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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 #355

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355. The second account:

When I once looked out into the world of spirits, I saw some men in a particular meadow, dressed in the same sort of clothing that people wear in the world, from which I recognized that they had only recently come from the world.

I went over to them and stood to the side, in order to hear what they were saying to each other. They were talking about heaven; and one of them, who knew something about heaven, said there were wonders there which no one could ever possibly believe unless he saw them. He cited as examples the paradise-like gardens; the palaces, magnificently constructed architecturally owing to the quintessence of the art there, shining as though of gold, with columns of silver in front, and covered with precious stones in heavenly forms; the houses, too, of jasper and sapphire, fronted by majestic porticos through which the angels enter; and the adornments inside the houses, which neither art nor words can describe.

[2] "As for the angels themselves," he said, "they are of both sexes. There are young men and married men, maidens and wives - maidens so beautiful that the world has nothing to match such beauty. Yet the wives are even more beautiful, appearing as veritable pictures of heavenly love, and their husbands as pictures of heavenly wisdom. The latter are also all youthful young men; and what is more, they do not know what love for the opposite sex is other than conjugial love. Furthermore - something that will surprise you - the husbands have a continual ability to experience its delights."

When those newly arrived spirits heard that they did not have any love for the opposite sex there other than conjugial love, and that they had a continual ability to experience its delights, they laughed among themselves and said, "What you are saying is unbelievable. Such an ability is not possible. You are, perhaps, making up stories."

[3] But then an angel from heaven stood unexpectedly in their midst and said, "Listen to me, please. I am an angel from heaven, and I have lived with my wife now for a thousand years, in the same flower of youth in which you see me here. I have this youthfulness as a result of conjugial love with my wife; and I can declare that I have had and continue to have the continual ability you are talking about. However, because I perceive that you believe it is not possible, I will speak with you on this subject in terms of its reasons, in accordance with the light of your intellect.

"You know nothing of the original state of man, which you call the state of his integrity. In that state, all the interior faculties of the mind were opened all the way to the Lord, and consequently were pervaded by a marriage of love and wisdom or of goodness and truth. So, because the goodness of love and the truth of wisdom are continually drawn to each other by love, they continually aspire to be united; and when the interior faculties of the mind are opened, this conjunctive, spiritual love freely flows down with its continual impetus and imparts the ability.

[4] "Because man's very soul is pervaded by a marriage of goodness and truth, it is impelled not only by a perpetual striving for union but also by a perpetual striving to be fruitful and produce a likeness of itself. So, when a person's interior faculties are open all the way down from the soul from that marriage there - since the interior faculties continually look to producing an effect in outmost expressions as their goal, in order to manifest themselves - as a result that perpetual striving to be fruitful and produce a likeness of itself, which is one of the soul, becomes one of the body. Consequently, because the ultimate operation of the soul in the body in the case of a married couple is into the ultimate expressions of love there, and these depend on the state of the soul, it is apparent why they have this continual ability.

[5] "They experience as well a perpetual fruitfulness, because there is a universal atmosphere of begetting and propagating the celestial attributes that have to do with love, the spiritual attributes that have to do with wisdom, and so the natural attributes that have to do with offspring - an atmosphere which emanates from the Lord and fills the entire heaven and entire world. Thus that heavenly atmosphere fills the souls of all people, and descends through their minds into the body, even to the outmosts of it, imparting a generative power. However, this power can be imparted only to those in whom a passage stands open from the soul through the higher and lower regions of the mind into the body and its outermost elements, which is the case in those who allow themselves to be led back by the Lord into the original state of their creation.

"I can declare that for a thousand years now I have never lacked the ability, or the power, or the virility, and that I have not experienced at all any diminishing of its forces, since these are continually renewed by the continual flowing in of the aforesaid universal atmosphere. They also then gladden the spirit, and do not leave it depressed, as happens in the case of those who suffer a loss of them.

[6] "Furthermore, truly conjugial love is altogether like the warmth of spring, whose flowing in inspires all things to burgeon and be fruitful. That, too, is the kind of warmth we have in our heaven. Consequently married partners there have springtime in them with its constant stimulus; and that constant stimulus is the impetus from which our virility comes.

"The fruits produced among us in heaven, however, are of another kind than among people on earth. With us the fruits are spiritual, which are the fruits of love and wisdom or of goodness and truth. A wife acquires from her husband's wisdom a love of it in her, and from his wife's love of wisdom a husband acquires wisdom in him. Indeed, a wife is actually transformed into an embodiment of love for her husband's wisdom, which is accomplished by her receptions of the propagations of his soul with delight - a delight arising from her willing to be an embodiment of love for her husband's wisdom. From being a maiden she thus becomes his wife and a likeness of him. As a result, too, love with its inmost friendship constantly increases in the wife, and wisdom with its happiness in the husband, and this to eternity. This is the state of angels in heaven."

[7] After the angel said that, he looked at the men who had come recently from the world and said to them, "You know that when you have felt the virile urge of love, you have made love to your married partners, and that after experiencing the delight you have turned away. But you do not know that in heaven we do not make love to our partners because of that virile force, but we have that virile force because of our love; and because we love our partners continually, that virility is continual in us.

"If you can reverse your state, therefore, you can understand this. When a man loves his partner continually, does he not love her with his whole mind and his whole body? For love directs all things of the mind and all things of the body to that which it loves; and because it is reciprocated, it so joins the two that they become as one."

