New Christian Bible Study

Commentary

 

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 #341

Study this Passage

  
/ 962  
  

341. To this I will append the following account:

I saw some English clergymen assembled - as many as six hundred - who were praying to the Lord to allow them to ascend into one of the societies of a higher heaven, and it was granted them. So they ascended, and upon entering it, they saw their king, the grandfather of the king presently reigning, 1 and they rejoiced. The king then came over to two bishops that they had among them, whom he had known in the world, and speaking to them, he asked, "How came you here?"

They replied that they had petitioned the Lord, and that it had been granted.

The king said to them, "Why did you petition the Lord, and not God the Father?"

And the bishops said that it was what they had been told to do below.

Then the king said, "Did I not tell you this at times in the world, that one must go to the Lord, and furthermore, that charity is the primary thing. What was your answer in regard to the Lord then?"

It was then given them to remember that they had replied that when one goes to the Father, one goes also to the Son.

But the angels surrounding the king said, "You are mistaken. That's not what you thought, nor does one go to the Lord when one goes to God the Father. Rather, one goes to God the Father when one goes to the Lord, because they are one, like soul and body. Who approaches someone's soul and in that way his body? Is it not the case that when one approaches a person's body, something that he sees, he approaches also the person's soul, which he does not see?"

To this the bishops made no answer. And the king drew near to the two bishops, holding in his hand two gifts, saying, "These are gifts from heaven."

The gifts were heavenly figurines of gold, and the king tried to hand them over. But suddenly then a dusky cloud covered them and separated them, and the clergymen descended the way they had come. They then recorded this event in a book.

[2] All the other English clergymen who heard that their colleagues had been granted to ascend to a higher heaven, assembled at the foot of a mountain, where they awaited their return. And when those colleagues did return, they greeted their brethren and related what had befallen them in heaven, saying that the king had given the bishops two heavenly figurines of gold most beautiful to look at, but that these had fallen out of their hands. And then they disappeared into a nearby wood and conferred with each other, looking around to see if anyone was overhearing. But they were overheard nevertheless.

They were talking about unanimity and harmony, and then about primacy and dominion. The bishops did the speaking, and the rest favored them with their assent. But suddenly, to my surprise, they no longer appeared as many, but as one great person, with a face like that of a lion, having on his head a towering miter, and upon that a crown. And he spoke with a deep voice, and went forward with a broad step. And looking behind him he said, "Who else has a right to primacy but me?"

The king looked down from heaven and saw - seeing them all first as one, and then as many in harmony, most in secular clothing, he said.

Footnotes:

1. The English king presently reigning was George III (1760-1820), grandson of George II (1727-1760).

  
/ 962  
  

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 #294

Study this Passage

  
/ 535  
  

294. The second account:

Several days later I again saw the same seven wives in a rose garden, but in a different one from the one previously. It was a magnificent garden, the like of which I had never seen before. It was laid out almost in a circle, and the roses in it formed a kind of rainbow-like arc. Purple-colored roses or flowers formed its outmost ring; golden-yellow ones the next ring in; dark-blue ones the ring inside that; and bluish-green or bright-green ones the inmost ring. And enclosed within that rainbow-like rose garden was a little pool of clear water.

Those seven wives, previously called maidens of the spring, were sitting there, and seeing me at my window they again called me over. Then, when I arrived, they said, "Have you ever seen anything more beautiful on earth?"

"Never," I said.

So they said, "A marvel like this is created by the Lord in instant, and it represents a new development on earth, for everything created by the Lord represents something. But divine if you can what that is. We are guessing that it is the delights of conjugial love."

[2] On hearing this I said, "What are the delights of conjugial love, of which you spoke with so much wisdom and also so much eloquence last time? After I left you, I related what you said to wives living in our world, and I told them, 'Having now been instructed, I know that you feel delights in your hearts arising from your conjugial love, which you are able to communicate to your husbands in accordance with their wisdom. I also know that from morning to evening you therefore continually contemplate your husbands with the eyes of your spirit and consider how to turn and guide their hearts to becoming wise, in order that you may realize those delights.' I further reported what you meant by wisdom, saying that it is a spiritual-rational and spiritual-moral wisdom, and that as regards marriage it is to love only one's wife and to rid oneself of all desire for other women.

"But to this the wives in our world responded with laughter, saying, 'What are you talking about? What you have said is preposterous. We do not know what conjugial love is. If our husbands experience anything of it, still we do not. How then do its delights originate with us? Indeed, when it comes to the delights which you call the end delights, we sometimes resist vehemently, for to us they are repugnant, in almost the same way as acts of rape. In fact, if you look, you will not see one sign of any such love in our faces. Therefore you are either talking nonsense or joking if, like those seven wives of yours, you too say that we think about our husbands from morning to evening and continually give attention to their wishes and pleasures, in order that we may gain from them delights such as those!'

