“For you have formed my inward parts; you have covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvellous are your works and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret, and skilfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed and in your book they are all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” Psalm 139:13-16

This year, in New Zealand, Australia and the USA, voters are being asked to make decisions about abortion reform, whether to liberalise or tighten up laws that already exist. The two main protagonists in the debate are those who view the unborn child as a person who should not be killed and those who view the foetus as an appendage to the woman’s body and that she can do what she likes with her body.

To help to come to grips with abortion, whether induced or natural (still-birth situations), we need to consider the place or role of the human internal. This human internal is what we otherwise refer to as the soul or spirit. The soul or spirit is the person! The body is the covering (literally ‘knitted’) in my mother’s womb. In the Divine economy, everything has a purpose and nothing is left to waste! The death or “termination” of the physical form is concerned with the external bodily part of us whereas we need to also consider these matters from the human internal aspect which lives forever. There are, therefore, two levels of life that need to be acknowledged and their order in our creation is vital.

The first level of life. The first level of life is that of the spirit or soul! This is referred to as the inward parts by the Psalm. The seed of the soul is like a graft from the father. Everything is there. Everything that comes into existence on the natural plane of life and develops there, does so by means of influx from the spiritual realm. The body does not develop first and receive a soul at birth! “In the sperm that conceives each one of us, there is a whole graft or offshoot of our father’s soul that is wrapped in substances of nature. Our bodies are formed by means of this in our mother’s womb…

“In the seed from which each individual is conceived there is a shoot or cutting of the father’s soul in all its completeness, wrapped in a covering of natural elements. These control the formation of the body in the mother’s womb…. The reason why the father’s type in all its completeness is in the seed is that the soul is in origin spiritual and the spiritual has nothing in common with space, so it can be reproduced in a small compass just as well as on a large scale.” (True Christian Religion 103)

So, we start off as a spiritual Tardis!

“People’s internal is that which makes them human and distinguishes them from animals. By means of this internal people live on after death and for ever … It is the prior or primary form from which anyone becomes and is a human being … By means of this internal the Lord is united to people. The heaven itself that is nearest to the Lord consists of these internals.” Arcana Caelestia 1999.3

This internal person or mind essentially consists of two things, a will and an understanding. These are what are fearfully and wonderfully made. Fear speaks of feelings, an activity of the will, and wonderfully (literally ‘to distinguish’) an activity of the understanding or rational faculty. These are the vessels for God’s love and goodness, and God’s wisdom and truth. They are our point of connection with God within. The quickening of the soul.

“These inward aspects of a person possess no life in themselves but are recipient forms of the Lord’s life.” Arcana Caelestia 1999.4

“Man’s internal is not the Lord, and so not life but a recipient of life.” Arcana Caelestia 2004.3

The internal consists of a will and an understanding and the spiritual body, like the natural body, correspond to the functions and uses of these two vessels. They have no life in themselves but at the time of conception, life from the Lord flows in.

We receive the warmth of His Love and the Light of His Wisdom. Our soul comes to life so to speak like a seed in the ground comes to life when warmed by the sun and is watered. Love is our life and so it is that the heart is formed in the foetus very early on. The lungs which correspond to the understanding faculty do indeed form but do not come into operation till birth. But the soul is alive and fully functional! If it were not so the lungs could not be formed. The Birth of an independent fully alive baby.

“Love without understanding, or affection which is of love, without thought, which is of the understanding, can neither feel nor act in the body; because love without understanding is as it were blind, while affection without thought is as it were in darkness, for the understanding its the light by which love sees.” Divine Love and Wisdom 406 

“This can be confirmed to life from the conjoining of the heart with the lungs, because the correspondence between the will and heart, and between the understanding and the lungs, is such that just as love acts with understanding spiritually, so does the heart act with the lungs naturally; that a man has neither any sensate life nor any active life so long as the heart and the lungs do not act together, is evident from the state of the embryo or the infant in the womb, and from its state after birth. As long as a person is an embryo, or in the womb, the lungs are closed; consequently it possesses neither feeling nor (conscious) action; the organs of sense are sealed up….; but after birth the lungs are opened, and in proportion as they are opened a person feels and acts; the lungs are opened up by the blood sent into them from the heart……It is true that in the meantime blood circulates through the lungs, but through the pulmonary arteries and veins, and not through the bronchial arteries and veins which give a person the power to breathe.” Divine Love and Wisdom 407

So when the baby comes into the light of the world it becomes fully alive. It becomes aware!

Conclusions: Firstly, we can have something positive to say to those who have had a still-birth or miscarriage, that the developing child lives on directly under the Lord’s care in the highest heaven. Secondly, when a deliberate termination is performed it is a matter of motive, mercy and knowledge or ignorance of the spiritual realities. One way or another it can leave a scar on the mind and life. Life and death medical situations, mental health situations, and psychological conditions arising from trauma such as rape are very difficult to deal with. Decriminalising abortion and making it just a health issue will not really make things better or easier. It is also ultimately a question of our spiritual health and governments cannot legislate for that! Finally, the purpose of creation is a heaven of angels from the human race, and abortion cannot defeat that purpose. The unborn child, the living soul goes straight to heaven!

This short reflection is a response to some questions I was asked to consider for a recent college assignment as part of the diploma course I am undertaking with the Australian New Church College.

The questions were related to the concept of humanity and in exploring the qualities of someone that is renowned for their humanitarian work. The first question I find myself hearing is, ‘What does humanitarian mean?’

When I look in Google I find: 

“Having concern for or helping to improve the welfare and happiness of people. Of or relating to ethical or theological humanitarianism. Pertaining to the saving of human lives or to the alleviation of suffering: a humanitarian crisis.”

So, one who is renowned for their humanitarian work is one in which their work is viewed as helping to improve welfare and happiness and saving human lives. When I hear the word ‘human’ I immediately think of the Lord’s love and wisdom in use… this is what the human form is. And obviously Jesus as the Lord is the ultimate example, both literally and figuratively, in His coming on earth to save the human race… to save that which is of His form.

My feeling is, that even if we are unable to identify that this is what the human form is and what it means to be human, that there is however an innate sense of that form in our minds that is simply a result of His essence flowing into our soul moment to moment – instilling in us an affection for qualities that demonstrate this. We see this confirmed in the spiritual principle that everything that exists in the natural landscape of this plane of life is, in fact, a result of a spiritual cause. So we naturally see, again both literally and figuratively, an inclination in human beings towards qualities in others that draw out the human form for us to behold, albeit a natural, external representative of this.

