This is because natural knowledge and natural reason alone tend to
confirm materialism and a view of humans as being only a species of animal.
Denial of transcendence can even lead to such outbursts of madness as the
Reign of Terror in the French Revolution – a terrible by-product of the 18thcentury Enlightenment movement.
The Writings explain that true enlightenment is the result in a person
of the influx of Divine truth emanating from the Lord’s Divine love. (Arcana
Coelestia 10330) “Every truth from good is a shining light and a source of
enlightenment.” (Ibid. 5208)
Enlightenment is achieved by “studying the Word with the goal of knowing
truths.” And not just knowing, but being affected by the truth. “Everyone has
such enlightenment as is his affection of truth; and such affection of truth as is
his good of life.” (Ibid. 7012)
So here we have the key to enlightenment. It comes to those who love
truth and are affected by it; and that affection is aroused by living a useful life
and doing what is good.
We need not seek enlightenment as an end in itself, therefore; it will come
to us as our thoughts and deeds are transformed by meditating on the Word,
and living by it.
(WEO)
how nancy reagan came to believe in the afterlife
The following is an excerpt from a column in The Wall Street Journal in which
Peggy Noonan recalls a visit with Nancy Reagan, who died at the age of 94 on
March 6th –12 years after her husband, President Ronald Reagan. Nancy had
not believed in the afterlife, she said, but this is how that changed:
One day at dusk in November 2013 we were talking quietly as I held her hand at her
bedside. She began to talk about Ronnie and how even now he was ever-present to
her. Then she said: “I didn’t believe in the afterlife. I never believed in it, but things
have happened since Ronnie died. He visits me.”
“You mean you dream of him,” I said. She got a quizzical look. “I don’t know if it is
dreams or what. It sounds funny or crazy, sometimes I wake up at night and he’s in
bed next to me and I see him.”
Once, she said, she woke in the middle of the night and looked over at the big beige
stuffed chair at the bottom of the bed to the left. “You look cold,” she said to him,
and went to the closet for a blanket. She draped it over him and went back to bed.
The next morning she awoke and looked over at the chair. The blanket, she said, was
still there, but moved to the side as if someone had pushed it when he left.
She could not, she said, explain this. Whatever it was, the love that she felt did not
just disappear.
“I now believe in the afterlife,” she said.
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