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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

 

True Christian Religion #695

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695. The fourth experience.

Most people today who believe in a life after death also believe that in heaven their only thoughts will be devotions, their only utterances prayers, and both of these together with their facial expressions and bodily acts will be nothing but ways of glorifying God. So they imagine that the only homes they will have will be places of worship or consecrated buildings, and so they will all be priests of God. But I can solemnly state that in that life the rites of the church do not take up more of people's minds or houses than they do where God is worshipped in the world, though in a purer and more inward way. But there are to be found there all kinds of matters requiring secular attention, and all sorts of matters requiring rational learning, and these of the highest degree,

[2] One day I was carried off into heaven and brought to a society, where wise men lived who in ancient times had been distinguished for the learning they had gained from deep study and meditation on matters within the scope of reason, and which at the same time were of service. Now they were in heaven because they had believed in God, and now believed in the Lord, and they had loved the neighbour as themselves. I was subsequently taken to a meeting they held and asked where I came from. I revealed that I was in the body in the natural world, but in the spirit in their spiritual world.

These angels were delighted to hear this and kept asking: 'In the world where you are in the body what do people know and understand about inflow 1 ?'

After thinking what I could recollect on the subject from conversations and from the writings of famous people, I replied that they are still ignorant of any inflow from the spiritual world into the natural world, though they know of the inflow of nature into objects in nature. For instance, the inflow of heat and light from the sun into living bodies, and also into trees and plants, which causes them to become alive; and in the opposite case the inflow of cold into the same bodies, which causes their death. Moreover they know about the inflow of light into the eyes bringing about sight, the inflow of sound into the ears bringing about hearing, the inflow of smell into the nostrils bringing about smelling, and so on.

[3] Apart from these instances the scholars of the present time reason in different ways about the inflow from the soul into the body, and from the body into the soul. On this subject there are three theories current. One party argues whether there is an inflow from the soul into the body, which they call 'incidental' 2 because of the chance incidence of things on the bodily senses. Or they argue whether there is an inflow from the body into the soul, which they term 'physical', because objects impinge on the senses and from these on the soul. Or whether there is a simultaneous and instantaneous inflow both into the body and the soul together, to which they apply the term 'pre-established harmony'. Yet each of these parties thinks that the inflow they believe in exists inside the realm of nature.

Some people believe that the soul is a particle or drop of ether, some that it is a tiny ball or speck of heat and light, some that it is some entity hidden in the brain. But whatever it is they consider the soul to be, they call it spiritual; but by spiritual they mean something purer but natural, since they know nothing of the spiritual world and the inflow from it into the natural world, so that they remain restricted to the natural sphere. Within this they climb up and drop down, and they soar into it like eagles into the air. Those who are limited to nature are like the natives of an island in the sea who are unaware of the existence of any land but theirs; or they are like fish in a river unaware of the existence of air up above their waters. As a result when anyone mentions the existence of a world apart from theirs inhabited by angels and spirits, and describes this as the source of all inflow into human beings, as well as into trees at a more inward level, they stand astonished, as if they had been told of visions of ghosts, or of nonsense from astrologers.

[4] Apart from the philosophers, people nowadays, in the world in which I live in the body, are unable to think and talk about any other sort of inflow than that of wine into glasses, of food and drink into the stomach, of taste into the tongue, and perhaps of the inflow of air into the lungs, and so on. But if these people are told anything about the inflow from the spiritual world into the natural one, they say: 'Let it flow in, if it does; what pleasure or use is there in knowing this?' Off they go, and then afterwards on talking about what they are told about inflow, they play about with it, as some people play with pebbles, running them through their fingers.

[5] Afterwards I talked with those angels about the amazing effects caused by the inflow from the spiritual world into the natural one. For instance, we talked about the way caterpillars turn into butterflies, about bees and drones, and the astonishing things the silkworm does, and also spiders; how people on earth attribute all these things to the light and heat of the sun, and so to nature. What has often astonished me is that they use these facts to strengthen their leaning towards nature, and any such strengthening plunges their minds into sleep and oblivion, so that they become atheists.

[6] After this I related the amazing facts about plants, how they all progress from the seed in due sequence until they produce new seeds, exactly as if the earth knew how to provide and adapt its elements to the reproductive principle of the seed; and from this to bring forth a shoot, to broaden this to form a stem, to send forth branches from this, to clothe these with leaves, and later to embellish them with flowers, and beginning from their interiors to produce fruits, and by means of these produce as offspring seeds from which the plant can be born again. But because these things are always to be seen and have become familiar, usual and commonplace by constant repetition, they are not looked on as amazing, but as simply the effects of nature. People hold this view solely because they are ignorant of the existence of a spiritual world, working from within on and actuating every single thing which comes into existence and is formed in the world of nature and upon the natural earth, activating sensation and movement as the human mind does in the body. Nor do they know that every detail of nature is as it were a tunic, sheath or clothing enclosing spiritual things and serving at the lowest level to bring about the effects corresponding to the purpose of God the Creator.

Footnotes:

1. The Latin influxus is throughout this section translated 'inflow', although in some cases other translations would be more natural in English.

2. Or 'occasional'.

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

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