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Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #153

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153. To this I will add the following account, regarding the lot after death of people who in both doctrine and life have confirmed themselves in the doctrine of faith alone to the point of believing it to be justifying.

1. When they are physically dead and come to life again in the spirit, which generally happens on the third day after the heart has stopped beating, they appear to themselves to have the same body that they had before in the world, so much so that they do not know otherwise than that they are living in the prior world. Yet they do not have a material body, but rather a spiritual one, and to their senses, which are also spiritual, their body appears as though material, even though it is not.

[2] 2. After several days they see that they are in a world where various societies have been established - a world called the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell. All the societies there, of which there are a countless number, have been marvelously organized in accordance with the inhabitants' natural affections, good and evil. Societies organized in accordance with good natural affections communicate with heaven, while societies organized in accordance with evil affections communicate with hell.

[3] 3. A newly arrived spirit or new spiritual person is taken about and conveyed into various societies, both good and evil, and he is examined to see whether he is affected by truths, and in what way, or whether he is affected by falsities, and in what way.

[4] 4. If the person is affected by truths, he is led away from evil societies and introduced into good ones, and into various good ones, until he comes to a society corresponding to his natural affection, and there he experiences a goodness in harmony with that natural affection. This continues until he sheds the natural affection and takes on a spiritual one, at which point he is raised into heaven. But this is what happens in the case of people who in the world lived a life of charity and so also a life of faith, which consisted in their believing in the Lord and refraining from evils as sins.

[5] 5. In contrast, people who in both doctrine and life had confirmed themselves in the doctrine of faith alone to the point of believing it alone to be justifying - these, because they are affected not by truths but by falsities, and because they have dismissed goods of charity or good works from being means of salvation, are led away from good societies and introduced into evil ones, and into various evil ones, until they come to a society corresponding to the lusts of their self-love. For anyone who loves falsities cannot help but love evils.

[6] 6. However, because they feigned good affections in outward appearances in the world (even though they inwardly harbored nothing but evil affections or lusts), they are periodically kept at first in states of outward pretense. Moreover, those who in the world had presided over companies of others are set here and there over societies in the world of spirits, in overall charge or in part, according to the scope of the positions they had held before. Yet because they like neither truth nor justice, and cannot be enlightened sufficiently to know what truth and justice are, therefore after several days they are discharged. I have seen spirits like this conveyed from one society to another, and though everywhere given some administrative position, after a short time they are just as often discharged.

[7] 7. After repeated dismissals, some of these people out of weariness do not wish to seek further positions, and some out of a fear of losing their reputation do not dare to. Therefore they go off and sit sadly, and at that point they are led away into an uninhabited region where they find cabins, which they enter. There they are given some work to do, and to the extent that they do it they are given food. But if they do not do it, they go hungry and are not given any. Necessity accordingly compels them.

Foodstuffs in that world are like those in our world, only they come from a spiritual origin and are given by the Lord from heaven to all in accordance with the useful functions they perform. Idle people, as they perform no useful function, are not given any.

[8] 8. After a while these people loathe work, and they then leave the cabins. If they were priests, they wish to become builders, and instantly then piles of hewn stones, bricks, boards and wooden panels appear, with heaps of reeds and rushes, clay, plaster and asphalt. When they see these, they are fired with an urge to build, and they begin to construct a house, taking now a stone, now a piece of wood, now a reed, now wet clay, and placing one upon another in haphazard fashion, though in their eyes an ordered one. Yet what they build by day collapses overnight; and the following day they gather the fallen materials from the rubble and build again, and this repeatedly until they grow weary of building.

This is the case because they used to pile up falsities to confirm the doctrine of salvation through faith alone, and that is how these falsities build the church.

[9] 9. Out of weariness these people next go off and sit solitary and idle, and because, as we said, idle people are not given any food from heaven, they begin to hunger. They also begin to think of nothing else than how to get food and relieve their hunger.

