The Revelation Process

An introduction

Although revelation has often been considered to be exotic or mystical, the Writings teach that it actually involves just the same process that happens to everyone at death - an opening of the spiritual senses to an awareness of the spiritual world. It only differs from death in that the transition goes both ways, with the revelator able to return to awareness here in the body's world. For people of the most ancient times, in fact, it was such a routine experience to be directly aware of the spiritual realm that it was more a part of daily life than something so unusual as to be called "revelation." But, as summarized in What is The New Church?, after people invented evil and turned away from God, symbolized by the story of "the fall" in Genesis, they closed off this level of awareness and immersed themselves completely in the senses of this world.

After that time, with the exception of some miracles (see How Miracles Worked), the opening of awareness in the spiritual realm only came occasionally and to specially chosen people who were referred to as "prophets" or "seers" (i.e. people who could see into the spiritual realm). Many Bible stories involve such spiritual seeing, from the burning bush of Moses to the star of Bethlehem and the whole book of Revelation. The last and greatest such opening of the spiritual senses to a person still in the body's world, New Church people believe, was that provided by God to Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg's experience was unusual among such revelations, we believe, in that it was the first time the person receiving the revelation had fully understood what was happening and been rationally involved in the process. John, for instance, while he faithfully recorded in the book of Revelation the remarkable symbolic messages shown him "in the spirit," had no idea what they all meant. Swedenborg not only fully understood what he was experiencing but was actively involved, traveling widely in the spiritual realm, discussing a wide variety of topics with the people he met there, and undergoing a variety of spiritual experiences under conditions like those of a scientific experiment that allowed him to record the experience in greater detail than he would have been able to otherwise. (For instance, he was allowed to go through the experience of dying while still maintaining some of his awareness so that he could record what exactly was involved.) In sum, then, while revelation is no longer a widely experienced process, it is no more unusual than the process of death that everyone goes through.

Further Reading:
Swedenborg and His Revelation: An Anthology

An extensive collection of articles covering a variety of aspects of this subject, from the nature of Swedenborg's preparation to the revelation process itself.

"Lest therefore that the man of the New Church should wander about, like those of the Old, in the shade that obscures the sense of the letter of the Word, especially in respect to heaven and hell and man's life after death, and ... in respect to the Lord's coming, it has pleased the Lord to open the sight of my spirit, and thus introduce me into the spiritual world. He has thus permitted me not only to talk with spirits and angels, and relatives and friends, and even with kings and princes who have finished their course in the natural world, but also to behold the mighty wonders of heaven and the miseries of hell. I have also seen that man after death does not abide in some indeterminate place in the earth, nor flit about blind and dumb in the air or in the empty void, but lives as a man in a substantial body, and in a more perfect state if he joins the company of the blessed....." (Emanuel Swedenborg, The True Christian Religion 771)

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The revelation process

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