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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

 

Conjugial Love #232

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232. The second account:

Some time later, I again heard from the land below the same cries as before, "Oh, how learned!" and "Oh, how wise!" So I looked around to see what angels were then present, and lo, they were angels who lived in the heaven just above the people who were crying out, "Oh, how learned!" I therefore spoke to them about the clamor, and the angels said that the people acclaimed as learned there were the sort who only reason about whether a thing is so or not and rarely think that it is.

"Consequently they are like gusts of wind," they said, "which blow and pass away, or like coverings of bark around trees which have no core, or like shells around almonds without a kernel, or like rinds around fruits without any flesh. For their minds lack any inner judgment and are connected only with their physical senses. If the senses themselves are inadequate to form a judgment, therefore, they can reach no conclusion. In a word, they are merely sense-oriented, and by us are called reasoners.

"We call them reasoners because they never reach any conclusion. Instead they take up whatever they hear and argue about whether it is so, constantly contradicting themselves. They like nothing more than to attack actual truths and thus tear them apart by turning them into matters of dispute. They are the sort of people who think they are more learned than all others in the world."

[2] When I heard this, I asked the angels to take me down to them. So they took me to a cave which had steps leading down to a lower earth. We then descended and followed in the direction of the clamor "Oh, how learned!" And suddenly we saw several hundred people standing in the same place, trampling the soil with their feet. Being astonished by this at first, I asked why they were standing together like that and stamping away at the soil. "At that rate they may use their feet to make a hole in the ground," I said.

The angels chuckled at this and said, "They appear as standing there like that because on any subject they regard nothing as being so, but only consider whether it is and make it a matter of debate. So, since their thought goes no further, they appear only to tread and wear away the same patch of ground without making any progress."

At that point I then went over to the gathering; and behold, they seemed to me to be people of not unhandsome appearance and dressed in elegant clothing. But the angels said, "That is how they seem in their own light; but if light from heaven flows in, their appearance changes, and also their clothing." This, too, actually happened; and then they appeared with dark faces, clothed in black sacks. However, when the light from heaven was taken away, they looked as they had before.

Shortly afterwards I spoke with some of them and said, "I heard the clamor of the crowd around you, crying 'Oh, how learned!' Allow me to explore with you, therefore, some discussion on subjects which are matters of the highest learning."

[3] To which they replied, "Name any subject you please and we will give you an answer."

So I asked, "What must the nature of a person's religion for him to be saved by it?"

In answer they said, "We need to divide this question into several parts, and we cannot give a reply before we come to a conclusion in regard to these. The first consideration must be whether there is anything to religion. Second, whether there is any salvation or not. Third, whether one religion is of any more avail than another. Fourth, whether there is a heaven and a hell. Fifth, whether there is any eternal life after death. And many other considerations besides."

So I asked about the first, whether there is anything to religion. And they began to discuss it, advancing a number of arguments over whether there is any religion, and whether there is anything to what is called religion.

I then asked them to refer the question to the whole gathering, which they did. And the collective response was that the question as put required so much investigation that they could not resolve it by the end of the evening.

"Could you resolve it in a year?" I asked.

And one of them said it could not be resolved in a hundred years.

"But meanwhile," I said, "you are without religion."

To which he replied, "Do we not have to show first whether there is any religion, and whether there is anything to what is called religion? If there is, religion must exist for the wise as well. If not, it must exist only for the common people. We all know that religion is said to be a tie that binds, but the question is, for whom? If only for the common people, then in essence there is nothing in it. If for the wise as well, then there is something in it."

[4] On hearing this I said to them, "You are not learned at all, because you can only speculate about whether a thing is so without settling it either way. Who can become learned without knowing anything for certain, and without making any progress towards it in the way that any person progresses, step by step, and so gradually into wisdom? Otherwise you do not lay so much as a fingernail on truths but remove them further and further out of sight.

"If you reason only about whether a thing is so, is that not like reasoning about the fit of a hat which is never tried on, or about the fit of a shoe which no one wears? What other consequence results but your not knowing whether anything is anything - including, indeed, whether there is any salvation, whether there is any eternal life after death, whether one religion is of any more avail than another, whether there is a heaven and a hell. You cannot have any thought about such things so long as you remain stuck at the first step and keep pounding away at the same piece of ground there without putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward.

"You had better take care that while your minds are standing outside the temple of judgment like that, they do not harden within and turn into pillars of salt, and you become the companions of Lot's wife."

[5] So saying I turned and went, and in anger they hurled stones after me. And at that point they appeared to me like figures carved out of stone, having nothing of human reason in them.

I then asked the angels about their fate; and the angels said, "Their fate is to be let down into an abyss, and there into a wilderness, where they are forced to carry packs. Moreover, because they are then unable to utter anything from their reason, they prattle and talk nonsense; and from a distance there they look like donkeys bearing burdens."

