This course introduces students to the unique and inspiring teachings of the New Church on life after death in the book Heaven and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg. Topics include: who goes to heaven and how they get there; who goes to hell and how they get there; how the Lord rules heaven and hell and how He rules earth by means of them; the experience of living in heaven; things you see and do in heaven; marriage in heaven; the true nature of hell; what ‘Judgment Day’ really is; how we are resurrected at death and the process we go through to enter our eternal home; and our connection with spirits and the spiritual realm. The course will also include a unit on Near Death Experiences and how these experiences relate to New Church teachings. The course has a special focus not only on what happens after death but how these teachings relate to our lives right now.
Before this unit gets to introducing Heaven and Hell, we spend time getting students up to speed regarding taking a religion course at the Academy of the New Church. In addition to spending time getting to know the students, we encourage them to believe what they think makes the most sense, as well as ask them to keep an open mind when learning about the New Church perspective on the life after death.
After groundwork is laid, this unit spends time making space for each student to consider what she believes by means of a journal and a survey and comparing it to what America believes (according to a Barna survey). Following this, the course moves into funerary customs and how faith impacts belief in afterlife. After these personal and general looks at perspectives on the afterlife, we take a look at what the Bible offers on the afterlife, and how surprisingly little is included in that revelatory work.
Finally, the group brainstorms how humanity came to believe in an afterlife in the first place.
Any course on the afterlife would be lacking if it did not address the subject of Near Death Experiences.
This unit takes a neutral approach to the subject, neither confirming nor denying the claims of those who study or who have had Near Death Experiences. As with all things in this course, the students are left in freedom to believe or disbelieve as they think best.
"A near-death experience (NDE) is a personal experience associated with impending death, encompassing multiple possible sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light." (Wikipedia)
Raymond Moody started studying Near Death Experiences in the 1960's, and published his book Life After Life in 1975. "Moody began documenting similar accounts by other people who had experienced clinical death and discovered that many of these experienced shared common features, such as the feeling of being out of one’s body, the sensation of traveling through a tunnel, encountering dead relatives, and encountering a bright light. In 1975, Moody published many of these experiences in his book, Life After Life, in which he coined the term "near-death experience." (Wikipedia)
Many people quibble with Moody's methodology and conclusions, believing that he is mistaken or has jumped to unreasonable conclusions based on the available data, however, what cannot be denied is that many who are clinically dead have experienced strange and inexplicable, often-times life-changing things during the time of death.
This unit is a very short unit, and serves as a conversation-starter for the students. It also helps to loosen students up to discussing the spiritual world more openly.
This unit is designed to bring the student gradually into an understanding that heaven is not a geographical place, but rather, heaven is a frame of mind and a state of heart. Heaven is because GOD is first.
Unit Contents:
Introduction to the Book Heaven and Hell
The Lord is at the Center of Heaven
The Lord is the God and Sun of Heaven
The Lord’s Divine Nature in Heaven is Love for Him and Thoughtfulness toward One’s Neighbor
The life of heaven is a life of service and connection to others. The angels are able to be so useful and connected because they dwell in mutual love. This chapter relies on a working knowledge of Mutual Love as presented in the previous Unit. This is because mutual love is effectively the glue which holds all of society together.
Society exists on many levels, from family to local community, to the country, the church, all the way up to heaven. The rules for healthy society in the natural world are exactly the same as the rules for healthy society in heaven. The primary key to having healthy society is selflessness.
In the Heavenly Doctrines, it is articulated that heaven from a distance would appear as a human being because of the interconnectedness of all elements of the human body. This interconnectedness of organs and parts is like the cooperation of the human family. Using the image of the “Grand Man” as presented in Heaven and Hell gives a great opportunity for the students to see selflessness and mutual love as the glue that holds society together.
This unit is designed to gradually bring students into a fluency in the language of heaven. This unit can sometimes feel a little tedious, but I have found that its design yields fantastic results. The study of correspondences is necessary in order to understand that anything we read about the subjective experience of the spiritual world is not literal, but is symbolic. It is important for the students to understand that when discussing the spiritual world, behind each mention of a style of architecture, a fashion of dress, a mode of transportation, a season of the year, a time of day, or anything else that is concrete imagery, there rests a deeper meaning, and that the imagery is merely a presentation of a truer reality.
This unit is designed to move first from a general study of symbolism to a specific study of Scripture and correspondences. Each step of the way there is repetition and application to strengthen the students’ grasp of the subject.
At last, the course moves to take a look explicitly at what life in heaven is like. This course has taken a similar approach to teaching on the spiritual world as the book does. Heaven and Hell spends a lot of time setting the stage and laying the groundwork that people need in order to see the life in heaven in its proper context. The proper context, of course, has been presented at the outset of this course, but for the sake of reminder it will be reiterated here.
Simply put, Heaven and Hell is not a travel guide, but rather is a mirror for understanding ourselves and understanding that our lives today lead to lives to eternity. Decisions made now connect us with heaven and with hell depending on where we are coming from. The hope is that by examining the nature of the Lord, heaven, and heavenly life, as well as taking an almost painstaking look at correspondences, the students are prepared to look at the subjective experience of heaven without being weirded out or offended by what they read. The greatest example of not seeing teachings on life in heaven in their appropriate context is when people say they don’t want to go to the celestial heaven because they don’t want to live in tents. This statement is the result of a flawed perspective, however. The tents are an image of something more real. Without a knowledge of correspondences this cannot be acknowledge.
Unit Content:
The Four Quarters in Heaven
How the States of Angels in Heaven Change
Time in Heaven
The Clothes Angels Appear In
Angels’ Homes and Houses
Space in Heaven
After examining the concepts that make heavenly life and the subjective experience of heaven, it is important to discuss the time of discernment and sorting that facilitates a person’s entering heaven (or hell). The World of Spirits is a difficult concept to teach at times because the doctrines are clear that as a tree falls, so it lies. In other words, a rational adult is finished changing when death strikes, and the world of spirits is a place to figure out what was loved most and what drives a person. However, all of the sorting, because it seems to take place in a world very much like our own with interactions that happen in this world and vistas that don’t feel too unfamiliar when they are read, students tend to forget that the decision has already been made, and the World of Spirits is just a time to figure out which decision has been made.
This unit introduces the idea of a place where self-sorting and soul searching takes place. It leads into the movie What Dreams May Come, which shows many things about the spiritual world, processing, and how it is our core loves which make us who we are and determine our eternal home.
[If Time Allows]
It wouldn’t be a course on the spiritual world without examining the alternative to Heaven. This unit takes a practical approach to the life of hell and looks more sketchily at the conceptual. Hell is not merely a place, but rather is a mindset, and more importantly a state of heart. There is a lot of disobedience, irreverence, selfishness, and more that connects people in our natural world with the hell of the next...
Summarize the term and prepare for the final exam.