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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 #444

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444. To this I will append the following narrative account:

After I finished my considerations of conjugial love and began reflecting on licentious love, suddenly two angels stood beside me and said, "We perceived and understood what you were thinking about before, but the things you are now pondering escape us, and we do not comprehend them. Omit them, because they are of no consequence."

But I replied, "This love that I am considering now is not of no consequence, because it exists."

To that they responded, "How can there be any love that does not exist from creation? Is it not conjugial love that exists from creation? Is this not a love between two people who have the capability of becoming one? How can there be a love which divides and separates them? What young man can love any other woman than the one who loves him in return? Must not the love in one recognize and acknowledge the love in the other - loves which, when they meet, of their own accord unite? Who can love someone in whom that love is missing? Is it not conjugial love alone that is mutual and reciprocal? If love is not reciprocal, does it not pull back and die?"

[2] On hearing this I asked the two angels what society of heaven they were from, and they said, "We are from the heaven of innocence. 1 We came into this world of heaven as little children and were raised under the Lord's guidance. Moreover, after I became an adolescent youth, and my wife here with me a marriageable girl, we were betrothed and pledged, and at the earliest opportunity married. So, because we have known nothing regarding any other love than a truly wedded and conjugial love, therefore when your ideas were communicated to us concerning an alien love altogether opposed to our love, we did not comprehend any of them. Consequently we have come down to ask you why you are pondering notions so inconceivable. Tell us, then, how a love is possible which not only does not exist from creation, but is even contrary to creation. We regard things contrary to creation as matters having no reality."

[3] When he said this, my heart rejoiced that I was given an opportunity to speak with angels of such innocence, who did not know at all what licentiousness was. I opened my mouth therefore and explained, saying, "Do you not know that there is such a thing as good and evil, and that good exists from creation, but not evil? And yet evil regarded in itself is not nothing, even though it is nothing good?

"Good exists from creation, and good moreover in the highest degree and in the least degree; and when this least good reduces to nothing, evil arises on the other side. Therefore there is no proportional relationship or progression of good to evil, but a proportional relationship and progression of good to a greater or lesser good, and of evil to a greater or lesser evil; for good and evil are opposites in every single respect.

"Now because good and evil are opposites, there is a middle ground, and in it an area of equilibrium, in which evil acts against good. But because evil does not prevail, it remains in the endeavor. Every person grows up in this equilibrium; and being an equilibrium between good and evil, or to say the same thing, between heaven and hell, it is a spiritual equilibrium, which produces a state of freedom in those who live in it. The Lord draws all people out of this equilibrium to Him, and the person who follows in freedom is led by Him out of evil into good, and thus into heaven.

"It is the same with love, especially in the case of conjugial love and licentious love. Conjugial love is good, while licentious love is evil. Every person who hears the voice of the Lord and follows Him in freedom is introduced by the Lord into conjugial love with all its delights and joys. But the person who does not hear and does not follow introduces himself into licentious love, entering at first into its delights, but afterwards into its distresses, and finally into its miseries."

[4] My having said that, the two angels asked, "How could evil come into existence when nothing but good existed from creation? For anything to exist it must have an origin. Good could not be the origin of evil, because evil is nothing good, being rather the negation and destruction of good. But still, because evil exists and is experienced, it is not nothing, but something. Tell us, therefore, from what this something, after having no existence, came into existence."

To that I replied, "This secret cannot be explained unless it is known that no one is good but God alone, 2 and that nothing is good that is good in itself unless it is from God. Consequently it is the person who looks to God and wills to be led by God who is motivated by good. But the person who turns away from God and wills to be led by himself is not motivated by good; for the good that he does is either for the sake of himself or for the sake of the world; thus it is either merit-seeking, or feigned, or hypocritical. From this it is apparent that man himself is the origin of evil - not that that origin was infused into man from creation, but that by turning from God to self he infused it into himself.

"This origin of evil did not exist in Adam and his wife until the serpent said, '...in the day you eat of (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil)...you will be like God' (Genesis 3:5). And then, because they turned away from God, and turned to themselves as though to a god, they created in themselves the origin of evil. Eating of that tree symbolized their believing that a person knows good and evil and is wise on his own, and not from God."

[5] But then the two angels asked, "How could man turn away from God and turn to himself, when a person can will nothing, think nothing, and so do nothing except from God. Why did God permit it?"