My daughter, Audrey, has been reading about Audrey Hepburn as she has been given a few books on her since she shares the same name. These books are aimed at children so we have read them together at bedtime. Granted they have presented in a very sweet and perhaps not always truthful way, which I discovered after having read deeper into her life, but they do however capture the general love the public seem to have for Audrey Hepburn.

She is graceful, beautiful but in an interesting way, and gentle. She speaks quietly but with assertiveness and she speaks with a clear articulation. Her face is clear and her eyes always seem to be wide and attentive. She is famous and well loved and known for her generosity of spirit and humbleness. And these are qualities just related to her work in Hollywood in the theatre and movies.

Added to that, once I started reading about her work with UNICEF, I found her described as tireless, compassionate and committed to the work above and beyond what was expected.

The announcement of Audrey’s appointment as the Special Ambassador for UNICEF was made on March 8, 1988. Although UNICEF officials would have been content if Audrey had functioned merely as a figurehead, that was never the case. “From the moment she signed on, she went into the field, meeting with the starving children whose message of despair she hoped to carry to the rest of the world. Completely hands-on in her approach, she raised the consciousness of millions of people about countries they never knew existed.”

She was portrayed as a woman who had a particular love for children and their struggles in poverty, having also had a taste of it in her own childhood.

As a starving child in Holland after World War II, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the forerunner of UNICEF, brought her much-needed food, medicine, and clothing.

“There is a moral obligation,” she would say, “that those who have, should give to those who don’t.”

This last sentence to me particularly speaks of the way the Lord’s love works in us. What’s written here is a natural based response to the idea of charity … in the desire to give to others who are poor and needy. But in the spiritual life of our thoughts and affections, we are asked to take this a step further and be more discerning than just offering to those who have nothing. We are asked to acknowledge that is, in fact, our own self that has nothing and that it is our moral obligation to allow the Word as the Lord, His truth as His love, to flow into our being and allow it to affect us and move us to seek to apply it in our life. In this way we then become those who have nothing, allowing the Lord to give to us and in turn allows us to offer to others in our life, who also have nothing. By seeking to live by the Word’s truths we are thereby seeking to live in His love, which will mean that the way we offer to others is guided by spiritual charity and hence a moral application of truth. Spiritual charity allows His light to shine on the things that oppose our reception of Him and thus in this contrast, enhances our ability to see the Lord more fully. If we practice spiritual charity then what we offer to others in our life will be a moral charity too.

“It must be understood that all works and deeds pertain to moral and civil life, and therefore have regard to what is honest and right, and what is just and equitable, what is honest and right pertaining to moral life, and what is just and equitable to civil life.

The love from which deeds are done is either heavenly or infernal.

Works and deeds of moral and civil life, when they are done from heavenly love, are heavenly; for what is done from heavenly love is done from the Lord, and everything done from the Lord is good.

But the deeds and works of moral and civil life when done from infernal love are infernal; for what is done from this love, which is the love of self and of the world, is done from man himself, and everything that is done from man himself is in itself evil; for man regarded in himself, that is, in regard to what is his own, is nothing but evil.” ( Heaven and Hell 484)

The joining together then of his love and wisdom in use like this enables the human form to be made just that little bit deeper known yet again. This humbles us as we find ourselves in the presence of those qualities of the real humanitarian work, the work that saves human life from the things that oppose it; grace, beauty, quiet assertion, and clearer articulation.

We are moved by His mercy, by His generosity of spirit, the tireless way He offers again and again, the compassion and the commitment of that. To His continual ability to offer above and beyond what was expected. An increasing light and delight…

Because so many new features have been added to enhance this website it is worthwhile to provide a follow-up to Julian Duckworth’s excellent article on The New Christian Bible Study Website that appeared in the Spring 2019 New Age.

Click to go to:newchristianbiblestudy.org      

This website has been set up by the enterprising Steve David and his team. Its overall purpose is to offer and provide access to Swedenborg material in many ways and make it one of the most helpful Bible Study sites. Recent figures show that it is receiving around 2.5 million visits/year which is double what it was last year.

Some of our members use it frequently and made very positive comments about its value and purpose. For those who are new to the website, I suggest exploring it with the assistance of Julian’s introduction as a start. What follows are features that I have come to use often in exploring Swedenborg’s Works.

Under the picture on the Home page are 4 options – Read the Bible, Understand Bible Stories, Explore Spiritual Topics and Theology (Study Swedenborg’s Works). I click on Theology when I want to read a passage from Swedenborg’s Spiritual Writings.  I click on Study Swedenborg’s Works when I want to read a passage from Swedenborg’s Spiritual Writings. This gives me access to all of his spiritual books like the Arcana Caelestia or Heaven and Hell. This is so quick compared to the previous ways I used to do it, such as looking up the physical book if I had it, or the electronic version I’ve downloaded, or starting up the New Search Program, or the Kempton Project. What’s great is that it’s such a time saver and you have access to all his Spiritual Writings – published and unpublished – free of charge. This website is a wonderful gift to the Swedenborgian internet community.

I’m currently studying the Arcana as part of a Logopraxis Course. I looked up Arcana Coelestia 4735 as it caught my attention as very significant. Swedenborg is saying that Divine Love displays itself in the human form and the whole passage forms a key part of his message.

I noticed a new button with the name ‘Study this Passage’. By clicking on it a panel slides out from the right hand side as you can see in the following image.

It has 2 tabs in this instance. The first tab with the feather icon is titled “From Swedenborg’s Works” and provide Inbound References. In this particular case, they were passages from Swedenborg’s other books that refer to AC 4735.

The second tab with the Book icon is titled “Other New Christian Commentary” and it provided 2 links as illustrated below.

I clicked on the first link having the title “Divine Human 1”. It brought up the Commentary window alongside the AC 4735 passage as shown in the following image.

To my delight, it consisted of a short video on the Human Form produced by the New Christian Bible Study Staff. The content and imagery are excellent. Below the video was Julian Duckworth’s insightful commentary on the Divine Human. This is a major idea in Swedenborg’s Writings and Julian’s way of explaining it is very helpful.

