Swedenborg & the Paranormal

If you looked at the Google home page a few days ago you would have noticed their logo had been playfully altered to show a UFO hovering over the letters while it beamed up the second letter O in "Google." For other creative past Google logos, see http://www.google-logos.com/category/official-google-logos

Clicking on their UFO logo revealed a searchlist of numerous things paranormal. One of the items of note was a LiveScience countdown list of the current top ten unexplained phenomena - see http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/top10_unexplained_phenomena-1.html

The listed top ten unexplained phenomena are (more details on each at their site):

10. The Body/Mind Connection
9. Psychic powers and ESP
8. Near-Death Experiences and Life After Death
7. UFOs
6. Deja vu
5. Ghosts
4. Mysterious Disappearances
3. Intuition
2. Bigfoot
1. The Taos Hum

I think that Emanuel Swedenborg is often unfairly singled out in the popular mind as being an authority on the paranormal. While it's true that he enjoyed considerable paranormal gifts, I think he would have been the first to dismiss the importance of these as pursuits in their own right.

Swedenborg was primarily interested in his later life in exploring and recording honestly and faithfully the things he was given to see and experience about the spiritual world and realm of the soul. His former scientific achievements and fame for his intellectual capacity in fields at the forefront of science of his day, plus his service to the Swedish House of Nobles, the Swedish king and to the Board of Mines should serve as testament of his sanity.

But then I also think of the value of Swedenborg's material in helping put into a healthy perspective what are regarded as the important outstanding questions of our time. Swedenborg presents a vast cosmology and framework of a plausible harmonious and orderly reality which allows these questions to exist without the need to go into scientific denial and his work even goes a long way to answering them (well, perhaps all except items 7, 2, and 1).

By comparison, even a more orthodox scientific community listed the top unanswered science questions. On 18th November 2006, the reputable New Scientist magazine decided to celebrate their 50th birthday by tackling "the truly big questions" with the help of some of the leading lights in science. They titled their piece The biggest questions ever asked.
See http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225780.068-the-biggest-questions-ever-asked.html

The questions posed in the New Scientist were:

1. What is reality?
2. What is life?
3. Do we have free will?
4. Is the universe deterministic?
5. What is consciousness?
6. Will we ever have a theory of everything?
7. What happens after you die?

These seem to complement the unsolved mystery list mentioned above rather nicely. And if you study Swedenborg's writings, my guess is that you would probably agree that Swedenborg goes a long way in helping put such question into a healthy perspective which can provide some very satisfying answers or at least a very clear framework for deciding the importance of such matters.

Anyhow, happy pondering.