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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 #961

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961. To this I will append two narrative accounts. Here is the first:

Once, on awakening from sleep, I fell into a profound meditation regarding God. And when I looked up, I saw in the sky above me a bright, oval-shaped light. Then, as I fixed my gaze on the light, the light ebbed toward the circumference and entered the perimeter. And suddenly heaven opened to me and I saw some magnificent sights, with angels standing around in a circle on the southern side of the opening and conversing together. Because I burned with a desire to hear what they were saying, I was therefore first granted to hear the sound, which was full of heavenly love, and afterward the words, which were full of wisdom arising from that love. They were talking together about the oneness of God, conjunction with Him, and so salvation.

What they were saying is beyond description. Most of it cannot be put into the words of any natural language. But because I had been myself a number of times in the company of angels in heaven, and had then used the same language as they, being in the same state, I was consequently able to understand them now and to take from their conversation some thoughts that I could express in rational terms in the words of a natural language.

They were saying that the Divine being is one, unchanging, absolute, and indivisible, and so is also the Divine essence, inasmuch as the Divine being is the Divine essence, thus also God, because the Divine essence, which is at the same time the Divine being, is God.

[2] This the angels illustrated using spiritual ideas, saying that the Divine being cannot evolve into a number of Divines, each of which possesses the Divine being, and still be one, unchanging, absolute, and indivisible. Indeed, each would think, of Himself and by Himself, from His own being. If He should then think also at the same time unanimously with others and in harmony with others, the result would be a number of like-minded gods and not one God. For unanimity is the consensus of a number, and at the same time the consensus of each one, of himself and by himself, and this does not accord with the unity of God, but with a plurality of beings. They did not say, with a plurality of gods, because they could not, since the light of heaven resisted it, being the light in accord with which they formed their thinking and in which their discussion proceeded. They even said that when they tried to say "gods," with each one a person by himself, their effort to say it turned instantly and spontaneously into their saying one God, indeed into saying the one and only God.

[3] The angels said in addition that the Divine being is a Divine being in itself, not one derived from itself, because to say one derived from itself supposes a being in itself as its origin, thus a God derived from God, which is not possible. Something derived from God is not called God but rather Divine. For what is a God derived from God? What then is a God born from eternity from God? And what is a God emanating from God through a God born from eternity? They are but words that contain not a spark of light from heaven.

"Not so," they said, "in the case of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Him is the Divine being itself from which all else springs, to which the soul corresponds in man. He has also a Divine humanity, to which the body corresponds in man. And from Him is also the emanating Divine, to which the activity of soul and body corresponds in man. This trine is a unit, because from the originating Divine springs the Divine humanity, and from the originating Divine through the Divine humanity springs as a consequence the emanating Divine.

"For this reason, too, every angel and every person, being an image of the Divine, has a soul, body and activity which constitute a unit, since from the soul springs the body, and from the soul through the body springs the consequent activity."

[4] The angels said further that the Divine being, which in itself is God, is unchanging - not unchanging statically, but infinitely, that is, unchanging from eternity to eternity. It is the same everywhere, and the same for every individual and in every individual, with all variation and capability of variation resting in the recipient. The state of the recipient is responsible for this.

That the Divine being, which in itself is God, is absolute, they illustrated as follows:

"God is absolute," they said, "because He is love itself, wisdom itself, good itself, truth itself, and life itself. If these were not absolute in God, they would have no reality in heaven or in the world, as they would have no relation to anything absolute. Every quality is accorded its quality from the fact that there is something absolute from which it springs and to which it has relation so as to be what it is.

"This absolute entity, which is the Divine being, does not exist space, but is present with people and in people who live in space, in accordance with their reception, since love and wisdom, and goodness and truth, which are absolute in God, indeed which are God Himself, cannot have location predicated of them, or a progression from place to place, but are independent of space, and so omnipresent. Therefore the Lord says that He is in the midst of His disciples, and that He is in them and they in Him. 1

[5] "However, because no one can receive Him as He is in Himself, He appears, such as He is in Himself, as a sun above the angelic heavens, and the light emanating from that sun is the Lord in respect to wisdom, and its warmth the Lord in respect to love.