"I have retained from the responses of those wives these declarations, to report them to you, since they call into dispute and even more entirely contradict the discourse I heard from you by the spring, which I listened to so eagerly and also believed."

[3] To this the wives sitting in the rose garden replied, "Dear friend, you do not know the wisdom and prudence of wives, because they hide it altogether from men and keep it hidden precisely in order to be loved by them. For every man who is not spiritually rational and moral but only naturally so possesses a coldness towards his wife, such a coldness being inherent in him in his inmost elements. This coldness a wise and prudent wife acutely and keenly notices, and she then conceals her conjugial love, withdrawing into her heart so much of it and hiding it there so deeply that not the least bit of it appears in her face, her tone of voice, or gesture. She does this, because to the extent her love appears, to that extent a man's coldness with respect to marriage pours forth from the inmost elements of his mind where it resides and descends into its outmost expressions, producing a total frigidity in the body and an urge to separate himself therefore from the bed and bedroom."

[4] I asked them then, "What causes such coldness, which you call coldness with respect to marriage."

"It comes from a lack of rationality on their part in matters of the spirit. Every man who is irrational in matters of the spirit is inmostly cold to his wife and inmostly warm toward harlots. And because conjugial love and licentious love are opposed to each other, it follows that conjugial love becomes cold whenever licentious love is warm. Then, when coldness reigns in a man, he cannot endure any feeling of love or even therefore any whisper of it from his wife. That is why a wife so wisely and prudently conceals it; and to the extent she does this by denying and resisting, to that extent a wanton atmosphere flows in which revives and restores the man's interest. As a result the wife of a man like that does not experience any delights of the heart such as we do, but only physical gratifications, which on the man's part have to be termed pleasures of insanity, because they are the pleasures of a licentious love.

[5] "Every chaste wife loves her husband, even a husband who is unchaste; but because wisdom is the only quality that receives her love, therefore a wife spends every effort to turn his insanity into wisdom, at least to the point that he does not desire any other women but her. This she accomplishes in a thousand ways, taking especial care that none of these ways be detected by her husband; for she well knows that love cannot be compelled, but is subtly infused in a state of freedom. For that reason it is granted to women to discern from sight, hearing and touch their husbands' every state of mind, while it is not granted to men conversely to discern any of their wives' states of mind.

[6] "A chaste wife can look at her husband with a stern expression, speak to him in a sharp voice, and even be angry at him and fight with him, and yet at the same time in her heart cherish a gentle and tender love for him. The object, however, of these expressions of anger and concealments of love is wisdom and a consequent reception of love on the part of her husband, as is clearly apparent from how quickly she can be placated. Wives furthermore have such ways of concealing the love implanted in their heart and marrows in order by these means to keep a man's coldness with respect to marriage from breaking out in him and extinguishing even the fire of his licentious heat, the result of which would be to turn him from green wood into a dry stick."

[7] After those seven wives made these statements and a number of others like them, their husbands came with clusters of grapes in their hands, some of which had a delicious flavor and some an offensive one. So the wives said, "Why did you bring bad or wild grapes, too?"

"Because," replied their husbands, "your souls being united with ours, we perceived in our souls that you were speaking with this man here about truly conjugial love, saying that its delights are delights of wisdom, and also about licentious love, saying that its delights are pleasures of insanity. The grapes with the delicious flavor are the first kind of delights, while the offensive-tasting or wild grapes are the second kind."

The husbands then confirmed what their wives had said, adding that the pleasures of insanity appear in outward respects similar to the delights of wisdom, but not in their inner qualities - "just like the good and bad grapes that we brought," they said. "For both chaste and unchaste men are capable of a similar wisdom in outward respects, but in its inner qualities their wisdom is entirely different."

[8] After that the little boy came again with a piece of paper in his hand, and he held it out to me, saying, "Read."

So I read as follows:

Be advised, all who read this, that the delights of conjugial love ascend up to the highest heaven, and on the way and in that heaven they join with the delights of all heavenly loves, and so enter into their felicity, which lasts to eternity. That is because the delights of that love are also delights of wisdom.

Be advised, too, that the pleasures of licentious love descend down to the lowest hell, and on the way and in that hell they join with the pleasures of all hellish loves, and so enter into their misery, which consists in a frustration of all the heart's delights. That is because the pleasures of that love are also pleasures of insanity.

The husbands subsequently departed with their wives, and accompanying the little boy as far as the path he took to ascend to heaven, they discovered that the society he had been sent from was a society of the New Heaven, the heaven with which the New Church on earth will be affiliated.

  
/ 535  
  

Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

©2024 New Christian Bible Study Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed from newchristianbiblestudy.org