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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 #293

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

I once looked out my window toward the east and saw seven women sitting next to a rose garden by a spring drinking water. I strained my eyes intently to see what they were doing, and the intensity of my gaze caught their attention. With a motion of the head one of them therefore invited me over. Accordingly I left the house and hurried in their direction. And when I arrived, I politely asked them where they were from.

They then said, "We are wives. We are talking here about the delights of conjugial love, and we have concluded from a good deal of evidence that these delights are also delights of wisdom."

This response so delighted my heart that I seemed to be more interiorly in the spirit and to have on that account a more enlightened perception than ever before. So I said to them, "Permit me an opportunity to ask you some questions about those pleasant delights." And they nodded their assent.

So I asked, "How do you wives know that the delights of conjugial love are at the same time delights of wisdom?"

[2] They then replied, "We know it from the correspondence that exists between wisdom in our husbands and the delights of conjugial love in us. For the delights of this love in us heighten or diminish and take on altogether different qualities according to the wisdom in our husbands."

On hearing this I inquired further, saying, "I know you are affected by gentle words from your husbands and cheerful states of mind on their part, and that you take delight on account of these with all your heart. But I wonder at your saying that it is in response to their wisdom. However, tell me what wisdom is and what sort of wisdom you mean."

[3] To this the wives replied with annoyance, "You think we do not know what wisdom is and what sort of wisdom we mean, even though we continually reflect on it in our husbands and daily learn it from their mouths. Indeed, we wives think about the state of our husbands from morning to evening, with scarcely any time intervening in a day when this is interrupted or in which our instinctive thought is entirely withdrawn or gone from them. Our husbands in contrast spend very little time in the course of a day thinking about our state. As a result we know what sort of wisdom in them finds delight in us. Our husbands call this wisdom a spiritual-rational wisdom and a spiritual-moral one. Spiritual-rational wisdom, they say, is a matter of the intellect and its intellectual concepts, while spiritual-moral wisdom is a matter of the will and its mode of life. Yet they join the two together and regard them as one; and they maintain that the pleasant delights of this wisdom are transposed from their minds into delights in our hearts, and from our hearts back to their hearts, so that these return to the wisdom from which they originated."

[4] I then asked whether they knew anything more about this wisdom in their husbands - "wisdom," I said, "which finds delight in you."

"We do," they said. "It is a spiritual wisdom, and from that a rational and moral one. Spiritual wisdom is to acknowledge the Lord our Savior as God of heaven and earth, and through the Word and discourses from it to acquire from Him truths connected with the Church, from which comes a spiritual rationality; and in addition to live from Him according to those truths, from which comes a spiritual morality. Our husbands call these two the wisdom which in general works to produce truly conjugial love. We have also heard from them the reason, namely, that this wisdom opens the inner faculties of their mind and thus of their body, providing free passage from the firsts to the last of these for the stream of love, on whose flow, sufficiency and strength conjugial love depends for its existence and life.

"As regards marriage in particular, the spiritual-rational and spiritual-moral wisdom of our husbands has as its end and goal to love only their wives and to rid themselves of all desire for other women. Moreover, to the extent they achieve this, to that extent that love is heightened in degree and perfected in quality, and the more clearly and keenly do we then feel matching delights in us corresponding to the contented pleasures of our husbands' affections and the pleasant exaltations of their thoughts."

[5] I asked them next whether they knew how the communication took place.

They said, "All conjunction by love requires action, reception, and reaction. The state of our love and its delights is the agent or that which acts. The state of our husbands' wisdom is the recipient or that which receives. And this same wisdom is also the reagent or that which reacts in accordance with their reception. This reaction is then perceived by us with feelings of delight in our hearts according to our state and the measure in which it is continually open and ready to receive those elements which in some way are connected with and so emanate from virtue in our husbands, thus which in some way are connected with and so emanate from the final state of love in us."

At that point they also inserted, "Take care you do not interpret the delights we have mentioned to mean the end delights of conjugial love. We never talk about these, but only about the delights of our hearts which constantly correspond to the state of wisdom in our husbands."

[6] After that there appeared in the distance what looked like a dove in flight with a leaf from a tree in its mouth; but as it drew near, instead of a dove we saw a little boy with a piece of paper in his hand. Coming over to us then, he held it out to me and said, "Read it in the presence of these maidens of the spring."

So I read the following:

Tell the inhabitants of the earth among whom you live that there is such a thing as truly conjugial love, offering a million delights scarcely any of which are yet known to the world. But they will be discovered when the church betroths itself to her Lord and becomes His bride and wife.

Then I asked the wives, "Why did the boy call you 'maidens of the spring'?"

"We are called maidens when we sit by this spring," they replied, "because we are forms of affection for the truths of our husbands' wisdom; and an affection for truth in form is termed a maiden. The spring likewise symbolizes the truth of wisdom, and the rose garden we are sitting next to its delights."

