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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 #463

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463. To this I will append the following account:

I looked out in the direction of the seashore in the spiritual world, and I saw there a magnificent harbor. I went over and inspected it; and lo, I saw there seagoing vessels, great and small, and in them all kinds of merchandise, with boys and girls sitting on the rowers' benches and handing it out to any who wanted it. Moreover they said, "We are waiting to see our beautiful turtles which will soon rise up for us out of the sea." And suddenly I saw turtles, great and small, on whose shells and carapaces sat baby turtles, which were looking about at the surrounding islands.

The parent turtles had two heads, a large one covered with a shell like the carapace of their bodies, which gave them a reddish glow; and a small one, like the usual one for turtles, which they would withdraw into the foreparts of their bodies and also insert invisibly into the larger head. I kept my eyes, however, on the large, reddish head, and I saw that it had a face like that of a human being, and that it would speak with the boys and girls on the rowers' benches and lick their hands. The boys and girls for their part would pet them then and give them food and treats to eat, and also valuable gifts, such as silk usable for garments, sandarac wood 1 for tablets, purple for their ornamentation, and scarlet pigment as rouge.

[2] Seeing these things, I wished to know what they represented, as I knew that everything appearing in the world of spirits is a correspondent form and represents something spiritual descending from heaven.

Angels then spoke to me from heaven and said, "You yourself know what the harbor represents, and its vessels, and the boys and girls on the benches; but you do not know what the turtles represent."

So they said, "The turtles represent those members of the clergy there who divorce faith from charity and its good works totally, asserting to themselves that there is no conjunction whatever, but that the Holy Spirit enters into a person through faith in God the Father because of the merit of the Son, and purifies the person interiorly as far as to his native will. They make this will, then, into a kind of oval plane, and when the operation of the Holy Spirit approaches it, they say it goes around that plane on the left side and does not at all touch it. Thus the inner or higher part of a person's nature belongs to God, they say, while the outer or lower part belongs to the person, and thus nothing that a person does, whether good or evil, appears before God - not good because it is merit-seeking, and not evil because it is evil - since if these were to appear before God, they would both cause the person to perish.

"Moreover," they said, "because this is the case, a person is permitted to will, think, say and do whatever he pleases, provided he guards himself against the world."

[3] I asked whether they also declare that a person is permitted to think about God as being not omnipresent and not omniscient.

They said from heaven that this, too, is permitted them, because in the case of a person who has once been purified and thus justified, God does not look at anything pertaining to his thought or will, and yet in the inner recess or higher region of his mind or nature, he still retains the faith that he had previously received in its action upon him, and that the action can sometimes return without the person's knowing.

"This," the angels said, "is what the small head represents, which the turtles draw into the foreparts of their bodies and hide, and which they also insert in the large head when they speak with laymen. For they do not speak with them out of the small head, but out of the large one, which out front appears as though endowed with a human face. They speak with them from the Word about love, charity, good works, the Ten Commandments, and repentance, and they take from the Word almost everything that is found there on these subjects. But then they insert the small head into the large one, and this causes them to interpret within themselves that none of these things are to be done for God's sake, or for the sake of heaven and salvation, but only for the sake of the public good and personal good. Yet because they speak about these things from the Word, especially about the gospel, the operation of the Holy Spirit, and salvation, doing so agreeably and elegantly, therefore they appear to their listeners as beautiful human beings and wiser than any others in the entire world. That is why you saw the boys and girls sitting on the rowers' benches give them treats to eat and valuable gifts.

[4] "These, then, are the people you saw represented as turtles. In your world one can tell them apart from others to some small extent only by the fact that they believe themselves to be wiser than any others, and ridicule them, especially their colleagues, who they say are not as wise as themselves, and whom they scorn. They carry about with them a particular little seal on their clothing, to distinguish themselves from others."

[5] One of those speaking with me said, "I will not tell you their opinion regarding all the other tenets of faith, as for example, regarding election, free will, baptism, and Holy Supper, which are the kind of things they do not make public. But we in heaven know.

"However, because they are of such a character in the world, and because after death no one is permitted to speak otherwise than as he thinks, therefore - because they can speak then only in accord with the insanities of their thoughts - they are regarded as insane and expelled from one society after another, and at last are conveyed down into the bottomless pit and become carnal spirits having the appearance of mummies. For a callus was produced on the interiors of their minds, because in the world they had also interposed a wall.

