Inside Off The Left Eye – Details, episodes & analysis

We are excited to share a new podcast offering: the Latin Playground! Alongside translator Jonathan Rose, we delve into the nature of language, the nuances of Neo-Latin, and the spiritual experiences of the scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Search the Latin Playground wherever you listen to podcasts to learn with us as we explore the inextricable link between spiritual revelation and grammar. 

New episodes coming in January, 2025! 

Chelsea shares an announcement about the Inside Off The Left Eye podcast, as well as gratitude to our listeners.

Secrets of Heaven volumes 3 and 4 are now available! To read the latest publications on which Dr. Jonathan Rose and his team have been working so hard, follow these links:

https://swedenborg.com/product/secrets-heaven-3-nce/

https://swedenborg.com/product/secrets-heaven-4-nce/

And for a whole library of books and videos to dig into, go to our two websites: www.swedenborg.com and www.offthelefteye.com

Or check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/offthelefteye

If you'd like to support our ongoing efforts in translation, publication, and content production, go to https://www.offthelefteye.com/donate/

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3215

The representative objects that present themselves to spirits come in unbelievable variety, but most of them resemble objects that exist on the earth in its three kingdoms. 

3214

Scenes representing what is spiritual and heavenly sometimes occur in a long series, lasting an hour or two, one after another, in an order that is astounding. There are certain communities in which this happens, and I was allowed to stay in them for many months. The representations are such that if I were to narrate and describe the chain of events in just one of them, it would fill many pages. The scenes are intensely pleasing, because something new and unexpected always comes next, and this keeps happening until the phenomenon being represented has been brought to perfect completion. When everything is complete, the viewer is able to take it all in at a single glance and at the same time to sense what the individual pieces of it symbolize.

This is another way good spirits are introduced into spiritual and heavenly thinking.

3417:3

[3] So people who know religious concepts but do not live a life of love for others cannot see that any pleasure exists besides that which results from supremacy. It monopolizes their minds and constitutes their whole life. Consequently they are completely unacquainted with the heavenly satisfaction that comes of humility and the desire to help others—that is, with the joy of love for the Lord and charity for their neighbor—and with the bliss and happiness these produce. For that reason, the Lord accommodated to their weaknesses when he spoke, so that by this means they could be stirred up and led to learn, teach, and do good. All the same, he teaches what importance and prestige in heaven really are . . .

[After death] we do admittedly become relatively great, important, powerful, and imperial, since a single angel is stronger than many thousands of hellish spirits. But the power comes from the Lord, not ourselves.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

2960:2

Ephron said, “The field I give you; and the cave that is in it—to you I give it” (verse 11). These words meant that they wanted to prepare themselves on their own, so far as the requirements of religion and faith went, or in other words, to reform themselves. This is what the first stage is like for people who are reforming (see §2946). When they learn more truth, or more about the faith, however, they reach a second stage, in which they agree [to let the Lord reform them] but still want to do it themselves. That is the stage the current verse focuses on, but a third is soon depicted, in which they really believe that the Lord reforms them.

[2] . . . the reasons why they still want to reform themselves—even when they progress in their knowledge of truth (or faith) and acknowledge that the Lord does it—are these: The cloud of ignorance breaks up only gradually. It takes time to confirm and strengthen the truth. And goodness is perfected as we absorb knowledge of the truth. Real goodness, which forms the receiving ground for truth, enables us not only to acknowledge but even to believe that the Lord is the one who reforms us. This stage is the third, and a fourth follows it: We actually perceive that the Lord does the reforming. There are not many who reach this stage during bodily life, because it is an angelic one, but people who have been reborn enter it in the other world. 

3286:2–3

[2] With human beings the case is this: When we are being reborn, the Lord instills goodness—benevolence toward our neighbor—into our rational mind, and into this benevolence, or goodness, he introduces truth brought up out of our earthly self. At that point our earthly level has not yet been reborn, and we can recognize the fact from our inner or rational self’s frequent battles with our outward or earthly self. As long as they fight, our earthly part is not regenerate, and when it is not regenerate, the truth we have in our rational part is infertile. As in general, so in every particular: on any issue over which our rational thinking conflicts with our earthly thinking, the truth in our rational mind is said to be barren.

