Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic/Chapter 19

by Signe Toksvig

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Space, Time, and Memory

IF a man who has followed the sea settles down on land in an office, he will continue just the same to will the air and notice the wind and the stars, as he goes to and from his cave; and so Swedenborg, with the best will in the world, could not become entirely theological; he kept casting side-glances at his previous interests, often dragging them by the ear into the most incongruous exegetical surroundings, where he could retain them only by the unfettered use of symbolism. But he loyally let them remain side-interests, and one has to dig them out piecemeal, mostly from his diaries, because there he did not always try to make them work to prove his theological points.

It was in his talks with what seemed to him spirits that his old interests of physics, physiology, and psychology mostly got a chance, and there is something convincing even in their fragmentary character. On the whole, as his other-world experiences continued, the fragments really turned out to fit together well enough to make a fairly consistent picture of the various phenomena which interested him. Of these the interlocking questions of time and space preoccupied him a good deal.

When he said that the spirits who were "near" him perceived his thoughts, he made it clear that the use of such a spatial word was only a makeshift. For in that world, he insisted, "change of place and distance is only an appearance, according to each one's state and its change." ¹ If he were thinking of a certain topic, the spirits with whose mental or emotional state it had some relation would be "near" him; in fact their thoughts might be so closely linked to his that they would believe they were doing the meditating.

Space in their world, in other words, was "psychological"; something which, Swedenborg said, the angels or advanced spirits understood, but which was difficult to explain to newcomers, since to their view it really looked as if they were still in place and space. Swedenborg tried to make them understand that this was a kind of illusion, although it was a real enough expression of their mental and emotional states. As he said: "I have frequently conversed with spirits concerning the idea of place and distance among them—that it is not anything real, but appears as if it were, being nothing but their states of thought and affection which are thus varied, and are in this manner presented to view in the world of spirits . . . the spirits to whom bodily and earthly ideas adhere do not apprehend this, for they suppose that the case is exactly as they see it to be. Such spirits can hardly be brought to believe otherwise than that they are living in the body, and are not willing to be persuaded they are spirits and thus scarcely that there is any appearance or any fallacy in relation to the matter, for they desire to live in fallacies." ²

He told them that "it is thought which conjoins, for to thought there is neither place nor distance . . ." and, elsewhere, he wrote that the case was the very same with men in the flesh. Men's souls were "constantly bound to some society of spirits and of angels . . . it matters not that they are distant from one another on earth . . . still they can be together in the same society—those who live in charity in an angelic society, and those who live in hatreds and such evils in an infernal society. In like manner it matters not that there be many together on earth in one place, for still they are all distinct in accordance with the nature of their life and of their states, and each one may be in a different society." ³

In the same paragraph, he touched on apparitions. "Men, who are distant from one another some hundreds or thousands of miles, may when they appear to the internal sense, be so near each other that some of them may touch, according to their situation." And a kind of two-oway telepathy: "Thus if there were a number of people on earth whose spiritual sight was opened, they might be together and converse together, though one was in India and another in Europe, and this also has been shown me."

Swedenborg did not think that this would necessarily be by means of their "spirit-bodies" or psychic organisms. "I have been informed," he said, "both by conversation with angels and by living experience, that spirits as spirits, in regard to the organic forms which constitute their bodies, are not [always?] in the place where they are seen, but may be far away and yet appear there." ⁴

In other language, spirits whether in or out of the flesh could project mental images of themselves. This indeed fits in with Tyrrell's theory of apparitions, that they are not "real," but conceivably projected "idea-patterns," made up by coöperating intelligences (in or out of the flesh) with all the paraphernalia of apparent reality, including spots of three-dimensional space, as anybody can create for himself in a dream.⁵

But did the "organic form" of the spirit—that little tight condensation or field of suggestible energy-stuff—have a "situation"?

