Friday, April 18, 2008

The Common Theme

Going forward, I'd like to identify some basic thinking patterns which dictate the course the mythology takes. The ideas and characters and stories that I collect aren't completely arbitrary, nor is my decision to dwell on one area more than another. It's not like I really choose what I'm going to be obsessed with, or hand-pick what themes are going to haunt my day, but there is a loose guiding principle involved here. And I think I can identify it. Its name is Emanuel Swedenborg.

Swedenborg was a theologian from the 18th century who conquered every realm of science then available, exhaustively searching for the biological seat of the human soul. Failing this he went on to do some other things, before an angel appeared one day and asked him about his health. From this point forward Swedenborg claimed to live half in this world and half in the spiritual world, in heaven and hell and the places in between, all the while journaling his findings and explorations with the keen scientific mindset he'd adopted earlier in life. At first his writings were a loose collection of thoughts and observations in which he struggled to understand what was happening to him. And then, at some point he got it, and proceeded to write out thirty-seven volumes of methodical doctrine describing the internal meaning of the bible and the true relationship between the natural and spiritual worlds.

Now, this is quite a trip, and I realize that most people haven't heard about this guy before. If they have, it's probably by proxy, having read one of the authors majorly influenced by his writings. William Blake, Dostoevsky, Jung, Borges -- all pretty big fans of the Swedenborg. I've studied the man a lot (in fact, approximately half of my bachelor's degree is dedicated to his work), and I've arrived at the conclusion that there are two major conceptual repercussions to what Swedenborg wrote, and that when people read him, they tend to resonate with one or the other, occasionally both.

The first repercussion is religious: Swedenborg didn't start a religion himself, but he reframed Christianity in a major way, encouraging people to dive into the nuances of their faith, but also to live purposefully and thoughtfully. This blog isn't about religion, so I'm going to leave that there.

The second repercussion is philosophical. Despite what hangups one might have about religious thought (or not, I don't know who reads this), Swedenborg provides a world view that's pretty hard to compete with in terms of nuance and comprehensiveness. When talking to another friend who'd recently started reading Swedenborg, I thought he summarized it pretty well when admitting, "I'm not sure if there's any way to tell if what he's saying is true, but I think I could spend the rest of my life thinking about it." No matter what I happen to be processing in a given moment, there are certain Swedenborgian premises that preclude everything else. They're the starting point. And not even because I need for them to be true, or take them firmly on faith, but because philosophically, the skew they allow me to put on everything I observe is always going to be more compelling and meaningful to me than that provided by any other kind of mindset I've come across (not that I'm actively shopping for mindsets - there's only so much time in the day).

So, anyway, I'm not going to lay out Swedenborg here. Google would do a better job of that. But there are a couple points I want to hit on, that I see as the nucleus of thought around which the mythology spins. Since I'm going to do a lousy job anyway, I guess I'll pick two things.

1. Swedenborg's heaven and hell don't exist as ethereal realms that one mysteriously transports to after death. By his conception the spiritual world just exists, and the natural world (that we see and smell and feel self-important about) sits on top of it. Now, there's a lot involved in this, and if I could encapsulate it satisfyingly in one paragraph than there'd be no need to mythologize. But there are some basic repercussions to this framework that I can hit on, such as the idea that our thoughts don't exist in isolation, but are actually the influence of spirits who are with us in a given moment. When we choose to dwell on lust or whatever, our spiritual selves are simultaneously moving through societies in hell where they love that stuff, where we're encouraged to continue down that line of thinking. If we get over ourselves and forgive someone, maybe we'll hang out with angels for a while, and feel the lift of their heavenly societies. By this thinking, most people drift between heaven and hell a dozen times in a normal day, and this is par for the course for humanity. But as time goes on, and we tend to dwell on certain things more than others, we wear down a path and hang out in some places more than others. So after death, then, it's not a matter of some arcane judgment process and delegation to an appropriately themed mythological realm, but just a matter of picking which spiritual society one liked best when they were alive. For some, this is coming from a place of generally thinking that other people are swell and trying to help them out. For others, it's almost exactly like Sin City (really, whatever you want to say about that movie, I think it provides an inspired portrayal of how I think about hell). After joining that society a person gets to join in on blindly influencing people on earth, while still feeling the thrill of life and living, because the spiritual world is substantially more realistic than ours.

Simple enough, right?

I think that Jung's 'collective unconscious' does a pretty good job of making this idea consumable to people who aren't willing to bite off the whole Swedenborg thing at once, so my obsession with that (which has been documented fairly well so far in this blog) is really an offshoot of this other, more fundamental concept. And the shadow-form things that were crawling out of the hole, other obsessions that I haven't gotten into yet, they're all coming from a place of trying to articulate this concept of an underlying spiritual reality. Cuz I think it's kinda cool. Moving on.

