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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

 

Apocalypse Revealed #153

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153. To this I will add the following account, regarding the lot after death of people who in both doctrine and life have confirmed themselves in the doctrine of faith alone to the point of believing it to be justifying.

1. When they are physically dead and come to life again in the spirit, which generally happens on the third day after the heart has stopped beating, they appear to themselves to have the same body that they had before in the world, so much so that they do not know otherwise than that they are living in the prior world. Yet they do not have a material body, but rather a spiritual one, and to their senses, which are also spiritual, their body appears as though material, even though it is not.

[2] 2. After several days they see that they are in a world where various societies have been established - a world called the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell. All the societies there, of which there are a countless number, have been marvelously organized in accordance with the inhabitants' natural affections, good and evil. Societies organized in accordance with good natural affections communicate with heaven, while societies organized in accordance with evil affections communicate with hell.

[3] 3. A newly arrived spirit or new spiritual person is taken about and conveyed into various societies, both good and evil, and he is examined to see whether he is affected by truths, and in what way, or whether he is affected by falsities, and in what way.

[4] 4. If the person is affected by truths, he is led away from evil societies and introduced into good ones, and into various good ones, until he comes to a society corresponding to his natural affection, and there he experiences a goodness in harmony with that natural affection. This continues until he sheds the natural affection and takes on a spiritual one, at which point he is raised into heaven. But this is what happens in the case of people who in the world lived a life of charity and so also a life of faith, which consisted in their believing in the Lord and refraining from evils as sins.

[5] 5. In contrast, people who in both doctrine and life had confirmed themselves in the doctrine of faith alone to the point of believing it alone to be justifying - these, because they are affected not by truths but by falsities, and because they have dismissed goods of charity or good works from being means of salvation, are led away from good societies and introduced into evil ones, and into various evil ones, until they come to a society corresponding to the lusts of their self-love. For anyone who loves falsities cannot help but love evils.

[6] 6. However, because they feigned good affections in outward appearances in the world (even though they inwardly harbored nothing but evil affections or lusts), they are periodically kept at first in states of outward pretense. Moreover, those who in the world had presided over companies of others are set here and there over societies in the world of spirits, in overall charge or in part, according to the scope of the positions they had held before. Yet because they like neither truth nor justice, and cannot be enlightened sufficiently to know what truth and justice are, therefore after several days they are discharged. I have seen spirits like this conveyed from one society to another, and though everywhere given some administrative position, after a short time they are just as often discharged.

[7] 7. After repeated dismissals, some of these people out of weariness do not wish to seek further positions, and some out of a fear of losing their reputation do not dare to. Therefore they go off and sit sadly, and at that point they are led away into an uninhabited region where they find cabins, which they enter. There they are given some work to do, and to the extent that they do it they are given food. But if they do not do it, they go hungry and are not given any. Necessity accordingly compels them.

Foodstuffs in that world are like those in our world, only they come from a spiritual origin and are given by the Lord from heaven to all in accordance with the useful functions they perform. Idle people, as they perform no useful function, are not given any.

[8] 8. After a while these people loathe work, and they then leave the cabins. If they were priests, they wish to become builders, and instantly then piles of hewn stones, bricks, boards and wooden panels appear, with heaps of reeds and rushes, clay, plaster and asphalt. When they see these, they are fired with an urge to build, and they begin to construct a house, taking now a stone, now a piece of wood, now a reed, now wet clay, and placing one upon another in haphazard fashion, though in their eyes an ordered one. Yet what they build by day collapses overnight; and the following day they gather the fallen materials from the rubble and build again, and this repeatedly until they grow weary of building.

This is the case because they used to pile up falsities to confirm the doctrine of salvation through faith alone, and that is how these falsities build the church.

[9] 9. Out of weariness these people next go off and sit solitary and idle, and because, as we said, idle people are not given any food from heaven, they begin to hunger. They also begin to think of nothing else than how to get food and relieve their hunger.

When they are in this state, some people come to them, from whom they beg assistance. But those other people say to them, "Why are you sitting so idle? Come with us to our houses, and we will give you jobs to do and feed you."

They joyfully then arise and go away with those people to their houses, and each is there given his job, and in exchange for the work food. However, because all who have confirmed themselves in falsities of faith cannot do works of good and useful service, but only works that serve evil, and because they do not do the works faithfully, but only so that people may see them, for the sake of acclaim or material gain, therefore they abandon their jobs and care only to socialize, talk, walk, and sleep. And then, because their employers can no longer induce them to work, they are therefore forced to leave as serving no useful function.

[10] 10. When they have been forced to leave, their eyes are opened and they see a path leading to a certain cavern. When they go to it, the entrance opens and they go in, inquiring whether there is any food there, and when they are told that there is, they ask permission to remain. They are then told that they may, and they are taken in, with the entrance closing behind them.

The master of the cavern then comes and says to them, "You cannot leave anymore. See your fellow inhabitants. They all work, and as they work, they are given food from heaven. I tell you this so that you know."

Their fellow inhabitants say, moreover, "Our master knows for what work each of us is suited, and every day he assigns it to us. Every day that you finish it you are given food. But if you do not finish it, you are given neither food nor clothing. Also, if anyone does evil to another, he is forced to a corner of the cavern, onto a bed of accursed dust, 1 where he is miserably tortured, and this until the master sees some sign of repentance in him. He is then taken out and ordered to do his work."

