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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 #326

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

After the question concerning the soul had been discussed in the school and answered, 1 I saw the people going out in order, the headmaster in front, after him the older men, with the five young men who had responded to the question in the midst of them, and after them the rest. As they left the building, they went around to the sides, where there were walkways surrounded by bushes. And gathering there, they broke up into small groups, all of them circles of young men conversing on matters of wisdom, with one of the wiser men from the balcony in each.

Seeing them from my place of lodging, I entered a state of the spirit and in the spirit went out to them. And there I went over to the headmaster, who a little before had posed the question concerning the soul.

When he saw me he said, "Who are you? As I watched you approaching on the way here, I was astonished to see that one minute you would pop into view, the next minute drop out of sight, so that one moment I would see you and suddenly then not. Surely you are not in the same life-state as our people."

Gently laughing at this I replied, "I am not a marionette, nor a chameleon, but I am one who alternates, being sometimes in your light and sometimes not, so that I am an alien and at the same time a native."

[2] At this the headmaster looked at me and said, "These are strange and extraordinary things you are saying. Tell me who you are."

So I said, "I live in the world in which you once lived and from which you have departed, which is called the natural world; and I live as well in the world into which you have come and in which you are now living, which is called the spiritual world. I am as a result in a natural state and at the same time a spiritual one - in a natural state when I am with people on earth, and in a spiritual state when I am with you. Moreover, when I am in a natural state, I am not visible to you; but when I am in a spiritual state, I am. To be as I am is something I have been given by the Lord.

"Being an enlightened man, you know that an inhabitant of the natural world does not see an inhabitant of the spiritual world, or vice versa. Therefore when I conveyed my spirit into my body, you did not see me; but when I conveyed it out of my body, you did.

"You also taught in your school exercise that you are souls, and that souls see souls because they are human forms. But you know that you did not see yourselves or your souls within your bodies when you were in the natural world. This fact is due to the difference that exists between something spiritual and something natural."

[3] When he heard me mention a difference between something spiritual and something natural, he said, "What is the difference? It is not like the difference between something more pure and something less so? So what is something spiritual but a purer form of something natural."

But I replied, "That is not what the difference is, but it is as the difference between something prior and something subsequent, between which there is no finite relationship. For the prior is in the subsequent, as a cause in its effect, and the subsequent exists from the prior, as an effect from its cause. That is why the one is not visible to the other."

To this the headmaster said, "I have reflected and ruminated on the difference, but so far in vain. I would like to have some concept of it."

[4] So I said, "You shall not only have a concept of the difference between something spiritual and something natural, but you will even witness the difference." Whereupon I spoke to him as follows:

"You are in a spiritual state when you are with your own people, but in a natural state with me; for you speak with your associates in spiritual language, the common language of every spirit and angel, whereas with me you speak in my native tongue. Indeed, every spirit or angel in speaking with a mortal person uses the person's customary language, thus speaking French with a Frenchman, English with an Englishman, Greek with a Greek, Arabic with an Arab, and so on.

"So then, to learn the difference between something spiritual and something natural in terms of languages, do the following: Go over to your associates, say something there and remember the words. Then with these memorized, come back and repeat them to me."

So he did as I said, and returned to me with the words in his mouth, but when he uttered them he did not know what any of them meant. The words were altogether strange and unfamiliar, being words not found in any language of the natural world.

After he repeated this experiment several times, it became clearly apparent to him that people in the spiritual world all speak a spiritual language which has nothing in common with any language of the natural world, and that every person comes automatically into use of that language after death. At the same time he also then discovered that the very intonation of spiritual language is so different from the intonation of natural language that the intonation of spiritual language, even when loud, is not at all audible to a natural person, nor the intonation of natural language to a spiritual person.

[5] After that I asked the headmaster and some others standing by to go over to their associates and write down some thought on a piece of paper, and with that piece of paper come back to me and read it. They did as I said, and they returned with the piece of paper in hand; but when they went to read it, they were unable to make out what any of it meant, since the writing consisted only of some alphabetic letters with curly lines over them, each of which carried some meaning connected with the subject. (Because every letter of the alphabet carries some meaning there, it is apparent from what origin the Lord is called the Alpha and the Omega.) 2 As they again and again withdrew, wrote and returned, they discovered that their writing included and contained a countless number of elements which no natural writing could ever express. But they were told that this is because a spiritual person thinks thoughts incomprehensible and inexpressible to a natural person, and these cannot descend or be put into any other form of writing or language.

[6] Then, because the others standing by were unwilling to believe that spiritual thought so far surpasses natural thought as to be inexpressible in comparison, I said to them, "Try an experiment. Go over into your spiritual association, think on some subject, and holding the thought come back and express it to me."

So they went, thought, held the thought, and came back; but when they went to express what they had thought, they could not. For they did not find any natural mental concept equivalent to any spiritual concept. So neither did they find any word to express their thoughts, since ideas of the mind take form as words in speech. At that they then began to withdraw and return, to prove to themselves that spiritual ideas were higher than natural ones, being inexpressible, ineffable and incomprehensible to the natural man. And because spiritual ideas are so transcendent, they began to say that spiritual ideas or thoughts compared to natural ones were the essences of ideas and the essences of thoughts, and that they therefore expressed the essences of qualities and the essences of affections; consequently that spiritual thoughts were the germs and origins of natural thoughts. It also became evident from this that spiritual wisdom was the essence of wisdom, thus unintelligible to any person of wisdom in the natural world.

