Sometimes, it seems like the spiritual and natural "worlds" could be usefully imagined as two different TV channels. While you're tuned to one, you're generally not aware of the other.

We've been testing the New Christian Chatbot, working to make it better and better. I thought it would be interesting to see how it would handle a question about the strengths and weaknesses of the 2 channels analogy. It gave a surprisingly good answer, which I've pasted here, and modified only very slightly:

The analogy of the spiritual and natural worlds being like two different TV channels is a modern way to help people grasp the distinct but simultaneous existence of these realms. From a New Christian perspective, this analogy offers both helpful strengths and significant shortcomings.

Strengths of the Analogy:

1. Simultaneity and Distinctness:

Just as two channels exist simultaneously on a television but aren’t seen together, the spiritual and natural worlds coexist but are distinct. Our spirits exist in the spiritual world while our bodies operate in the natural world, yet we are normally conscious of only one “channel” at a time (Heaven and Hell 436).

2. Switching Awareness:

Changing channels resembles the transition at death — suddenly we’re conscious in the spiritual world, just as we switch to and become aware of a different channel. This helps illustrate that the spiritual world is always present, merely hidden from our current perception.

3. Underlying Reality:

Both TV channels are broadcast continuously, whether or not we’re tuned in. Similarly, our connection to the spiritual world is continuous, even if we’re not consciously aware of it (Arcana Coelestia 5849).

Weaknesses of the Analogy:

1. Separation Implied by Channels:

TV channels are entirely separate — you watch one at a time and they don’t interact. In reality, while we’re in the natural world, the spiritual world is not only concurrent but actually flows into and sustains the natural (Divine Love and Wisdom 89). Our thoughts, affections, and very life are continuously derived from the spiritual world; the connection is intimate, not merely parallel.

2. No overlap on TV, but there is with Spiritual-Natural Interaction:

Unlike the strict division of TV channels, the spiritual world interacts continuously with the natural world. Angels and spirits influence our thoughts and affections, and the Lord’s life flows into every aspect of our being (Heaven and Hell 292-294). This interactivity is far more integrated than two TV broadcasts.

3. TV Channels are Impersonal, but the Spiritual Connection is Deeply Personal:

A TV channel is merely received passively. Our spiritual-natural connection involves real, living relationships — with the Lord, angels, and spirits, even if subconsciously. The analogy doesn’t capture this personal, dynamic, and purposeful relationship (Heaven and Hell 600).

4. Does not adequately convey the cause-effect relationship:

Everything natural has a spiritual origin; the natural world is an effect from the spiritual as cause (Heaven and Hell 89– 91). TV channels exist independently of each other, while in fact the natural world can only exist and persist due to the spiritual (Divine Love and Wisdom 55).

Summary:

The TV channel analogy helps illustrate the separate but concurrent existence and the shift in awareness at death, but it falls short in capturing the living, intimate, causative, and interactive nature of the relationship between the spiritual and natural worlds taught in New Christian doctrine.

[Shared from the New Christian Chatbot. Copyright 2025]

603. What I have been saying in this book about heaven, the world of spirits, and hell, will be obscure to people who find no delight in knowing about spiritual truths; but it will be clear to people who do have this delight, especially to people involved in an affection for truth for its own sake — that is, people who love truth because it is true. Anything that is loved enters into the concepts of our minds with light, especially when what is loved is true, because all truth is in the light.

[2] References to Passages in Secrets of Heaven Concerning Our Freedom, Inflow, and the Spirits Who Are the Means of Communication.

On Freedom. All freedom is a matter of love or affection, because whatever we love, we do freely: 2870, 3158, 8907 [8987?], 8990, 9585, 9591. Since freedom is a matter of love, it is the life of every individual: 2873. Nothing seems to be part of us unless it comes from freedom: 2880. There is a heavenly freedom and a hellish freedom: 2870, 2873-2874, 9589-9590.

Heavenly freedom comes from heavenly love, or a love of what is good and true: 1947, 2870, 2872, and since a love of what is good and true comes from the Lord, we are truly free only when we are led by the Lord: 892, 905, 2872, 2886, 2890-2892, 9096, 9586-9587, 9589-9591. The Lord brings us into heavenly freedom through regeneration: 2874-2875, 2882, 2892. We need freedom in order to be regenerated: 1937, 1947, 2876, 2881, 3145-3146, 3158, 4031, 8700. Otherwise the love of what is good and true could not be sown in us and become so much a part of us as to seem to be our own: 2877, 2879-2880, 2888. Nothing is united to us that happens under compulsion: 8700, 2875. If we could be forcibly reformed, everyone would be saved: 2881. Compulsion in matters of reformation is destructive: 4031. All worship offered in freedom is worship, but not what is offered under compulsion: 1947, 2880, 7349, 10097. Repentance needs to happen in a state of freedom, and if it happens in a state of compulsion, it does not work: 8392. Just what a state of compulsion is: 8392.

