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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 #294

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294. The second account:

Several days later I again saw the same seven wives in a rose garden, but in a different one from the one previously. It was a magnificent garden, the like of which I had never seen before. It was laid out almost in a circle, and the roses in it formed a kind of rainbow-like arc. Purple-colored roses or flowers formed its outmost ring; golden-yellow ones the next ring in; dark-blue ones the ring inside that; and bluish-green or bright-green ones the inmost ring. And enclosed within that rainbow-like rose garden was a little pool of clear water.

Those seven wives, previously called maidens of the spring, were sitting there, and seeing me at my window they again called me over. Then, when I arrived, they said, "Have you ever seen anything more beautiful on earth?"

"Never," I said.

So they said, "A marvel like this is created by the Lord in instant, and it represents a new development on earth, for everything created by the Lord represents something. But divine if you can what that is. We are guessing that it is the delights of conjugial love."

[2] On hearing this I said, "What are the delights of conjugial love, of which you spoke with so much wisdom and also so much eloquence last time? After I left you, I related what you said to wives living in our world, and I told them, 'Having now been instructed, I know that you feel delights in your hearts arising from your conjugial love, which you are able to communicate to your husbands in accordance with their wisdom. I also know that from morning to evening you therefore continually contemplate your husbands with the eyes of your spirit and consider how to turn and guide their hearts to becoming wise, in order that you may realize those delights.' I further reported what you meant by wisdom, saying that it is a spiritual-rational and spiritual-moral wisdom, and that as regards marriage it is to love only one's wife and to rid oneself of all desire for other women.

"But to this the wives in our world responded with laughter, saying, 'What are you talking about? What you have said is preposterous. We do not know what conjugial love is. If our husbands experience anything of it, still we do not. How then do its delights originate with us? Indeed, when it comes to the delights which you call the end delights, we sometimes resist vehemently, for to us they are repugnant, in almost the same way as acts of rape. In fact, if you look, you will not see one sign of any such love in our faces. Therefore you are either talking nonsense or joking if, like those seven wives of yours, you too say that we think about our husbands from morning to evening and continually give attention to their wishes and pleasures, in order that we may gain from them delights such as those!'

"I have retained from the responses of those wives these declarations, to report them to you, since they call into dispute and even more entirely contradict the discourse I heard from you by the spring, which I listened to so eagerly and also believed."

[3] To this the wives sitting in the rose garden replied, "Dear friend, you do not know the wisdom and prudence of wives, because they hide it altogether from men and keep it hidden precisely in order to be loved by them. For every man who is not spiritually rational and moral but only naturally so possesses a coldness towards his wife, such a coldness being inherent in him in his inmost elements. This coldness a wise and prudent wife acutely and keenly notices, and she then conceals her conjugial love, withdrawing into her heart so much of it and hiding it there so deeply that not the least bit of it appears in her face, her tone of voice, or gesture. She does this, because to the extent her love appears, to that extent a man's coldness with respect to marriage pours forth from the inmost elements of his mind where it resides and descends into its outmost expressions, producing a total frigidity in the body and an urge to separate himself therefore from the bed and bedroom."

[4] I asked them then, "What causes such coldness, which you call coldness with respect to marriage."

"It comes from a lack of rationality on their part in matters of the spirit. Every man who is irrational in matters of the spirit is inmostly cold to his wife and inmostly warm toward harlots. And because conjugial love and licentious love are opposed to each other, it follows that conjugial love becomes cold whenever licentious love is warm. Then, when coldness reigns in a man, he cannot endure any feeling of love or even therefore any whisper of it from his wife. That is why a wife so wisely and prudently conceals it; and to the extent she does this by denying and resisting, to that extent a wanton atmosphere flows in which revives and restores the man's interest. As a result the wife of a man like that does not experience any delights of the heart such as we do, but only physical gratifications, which on the man's part have to be termed pleasures of insanity, because they are the pleasures of a licentious love.

[5] "Every chaste wife loves her husband, even a husband who is unchaste; but because wisdom is the only quality that receives her love, therefore a wife spends every effort to turn his insanity into wisdom, at least to the point that he does not desire any other women but her. This she accomplishes in a thousand ways, taking especial care that none of these ways be detected by her husband; for she well knows that love cannot be compelled, but is subtly infused in a state of freedom. For that reason it is granted to women to discern from sight, hearing and touch their husbands' every state of mind, while it is not granted to men conversely to discern any of their wives' states of mind.

[6] "A chaste wife can look at her husband with a stern expression, speak to him in a sharp voice, and even be angry at him and fight with him, and yet at the same time in her heart cherish a gentle and tender love for him. The object, however, of these expressions of anger and concealments of love is wisdom and a consequent reception of love on the part of her husband, as is clearly apparent from how quickly she can be placated. Wives furthermore have such ways of concealing the love implanted in their heart and marrows in order by these means to keep a man's coldness with respect to marriage from breaking out in him and extinguishing even the fire of his licentious heat, the result of which would be to turn him from green wood into a dry stick."