[3] The main thing on which the work of regeneration hinges is the effort to bring our earthly self into correspondence with our rational self, not only as a whole but also in particular, and it is through our rationality that the Lord reduces our earthly self into correspondence. His method is to instill goodness into our rational mind, plant seeds of truth in the soil of that goodness, and then through rational truth reduce the earthly plane to obedience. When it obeys, it corresponds; and the more it corresponds, the more we are reborn.

2979:2, 3

This is how matters stand with the rebirth of spiritual people: First they learn the true ideas that belong to faith, and from then on the Lord maintains in them a desire for truth. The goodness that faith calls for, which is charity toward their neighbor, is instilled in them at the same time, but in such a way that they hardly realize it, since it hides within their desire for truth. The purpose is for truth, which belongs to faith, to unite with goodness, which belongs to charity. As time passes, their desire for the truth belonging to faith grows, and they look to truth for the sake of the goal, which is goodness, or (to put it another way) life. This they do more and more. In this way, truth is instilled into goodness, and when that happens, their life becomes steeped in goodness that accords with the truth instilled into it. So they act (or seem to themselves to act) out of goodness. Up till this time, the truth constituting faith is the most important consideration to them, but afterward, the goodness constituting life is. When the two switch, the person has been reborn.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3474:1

A spirit came to me not long after he had left his body. (This I could tell from the fact that he did not yet realize he was in the other life but believed he was still living in the world.) I sensed that he had devoted his time to intellectual pursuits, which I discussed with him, but then to my amazement he suddenly soared into the air. I decided he was the type of person whose ambitions had been lofty (since people like this usually rise into the air) or that he thought heaven was high in the sky. (This kind of person too is usually raised aloft, in order to learn that heaven is not up high but deep within.) I soon perceived, though, that he had been lifted up to a group of angelic spirits positioned a little out in front and to the right, on the first threshold of heaven. He then spoke to me from there, saying that he was seeing sights grander than the human mind could ever conceive. While this was happening, I was reading in the first chapter of Deuteronomy about the Jewish people, specifically the ones sent to scout out the land of Canaan and all that it held. As I was reading it, he said that he caught none of the literal meaning but only the contents of the spiritual meaning, which were too astounding to describe. This occurred on the very threshold of the angelic spirits’ heaven. What would it be like in their heaven proper, or in the heaven of true angels?

3416

And Isaac went from there means that the Lord abandoned deeper truth. . . .

That the Lord abandons deep truth means that he does not reveal it to people. Inward truth is present throughout the Word, but we do not even see it when we read the Word if we are the type that knows religious concepts without living by them. This becomes clear from the fact that people who consider faith the key to salvation do not notice what the Lord repeatedly said about love and charity. Any who do notice call [good deeds] the fruits of faith, distinguishing and even separating them from charity, whose nature they do not know. So they see the Word from the back, not the front; in other words, they see its surface, not what is inside it. To see the back, or the outside, without the front, or the inside, is not to see anything divine in it.

That is what it means to say that the Lord abandoned deep truth, symbolized by Isaac’s going from there. Not that the Lord abandons it, but that people remove themselves from the Lord, because they remove themselves from anything that affects their life.

3305:2

Readers who stick to the literal meaning believe that when the Word mentions Jacob, it means the whole people descended from Jacob. In consequence, they attribute to that people everything the Word says about Jacob, whether as narrative or as prophecy. The Word is divine, though—mainly because everything in it relates not to one nation or one people but to the entire human race as it is, as it was, and as it will be.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3228

The themes of the current chapter are: the sons Abraham had by Keturah; Ishmael’s sons, by name; the birth of Esau and Jacob to Isaac and Rebekah; and the birthright Esau sold to Jacob for lentil soup. Anyone can see that material like this is useful as a religious history of the era but provides little for a person’s spiritual life—and yet it is our spiritual life that the Word exists for.