They are told, too, that after they have done their work, they are all allowed to walk about, converse, and later sleep. They are also taken deeper into the cavern where there are whores, and they are each permitted to choose one of them to be his woman, but are forbidden under threat of penalty to go whoring promiscuously.

[11] The whole of hell consists of such caverns, which are nothing less than eternal workhouses. I have been given to go into some and see, in order that I might make this known, and the people all appeared to be of a low class, nor did any one of them know who he had been in the world or what his occupation had been. But an angel who accompanied me told me that this one had been a household servant in the world, this one a soldier, this one an administrator, this one a priest, this one a person of high rank, this one a person of wealth; and yet none of them knew anything other than that they had been servants, and their fellows likewise. That is because they had been inwardly alike, even though unalike outwardly, and it is people's inner qualities that affiliate them in the spiritual world.

Such is the lot of people who have set aside a life of charity, and so have not lived it in the world.

[12] As regards the hells in general, they consist solely of such caverns and workhouses, but of one sort where they are inhabited by satanic spirits, and of another where they are inhabited by diabolical spirits. Satanic spirits are ones who have been governed by falsities and their resulting evils, while diabolical spirits are ones who have been governed by evils and their accompanying falsities.

Satanic spirits appear in the light of heaven as cadaverous, and some black, like mummies, while diabolical spirits appear in the light of heaven dark and fiery, and some as black as soot. All, however, in face and body are monstrous. Yet in their own light, which is like that of burning coal, they do not appear as monstrous, but as human. This appearance is granted to them to enable them to associate with one another.

Footnotes:

1. The dust of certain hells is so named. See Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom 341[2].

  
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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 #267

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267. The second account:

Some period of time later I entered a wooded area, where I walked engaged in thought concerning people who are caught up in a craving to possess those things which have to do with the world, and who fantasize on that account that they do. And I saw, then, two angels at some distance from me, talking together and now and then looking over at me. Consequently I drew nearer; and as I approached, they spoke to me, saying:

"We perceive in ourselves that you are thinking about the same thing we are discussing, or that we are discussing the same thing you are thinking about, which comes from a reciprocal communication of our affections."

I asked them, therefore, what they were discussing.

"Fantasy, lust, and intelligence," they said, "and at the moment, people who find delight in picturing and imagining that they possess everything in the world."

[2] At that I then asked them to express their thought with respect to the first three points - lust, fantasy and intelligence.

So, taking up the subject, they said that everyone is in a state of lust inwardly from birth, and in a state of intelligence outwardly from training; but that no one is in a state of intelligence inwardly, thus in spirit - still less in a state of wisdom - except from the Lord.

"For everyone," they said, "is withheld from the lust of evil and kept in a state of intelligence according as he looks to the Lord and is at the same time conjoined with Him. Apart from this a person is nothing but lust. Yet he is still in a state of intelligence in outward aspects, or as regards the body, from training. For though a person craves honors and riches, or prominence and wealth, these two are not attained unless he appears to be moral and spiritual in character, thus intelligent and wise; and he learns to appear such from the time he is a little child. That is why, as soon as he comes into the company of others or into gatherings of them, he turns his spirit about, withdraws it from lust, and speaks and acts in accordance with the becoming and honorable virtues he has learned from early childhood and still retains in his physical memory - doing his utmost to take care that nothing emerges of the insanity of lust which grips his spirit.

[3] "Consequently everyone not inwardly led by the Lord is a faker, a phony and a hypocrite, and so is human in appearance but not in reality. Of such a person it may be said that his outer shell or body is wise, while his kernel or spirit is insane; or that his outward aspect is human and his inward one animal. People like that direct the back of their heads upward and the front downward, thus going about as though afflicted with heaviness, their heads hanging down and their faces turned to the ground. When they put off the body and become spirits, and are then set free, they become reflections of the insanities of their lust. For people who are caught up in love of self have a longing to rule over the universe, even to extend its limits in order to widen their dominion, never seeing an end; while people who are caught up in a love of the world have a longing to possess all its riches, and they grieve and are envious if any of its treasures are kept hidden from them in the possession of others.

"To keep people like this from becoming nothing but reflections of their lusts, therefore, and so no longer human, it is given them in the natural 1 world to think in accord with fear for the loss of their reputation, and so the loss of honor and gain, together with fear of the law and its penalties; and also to apply their minds to some pursuit or work, by which they are held in external concerns and thus in a state of intelligence, however irrational and insane they are inwardly."

[4] Following this description I asked whether all people who are caught up in the lust are at the same time caught up in the fantasy of it.

They replied that those are caught up in the fantasy of their lust who think withdrawn into themselves and indulge their imagination excessively, talking to themselves; for they almost separate their spirit from its connection with the body, overwhelming their understanding with delusion and stupidly entertaining themselves with nonsense as though everything in the universe were theirs.

This madness is what a person comes into after death if he has withdrawn his spirit from the body and has been unwilling to relinquish the pleasure of his madness, thinking little from religion about evils and falsities, and least of all about unbridled love of self as being destructive of love toward the Lord, or about unbridled love of the world as being destructive of love for the neighbor.

Footnotes:

1. The original text reads, "in the spiritual world," but preceding and subsequent statements in the discussion, and the general doctrine delivered elsewhere concerning the nature of the two worlds, suggest that it is probably a slip of the pen for "the natural world." (The same statement is repeated in True Christian Religion, no. 662[3], without correction, but so are several other, more obvious errors, indicating that the latter was simply set in type again from the text here, without careful review.)

  
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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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