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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 #444

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

After I finished my considerations of conjugial love and began reflecting on licentious love, suddenly two angels stood beside me and said, "We perceived and understood what you were thinking about before, but the things you are now pondering escape us, and we do not comprehend them. Omit them, because they are of no consequence."

But I replied, "This love that I am considering now is not of no consequence, because it exists."

To that they responded, "How can there be any love that does not exist from creation? Is it not conjugial love that exists from creation? Is this not a love between two people who have the capability of becoming one? How can there be a love which divides and separates them? What young man can love any other woman than the one who loves him in return? Must not the love in one recognize and acknowledge the love in the other - loves which, when they meet, of their own accord unite? Who can love someone in whom that love is missing? Is it not conjugial love alone that is mutual and reciprocal? If love is not reciprocal, does it not pull back and die?"

[2] On hearing this I asked the two angels what society of heaven they were from, and they said, "We are from the heaven of innocence. 1 We came into this world of heaven as little children and were raised under the Lord's guidance. Moreover, after I became an adolescent youth, and my wife here with me a marriageable girl, we were betrothed and pledged, and at the earliest opportunity married. So, because we have known nothing regarding any other love than a truly wedded and conjugial love, therefore when your ideas were communicated to us concerning an alien love altogether opposed to our love, we did not comprehend any of them. Consequently we have come down to ask you why you are pondering notions so inconceivable. Tell us, then, how a love is possible which not only does not exist from creation, but is even contrary to creation. We regard things contrary to creation as matters having no reality."

[3] When he said this, my heart rejoiced that I was given an opportunity to speak with angels of such innocence, who did not know at all what licentiousness was. I opened my mouth therefore and explained, saying, "Do you not know that there is such a thing as good and evil, and that good exists from creation, but not evil? And yet evil regarded in itself is not nothing, even though it is nothing good?

"Good exists from creation, and good moreover in the highest degree and in the least degree; and when this least good reduces to nothing, evil arises on the other side. Therefore there is no proportional relationship or progression of good to evil, but a proportional relationship and progression of good to a greater or lesser good, and of evil to a greater or lesser evil; for good and evil are opposites in every single respect.

"Now because good and evil are opposites, there is a middle ground, and in it an area of equilibrium, in which evil acts against good. But because evil does not prevail, it remains in the endeavor. Every person grows up in this equilibrium; and being an equilibrium between good and evil, or to say the same thing, between heaven and hell, it is a spiritual equilibrium, which produces a state of freedom in those who live in it. The Lord draws all people out of this equilibrium to Him, and the person who follows in freedom is led by Him out of evil into good, and thus into heaven.

"It is the same with love, especially in the case of conjugial love and licentious love. Conjugial love is good, while licentious love is evil. Every person who hears the voice of the Lord and follows Him in freedom is introduced by the Lord into conjugial love with all its delights and joys. But the person who does not hear and does not follow introduces himself into licentious love, entering at first into its delights, but afterwards into its distresses, and finally into its miseries."

[4] My having said that, the two angels asked, "How could evil come into existence when nothing but good existed from creation? For anything to exist it must have an origin. Good could not be the origin of evil, because evil is nothing good, being rather the negation and destruction of good. But still, because evil exists and is experienced, it is not nothing, but something. Tell us, therefore, from what this something, after having no existence, came into existence."

To that I replied, "This secret cannot be explained unless it is known that no one is good but God alone, 2 and that nothing is good that is good in itself unless it is from God. Consequently it is the person who looks to God and wills to be led by God who is motivated by good. But the person who turns away from God and wills to be led by himself is not motivated by good; for the good that he does is either for the sake of himself or for the sake of the world; thus it is either merit-seeking, or feigned, or hypocritical. From this it is apparent that man himself is the origin of evil - not that that origin was infused into man from creation, but that by turning from God to self he infused it into himself.

"This origin of evil did not exist in Adam and his wife until the serpent said, '...in the day you eat of (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil)...you will be like God' (Genesis 3:5). And then, because they turned away from God, and turned to themselves as though to a god, they created in themselves the origin of evil. Eating of that tree symbolized their believing that a person knows good and evil and is wise on his own, and not from God."

[5] But then the two angels asked, "How could man turn away from God and turn to himself, when a person can will nothing, think nothing, and so do nothing except from God. Why did God permit it?"

However, I replied, "Man was so created that everything he wills, thinks and does appears to him as being in him and thus from him. Without this appearance a person would not be a human being, for he would be unable to receive anything of good and truth or of love and wisdom, retain it, and seemingly adopt it as his own. Consequently it follows that without this, as it were, living appearance, man would not have any conjunction with God, and so neither any eternal life. But if as a result of this appearance he persuades himself to the belief that he wills, thinks, and thus does good of himself, and not from the Lord (even though to all appearance as though of himself), he turns good into evil in him, and so creates in him the origin of evil. This was Adam's sin.