What’s fantastic, is that complementary material is placed in easy reach of the passage you are interested in, for those who wish to explore further. I like it that the reader initiates the process of further investigation by choosing ‘Study this Passage’ and decides to what extent they want to follow the links.

The creators of the slide feature on the Swedenborg Writings web pages call it the “Swedenborg Slider”. This slider has been enhanced with Parallel Passages. 40 years ago, New Christian scholars worked on a project to collect “parallel passages” in Swedenborg’s theological works. There are a lot of them… more than 2800 pairs. For years, the Development Team wanted to add these to the New Christian Bible Study site and recently got a chance to tackle it. If you’re reading one of Swedenborg’s books, and you click on the “Study this Passage” button, you’ll see parallel passages, to go along with the inbound references. To check it out go to Apocalypse Revealed #255, click on “Study this Passage” and see the parallel passages listed on the Slide panel. The benefit of providing links to parallel passages is that it enables people to contemplate a central idea and see it from one perspective as you read a passage and then from a slightly different perspective with the second passage and so on. This activity of seeing a central idea from a slightly different angle can be seen as a form of contemplation which is a very important spiritual practice to developing our understanding.

To sum up, the Swedenborg’s Works part of the website which has been enhanced with the new “Swedenborg slider”, provides great assistance to people who want to explore his theological works online.

If you benefit from this site, please consider making a donation. There is a Donate facility to let you express your gratefulness and support for the continuance, maintenance and development of this website. The team have much in the pipeline and are limited by financial constraints, so donations are very much appreciated.

Please consider promoting this website in whatever way appeals to you, to people you think would enjoy using it. As more people like yourselves utilise this website, its growing usefulness is likely to attract sponsors to financially support this work. Hopefully what has been described has been helpful and provides further encouragement for you to explore and use this wonderful website. I would be delighted to hear your comments which you can send to michael@swedenborg.com.au with ‘Comments on the NCBS website’ as the subject.

Next time I will share what I’ve found helpful in the Bible section of the website.

While I have been in hospital I have been working some of the time on an indexing of many of our church teachings to make them accessible in a much shorter version. The second one I worked on said this: “Jesus Christ is the invisibleness of God made visible. Everything spiritual must be seen by us through natural forms.” Through what’s seeable, through what we’re familiar with, and through things we can understand. Jesus Christ is personal, like us, but perfect like we aren’t, and Jesus told parables that used sheep and seeds and birds and houses which the listening crowds would ‘get’ because they knew them daily.

So, back to the hospital as a picture for us of heaven. Every time my hospital room door opens, it’s someone who seems to be saying on their face that I am the most important person around. That sounds heavenly! Yes, they will go next door and do that again but that’s not the point. They haven’t been trained to care, they are caring. I haven’t yet met a day nurse who took up nursing because they didn’t know what else to do.

One of the impressive things about hospitals is their staggering co-ordination between different departments. Of course, today a lot of middle-level hospital workers and others have it all to hand on a computer screen and can find in a flash when someone was tested for ringworm. That has made things more efficient but any hospital has to have its systems in place, even those that were around in 1919!

In Swedenborg’s work ‘Heaven and Hell’ there are many descriptions of heaven (and of hell). A lot of these pictures of how it goes in heaven talk about principles, like being useful, being wise, acknowledging the Lord, everything has its place in the scheme of things, and they often add a visual description to make it more personal. I found myself thinking that you could wander around a big hospital with a copy of ‘Heaven and Hell’ and see so many instances of what we’re told heaven is like. Hell? Well, you might have to go somewhere else to do that but I’d better not say more.

So here are three chapter headings from ‘Heaven and Hell’ as I wander round the hospital seeing various heavens with my own eyes…

Heaven is made up of countless communities. This is an obvious one because all hospitals are packed with their -ologies (haematology, neurology, oncology…) each one with its expertise and function but none any less than any other.

The Divine of the Lord makes heaven. Perhaps not as easy as the first one but let’s give it a try. The Lord’s Divine really means what the Lord is like in himself plus what the Lord gives out and shines forth with, which is his love and wisdom. So where do you see that the most in a hospital? Perhaps it is in everything and everyone who works for the welfare of all. But I think I felt it when I waited for my op in the surgical department, this large space full of doctors, nurses, anaesthetists, admin, porters, each looking busier than busy, but all driven by the desire to heal and make it better. It’s that which shines forth in surgery.

Heavenly Joy and Happiness is basically the idea that while we enjoy a lot of worldly things which seem, we think, to make us happy, the real joy and happiness is something else, something purer, finer and which moves our deeper levels of our soul and spirit. In terms of the hospital, this would be the occasional but powerful feeling, “What a wonderful place this is,” adding perhaps, “This is none other than the house of God.”

Julian Duckworth

But socially, in Europe, at least until the mid-1800s, it was still unpopular and unfashionable to profess to be an unbeliever, even if the tide was gradually beginning to turn. While the famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1811 was still a student at University College, Oxford, he crafted and printed an essay called “The Necessity of Atheism” in which he wrote: “the mind cannot believe in the existence of a God,” because he saw no reasonable outer evidence for such a conclusion. When the tract was sent to the heads of all Oxford University colleges the pamphlet so shocked the authorities that Shelley was “rusticated for contumacy” (suspended for stubborn disobedience of the authorities) because he refused to deny himself being its author. Around that period it was normal that fathers by default got custody of their children if ever a marriage split (in those days he would be the main financial provider). But due to Shelley’s publicly professing his atheism, he was the first man for which the courts decided that it would be better not granting him custody over his children (most likely they assumed no good role model would be provided by a non-Christian parent). Such were the conventions.

Swedenborg perceived the rationality of the age ahead of him, which I suspect troubled him. His philosophy was employed to prove the opposite, that a God does exist and that we have a soul. Even his scientific endeavours were also pitched at the pursuit of proof of God, although science turned out not to convince of itself, except when a reason had already been accepted. He was later to indicate that such non-absolute proof would destroy our freedom, especially for us to exercise our rationality freely and to feel our reason and conclusions as our own. While still in his scientific period, in his work “The Infinite, and the Final Cause of Creation” – published in 1734, the same year in which he finished his major philosophical opus “The Principia” – Swedenborg states:

“Philosophy, if it be truly rational, can never be contrary to revelation… Reason or understanding is a faculty partaking both of the soul and the body, whose end is to enable the soul to be instructed through the body and its organs… the rational cannot be contrary to the Divine; since the end for which reason is given to us is that we may be empowered to see that there is a God, and to know that He is to be worshipped.”

