18. The face of the abyss means our cravings and the falsities these give rise to; we are wholly made up of cravings and falsities and wholly surrounded by them. Because no ray of light is in us, we are like an abyss, or something disorganized and dim.
Many passages in the Word also call such people abysses and sea depths, which are drained (that is, devastated) before a person is regenerated. In Isaiah, for instance:
Wake up, as in the days of old, the generations of eternity! Are you not draining the sea, the waters of the great abyss, and making the depths of the sea a path for the redeemed to cross? May those redeemed by Jehovah return! (Isaiah 51:9-10, 11)
An individual of this type, observed from heaven, looks like a dark mass with no life at all to it. 1
The same words involve an individual's overall spiritual devastation — a preliminary step to regeneration. 2 (The prophets have much more to say about it.) 3 Before we can learn what is true and be affected by what is good, the things that stand in the way and resist have to be put aside. The old self must die before the new self can be conceived. 4
Footnotes:
1. Here, in a transference of perspective common in his works, Swedenborg describes a spiritual viewpoint in terms of the geography of the spiritual world. "To see from heaven" is in his theology to see people, intellectual movements, or philosophical abstractions in the "higher" light that prevails in heaven, even if those entities themselves are "lower down" in the spiritual, or even in the physical, world. (Aspects of the mind that are more spiritual can be described as both "higher" and "more inward," and less spiritual aspects as "lower" and "more outward." See also Swedenborg [1771] 2006, 739 note 2 in §828.) The nature of heaven's light, as Swedenborg explains it, is that it reveals the true underlying nature of the thing or person seen, but shows it as a pictorial or animated graphic (Secrets of Heaven 4674:2-3; Heaven and Hell 131; his 1768 work Marriage Love 269:3; True Christianity 281:12, 462:11). This light does not always flow down into spiritual areas below heaven, but when it does, it radically changes the appearance of things there (Heaven and Hell 553; True Christianity 187:2). Swedenborg reports seeing people's inner natures represented in the light of heaven as people (Secrets of Heaven 6626; Revelation Unveiled 341:2); animals (see Swedenborg's posthumously published theological work Revelation Explained [Swedenborg 1994-1997] §1005:3); birds (True Christianity 42, 334:8); monstrous, mythological, or biblical creatures (see the 1763 work Divine Love and Wisdom 254; Marriage Love 521:1; True Christianity 388:1, 389:7); or lifeless objects (see the 1763 work Divine Providence 226; True Christianity 31:4, 110:8, 113:4). For similar visions of the inner soul of certain individuals as dark or inanimate masses, see Swedenborg's posthumously published Spiritual Experiences (Swedenborg 1998-2002) §§1271, 3215, 4060. For related phenomena, see notes 1 in §41 and 1 in §154. [JSR, SS]
2. The spiritual "devastation" to which Swedenborg alludes here is common in religious literature. A classic account of it is given by the psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910), who speaks of the progress from a "sick soul" to a "divided self" and finally to regeneration, or spiritual rebirth — which is often the result of a conversion experience (see James 1910, 136-188. One term frequently applied to this "devastation" is the "dark night of the soul," from the poem of the same name by the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic John of the Cross (1542-1591; see John of the Cross 1990). Swedenborg endured a similar crisis in the years 1743-1745, which marked his transformation from scientific investigator to spiritual visionary. Swedenborg's Journal of Dreams, a record he kept during the months March-October 1744, gives a vivid account of his internal upheavals during this period; see Swedenborg 2001b. [RS]
3. For prophetic depictions of spiritual devastation, see the following passages, which are quoted among others on this topic in §5376: Isaiah 6:9-13; 13:6; 16:4; 33:8-9; 42:14-15; 49:17-19; 51:17-23; Ezekiel 36:3-12; Zephaniah 1:14-18. [LHC]
4. Compare Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:9-10. [LHC, JLO]