Most of the teachings found in the Writings are teachings that I am very proud to “own.” But there are a couple that I do look at like that crazy uncle we try to keep away from other people when we’re dining in public. One of those teachings for me has always been the whole “second coming has already happened.” It’s not that I don’t believe it to be true, but I’ve always thought that it presents more barriers to the acceptance of the Writings than benefits.
However, what I’ve found in more recent years is that our strange teaching about the second coming having already happened is becoming less weird. Why? Because the world seems to have developed an appetite for the weird, and they’re sitting down for a heapin’ helping of it and then going back for seconds.
My observation is that this really started happening after the movie “The Matrix” came out in 1999. The basic premise of the movie is that the world we are living in is a simulation, and our brain is wired into a giant computer while our body is in a pod that enables humans to serve as batteries for our mechanical overlords. It’s a grim picture of the future. But despite that, since this movie came out it seems that people are far more interested and willing to believe that we live in some sort of simulation and question the nature of reality.
If you do an internet search on the term “simulation theory” you’ll find all sorts of variations on the idea, but they all propose something along the lines of reality isn’t real and we live in a simulation, even if it’s not run by artificial intelligence robots that we created and turned against us. Plus, these theories aren’t propagated just by the fringes of the internet, but big names like Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse-Tyson who are willing to stoke the fires of speculation on this one. Musk is on record saying “If you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality,” before concluding, “We’re most likely in a simulation.” Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson agrees, giving “better than 50-50 odds” that the simulation hypothesis is correct. “I wish I could summon a strong argument against it, but I can find none,” he told NBC News in an email. These two are far from the only mainstream proponents of the idea. In fact, if you search it up you’ll find that plenty of mainstream scientists are searching for ways to prove that simulation theory is in fact true.
But not everybody needs some scientific proof. I came across one video that has 1.5 million views that declares the world ended in 1999. The proof? Look at the 20th century… each decade has its own style. In the 50’s you have the “greaser” look, but the 60s went to “flower power,” and the 70s, 80s and 90s each and their own style. But if you look at the late 90s and today, can you really tell the difference? A cool haircut in 1999 would still be fine today. But you wouldn’t see a teen in the 90s getting a haircut that was cool in the 50s. But it’s not just fashion, each decade had its own music, TV shows, cars, and vibe. The assertion then becomes that since these trends stopped evolving in the late 90s, therefore something must have happened that ended the world! Whoever saw us destroy ourselves must have uploaded our consciousnesses into a simulation, or even transferred them into a different universe with a different time line! What else could explain the world today?
When you start pondering these ideas, the New Church’s position that the second coming of God has already happened doesn’t seem quite so… weird. But what intrigues me about all of this is that if you squint just a bit, you can start to see the similarities between what Swedenborg describes as reality and simulation theory. Think about what this world is… it is a simulation… of the spiritual world. We know that the spiritual world is the true reality, and that we are living a dual existence with our spirit living in that reality while our physical body is here. So much of what the Writings teach us is that there is so much more to reality that what we are aware of. I think simulation theory is getting at the same thing.
What is it that we gain from these ideas? Well, with the New Church I think one of the things we get is a change of perspective. The New Church is telling us something very contrary to our lived experience, which is that this world is a world of effects. We think our world is independent, and that the ebbs and flows of society along with the destruction and developments are all a result of our own virtues, foibles, and ingenuity. However, the Writings say that we are not the sole cause! The spiritual world is really the cause of much of what we experience. We are the effect of powers beyond us, with some ability to interact in this created world. Simulation theory also shifts our perspective in a way that we don’t think we’re quite so important. Somebody, or a bunch of somebodys, are running this giant simulation that we’re stuck in. Clearly the somebody(s) must be smarter than us! There’s nothing that sends the ego into such a full retreat as to think that you’re in a world – or a universe – in which you are captive, even if the captor is benevolent towards you. In simulation theory, everything is provided by a creator, and you really provide nothing. Sound familiar? It should.
So where does all of this leave us? Why am I writing about this? Well, New Church Day is approaching, and I find that the celebration of the second coming brings with it a great hope for humanity and the world. We know that the New Jerusalem isn’t a literal city that is going to float down, but that a true understanding of spirituality is going to be taking hold around the world. One of the key pieces of that is the realization that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.
If you get the opportunity to explore stories of near-death-experiences, you’ll find that these people are completely transformed because they realize that there is something more, and that they find this world is pretty meaningless in comparison. It’s not a short-term change for these people, but it’s an incident that completely changes how the rest of their live goes. They don’t just hope that there’s an afterlife, they know there is.
My hope though is that even though I don’t agree with the details about simulation theory, that it is just another step along the path of the growth of human consciousness, a step that will lead us closer to the idea that there really is so much more than this world and this life, and a step that will help us see that we really are spiritual beings having an Earth experience. I hope for this because I do believe that when we get there, we’ll see that the world didn’t end in 1999, but rather it truly began with that simple revelation. In that day, we still may regard simulation theory as weird, but it is often the weird and unorthodox ideas that propel us into a better future, a future that is truly the New Church.