In this he sounds almost like a gifted musician who is offering all his skill and talent, effort and works towards glorifying the Creator.

We are not rational simply because we can reason, mainly because we reason from falsities introduced by egotistic tendencies (and ignorance), which Swedenborg asserts has destroyed the proper order of rationality in us. Because we have more freedom and less knowledge at birth than animals, who have instinctive knowledge, we often end up being worse off than animals once the proper order of our reasoning is aligned to influx from our higher source. The true order of life – and of the celestial people – is this: from the Lord comes wisdom, from that wisdom comes intelligence, from intelligence stems reason, and by reason the scientifics of the memory are brought to life. (AC121)

The relatively recent meteoric rise of the field of Behavioural Economics shows plenty of evidence of how biased and blind we are in much of our own thinking (see the work of Daniel Kahneman, Carol Tavris, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, etc). The list of identified biases (systematic errors of thinking and judgement) seems to be growing almost daily. I relate this to Swedenborg repeating his assertion that we have much falsity in our mental systems. As a result of us being blind to truth and reality, rational justifications are frequently part of our intellectual diet. Such justifications are the appearances of rational stories which we use to explain in hindsight why we did something. These justifications invented after the fact are often believed as true by the teller but can be exposed by the researcher as showing they are inaccurate reasons. We don’t make an error in the story alone. Justifications can be a type of subjective or false excuse, maybe in defence of our actions, or out of ignorance of our lack of seeing the primary power of our affections at work.

Unless there is a foremost love of truth above any love of self (i.e. by shunning self-justification efforts), there is no perception by which to see for ourselves whether something is actually true. This lack of perception is partly due to the opinions that we already hold as a result of having ‘proved’ it for ourselves earlier (chosen to believe it) from our sense impressions or from some superficial interpretation, and partly due to the misconceptions that lend support to the preconceived notion. That last point is loosely based on AC8521, in which I believe Swedenborg pointed out a hot topic in modern psychology, namely that of ‘confirmation bias.’ Our bias endorses a preconceived, predetermined opinion or interpretation and selectively seeks evidence (reasoning) in support of it, while avoiding and filtering that which does not support it.

The trouble is that sometimes we are not even aware that our reasoning is flawed, which makes a mockery of our ‘beliefs’ based on such ‘knowledge.’

For example, you go to the supermarket and stop by some shelves offering French and German wine. You buy a bottle of French wine. After going through the checkout you are asked what made you choose that bottle of wine. You say something like “It was the right price”, or “I liked the label”. Did you notice the French music playing as you took it off the shelf? You probably did. Did it affect your choice of wine? No, you say, it didn’t. That’s funny, because on the days we play French music nearly 80% of people buying wine from those shelves choose French wine, and on the days we play German music the opposite happens. This study was done by Adrian North from the University of Leicester. Only 1 out of 44 customers who agreed to answer some questions at the checkout spontaneously mentioned the music as the reason they bought the wine. When asked specifically if they thought that the music affected their choice 86% said that it didn’t. The behavioural influence of the music was massive, but the customers didn’t notice or believe that it was affecting them.

Our sciences and philosophies are not immune to these subtle and unconscious effects of our affections, battling it out with our reasoning. As Mark Twain once said, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

But the news is not all bad. We are certainly not born a blank slate but have some good remaining in us. Recent psychology studies with young babies before being trained into beliefs show they have an innate preference for good over evil, and that children around age of three are eager to help others out solving all sorts of troubles, “and what’s more, they seem to enjoy it!” (PBS series “The Human Spark”). Children, like adults, can – and often do – struggle against innate hedonistic tendencies (see the Marshmallow Test, which creates a scenario of choice between “having it now, or waiting for a greater reward”). A recent update on it from Rochester University shows that if the kids are first primed with a negative experience, they are much more likely to act out of self-interest than if the Marshmallow Test is preceded by a positive incident engendering a sense of trust. So very much is up to the modelling created by their care-givers.

To leave the final word to Swedenborg (DLW258):

“Each of us is born with the ability to understand truths even at the deepest level where angels of the third heaven live. As our human discernment climbs up on a continuum around the two higher levels, it receives the light of wisdom from those levels. As a result, we can become rational in proportion to its ascent… The reason we do not become rational to the highest degree we are capable of, is that our love, which is a matter of our intent, cannot be raised up in the same way as our wisdom, which is a matter of our discernment. The love that is a matter of intent is raised only by abstaining from evils as sins and then by those good actions of thoughtfulness that are acts of service, acts that we are then performing from the Lord. So if the love that is a matter of intent is not raised up along with it, then no matter how high the wisdom that is a matter of our discernment has risen, it ultimately falls back to the level of its love.”

A worthy book to read is “A Thoughtful Soul” by George Dole. Earlier its title was “A View From Within”, but the later edition has a marvellous foreword by the late professor Huston Smith which relates to what has been said here above.

With love and kind wishes.

May your month be reasonable.

Joe

I was reminded of the story of Dr Francis Collins who, many people will know, headed the Human Genome Project. In his wide-ranging book ‘The Language of God’ he describes how he grew up in a free-thinker’s home and by the time that he graduated as a young Doctor he was quite comfortable with the idea of being a confirmed atheist. He tells how this certainty was challenged by meeting Christian patients on his daily hospital rounds. These patients, although their prognoses were often poor, possessed a serenity which defied logic. It disturbed him so much that he decided to investigate further. His search led him to a Methodist Minister who recommended he read CS Lewis’ book ‘Mere Christianity’. CS Lewis became a guiding light for him, answering many of his troubling questions. Finally, after many months of soul searching, he made what he described as ‘a leap of faith’ and embraced Christianity.

Dr Collins, before deciding on a career in medicine had been a chemistry PhD student. Possibly, partly because of this background, he was asked to head the Human Genome Project. It seemed an impossible task. It was true that some segments had already been unravelled but using the current techniques meant that to complete the whole of the human genome would take an impossibly long time. New techniques would have to be devised. The pressure must have been immense. Apart from the inherent scientific problems he and the Director of the Project were soon embroiled in a legal/political minefield. Commercial interests claimed ownership of some sequences and threatened to derail the whole Project. No doubt his faith would have been a great comfort to him during this time.