  
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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 #532

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532. To this I will append the following narrative account:

I was once in my spirit taken up to the angelic heaven and into one of its societies; and some of the wise there then came to me and said, "What news do you have from earth?"

"This is new," I said, "that the Lord has revealed secrets which surpass in excellence all the secrets previously revealed from the inception of the Church."

"What are they?" they asked.

I said that they were the following:

1. That in the Word and in each and every particular of it, there is a spiritual meaning corresponding to the natural meaning; that through that spiritual meaning people of the church are conjoined with the Lord and affiliated with angels; and that in it lies the holiness of the Word.

[2] 2. That the corresponding elements of which the spiritual meaning of the Word consists have been disclosed.

The angels asked whether the inhabitants of the earth knew anything about correspondences before. I said that they knew nothing at all of them. They have lain hidden now for several thousand years, I said, namely from the time of Job. Among peoples who lived at that time and before, a study of correspondences was the study of studies, from which they had their wisdom, because they gained from it a concept of spiritual things having to do with heaven and so with the church. But because that study was turned into an idolatrous one, it was of the Lord's Divine providence so blotted out and lost that no one has seen any trace of it. However, knowledge of it has nevertheless now been disclosed by the Lord, I said, in order that people of the church may be conjoined with Him and affiliated with angels. This conjunction and affiliation are effected through the Word, in which each and every particular is a correspondent form.

The angels greatly rejoiced that it had pleased the Lord to reveal this great secret, which for several thousand years had lain so deeply hidden. And they said it was done in order that the Christian Church, founded as it is on the Word and being now at its end, might be revived and again draw its spirit through heaven from the Lord.

They inquired as well whether in consequence of that knowledge it had at this time been disclosed what baptism and Holy Supper symbolize, sacraments about which people have hitherto had such various thoughts. And I replied that it had been disclosed.

[3] I said further, 3. that the Lord has now revealed the circumstances of people's life after death.

The angels said, "What about life after death? Who does not know that a person lives after death?"

"They know it and do not know it," I replied. "They say that what lives after death is not the person but his soul, and that this lives on as a spirit, of which they harbor an idea as of its being like the wind or ether, saying that it does not live as a real person until after the day of the Last Judgment. At that time, they say, the elements of the body which were left in the world, even though eaten by worms, mice and fish, will be gathered together again and constituted once more into a body, and that it is thus that people will rise again."

"What is this you are saying?" the angels said. "Who does not know that a person lives as a person after death, the only difference being that he then lives as a spiritual person? And who does not know that a spiritual person sees a spiritual person as a material person does a material one, without their being aware of a single distinction, except that they are living in a more perfect state?"

[4] The angels then inquired, "What do people know of our world, and of heaven and hell?"

I said that they have known nothing, but 4. that the Lord has now disclosed the nature of the world in which angels and spirits live, thus the nature of heaven and the nature of hell; as also that angels and spirits live in affiliation with men; in addition to many other wonders connected with them.

The angels were gladdened that it had pleased the Lord to disclose such things, so that people would no longer suffer such ignorance as to be in a state of uncertainty regarding their immortality.

[5] Going on, I said, 5. "The Lord has now revealed that there is in your world a different sun from the one in our world; that the sun of your world is pure love, while the sun of our world is nothing but fire; that because your sun is pure love, everything that emanates from it brings with it something of life, while because our sun is nothing but fire, everything that emanates from it brings with it nothing of life; also that this is the origin of the difference between what is spiritual and what is natural, a difference hitherto unknown which has also been disclosed."

It has been made known in consequence of this, I said, from what source the light comes which enlightens the human intellect with wisdom, and from what source the warmth comes which kindles the human will with love.

[6] In addition, it has been disclosed 6. that there are three degrees of life, and consequently three heavens; that the human mind is divided into these degrees, and that the human being thus corresponds to the three heavens.

"Did people not know this before?" said the angels.

I replied that they knew about greater and lesser degrees in a range, but nothing about prior and subsequent degrees.

[7] The angels asked whether in addition to these disclosures anything else had been revealed. I said that a number of other things had been, namely, 7. concerning the Last Judgment; concerning the Lord, that He is God of heaven and earth, that God is one both in person and in essence, in whom is the Divine trinity, and that He is the Lord; also concerning the New Church about to be established by Him, and the doctrine of that church; concerning the sacredness of the Holy Scripture; as also that the Apocalypse has been revealed, nothing of which could have been revealed, not even in one little verse, except by the Lord.

Included also is a revelation concerning inhabitants of other planets and concerning other earths in the universe, I said; as well as many accounts and wonders from the spiritual world, by which much else having to do with wisdom has been disclosed from heaven.

  
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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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