Yes, Swedenborg said, and even if it is only an appearance it is real because it is the same as the ruling general state of the spirit both as to mind and as to character—the state which draws him into his own "society." From that state there are many variations and excursions, but into it the spirit always returns. It cannot be more than apparently "placed"; there is no up and down in the nonspatial world; but these changes of state "appear in the world of spirits as changes of place." ⁶

Tyrrell, in discussing the "reality" of collective hallucinations, says that even if one could imagine a group of living people so collectively hallucinated that they seemed to themselves to be living in whatever environment the "idea-pattern" had impressed on them, they could still test it by comparison with the physical world. They could, for instance, pass through the wall of a hallucinatory house.

"But if we take the further step" (Tyrrell takes it), "and suppose these persons to have shed their physical bodies, without having otherwise changed their personalities, then this impressed, hallucinatory world would have no competitor. Everything in it would behave as if all were physically occupied; and there would be no test by which they could tell whether their world were physical or hallucinatory." ⁷

That was precisely the trouble which Swedenborg said he had with those spirits who wouldn't believe anything to be true that they did not see with their eyes, "even if this were mere fallacy." He stuck to it, nevertheless, that their "walkings and removal" and "their advancements which are frequently seen are nothing but changes of state; that is to say, they appear in the world of spirits as changes of place, but in heaven as changes of state."

Swedenborg realized that "thinking makes it so." He also could conceive that a three-dimensional space might be interimagined by a group who would then seem to themselves to live in it. But, as Tyrrell says, "If problems about space are mooted, people turn at once to geometry. It seems that it may be more enlightening to turn to the observer. These suppositional spaces provide a universe with plenty of room in it." That is, every like-minded group, or even individual, could have its own hallucinated three-dimensional space, which "they no doubt would call 'physical' space, and this would be spatially unrelated to what we call physical space." Yet it would not be entirely subjective, but the question of "where" such spaces could be "simply disappears and becomes meaningless." ⁸

Swedenborg, despairing of "natural terms" with which to explain these subtleties, did not think the hallucinatory space was entirely subjective either. Again and again he repeated that the reality of the apparent change of place was due to a real change of state—mental or emotional. Later on he tried to sum it up:

"Approaches are likenesses of the state of the interiors, and separations are unlikenesses; and for this reason those are near each other who are in like states, and those are at a distance who are in unlike states; and spaces in heaven are simply the external conditions corresponding to internal states. For the same reason the heavens are distinct from each other, so are the societies of each heaven and the individuals in each society; and furthermore the hells are entirely separated from the heavens, because they are in a contrary state.⁹

"For the same reason, again, anyone in the spiritual world who intensely desires the presence of another comes into his presence, for he thereby sees him in thought, and puts himself in his state; and conversely one is separated from another so far as he is averse to him . . . whenever in that world several are together in one place they are visible so long as they agree, but vanish as soon as they disagree." ¹⁰

Presumably they seem to themselves to walk away. Swedenborg said, "Walking, going and departure are nothing else but changes of state of the interiors; but still before the eyes of the spirits and angels they appear exactly like walking, going and departure . . ." ¹¹

"That this is so can be confirmed by much experience in the other life, for I have walked there in spirit with them, and among them through many of their abodes, and this though in body I remained in the same place." ¹²

Innumerable times Swedenborg stressed that his physical body stayed in the one spot and only his mind roamed, and this not in our space but through "changes of state." When he went on those odd excursions which he termed visits to the spirit realms of other planets, he maintained that it took two days for all the necessary changes of state to occur in him.

Well aware as Swedenborg was that time can also be psychological—a good companion shortens time, a dreary one lengthens it—he was prepared when he came to converse with "angels" who had forgotten what calendar and clock time was. They had been so long dead to that kind of time, they had forgotten the alternation of night and day due to the earth's rotation about the sun, and Swedenborg had to explain all that to them. But though they had no notion of our kind of time they knew well enough, he said, "that relatively to the duration of state there is time, just as much as in the world" ¹³—a kind of local time, just as the appearance of three-dimensional space was local. Even angels had their ups and downs emotionally, he noted elsewhere; even for them there were states of greater and lesser joy and even some sadness—for otherwise than by contrast it is hard to seize those states.