[7] One of the seven wives then wove a garland of roses; and sprinkling it with water from the spring, she placed it over the cap the boy had on, fitting it around his little head and saying, "Receive the delights of intelligence. Your cap, you see, symbolizes intelligence, and the garland from this rose garden its delights."

Thus adorned the boy then departed, and in the distance he looked once more like a dove in flight, but this time with a little crown on its head.

  
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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

 

Apocalypse Revealed #386

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386. To this I will append the following account:

When I once looked about in the spiritual world, I heard what sounded like the gnashing of teeth, and like a thumping, too, intermixed with a harsh noise. So I asked what I was hearing, and the angels who were with me said, "There are clubs, which we call taverns, where people argue with each other. This is the way their debates sound at a distance, but close by they sound only like arguments.

I went over and saw cottages constructed of interwoven rushes, with clay for mortar. I wanted to look through a window, but there wasn't one. I looked for a window because I was not permitted to enter through the door, as light from heaven would then flow in and befuddle the people.

Suddenly, however, a window materialized on the right side, and I heard the people complain then that everything had gone dark. But shortly a window materialized on the left side, with the window on the right side closing, and then the darkness was by degrees dispelled, and they saw each other in a state of light. After that I was allowed to enter through the door and listen.

There was a table in the middle of the room, with benches surrounding it, yet the people all seemed to me to be standing on the benches, and to be arguing sharply with each other about faith and charity, the people on one side saying that faith was the principal tenet of the church, and on the other side that charity was.

Those who made faith the principal tenet said, "Do we not deal with God as regards faith, and with people as regards charity? Is not faith therefore something heavenly, and charity something earthly? Are we not saved by what is heavenly, and not by anything earthly?

"Furthermore, cannot God confer faith from heaven, because it is something heavenly, and must not a person confer on himself charity, because it is something earthly? What a person confers on himself is unrelated to the church and is therefore not saving. Can works that are called works of charity justify anyone in that case before God?

"Believe us when we say that by faith alone we are not only justified but also sanctified, provided our faith is not contaminated by hopes for merit that spring up from works of charity."

And so on.

[2] In reply, the people who made charity the principal tenet of the church sharply refuted them, saying that charity is saving, and not faith. "Does not God hold all people dear and will good to all? How can God do this except through the agency of people? Does God enable people to speak with one another only about matters having to do with faith, and not enable them to do things for one another that are matters of charity?

"Do you not see how absurdly you spoke about charity, saying that it is something earthly? Charity is something heavenly, and because you do not do the good pertaining to charity, your faith is earthly. How do you receive faith other than as a log or rock? You say that it is simply by hearing the Word, but how can the Word do anything simply by being heard, and how can it have any effect on a log or rock? Perhaps you are animated without being aware of it. However, what is that animation except to enable you to say that faith alone is saving? Yet what that faith is, and what saving faith is, you do not know."

[3] But one among them then arose, whom an angel speaking with me called a syncretist. 1 He took the cap from his head and placed it on the table, but quickly replaced it, as he was bald. He said, "Listen, you are all wrong. The truth is that faith is spiritual, and charity moral; but still they are conjoined, and they are conjoined by the Word, by the Holy Spirit, and by the effect these have, without the person's knowing. Indeed, the person may be said to be a compliant form, but one in which the person has no part.

"I have thought to myself a long time about this, and I eventually found that God can enable a person to receive a faith that is spiritual, but cannot move him to a charity that is spiritual without his being like a pillar of salt."

[4] When he said this, the people caught up in faith alone applauded, while those espousing charity booed. And the latter said with annoyance, "Listen, my friend, you do not know that a moral life can be spiritual, and that it can be merely natural - being a moral life that is spiritual in the case of people who do good from the Lord, though doing it as if of themselves, and being a moral life that is merely natural in the case of people who do good from hell, though doing it as if of themselves."

[5] I said before that the arguing sounded like the gnashing of teeth, and like a thumping, too, intermixed with a harsh noise. The particular arguing that sounded like the gnashing of teeth came from those who were espousing faith alone; the arguing that sounded like a thumping came from those who were espousing charity alone; and the intermixed harsh noise came from the syncretist. I heard their voices at a distance thus because they had all argued in the world, but did not refrain from any evil and so did not do any moral good that was spiritual. Moreover, they also did not know at all that the totality of faith is truth, and that the totality of charity is goodness, and that truth without goodness is not truth in spirit, and that goodness without truth is not goodness in spirit; thus that one must form the other.

The reason everything became dark when a window materialized on the right side is that light flowing in from heaven on that side affects the will. And a state of light returned when the window on the right side closed and a window materialized on the left side, because light flowing in from heaven on the left side affects the intellect, and everyone can be in the light of heaven as regards his intellect, provided his will is closed as regards the evil in him.

Footnotes:

1. An espouser of syncretism, a system of belief that attempts to reconcile differing religious and philosophic positions. The term was applied especially to the views of George Calixtus, a Lutheran theologian in the 17th century, and to his followers.

  
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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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