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]

602. One last note, about our instinct concerning life after death that results from heaven's inflow into us. There were some common people who had lived in the virtues of their faith in the world. They were brought back into a state like the one they had in the world (which can happen to anyone when the Lord allows it), and then shown what kind of notion they had had about our state after death. They said that in the world, some intelligent people had asked them what they thought about their soul after their life in the world, and they said they did not know what a soul was. Then the questioners asked them what they believed about their state after death, and they said they believed they would live as spirits. Next they were asked what kind of belief they had about spirits, and they said that spirits were people. Their questioners kept asking how they knew this, and they kept saying that they knew it because it was true. The intelligent people were amazed that simple people had this kind of faith when they themselves did not.

I could see from this that everyone who is united to heaven has an instinctive notion about life after death. The sole source of this instinctive notion is the inflow from heaven, that is, through heaven from the Lord, by means of spirits who are assigned to us from the world of spirits. This instinctive notion is possessed by people who have not stifled their freedom of thought by assumptions about the human soul that they have seized on and confirmed by various means, assumptions that the soul is either pure thought or some animate principle whose seat they seek in the body. However, the soul is nothing more nor less than our life, while the spirit is the actual person, and the body is an earthly thing we carry around in the world. It is only an agent through which our spirit, the actual person, acts in a way that is adapted to the natural world.