Mapping out the human DNA would have potentially significant outcomes. Medical scientists could then study the possibility of gene manipulation to alleviate or even cure many diseases that were caused by faulty genes.
When the team finally completed the task Dr Collins instantly became world famous. In his TV appearances and lectures, he also became known as a fearless defender of faith. In particular, he argued that there was no need for science and religion to be seen as incompatible.

My question is: would these obscure Christian patients have known that they were an integral part of part of one of the major medical breakthroughs of all time? I very much doubt it given the timeline involved.

 by John Wilson (of the Sydney Society)

Margit Irwin, Bryn Athyn, PA: Three years ago if someone asked me if I belonged to a Logopraxis group I probably would have replied that it was the sort of thing I would be uncomfortable with. Being a conservative type who has been uncomfortable whenever in a “care and share” group of any kind, Logo Praxis was not something I was looking for. However, a chance conversation with a classmate convinced me that it was worth at least trying it out. After all (and this was the clincher) it really wasn’t about me per se, but a chance to bring my religion into better focus. I am eternally grateful for that chance conversation!

Logo Praxis groups usually meet once every two weeks. During the two weeks leading up to to a meeting we read a short portion of a book of the Writings or the Bible with an eye towards what jumps out at us. We are then encouraged to use that part as a means for a focus for us during those weeks. We might zero in on our focus with starters like: be aware of, make a conscious effort to, reflect on, observe shifts of state when this truth is remembered, etc.

Suddenly, my life IS my religion, rather than religion being a part of my life. Making the daily effort to be aware of a truth that stood out for me in any given two weeks has been such a blessing. Working daily on better understanding Him and living with His will in mind rather than mine has been a wonderful experience. Noting the many times I fail to live up to His wishes for me has helped me to try harder. The Lord’s presence with me is now felt much more strongly. I have become aware of His truths and how much I need his constant help in order to draw closer to Him and what he wants for all of humanity.

The meetings themselves give space for reflection and for sharing what has transpired for us in the two weeks intervening. The intent is to help each other grow in our knowledge of the Lord and what he is trying to teach us. Our failures are as important if not more so that our “aha” moments. Our task is to make every effort to take personality out of the equation as we make our submissions for each week. The intent is not to direct or guide but continually turn back to and be guided by the Word of God, and to be supportive of that intent in our group members.

My greatest wish would be that more people could experience this practice of daily worship. I have reaped the blessings of being kinder, less judgmental, amazingly more hopeful and willing to work on my many shortcomings. There are miles yet to go, but I now live with the confidence that the Lord is always there to show me, through His Word, what steps I need to take as I stumble along the road towards His kingdom!

Margit can be contacted at margit@irwins.ws.

Siri Y. Hurst, Huntingdon Valley, PA: How Logopraxis is helpful in my life. It might sound a bit dramatic to say that Logopraxis has significantly changed my life for the better, but it has and here’s how. Before starting Logopraxis I used to read the Word (Writings) on an intellectual level and sometimes apply what I learned to life, usually during adversity.

Now that I read the Word using the Logopraxis concept that everything, but EVERYTHING, applies to me and my state, the Word becomes alive. While I was raised to think this way, I did not have the Logopraxis tools to formulate a task from the reading and bring that into my daily life. And what is wonderful, I regularly meet with others who are on the same path and hear how they are applying truths in their life. It is a gift we give each other.

Logopraxis takes work. However, it is like climbing a mountain from which to view the natural life from something higher. This “seeing” of the natural life, especially the proprium, can help free us from it, or help us not identify with it. “The seeing is the freeing.” For me, this often brings a state of interior peace.

Logopraxis is not just an intellectual process but experiential. It is experiencing the Lord as the Word.

Siri can be contacted at sirihurst@gmail.com.

Gretchen Sandstrom, Bloomfield, Connecticut: Harald and I joined Logopraxis in February, 2016. I am just finishing two years in this program. I still feel like a newcomer. But I’m very happy to have found a new-to-me way of coming to my religion.

My upbringing in Pittsburgh, PA was New Church from the beginning. I went to New Church elementary school. I had two years of public high school and then went to Bryn Athyn for the other two years and four years of college. I learned the stories of the Word, about DLW and CL, always storing up cognitions and trying to remember representations. The Theta Alpha Journal’s regular feature “Let’s Apply” was one of my first explorations of using the teachings, beyond the obvious shunning evils as sins and aiming for Conjugial Love.

Our Logopraxis group leader, Rev. David Millar, reminds us to read the Word/Writings for application, devotion, and worship. The discovery that a whole movement was based on searching for what the Lord is telling me to do was very exciting and a little scary. The Gospel of John says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So seeing the Lord as the Word – including the Writings – means what I read there is the Lord speaking directly to me. Even offering instructions!

For example, Arcana Caelestia 4249 says: “Indeed temptation has its origin in angels’ maintenance of the person in goods and truths, while evil spirits maintain him in evils and falsities.” And 4249,2 says: “Whatever a person thinks and what he wills, that is all his thoughts and all his affections, originate either in hell or in heaven.” This is scary while also providing a feeling of relief. My thoughts and affections don’t really come from me. They come either from angels or from devils. What I can do is choose which ideas to retain or act on. When the devils are present, notice this and try to choose another behaviour, from the angels. Then the Lord can restore things to order.
Having our face-to-face Google Hangout group meeting is a huge benefit. Hearing what other members heard from the Lord broadens the value of the reading. It’s a real support system. We all see how the Lord “spoke” to or is inspiring each one of us individually! And being able to hear David Millar’s summing up and answers to questions is such a privilege.
Gretchen can be contacted at gsand02@comcast.net.

Dianna Synnestvedt, Bryn Athyn, PA: My spiritual practice has grown deeper since I became part of the Logopraxis community. I love the guidance and support I get from my fellow practitioners, and the structure that the method gives. I find I have more peace in my life as I am able to see my proprium for what it is, and try to apply principles in the Word to the life of my mind. One of the important things I have learned through practice is to be aware of levels of meaning when I am pondering a situation.

The structure of the method teaches me to find principles in the Word to live by, and the structure of the life group sessions allows the communities to share the activity of the Word in our lives with each other.

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Dianna can be contacted at desynnestvedt@gmail.com.

