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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

 

True Christian Religion #693

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693. The second experience. 1 Some weeks later I heard a voice from heaven saying, 'There is to be another meeting on Parnassium; come and we will show you the way.' I went and when I came near I saw someone with a trumpet standing on Heliconeum, announcing and summoning a meeting. Then I saw people coming up from the city of Athenaeum and its neighbourhood as before, and among them three newcomers from the world. The three were from the Christians, one a priest, the second a politician, and the third a philosopher. On the way the people entertained them with talk on various subjects, especially about the wise men of antiquity, whom they mentioned by name. The three asked whether they would see them. They were told that they would see them, and if they wished greet them, since they were easy to approach.

They asked about Demosthenes 2 , Diogenes and Epicurus 3 . 'Demosthenes,' they said 'is not here but where Plato lives. Diogenes with his school lives under Heliconeum, because he regards worldly matters as of no value and reflects on heavenly matters. Epicurus lives on the western boundary and does not visit us, because we make a distinction between good and evil affections; we hold that good affections go along with wisdom, and evil affections are opposed to wisdom.'

[2] When they had climbed the hill of Parnassium, some guards there brought water from its spring in crystal goblets, saying: 'This is water from the spring mentioned by the ancient writers of fables as having been broken open by the hoof of the horse Pegasus and later consecrated by the Nine Maidens 4 . But by the winged horse Pegasus the ancients meant the understanding of truth by which comes wisdom. The hooves of its feet meant the experiences which give rise to natural intelligence; and by the Nine Maidens they meant knowledge and learning of every kind. These stories are nowadays called fables, but were correspondences, a manner of expression the earliest people used.'

'Don't be surprised,' their companions told the three newcomers. 'The guards are taught to speak like this. We understand by drinking the water from the spring being taught about truths, and by means of truths about different kinds of good, and so to be wise.'

[3] After this they went into the Palladium and with them the three newcomers from the world, the priest, the politician and the philosopher. Then those with laurel wreaths who were sitting at the tables asked: 'What news is there from earth?'

'The news,' they replied, 'is that a certain person is claiming to talk with angels, and to have his sight opened into the spiritual world just as much as he has it opened into the natural world. He reports a great deal of news from there, including the following. A person, he says, lives as a person after death, just as he previously lived in the world. He sees, hears and talks, just as he did previously in the world. He is dressed and wears adornments just as previously in the world. He feels hunger and thirst, eats and drinks, just as previously in the world. He enjoys the delights of married life, just as previously in the world. He goes to sleep and wakes up, just as previously in the world. That world has lands and lakes, mountains and hills, plains and valleys, springs and rivers, parks and woodland; as well as palaces and houses, towns and villages, just as the natural world. There are writings and books there, there are official duties and business enterprises, precious stones, gold and silver. In short, every single thing that there is on earth is to be found in heaven, and in infinitely greater perfection. The only difference is that everything in the spiritual world is of spiritual origin, and so is spiritual, since it comes from the sun there, which is pure love. Everything in the natural world is of natural origin, and so is natural and material, because it comes from the sun there which is pure fire. In short, a person after death is perfectly human, in fact, a more perfect person than he was previously in the world. For previously in the world he had a material body, but in the spiritual world he has a spiritual body.'

[4] When this was said, the wise men of antiquity asked what the people on earth thought about this. 'We,' said the three, 'know that this is true, because we are here and have looked at and tested everything. But we shall tell you what was said and what reasonings were employed on earth.'

Then the priest said: 'The clergy like me, when they first heard these things, called them visions, then fictions, and later said that the man had seen ghosts. Finally they were perplexed and said, "Believe it if you like. We have up to now taught that a person will not have a body after death, until the day of the Last Judgment." '

'Are there not intelligent men,' they asked, 'among them, who can prove and convince them of the truth that a person lives on after death?'

