Van Swedenborgs Werken

 

Spiritual Experiences #5542

  
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5542. Among these are also those who have only false doctrine from the sense of the letter of the Word. They have no concern for real truths themselves, however open they are in the Word or however they are preached to them in the other life, only if they have convinced themselves of them. Those of them, however, who have lived under the influence of what is good, long for truths, genuine ones, from the influence of what is good; for good longs for truths just as food longs for water. It desires conjunction since the one loves the other.

I have seen an enormous number of those like this, Lutherans and others. Those, because they did not want to accept anything of genuine truths, were thrown down from heaven and transferred to a land toward the east at the north there; and those of them who had lived evilly were transferred to hells.

[5542] 1/2. The reason that dragons are opposed to heaven is because they are opposed to the heavenly doctrine, for heaven's doctrine does not appear in the sense of the letter except to those who have been enlightened. For this reason too dragons are opposed to heaven, and if they come there, they immediately extinguish the wisdom of those who are there. Nevertheless, when the dragons who force their way up are examined, as a result of the profound obscurity that develops and the torment that results, they throw themselves back. Those who have confirmed [their false belief] more than others compose the dragon's head and body, and they are situated there according to the nature and degree of the confirmation. Their presence brings on mental torpor to the point of extinguishing the affection for truth with those who have intelligence from doctrine, as I know from experience. There were those like this below and there were those like this above, and to the extent that they were present the affection was numb; and if they had not been removed, torpor and surfeit to the point of nausea would have gripped [me]. When anyone talks with them from doctrine, they do not understand and they resist, and in the end they are hostile, some from aversion, some from hatred, and so on. Sometimes they appear to themselves to have light apart from any doctrine; likewise to have their own life and to have the freedom of feeling just as they wish, for and against, whatever and however.

  
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Thanks to the Academy of the New Church, and Bryn Athyn College, for the permission to use this translation.

Van Swedenborgs Werken

 

Last Judgment (Posthumous) #166

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166. [166.] 32. Many also were discovered in the Christian domain who had an understanding of truth but not a will for good. People of this character were initially accepted among the upright, because they can articulate many things that are in fact true. In such, too, the intellect is in the beginning enlightened, but the will asleep. These people gathered on mountains in the western zone. They attached themselves to the upright who dwell in the lowest heaven, who do not inquire into matters of the will, but believe that if people speak intelligently, they are also good. However, I saw that these were people without any charity, and that they affiliated themselves secretly with the evil and infested the upright, doing so first by reasoned arguments, and then by arts, until they were conjoined and the upright bound to them. For in this way they prevail against others as well.

There were many like this in the heavens that Christians made for themselves, and they interposed themselves between the Lord and people in the world and obstructed the way, so that the Divine operation could not have its force. Most of these people were caught up in a conceit in their own intelligence from love of self, and in the delight of ruling.

I saw some people of this character on a quite high mountain in the western zone toward the north and all around the sides of the mountain; and they persuaded themselves and others that everyone in heaven is there in consequence of his intellectual light alone and not at the same time his heavenly warmth. Such people, however, are dangerous.

I saw these people cast down from the mountain and from the sides of the mountain, and a chasm opened below and swallowed them up; and having fallen a long way down, they were brought into a state of darkness, for they then accepted falsities as truths and were turned away to their opposites. Such is the character of the intellect that is led by an evil will.

Evil people who had allied themselves with them, having then no longer the power to resist, were cast down into their various hells, some into hells beneath mountains, some into hells beneath level plains.

  
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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.