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8. Correspondences: The Great Lost Secret
By Kurt Simons | June 3, 2007
Our mental life is full of symbols, ranging from flags and trademarks to allegories, analogies, and metaphors, to mathematics and language itself. As noted in The Word and the Bible, the Sacred Scriptures are also full of symbols. Some are obvious, such as Christ’s use of parables. Some are almost impossible to understand, such as the vivid images in the Book of Revelation.
The teachings of the Second Coming tell us that allegory and symbolism are nothing less than the basis of the Word of God and creation itself. The spiritual relationship between a symbol and its meaning or source is called “correspondence.” Correspondences were well-known to the people of the Most Ancient and Ancient Churches at the beginning of history, but full knowledge of them was lost after the “fall” of the Ancient Church. All that remained were distorted fragments of knowledge, in the form of idolatry, which began at that time, and in mythology, and such idioms of speech as “I see,” meaning I understand, or “Do you hear me?” meaning, are you going to obey? Or having “high” ideals or “low” motives. Now, however, the full concept of correspondences is revealed once again at the Second Coming. The subject is a large one, and we can only give a brief introduction to it here.
Degrees and Correspondences I: The Word vs. the Bible
As noted in The Word and the Bible, the feature that distinguishes the Word of God from all other books is a continuous inner spiritual meaning that the external story represents in symbolic form, or “corresponds” to. The wide range of correspondences in Scripture is most extensively explained in the verse-by-verse, and sometimes word-by-word, review of the inner sense of Genesis and most of Exodus found in the Arcana Coelestia, and the equivalent review of the book of Revelation in Apocalypse Revealed. (An extensive introduction to this whole subject can be found in Worcester’s Bible stories and their inner meaning. A family study guide.) Understanding these correspondences completely transforms our reading of the Word. Not only is its otherwise mysterious symbolism (such as the visions of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation) explained, but its apparently ugly and strange parts, such as Elisha cursing the children (2 Kings 2:24) or Jeremiah being told to cut and weigh his hair (Ezekiel 5) are shown, from their correspondences, to contain spiritual teachings of great wisdom and power. In short, when you see the Word with its inner, correspondential sense, it takes on the stature and depth you would expect from a book written by the God of the universe.
Degrees and Correspondences II: Spiritual Physics
There is an old philosophical puzzle: Where did God get the material from which the universe was built? Did He create the universe “ex nihilo,” “from nothing?” If so, He violated His own physical laws, such as the conservation of energy. This problem is solved, however, if God created the universe out of His own substance, making some of His infinity into finite matter, which is just what happened, according to the teachings of the Second Coming. But, if that is so, it raises a new question: If the universe originated from Divine substance, are we in some way part of God? Some religions believe that we all have a Divine “spark” in us.
Actually, God set up a beautiful, if complex, system that allows Him to provide the inflowing power that keeps the spiritual and physical universes in existence moment by moment, while at the same time keeping those universes completely separate from Himself. He does this by means of two coordinated characteristics of His creation - correspondences and discrete degrees.
There are two kinds of spiritual change: continuous degree change and discrete degree change. Changing along a continuous degree works like moving away from a light - the light appears steadily dimmer but is still the same light. In contrast, a change in discrete degree is a change to a completely separate level of existence, like a change from physical awareness to spiritual awareness. The different levels of creation are separated by discrete degree differences. Those discrete levels range from the highest, that of God Himself, down through the spiritual universe level to the physical universe level at the bottom. Each step, each degree, coming down is more finite and limited than the one above it. For instance, your body can travel through space, but not back or forward in time. Your mind, however, exists on a higher discrete degree level. It can “travel” forward in time in imagination or back into the past in memory. It can also travel in imagination to places where your body can’t go, such as a planet on the other side of the universe or to a completely imaginary place.
