The Hidden Levels of the Mind: An Excerpt

Swedenborg describes the three levels of our mind in this way:

The mind of man, which consists of will and understanding, is from creation, and therefore from birth, of three levels, so that man has a natural mind, a spiritual mind, and a celestial mind, and can thereby be elevated into and possess angelic wisdom while he lives in the world; but it is only after death, and then only if he becomes an angel, that he enters into that wisdom, and his speech then becomes ineffable and incomprehensible to the natural man. (Divine Love and Wisdom §239)

That passage says that we can be "elevated into and possess angelic wisdom" while living in this world, but that is referring only to our potential. It is nothing more than a possibility. We all have that wisdom implicitly, but we enter into it according to our life on earth and use it fully and explicitly only after death and if we become an angel.

The highest level of our mind, the celestial, receives love from the Lord—the purest form of love, and the part of our self that manifests it most clearly. It is the fulfillment of the first and greatest commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matt. 22:37). With regard to conscious understanding, this part of our mind receives the divine wisdom—the ability to see all things in heavenly light—that is the offspring of divine love.

The spiritual mind or level of mental activity consists of love of others and feelings of goodwill or charity. In the next verse of Matthew, the Lord identifies this as the second of the two great commandments: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself " (Matt. 22:39). When we experience this love and express it in words or actions, we are saying what we really believe.

We gain a fuller understanding of these two commandments when we realize that in the Greek of the New Testament there are two words for love: one means "to be fond of " and the other means "to consider the welfare of." The second word is used in both commandments, and elsewhere whenever we are commanded to love. The Lord can certainly command us to consider the welfare of others: that is real love, an outgoing love. But no one, not even the Lord, can command us "to be fond" of another. That happens spontaneously or it does not happen at all. We are either fond of a person or we are not fond. It is a personal matter. Consequently, the Lord is not commanding us to be fond of everyone; but he is commanding us to consider the welfare of others—whether we like them or not. Verses that mention our love for the Lord have a similar meaning. Our salvation does not depend on our being "fond" of the Lord, but on considering his welfare and that of his kingdom. That is why he said: "He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me" (John 14:21).

The two higher levels of the mind, the celestial and the spiritual, constitute what Swedenborg calls the internal mind (see diagram 2). We can also think of it as the supra-conscious mind, as opposed to the conscious mind and the subconscious mind that Sigmund Freud wrote about. While the subconscious mind exists below our conscious awareness and houses our less-than-perfect impulses, the supra-conscious mind exists above our conscious awareness and can lift us up above the influences of the subconscious. This internal mind is in contrast to the external or natural mind, which we will discuss below.

Spiritually speaking, the internal mind obviously belongs to heaven, since its ruling or predominant love is either love for the Lord or charity toward the neighbor. In fact, it could also be called the heavenly mind. This is where the Lord dwells with us.

It is important to realize that everyone, no matter what his or her heredity or environment, has that internal mind. There are no exceptions. As we read in Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven,

"In the internal mind are nothing else than goods and truths that are the Lord's . . . In every person [there is] a celestial and a spiritual level that corresponds to the angelic heaven" (§978; see also §1594:5).

Although our internal mind is above our conscious awareness while we are on earth, when we pass into the spiritual world (and if we become an angel there), we gain the wisdom of either the spiritual or the celestial level of heaven, depending on which one of those two higher levels of our mind most often flowed down into us while we were living in this world.

In marked contrast to the sublime reaches of our internal mind is the conscious mind that we use in our daily life: the lowest level of our mind, the natural or earthly level. If you are reading this book and understanding it (or even not understanding it!) you are using your conscious mind, which is also called the external mind. This, Swedenborg often points out, is not the same thing as our brain. Since the mind is the person, the term external mind refers to that part of us that is conscious of the world around us. Our body (of which the brain is a part) exists only to allow us to function on the physical plane. So wherever you find the terms "external mind" or "natural mind" in this book, keep this distinction in mind.