However, he said, even the idea of time, any kind of time, perished with those who were of the innermost heaven, "because with them the natural [self] which is in the notion of time is put to sleep." ¹⁴

The aspect of time which most fascinated Swedenborg was memory—man's precarious hold on time. As early as in his first published writings on physiology he had maintained that memory was a change of state in the little "brains" (cells) of the cortex, not tablets stored in little boxes in the brain.¹⁵ Nobody surely believes that any more, he said about this theory, and he would have been surprised at its persistence. In the summer of 1744, in his draft of the book on the five senses, he sketched out what he meant to say about memory—for instance that the memory was the "field" (campus) "which the external senses establish, as also the internal." ¹⁶

What he thought changed was "the cortical substance," but by that he usually meant the energy-stuff of the psychic organism, in this case its brain, from which the physical brain derived, not the other way around. "That all thoughts are changes of state is confirmed by all philosophers, but that such changes really exist, and indeed in an eminent organism, has not yet been demonstrated, nor can it be demonstrated until the brain shall have been scanned . . ." ¹⁷ and the connection between superior and inferior forms made clear, or the mind-body relationship again. This is what he meant to do in his future brain studies, but as it happened he completed his study of memory, so it seemed to him, in the other world, where he had the vast advantage of being "taught by conversation with souls and spirits on this subject," and indeed of actually seeing the field of memory in operation.

In brief, he would have agreed with Bergson that "memory is something other than a function of the brain, and there is not only a difference of degree, but a difference in the nature of perception and remembrance." ¹⁸

Not unlike Bergson either, Swedenborg had decided that there were different levels of consciousness and subconsciousness in man, and "memories" corresponding to each.

First of all, Swedenborg maintained, there was the external or corporeal memory of "material" ideas, by which he meant those images which man had acquired as a result of the physical "affection" (stimulus) of his sense organs, and which was "useful for man inasmuch as it is suitable to those things which his life in the body and the world require." ¹⁹

This external memory, dependent on sense reports or their associated ideas, is the one, according to Swedenborg, which seems to die or to become at least passive immediately on the death of the body.²⁰ But after a brief period of stupor, the recollection of physical sensation is still so strong that the recently arrived souls continue to think of or to remember themselves as they were in the body, with clothes, possessions, appetites, etc., and thus in a sense they re-create themselves as they were. Out of these memories they scaffold "the phantasies which they love," which he also now and then describes as a kind of dream world. When they are in "these physical phantasies," he says, they are really asleep and dreaming.²¹

They cannot, however, remember at will details from their life on earth, which often seems to make them indignant. ("Indignation and restlessness," Swedenborg says elsewhere, are characteristics of the less evolved spirits.) He tried to soothe a certain morose spirit by telling him that he ought to be grateful that he was now gifted with a much subtler understanding and not mind being unable to remember everything, but the spirit seems to have been no more grateful than the elderly in the body are when their memory fails to function.²² But, as with them, so the memory of spirits can be excited into action by giving it a clue (Carington's "K" idea).

"Souls in the other life seem indeed to themselves to have lost the memory of particulars, or the corporeal memory in which merely material ideas inhere, because they are unable to excite anything from that memory, though they still have the full faculty of perceiving and speaking as in the body. . . . Still, that memory remains, not however as active but as passive [subconscious?], and it can be excited by others, for whatever men may have done, seen or heard in their lifetime, when these things are spoken of to them with a like idea, then they at once recognize them and know that they have said, seen or heard such things, which has been evinced to me by such abundant proofs that I could, in confirmation, fill many pages with them." ²³

Swedenborg asserts that in the first bewildered period following the death-shock, spirits do not always know even who they are, as when he mentions a spirit who first recognized himself from seeing his own image in Swedenborg's mind.²⁴ In another case, "A certain one whom I had not previously known, and who seemed to have but recently died, was with me today, and when it was permitted to inquire whence he came he was led by my memory through various cities which he did not know, but when he was conducted through his own city then he recognized the streets and everything connected; and if I had known the situation of the houses I could also have found the house where he had lived." ²⁵

He concluded that the reason spirits were not "allowed," generally speaking, to remember more details from their earth life was that the Lord meant them to lead a more "interior" life now, but he often sorrowfully mentions that spirits do not at all relish this wise provision or even realize it. "Souls are not at all aware but that they speak from their own memory, and do in fact sometimes thus speak, as I have heard, but then it is from the interior memory, through which the things in their corporeal memory are excited." ²⁶

Here Swedenborg touches on what he considered the relationship between the different levels of memory or "memories."

