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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

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #351

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351. People who believe that the Divine operates in every single element of nature can, from the many things which they see in nature, confirm themselves on the side of the Divine, just as well as and even more than those who confirm themselves on the side of nature. For people who confirm themselves on the side of the Divine pay heed to the marvels which they see in the propagations of both plants and animals.

In the propagations of plants, they note how a tiny seed cast into the ground produces a root, by means of the root a stem, and then in succession branches, leaves, flowers and fruits, culminating in new seeds - altogether as though the seed knew the order of progression or the process by which to renew itself. What rational person can suppose that the sun, which is nothing but fire, has this knowledge? Or that it can impart to its heat and its light the power to produce such effects, and in those effects can create marvels and intend a useful result?

Any person having an elevated rational faculty, on seeing and considering these wonders, cannot but think that they issue from one who possesses infinite wisdom, thus from God.

People who acknowledge the Divine also see and think this; but people who do not acknowledge the Divine do not see and think it, because they do not want to. Therefore they allow their rational faculty to descend into their sensual self, which draws all its ideas from the light in which the bodily senses are, and which defends the fallacies of these, saying, "Do you not see the sun accomplishing these effects by its heat and its light? What is something that you do not see? Is it anything?"

[2] People who confirm themselves on the side of the Divine pay heed to the marvels which they see in the propagations of animals - to mention here only those in eggs, as that in them lies the embryo in its seed or inception, with everything it requires to the time it hatches, and moreover with everything that develops after it hatches until it becomes a bird or flying thing in the form of its parent. Also that if one gives attention to the form, it is such that, if one thinks deeply, one cannot help but fall into a state of amazement - seeing, for example, that in the smallest of these creatures as in the largest, indeed in the invisible as in the visible, there are sense organs which serve for sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch; also motor organs, which are muscles, for they fly and walk; as well as viscera surrounding hearts and lungs, which are actuated by brains. That even lowly insects possess such component parts is known from their anatomy as described by certain investigators, most notably by Swammerdam 1 in his Biblia Naturae. 2

[3] People who attribute all things to nature see these wonders, indeed, but they think only that they exist, and say that nature produces them. They say this because they have turned their mind away from thinking about the Divine; and when people who have turned away from thinking about the Divine see wonders in nature, they are unable to think rationally, still less spiritually, but think instead in sensual and material terms. They then think within the confines of nature from the standpoint of nature and not above it, in the way that those do who are in hell. They differ from animals only in their having the power of rationality, that is, in their being able to understand and so think otherwise if they will.

Footnotes:

1. Jan Swammerdam, 1637-1680, Dutch anatomist and entomologist.

2. Published posthumously under Dutch and Latin titles, Bybel der Natuure; of, Historie der insecten... / Biblia Naturae; sive Historia Insectorum... (A Book of Nature; or, History of Insects...), with text in Latin and Dutch in parallel columns, Leyden, 1737 (vol. 1), 1738 (vol. 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.

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