[8] He said further, "I will not speak to you of conjugial love's having been implanted from creation in males and females, and of their inclination to a legitimate union; nor of the procreative faculty in males, which is tied together with a faculty for proliferating wisdom from a love of truth; nor of the fact that so far as a person loves wisdom from a love of wisdom, or truth from goodness, so far he experiences truly conjugial love and its accompanying power."

  
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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 #333

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333. The second experience.

Some time later I heard again from the lower earth the same cries as before 'How learned, how learned!' On looking around to see who was there, I found myself in the presence of angels from the heaven exactly above the people who were shouting 'How learned!'

When I talked to them about the shouting, they said that these were learned people who only argue whether a thing exists or not, and rarely reach the thought that it is so. 'They are therefore like winds which blow and pass on, or like bark around trees that have no heartwood, or like almond shells with no kernel, or like the peel around fruits with no flesh inside. For their minds are devoid of interior judgment, and merely coupled to the bodily senses. So if the senses themselves are unable to judge, they can reach no conclusions. In short, they are creatures of their senses, and we call them logicmongers. We call them this because they never reach any conclusions, but they pick up anything they hear and argue whether it exists, continually speaking for and against. Nothing gives them more pleasure than attacking truths and by subjecting them to argument tearing them in pieces. These are the people who consider themselves learned beyond anyone in the world.'

[2] On hearing this I begged the angels to take me down to visit them. So they took me down to a hollow, from which steps led down to the lower earth. We went down and followed the sound of shouting 'How learned!' There we found some hundreds of people standing in one place stamping on the ground. I was surprised at this and asked: 'Why are they standing like that stamping on the ground? They might,' I added, 'make a hole in the ground like that.'

The angels smiled at this and said: 'They seem to stand in one place because they never think about anything being so, but only whether it exists, and this they argue about. When thought makes no further progress, they seem merely to trample and wear out one clod of earth without advancing.'

The angels went on: 'Those who arrive in this world from the natural one, and are told that they are in a different world, form groups in many places, and try to find out where heaven and hell are, and likewise where God is. But even after being taught this, they still begin reasoning, debating and arguing whether God exists. They do so because at the present time so many people in the natural world are nature-worshippers, and when the talk turns to religion this is the subject they discuss among themselves and with others. This proposition and discussion rarely ends in an affirmation of faith in the existence of God. Afterwards these people associate more and more with the wicked; this happens because no one can do any good from the love of good, except by God's help.'

[3] After this I was taken to a meeting, and there I saw people with not unpleasing faces and well dressed. 'They look like this,' said the angels, 'in their own light, but if light is shed from heaven, there is a change in their faces, and in their clothes.' This happened, and their faces turned swarthy and they seemed to be wearing black sackcloth. But when this light was shut off, they returned to their previous appearance.

A little later I spoke with some of the people in the meeting and said: 'I have heard the crowd around you crying out "How learned!" So I should like, if I may, to enter into conversation with you about matters of the most profound learning.' 'Say anything you like,' they replied, 'and we will satisfy you.'

'What sort of religion,' I asked, 'will effect people's salvation?'

'We shall split up this question,' they said, 'into several, and we cannot give a reply until we have settled these. The order of discussion will be: (1) whether religion is of any importance; (2) whether or not there is such a thing as salvation; (3) whether one religion is more efficacious than another; (4) whether heaven and hell exist; (5) whether there is everlasting life after death; and many more questions.'

So I asked about the first question, whether religion is of any importance; and they started discussing it with many arguments. So I asked them to refer it to the meeting, which they did. The agreed reply was that this proposition requires so much investigation that it would not be finished before evening. 'Could you,' I asked, 'finish it within a year?' One of them said it could not be finished in a hundred years. 'So,' I said, 'in the meantime you have no religion, and since salvation depends upon it, you have no idea of salvation, no belief in it or hope for it.'

'Wouldn't you like us,' he replied, 'to prove first whether religion exists, what it is, and whether it is of any importance? If it exists, it will be for the wise too; if it does not, it will be only for the common people. It is well known that religion is called a bond; but the question may be asked, "For whom?" If it is only for the common people, it is not really of any importance; but if it is for the wise, then it is.'

[4] On hearing this I said: 'You are anything but learned, since you can think of nothing but whether it exists, and argue this in either direction. Can anyone be learned, unless he knows something for certain, and advances to that conclusion, just as a person advances step by step, and in due course achieves wisdom? Otherwise you do not so much as touch truths with your finger-tips, but drive them further and further from your sight. Therefore reasoning only whether it exists is like arguing about a hat without wearing it, or about a shoe without putting it on. What can come of this, except ignorance whether anything exists, whether anything is more than an idea, and so whether salvation exists, or everlasting life after death, whether one religion is better than another, or whether heaven and hell exist? You cannot have any thoughts on these subjects, so long as you are bogged down at the first step and pound the sand there, unable to put one foot in front of the other and make progress. Take care that, while your minds stand in the open outside the court, they do not inwardly grow ossified and turn into pillars of salt.'

With these words I left them, and they were so incensed they threw stones after me. Then they looked to me like carvings, totally devoid of human reason. I asked the angels what was their fate. They said that the worst of them are plunged into the depths, and there they find a desert, where they are forced to carry loads. Since they can then make no reasonable utterance, they chatter and make idle remarks, Seen from a distance there they look like donkeys carrying loads.

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

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