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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 #611

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611. To this I will append the following account:

People are prepared for heaven in the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell, and at the end of that time they all to some degree or other long for heaven. Presently then their eyes are opened and they see a path leading to some society in heaven. They set out on the path and ascend, and as they ascend they come upon a gate, with a guard there. The guard opens the gate, and so they enter.

An inspector then comes to meet them, who tells them from the governor that they may go on in and look to see whether there are any houses there that they recognize as their own, for every new angel has a new house awaiting him. If newcomers find one then, they report this and remain there. But if they do not find one, they return and say that they did not find one.

At that some wise person then examines them there, to see whether the light that they possess accords with the light found in the society, and especially with the warmth in it. For the light in heaven is, in its essence, Divine truth, and the warmth in heaven is, in its essence, Divine good, both emanating from the Lord as the sun there. If the newcomers possess another light and another warmth than the light and warmth in that society, that is, a different truth and a different goodness, they are not admitted.

Therefore they leave that place and travel along paths that open between societies in heaven, and this until they find a society in complete harmony with their affections. And there they find their abode to eternity. For they are then among people like themselves, as though among relatives and friends, whom they love with a heartfelt love, because they share the same affection; and there they experience their life's bliss and a delight that fills their whole breast, because their soul is at peace. For in the warmth and light of heaven there is an indescribable delight, in which they share.

[2] Such is the case with people who become angels. But not with people caught up in evils and falsities. They are given permission to ascend into heaven, but when they enter, they begin to draw breath or breathe with difficulty, and soon their vision dims, their intellect darkens so that they can no longer think, and death hovers before their eyes. And so they stand like wooden posts. Their heart then also begins to pound, their breast to be constricted, and their mind to be seized with anguish and to be more and more tortured; and in that state they writhe like a snake placed near a fire. Consequently they roll away from there and throw themselves over a cliff that then appears to them. Nor do they rest until they are in hell with people like themselves, where they can breathe and where their heart beats freely.

After that they hate heaven and reject truth, and at heart blaspheme the Lord, believing that the torture and torment they experienced in heaven came from Him.

[3] From these few particulars it can be seen what the lot is like of people who place little value in truths, even though truths constitute the light which angels have in heaven, and who place little value in goodness, even though goodness constitutes the warmth which angels have in heaven.

It can also be seen from this how wrong those people are who believe that everyone can enjoy the bliss of heaven just by being admitted into heaven. For it is today's faith that to be received into heaven is to be received out of pure mercy, and that acceptance into heaven is like people's entrance into a wedding reception and at the same time into the joys and delights there. Let them know, however, that there is a communication of affections in the spiritual world, since a person is then a spirit, and the life of the spirit is affection, and his thinking springs from it and accords with it. Let them also know that a homogeneous affection unites, and a heterogeneous one drives apart, and that something heterogeneous causes torment, such as to a devil in heaven, and to an angel in hell. People are therefore justly separated in accordance with the diversities, varieties, and differences in the affections of their love.

[4] I was given to see more than three hundred clergy from the Protestant Reformed world, all of them learned men, because they knew how to defend faith alone to the point of its being the means of justification, and some on beyond that. And because they also shared the belief that heaven is simply a matter of admittance by grace, they were given permission to ascend into a society of heaven, though not one of the higher ones. And as they ascended together, they looked from a distance like calves, and when they entered heaven, the angels received them politely. But as they were talking together, they were seized with a trembling, then a shuddering, and finally a torment as though of impending death; and at that they cast themselves down headlong, and in their descent they looked like dead horses.

They looked like calves as they ascended because the natural affection for seeing and knowing appears, by correspondence, as frolicking about like a calf. And in their descent they looked like dead horses because an understanding of the truth in the Word appears, by correspondence, as a horse, and an understanding devoid of any truth in the Word as a dead horse.

[5] There were some boys below who saw the clergymen descending, who in their descent looked like dead horses. And at that the boys turned their faces away and said to their teacher, who was with them, "What portent is this? We saw men, and now dead horses instead. And because we could not bear to look at them, we turned our faces away. Master, let us not tarry in this place, but depart."

So they departed. And their teacher then taught them on the way what a dead horse means, saying, "A horse symbolizes an understanding of the Word. All the horses that you saw had this symbolic meaning. For when a person goes meditating on the Word, his meditation then appears from a distance like a horse - a thoroughbred and live horse as long as he ponders the Word spiritually, but a wretched and dead horse as long as he does so materially."

