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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

 

Conjugial Love #182

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182. To this I will append two narrative accounts. Here is the first:

Several weeks later 1 I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Behold, another assembly is convening on Parnassium hill. Come, we will show you the way."

I went, and as I drew near, I saw on the hill Heliconeum someone with a trumpet, with which he announced and proclaimed the assembly. I also saw people from the city Athenaeum and its bordering regions ascending as before, and in the midst of them three newcomers from the world. The three were Christians, one a priest, the second a politician, and the third a philosopher. On the way the people entertained them with various kinds of conversation, especially concerning the ancient wise men, whom they mentioned by name. The visitors asked whether they would see these wise men. The people said that they would, and that if they wished, they would meet them, since they are friendly and cordial.

The visitors asked about Demosthenes, Diogenes and Epicurus.

"Demosthenes is not here," the people said, "but with Plato. 2 Diogenes stays with his disciples at the foot of the hill Heliconeum, because he regards worldly matters as of no importance and occupies his mind solely with heavenly ones. Epicurus lives at the border to the west, and he does not come in to join us either, because we draw a distinction between good affections and evil ones, saying that good affections accompany wisdom and that evil affections are opposed to wisdom."

[2] When they had ascended the hill Parnassium, some of the keepers of the place brought crystal goblets containing water from a spring there; and they said, "The water comes from a spring which the people of old told stories about, saying that it was broken open by the hoof of the horse Pegasus and afterwards became sacred to the nine Muses. 3 But by the winged horse Pegasus they meant an understanding of truth which leads to wisdom. By its hooves they meant empirical observations which lead to natural intelligence. And by the nine Muses they meant learning and knowledge of every kind. These stories today are called myths, but they were allegories which the earliest people used to express their ideas."

"Do not be surprised," the people accompanying the three visitors said to them. "The keepers have been told to speak as they did, to explain that what we mean by drinking water from the spring is to be taught about truths and through truths about goods, and thus to become wise."

[3] After this they entered the Palladium, and with them went the three newcomers from the world, the priest, the politician, and the philosopher. Then the people with the laurel wreaths who sat at the tables 4 asked, "What news do you have from earth?"

So the newcomers replied, "We have this news. There is someone who maintains that he speaks with angels, having had his sight opened into the spiritual world, as open as the sight he has into the natural world; and he reports from that world many novel ideas, which include, among other things, the following: A person lives, he says, as a person after death, the way he did before in the world. He sees, hears, and speaks as he did before in the world. He dresses and adorns himself as before in the world. He becomes hungry and thirsty, and eats and drinks, as before in the world. He experiences the delight of marriage as before in the world. He goes to sleep and wakes up as before in the world. The spiritual world has lands and lakes, mountains and hills, plains and valleys, springs and rivers, gardens and groves. One finds there palaces and houses, too, and cities and towns, just as in the natural world. They have written documents and books as well, and occupations and businesses, also precious stones, gold and silver. In a word, one finds in that world each and every thing that one finds on earth - things which are infinitely more perfect in heaven. The only difference is that everything in the spiritual world comes from a spiritual origin, and consequently is spiritual, because it originates from the sun there, which is pure love; while everything in the natural world comes from a natural origin, and consequently is natural and material, because it comes from the sun there, which is nothing but fire.

"This person reports, in short, that a person after death is perfectly human, indeed, more perfectly human than before in the world. For before in the world he was clothed in a material body, while here in this world he is clothed in a spiritual one."

[4] When the newcomers had thus spoken, the ancient wise men asked what people on earth thought of these reports.

The three visitors said, "We know that they are true, because we are here and have seen and investigated them all. We will tell you, therefore, what people said and judged concerning them on earth."

At that the priest then said, "When those who are members of our order first heard these reports, they called them hallucinations, then fabrications; later they said he saw ghosts; and finally they threw up their hands and said, believe if you will. We have always taught that a person will not be clothed in a body after death before the day of the Last Judgment."

The ancient wise men then asked, "Are there not any intelligent ones among them who can show them and convince them of the truth that a person lives as a person after death?"

[5] The priest said that there were some who showed it to them, but without convincing them. "The ones who show it say that it is contrary to sound reason to believe that a person does not live as a person until the day of the Last Judgment and meanwhile is a soul without a body.