Kirsten Schoenberger, Shelton, Connecticut: I was introduced to Logopraxis eight or so years ago. I heard that it was an approach to the building of a spiritual practice supported by a group of others engaged in the same work. We “met” via the exchange of emails. Today I am in an online group where we see and hear each other via the computer screen. Two people live in Australia and four in the USA. We meet every two weeks.

Perhaps because I like tasks with specific instructions, I was drawn to the format of the Logopraxis cycle. At the start of the cycle I read from a book of Sacred Scripture, pay attention to the portion that catches my attention, [and] pinpoint a spiritual principle seen there. Then I focus on how this principle functions in the realm of my mind until the group meets again. We come together to report on what we observed in our thoughts and affections during the previous two weeks. Each member of the group is fed by the experiences of the others. It is not a discussion. What we bring is an offering to the group. It feels holy and reverent. I feel the Lord in our midst.

The structured approach offers me a way to live my life from the Word. I was amazed that even after 13 years of New Church education and many years of actively participating in a church group, I hadn’t consciously taken in the idea that, “The Lord IS the Word”! Not that “The Lord is IN the Word”. Not that “The Lord INSPIRED the Word”. THE LORD IS THE WORD. I’ll never forget how deeply that moment affected me.

From then on when I read the Word I try to be open to the fact that the Lord is seeing me; doing His work within me. Right here. Right now.

Of course when the light of the Truths of the Word shine in, the proprium is exposed. It is not a pleasant thing. It sometimes feels like staring down into the fiery pit. When I see by the light of the Word, the Word Itself begins Its process of salvation in me. I can find comfort in the fact that since I have seen it, I can shun it. As we say in Logopraxis, ‘The freeing is in the seeing.’

One thing that I have learned in Logopraxis is that the Word shows me what I need to work on. I may think I know for myself what to work on to improve myself. But Who knows me the most intimately? The Lord presents me with important stuff to work on.

Logopraxis is not for everyone. I’m sure the Lord leads his people in the process of regeneration in many different ways. He led me to Logopraxis.

Kirsten can be contacted at ttail49@hotmail.com.

Gray Glenn, Kempton, PA: What difference do I perceive from doing Logopraxis? It has re-organized my thinking. I think differently than I used to, therefore, I respond differently to what life throws my way. Because of doing Logopraxis over a length of time, it has become easy to distinguish thoughts and affections from the Lord because the experience of them is now so separate from other thoughts and feelings. Because of this, I can’t take what is not from the Lord (just about everything) as seriously (for as long) as I used to. In turn, this opens the way to see more from what is the Lord.

The Lord leaves us free to live in our blindness, but doing Logopraxis can help us experience (in specific ways) how in our blindness we are not free.

Logopraxis involves setting up conditions to open the possibility of experiencing inner awareness from the Word. In Logopraxis the individual creates for his or her self new conditions every two weeks. Creating those conditions involves a meditative phase, an intellectual phase and a practical phase. The practical phase involves observing what happens under those pre-determined conditions. It is something an individual does regularly, on-going, to invite conscious participation in how the Lord reveals the proprium for what it is.

Logopraxis focuses on salvation as process, as the only activity of the Divine.

For me, Logopraxis has been a means of becoming more aware of how the Word works. It has provided many experiences which confirm the Divinity of the Living Word.

Gray can be contacted at pingie@ptd.net.

Hal Rosner, Philadelphia, PA: I’ve been in the Logopraxis community for about five years. I heard Reverend David Millar of the Australian New Church College give a presentation at the Swedenborgian Colloquium in 2012, and his talk deeply resonated with me. In the months that followed I was able to join a group organized by Gray Glenn. “LP” as it is often referenced by its followers, is my church. It is where I worship, commune with like minded souls, and experience the Lord’s presence through a commitment to spiritual practice.

At the Colloquium David spoke of declining church memberships and congregants becoming passive or perhaps even co-dependent in their relationship with traditional organizational models. In my life I experienced such complacency or even ambivalence in my own study of the Word. It seemed I was subsisting on a couple of favourite numbers from the Writings, to be applied to myriad woes in the context of my repentance journey. To complicate matters, my social circle of friends and relatives tended to be rabid nay-sayers, sceptics, and evangelical atheists.

The YouTube video of David’s talk is an excellent introduction to LP. The website SpiritandLife.net engages users at all levels so that participants are to be found world wide. My group, which meets face-to-face every two weeks, had been through Heaven and Hell, also Divine Love and Wisdom. We are now halfway through Divine Providence.

LP is a “disruptive innovation” much like Uber and Lyft upending the taxi industry, Amazon for retail shopping, and Spotify for purchasing music. The term typically refers to innovations that disrupt and displace existing markets. In this case, it is governing church institutions that may feel the impact.

I’m “all in” with the LP process, engaged with systematic weekly readings, also formulation and application of a task or spiritual focus. Daily. Weekly. I no longer read the Writings to analyse content, but instead lean in closely so that the Lord, the Word, reads me. This reversal of the traditional dynamic has resurrected and rejuvenated my spiritual life.

In LP there is a strong sense that participants are taking responsibility for their spiritual
growth and development. The ongoing commitment is to self-examination and repentance. The personal reflection that comes through practicing the truth builds a sense of community. LP as a process is often not pretty and often can by quite messy as the proprium is stripped of frivolous posturing and taken to task for holding on to bad behaviour. It is the application of spiritual truths that leads to a certain amount of liberation and freedom, and the powerful experience of the Lord in one’s life. All those ancient stories and all those volumes of the Writings provide the foundation and gateway, but knowledge has to be lived and put to use.

Hal can be contacted at hmrosner@gmail.com

Sarah Walker, Perth: I grew up in the New Church in Australia and was raised into the belief that the spiritual world was just as present and real as this world. There never was any question in my mind that it wasn’t. In my 20’s and early 30’s I lived in the UK and the USA. I experienced exactly what I’d felt at home. I was part of a New Church community in each of these places but I didn’t feel spiritually connected to them. I slowly become disillusioned and disheartened at the diminishing size of the church culture and population, and to what seemed to me to be the corresponding lack of connection with the Lord in my own life. I longed for that connection but had no idea how to start and eventually fell into a dormant state of waiting.

Then about two years ago I was at a national New Church camp and had attended a session run by Rev. David Millar. I don’t remember Logopraxis being mentioned but the premise behind it was certainly present. The idea of reading with conscious attention to what the Lord is saying to us. The idea that the Lord IS the Word. And if I truly believed that – then why wasn’t I reading it anymore? The idea is that the Word reads us (not that we read it), and that it brings our states to our attention if we are willing to hear and see.