[6] At that the boys asked, "What does it mean to meditate on the Word spiritually or materially?"

And the teacher replied, "I will illustrate the difference by examples. Who, when he reads the Word, does not think about God, the neighbor, and heaven? Everyone who thinks about God solely in terms of His person and not in terms of His essence, thinks materially. Everyone who thinks about the neighbor in terms of his appearance and not in terms of his character, thinks materially. And everyone who thinks about heaven solely in terms of a place, and not in terms of the love and wisdom of which heaven consists, also thinks materially."

But the boys said, "We think about God in terms of His person, about the neighbor in terms of his appearance, that he is a human being, and about heaven in terms of a place. When we would read the Word, did we then look to anyone like dead horses?"

Their teacher said, "No. You are still boys and could not think otherwise. But I have perceived in you an affection for knowing and understanding, and because that is a spiritual affection, you thought at the same time spiritually.

[7] "However, I will go back to what I said earlier, that anyone who thinks materially when he reads the Word or meditates on the Word, looks from a distance like a dead horse, but that someone who does so spiritually, looks like a live horse. Moreover, that anyone who thinks about God and about the trinity in God solely in terms of His person and not in terms of His essence, thinks about them materially. For the Divine essence has many attributes, like omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, mercy, grace, eternity, and others. And the Divine essence has attributes emanating from it, namely, creation and preservation, salvation and redemption, enlightenment and guidance. Everyone who thinks about God solely in terms of His person supposes three gods, saying that one god is the creator and preserver, another the savior and redeemer, and a third the enlightener and guide. But everyone who thinks about God in terms of His essence supposes one God, saying that God created us and preserves us, redeems us and saves us, and enlightens and guides us.

"That is why people who think about the trinity in God in terms of His person, and thus materially, cannot help but be drawn by the ideas in their thinking, which is material in nature, to make three gods out of one. But still the same people are bound, contrary to their thought, to say that in each there is a communion of all their attributes, and this only because they have thought dimly about God in terms of His essence, as though through a screen.

"Therefore, my pupils, think about God in terms of His essence and from that about His person, and do not think in terms of His person and from that about His essence. For to think about His essence in terms of His person is to think materially also about His essence, whereas to think about His person in terms of His essence is to think spiritually also about His person.

"Because gentiles of old thought materially about God and also about the attributes of God, they imagined not only three gods, but even more, as many as a hundred.

"Know then that something material does not flow into something spiritual, but that something spiritual flows into something material.

"The same is the case with thought about the neighbor in terms of his appearance and not in terms of his character, and also with thought about heaven in terms of a place and not in terms of the love and wisdom of which heaven consists.

"The same is the case with each and every particular in the Word. Consequently it is impossible for someone who entertains a material idea of God, and also of the neighbor and heaven, to understand anything in it. For him the Word is a dead letter, and when he reads it or meditates on it, he looks at a distance like a dead horse.

[8] "Those people you saw descending from heaven, who became in your eyes as though dead horses, were people who had closed the rational sight in themselves and in others by the peculiar dogma that the intellect must be held captive in obedience to their faith. They did so not thinking that an intellect closed by religion is as blind as a mole, and has in it nothing but darkness - such darkness as repels from itself any spiritual light, obstructs any influx of it from the Lord and heaven, and in matters of faith sets a barrier to it in the carnally sensual mind, far below the rational one. In other words, they put a barrier alongside the nose and fix it in its cartilage, so that afterward they cannot even catch a scent of spiritual matters. Some of those people are therefore of such a character that when they catch a whiff of spiritual matters, they fall into a swoon. By a whiff I mean a perception.

"These are the people who make God into three gods. They say, indeed, that in terms of His essence there is one God, but still, when they pray in accordance with their faith, namely, that God the Father may have mercy for the sake of the Son and send the Holy Spirit, they clearly suppose three gods. They cannot do otherwise, for they pray to one god to have mercy for the sake of another, and to send a third."

And the teacher then taught his pupils about the Lord, that He is one God, in whom is the Divine trinity.