When they are in this state, some people come to them, from whom they beg assistance. But those other people say to them, "Why are you sitting so idle? Come with us to our houses, and we will give you jobs to do and feed you."

They joyfully then arise and go away with those people to their houses, and each is there given his job, and in exchange for the work food. However, because all who have confirmed themselves in falsities of faith cannot do works of good and useful service, but only works that serve evil, and because they do not do the works faithfully, but only so that people may see them, for the sake of acclaim or material gain, therefore they abandon their jobs and care only to socialize, talk, walk, and sleep. And then, because their employers can no longer induce them to work, they are therefore forced to leave as serving no useful function.

[10] 10. When they have been forced to leave, their eyes are opened and they see a path leading to a certain cavern. When they go to it, the entrance opens and they go in, inquiring whether there is any food there, and when they are told that there is, they ask permission to remain. They are then told that they may, and they are taken in, with the entrance closing behind them.

The master of the cavern then comes and says to them, "You cannot leave anymore. See your fellow inhabitants. They all work, and as they work, they are given food from heaven. I tell you this so that you know."

Their fellow inhabitants say, moreover, "Our master knows for what work each of us is suited, and every day he assigns it to us. Every day that you finish it you are given food. But if you do not finish it, you are given neither food nor clothing. Also, if anyone does evil to another, he is forced to a corner of the cavern, onto a bed of accursed dust, 1 where he is miserably tortured, and this until the master sees some sign of repentance in him. He is then taken out and ordered to do his work."

They are told, too, that after they have done their work, they are all allowed to walk about, converse, and later sleep. They are also taken deeper into the cavern where there are whores, and they are each permitted to choose one of them to be his woman, but are forbidden under threat of penalty to go whoring promiscuously.

[11] The whole of hell consists of such caverns, which are nothing less than eternal workhouses. I have been given to go into some and see, in order that I might make this known, and the people all appeared to be of a low class, nor did any one of them know who he had been in the world or what his occupation had been. But an angel who accompanied me told me that this one had been a household servant in the world, this one a soldier, this one an administrator, this one a priest, this one a person of high rank, this one a person of wealth; and yet none of them knew anything other than that they had been servants, and their fellows likewise. That is because they had been inwardly alike, even though unalike outwardly, and it is people's inner qualities that affiliate them in the spiritual world.

Such is the lot of people who have set aside a life of charity, and so have not lived it in the world.

[12] As regards the hells in general, they consist solely of such caverns and workhouses, but of one sort where they are inhabited by satanic spirits, and of another where they are inhabited by diabolical spirits. Satanic spirits are ones who have been governed by falsities and their resulting evils, while diabolical spirits are ones who have been governed by evils and their accompanying falsities.

Satanic spirits appear in the light of heaven as cadaverous, and some black, like mummies, while diabolical spirits appear in the light of heaven dark and fiery, and some as black as soot. All, however, in face and body are monstrous. Yet in their own light, which is like that of burning coal, they do not appear as monstrous, but as human. This appearance is granted to them to enable them to associate with one another.

Footnotes:

1. The dust of certain hells is so named. See Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom 341[2].

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christian Religion #16

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16. At this point I shall insert an account of an experience.

I saw some newcomers to the spiritual world from the natural world talking among themselves about the three Persons of the Divinity from eternity. They were in holy orders and one of them was a bishop.

They came up to me, and after we had talked for a while about the spiritual world, about which they had previously known nothing, I said: 'I heard you talking about the three Persons of the Divinity from eternity. Would you please reveal to me this great mystery in accordance with the views which you formed in the natural world from which you have just come?'

