QUEST FOR MEANING
by Aubrey Cole Odhner|

 THE IMPORTANCE OF
CORRESPONDENCES IN THE CURRICULUM
OF OUR CHURCH SCHOOLS

by Aubrey Odhner

        Magic is not always a good word in New Church circles, but I don't know how else to describe the charmed effect the concept of correspondences has had on the New Church since the beginning. Conference and Convention started right out filling their journals with studies on correspondences since at least 1812. Every General Church minister has written a paper on correspondences. Every student's imagination has been captured by the idea of the search for the Ancient Word and the study of correspondences. The recent reorganization of the Academy of the New Church Museum was inspired by a desire to collect all papers and studies on it. The common denominator of our collections is symbols, significatives, and Christian Iconography. I believe the key to our missionary efforts will be correspondences. Get that "key." This will not be a learned study, but more reflections on correspondences and life - the power of correspondences in life.

        I would like to thank Mr. Schnarr and the Education Council for providing me with this year's soap box for promoting the teaching of correspondences, and all things ancient and remote, and nonessential. Seriously, although some of you are incorporating the concept of correspondences and the teaching of myth in your curricula, I think, as a general rule we are missing the most important, the most vital teaching tool we have. In fact, I believe it is the teaching tool, the only method by which one mind affects another, and by which influx affects us all. I keep hearing comments like "What have correspondences to do with real life?" Isn't it just some remote, esoteric study that some wifty people love to talk about? But how useful is it? Of course the Word is written in correspondences, but that is a deep religious study, like studying the Arcana, for sophisticated scholarly people, especially ministers. But what do correspondences have to do with the practical, moral life? The answer, I believe is very clear: it is central; it is only because of correspondences that we have life itself.

        In the Arcana Coelestia no.1476, which interprets the passage from Genesis where Abram urges Sarai to tell the Egyptians that she is his sister, Abram says: "Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall have life because of thee." The Writings tell us this passage explains the mode or method of the Lord's instruction: that the celestial principle enters by influx into the spiritual, the spiritual into the rational, and the rational into the scien-tifics or knowledge (which is the ultimate recipient vessel), because they are all directly aligned by correspondence to one another. When this order prevails then the celestial principle cannot be violated. Then the soul, the celestial, the end or purpose floods through to the ultimate, when the alignment of the three degrees is in exact correspondence.

        You notice that I used the word "floods" through because I could best describe the power from the influx of the Divine and Wisdom into the lower vessels in terms of water rushing or  flooding. When reading this passage I immediately envisioned a great mountain stream of water crashing from a great height, with no impediment on its way down, crashing on the rocks below. The water and rocks are both representative of truth; the water is not a trickle, or a pool, or a lake, it is a powerful Niagara which provides unlimited hydro-electric power for infinite uses. I used the words "flood" and the Writings use the word "influx." Did the Romans picture a more powerful ultimate by "flux," like flood or torrent? Did Swedenborg? There is power in ultimates -in ultimate words of our own language. Yesterday, Don Rose, in referring to the moral virtues, said "cross out "virtue" and write in "strength." See the power in that word character strength - not frail virtues. Does this say something about translations? Should all such terms in the Writings be translated into Anglo-Saxon in order to convey their full impact? Or, should we all learn to think as the Romans did? Did the 18th Century scholars who wrote in Latin also think in Latin? I daresay the process of influx is much more powerful than we picture it when we use the Latinized word "influx."

        But why is there this tremendous power in ultimates? We get a very direct answer in no. 59 of Invitation to the New Church, which I shall quote in full; "It shall be shown that the greatest power is in correspondences because in them heaven and the world, or the spiritual and the natural, are together. That for this reason the Word was written by mere correspondences; wherefore, through it there is the conjunction of man with heaven, and thus with the Lord. The Lord also by this means is in firsts and at the same time in ultimates. On this account the sacraments have been instituted through correspondences, and therefore there is the Divine power in them." Note well, the power is in the correspondences, that is, in the direct relationship of the prime of the Lord with the ultimate in the symbol or vessel; this is true of the Word and of the Sacraments. Sometimes I think we are weakening the effect of this powerful relationship by intellectualizing the concepts in the Writings, depriving our young of the glory and the power of the free fall of the Divine into the corresponden-tial ultimates with its consequent powerful reaction at impact.

I first noticed this weakening effect when I was teaching Senior girls about Hinduism; we were talking about the transcendent god and the god incarnate. I suddenly realized that they did not understand the difference. I asked them what "God Incarnate" meant and not one could give me a good answer, and sadly many of them had an exact opposite idea of the meaning of God Incarnate. They thought it was some great philosophical abstraction, something remote and distant, in the highest essence in heaven. When I told them it meant God in the flesh, they understood exactly; I was speaking Anglo-Saxon. By not using the homey, real, ultimate word we have deprived them of the impact of direct correspondence in language.