"The Lord is not a sun, but the Divine love and wisdom radiating immediately from Him and surrounding Him appear to angels as the sun. He himself in the sun is human. He is our Lord Jesus Christ, both in respect to the originating Divine and in respect to His Divine humanity, since the originating Divine, which is love itself and wisdom itself, was the soul He had from the Father, thus Divine life, which is life in itself. Not so in any other person. The soul in him is not life, but a recipient of life. This is also something the Lord taught, saying, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." 2 And in another place, "As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself." 3 He who has life in Himself is God."

To this the angels added that it is possible for someone who possesses some spiritual light to perceive from this that because the Divine being, which is also the Divine essence, is one, unchanging, absolute, and so indivisible, it cannot possibly exist in a plurality of persons. And that if someone were to say it could, there would be manifest contradictions in any added qualifications.

[6] Having said this, the angels perceived in my thought the usual notions in the Christian Church regarding a trinity of Persons in union and their union in the trinity, regarding God, and regarding as well the birth of the Son of God from eternity. And they said then, "What are you thinking? Are you not forming your thoughts from a natural sight, with which our spiritual sight does not accord? Therefore, if you do not rid yourself of those ideas in your thinking, we will close heaven to you and go away."

But to that I said to them, "Pray enter more deeply into my thinking, and perhaps you will see an agreement."

They then did so, and they saw that by three Persons I mean three succeeding Divine attributes, namely creation, salvation, and reformation, and that these are the attributes of a single God. They saw, too, that by the birth of the Son of God from eternity I mean His birth foreseen from eternity and provided in time. And I told them then that I acquired my natural thought regarding a trinity of Persons and their union, and the birth of a Son of God from eternity, from the church's doctrinal creed, called the Athanasian Creed, and that the doctrine in it is right and correct, provided that for the trinity of Persons in it one substitutes the trinity of a Person, which exists only in the Lord Jesus Christ, and for the birth of the Son of God, His birth foreseen from eternity and provided in time. For it is in relation to the humanity He assumed in time that He is plainly called "the Son of God."

[7] At that the angels said, "Good!" And they asked me to say on their authority that if someone does not turn to the God Himself of heaven and earth, he cannot enter heaven, because heaven is heaven owing to this one and only God, and that this God is Jesus Christ, who is the Lord Jehovah, our Creator from eternity, our Savior in time, and our Reformer to eternity, thus who is at once the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

After that the heavenly light that I saw before came back over the opening in the sky, and it gradually descended from there and filled the interiors of my mind, enlightening my natural ideas regarding the union and trinity of God. And the ideas I had initially acquired about these, which were merely natural, I then saw separated, as the chaff is separated from the wheat when shaken in the wind, and these ideas were carried off as though by a wind into the northern zone of heaven and vanished.

Footnotes:

1. Matthew 18:20, John 14:20; 17:23.

2. John 14:6.

3. John 5:26.

  
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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 #662

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662. 1 The second experience.

Some time later I went into a park and walked there reflecting on those who have a longing to possess worldly goods and so imagine that they do. Then I saw at some distance from me two angels in conversation, who from time to time looked towards me. So I went nearer, and as I approached they addressed me and said: 'We have an inward perception that you are reflecting upon what we are talking about, or that we are talking about what you are reflecting on, which is the result of the reciprocal communication of affections.'

So I asked what they were talking about. 'About imagination,' they said, 'longing and intelligence; and now about those who delight in day-dreaming and imagining they possess everything in the world.'

[2] So I asked them to reveal their thoughts on these three topics, longing, imagination and intelligence.

They began their reply by saying that everyone inwardly by birth has longings, but outwardly acquires intelligence by education. No one has intelligence, much less wisdom, inwardly, that is, in respect of his spirit, except from the Lord. 'For everyone,' they said, 'is restrained from longing for evil, and is kept in intelligence in proportion to the extent he looks to the Lord and at the same time is linked with Him. Failing this, a person is nothing but longing; yet in externals, that is, as regards the body, he has intelligence as the result of education. A person longs for honours and riches, or to be eminent and wealthy; and these two goals cannot be achieved unless he appears well-behaved and spiritual, and so intelligent and wise. So from childhood he learns to appear thus. This is why, as soon as he mixes with people or attends a meeting, he reverses his spirit, switching it away from longing, and speaking and acting in accordance with the principles of decency and honour which he learned from childhood and retains in his bodily memory. He also takes the greatest care to see that nothing of the mad longing of his spirit slips out.