However, I replied, "Man was so created that everything he wills, thinks and does appears to him as being in him and thus from him. Without this appearance a person would not be a human being, for he would be unable to receive anything of good and truth or of love and wisdom, retain it, and seemingly adopt it as his own. Consequently it follows that without this, as it were, living appearance, man would not have any conjunction with God, and so neither any eternal life. But if as a result of this appearance he persuades himself to the belief that he wills, thinks, and thus does good of himself, and not from the Lord (even though to all appearance as though of himself), he turns good into evil in him, and so creates in him the origin of evil. This was Adam's sin.

[6] "But let me explain this matter a little more clearly. The Lord views every person by looking at his forehead, and this sight passes to the back of his head. Behind the forehead is the cerebrum, and in the back of the head the cerebellum. The cerebrum is devoted to wisdom and its truths, while the cerebellum is devoted to love and its goods. Therefore a person who looks with his face to the Lord receives wisdom from him, and through that wisdom, love. But a person who looks away from the Lord receives love and not wisdom; and love without wisdom is love that originates with man and not from the Lord. Moreover, because this love allies itself with falsities, it does not acknowledge God, but embraces itself as a god; and this it tacitly defends by the person's faculty of understanding and of becoming wise as though of himself, implanted in him from creation. Thus this love is the origin of evil.

"The fact of this can be visibly demonstrated. I will call here some evil spirit who has turned away from God, and I will speak to him from behind or at the back of his head. And you will see that the things I say are turned into their opposites."

[7] So I summoned such a spirit. He came, and I spoke to him from behind, saying, "Do you know anything about hell, damnation, and the torment there?" Then, when he turned around to face me, I asked, "What did you hear?"

He replied: "I heard the following. 'Do you know anything about heaven, salvation, and the happiness there?'"

Afterwards then, when I repeated his answer to him from behind, he said that he heard what I had said at first.

After that I said to him from behind, "Do you know that people in hell are insane because of their falsities?" And on my asking him about this, as to what he had heard, he said, "I heard, 'Do you know that people in heaven are wise because of their truths?'

Again, when I repeated this answer to him from behind, he said that he heard, "Do you know that people in hell are insane because of their falsities?"

And so it went. From which it became plainly apparent that when the mind is turned away from the Lord, it turns to itself, so that it then perceives things in a contrary way.

"That is the reason," I said, "that, as you know, in this spiritual world, no one is permitted to stand behind another and speak to him; for he thus infuses into the other his love, which the other's intelligence then yields to and obeys because of the delight attached to it, but which, being from man and not from God, is a love of evil or a love of falsity.

[8] "In addition to this, I will relate to you another, similar occurrence, namely, that I have several times heard goods and truths descend from heaven into hell, and they were gradually turned there into their opposites - good into evil, and truth into falsity. The reason for this phenomenon is the same, namely, that all who are in hell turn away from the Lord."

After listening to this, the two angels thanked me and said, "Because you are now thinking and writing about a love that is contrary to our conjugial love, and because anything contrary to that love saddens our minds, we will leave you."

And as they bade me farewell, I asked them not to report anything concerning this love to their brothers and sisters in heaven, because it would injure their innocence.

I can declare for a certainty that people who die as little children grow up in heaven, and when they attain a stature like that of youths eighteen years old and of girls fifteen years old in the world, they stop there, and marriages are then provided for them by the Lord. Moreover, that both before marriage and after it, they do not know at all what licentiousness is, or that it is possible.

Footnotes:

1. I.e., the third heaven. See no. 410.

2. Matthew 19:17.

  
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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 #136

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136. The third experience.

I saw in the distance five colleges, each of which was surrounded by radiance from heaven. The first college was surrounded by a purple light, such as is seen in the clouds on earth before the sun rises in the morning. The second was surrounded by a yellowish light, like that of the dawn after sunrise. The third was surrounded by a brilliant light, like that of mid-day on earth. The fourth was surrounded by a moderate light, like that of the afternoon when the shades of evening begin to fall. The fifth actually stood in the shades of evening-time. Colleges in the world of spirits are meeting places where scholars gather to discuss various mysteries, which are of use in their progress towards knowledge, intelligence and wisdom.

On seeing them I felt a desire to visit one of them, so being in the spirit I went to that which had the moderate light. I went in and saw a gathering of scholars debating the question, what is meant by what is said of the Lord, that He was lifted up into heaven and sits at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19).