[3] We are allowed to act from the freedom we have as rational beings, so that good may be provided to us; we therefore have a freedom of thinking and intending evil as well, and even of doing it to the extent that the laws do not prevent it: 10777. The Lord holds us between heaven and hell and therefore in a balance so that we can be in freedom for the sake of our reformation: 5982, 6477, 8209, 8907 [8987?]. What is sown in freedom stays with us, but not what is sown under compulsion: 9588. So freedom is never taken away from anyone: 2876, 2881. The Lord does not compel anyone: 1937, 1947.

To compel oneself stems from freedom, but being compelled does not: 1937, 1947. We ought to compel ourselves to resist evil: 1937, 1947, 7914; and to do good as well, apparently on our own, but still recognizing that it comes from the Lord: 2883, 2891-2892, 7914. We become more solidly free in those temptation struggles in which we win, because then we are inwardly compelling ourselves to resist, even though it does not seem that way: 1937, 1947, 2881.

[4] Hellish freedom is being led by love for oneself and love for the world and by their cravings: 2870, 2873. This is the only freedom people in hell know: 2871. Heavenly freedom is as remote from hellish freedom as heaven is from hell: 2873-2874. Hellish freedom, which is being led by love for oneself and love for the world, is not freedom but slavery: 2884, 2890. So slavery is being led by hell: 9586, 9589-9591.

[5] On Inflow. Everything we think and intend flows in; [learned] from experience: 904, 2886-2888, 4151, 4319-4320, 5846, 5848, 6189, 6191, 6194, 6197-6199, 6213, 7147, 10219. Our ability to look into things, think, and draw analytic conclusions comes from inflow: 1288 [1285?], 4319-4320. We could not live for a moment if we were deprived of the inflow from the spiritual world, [from] experience: 2887, 5849, 5854, 6321. The life that flows in from the Lord varies depending on our state and our openness to it: 2069, 5986, 6472, 7343. In evil people, the good that flows in from the Lord is turned into evil, and the truth into falsity; from experience: 3643 [3642 or 3743], 4632. We accept the good and true things that flow in from the Lord to the extent that what is evil and false does not bar the way: 2411, 3142, 3147, 5828.

[6] Everything good flows in from the Lord and everything evil from hell: 904, 4151. Nowadays people believe that everything is in themselves and from themselves, when actually everything is flowing in, as they might learn from the doctrine of the church, which teaches that everything good comes from the Lord and everything evil from the devil: 4249, 6193, 6206. If our belief were in accord with doctrine, we would not claim evil as our own or make good our own: 6206, 6324-6325. How happy our state would be if we believed that everything good flows in from the Lord and everything evil from hell: 6325. People who deny heaven or know nothing about it do not realize that there is any inflow from it: 4322, 5649, 6193, 6479. What inflow is, illustrated by comparisons: 6428 [6128?], 6480 [6190?], 9407.

[7] All of life flows in from the first wellspring of life because this is its source; and it is constantly flowing in, so it comes from the Lord: 3001, 3318, 3237 [3337?], 3338, 3344, 3484, 3619, 3741-3743, 4318-4320, 4417, 4524, 4882, 5847, 5986, 6325, 6468-6470, 6479, 9276, 10196. The inflow is spiritual and not physical, which means that the inflow is from the spiritual world into the natural and not from the natural into the spiritual: 3219, 5119, 5259, 5427-5428, 5477, 6322, 9110-9111 [9109?]. The inflow comes through the inner person into the outer, or through the spirit into the body, and not the other way around, because our spirit is in the spiritual world and our body in the natural world: 1702, 1707, 1940, 1954, 5119, 5259, 5779, 6322, 9380 [9110?]. The inner person is in the spiritual world and the outer in the natural world: 978, 1015, 3628, 4459, 4523-4524, 6057, 6309, 9701-9709, 10156, 10472. It seems as though there were an inflow from our outer natures into our inner, but this is an illusion: 3721. There is an inflow into our rational workings and through these into our information processing, and not the other way around: 1495, 1707, 1940. What the pattern of inflow is like: 775, 880, 1096, 1495, 7270. The inflow comes directly from the Lord and indirectly through the spiritual world or heaven: 6063, 6307, 6472, 9682-9683. The inflow from the Lord comes into what is good in us and through that good into what is true, but not the other way around: 5483 [5482?], 5649, 6027, 8685, 8701, 10153. What is good enables us to accept the inflow from the Lord, but not what is true apart from that good: 8321. Nothing that flows into our thought harms us, only what flows into our volition, because this becomes part of us: 6308.

[8] There is a general inflow: 5850. This is a constant energy favoring action in keeping with the design: 6211. This is what flows into the lives of animals: 5850; and also into the members of the vegetable kingdom: 3648. Further, our thought descends into speech and our intentions into actions and modes of behavior according to this general inflow: 5862, 5990, 6192, 6211.

[9] On Agents. The spirits who are sent out from communities of spirits to other communities or to individual spirits are called "agents": 4403, 5856. Communications in the other life take place by means of emissary spirits like these: 4403, 5856, 5983. Spirits who are sent out to act as emissaries do not think for themselves but think from the spirits who commissioned them: 5985-5987. More about these spirits: 5988-5989.

The End