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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

 

True Christian Religion #568

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568. The second experience.

Every religious and wise person wants to know what his life will be like after death, so I shall give a general description so that he may know.

Everyone after death, when he becomes aware that he is still alive, but in another world, and he is told that above him is heaven, where there are everlasting joys, and below him is hell, where there are everlasting sorrows, is first brought back into the external state he was in, while he was in his former world. Then he believes that he will certainly reach heaven, and he talks intelligently and behaves prudently. Some say: 'We have lived a moral life, we have had honourable ambitions, we have not deliberately done evil.' Others say: 'We have gone regularly to church, we have attended mass, we have kissed holy statues, we have prayed hard on our knees.' Some say: 'We have given to the poor, we have helped the needy, we have read devotional books, as well as the Word.' And there are many more similar claims.

[2] But when they have made these statements, the angels standing by them say: 'All the things you have mentioned you did externally; but you still do not know what you are like internally. You are now spirits with a substantial body, and the spirit is your internal man. It is this in you which thinks what it wishes, and wishes what it loves, and this is the pleasure of its life. Everyone from early childhood begins his life on the external level. He learns to behave with morality, to talk intelligently, and once he has formed some idea of heaven and its blessedness, he begins to pray, to go to church and attend regular services. Yet he still treasures up in the depths of his mind the evils which spring in profusion from their native source; he cleverly covers them up too with reasonings based upon fallacies, until he himself does not know that evil is evil. Then as for the evils which are wrapped up and covered, as if by dust, he does not give them another thought, only taking care that they are not exposed to the world's gaze. So his only concern is with the externals of a moral life, and so he becomes duplicitous, a sheep in externals, a wolf in internals. He becomes like a golden box containing poison; or like a person with bad breath who keeps a pastille in his mouth to prevent by-standers smelling it; or like a mouse's skin made to smell of balsam.

[3] 'You said that you lived a moral life and devoted yourselves to religious studies. But my question is, did you ever examine your internal man and become aware of any longings for revenge, even to the point of murder, any longings for indulging your lusts even to the point of adultery, any longings for fraud even to the point of stealing, any longings for lying even to the point of giving false witness? Four of the Ten Commandments contain the injunction, "You are not to," and the last two "You are not to covet." Do you really believe that in these matters your internal man resembled your external one? If you do, I think you may be wrong.'

[4] To this they replied, 'What is the internal man? Is it not one and the same as the external? Our ministers have told us that the internal man is nothing but faith, and reverence in utterance and morality in life is a sign of it, because it shows its working.'

The angels answered: 'Saving faith is in the internal man, and likewise charity, and this is the source of Christian faithfulness and morality in the external man. But if the longings we mentioned before remain in the internal man, that is, in the will and so in his thinking, and if, therefore, you love those longings inwardly, and yet act and talk differently in externals, then in your case evil is placed above good, and good below evil. However much, therefore, you seem to talk from the understanding, and to act from love, there is evil within and this is wrapped up, as we said. Then you are like cunning chimpanzees, which ape human actions, but their heart is not in them.

[5] 'You know nothing about your internal man, because you have not examined yourselves, and following that examination repented. You will discover shortly what your internal man is like, when you have the external stripped off and you enter into possession of the internal. When this happens, your companions will no longer recognise you, nor will you recognise yourselves. I have seen wicked people who pretended to be moral looking like wild beasts, glaring truculently at their neighbour, burning with murderous hatred, and cursing God, whom they worshipped in the external man.'

On hearing this they went away; and then the angels told them: 'You will see what your life will be like after this, for your external man will shortly be taken away and you will enter into possession of the internal, which is now your spirit.'

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #119

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119. The second memorable occurrence taken from Revelation Unveiled. One time just after I woke up from sleeping I fell into a deep meditation on God. Looking up I saw above me in heaven an oval of intensely shining light. As I fixed my gaze on the light, it gradually receded toward the sides and merged into the periphery [of my vision].

Then, behold, heaven opened up to me! I saw some magnificent things, and angels standing in a circle on the south side of the opening, talking to each other. Because a burning desire came over me to hear what they were saying, I was allowed to hear it—first the sound of it, which was full of heavenly love; then the conversation itself, which was full of the wisdom that goes with that love.

They were having a conversation about the only God, about being in partnership with God, and about the salvation that results. What they were saying was ineffable—most of it could not be expressed in the words of any earthly language. Several times before, however, I had been in gatherings of angels in heaven itself, and had been able to join in their conversation because I was then in a state similar to theirs. This enabled me to understand them now, and to select from their discussion a few points that could be expressed in a rational way using the words of earthly language.

[2] They were saying that the underlying divine reality is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. They said that the same is true of the divine essence, because the underlying divine reality is the divine essence, and that the same is also true of God, because the divine essence that is the underlying divine reality is God. They used spiritual images as illustration.