[2] Most of the gathering said that they understood the words perfectly literally, to mean that the Son sat next to the Father. But they disputed why He did so. Some said that the Son has been placed by the Father on His right on account of the redemption which He accomplished. Some said that it was out of love that He was given that seat. Some said it was so that He should be His counsellor, because He is such as to be honoured by the angels. And some said because the Father had given Him power to reign in His stead, for we read that to Him is given all power in heaven and on earth. But a large number asserted it was to hear those on the right for whom He intercedes. For all in the church to-day approach God the Father and pray to Him to have mercy for the sake of the Son; this, they said, makes the Father turn to Him to hear His mediation. But some held that only the Son of God from eternity sits at the Father's right to share His divinity with the Son of Man who was born in the world.

[3] On hearing this I was very surprised that learned men, although they had spent some time in the spiritual world, were still so ignorant of heavenly matters. But I could detect the reason, that they had such confidence in their own intelligence that they had not allowed themselves to learn from wise men. But to prevent them remaining any longer in ignorance about the Son's sitting on the right hand of the Father I raised my hand, and asked them to listen to a few words which I wanted to say on the subject. As they agreed to this, I said: 'Do you not know that the Word says that the Father and the Son are one, and that the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father? The Lord says so quite openly (John 10:30; 14:10-11). If you do not believe this, you are dividing God into two; and this will inevitably make you think of God in a natural manner, or in the manner of the bodily senses, or even in material terms. This too has happened in the world since the time of the Council of Nicaea, which introduced the concept of three Divine Persons from eternity, and so turned the church into a theatre hung with curtains to act as scenery, in front of which actors played new scenes. Is there anyone who does not know and acknowledge that God is one? If you acknowledge this in your hearts and spirits, all your debate collapses of its own accord, and rebounds into the air, like nonsense from the wise man's ear.'

[4] This speech made many of them very angry with me, and they wanted to tweak my ears and make me be silent. But the chairman of the meeting said indignantly: 'We are not talking about the oneness and plurality of God, because we believe in both. The question is, what is implied by the Son sitting at His Father's right hand; if you know anything about this subject, speak.'

'I will,' I replied, 'but please put a stop to the uproar. Sitting at the right hand does not here mean sitting on the right, but it means God's omnipotence by means of the Human which He took upon Himself in the world. This allows Him to operate at the last as well as at the first level. This enabled Him to enter, overthrow and conquer the hells, as well as to impose order on the heavens. It was by this that He redeemed men and angels, and He continues to do so for ever. If you consult the Word, and are of such a nature that you can receive illumination, you will see that "the right hand" here means omnipotence, as it does in [Isaiah and], the Psalms of David:

My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand has measured out the heavens, Isaiah 48:13.

Jehovah 1 has sworn by His right hand, and by the arm of His strength, Isaiah 62:8. Your right hand upholds me, Psalms 18:35.

Pay heed to the Son, whom you have made strong for you, your hand for the man at your right, for the Son of Man whom you made strong for you, Psalms 80:15, 17.

This shows how the following passage should be understood:

The saying of Jehovah to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a foot-stool for your feet. Jehovah will send from Zion a sceptre to show your strength, rule in the midst of your enemies, Psalms 110:1-2.

The whole of that Psalm describes the Lord's battle with the hells and their conquest. Since "the right hand of God" means omnipotence, therefore the Lord says that He will sit "on the right hand of power" (Matthew 26:63-64); and "on the right hand of the power of God" (Luke 22:69).'

[5] At this point I was interrupted by an uproar in the assembly; but I said: 'Take care! There may perhaps appear from heaven a hand, such as appeared to me. If it does, it strikes unbelievable fear of its power into you. This proved to me that "the right hand of God" means omnipotence.'

Hardly had I said this, when a hand was seen stretched out beneath heaven. Its appearance struck such terror into them that they rushed pell-mell to the doors; some rushed to the windows to throw themselves out, some were unable to breathe and fainted. However, I was not terrified, so I stayed behind, and then walked slowly after them. When I looked back from a distance, I saw that the college was surrounded by a dark cloud; and I was told from heaven that this was because they had spoken from their belief in three Gods, and that its earlier light would return, when more sensible people gathered there.

Footnotes:

1. Corrected in the author's copy from 'God' in keeping with the Hebrew.

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

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