  
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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 #692

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692. At this point I will add some accounts of experiences, of which this is the first. 1

When I was going home from the school of wisdom, I saw on the way an angel dressed in blue. He came and walked beside me, and said: 'I see you have come away from the school of wisdom, and that you took great pleasure in what you heard there. But I perceive that you are not fully in our world, because you are at the same time in the natural world, so you do not know about our Olympic contests. At these the wise men of antiquity meet, and learn from newcomers from your world what changes of state and what vicissitudes wisdom has so far undergone and is still undergoing. If you like, I will take you to the place where many of the wise men of antiquity live together with their sons, that is, their disciples.'

So he took me to a place on the border between the north and the east, and when I had a view in that direction from a piece of high ground, I caught sight of a city with two hills at one side, the one nearer the city being the lower of the two. 'This city,' he told me, 'is called Athenaeum, the lower hill is called Parnassium, the higher Heliconeum. They bear these names because in the city and its neighbourhood the wise men of ancient Greece live, men such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristippus and Xenophon 2 , with their disciples and recruits.'

I asked about Plato and Aristotle. He told me that they and their followers were in a different region, because they had taught rational arguments concerned with the understanding, but the people here had taught about moral issues which relate to life.

[2] He said that scholars from the city of Athenaeum were frequently sent on embassies to the educated Christians, to report what are their present thoughts about God, the creation of the universe, the immortality of the soul, the condition of man relative to that of animals and other subjects apposite to interior wisdom. He told me that the crier had announced a meeting for that day, a sign that their emissaries had met some newcomers from the earth and heard some interesting news. We saw a lot of people coming out of the city and its neighbourhood, some of them with laurel-wreaths on their heads, some holding palm-fronds in their hands, some with books under their arms, and some with pens tucked under the hair of the left temple.

[3] We joined them and went up together, and found on the hill an octagonal palace, which they called the Palladium. When we went in we found eight hexagonal recesses, in each of which was a bookcase, as well as a table at which those who wore laurels sat down. In the Palladium itself we saw seats carved out of stone, on which the remainder seated themselves.

Then a door on the left was opened and by it two newcomers from the earth were brought in. When they had been welcomed, one of those wearing laurels asked them, 'What news is there from earth?'

'The news,' they said, 'is that men have been found in forests resembling animals, or animals resembling men. They recognised from their faces and bodies that they had been born men, but that at the age of two or three they had been lost or abandoned in the forests. They said that these creatures could not voice any of their thoughts, nor learn how to make articulate sounds so as to utter words. Neither did they know what food was fit for them, as animals do, but they put in their mouths what grew in the forest whether clean or dirty; and much more of the same kind. From these facts some of our learned men made many guesses and some made many deductions about the condition of men relative to that of animals.

[4] On hearing this some of the wise men of antiquity asked, 'What were their guesses and deductions from these facts?' The newcomers replied that there was a great deal, but it could be reduced to the following:

1. Man by his nature and also from birth is more stupid and so more vile than any animal, and if not taught becomes like one.

2. He can be taught because he has learnt to make articulate sounds, and so to talk; and by this means he has begun to express his thoughts; and by degrees he has done so more and more, until he could put together the laws of living together, many of which, however, have been stamped upon animals from birth.

3. Animals equally with men are capable of reasoning.

4. If therefore animals could talk, they would reason as cleverly on all subjects as men. A proof of this is that they think from reason and prudence just as much as men.

5. The understanding is merely a modification of sunlight with the co-operation of heat by means of the ether, so that it is simply an activity of more inward nature. This activity can be raised to such a height that it looks like wisdom.

6. It is therefore useless to believe that man lives after death any more than an animal does, except that perhaps for a few days after death an exhalation of the life of the body may appear as a cloud in the form of a ghost, before being dispersed into nature. This is very much as when a twig picked out of the ashes of a fire may appear to retain the likeness of its shape.

7. Consequently religion, which teaches that life continues after death, is an invention so that the simple may be kept inwardly obedient by its laws, just as they are kept outwardly obedient by the civil law.

They added that these were the reasonings of those who were only clever, but not intelligent. 'What do the intelligent think?' they asked. The reply was that they had not heard, but they were of the opinion that they thought the same.