[5] The priest said that there were some who proved it but failed to convince. 'Those who offer proofs,' he said, 'assert that it is contrary to sound reason to believe that a person does not go on living as a person before the day of the Last Judgment, and in the meantime is a soul without a body. "What is a soul and where does it live in the meanwhile? Is it more than a breath, a puff of wind flying through the air, or something lodged in the middle of the earth, where its Pu 5 is. Do the souls of Adam and Eve, and of all their successors for six thousand years or sixty centuries still flit about the universe, or are they shut up in the bowels of the earth, awaiting the Last Judgment? Is there anything more worrying and pitiable than such a period of waiting? Could not their fate be compared to that of prisoners in jails chained hand and foot? If that is man's fate after death, would it not be better to have been born a donkey than a man? Surely it is unreasonable to believe that a soul can be clothed again in its body, when the body has been eaten by worms, rats or fish? Or that some new body will be wrapped around a bony skeleton which has been parched by the sun or has collapsed into dust? How can such stinking bits of corpse be gathered together and united with souls?" But when they hear such arguments, they do not offer any reasonable answer, but cling to their faith, saying; "We keep our reason obedient to our faith." Their reply to the question about all being gathered from the grave on the day of the Last Judgment is: "This is the task of omnipotence," and when they start talking about omnipotence and faith, reason flies out of the window. I can assure you that then sound reason is treated as nothing, and some regard it as a mirage. They are actually able to tell sound reason that it is crazy.'

[6] On hearing this the wise men of Greece said: 'Are not these paradoxes refuted by themselves as being contradictory? Yet in the world to-day even sound reason cannot refute them. Can you believe anything more paradoxical than what is said about the Last Judgment, that then the universe will come to an end, and then the stars of the sky will fall upon the earth, although it is not as big as the stars? Or that people's bodies, what will then be corpses or mummies eaten up by people or reduced to shreds, will be joined to their souls again? When we were in the world, we believed in the immortality of people's souls because of the deductions which reason offered us. We also allotted a place for the blessed, which we called the Elysian fields, believing them to be likenesses or appearances of human beings, though delicate because they are spiritual.

[7] After these speeches, they turned to the second newcomer, who in the world had been a politician. He admitted that he had not believed in life after death, and had thought that the stories he had heard about it were imagination and fiction. 'When I thought about it,' he said, 'I said: "How can souls be bodies? Everything a person is lies dead in the grave. Has he got an eye there to see with? Has he got an ear there to hear with? How can he have a mouth to talk with? If any part of a person lived after death, could it be anything but a kind of ghost? How can a ghost eat and drink? How can it enjoy the delights of married life? Where does it get clothes, house, food, and so on? Ghosts, which are airy forms, look as if they existed, but they do not." It was this and such like that I thought when I was in the world about people's life after death. But now that I have seen everything, and touched everything with my hands, I have been convinced by my very senses that I am a person just as in the world. So much so, that I am unaware that I am not living as I formerly did, but for the fact that now my reason is sounder. I have several times been ashamed of what I thought formerly.'

[8] The philosopher told much the same story about himself. But the difference was that he ascribed all the news he had heard about life after death to opinions and theories which he had learnt from ancient and modern thinkers.

The wise men were astonished to hear this. Those who belonged to the school of Socrates said that this news from earth allowed them to perceive that the interiors of men's minds had little by little been closed up, so that in the world now belief in falsity shone like truth, and silly cleverness like wisdom. They said that the light of wisdom had since their time lowered itself from the interior of the brain to the mouth beneath the nose, where it looked to the eyes like the gleam of lips, and what the mouth had to say from that source seemed like wisdom.

On hearing this one of the recruits there said: 'How stupid are the minds of those who dwell on the earth to-day! I wish the disciples of Heraclitus and Democritus 6 , who laugh at everything or who weep at everything, were here. We should hear a mighty laughter and a mighty weeping.'

When the meeting was over, they gave the three newcomers from earth mementoes of their country; these were copper plates on which some hieroglyphs had been engraved, and these they took away with them.

Footnotes:

1. This is repeated from Conjugial Love 182.

2. The famous Greek politician and orator of the 4th century BC.

3. Greek philosophers of the late 4th century BC.

4. Otherwise known as the Muses.

5. See note on 29, 2. Pu, the Greek word for 'Where?' is a term for the place where the souls of the dead are thought to await resurrection.

6. Greek philosophers of the 5th century BC; Democritus was famous for his use of ridicule.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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