"There is a hellish society of them bordering on a hellish society of Machiavellians, and they sometimes pass from the one into the other and call themselves comrades; but then they leave because of the difference between them, as they have among them some religion relating to faith in action, whereas among Machiavellians there is none."

[6] After I saw them expelled from one society after another and gathered together to be cast down, I saw a ship with seven sails flying in the air, and in it officers and sailors dressed in purple clothing, with magnificent laurel wreaths on their heads, and crying, "Look, we are now in heaven! We are professors robed in purple, and laureates greater than all others, because we are the foremost of the wise out of all the clergy in Europe."

I wondered what this was, and I was told that the figures were depictions of the conceit and the mental concepts termed fantasies emanating from the people who had appeared before as turtles, and who now, having been expelled from one society after another, appeared as insane and were gathered into a single group, standing together in one place.

At that I desired to speak with them, and I went over to the place where they were standing, and greeting them, said, "You are people who have divorced people's internals from their externals, and divorced the operation of the Holy Spirit as though in faith from its concomitant operation with a person as though apart from faith, thus divorcing God from man. Have you not by the same token removed not only charity and its works from faith, as many other learned of the clergy do, but also faith itself as regards its manifestation by a person in the sight of God?

"But if you please, do you wish me to speak to you on this subject in accord with reason, or in accord with the Holy Scripture?"

[7] They told me to speak first from reason, and so I spoke saying, "How can the internal and the external in a person be divorced? Who does not see, or cannot see, as a matter of common sense that a person's interiors all extend and are continued into the exteriors, and even into his outmosts, in order to produce their effects and accomplish their operations? Do the internals not exist for the sake of the externals, so as to terminate in them and subsist in them, and thus abide, much like a column upon its pedestal? Can you not see that if the continuity and thus conjunction did not exist, the outmost elements would disintegrate and drift away like bubbles in the air? Who can deny that there are millions of interior operations of God in people, of which a person knows nothing? And what help would it be for him to be aware of them, provided he is cognizant of the outmost ones, in which he, with his thought and will, act together with God?

[8] "But I will illustrate this with an example. Is a person aware of the inner operations of his speech, such as how the lungs draw in air and fill their alveoli, bronchia, and lobes with it? Or how they expel air into the trachea and there turn it into sound? Or how the sound is modified in the glottis with the aid of the larynx, and how the tongue then articulates it and the lips complete the articulation so that it becomes speech? All of these interior operations, of which the person knows nothing - do they not take place for the sake of the outmost effect, that the person be able to speak? Take away or divorce one of those internal processes from its continuity with the outmost effects - would a person be able to speak any more than a wooden post?

[9] "Take another example. A person's two hands are his terminal members. Do not the interior elements that extend into it come from the head through the neck, and then through the breast, shoulders, arms and forearms? And do these not involve countless muscular tissues, countless arrays of motor fibers, countless bundles of nerves and blood vessels, and a number of articulations of bones with their membranes and ligaments? Is a person at all aware of these? And yet his hands operate as a result of them. Suppose these inner processes took a wrong turn at the wrist and did not continue into the hands? Would the hands not fall off the forearms and decay like some inanimate object plucked away? In fact, if you are willing to believe it, it would be the same as with the body if the person were beheaded.

"It would be the altogether the same with a person's thought and will if the Divine operation should cease before reaching them and not flow into them.

"So much in accord with reason.

[10] "Now if you are willing to hear it, these arguments accord with the Holy Scripture as well. Does the Lord not say,

Abide in Me, and I in you... I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5)

"Are not the fruits good works, which the Lord does through a person, and which a person does as though of himself?

"Does the Lord not also say that He stands at the door and knocks, and that if anyone opens the door, He will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Him (Revelation 3:20)?

"Does the Lord not give minas and talents, that a person may do business with them and make a profit, and that in the measure of the person's profit He gives eternal life (Matthew 25:14-30, Luke 19:13-26)? Moreover, that He rewards everyone in accordance with the person's labor in His vineyard (Matthew 20:1-17)?