Then the bishop looked at me and said: 'I see that you are a layman, so I will reveal the views I hold about this great mystery and instruct you. My views were, and still are, that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit sit in the midst of heaven on magnificent, high seats or thrones; God the Father on a throne of pure gold, with a sceptre in His hand; God the Son on His right hand on a throne of the finest silver, with a crown on His head; and God the Holy Spirit next to them on a throne of glistening crystal, holding a dove in His hand. Around them are three glittering rows of hanging lamps made of precious stones; and at a distance from this ring stand countless angels all worshipping and glorifying God. In addition, God the Father discusses constantly with His Son the souls who are to be justified; they decide between them and decree who on earth are worthy to be received among the angels and crowned with everlasting life. As soon as God the Holy Spirit hears the names they give, He flies through the world to them, bringing with Him the gifts of righteousness, a token of salvation for each person who is to be justified. Immediately on His arrival He breathes on them and blows away their sins, like a man with a fan who clears the smoke from a furnace, and whitewashes it. He removes too the stony hardness of their hearts and imparts the softness of flesh; and at the same time He renews their spirits or minds, brings them to a new birth, and gives them babyish faces. Finally He marks their foreheads with the sign of the cross, and calls them the Chosen and the Sons of God.' At the conclusion of this lecture the bishop said to me: 'That is how I unravelled that great mystery in the world; and because many of my clergy there applauded my speech, I am sure that you too, being a layman, will be persuaded by it.'

[2] On the conclusion of this speech by the bishop, I looked hard at him and the clergy with him, and noted that they were all fully in favour of his views. So I embarked upon a reply, and said: 'I have weighed up your profession of belief, and have inferred from it that you have formed and hold an entirely natural and sensual, I might say, material idea about the Triune God. This must inevitably lead to the idea of three Gods. Is it not thinking according to the senses to imagine God the Father seated upon a throne with a sceptre in His hand? Or about the Son on His throne with a crown on His head? Or the Holy Spirit on His with a dove in His hand, and flying throughout the world to carry out His orders? Since that is the sort of idea that emerges, I cannot accept the truth of your words. From my earliest years I have not been able to admit into my mind any idea of God except as One; and since this has been what I have admitted and is what I still hold, everything you have said makes no impression on me. In due course I saw that by the 'throne' on which the Scriptures say that Jehovah sits is meant His kingdom, by 'sceptre' and 'crown' His rule and dominion, by 'sitting at the right hand' the omnipotence of God exercised by means of His humanity; and by what is said of the Holy Spirit the workings of the Divine Omnipresence. Please take up, my lord, the idea of One God and give it reasonable consideration, and you will at length clearly grasp that this is so.

[3] 'You certainly say that God is one, and this is because you make the three Persons share one, undivided essence. Yet you do not allow anyone to say that the one God is one Person, but insist that there are three Persons, a belief necessary to preserve an idea of three Gods such as you have. You also attribute to each Person a character differing from the others'; do you not by this divide that Divine essence of yours? In these circumstances how can you say and at the same time think that God is one? I would forgive you if you said that there is one Divine. How can anyone who is told that 'the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and that each person by Himself is God' possibly think that God is one? Surely this is a contradiction which cannot be believed. This illustration will show that one cannot speak of one God but only a like Divinity: one cannot call a group of people, who make up a single senate, assembly or council, one man, but so long as they all individually hold the same opinion, they can be said to have one view. Nor can three diamonds of a single composition be called one diamond, only one in respect of their composition; and each diamond differs from another in value according to its weight. This would be impossible if they were one, and not three.

[4] 'However, I perceive that you call the three Divine Persons, each of whom is by Himself or singly God, one God, and have commanded every member of the church to speak in these terms, because enlightened and sound reason throughout the world acknowledges that God is one. You would therefore blush with shame, if you too did not speak in these terms. Yet all the time that you are uttering the words 'One God', although you are thinking of three, still that shame does not trap the two words in your mouth, but you say it aloud.'

After these speeches the bishop and his clergy withdrew, and as he went he turned round and wanted to shout 'There is one God'; but he could not, because his thought hampered his tongue; and then, forcing his lips apart, he gasped 'Three Gods'. The bystanders on seeing this monstrous happening burst into laughter and went away.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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