3438:2

I must say a few words to explain more clearly what the case is with the Word’s literal meaning. The inner meaning relates to the literal meaning the way our deeper levels (our heavenly and spiritual planes) relate to our outer levels (our earthly and bodily planes). Our deeper levels bask in heaven’s light, but our outer levels live in worldly light. . . . The difference is like that between the light of day and the shadow of night. Since we live in this shadow and do not want to know that truth from the Lord contains light, we cannot help believing that our shadow is the light and conversely that the light is shadow. We are like owls flying through the shadows of night thinking they are in the light, but when they encounter daylight, they think they are in shadow. In people like this, the inner eye, the eye of the intellect, by which we see inside, is not formed for any other purpose, because such people themselves have formed it this way. They open it when they look down to worldly and bodily concerns and close it when they look up to spiritual and heavenly concerns. For them the Word is similar; what appears in its literal sense they consider full of light, but what appears in its inner sense they consider full of shadow. We each see the Word according to our nature. 

3304:3

People who focus on the narrative alone, unable to shift their minds from it, see this phrase and others leading up to it simply as foreshadowing what took place between Esau and Jacob. Subsequent parts of the story confirm them in their view. The Lord’s Word, though, is such that the narratives have their logical sequence and the spiritual contents of the inner meaning have theirs. Our outer self looks at the former; our inner self, at the latter. So the two—the outer self and the inner—correspond to one another, and the Word provides the link. The Word is the union of earth and heaven, as shown many times. So whenever we read the Word reverently, our outer self on earth unites with our inner self in heaven.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3310:4

Only through concepts formed from facts and sense impressions can we corroborate doctrinal truth. Absolutely everything we think about—even the deepest mystery of faith—comes with some earthly, sense-based image, even though we usually have no idea of the true character of that image. In the other life, if we wish, it can be displayed for our minds or even (if we so desire) for our eyes to see. In the other world, such things can be presented to view. This seems unbelievable but is still true.

3425:3 

Those who are not defiant act, talk, seek wealth, and indulge in pleasure in the same ways as those who are—so much so that in external appearance they can hardly be told apart. Only their aims differentiate them; to put it another way, only what they love differentiates them (since what we love is our aim). Yet although they look the same in their outward form, or body, they have nothing in common in their inner form, or spirit. People who are in correspondence—whose outer self harmonizes with their inner self—have a spirit that is radiant and beautiful, as heavenly love is when embodied. People who are in opposition—whose outer self resists their inner self—may look the same on the outside, but their spirit is dark and ugly, as self-love and materialism are, or as contempt and hatred are, when embodied.

3080

The reason very good to look at symbolizes beauty—here, the beauty of a desire for truth . . . —is that all beauty comes from goodness that has innocence within it. When the goodness of the inner self acts on the outer self, it actually creates beauty. That is the source of all human beauty.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3200 

These two verses depict the condition of goodness on the rational plane when it is waiting for the truth that is to unite with it as a bride with her husband. The next two depict the condition of truth when it comes close and perceives the goodness with which it is to unite.

It is important to know, however, that these stages did not arrive just once but constantly throughout the Lord’s life in the world, up until he was glorified. The same is true in people who are regenerating, because they are not reborn once but constantly throughout their life and even in the other life. After all, we can never become perfect.

3308

Goodness and truth resemble babies, in that they are conceived, grow in the womb, are born, grow up, and increase in age until they reach full maturity. Conception, gestation, and birth belong to their rise; growing up and aging till they reach full maturity belong to their progress. The stage of progress, in which goodness and truth unite, follows birth, and its start is what growing up symbolizes here. This stage begins right after birth and continues all the way to the end of life, and in people devoted to goodness, it continues beyond bodily life to eternity. In other words, angels are always developing.