So . . . I was inspired to pick up the Sacred Scriptures that night with these ideas in mind. And something in me shifted and jolted me awake. Over the next month or so it brought me to a point where I was compelled—almost even given no choice—but to move forward and act. I had to begin. And Logopraxis was where I started.

Once I began to learn the skill of reading with conscious attention—I did start to hear and see the Lord more. But it didn’t stay limited to the text of Arcana Caelestia, which is what we were reading at the time. It transferred. The Sacred Scriptures suddenly seemed like a living entity. My Logopraxis life group became an opportunity for me to hear and see and love the Lord. My interactions with others in my life were opportunities. My dreams started to shed light on my states and even guide me to truths I needed to learn. I couldn’t see a tree anymore without thinking of perceptions or hear a bird without feeling ideas or look at the sunrise without a deep love rising in me for Him. I found connections opening up everywhere.

And I felt spiritually connected to a community: the idea that the Word, the Lord, is what unites us; the idea that if we share our experience of it with others, and not just our intellectual understanding—but our lived experience of the Word working in our life—then this gives us a glimpse of what heaven is; the idea of what a spiritual community is; the idea that if we practice self-examination and repentance not just for ourselves, but for others and for the community, then what we learn feeds them too.

This is a small summary of my experience of Logopraxis and it still continues to change every day, or rather my relationship with the Lord changes and deepens every day. We all have our unique role to play in the Grand Human and so we all experience the Lord differently. Therefore the practice of the process will be slightly different in each of us. (And it is just a process, until you apply it to your inner life and live it.) It is the sharing of goods and truths that link us together—it is the Lord in our midst.

Sarah can be contacted at musictogetherwithsarah@gmail.com.

Alanna Rose, Plainfield, NY: I heard about Logopraxis after writing an article for the Theta Alpha Journal questioning why there were no esoteric chapters of the New Church, or Swedenborgian theology. What I received in response was a letter from Gray Glenn stating roughly, ‘It does exist! It’s called Logopraxis.’ I began listening to David Millar’s sermons online and was really inspired by his ability to connect obscure pieces of the Old Testament with internal states I was experiencing—basically his ability to bring the Word to life inside of me. I joined a Logopraxis group online after being cautioned that it was unusual for someone under 50 to join and that it was often unpleasant. How could I resist?!?

Working personally with sacred texts (the Bible, the Writings) in the context of David Millar’s understanding of Logopraxis has vivified concepts I have of myself, the Word (the Lord) and the human condition. It has drawn on basic truths I learned within a New Church context and electrified them. It has elevated my respect for the Word (the Lord) and brightened my sense of His presence as the Word ‘in me.’ Working with David Millar has righteously crushed my natural concept of ‘morality’ as a goal in itself. (Moral superiority is my lower self tying to merit salvation—an impossibility as salvation is in essence the Lord, and not something the proprium is even interested in.) Logopraxis exposes the proprium and its action within me and the degree of resistance the proprium has to the Lord’s influence. It’s given me more compassion for my fellow travellers (all of humanity) by showing me how miserable the states of the proprium really are to endure and how vigorously it strives to dominate my experience. The esoteric aspect I spoke of earlier is the mysterious way the Lord works inside of me. My understanding will certainly expand in the future as I practice, but what I gather now is that we cannot even see the proprium without revelation. When I see my lower self and its inclinations ‘I’ am seeing from the Lord. My efforts to see are important, but seeing is actually only the Lord’s. So where am ‘I’ anyway? I might add that this work is exceedingly slow going. Any false hope that I will ‘graduate’ or ‘arrive’ is exposed as the illusion it is. The Logopraxis process is a personal endeavour offering an eternal deepening that I can engage in (or resist) for as long as the Lord lives (forever). Thank goodness we have all day, so to speak.

Alanna can be contacted at rose.alanna@gmail.com.

To find out more about Logopraxis:

Visit the website: spiritandlife.net/church.
Contact Reverend Millar at dwmilla@gmail.com

This article originally appeared in “Theta Alpha Journal” May 2018

O the Lord is good to me,
and so I thank the Lord
for giving me the things I need,
the sun, the rain, and the apple-seed.
The Lord is good to me.

And every seed that grows
will grow into a tree.
And one day soon there’ll be apples there,
for everyone in the world to share.
The Lord is good to me.

The Johnny Appleseed Grace is a regular feature of New Church family camp (retreat) mealtimes. But I wonder how many of you know the second verse?

While at college in Manchester, we often shared in this sung grace at lunchtimes, and Mary Duckworth (the UK’s first female minister, who trained alongside me) would insist that we sang the second verse. For which I will be forever grateful.

And every seed that grows …

I wonder whether you have heard of “micro-investing”? If you find it hard to save, you can now get an app on your smartphone which links to your credit card. Every time you go to the supermarket, the app rounds your purchase up to the nearest dollar, takes those extra cents and squirrels them away in a savings account until such time as you have enough money to purchase something like shares on the stock market. The theory is that you don’t miss those spare cents, but over time, they accumulate into substantial savings. The tiny seed becomes a tree which provides fruit for generations to come.

When we talk about outreach, we can tend to think that for anything to be worthy of the name, it is are supposed to be large, expensive, difficult and best left to the experts. We tend to avoid doing outreach as a result, just like we avoid saving. So, I want to focus on “micro-outreach”: that is, projects that are little, inexpensive, ordinary, and easy.

Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, … So He called His disciples to Himself and said to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the treasury; for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.’ (Mark 12:42-44)

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito. (The Dalai Lama)

There are things that we can all do that make a difference. I want to share a few ideas.

As part of my regular week, I drive through the Canberra suburbs of Lyneham and O’Connor. At one corner there is a little park, where someone has placed an old bar fridge. It is surrounded by some old garden chairs, and on its side is a sign which reads, “The Lyneham and O’Connor Lending Library”. It occurred to me that it would be quite easy to take one of the books from my shelves and contribute it to that library. Then a few weeks ago I came across an article about little libraries. It turns out there are 35 little libraries in Canberra alone. What is more, there is a website that lists the location of all of them. So my project is to collect 35 secondhand books, by Swedenborg, Philip Groves, or other New Church authors and place them in those libraries around town.

