“Swedenborg had a vague and imperfect idea regarding the spiritual heavens. He claimed that he visited many heavens of souls in their different degrees of unfoldment. Be that as it may, one thing is certain – there are centers, so to speak, where souls of like development are gathered together, all the way from the child-spirit that is highly unfolded but still a child, up to the pure love-sphere of innocence and purity; and so on up into the realm of mind; and each of these centers – or heavens – is approachable by certain means which the person will apply during the progress of his development.
Therefore, unless forewarned, there is liability of the soul’s coming into touch with, let us say for illustration, the childlike innocence and pure life-element that occupies a certain center, a heaven. And if the soul knows no better, it may think that it has reached the highest heaven, the ultimate, and go no further. By another mental state, arising from the application of certain laws, it may reach that heaven that is bright, loving, pure, active in every good word and work, and may think that it has reached the heaven that is to be imparted to earth when man has come into the image and likeness of God; or it may, through another method, reach a heaven that is characterized by certain knowledge; for there are many heavens; and all these centers may be touched by applying certain laws in the process of walking the “narrow way.”
The danger is that when man has touched a center, or heaven, he at once ceases to reach out to God and settles down satisfied in the sphere that he has touched, and thus his progress ceases. In some cases, not only will the progress cease, but there is a liability of his being deceived by dark intelligences, thrown out of the path and led down into darkness. But keep in mind the one thought, that Yahveh Elohim, the God of the solar system, is your ultimate, is the end that you seek; keep in mind the highest that you can conceive and pray daily and earnestly to know the truth, that you may live in harmony with it; and if you become conscious of one of the lesser heavens, learn from it, but do not desire to remain there.
Remember the object of creation, and therefore the work before us, the sons of God, is to unite our consciousness with the great Nature that created this system and through it to bring upon earth a like organism, which, under the guiding intelligence of Yahveh Elohim, will become the perfect expression of his Mind and Will, and will become, as was revealed to John, a king and priest unto God and “reign on the earth.”
The thought that in the past has occupied the mind of the Christian world – that of dying and going to heaven, as the ultimate object of our creation – is an error, for the Lord Christ’s teaching was of immortality, not of the soul only, but immortality of the entire man; and the purpose as announced in the beginning was that man should have “dominion over the earth.” The purpose was also revealed to John on Patmos when the angel said, “The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ (anointed).”
When we take into consideration the facts presented in the early part of this work, the “Immensity of the Universe”, the infinity of space filled with worlds and universes, and think reasonably of these things, our mind is turned away from the childish thought that has occupied it in the past – that of some far-off world – to which we must go when we leave this earth and we awaken to the truth that the whole tenor of Revelation is to prepare man to become a king and a priest unto God, and to reign on this earth. This thought is necessary in order to understand the following chapters on the image and the likeness of God.”
Hiram Butler
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 