Swedenborg defines the corporeal or external memory as that which is useful and necessary for life in the body, saying moreover that this memory only retains those things on which man has consciously "reflected"—his word for "attended to." "Although the human sight is diffused into thousands and thousands of objects," he says, "yet out of those the external memory retains only those which it has reflected on." ²⁷

This is not too dissimilar to Bergson's saying that "perception" is essentially dependent on what is useful to the body, so that only the object is selected, and therefore perceived and remembered, which serves that "centre of action," the body. Bergson also supposes "a plane of pure memory where our spirit preserves in every detail the picture of our past life," and, according to him, it is from this enlarged plane that consciousness selects the recollections that are to stimulate the apparatus of the physical brain into present perception.²⁸

According to Swedenborg, the interior memory "is as it were the interior faculty of taking forth and viewing the particulars of the corporeal memory." ²⁹

And the "plane of pure memory" of Bergson corresponds exactly to the "interior memory" of Swedenborg in its all-registering capacity, even of things to which the attention has not been consciously directed, "so that," as Swedenborg says, "there is not even the least thing whatever that has reached the sight of the body and whatever has reached the internal sense but is most accurately impressed . . ." ³⁰

It is no news to students of modern psychology that the subconscious has a photographic memory. Strong evidence for this comes from studies in multiple personality,³¹ where some segment of the personality can remember things under hypnotism which the conscious mind cannot possibly recall. Hans Driesch puts it this way: "The enormous extension of simple memory in hypnosis allows us to establish the hypothesis that, at the very bottom, the soul is able to retain everything that has ever been experienced during the whole mental life . . ." ³²

Swedenborg distinguishes between the interior photographic memory and another "more interior," which includes all of experience. That the latter has a resemblance to modern views of the subconscious is shown by his assertion that in it man's experience is arranged in such a way that emotions constitute "the nucleus," and "scientifics" (facts) occupy the "surface." ³³ For him it was indeed the very nature of a man, and he said that this memory-disposition was actually visible to the higher beings of the spiritual world.

"Man cannot ever think anything which does not come into clear light after death, yea, into so clear a light that nothing at all is hid of the least of all that he has thought; it is inscribed on his disposition, and, if it may be credited, this is what is understood by everyone's book of life." ³⁴

People who had succeeded in concealing their evil deeds in this life, and who persisted in denying the charges in the other, were confounded by having their actions represented before them visibly (as if seeing a modern film). Swedenborg cites several such cases, which, he said, he had witnessed. It was also a kind of punishment.

Apart from having been told about the all-recording memory by his friends in the other world, Swedenborg believed that mankind possessed it because of dreams. While dreaming, he said, such portraits were made as the waking mind could not produce. "For in a dream a man is wont to appear as the very same with all his lineaments, together with every condition of his body, his speech, his gait and many other particulars, which one never could know from the memory of material things, nor is man able to describe any such faculty.³⁵

The ability of his interior memory to retain everything about people who had been known to Swedenborg caused him, he says, a certain amount of trouble. For some, though not all, of the spirits around him, had access to this memory and could fish out of it the details necessary to give a perfect impersonation of a man he had known, "as though it were his very self." He sometimes refused to believe in somebody's alleged identity, because "all things, even the minutest particulars, can be so counterfeited as to confirm the illusion." Only "the interior angels" could know the difference, and he warned "anyone with whom spirits converse that similar personations are most frequent in the world of spirits." ³⁶

It disquieted him, this accessibility of his memory. "They are able to read the deeper things which are with me in my memory, whilst I am unaware of it . . ." ³⁷

He saw the spirits, in other words, as having access to both the conscious and subconscious parts of his memory, insisting that they could speak from it "with variety." In fact he said that this was all which most of the spirits could speak from, his memory. But not as if they merely repeated what he thought; it was rather as if the topics in his mind were so many keys on a piano which they picked out into tunes of their own, according to their own character, or lack of it.