Why not have a look for one in your area? Go to streetlibrary.org.au

My own micro-outreach project is called, “The Bible for Atheists”. Time is my greatest limitation, so I need a project that allows me to make the best use of the time I have available. In December last year, we received a question from an atheist via the New Church in Canberra Facebook page. I decided I could write a pretty good answer. So beginning this year, I answered that question in a sermon, recorded it, advertised the result on Facebook, and asked for more questions. The result has been more than a dozen questions which I have used as the basis for our regular services of worship, recorded, and advertised on Facebook again.

As always, reactions have been varied. But I have enjoyed some good, thoughtful conversations, and we are now beginning to see people expressing an interest in attending future events.

Here are some of the other ideas shared at the assembly.

Rev Julian Duckworth shared Rev Alfred Acton’s ideas on speaking to others about the New Church. He suggested preparing something worth saying (but brief) on: God, the afterlife, the Bible, your spiritual life, and marriage.

Rev Darren Brunne produces little cards on various spiritual qualities that can be handed to friends and colleagues or left on coffee shop tables for others to find.

June Johnson shared about her computer awareness classes, held at the Adelaide church. We brainstormed how to promote them, using: meetup.com website; shopping centre, supermarket, or council noticeboards; coffee shop windows; local newspaper or radio community bulletin boards; placing a sign on the roadside; going into an op-shop and putting a note in all the clothing pockets (cheeky!); doctor or dentist surgeries; senior’s centres or newspapers; word of mouth (giving a card to people who already attend class); aged care facilities and lounges; letterbox drop; local libraries; lawn bowls club; and Probus clubs.

These are only a few ideas. The point is, we can each find projects – small, inexpensive, ordinary, and easy – that play to our strengths, and utilise our own particular skills.

If there’s anything I’m most proud of in Canberra, it’s that we have a number of members who are actively talking about their faith. They each share it in their own ways using their own abilities. No doubt there are others doing the same who I’m not aware of. I imagine a church which encourages this highly-individual, personal, micro-outreach: the future for such a church is a bright one, irrespective of its size.

Who were they? Amalek, their original tribal chief was a grandson of Esau. This is stated in Esau’s genealogy in Genesis 36:12. In the story of Balaam, in Numbers 24:20, Balaam chants that Amalek was “the first among the nations but his latter end shall be that he shall perish” which seems to suggest a great antiquity for them.
However, their Biblical intervention with the Israelites came during the wanderings through the wilderness, where in due time, the Amalekites overran them from surrounding hills and attacked the people at the rear of the march. These would have been the weak, the elderly, the frail, the ones struggling to keep going.

It was on this journey that Israelites came to Rephidim and made battle with Amalek. Joshua was put in charge and he saw how serious it would be. The Lord told Joshua to tell Moses to stand with his hands raised on a hill. When his hands were held up, Israel would be in the ascendancy, but if he lowered them, Amalek would be winning. But Moses’ hands grew tired, so Joshua told Aaron and Hur to go to Moses and hold his arms up, which they did, and won.
The Amalekites became a name for the archetypical enemy of Israel. Some later Jewish writers say that the Amalekites are any person or people who denounces the existence and holiness of the Lord. The great Biblical cry is to blot out the name of Amalek from remembrance because of what they did to Israel in the wilderness.

In Deuteronomy 25 the call is to remember what Amalek did to us and never to forget this. Later, this changes to the call to wipe out all remembrance of them to the point of not ever mentioning them or that a particular animal belonged to an Amalekite – in other words, to make out that they do not exist and they never have. To be an anathema.

The spiritual idea about the Amalekites is linked with all this. Because of their action of attacking the stragglers, it is quite easy to link them with the way the hells attempt to break and undermine us, especially when we are feeling week or afraid or, particularly, discouraged.

We experience discouragement from time to time because it is a part of the pattern of human life. We do well to understand that it is not our fault – which is often our first thought – but this alternation of our state is being fed by the hells coming at us from every side like the Amalekites did to Israel. Guerilla warfare.

And to blot out the name of Amalek is also helpful because in such a sorry state we should not be dwelling on it but trying to find our best way out of it by turning to the Lord to help us rather than finding reasons for it happening.

When King Saul lost the battle against the Philistines, he leaned upon his spear to end his life. A young man came to him. Saul asked, ‘Who are you?” He replied, I am an alien, an Amalekite.” Saul commanded him to kill him, for he was still alive, so the young man killed Saul and took his crown and brought it to King David, saying that Saul was dead. David asked him how he knew that Saul was dead. The man told him what had happened. David ordered one of his men to kill him because he had killed the Lord’s anointed one. And the Amalekite died. (2 Samuel 1:5-10)

Julian Duckworth

A patient had advanced cancer of the lymph nodes (lymphoma) and was told that he had no more than a few weeks to live. He couldn’t get radiotherapy or chemotherapy because he was anaemic but he had heard of a new experimental anti-cancer drug called Krebiozen and begged his doctor to give him some. So the doctor gave him an injection. Within a few days of the injection, he was out of bed and walking about the ward at the hospital. Very quickly the tumours, which had been the size of oranges, had shrunk and were now golf ball sized. His rapid improvement continued and he was soon released from the hospital totally free of cancer. About 2 months later there was a story in the papers saying that Krebiozen was no good. The man read it, believed it, even though Krebiozen was working for him, and within days his cancer had returned and he was back in hospital.

His doctor, realising there were few options, then told him a lie because he believed that the patient’s recovery might have had a lot to do with his belief in Krebiozen. So he told him that the papers had got it wrong and that the drug really was a great drug. The doctor told him that the cancer probably came back because the batch of drug he got had gone off a bit while it was sitting in the hospital pharmacy. He told him that a new batch of double strength Krebiozen was due at the hospital soon and he could get an injection of it.

Of course, there was no double strength stuff. The doctor made it up. A couple of days later, pretending that the double strength batch had just been delivered, the doctor gave the patient the injection. But it was an injection of pure water – a placebo. You know what? The cancer rapidly disappeared. The man was healthy and free of cancer once again.

But, once again, about 2 months later the papers ran another story, this time giving Krebiozen a death sentence. Apparently, the trials had shown it to be useless. This proved to be the last straw for the patient because his tumours quickly reappeared, he was taken back into hospital, and he died 2 days later.

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