[5] On hearing this all who were sitting at the tables said: 'What times they live in on earth now! What sad changes wisdom has undergone! It seems to have turned into foolish cleverness. The sun has set and is beneath the earth, diametrically opposite its noon position. How can anyone fail to know from the evidence of the people abandoned and then found in the forests, that this is what man is like if he receives no instruction? Surely he is what he is taught to be. By birth he is more ignorant than animals. He must then learn to walk and to talk. If he did not learn to walk, would he stand upright on his feet? And if he did not learn to talk, would he be able to utter any of his thoughts? Surely everyone is what he is taught to be, crazy if taught falsities, wise if taught truths? And if he is crazy from being taught falsities does he not imagine himself to be wiser than the man who is wise from being taught truths? Are there not foolish and deranged people who are no more human beings than those who were found in the forests? Are not those who have lost their memory like them?

[6] 'From both these sets of facts we draw the conclusion that a man is not a man without instruction, and is not an animal either, but he is a form capable of receiving in himself what makes a man human, so that he is not born a man, but becomes one. Man has by birth a form such that he can be an instrument for the reception of life from God, with a view to being a subject into which God can put all good, and by union with Himself make blessed for ever. We perceive from what you say that wisdom at the present time is so far extinct or turned to foolishness, that there is total ignorance about the terms upon which human beings live as compared to those on which animals live. As a result, they do not know either anything about how a person lives after death. But those who are able, but unwilling, to know about this, and so deny its reality, as many of you Christians do, can be likened to the people found in the forests. It is not that they have become so stupid through being deprived of instruction, but they have made themselves stupid by relying on the fallacies of the senses, which are the darkness that conceals truths.'

[7] But then someone standing in the middle of the Palladium and holding a palm-frond in his hand said: 'Please unravel this mystery. How could man having been created a form of God be changed into the form of a devil? I am well aware that the angels of heaven are forms of God, and the angels of hell are forms of the devil, and that these two are completely opposite forms, one of madness, the other of wisdom. Tell me, then, how could man created as a form of God pass from daylight into such a night as to be able to deny the existence of God and everlasting life?'

The teachers replied one after the other, first the Pythagoreans, then the Socratics, and afterwards the rest. But among them there was a certain follower of Plato, who was the last to speak. His opinion, which was adopted, went like this. The people of the age of Saturn, the golden age, knew and acknowledged that they were forms for the reception of life from God, and consequently they had wisdom written upon their souls and hearts, so that they saw truth by the light of truth, and truths enabled them to perceive good by the pleasure of its love. 'But,' he said, 'as in the following periods the human race retreated from the acknowledgment that all the truths of wisdom and thus all the good of love they had was continually flowing in from God, they ceased to be dwelling-places of God, and then too they stopped talking with God and mixing with angels. For the interiors of their minds were diverted from their previous direction, which was being raised upwards by God towards God, and they were turned further and further aside, outwards to the world, and so directed by God to God by way of the world. Finally they were turned in the opposite direction, which is downwards towards oneself. Because a person who is inwardly turned upside down or away cannot look to God, people separated themselves from God and became forms of hell, and so of the devil.

'It follows from this that in the earliest ages people acknowledged with heart and soul that all the good of love, and so all the truth of wisdom, came to them from God, and also that this good and truth were God's in them, so that they were purely receivers of life from God; which is why they were called images of God, sons of God and born of God. But in the following ages people no longer acknowledged this with their heart and soul, but by some incorrect belief, later by historical faith and finally merely professing it with the lips. Acknowledging anything of this kind merely by professing it with the lips is not acknowledging it, and is in fact denying it at heart.

[8] 'These facts enable us to see what wisdom is like on earth among present-day Christians. They can still be inspired by God as the result of a written revelation, while not being aware of the difference between man and an animal. Thus many people believe that if man lives after death, so too must an animal; or because an animal does not live after death, neither can man. Surely our spiritual light, which enlightens our mental vision, is in their case turned into thick darkness; and their natural light, which only enlightens the bodily vision, has become dazzling light to them?'

[9] After this speech all turned to the two newcomers and thanked them for coming and bringing their report; and they begged them to carry back to their brethren a report of what they had heard. The newcomers replied that they would strengthen their people in their belief in this truth, that in so far as they attribute all the good of charity and all the truth of faith to the Lord and not to themselves, so far are they human beings and so far do they become angels of heaven.

Footnotes:

1. This passage is repeated from Conjugial Love 156a-156e (151-154 bis).

2. Greek philosophers of the 6th, 5th and 4th centuries BC.

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

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