3296:2

. . . A person’s rebirth mirrors the Lord’s glorification . . . ; in other words, regeneration offers an image of the process by which the Lord glorified his human side, or made it divine. Just as the Lord changed his human condition into an entirely divine one, he completely changes our condition when he regenerates us, since he makes our old self new.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3318:2  

A few words are needed to show how matters stand here, specifically how they stand with human beings. A human being is nothing else but an organ or vessel that receives life from the Lord; we do not live on our own. . . . The life that flows into us from the Lord comes from his divine love. This love, or the life that radiates from it, flows in and bestows itself on the vessels in our rational and earthly minds. Such vessels in us face away from the life force because of the evil we inherit by birth and the evil we ourselves acquire by committing it. However, so far as it can do so, the inflowing life repositions the vessels to receive itself.

3316:3 

When we read the story and take it literally, the angels then present with us form no picture whatever of soup, of Jacob, of Esau, of a red dish, or of swallowing some of it. Instead they form a spiritual image, which is entirely different, and distant from the earthly one. The earthly image turns into a spiritual one instantly. The same is true with all other images in the Word. For example, when we read about bread there, angels do not picture bread but instantly think of heavenly love (love for the Lord) and its ramifications instead. When we read in the Word about wine, they do not picture wine but rather spiritual love (love for one’s neighbor) and its ramifications. So when we read about soup, they do not picture soup but doctrines that have not yet been united to goodness and therefore the disorder of their arrangement.

This reveals the nature and quality of angels’ thought and perception and the width of the gap between theirs and ours. If we thought this way when doing something reverent like taking Holy Supper—if we perceived love for the Lord in place of bread, and love for our neighbor in place of wine—we would be thinking and perceiving as angels do. They would then come closer and closer to us until eventually we could share thoughts with each other—but only so far as we humans also dedicated ourselves to goodness.

2955 

Another reason I will bury my dead one means emerging from . . . spiritual nighttime and coming alive is that when an earlier religion dies, the Lord raises up a new one to replace it. So instead of death there is life, and instead of night there is morning. Yet another reason is that in anyone who is reforming and becoming spiritual the dead part is buried, so to speak, and a new, living part rises again. So in place of the night in such a person, or in place of the dark and cold, morning dawns with its life and warmth.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3463:4  

Anyone can see how the case stands . . . simply from this general rule concerning neighborly love: “Everything whatever that you want people to do for you, you do likewise for them” (Matthew 7:12). People who do this by command do good to others but only because it has been ordered, not because their heart seeks it. Whenever they do, they start with themselves, and in doing good they are thinking of their own merit. On the other hand, people who do it not by command but out of neighborly love, or because they want to, are operating from the heart, in freedom. Whenever they act, they start with goodwill itself and therefore with something that gives them pleasure. Since this pleasure is their reward, they do not think of taking credit. From this you can see what the difference is between doing good from faith and doing good from charity. 

3469:2.  

The inner levels, or rational dimension, have been reborn in people with the goodness that comes of truth (that is, people who live according to doctrine), but not yet their outer levels, or earthly dimension. Our rationality is reborn before our earthly part . . . , because our earthly part lives entirely in the world and acts as a base on which our thought and will are founded. That is why we sense conflict between our rational, inner self and our earthly, outer self when we are regenerating. Our outer part regenerates much later and much more reluctantly than our inner part. Nothing that is close to the world and the body can easily be pressured into offering obedience to the inner self, only over a long period of time. The process also requires us to be introduced by the struggles of spiritual trial into many new stages of acknowledgment about ourselves and the Lord—that we ourselves are pitiful, and the Lord, merciful. So it requires many new stages of humility. 

2994 

As long as we are living in our body, we are incapable of sensing or perceiving much of this. With us, heavenly and spiritual entities are translated into the earthly attributes of our outer self, and there we lose the ability to sense and perceive them.

Representations and correspondences as they exist in our outer self also do not appear like the traits of our inner self that they correspond to and represent. So these inner traits cannot impinge on our awareness until we shed the outer dimension.

When we do, those of us who are in correspondence—that is, whose outer self corresponds to our inner—are very fortunate.