"But these are just a few proofs. We could fill pages with citations from the Word to the effect that a person should be like a tree and produce fruits, that he should keep the commandments, love God and the neighbor, and more. But I know that it is not possible for your intellectual acumen to have any real common ground with passages from the Word. Even though you quote them, still your ideas pervert them. Nor can you do otherwise, because you take away from a person everything having to do with God as regards any communication and so conjunction. What remains then but only all the rituals of worship?"

[11] After that I saw these people in the light of heaven, which disclosed and exposed the character of each one, and they did not appear then as before, in a ship in the air, as though in heaven. Nor were there any purple-robed figures in it, or heads wreathed with laurel. I saw them instead in a sandy area, in ragged clothing, and girded about their loins with nets, like those used by fishermen, through which their nakedness was visible. And they were then conveyed down into the previously mentioned society bordering on the hellish society of Machiavellians.

Footnotes:

1. Literally, "thyine wood." See Revelation 18:12

  
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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 #570

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570. The fourth experience.

I once talked with a newly arrived spirit, who while in the world had spent much time meditating about heaven and hell. (By newly arrived spirits are meant people who have recently died, who are called spirits because they are then spiritual people.) As soon as he entered the spiritual world, he began in the same way to meditate about heaven and hell; and he felt happy when he thought about heaven, and sad when he thought about hell. On realising that he was in the spiritual world, he immediately asked where heaven and hell were, and what each were, and what they were like.

'Heaven,' they replied, 'is above your head, and hell is below your feet, for you are now in the world of spirits, which is mid-way between heaven and hell. But we cannot describe in a few words what heaven is and what it is like, or what hell is and is like.'

Then, being intensely eager to know he fell on his knees and prayed earnestly to God for instruction. An angel appeared at once on his right, who made him get up and said: 'You have begged to be instructed about heaven and hell. Ask and learn what pleasure is, and you will know.' And with these words the angel disappeared.

[2] Then the new spirit said to himself: 'What is the meaning of this, "Ask and learn what pleasure is, and you will know what heaven and hell are and what they are like"?' So he left the place where he was and wandered about, addressing those he met and saying: 'Please be so good as to tell me what pleasure is.' 'What sort of a question is this?' said some. 'Everyone knows what pleasure is. Isn't it joy and happiness? Pleasure then is pleasure, and one is like another; we don't know how to distinguish them.'

Others said that pleasure is mental amusement. 'When the mind is amused, the face is cheerful, speech is full of jokes, gestures are lighthearted, and the whole person is pleased.' But some said: 'Pleasure is simply feasting and eating delicacies, drinking and getting drunk on fine wine, and then having conversations on various topics, especially about the sports of Venus and Cupid.'

[3] On hearing this the new spirit was cross and said to himself: 'These are the replies of peasants, not educated people. These pleasures are neither heaven nor hell. I wish I could meet some wise men.' So he left these people and started asking, 'Where are the wise?'

Then he was seen by an angelic spirit, who said: 'I perceive that you are fired with the longing to know what is the universal characteristic of heaven and of hell. This is pleasure, so I will take you to a hill, where every day there is an assembly of those who seek out effects, of those who enquire into causes, and of those who examine ends. Those who seek out effects are called scientific spirits, or Sciences personified. Those who enquire into causes are called intelligent spirits, or Intelligences personified. Those who examine ends are called wise spirits or Wisdoms personified. Directly above them in heaven are the angels who see causes from the point of view of ends, and effects from the point of view of causes; these angels are the source of enlightenment for these three gatherings.'

[4] Then he took the new spirit by the hand and brought him onto a hill, where those who examine ends and are called Wisdoms were meeting. 'Forgive me,' he said to them, 'for coming up here to meet you. The reason is that from the time I was a boy I have been meditating about heaven and hell. I have recently arrived in this world, and some of the people I met told me that here heaven is overhead and hell is underfoot; but they did not tell me what each were or what they were like. So thinking constantly about them made me worried, and I prayed to God. Then an angel approached me and said: "Ask and learn what pleasure is, and you will know." I have been asking, but so far to no purpose. So, please, if you would be so kind, teach me what pleasure is.'