"What is a person's soul, they ask, and where is it in the meantime? Is it an exhalation or a bit of wind flitting about in the air, or some entity hidden away at the center of the earth where its nether world is located? The souls of Adam and Eve, and of all the people after them, for six thousand years or sixty centuries now - are they still flitting about the universe or still being kept shut up in the bowels of the earth, waiting for the Last Judgment? What could be more distressing or more miserable than having to wait like that? May their fate not be likened to the fate of captives held chained and fettered in prison? If that is to be what a person's fate is like after death, would it not be better to be born a donkey than a human being?

"Moreover, is it not contrary to reason to suppose that a soul can be clothed again with its body? Does the body not get eaten away by worms, mice and fish? And this new body - can it serve to cover a bony skeleton that has been charred by the sun or has fallen into dust? How can these decomposed and foul-smelling elements be gathered together and joined to souls?

"But when people hear arguments like these, they do not use reason to respond to them, but hold to their belief, saying, 'We keep reason in obedience to faith.' As for all people being gathered together from their graves on the day of the Last Judgment, this, they say, is a work of omnipotence. And when they use the terms omnipotence and faith, reason is banished; and I can tell you that sound reason is as nothing then, and to some of them, a kind of hallucination. Indeed, it is possible for them to say in reply to sound reason, 'You are crazy.'"

[6] When the wise men of Greece heard this, they said, "Are logical inconsistencies like that not dispelled of themselves as mutually contradictory? And yet sound reason cannot dispel them in the world today. What can be more logically inconsistent than to believe what they say about the Last Judgment, that the universe will then come to an end and that at the same time the stars of heaven will fall down on to the earth, which is smaller than the stars; and that people's bodies, being then either cadavers, or embalmed corpses other people may have eaten, 5 or particles of dust, will come together with their souls?

"When we were in the world, we believed in the immortality of human souls on the basis of inductive arguments which reason supplied us, and we also determined places for the blessed, which we called the Elysian Fields. And we believed these souls to be human forms or likenesses, but ethereal since they were spiritual."

[7] After they said this, they turned to the second visitor, who in the world had been a politician. He confessed that he had not believed in a life after death, and had thought concerning the new reports he began to hear about it that they were fictions and fabrications. "Thinking about it I said, how can souls be corporeal beings? Does not every remnant of a person lie dead in the grave? Is the eye not there? How can he see? Is the ear not there? How can he hear? Where does he get a mouth with which to speak? If anything of a person should live after death, would it be anything other than something ghostlike? How can a ghost eat and drink? And how can it experience the delight of marriage? Where does it get its clothing, housing, food, and so on? Besides, being airy apparitions, ghosts only appear as though they exist, and yet do not.

"These and others like them are the thoughts I had in the world concerning the life of people after death. But now that I have seen it all and touched it all with my hands, I have been convinced by my very senses that I am as much a person as I was in the world, so much so that I have no other awareness than that I am living as I did then, with the difference that I now reason more sensibly. I have sometimes been ashamed of the thoughts I had before."

[8] The philosopher had a similar story to tell about himself, with the difference, however, that he had classed these new reports he heard regarding life after death with other opinions and conjectures he had gathered from ancient and modern sources.

The sages were dumbfounded at hearing this; and those who were of the Socratic school said they perceived from this news from earth that the inner faculties of human minds had become gradually closed, with faith in falsity now shining like truth in the world, and clever foolishness like wisdom. Since our times, they said, the light of wisdom has descended from the inner regions of the brain to the mouth beneath the nose, where it appears to view as a brilliance of the lips, and the speech of the mouth therefore as wisdom.

Listening to this, one of the novices there said, "Yes, and how stupid the minds of earth's inhabitants are today! If only we had here the disciples of Heraclitus who weep over everything and the disciples of Democritus who laugh at everything. What great weeping and laughing we would hear then!"

At the conclusion of this assembly, they gave the three newcomers from earth emblems of their district, which were copper plaques on which some hieroglyphic symbols were engraved. With these the visitors then departed.

Footnotes:

1. I.e., several weeks after the occurrence related in nos. 151[r]-154[r].

2. See no. 151[r]:1.

3. Cf., in Greek mythology, the spring Hippocrene on Mount Helicon, and perhaps also the spring Castalia on Mount Parnassus.