They said, “The underlying divine reality cannot be divided into many entities, each of which possesses an underlying divine reality, and still remain united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. Otherwise each separate entity would think on its own from its own separate underlying divine reality. If it also happened to be concurrently of the same mind as the others, there would be a number of deities in agreement; there would not be one God. Agreement, or the consensus of many, each one acting on its own or by itself, is not an attribute of one God but of many.”

They did not say “gods” because they were unable to. It was suppressed by the light of heaven that shaped their thought and was the context in which their conversation took place. They also said that when they tried to utter the word “gods” and to describe each one as a person by himself, the effort to say that immediately veered off toward “one,” and in fact toward “the one only God.”

[3] They added, “The underlying divine reality is a reality in itself, not from itself, because if it were from itself, that would imply an underlying reality that existed in itself from some prior underlying reality. It would mean there was a god from a god, which is not possible. What comes from God is called ‘divine,’ but it is not called ‘God.’ What is ‘a god from God,’ what is ‘an eternally begotten god from God,’ and what is ‘a god emanating from an eternally begotten god from God’ except words utterly devoid of heavenly light?”

Later on they said, “The underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, is uniform—and uniform not just in a simple way but in an infinite number of ways. It is uniform from eternity to eternity. It is uniform everywhere, and it is uniform with everyone and in everyone. (It is the condition of the recipient that causes all the variety and variability in reception.)”

[4] The angels demonstrated the absoluteness of the underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, as follows: “God is the Absolute, because he is absolute love and absolute wisdom, or to put it another way, he is absolute goodness and absolute truth. As a result, he is life itself. If these qualities were not absolute in God they would never exist in heaven or in the world, because they would be relatively nonexistent compared to the Absolute. Every quality is what it is because it comes from the Absolute, both as its source and as its point of reference.

“The Absolute (meaning the underlying divine reality) has no specific location. It is with those and in those who are in specific locations, depending on how receptive they are. Love and wisdom, goodness and truth, and the life these qualities give are absolute in God; in fact, they are God himself. A specific location cannot be attributed to them, and neither can a progression from place to place as the source of their omnipresence—they are not in a particular place. For this reason the Lord says he is in the midst of people [Matthew 18:20]; and he is in them and they are in him [John 6:56; 14:20; 15:4, 5].

[5] “Nevertheless, no one can comprehend God as he is in himself. Therefore he appears as he is in himself to be a sun above the angelic heavens. He himself as wisdom emanates from that sun in the form of light, and he himself as love emanates from that sun in the form of heat. That sun is not God himself. The divine love and wisdom surrounding him as they first go forth from him come to angels’ view as a sun.

“The Absolute in that sun is the Human Being. It is our Lord Jesus Christ, including both the divine source and the divine-human manifestation. Since the Absolute, which is absolute love and absolute wisdom, was in him as his soul from the Father, therefore divine life or life in itself was in him. None of us is like this. The soul in us is not life; it is merely a vessel for receiving life.

“In fact, the Lord teaches this when he says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6); and in another passage, ‘Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has also granted the Son to have life in himself’ (John 5:26). ‘Life in himself’ is God.”

They added that people who have any spiritual light at all can see from all this that the underlying divine reality, which is also the divine essence, cannot be shared among many, because it is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. If anyone were to claim that the divine reality could be shared, further points that person made on the subject would contain obvious contradictions.

[6] Then the angels became aware that my thoughts included common Christian ideas of God: ideas of a trinity of persons in unity, and a unity of persons in the Trinity, and also of the Son of God’s birth from eternity. At that point they said, “What are you thinking? Surely you are thinking those thoughts from an earthly light that is incompatible with our spiritual light. We are closing heaven to you and leaving unless you get rid of the ideas that go with that point of view.”

So I said, “Please go deeper into my thinking. Perhaps you will see a compatibility.”

They went deeper and saw that three persons to me meant three emanating divine activities: creating, redeeming, and regenerating, which are activities of the one only God. The birth of a Son of God from eternity to me meant his birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time.

Then I explained that my earthly thoughts about the trinity and the unity of persons and about the eternally begotten Son of God were based on the church’s statement of faith that was named after Athanasius. I added that the Athanasian Creed is accurate, provided that instead of the trinity of persons mentioned there one substitutes a trinity in one person—a trinity that exists uniquely within the Lord Jesus Christ; and provided that instead of the birth of a Son of God from eternity one substitutes the birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time, because his human manifestation is openly referred to as the Son of God.

[7] The angels then said, “Good, good.”

They asked me to pass on a statement from them: “Anyone who does not seek help from the absolute God of heaven and earth cannot come into heaven, because heaven is heaven as a result of the one only God. The absolute God is Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah the Lord, Creator from eternity, Redeemer in time, and Regenerator to eternity. He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit combined. This is the gospel that needs to be preached.”

Afterward the heavenly light I had seen above the opening came back. It came down bit by bit and filled the inner reaches of my mind, enlightening my ideas of the unity and the trinity of God. Then I saw my former merely earthly ideas being separated out, just as husks are shaken off wheat tossed in a winnowing basket. I saw my old notions carried off as if by a wind to the north of heaven and scattered.

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

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