet here. But they didn't say what heaven and hell are or what they're like. Due to thinking about heaven and hell all the time, I was desperate; so I prayed too, and an angel was there and said 'Ask around and find out what happiness is, and you'll know."
"I've asked, but uselessly so far. So, if you will, please teach me what happiness is."
The wise people answered, "Happiness is all that everyone in heaven lives for and that everyone in hell lives for. For those in heaven, happiness has to do with what is good and true; but for those in hell, happiness has to do with what is evil and untrue because all happiness relates to love, and love is the essence of a person's life. So just as a person is a person according to his kind of love, he's a person according to his kind of happiness."
"Love in action gives a feeling of happiness. In heaven it acts with wisdom, in hell it acts with folly. Either way it makes its subject happy.
"But heaven and hell have opposite pleasures because they have opposite loves. Heaven has the love of being helpful and the happiness this gives; hell has the love of being harmful and the happiness this gives. So if you know what happiness is, you do know what heaven and hell are and what they're like.
"But ask around some more and find out what happiness is from the people who look into the causes and are called the Information. They're to the right from here."
The newcomer left, went to the Information, told them why he had come, and asked them to teach him what happiness is.
Happy to be asked, they said, "It's true that whoever recognizes happiness realizes what heaven and hell are and what they're like. Intention, which makes a human being human, will not budge one iota except for happiness! For intention, per se, is nothing other than the attraction and the carrying out of some love - some form of happiness - for what makes you intend anything has something pleasant, desirable, and satisfying about it. And because intention spurs your intellect to think, no idea comes to mind at all except from the inflowing pleasure of an intention.
"The reason for this is that the Lord, by His influence, activates everything in the souls and minds of angels, spirits, and people. He activates them by the influence of love and wisdom, and this influence is precisely the activity from which all happiness comes. At its source, this is called blessings, fortune and luck; and in its outcome happiness, well being, and pleasure. In a broad sense it's called 'good'.
"But the spirits in hell turn everything they have upside down, so they also turn good into evil and truth into untruth. But it still keeps its pleasure, because unless the pleasure remains, there's no motivation, no feeling and therefore no life.
"These observations show what the happiness of hell is, what it's like, and what it comes from, as well as what the happiness of heaven is, what it's like, and what it comes from."
Now let's stop for a moment to consider just how revolutionary this passage is. Swedenborg is saying without hesitation that God wants everyone to be happy. In fact, God expects it of us to want happiness as the basis of our very nature, and God knows that we will not and cannot intend anything unless it is to make ourselves happy. God is fine with this, and God is giving everyone pleasures to the best of God's ability, which surely must be significant! So heaven is a place of pleasures, of course. But Hell is not a place of suffering, but a place of pleasures also, pleasures that simply differ from those of heaven. How many of us can honestly say that we have as much understanding and sympathy for ourselves as God does in this way? We human beings are forever disciplining ourselves, wrestling ourselves over what we should and shouldn't have or want. But God does not do this at all, God just gives and gives.
Ah, but there must be a catch you say. And of course there is. You can be sure that the great moralist Swedenborg is about to make it very clear how and why the pleasures of hell are inferior to the pleasures of heaven, and that the pleasures of hell are entirely repugnant to anyone of decency. In the following conclusion to our story, you may disagree with the methods of illustration, but Swedenborg does make it unforgettably apparent that the spirits in hell are in a conflicted and self-tormented state.
After listening to all this, the new spirit was led to the third group, where there were people who inspect results and are called the Facts. They said, "Go down into the world below, and go up into the world above. In the one place you'll observe and fell the happiness of the angels in heaven, and in the other the happiness of the spirits in hell."
But just then the ground opened up at a distance from them, and three devils came up through the opening! They looked as if they were on fire with the happiness of their loves. Those who were with the new spirit could tell that the three devils had come up from hell providentially, so they said to them, "Don't come any closer, but from where you are, tell something about your happiness."
They said, "Everyone, you understand, whether good or bad, has his happiness- a good person the happiness of his goodness, and a bad person the happiness of his badness."
"What's your happiness?" the Facts asked.
They said it was the pleasure of whoring, stealing, cheating, and blaspheming.
Then the Facts asked, "What are those pleasures like?"
The devils said," To other people they smell like the bad smells from excrement and like the stench of corpses and like the fumes from stagnant urine."
They asked,"Are these smells pleasant to you?"
The devils said, "Very pleasant!"
The Facts said, "Then you're like the filthy creatures that spend their time in things like that."
"If we are, we are," they answered, "but things like that are a joy to our nostrils."
"Anything else?" asked the Facts.
The devils said,"Everyone's allowed to enjoy his own happiness, even the most filthy, as they call it, so long as he doesn't bother good spirits and angels. But with our kind of happiness, we can't help bothering them; so we're thrown into penitentiaries where we suffer dreadfully. The suppression and withholding of our pleasures there is what they call the torment of hell. And it's also an inward agony."
The Facts asked,"Why do you bother good people?"
They said they could not help it. A kind of rage sets in when they see an angel and feel the godly sphere around them.
"You're like the wild creatures in this way, too," said the Facts.
When the devils saw the new spirit with angels, a rage soon came over them that looked like the flames of hatred, and so they were thrown back into hell to keep them from doing any harm.
After all this, the angels appeared who view the causes in light of the reasons and the results in light of the causes, and who are in a heaven above the three groups. The angels seemed to be in a brilliant light that circled down in spiral curves. It brought with it a circular wreath of flowers and put it on the new spirit's head, and then a voice came to him from up there, saying "This laurel wreath is given to you for having thought about heaven and hell from childhood."
So ends Swedenborg's lesson on happiness. Apparently, you can find happiness in either heaven or hell. But hellish happiness is based on nasty things, which have to do with decay and disorder, and even the spirits in hell are not content with this, as much as they like it. Hell is characterized by insatiability, dissatisfaction, and boundless rage. Hellish spirits will attack goodness anywhere they can, and I like to think of this as them picking at the scabs of their own potential, or insanely charging at their own light shadows. Then because they are held back from injuring good spirits, the hellish spirits are consequently suffering, but this suffering is of their own making, and not for a lack of their own pleasures to enjoy.
So the lesson for us might be to expand privately upon what makes us personally happy, and not look outward to what others are doing for their happiness. Everyone has their own means for happiness, and you are becoming a hellish creature if you attack what has made someone else happy in their privacy. Swedenborg assures us that God intends for all spirits to find their way to heavenly pleasures, because those are the pleasures that are self-sustaining, self-fulfilling, and ever-expanding in order to make us content and safe and free to be spirits for eternity.
Thank you.
|
