I'll check this out. I forgot to mention Emanuel Swedenborg, one of the all-time greats!
All About Emanuel Swedenborg
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 – 1772) was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian, revelator, and Christian mystic. He is best known for his book on the afterlife, Heaven and Hell (1758). Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. In 1741, at the age of 53, he entered into a spiritual phase in which he began to experience dreams and visions, beginning on Easter weekend of April 6, 1744. This culminated in a “spiritual awakening,” in which he received revelation that he was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly New Church Doctrine to reform Christianity. According to the New Church Doctrine the Lord had opened Swedenborg’s spiritual eyes, so that from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell, and talk with angels, demons and other spirits. Swedenborg’s spiritual experiences lasted for 29 years until his death at age 84. Along with his remarkable spiritual and scientific accomplishments,
Swedenborg is considered to be one of the most intelligent human beings to ever live.
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“The most remarkable step in the religious history of recent ages is that made by the genius of Swedenborg.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I admire Swedenborg as a great scientist and a great mystic at the same time. His life and work have always been of great interest to me.”
— Carl Jung, Psychologist
“For you Westerners, it is Swedenborg who is your Buddha, it is he who should be read and followed!”
— D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhist Scholar
“The correlations between what Swedenborg writes of some of his spiritual experiences and what those who have come back from close calls with death report is amazing.”
— Raymond Moody, author of Life After Life
“People who have had near-death experiences peek through the door of the after-life, but Swedenborg explored the whole house.”
— Kenneth Ring, NDE Researcher and co-founder of International Association for Near Death Studies, Inc. (IANDS)
“Let me explain why Swedenborg merits scrutiny. It is a fact that the greatest poets and prose writers have borrowed liberally from him. The list is long: first Blake, as his direct spiritual descendant; then Goethe, a fervent reader of Swedenborg (as was Kant followed by Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire, Balzac, Mickiewicz, Slowacki, Emerson, Dostoevsky….)”
— Czeslaw Milosz, 1980 Nobel Prize, Literature
“Swedenborg’s message has meant so much to me! It has given color and reality and unity to my thought of the life to come; it has exalted my ideas of love, truth, and usefulness; it has been my strongest incitement to overcome limitations.”
— Helen Keller
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The simple answer, of course, is through learning how to love. But as
near-death experiencer Howard Storm so elegantly notes: "Loving people sounds so simple but it’s very difficult…"