But why are we so unsure of the power and value of correspondences themselves? Why are we thinking of correspondences as a remote study, a sort of fun game for those who want to play it. The answer to that may be found in nos. 114 and 115 in Heaven and Hell. These numbers describe three approaches to correspondences: The most ancient men, celestial men, thought from correspondences themselves, those of the next age did not think from correspondences themselves but only from a knowledge of correspondences. Later there followed a period where they had a knowledge of correspondences but they did not think from them. Later the knowledge itself was lost. At this time in the development of our Church the knowledge has been restored, that is, the knowledge has been offered to us, but very few of us have even bothered to study them, much less think from that knowledge. And yet the promise is given that even in merely acquiring that knowledge we will be able, "in respect to the thoughts of our minds, be associated with the angels, and thus in respect to the thoughts of spiritual or internal man to be conjoined with them." (114)

        We barely have a surface knowledge of correspondences even though the Writings are a treasure trove. In our Secondary Schools Human Body courses, we teach a few facts about the correspondences of the organs of the body in a two dimensional anatomical sense; we just barely relate the physiological processes to spiritual processes. Just recently, one of our ministers helped me to explain to our students the relationship we wanted to establish between the Boys School and the Girls School; something heretofore obscure suddenly became clear to all: The two schools are separate organs, like the heart and lungs, they are distinct as to their essential function and yet inextricably interrelated and interdependent; the flow of traffic should be like the flow of the blood through great arteries, useful and businesslike; stop and chat a little but let us not have arterial blockage, or there will be heart attacks and strokes! There is instant understanding and delight and recognition of its truth. Here we have used the knowledge of correspondences to explain and describe a function on another plane.

        In connection with this same subject, I am often struck by our ability to see a truth clearly on one plane and our inability to see it on another plane. Most of us at the Academy are quite sure we do not want coed dormitories and we do not want coed athletics, at least in the area of contact sports. Even though we know boys and girls come from families of boys and girls together, we know what we know, and if it ain't fittin, it ain't fittin, as Mammy would say. If we are going to use our knowledge of correspondences and our knowledge of degrees, shouldn't we analyze what our reasons are for the former conviction and assume that there might be something on a mental plane that might be at least as compelling? Shouldn't we at least ask the question whether there might not be a mental intimacy between boys and girls that might be harmful if entered into too soon, although beautiful later in life?

        Although we have consciously used our knowledge of correspondences very little, unconsciously we seem to have atavistic remnants of the use of correspondences in many areas of our lives. How often when a speaker explains a difficult concept to us do we say, "Yes, I see." Actually we literally mean, "Yes, I hear what you are saying." But sight corresponds to understanding, so when we say "I see," of course we really mean "I understand."

        We all know that communication by body language is much more powerful than communication by words. When a student twists around in his chair and faces the back of the room and protests that he is listening, we are not amused. Even if he is actually listening the communication is still cut off because most teachers are not able to teach to someone who is saying with his whole body, "I am not listening and I do not respect you."

        Poets and artists, are, of course still echoing the arts of their ancient bardic ancestors; metaphor and simile, imagery, language itself, all testify to two levels of being and their correspondential relationship and the power in word and symbol. Shakespeare understood this when he said, "Assume a virtue if you have it not." The Japanese have always known that there is special power in special symbols, Kami. Swedenborg knew it when he observed that a certain teacup held a special sphere - that it preserved a spiritual sphere by correspondences.

        The Writings not only elucidate and teach about the Science of Correspondences, but also use that knowledge and describe how correspondences are used in Heaven, and as is well known by New Churchmen the Writings give many examples of how they were used by the Ancients.

        In heaven, we are told, things appear at a distance according to correspondences. Consider the familiar Memorable Relation, C.L. 42: "And lo! there appeared a chariot descending out of the highest or third heaven, in which there appeared one angel; but as it approached, there appeared therein two." And later in the same number: "Her hair was arranged in beautiful order according to its correspondences with her beauty." Indeed there is hardly a number of the Writings which does not either elucidate or describe the Science of Correspondences or simply use it.

        Not only do the Writings refer to the Science of Sciences among the Ancients, but many direct references to classical myth are made, and in some cases, myths are interpreted: In A.C. 2762, the meaning of Pegasus and of the Trojan horse are given. The Titans and the Cyclops are explained in Coronis 38. There are several references to Pallas' as in Pallas Athene, on being A.C. 4658.

        The importance of correspondences in heaven, to the ancients, and in Memorable Relations, is clear; to us, in the understanding of the Word, it is imperative. Beyond the understanding of the Word and the Sacraments, how far should we take this study? I believe we have the choice of remaining forever locked in externals, idolaters worshipping images, if we do not accept the challenge of becoming more and more aware of meaning, of quality, and of spheres of influx which are only possible by means of correspondences. We cannot really understand spiritual things; we only know about them. Meaning and quality escape us, except accidently. I believe it is the mission of the New Churchman to enter consciously into the study of correspondences.

        We do not communicate with each other directly; we do not teach students directly. We merely arrange symbols, representatives, push organstops, and it is influx from the other world which flows into the sutdent, by means of correspondences. It is only the Lord who teaches, gives a sense of meaning, gives a sense of quality. We only rearrange natural vessels. But the challenge is that the better we understand the nature and function of correspondences the more effectively we can communicate with our fellow man. We all know our greatest problems are in lack of communications. We have the science of sciences at our fingertips, the greatest communications media. Let's use it.

        When Joseph asked the butler whose dream he had interpreted to remember him to Pharoah that it might be well with him, again, this phrase "that it might be well" refers to correspondences being aligned so that the Divine might flow directly into the ultimate natural. I believe that if, as a Church, we become much more aware of the correspondential nature of ultimates, it will be well with us.