Future Positive — Gary Lackman writes: On the night of April 6, 1744, one of the most remarkable thinkers of the eighteenth century underwent an astonishing spiritual crisis. That night, Emanuel Swedenborg, a fifty-six-year-old Swedish scientist and statesman, experienced a visitation by Christ. …

After a “psychic storm” erupted with great claps of thunder and a hurricane-like wind threw him from his bed—his own account suggests he had an out-of-the-body experience—Swedenborg found himself “face to face” with Christ. For a deeply religious man like Swedenborg, it was a powerful and disturbing encounter.Looking at Christ’s smile, which Swedenborg thought was as it must have been “when he lived on Earth,” Swedenborg was surprised to hear the Lord ask if he had a “clean bill of health,” a reference to a time when Swedenborg was almost hung for breaking quarantine during the plague. Humbled, Swedenborg replied that he, Christ, knew the answer to this better than he did himself. Christ agreed and replied, “Then do.” Swedenborg took this to mean “Then do.” Swedenborg took this to mean he was to fulfill his promise to abandon his scientific work and to concentrate instead on investigating the spiritual worlds within.

Whether Christ meant this or not, Swedenborg took the injunction to heart. For the rest of his life, he mapped out the strange geography of the interior realms, covering a terrain that included not only other planets but also heaven, hell, and an intermediary sphere Swedenborg called the spirit world.

Although in his day he was fêted by nobility and he later inspired individuals as diverse as, to name just a few, the poets William Blake and Charles Baudelaire, the playwright August Strindberg, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, and the Zen master D.T. Suzuki (who called him the Buddha of the North), outside the realms of parapsychology and the history of dissident Christian sects, Emanuel Swedenborg is little known today. This is unfortunate; his work, both as a scientist and as a religious thinker, deserves wider recognition. (02/08/10)

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