[7] After those seven wives made these statements and a number of others like them, their husbands came with clusters of grapes in their hands, some of which had a delicious flavor and some an offensive one. So the wives said, "Why did you bring bad or wild grapes, too?"

"Because," replied their husbands, "your souls being united with ours, we perceived in our souls that you were speaking with this man here about truly conjugial love, saying that its delights are delights of wisdom, and also about licentious love, saying that its delights are pleasures of insanity. The grapes with the delicious flavor are the first kind of delights, while the offensive-tasting or wild grapes are the second kind."

The husbands then confirmed what their wives had said, adding that the pleasures of insanity appear in outward respects similar to the delights of wisdom, but not in their inner qualities - "just like the good and bad grapes that we brought," they said. "For both chaste and unchaste men are capable of a similar wisdom in outward respects, but in its inner qualities their wisdom is entirely different."

[8] After that the little boy came again with a piece of paper in his hand, and he held it out to me, saying, "Read."

So I read as follows:

Be advised, all who read this, that the delights of conjugial love ascend up to the highest heaven, and on the way and in that heaven they join with the delights of all heavenly loves, and so enter into their felicity, which lasts to eternity. That is because the delights of that love are also delights of wisdom.

Be advised, too, that the pleasures of licentious love descend down to the lowest hell, and on the way and in that hell they join with the pleasures of all hellish loves, and so enter into their misery, which consists in a frustration of all the heart's delights. That is because the pleasures of that love are also pleasures of insanity.

The husbands subsequently departed with their wives, and accompanying the little boy as far as the path he took to ascend to heaven, they discovered that the society he had been sent from was a society of the New Heaven, the heaven with which the New Church on earth will be affiliated.

  
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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

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #114

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114. To these points I will add two memorable occurrences taken from Revelation Unveiled.

The first memorable occurrence. I was suddenly overcome with a deathly illness. My whole head felt worse and worse. A poisonous smoke was blowing in from the great city that spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8). I was half dead and in severe pain. I thought I was about to die. I lay in bed in that condition for three and a half days. My spirit developed this sickness, and then my body came down with it as well.

Then I heard voices around me saying, “Look, he is lying dead in the street of our city—the one who was preaching that we should repent so that our sins would be forgiven and [that we should worship] only Christ the human being.”

They asked some of the clergy, “Is he worthy of burial?” (We read that the same thing happened to the two witnesses who were killed in that city; see Revelation 11:8, 9, 10.)

The clergy replied, “No. Let him lie there as a spectacle.”

They kept going away and coming back to mock me.

And I am telling the truth when I say that this happened to me at the very time that I was explaining the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation.

Then I heard more serious words from the people who had been mocking me—especially these: “How can repentance be practiced apart from faith? How can Christ the human being be adored as God? Given that we are saved for free without our deserving it at all, what then do we need except faith alone—the faith that God the Father sent the Son to take away the damnation of the law, to credit us with his own merit, to justify us before the Father, to absolve us from our sins, and then to give us the Holy Spirit, who activates every good thing within us? Aren’t these points in accordance with Scripture and also with reason?”

The crowd of bystanders applauded these statements.

[2] I heard all this but was unable to respond because I was lying there almost dead.

After three and a half days, however, my spirit regained its health. In the spirit I went from that street into the city, and I said again, “Practice repentance and believe in Christ, and your sins will be forgiven and you will be saved. If you do not, you will perish. The Lord himself preached that we must repent in order for our sins to be forgiven, and that we must believe in him. He commanded the disciples to preach the same message. Surely the dogma of your faith leads to utter complacency about the way you live!”

“What are you babbling about?” they replied. “The Son has made satisfaction. The Father has assigned us the Son’s merit and has justified us for the reason that these are our beliefs. We are now led by the spirit of grace. What sin could there be within us? What death could there be among us? Do you grasp this Good News, you preacher of sin and repentance?”

Then a voice from heaven said, “Surely the faith of someone who has not practiced repentance is nothing but a dead faith. The end has come, the end has come upon you who are complacent, guiltless in your own eyes, justified by your own faith—devils!”

At that moment a chasm suddenly opened up in the middle of the city and spread outward. The houses were falling in on each other and the people were swallowed up. Soon water bubbled up from the great hole and flooded what was already devastated.

[3] After they sank to a lower level and were seemingly covered in water, I wanted to know what their situation was like in the depths. A voice from heaven told me, “You will see and hear.”

Then the water that had seemingly flooded them disappeared from before my eyes. (Water in the spiritual world is a correspondence that appears around people who have false beliefs.) I saw the people in a sandy place at a great depth, where there were piles of stones. They were running between the piles of stones and loudly bemoaning their having been cast out of their great city.

