front cover of BEAUTY, WONDER, AND THE MYSTICAL MIND
BEAUTY, WONDER, AND THE MYSTICAL MIND
WILSON VAN DUSEN
Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 1999

Beauty, Wonder, and the Mystical Mind spreads before the reader a rich word picture of the spiritual realm. Wilson Van Dusen describes the mature mystic, enumerating the characteristics of those whose lives are shaped by the experience of God. He explains how religion fits within the context of culture and how mysticism fits -- or does not -- within the context of religion. He also compares the mystical to the aesthetic, noting the similar ways in which art and epiphany move and elevate the experiencer.

Believing that all have the potential to experience God, Van Dusen opens the mystical realm to the reader with his warm and accessible style. Writing from lifelong personal experience in the spiritual dimension, he offers a singular interpretation of the history of major religions and their regard for mysticism.

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front cover of Between Method and Madness
Between Method and Madness
Essays on Swedenborg and Literature
Stephen McNeilly
Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 2005
Between Method and Madness: Essays on Swedenborg and Literature addresses the question of Emanuel Swedenborg’s (1688–1772) influence on literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The collection opens with a seminal essay by William Butler Yeats, a lyrical and critical masterpiece in which the Nobel Prize-winning poet reveals his breadth of lifelong philosophical and theosophical interests, framing them around the significant influence of Swedenborg. The collection also studies Swedenborg’s role in the birth and rise of the Symbolist movement and his influence upon Victorian poetry. The volume closes with an essay by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who views Swedenborg as a founding figure for the Spiritualist circles he himself advocated. This volume, the fourth in the Journal of the Swedenborg Society series, contains the following six essays:
 
• W. B. Yeats, “Swedenborg, Mediums and the Desolate Places”
• Gary Lachman, “The Spiritual Detective: How Baudelaire invented Symbolism, by way of Swedenborg, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe”
• Adelheid Kegler, “Elements of Swedenborgian Thought in Symbolist Landscapes: with reference to Sheridan Le Fanu and George MacDonald”
• Richard Lines, “Eros and the Unknown Victorian: Coventry Patmore and Swedenborg”
• Gary Lachman, “Space: the Final Frontier. O. V. de Lubicz Milosz and Swedenborg”
• Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Story of Swedenborg”
 
Also included are a preface by Stephen McNeilly, a chronology of Swedenborg, biographies of the essay subjects, and an index.
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front cover of A BOOK ABOUT DYING
A BOOK ABOUT DYING
PREPARING FOR ETERNAL LIFE
Robert Kirven
Swedenborg Foundation Publishers, 1997

Composed at a time when Robert H. Kirven was coping with the terminal illness of his wife, A Book about Dying affirms that the universal fear of death is eased by knowing what comes after. Using the unique Swedenborgian perspective of the afterlife and his own hard-earned knowledge of the day-to-day realities of caring for a loved one, Kirven writes of the spiritual experiences of the dying and of the survivors; offers practical advice on measure that can lessen the burden on the sick and the caregiver; and convincingly asserts that "for patient and survivor alike, living really does continue after dying."

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