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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with scarcely any time intervening in a day when this is interrupted or in which our instinctive thought is entirely withdrawn or gone from them.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

 

Conjugial Love #500

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

I once heard in the world of spirits a great tumult. Thousands of spirits had gathered and were crying out, "Punish them! Punish them!"

I drew nearer and asked, "What is going on?"

Leaving that great throng, one of them said to me that they were in a white-hot rage at three priests who were going about and everywhere preaching against adulterers, saying that adulterers lack any acknowledgment of God, and that heaven was closed to them and hell opened. Also that in hell they are unclean devils, because they appear at a distance there like pigs rolling around in piles of excrement, and that the angels in heaven abhor them.

I inquired where those priests were and why there was such an outcry on that account.

He replied that the three priests were in their midst, surrounded by bodyguards, and that the gathering consisted of people who believe that adulteries are not sins and who maintain that adulterers have an acknowledgment of God just as much as those who are faithful to their wives. "They are all from the Christian world," he said, "and when they were once visited by angels to see how many among them believed that adulteries were sins, not a hundred in a thousand were found who did."

Moreover he told me that the remaining nine hundred speak in regard to adulteries as follows:

[2] "Who does not know that the delight in adultery far surpasses the delight of marriage? That adulterers experience a perpetual state of heat and so possess a more vigorous, energetic and active life than those who live with just one woman? And that, conversely, love with one's married partner grows cold, and this sometimes to such a degree that at last scarcely a word of conversation and companionship with her has any vitality? It is different with loose women. The gradual deadening of life with a wife owing to a failure of ability is refreshed and invigorated by licentious affairs. Is not something that refreshes and invigorates better than something that deadens?

"What is marriage but legalized licentiousness? Who knows any difference between them? Can love be compelled? Yet love with a wife is compelled by covenant and laws. Is love with a partner not a sexual love? Yet this is so universal that it exists also in birds and animals. What is conjugial love but a love for the opposite sex? Yet love for the opposite sex is set free when enjoyed with every woman.

"There are civil laws against adultery because legislators have believed that it accorded with the public good, and yet the legislators themselves and judges sometimes commit adultery, and then say to each other, 'Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.' 1 Only the simple and religious believe that adulteries are sins. Not so the intelligent, who, like us, view them in the light of nature.

[3] "Are children not born of adulteries in the same way as in marriages? Are illegitimate offspring not just as fit and serviceable for offices and ministries as legitimate ones? And besides, children are thus provided for families that would be otherwise childless. Is this not beneficial rather than harmful?

"What harm does it do a wife if she admits a number of rivals? And what harm does it do her husband? The idea that the husband is disgraced is a frivolous opinion springing from the imagination.

"The decree that adultery is contrary to the laws and statutes of the church comes from the ecclesiastical order in order to gain power. But what does theology and spirituality have to do with merely physical and fleshly delight? Are there not clergymen and monks who are adulterers? Are they unable on that account to acknowledge and worship God? Why then do these three priests preach that adulterers are without any acknowledgment of God? We will not tolerate such blasphemies. Therefore let them be judged and punished."

[4] After that I saw them summon judges, and they asked the judges to impose penalties on the priests.

But the judges said, "This does not fall within our province, for it has to do with acknowledgment of God and sin and thus with salvation and damnation. Judgment with respect to these has to come from heaven.

"However, we will advise you as to how you can ascertain whether these three priests have been preaching the truth. There are three places known to us judges where matters of this sort are explored and revealed in a singular manner. One is a place in which a path to heaven lies open to all, but where, when they arrive in heaven, they themselves perceive what their character is in respect to their acknowledgment of God. The second is a place where a path lies open to heaven also, but which no one can enter unless he has heaven in him. And the third is a place where there is a path leading to hell, which those who love hellish things enter of their own accord, because they are drawn by their delight.

"We judges send to those places all who demand judgment from us in cases dealing with heaven and hell."

[5] Upon hearing this, the people gathered said, "Let us go to those places."

So they went to the first, where a path to heaven lies open to all; and as they were going, suddenly they were enveloped in darkness, so that some of them lighted torches and held them before them.

The judges, who had accompanied them, said, "This happens to all who go to the first place, but as they draw near, the blaze of their torches becomes fainter, and on their reaching the place itself is extinguished, because of the light of heaven flowing in - a sign that they have arrived. The reason for this phenomenon is that heaven is first closed to them and then opened."

So they came to that place, and as the torches went out of themselves, they saw a sloping path leading upward to heaven. The people who were in a white-hot rage at the priests entered it. Among the first were those who were purposeful adulterers, behind them those who were deliberate adulterers. And as they ascended the first began to cry out, "Follow us," and those behind cried, "Hurry," so as to urge them on.

[6] A short time later, after they were all inside a heavenly society, a gulf appeared between them and the angels, and the light of heaven flowing over the gulf into their eyes opened the interior elements of their minds, so that they were compelled to speak as they inwardly thought. Whereupon the angels then inquired of them whether they acknowledged the existence of God.

The first group, those who were adulterers from a purpose of the will, replied, "What is God?" And looking at each other they said, "Have any of you seen Him?"

The second group, those who were adulterers from a persuasion of the intellect, said, "Is not everything attributable to nature? What exists above it but the sun?"

At that the angels then said to them, "Depart from us. You yourselves now see that you lack any acknowledgment of God. When you descend, the interior elements of your minds will be closed and the outer ones opened, and after that you can speak contrary to your inner thoughts and say that God exists. Be certain of this, that as soon as a person becomes an actual adulterer, heaven is closed to him, and when it is closed, he does not acknowledge God. Hear the reason: From adulteries springs all the uncleanness of hell, and this stinks in heaven like the putrid filth of the streets 2 ."

Hearing this, the people turned and descended by three paths. And when they were below, the first and second groups conferred with each other and said, "The priests won there; but we know that we can speak of God just as well as they, and when we say that He exists, do we not acknowledge Him? These inner and outer elements of our minds that the angels told us about are fictions.

"But let us go to the second place described by the judges, where a path lies open to heaven for those who have heaven in them, thus for those who are destined for heaven."

[7] So they went, and as they approached, from that heaven went out the cry, "Close the gates! There are adulterers in the vicinity!"

Suddenly then the gates were closed, and guards with staffs in their hands drove them away. And they took from them the three priests in their keeping, against whom they had raised such a tumult, and conducted them into their heaven. The moment the gate was opened for the priests, moreover, immediately there wafted over the insurgents the delight of marriage, which because of its chastity and purity almost suffocated them.

For fear of fainting from loss of breath, therefore, they hastened to the third place that the judges had told them of, where they had said there was a path leading to hell; and wafting out from there then was the delight of adultery, which so revived those who were purposeful and deliberate adulterers that they almost danced as they descended; and on descending they immersed themselves like pigs there in unclean dirt and filth.

Footnotes:

1. Quoting John 8:7.

2. Which in Swedenborg's day included garbage thrown out of windows and the droppings of horses.

  
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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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