2. This is really a cheat, because it's just another repercussion of the underlying-spiritual-world concept. The big difference between the natural world and the spiritual world (other than our natural ability to move freely and sporadically between heaven and hell like the emotional wrecks that we are) is that the natural world is tied firmly to time and space, and the spiritual world isn't. Or at least, "spiritually" (I'm getting as sick of that word as you are), time and space aren't the sticking points that they are for us. Space, actually, is just a measurement of Love, and the space between spirits is dictated by how much they're coming from a similar point of view, with similar intentions and affections. And time, really, is just a measurement of progression. So, for example, people don't clock-watch in heaven, but they do go through morning, afternoon and evening stages, but these advancements are tied more closely to internal changes of state than the metronome-railroad situation we've got here.

And I personally happen to believe that the natural world, through advances in technology and culture, is hurtling closer to the spiritual world every day in terms of how we interact with these basic dimensions. But that's a wee bit non-canonical, as in, it's my own obsession, not specifically endorsed by any religion or philosophy I've come across. But still, Time. Whew. I could talk about it for a while. It's featured pretty prominently in the mythology lately.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I want to think about something for a second here. You’ve established pretty well that this idea of creating a mythology is all consuming. And how old are you? I think you’re only twenty something. And looking at the thoroughness of this blog and this website you keep linking me to, I feel it is pretty safe to say that this mythology of yours could fill books and books of space and still have room to write a few more books after that. And I can only assume that what I have read of your mythology is simply the tip of some colossal brain iceberg. You probably have notebooks full of pen scratch, short stories decorating your hard drive—even a screenplay according to one of your earlier posts. The point is, if you become obsessed enough with one kind of mythology, as you clearly have, then there is no end to the amount of material you could produce should you choose to go down that road. Imagine what kind of a collection of material you could have by the time you’re forty, or sixty. You could have a library full of three-inch-thick books detailing every aspect of this mythological world. And people would gladly read it. Hell, I’m pretty sure some people would join you in your obsession. They’d read every book you ever wrote and toil over the meaning behind every phrase or word. Suddenly the Undigestible man becomes this iconic symbol for hope, or God, or human kind. Hey, we’ve seen the kind of obsession that can come out of a Star Wars or a Harry Potter or a Lost. I think people are drawn to mythologies of all kinds and when we see someone willing to dive into that obsession head first, I think we become fascinated with that willingness and with what strange things might leak out of their heads next. Then one day, years down the chronological road, Dylan dies in a plane crash or of diarrhea (alright, that’s a joke, but really it’s the number one killer in the world today). The world will morn the man for a time, but the world will continue on and the man will slowly fade into history. But his mythology? Oh, his mythology lives on. People rediscover it over and over in his books and in his blogs. And while the man may have faded, his mythology continues to gain momentum and popularity. Maybe people even start taking the tools they have been able to garner from his great words and begin teaching it to others. Maybe people love his philosophy so much that they start building schools and societies around the great things he has to say and the great way his words can help them to live their lives. Dylan, you could be a god to these people…

Okay, maybe you wouldn’t be a god. I realize how ridiculous this whole hypothetical rant is. But it all boils down to a question I have about this Sweden guy you mentioned. I Googled him like you suggested and have been reading all morning. Pretty crazy stuff. Well, fascinating stuff, really. But the skeptic in me can’t help but wonder: what if Swedenborg was just another Dylan? You seem like an above-average intelligence kind of guy, just like this Swedenborg dude. And even if Swedenborg was considered the greatest mind of the time, that doesn’t make him impervious to obsession over mythological things. I think when it comes down to it; there isn’t a person out there that doesn’t have some kind of mythology racing through their heads several times a day. Why should Sweden guy be any different? If anything, he has such an extreme intelligence, that he might be all the more capable of taking that obsession to a new level. Creating an entire theological world so vast that others decide to dedicate their lives to it. But what if Swedenborg could be here right now and he were to tell you that all his books about the spiritual world, that they were all simply his mythology? That he wasn’t really talking to angels, but he was obsessing about all the details of what it would be like to talk to angels—what that world would look like, smell like… What would this mean to the followers of Swedenborg’s work if it all were just an elaborate mythology by an elaborate mind? And what would that mean for your own mythology? Because I get the sense that you do believe in more than just the message of Swedenborg. Would it change anything for you?

I’m sorry. Going back and reading what I’ve written so far, I’m afraid that I have come across as some arrogant doubt monger—which I’m not. I’m not trying to question the validity of Swedenborg or religion anymore than you were trying to discuss religion. I’m just interested in hearing what you think about the idea of religion and spirituality all being a product of mythology. The oldest records we have of religious stories—stories like that of the great flood turning up on tablets in ancient Mesopotamia long before the bible hit the shelves—are a kind of mythology that later seemed to find its way and be solidified into doctrine. If it all were just a product of some dudes willingness to grind his mythology into ancient tablets, what would that mean for your mythology, or my mythology, or Swedenborg’s? And why are you so eager to purge yourself of your mythology when it seems, at least to me, like such a natural part of the human experience. And maybe just one last question: if you were to completely dedicate your life to your mythology, and people were to turn you into the next Swedenborg (an idea that probably makes you laugh off as absurd), how would you feel about people putting such faith and trust into your ideas? If the Undigestible man became the Jesus of 4008 AD, how would you feel?