They were then told from the third heaven that there is a still more interior or higher wisdom, called celestial, which has a similar relationship to spiritual wisdom as spiritual wisdom does to natural wisdom; and that these levels of wisdom flow in succession in accordance with the heavens from the Lord's Divine wisdom, which is infinite.

Footnotes:

1. This account follows on the one related in no. 315 above.

2. In Revelation 1:8,11, 21:6, 22:13. Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, in the language in which Revelation was written.

  
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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

 

Conjugial Love #42

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42. To this I will append two narrative accounts from the spiritual world. Here is the first:

One morning I looked up into the sky, and I saw above me expanse upon expanse. And as I looked, the first or nearest expanse was opened, and shortly the second, which was above it, and finally the third, which was the highest of all. By the light coming from them I perceived that on the first expanse were angels of the first or lowest heaven, on the second expanse were angels of the second or middle heaven, and on the third expanse were angels of the third or highest heaven.

I wondered at first what was happening and why. But shortly I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of a trumpet, saying, "We have perceived, and now see, that you are meditating on conjugial love. Moreover, we know that so far no one on earth knows what true conjugial love is in its origin or in its essence, and yet it is important for them to know. Therefore it has pleased the Lord to open the heavens to you, that the inner faculties of your mind may receive an influx of illuminating light and thus perception.

"Among us in heaven, especially in the third heaven, our heavenly delights come principally from conjugial love. Consequently, by permission granted us, we will send a married couple down to you, in order that you may see."

[2] And suddenly, then, a carriage appeared, coming down from the highest or third heaven, in which I saw a single angel. But as it drew near, I saw that it held two.

The carriage shone before my eyes in the distance like a diamond, and harnessed to it were young horses as white as snow. And the couple sitting in the carriage held in their hands a pair of turtledoves.

And the couple called out to me, "You want us to come closer. But beware, then, of the flashing light coming from our heaven, the heaven we descended from. It is a blazing light, and you must take care that it does not penetrate interiorly. By its influx, indeed, the higher ideas of your understanding are enlightened, ideas that, in themselves, are heavenly. But these same ideas are inexpressible in the world in which you live. Receive the things you are about to hear, therefore, in rational terms and so explain them to the understanding."

I replied, "I will take care. Come closer."

So they came, and behold, it was a husband and his wife. And they said, "We are married. We have lived a blessed life in heaven from the earliest time, which you call the golden age, remaining forever in the same flower of youth that you see us in today."

[3] I looked at the two of them closely, because I perceived that they represented conjugial love in their life and in their adornment - in their life as shown in their faces, and in their adornment as shown in the garments they wore. For all angels are affections of love in human form. The essential, dominant affection shines out from their faces, and they are given clothing on the basis of their affection and in accordance with it. Consequently, in heaven they say that everyone is clothed in his own affection.

The husband appeared to be between adolescence and early manhood in age. From his eyes flashed a light sparkling with the wisdom of love. His face seemed to be inmostly radiant with this light, and because of the radiance from within, outwardly his skin virtually shone. As a result, his whole facial appearance was singularly one of dazzling good looks.

He was dressed in a full-length robe, and under the robe he wore a blue-colored garment, which was tied about the waist with a golden girdle bearing three precious stones, two of them sapphires, one on each side, and a garnet in the middle. His stockings were of shining linen, into which had been woven threads of silver; and his shoes were made entirely of silk.

This was the representational form that conjugial love took in the case of the husband.

[4] In the case of the wife, however, it took the following form. I saw her face, and did not see it. I saw it as the very essence of beauty, and did not see it because the beauty was beyond expression. For there was in her face the bright glow of a blazing light, like the light possessed by angels in the third heaven, and this light dimmed my vision, so that I was simply stupefied by it.

Noticing this, the wife spoke to me, saying, "What do you see?"

I answered, "I see only conjugial love and a picture of it. But I see and do not see."

At this she turned at an angle away from her husband, and then I could look more intently. Her eyes flashed with the light of her heaven, which is blazing, as I said, and so takes its quality from the love of wisdom. For wives in the third heaven love their husbands on account of their husbands' wisdom and in response to it, and the husbands love their wives on account of and in response to that love directed towards them, and so they are united.

The wife had her beauty as a result of this, such beauty that no artist could reproduce it or portray it in its true form, for a flashing of light like that is not possible in the painter's colors, nor is such loveliness expressible in his art.

Her hair was attractively arranged in a style to match her beauty, with jewels in the form of flowers inserted into it. She had a necklace of garnets, from which hung a rosette of peridots. And she had bracelets of pearls. She was dressed in a scarlet gown, and under it a purple bodice fastened in front with rubies. But what surprised me, the colors kept changing depending on which way she was facing in relation to her husband, and their sparkle also kept changing accordingly, being now more, now less - more when they faced each other, and less when she faced away at an angle.

[5] When I had seen these things, they spoke with me again. And when the husband spoke, he spoke as though he spoke at the same time on behalf of his wife, and when the wife spoke, she spoke as though she spoke at the same time on behalf of her husband. For such was the union of their minds, from which comes their speech. It was then that I heard as well the way conjugial love sounds, how it was inwardly together with, and also the result of, the delights of a state of peace and innocence.

Finally they said, "They are calling us back. We have to go."

They then appeared to be again riding in a carriage, as before, and they were borne off along a road stretching out between flower gardens, from whose beds rose olive trees and trees full of oranges. And as they drew near their heaven, young women came to meet them and welcome them and take them in.

  
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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.

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