Let's Be Logical Now. Rational.

One of the best descriptions that I have read of the limitations of the “Let's be logical, now,” mindset just seemed to jump off the page at me from a paragraph in Swedenborg (Coelestia Arcana, vol. 2) last night. The context of this piece is his explication of Sara laughing upon being told that she is going to have a child, Isaac (“laughter”), in her nineties. Her husband is 100. “Shall I truly bear, and I am become old?” She laughs. I guess it didn't seem very logical to her.

Swedenborg has a lot to say about this Sara-to-Sarah story but here is the part ( §2209) that was so striking to me last night:

As regards the rational in general, when it thinks about divine things, especially from its own truth, it cannot possibly believe that there are such things; both because it does not apprehend them, and because there adheres to it the appearances born from the fallacies of the senses by which and from which it thinks; as is evident from the examples adduced above; to which the following may be added by way of illustration. If the rational be consulted, can it believe that the Word has an internal sense, and this is so remote from the literal sense as has been shown? And that the Word is that which conjoins heaven and earth, that is, the Lord's kingdom in the heavens with the Lord's kingdom on earth? Can the rational believe that souls after death speak with each other most distinctly, without the speech of words, and yet so fully as to express more in a minute than a man does by his speech in an hour? And that the angels do the same, but in a speech still more perfect, and one that is not perceivable by spirits? Also, that on coming into the other life all souls know how to speak in this way, although they receive no instruction in so speaking? Can the rational believe that in one affection of man, nay, in one sigh, there are such wonderful things as can never be transcribed, and yet are perceived by angels? And that every affection of man, nay, every idea of his thought, is an image of him, being such as to contain in a wonderful manner all the things of his life? Not to mention thousands upon thousands of such things. The rational, which is wise from sensuous things, and is imbued with their fallacies, when thinking of such things, does not believe that they can be so, because it is unable to form any idea of itself except from such things as it perceives by some sense...

This is all definitely “nonsense,” non-sense, the exact word used, to logical positivism, linguistic analysis, operationalism, etc.

The increase in love and humility that can come with age, though - the burning away of ego-centrism - seems to make it much easier to understand what Swedenborg is saying here. No joke!