So being on a lower discrete degree or level of creation is what separates people from God, and in fact different discrete degrees is what measures the separation of all the different aspects of creation from God. But this raises a new question: How do the discrete degrees relate to each other? They are in a relationship of cause and effect. At the highest level God is the ultimate cause and source of all creation. His action brings about an effect at the discrete degree level of the spiritual world. That level’s effect then becomes the cause of an effect at the next discrete degree level down, in the physical world. In other words, everything that exists here in the natural world, every effect, does so as a result of a causal force, or spiritual form, from God via the spiritual world. What links the degree of spiritual cause to the degree of physical effect? Correspondences. The living correspondential “symbol” at the higher discrete degree level is linked by correspondence to the next lower discrete degree level. This relationship is thus the means by which existence radiates from God down through all the degrees of creation. Here’s an illustration:
Whatever a spiritual thing does for the human mind or spirit, its corresponding representation in the physical world will do for the human body. Thus, for instance, the heart corresponds to the feeling, motivating part of our mind and the lungs correspond to the analyzing, understanding part. Blood corresponds to the feelings themselves, and air corresponds to ideas, true and false. Just as the willing and understanding halves of our mind both have to be working for us to be mentally alive, so the heart and lungs must both function for our physical body to live. The heart circulates blood to our body to keep it alive just as our will “circulates” our feelings, or motives, into a subject that interests us. If that circulation of feelings stops, our interest in that subject dies, just as a part of the body dies if it loses circulation. The lungs take in air just as our mind takes in new ideas. Clean air is like true ideas, and it cleanses the blood circulating through the lungs just as true ideas can “cleanse” our motives. Poisoned air pollutes the blood just as false ideas pollute our motives. Too many new ideas all at once make us confused, just as breathing too fast or breathing in too much oxygen makes us dizzy. And if we don’t learn enough true ideas, our mental life stagnates and dies just as our body dies from lack of air. The point here is that the spiritual qualities involved, in this case the true ideas that cleanse our thoughts and motives, cause the physical mechanism of blood cleansing and circulation on the physical plane, or discrete degree.
A similar relationship is found in all spiritual and physical creation. Physical creation all springs from a spiritual cause, and spiritual sources and their physical effects correspond to each other. Without these correspondential connections between each discrete degree from God on down, creation would not exist.
The correspondential spiritual-physical discrete degree connection with God IS creation, and it never ceases. Creation was not just a one-time event in the distant past. God’s inflowing power and life is required at every moment for the universe’s ongoing existence. An interference at any level with that inflow threatens our existence. In fact, as noted in The Last Judgment Already Happened - in 1757, the inhabitants of hell have tried to cut off that inflow several times in human history. Each interference resulted in a “last judgment” to clear out that path so that the human race could continue to exist.
As noted in The First Coming of Jesus Christ, Human beings are the reason God created the universe. So it comes as no surprise that the most important correspondences involve the human form, created “in the image and likeness” of in correspondence to God (Genesis 1:27). This “image” includes not just the human body, but the more internal aspects of the mind and soul as well. All parts of creation mirror God, but nothing is a more complete reflection than the human “image.” For example, human beings are able to make judgments by distinguishing between good and evil, mirroring God’s spiritual understanding of moral and spiritual order. Even primates, the animals physically most like humans, cannot understand spirituality (see sections on Miracles and Evolution). This lack makes them animals instead of people. Animals, plants, chemicals, and atoms all reflect their Creator, but in fainter and fainter images, with their spiritual origins corresponding to tinier and tinier pieces of God’s wholeness.
Correspondences are bi-directional and can be evil
There are two sides to the system of correspondences. Correspondence, from “co-respond,” means that there is input from both sides of the correspondential relationship. The symbol and effect on the lower level and the source and cause on the higher level have a two-way interaction with each other. The lower, more external degrees of creation provide a foundation that the higher, more internal degrees need for their “real” existence. This is one reason why God came to earth as Jesus Christ. His physical presence made His coming more “real” and complete, and thus more spiritually effective, than it would have been if He had come only in the spiritual realm. He drove this point home to the extent of telling the apostles after His resurrection to not only behold Him, but even to “Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:39).