[3] Thus everyone, who is not inwardly guided by the Lord, is a pretender, a sycophant and hypocrite, appearing to be a human being without being one. Of him it can be said that his shell or body is wise, his kernel or spirit is mad; that his external is human, his internal that of a wild beast. Such people go about with the back of their heads pointing upwards, and downwards with the front, so that they are weighed down by their burden, with their heads hanging down, their gaze fastened on the ground. When they put off their bodies, becoming spirits and being set free, they turn into what their own mad longings are. For those who are ruled by self-love long to be masters of the universe, or even to extend its limits so as to have wider sway, for they can see no end to it. Those ruled by love of the world long to possess everything in it, and are grieved and envious if anyone has any treasures stored away in secret. So to prevent such people from turning into sheer longings and losing their humanity, they are allowed in the spiritual world to have their thoughts influenced by fear of losing their reputation, and so their honours and profit, as well as by fear of the law and its penalties. They are also allowed to concentrate their mind on some study or task, so that they are kept in externals and so in a state of intelligence, however much inwardly they rave and behave like madmen.'

[4] After this I asked whether all who have this longing also suffer from the delusion that they do possess worldly goods. They replied that the people who suffer from this delusion are those who think inwardly about it and over-indulge their imagination, talking to themselves about it. These people come close to separating their spirit from its link with the body; they swamp the understanding by day-dreaming, and indulge in the empty pleasure of imagining they possess everything. A person is after death the victim of this madness, if he has withdrawn his spirit from the body, and has not been willing to retreat from the delight his madness gives him. He thinks little from a religious point of view about evils and falsities, and hardly anything about unrestrained self-love as being destructive of love to the Lord, and unrestrained love of the world as being destructive of love towards the neighbour.

[5] After this the two angels and I felt a desire to see those who suffer from this imaginary longing, or delusion that they possess the wealth of all as the result of love of the world. We perceived that this desire came upon us in order that we should get to know these people. Their homes were under the ground on which we stood, but above hell. So we looked at one another and said: 'Let us go.' We saw an opening and some steps, so we went down them. We were told to approach them from the east, to avoid entering the cloud of their delusion and putting our understandings in shadow, which would at the same time obscure our sight.

Suddenly we caught sight of a building made of reeds, and therefore full of chinks, standing in the cloud, which continually seeped out like smoke from the chinks in three of the walls. We went in and saw fifty on one side and fifty on the other, sitting on benches. They had their backs to the east and south and faced the west and north. Each had a table in front of him with bulging money-bags on it, and around the bags piles of gold coins.

[6] 'Are those,' we asked each, 'the wealth of all in the world?'

'Not all in the world,' they said, 'but all in the kingdom.' Their speech sounded like a whistle, and they themselves had round faces which had a ruddy look like the shell of a snail. The pupils of their eyes seemed to sparkle against a green background; this was caused by the light of their delusion.

We took up a position in between them and said: 'Do you believe that you possess all the wealth of the kingdom?' 'Yes,' they replied.

Then we asked: 'Which one of you possesses this?' 'Each of us,' they said.

'How can you each possess this?' we asked. 'There are many of you.'

'We each of us,' they said, 'know that everything that belongs to another is ours. We are not allowed to think, much less say, "What is mine is not yours," but we are allowed to think and say, "What is yours is mine."'

Even to our eyes the coins on the tables looked as if made of pure gold. But when we let in light from the east, they turned out to be small particles of gold which they had magnified to such an extent by means of shared joint delusion. They said that anyone who comes in has to bring with him some gold, which they cut up into pieces, and these into small particles, and these they then magnify by concentrating their delusive powers with one intention, to make them look like coins of the larger sort.

[7] Then we said: 'Were you not born rational human beings? Where have you acquired that foolish fancy?'

'We know,' they said, 'that our vanity is fanciful, but because it pleases the interiors of our minds, we come in here and are delighted by seeming to possess everyone's wealth. But we do not stay here for more than a few hours, and having spent this time here we go out, and each time sanity returns to our minds. But still the attraction of our day-dreams from time to time comes upon us, and makes us alternate between coming in and going out, so that by turns we are wise and crazy. We know too that a harsh fate awaits those who cunningly filch other people's property.'

'What fate is that?' we asked.

'They are sucked down,' they said, ‘and thrown naked into some prison in hell, where they are obliged to work for clothing and for food, and then for a few pennies which they hoard and make their hearts' desire. But if they do harm to their companions, they have to give up some of their pennies as a fine.'

Footnotes:

1. This section is repeated from Conjugial Love 267-268.

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

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