An Essay on
Spiritual Substance
By the Rev. Dave Sonmor

In order to get a clear idea of what "spiritual substance" is, I feel it is necessary to first identify what is meant by spirit and what is meant by substance. My dictionary tells me that "spirit" is, "a persons animating principle, intelligence, soul, or a disembodied person," and also, "what is divine or inspired." This then requires me to ask it (my dictionary), "what is an animating principle?" It tells me that, "animate means 'having life'". Thus the animating principle would be that which has life, hence can give life, as life engenders life through procreation. Therefore, I would determine that "spirit" is "that which gives life." In our human case; that would be; that which gives us our unique human life.

My dictionary further tells me that "substance" is "a particular kind of material with uniform properties, and also, essence or reality. We might deduce from this that human substance includes our unique human physical body along with our human mind. The body being a strictly physical/natural substance and our mind, an abstract, non-material substance, along with our life which is our spirit substance. Thus body, mind and spirit make up the human being.

While living in the physical/natural world our natural body and environment play the major role in how we exist and in what we determine to be most important in our life. As we mature we find that our mind aspect becomes more important to us. As young people we want to learn about everything around us and be able to work and be involved in both physical and mental exercises and activities. But gradually as we soak up knowledge and develop opinions about things, our mind aspect becomes more prominent in our life than the physical aspect, as it is growing while the physical aspect begins to wane. By the time we reach sixty we may even be at the point of becoming wise. In any event we find ourselves living more and more in our head and less and less in the physical activity of our body. Meanwhile The spiritual aspect, which has been with us from our conception, has been along on this journey throughout our life. It is not dormant. It is just not clearly perceived by us because body and mind have been prominent in getting us through this earthly physical/mind oriented aspect of our life.

We may think that the spiritual substance in us will only become an effective/active aspect of life after we depart this earthly life, but in reality it has been an essential part and has continually grown and governed our activities, attitudes and behavior all along. It is the substance that gives us our real human life but we do not become fully aware or cognizant of that reality until we cease to be in this world and become cognizant of the life and reality of the World of the Spirit. We then become aware that our spirit has always been that underlying energy that guided and pushed us through our earthly life.

While in this natural world we tend to believe that reality is present only in stuff that we perceive or experience with our bodies physical senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. If we hit a log with our fist we quickly find that it is solid and therefore we deem it to be substantial and real. We will also likely experience the feeling of physical pain, which verifies the reality of the log's existence and develops in us a respect for that reality. Thus we can understand physical substance and its existence But there is also a kind of reality that is connected with our mind. Through knowledge and experience and our ability to think, we come to intuit that there is a substance of mind in our human makeup. It does not have the solidity or texture of physical objects but our experience of learning and practicing our powers of rationality and reason are also deemed to be real because of our experience with them. There is a mental solidity in our thought processes which for us is constant and durable. We can imagine and consider things that have no physical reality or substance to them, yet such ideas and thoughts can produce structures of unity and cooperation that are very real and can make life here very pleasant.

Through the reality of our mind activity and it's connection with our spirit and substance we can experience love. We cannot see love with our eyes and we cannot feel love with our touch but we none the less know love when it is present in our life. It is beyond a doubt the highest level of mind life that we can experience. It is not limited to just marital love , but includes love for our children our extended family members and our fellow human beings. We can also experience love for the uses that we serve to our community and organizations we belong to. We can love the work we do.

As we see a link between body substance and mind substance we can also see a link between mind substance and spiritual substance. Much of the love we experience at the mind level is recognized by us through the joy we experience from it. True marriage love is one form that borders on spiritual love because that kind of love involves caring more about the well being and the needs of the other person than about ones own safety and wellbeing. In other words, that their life and happiness is more important than our own. Therefore we gladly serve one another without always thinking that we should be getting a reward because of some sacrifice we are making. It is a reciprocal kind of love so it differs from that of a parents love for their children, which is more one sided.

This brings us to spiritual substance which is the main subject of this discourse. How do we know it exists? How do we know it is real or substantial. What is it? I suggested earlier on that spirit is an underlying energy that guides and pushes us through our earthly life. It is with us from conception through to total spiritual life, which is eternal. It is "life itself" which comes to us from only one source which is God. Spiritual substance is not fully comprehensible to us while we are in this world, but in the light of the spiritual world where our spiritual senses are fully conscious and operational for us, , we become completely aware that the spiritual substance that we possess is from the Lord whose very essence is love.

It is the Lord God who provides this love and life to all who are willing to receive it. How do we know it exists? Because we experience it. How do we know it is real? Because we feel it within our innermost being and share it with others. What is it? It is our very life-force. It is substantial and eternal. While we are in this world we must contend with undeveloped spiritual faculties and awareness and accept through faith in the Lord that He will provide us with everlasting life.

The writings of the New Church tell us, through Swedenborg's insights and observations, that God created the universe and everything in it from His Divine Love by means of His Divine Wisdom. If this is true then the substance of our material/physical world and life has its substance from the originating substance, which is love. The solidity of our natural substances is real to us in our earthly life. The reality of the rocks of the universe and our world are substance at its grossest or most external form and yet when we break it down into the multitude of elements contained in each grain of it we discover more and more aspects and variables to it, which scientists are now discovering are primarily various forms of energy. It is not a huge stretch to see that that energy is not in itself material.

In conclusion I feel that it is reasonable and rational to accept the concept that the energy, which is not perceived by us through our physical senses, is essentially spiritual. Therefore, we can also understand that as love from God descends down through His creation it does so by degrees as it moves from what is Divine through what is spiritual to what is material.

I think we human beings are truly blessed in that we can actively participate in both spiritual and physical life through a conscious relationship with the Divine. What do you think?

Dave