For, as Swedenborg often stressed, although the corporeal memory was usually in abeyance so that the spirits could not at will remember their experiences in the body, yet the result of those experiences remained—that is, their nature, disposition, personality.

"The two lives which remain after death," Swedenborg said, "are the lives of persuasion and of cupidity," ³⁸ or—as we might say—of opinions and emotions. It was evident to him that though persuasion might subdue cupidity, yet it was usually the other way around, "for that which is loved perniciously is confirmed on many grounds, even until the man is persuaded."

Spirits were especially prone to the life of unbalanced opinions, being without the common-sense checks of the physical world; and Swedenborg often complains of their self-confidence and arrogance, no matter how mistaken they were. He says they did not know whether the things they picked from his memory were true or not, but believed them equally and often supposed them to be from their own superb memories. "Consequently, if I demonstrated anything falsely, they would be persuaded concerning that also, for in respect to material things, they cannot judge from themselves, though they still suppose that the knowledges which are in my memory are in theirs." ³⁹

The ease with which spirits had access to Swedenborg's conscious and subconscious memories was greatly aided, he explains, by the fact of ideas being visible in the other world. "In the spirit world," he explained, thoughts can be seen "as when one sees in a picture everything simultaneously represented to him . . . a single obscure idea [to man in the body] is made clear by means of many representative and intelligible ideas that are set forth by spirits. Angelic spirits employ comparatively still more illustrations, for as is a man compared to spirits, so is a spirit compared to angelic spirits, and so are angelic spirits compared to angels." ⁴⁰

In a manner of speaking, Swedenborg seems to have considered that his "memories" were complete pictorial archives available at a glance, or a presentational field, from which clusters of information could be fished with the hook of a single fact. "I had no need to do more than think about a person with the idea of his qualities and at the same time of his position, dignity and other circumstances, without any idea of his face, body, and of such things as a man is described by in human speech—still less his name—and they at once discerned and knew who it was, and of what quality he was in my thought. In like manner respecting kingdoms, cities and similar things." ⁴¹

These "idea-patterns" (in Tyrrell's language) seem to remain constant. Swedenborg says specifically that whatsoever is connected with the idea of a person remains connected, "whatsoever one has heard concerning him, has seen in connection with him, has observed while he spoke with him, whatever he has thought about him, both well and ill—all remain; and many more things than he was ever aware of . . . all these ideas remain and are presented simultaneously in the other life, when anything is thought about anyone . . . also ideas of places are presented at the same time; and with these all things that happened there. Whatever happened there adheres to the memory of the place and is presented at the same time with it, thus thousands of things simultaneously." ⁴²

The same was the case even for science ". . . whatever one has learned and thought concerning that matter is simultaneously presented, thus more fully when he has thought much about such a thing."

These idea-pictures, available with the speed of thought, were not only to be got from the minds of the incarnate, however; Swedenborg admitted that at times spirits could gather facts from each other's memories and in this way unlock them. "I heard a certain spirit speak with another. I was acquainted with both in the life of the body. He described the genius and character of the other, and what opinion he had of him, and then recited a letter which he had written, and many other things in a series. The other acknowledged the whole, and was silent." ⁴³

When Swedenborg spoke of "spirits" he usually meant the ordinary run of what he called "middle-character" deceased, neither good nor bad, hardly changed from their uninstructed life on earth, and hardly as yet aware of their change of condition. Most of them could not grasp what he persisted in trying to tell them, that though they had apparently lost their "corporeal memory" they now had access to another and better mental apparatus.

For if they really learned to make use of their interior memory and their inmost memory they would be able to think "much more subtly and distinctly," since the interior memory was part of the faculty of rational understanding, and the inmost memory enabled one to judge of what was "true and good." ⁴⁴

The mere verbal knowledge of philosophy and religion Swedenborg considered part of the corporeal memory. It was "the understanding of these things which belongs to the interior memory"; ⁴⁵ therefore when the merely book-learned arrived in the other world they often appeared quite idiotic.