They were shouting and wailing, “Why has this happened to us? We are clean, pure, just, and holy because of our faith.”

Others were saying, “Surely through our faith we have been cleansed, purified, justified, and sanctified.”

Still others were asking, “Hasn’t our faith made it possible for us to be seen and esteemed by God the Father and the whole Trinity, and to be declared before angels, as clean, pure, righteous, and holy? Haven’t we been reconciled, atoned for, ritually purged, and therefore absolved, washed, and wiped free of our sins? Didn’t Christ take away the damnation of the law? Why then have we been thrown down here like the damned? We did hear from a bold proclaimer of sin in our great city, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance.’ But didn’t we believe in Christ when we believed in his merit? Didn’t we practice repentance when we confessed that we were sinners? Why then has this happened to us?”

[4] A voice was then heard from the side: “Are you aware of any sin in yourselves? Have you ever examined yourselves, and then abstained from any evil because it is sinful against God? If you do not abstain from sin, then you are still devoted to it; and sin is the Devil. You, then, are the people of whom the Lord spoke when he said, ‘You will then begin to say, “We ate and drank with you. You taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I tell you, I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of wickedness”’ (Luke 13:26, 27). Matthew 7:22, 23 is also about you. Therefore go away, each to your own place. Do you see the holes leading to those caves? Go in there, and each of you will be given your own work to do, and food in accordance with your work. If you don’t go in, your hunger will drive you in.”

[5] After that a voice from heaven came to some people who were up at the level of the ground but were outside the city (see Revelation 11:13). The voice said loudly, “Beware! Beware of associating with people like that. Don’t you understand that evils that are called sins and acts of wickedness make us unclean and impure? How can you be cleansed and purified from them except by active repentance and by faith in the Lord God the Savior? Active repentance is examining yourselves, recognizing and admitting to your sins, accepting that you are at fault, confessing them before the Lord, begging for his help and power in resisting them, stopping doing them, and living a new life. All this is to be done as if you were doing it on your own. Do this once or twice a year when you are about to take Holy Communion. Afterward, when the sins for which you are at fault recur, say to yourselves, ‘We do not want these, because they are sins against God.’ This is actual repentance.

[6] “Surely you can all recognize that if you do not examine yourselves and see your sins, you remain in them. From birth you find all evils delightful. It feels good to take revenge, to be promiscuous, to steal, and to slander. Because they feel good you overlook them. If someone happens to point out to you that they are sins, you make excuses for them because they feel good. You use false arguments to defend them and convince yourselves that they are not sins, and you stay in them. And afterward you do those evil things more than you did before, to the point where you no longer know what sin is or even whether there is such a thing.

“It is different, however, for people who actively go through a process of repentance. The evils that they recognize and admit to [in themselves] they call sins. They therefore begin to abstain and turn away from them. Eventually they begin to feel the pleasure of those evils as unpleasant. The more this happens, the more they see and love what is good, and eventually even feel delight in it, which is the delight that the angels in heaven feel. Briefly put, the more we put the Devil behind us, the more we are adopted by the Lord and are taught, led, held back from what is evil, and kept in what is good by him. This is the pathway from hell to heaven; there is no other way.”

[7] It is amazing that Protestants have such a deep-seated resistance, antipathy, and aversion to active repentance. Their reaction to it is so strong that they cannot force themselves to do self-examination, to see their sins, and to confess them before God. It is as if they are overcome by horror as soon as they form the intention to do it. I have asked many Protestants in the spiritual world about this, and they all said that it is completely beyond their strength. When they heard that Catholics practice this, that is, that they examine themselves and openly confess their sins to a monk, the Protestants were profoundly amazed, especially since the Protestants themselves could not do this even in secret before God, although they had been commanded, just as the Catholics had been, to do this when they were about to take the Holy Supper. Some people in the spiritual world investigated why this was, and discovered that faith alone was what had led to such an impenitent state and such an attitude of heart. Then those Protestants were allowed to see that Catholics are saved if they turn to Christ and worship him, and no longer worship but only honor the leaders of their churches.

[8] After that we heard a kind of thunder, and a voice speaking from heaven and saying, “We are amazed. Say to the gathering of Protestants, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance, and you will be saved.’”

So I said it.

I added, “Clearly, baptism is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into the church. What else do godparents promise for the child being baptized but that she or he will renounce the Devil and all his works? Clearly, the Holy Supper is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into heaven. Doesn’t the priest say to those about to take it that they absolutely have to practice repentance first? Clearly, the Ten Commandments are the universal teaching of the Christian church; they urge repentance. Isn’t it true that the six commandments on the second tablet say, ‘You are not to do this and that thing that is evil,’ not, ‘You are to do this and that thing that is good’? Therefore you are capable of knowing that the more we abstain from what is evil, the more we love what is good; and that before that, we do not know what good is, or even what evil is.”

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.

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