Experienced Continuities Between Dimensions

I have now been almost three years, or thirty-three months, in that state in which—my mind being withdrawn from corporeal things—I could be in the societies of the spiritual and the celestial and yet be like another man in the society of men without any difference; at which spirits also wondered;—when, however, I intensely adhered to worldly things in thought; as when I had care concerning necessary expenses, about which I this day wrote a letter so that my mind was for some time detained therewith , I fell, as it were, into a corporeal state, so that the spirits could not converse with me, as they also said, because they were as though absent from me. A case rather similar occurred before; whence I am enabled to know, that spirits cannot speak with a man who is much devoted to worldly and corporeal cares;— for bodily concerns, as it were, draw down the ideas of the mind and immerse them in corporeal things. [Emanuel Swedenborg, Spiritual Diary, March 4, 1748]

This quote, taken from the second volume of Swedenborg’s Spiritual Diary, suggest that under certain conditions—not understood as to causation—some people are able to perceive another reality which appears to be continuous with ours. Information about such experience is rarely recorded and, when it is, is brushed aside. So also are Swedenborg’s own experiences. The fact that he was a notable scientist, writer, and a high-ranking civil servant before his experiences began (at around age 57), and that he continued to maintain his high social standing until his death at age 84—traveling the world and in social contact with Swedish society, not least the royal family at its peak—is brushed aside by those who, for dogmatic reasons, simply cannot accept Swedenborg's testimony. But the experience, while rare, is not isolated. Quite ordinary people have such experiences too. Not surprisingly, they do not make a great fuss over them. And sensibly so. Society must have a certain adequacy even to consider such possibilities. And (as I keep pointing out) in periods when organized religion has the hammer hand, people who have such experiences are frequently treated with much greater severity than in our own. In our own they may be marginalized, ignored, and prevented from publishing. In others they are sometimes executed. One such case is that of the Persian mystic and writer Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155-1191). Another mystic I recently mentioned, Mohiuddin ibn el-Arabi, escaped that fate because he had better high-level connections.

I’ve had occasion to look at this subject before in an earlier post, where I first introduced the writings of Henry Corbin—himself a writer who examined the lives of all three of the mystics I mention above. He originated the phrase mundus imaginalis in an attempt to give a name to the dimension to which these individuals all had access. I’ll say more as occasions present themselves.