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

 

Conjugial Love #270

Study this Passage

  
/ 535  
  

270. The third account:

Awakening one morning, I fell to thinking about some questions having to do with conjugial love, coming finally to this one:

In what region of the human mind is truly conjugial love seated, and in what region, therefore, coldness in marriage?

I knew that the human mind is divided into three regions, one above the other, and that natural love resides in the lowest region, spiritual love in the next higher one, and celestial love in the highest. I knew also that in each region there is a marriage of good and truth, and because good has to do with love, and truth with wisdom, that in each region there is a marriage of love and wisdom; moreover, that this marriage is the same as a marriage of the will and understanding, since the will is the recipient vessel of love, and the understanding the recipient vessel of wisdom.

[2] While I was deep in thought on this question, I suddenly saw two swans flying towards the north, and presently two birds of paradise flying towards the south, and then two turtledoves flying in the east. Following their flight with my eyes, I next saw the two swans veer their course from the north to the east, likewise the two birds of paradise from the south, until they met up with the pair of turtledoves in the east. Then together they flew towards a certain lofty palace there, rising in the midst of olive trees, palms and beeches. The palace had three rows of windows, one above another; and as I watched, I saw the birds fly into the palace - the swans through windows standing open in the lowest row, the birds of paradise through windows open in the middle row, and the turtledoves through windows open in the highest row.

[3] After I witnessed this event, an angel stood beside me and said, "Do you understand the things you have seen?"

"A little," I replied.

"The palace," said the angel, "represents the abodes of conjugial love as these exist in human minds. Its highest level - into which the turtledoves disappeared - represents the highest region of the mind, where conjugial love resides in the goodness of love together with its wisdom. The middle level - into which the birds of paradise disappeared - represents the intermediate region, where conjugial love resides in a love of truth together with its intelligence. And the lowest level - into which the swans disappeared - represents the lowest region of the mind, where conjugial love resides in a love of what is just and right together with its knowledge.

[4] "These degrees are also symbolized by the three pairs of birds - the two turtledoves symbolizing conjugial love in the highest region, the two birds of paradise conjugial love in the intermediate region, and the two swans conjugial love in the lowest region. The three kinds of trees surrounding the palace - the olive trees, palms and beeches - symbolize the same.

"In heaven we call the highest region of the mind celestial, the intermediate one spiritual, and the lowest one natural. And we conceive of them as being like apartments in a house, one above another, with steps going up from one to the next, like stairs. Moreover, on each level there are as it were two sets of rooms, one for love, one for wisdom, with a bedroom, so to speak, in front, where they come together in bed - love with its wisdom, or good with its truth, or to say the same thing, the will with its intellect. In such a palace, all the mysteries of conjugial love become visible as though in effigy."

[5] Hearing this, being fired with a desire to see one, I asked whether a person might go in and look at the palace there, since it was a representational one.

The angel replied that only angels in the third heaven could, because for them every representation of love and wisdom becomes real.

"What I have related to you I have heard from them," he said, "including as well the following, that truly conjugial love resides in the highest region, in the midst of mutual love in the chamber or apartment of the will, and at the same time in the midst of perceptions of wisdom in the chamber or apartment of the intellect; and these come together in bed in a bedroom that is located in front on the east side."

"Why," I asked, "are there two chambers?"

"Because," he said, "a husband lives in the chamber of the intellect, and a wife lives in the chamber of the will."

[6] At that I inquired, "If that is where conjugial love resides, where then does coldness in marriage reside?"

"It, too, resides in the highest region," he replied, "but only in the chamber of the intellect, with the chamber of the will on that level being closed off. For as often as it pleases, the understanding with its truths can ascend by a spiral stairway to its chamber in the highest region; but if the will with the goodness of its love does not ascend at the same time to its companion chamber, the latter remains closed, and coldness develops in the other, which is the coldness one finds in marriage.

"As long as such coldness to one's wife continues, the intellect looks down from the highest region to the lowest; and if fear does not hold it back, it also descends in order to warm itself there with an illicit fire."

Having said this, the angel wished to tell me still more about conjugial love from the depictions of it in that palace; but he said, "Enough for now. First investigate whether these concepts are beyond people's general comprehension. If they are, what is the use of saying more? On the other hand, if they are not, more will be disclosed another time." 1

Footnotes:

1. We find, however, no report of any further disclosures.

  
/ 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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #961

Study this Passage

  
/ 962  
  

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.

  
/ 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.

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