PS: this was a little too long, huh?

Unknown said...

I would ask this: does it really matter whether or not something is a mythology or divine communication? Further more, couldn't mythology be a form of divine intervention? Don't misunderstand me; you're comments are interesting, Dr. Felix, and they have a lot of relevance to questions I have about the power of my own mythology (see previous comment under "who is the Undigestible man"). I think the sad truth is that we will never know the answers to these kinds of questions. Even if Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell was just part of a Mythology, we still wouldn't be able to do anymore than just suppose what the implications were of that. And what if Dylan did become the next Swedenborg? Who's to say that that isn't part of the grand scheme of things? Who's to say that Dylan's mythology, your mythology, or my mythology aren't all products of some holy entity that has enabled us to bring these things into the world? Or maybe it's all just a collection of stories to deal with the fact that there is no purpose? The point is, can we really know? I mean, we could all be products of some space squid, or our entire universe could be inside the marble of some giant space alien kid who uses us for a game (if you want to use a terrible ending to a movie as an example).

Dylan Hendricks said...

Thanks, guys. Even just invoking this reaction makes me feel like the blog is worthwhile, and perhaps more worthwhile than anything engendered (so far) by the mythology itself.

I think "the Scientist" hit along the same lines that my response would be. I was going to say this in the post, but felt like it was running too long anyway - that the thing about Swedenborg for me, and I think also for the authors who he influenced, is that the philosophical trappings of his world view are so pervasive that once you go there, there's no really going back. I would compare it to leaving Plato's shadow cave, but that's a little too presumptuous.

So I'll say it this way instead - that I couldn't care less whether what Swedenborg wrote was true or his own mythology, because like you were saying in defense of mythologies, the works stands on its own. The philosophical repercussions of what he wrote are what matter, as far as influencing the way I think about the world. And even more than that, Swedenborg's epistemology allows for the possibility that it could all just be "made up," but that the same imaginitive pool from which it was drawn, the same force that guided its invention, is that same collective well of wisdom that gives it the authority to be true, regardless of how it came about.

And I appreciate the affirmation of potential career opportunities. Believe me, if I saw a window where I could devote my time to this thing, I'd be there. But right now I'm battling with what feels like a potent (if not generic and intensely cliched) choice: do I allow myself to obsess long and hard enough that I can eke out a living doing it, or do I pursue a route that will hopefully free up my mind to think about things like, oh, you know, marriage and kids?

That might be a false dilemma, but the priorities involved are still worth weighing.

Unknown said...

I agree with you, both scientist and Dylan, and I like what "the Scientist" had to say in his previous comment. I have a similar Mythology myself. It seems like all of the mythologies being tossed around this blog have some pretty identifiable commonalities. I'd like to hear more about the scientist and how you think it relates to Dylan's Undigestible man - see if it aligns in the same way that I feel like mine does.

Still, I don't think that it is entirely pointless to ask the questions I've been asking. I believe it is critical that we entertain the various possibilities out there and to examine the implications. Even if we never find the answer, we are inquisitive creatures. What else are we supposed to do?

Anonymous said...

Vaishali said.....
I love that you have opened a greater discussion about Swedenborg. Dr. Felix and the Scientist seem to live a lot in their heads. What I love about Swedenborg is his practical application and approach to life right here, right now. How life FEELS is essential, not just what you think about it.

I believe I have written the only Swedenborg made fun and easy book in either the spiritual or physical realms. It is called "You Are What You Love" a phrase right from Emanuel himself. You can check it out on www.PurpleV.com.

I also have some radio shows, Friday's from 1-2PM PST on www.ContactTalkRadio.com, Saturdays from 5-6PM PST on www.KTLK.com and simulcast on www.ContactTalkRadio.com. You can visit the Contact Talk Radio site and download shows I have done in the past with Swedenborg experts.

The idea is to help people improve the quality of their lives by understanding the connection between what we give our attention to and where we live spiritually.

Vaishali, author and radio show host

Anonymous said...

I often am a little disappointed that I cannot prove whether religion is mythology or whether mythologies are fragments of religion.
Whether God is, or whether god is madness.

However, there is a Knowing that transcends "proving". This Knowing (for example, that God exists) may be given to us by God. Or it may be some well developed and mythologically entrenched delusion.

Oh well, I still find the things I Know to be more compelling than the things that have been "proven".

Anonymous said...

Dylan-
I've found that if you find another person who's similarly obsessed with similar things, marriage and obsession can coexist happily. Kids, I'd have to make more room for.