[5] 'Pleasure,' replied the Wisdoms, 'is the whole of life for all in heaven, and the whole of life for all in hell. Those who are in heaven experience the pleasure of good and truth, those in hell the pleasure of evil and falsity. For all pleasure has to do with love, and love is the very being of a person's life. So just as a person's humanity depends upon the nature of his love, so it does on the nature of his pleasure. The activity of the love creates the feeling of pleasure. In heaven its activity is accompanied by wisdom, in hell by madness. But each activity induces pleasure in the subjects it operates upon. The heavens and the hells experience opposite pleasures; the heavens experience the love for good and thus the pleasure of doing good, the hells the love for evil and thus the pleasure of doing harm. If therefore you know what pleasure is, you will know what heaven and hell are and what they are like.

[6] 'But ask and learn about pleasure from those who enquire into causes and are called Intelligences. They are on the right as you leave here.'

So he went away, approached the next gathering and explained why he had come, asking them to instruct him about pleasure. They were delighted to be asked, and said: 'It is true that, if anyone knows about pleasure, he knows what heaven and hell are and what they are like. The will, which is what makes a person human, does not move an inch, except as the result of pleasure. For the will regarded in itself is nothing but an affection of some love and thus of some pleasure. For there is some delight and thus some choice which inspires the act of willing; and because it is the will that makes the understanding think, not the slightest thinking is possible without pleasure flowing in from the will. The reason for this is that the Lord by the radiation from Himself activates everything in the soul and mind of angels, spirits and men. This activity takes place through the inflow of love and wisdom, and this inflow is the actual activity which is the source of all pleasure. This in its originating phase is called blessedness, bliss and happiness, and in its derived phase, pleasure, loveliness and delight, to use a universal term, good. But the spirits of hell turn everything they have upside down, so changing good into evil, and truth into falsity, though the pleasure remains constant. For without constant pleasure they would have no will, no feeling and so no life. From this it is plain what the pleasure of hell is, what it is like and where it comes from and likewise the pleasure of heaven.'

[7] Having heard this, he was taken to the third gathering where were those who seek out effects and are called Sciences. These said: 'Go down to the lower earth, and go up to the upper earth; on these you will perceive and feel the pleasures of both heaven and hell.'

Then some way off the ground gaped open and three devils came up through the opening; they had a fiery appearance resulting from the pleasure of their love. The angels who were accompanying the new spirit realised that the three devils had been deliberately brought up from hell and called out to them: 'Don't come any closer, but from where you are tell us something about your pleasures.'

'You may know,' they replied, 'that everyone, whether he is said to be good or wicked, experiences his own pleasure, the so-called good man his, and the so-called wicked man his.'

'What,' they were asked, 'is your pleasure?' They said it was the pleasure of fornicating, taking revenge, cheating and blaspheming. Then they were asked what their pleasures were like. They said that other people felt them as like the rank smell of dung, the stench of corpses and the rottenness of pools of urine. 'Do you find those things pleasant?' they were asked. 'Extremely so,' they replied. 'Then,' they were told, 'you are like unclean animals that live in such conditions.' 'If we are, we are,' they replied; 'but these are the kind of things that delight our nostrils.'

'What more can you tell us?' they were asked. They said that everyone is allowed to experience his own pleasure, even the filthiest, as others call it, so long as he does not annoy good spirits and angels. 'But because our pleasure will not let us stop annoying them, we have been thrown into labour-camps where we are harshly treated. It is the prevention and withdrawal of our pleasures there which is called the torments of hell; it is too a kind of inward pain.'

'Why did you annoy good people?' they were asked. They said they could not help themselves. 'There is a kind of frenzy,' they said, 'which takes hold of us, when we see an angel and feel the Lord's Divine sphere surrounding him.' 'Then you are really like wild beasts,' we said on hearing this.

A little later, when they saw the new spirit in the company of angels, a frenzy came over the devils, which seemed like the fire of hatred. So to prevent them doing harm, they were hurled back into hell. After this there appeared the angels who see causes from the point of view of ends and effects from the point of view of causes, and occupy the heaven above those three gatherings. They were seen surrounded by brilliant light, which as it rolled down in spiralling curves brought with it a garland of flowers, and placed it on the new spirit's head. Then a voice came forth saying: 'This laurel-wreath is given to you because from the time you were a boy you meditated about heaven and hell.'

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

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