4. See no. 151[r]:2.

5. As late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the substances of embalmed corpses, particularly of Egyptian mummies, were used in the preparation of potions and powders prescribed and taken for a variety of supposed medicinal purposes. Cf. True Christian Religion 160[5]; also nos. 693[6], 770.

  
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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

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #118

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118. Three Memorable Occurrences Taken from Revelation Unveiled

The first memorable occurrence. Once as I was explaining chapter 20 in the Book of Revelation and was meditating on the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, an angelic spirit appeared to me and asked what I was meditating on. I said, “The false prophet.”

The angelic spirit said, “I will take you to the place where the spirits meant by the false prophet are.” He added, “They are the same spirits portrayed in chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation as the beast from the earth who had two horns like a lamb, but who spoke like a dragon.”

I followed the angelic spirit. To my surprise I saw a crowd with church leaders in the center of it. The leaders were teaching that nothing saves us except faith in Christ’s merit and that works are good things to do, but not for our salvation. They were also proclaiming that works need to be taught from the Word so as to put lay people, especially simple ones, on a leash so that they obey their civic leaders and feel compelled from within by religion to practice moral goodwill.

[2] Then one of them saw me and said, “Do you want to see our shrine? It has a sculpture in it that portrays our faith.”

I went and saw it. It was magnificent! In the center of the shrine there was a statue of a woman dressed in scarlet clothes. She had a gold coin in her right hand and a chain of pearls in her left.

Both the statue and the shrine, however, were projected images. Hellish spirits have the ability to portray magnificent things using projected images. They do it by closing off the inner levels of our mind and opening only its outer levels.

When I realized that the statue and the shrine were conjured up through sorcery I prayed to the Lord. Suddenly the inner levels of my mind were opened. Then instead of a magnificent shrine, I saw a house that was full of cracks from the roof all the way to the foundation. Nothing in it was solidly connected. Instead of the woman, I saw a dummy hanging in the house, which had the head of a dragon, the body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion. It was exactly like the beast from the sea described in Revelation 13:2. Instead of the floor, there was a swamp that contained thousands of frogs. I was told that under the swamp there was a great hewn stone; and beneath it the Word lay deeply hidden.

[3] Seeing this I said to the sorcerer, “Is this your shrine?”

“It is,” the sorcerer said.

Just then, though, the sorcerer’s inner sight opened up as well. The sorcerer saw the same things I was seeing and loudly shouted, “What is this? Where did this come from?”

“It came from the light of heaven,” I said, “which has disclosed the true quality of each form here, including the quality of your faith, which has been separated from spiritual goodwill.”

Immediately the east wind came up and blew away the shrine with the sculpture. It dried up the swamp and exposed the stone that had the Word lying underneath it.

Then a warm, springlike breeze blew in from heaven. To my surprise I then saw a tent in that same place, a very simple one in its outer form.

Angels who were with me said, “Look, it is Abraham’s tent just as it was when the three angels came to him to announce that Isaac was going to be born [Genesis 18:1, 2, and following]. The tent looks simple to the eye, but as the light of heaven flows in, it becomes more and more magnificent.”

The angels were then granted the ability to open the heaven where spiritual angels live—the angels who have wisdom. In the light that flowed in from that heaven, the tent looked like the Temple in Jerusalem. When I looked inside, I saw that the foundation stone under which the Word had been hidden was now covered in precious stones. From the precious stones a kind of lightning was flashing onto walls that had reliefs of angel guardians on them, giving the angel guardians beautifully different colors.

[4] As I was feeling awestruck by these sights, the angels said, “You are about to see things that are even more miraculous.” They were then granted the ability to open the third heaven where heavenly angels live—the angels who have love. As a result of the light that flowed in from that heaven, the entire temple disappeared. In its place I saw the Lord alone, standing on the foundation stone, which was the Word. He looked much the way he had when seen by John in Revelation chapter 1.

Yet because holiness then filled the inner realms of the angels’ minds so that they felt an overwhelming urge to fall forward on their faces, suddenly the channel of light from the third heaven was closed by the Lord and the channel of light from the second heaven was reopened. As a result, the earlier appearance of a temple, and also a tent, returned. The tent was in the temple.

These experiences illustrated what Revelation 21 means when it says, “Behold, the tent of God is among people, and he will dwell with them” (Revelation 21:3); and when it says, “I saw no temple in the New Jerusalem, because the Lord God Almighty is its temple, and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22).

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.

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