This two-way correspondential interaction also enables us to influence the correspondence system with our free will. The “fall” of the Most Ancient Church happened because people used this power for evil, as discussed in The First Coming of Jesus Christ. Up to that point, correspondences brought only good things into peoples’ lives. But once people began to do evil and founded hell, evil began to flow into everyone’s life from hell. This changed the correspondence system so that it had an evil as well as good component. This change became apparent even in the physical world. All the fierce animals, stinging insects, diseases, and poisonous plants that had not existed in the “Garden of Eden” of the first creation came into existence. This is what is meant symbolically by God’s statements to Adam that “cursed is the ground for your sake…Both thorns and thistles shall it bring forth for you” (Genesis 3: 17, 18). However, God fit all of these “evil” plants and animals into some useful place in the complex web of life. One law of His creation is that nothing comes into existence that can’t be useful in some way. He thus makes sure that even evil things perform useful service. One use of evil things, for instance, is to hold up to the human race a correspondential mirror of the pain and ugliness that evil carries within it. It seems clear from the teachings of the Second Coming, however, that if humankind improves its spiritual state by living more consistently in keeping, in correspondence, with spiritual good, the spiritual basis of these bad plants, animals, poison, and disease will be diminished, so that, one day perhaps, they may become extinct.
Discrete Degrees and Death
Some religions have thought of death as traveling to some distant spirit world, “up” to heaven or “down” to hell. In fact, dying involves simply becoming aware at the spiritual level where your spirit has existed all along. In other words, death is just a matter of becoming aware at a higher discrete degree. Going to heaven is upward, and going to hell downward, but in a correspondential symbolic sense, not a physical sense.
A Theory of Everything
Scientists, particularly physicists, have long searched for a single basic mechanism that would explain all of physical reality. Swedenborg, in his pre-theological period, called such a mechanism the “universal mathesis.” Modern physics refers to such an idea as a unified field theory, grand unified theory, or theory of everything. On this matter, the physicist Steven Hawking made the now-famous observation that:
“What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? Why does the universe bother to exist?
“If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.” (S. Hawking. A Brief History of Time, chapter 11 (1988)).
Although a mathematical basis has not yet been derived, it seems possible that the knowledge of correspondences may provide the basis for a theory of everything, including not simply spiritual and physical reality but the Word as well. Correspondences are certainly from the mind of God and numbers themselves are heavily correspondential (e.g., “All numbers in the Word mean spiritual realities…” (Arcana Coelestia 10253)). If such a theory is ever able to be derived, however, it will not be a “triumph of human reason” but rather another demonstration of the power of revelation from God.
For Further Reading
From the Teachings of the Second Coming
Arcana Coelestia. The heavenly arcana contained in the Holy Scripture or Word of the Lord unfolded, beginning with the book of Genesis together with wonderful things seen in the World of Spirits and in the heaven of angels. - The basic source book of the teachings of the Second Coming, containing extensive reviews of the whole subject of correspondences (e.g. 3213ff) and such specific topics as the correspondences involved in The Holy Supper (Chapter 13).
Angelic Wisdom Concerning The Divine Love and Wisdom - Reviews the concept of discrete degrees and their application in creation and the way in which creation is based correspondentially on the human form.
The True Christian Religion Containing the Universal Theology of The New Church Foretold by the Lord in Daniel 7; 13, 14; and in Revelation 21; 1, 2 - Contains a big-picture overview of the correspondences of the Word (Chapter 4).
Other Titles
W. L. Worcester. Bible Stories and their Inner Meaning: A Family Study Guide - A classic and easy-to-read story-by-story review of the inner, correspondential, sense of the Divinely-revealed books of the Bible.
I. Thompson. Are Quantum Physics and Spirituality Related? - A physicist’s attempt to see the parallels, with emphasis on the idea of discrete degrees.
To Chapter 9: The World of Spirits, Heaven and Hell
September 13th, 2007 at 1:39 am
Hello: I believe you’ve put some very much needed information on line. I am particularly enthusiastic about the definition of how Swedenborg used the name Jesus, Christ and Lord. It’s not an idea most people would think of themselves, although apparently Carl G. Jung approached it when he wrote that ‘god’ is a pattern inherent if all, he used the gender men, but I hope females have access to the kind of psychological growth that is possible.
January 9th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Thank you for speaching everything that I have long suspected. I just learned of Swedenborg today.