[6] "But let me explain this matter a little more clearly. The Lord views every person by looking at his forehead, and this sight passes to the back of his head. Behind the forehead is the cerebrum, and in the back of the head the cerebellum. The cerebrum is devoted to wisdom and its truths, while the cerebellum is devoted to love and its goods. Therefore a person who looks with his face to the Lord receives wisdom from him, and through that wisdom, love. But a person who looks away from the Lord receives love and not wisdom; and love without wisdom is love that originates with man and not from the Lord. Moreover, because this love allies itself with falsities, it does not acknowledge God, but embraces itself as a god; and this it tacitly defends by the person's faculty of understanding and of becoming wise as though of himself, implanted in him from creation. Thus this love is the origin of evil.

"The fact of this can be visibly demonstrated. I will call here some evil spirit who has turned away from God, and I will speak to him from behind or at the back of his head. And you will see that the things I say are turned into their opposites."

[7] So I summoned such a spirit. He came, and I spoke to him from behind, saying, "Do you know anything about hell, damnation, and the torment there?" Then, when he turned around to face me, I asked, "What did you hear?"

He replied: "I heard the following. 'Do you know anything about heaven, salvation, and the happiness there?'"

Afterwards then, when I repeated his answer to him from behind, he said that he heard what I had said at first.

After that I said to him from behind, "Do you know that people in hell are insane because of their falsities?" And on my asking him about this, as to what he had heard, he said, "I heard, 'Do you know that people in heaven are wise because of their truths?'

Again, when I repeated this answer to him from behind, he said that he heard, "Do you know that people in hell are insane because of their falsities?"

And so it went. From which it became plainly apparent that when the mind is turned away from the Lord, it turns to itself, so that it then perceives things in a contrary way.

"That is the reason," I said, "that, as you know, in this spiritual world, no one is permitted to stand behind another and speak to him; for he thus infuses into the other his love, which the other's intelligence then yields to and obeys because of the delight attached to it, but which, being from man and not from God, is a love of evil or a love of falsity.

[8] "In addition to this, I will relate to you another, similar occurrence, namely, that I have several times heard goods and truths descend from heaven into hell, and they were gradually turned there into their opposites - good into evil, and truth into falsity. The reason for this phenomenon is the same, namely, that all who are in hell turn away from the Lord."

After listening to this, the two angels thanked me and said, "Because you are now thinking and writing about a love that is contrary to our conjugial love, and because anything contrary to that love saddens our minds, we will leave you."

And as they bade me farewell, I asked them not to report anything concerning this love to their brothers and sisters in heaven, because it would injure their innocence.

I can declare for a certainty that people who die as little children grow up in heaven, and when they attain a stature like that of youths eighteen years old and of girls fifteen years old in the world, they stop there, and marriages are then provided for them by the Lord. Moreover, that both before marriage and after it, they do not know at all what licentiousness is, or that it is possible.

Footnotes:

1. I.e., the third heaven. See no. 410.

2. Matthew 19:17.

  
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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 #507

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507. The fifth experience. 1

I was talking with angels and we came at last to the subject of the lust for evil which every person acquires by birth. 'In the world where I live,' said one of them, 'those who are possessed by lust appear to us angels as fools, but to themselves they seem extremely wise. On this account, in order to drag them out of their folly, they are by turns allowed to lapse into it and are then brought to a rational frame of mind, which in their case is confined to externals. When they are in this state they see, acknowledge and confess that they are crazy. But they still long to exchange their rational state for their crazed one, and they plunge into it as being freedom and pleasure in place of compulsion and unpleasantness. So it is lust that inwardly delights them, not intelligence.

[2] 'There are three universal loves of which every person is from creation compounded: the love of the neighbour, which is also the love of performing services, and this is a spiritual love; the love of the world, which is also the love of possessing wealth, and this is a material love; and self-love, which is also the love of dominating others, and this is a bodily love. A person is truly human when the love of the neighbour, or the love of performing services, makes up the head, and the love of the world, or of possessing wealth, makes up the chest and belly, and self-love, or the love of dominating, makes up the feet and the soles of the feet. But if the love of the world makes up the head, a person is only human in the way a hunchback is. And if self-love makes up the head, he is not like a person standing on his feet, but like one standing on the palms of his hands with his head down and his haunches in the air.

[3] 'When the love of performing services makes up the head, and the other two loves duly make up the trunk and feet, the person appears in heaven to have the face of an angel with a lovely rainbow around his head. But if the love of the world or wealth makes up the head, seen from heaven he seems to have a pale face like a corpse with a yellow ring around his head. And if self-love or the love of dominating others makes up the head, seen from heaven he seems to have a face dark with fiery gleams with a white ring around his head.'

This led me to ask: 'What do the rings around the head represent?' Intelligence;' they replied, 'the white ring around the head of a person with a dark face with fiery gleams represents his intelligence being limited to externals or around him, and his craziness being in his internals or inside him. Also a person of this sort is wise when engaged in the body, but crazy when in the spirit. No one is wise in spirit except by the Lord's doing; this happens when he is born again and created anew by the Lord.'

[4] After this the ground on the left opened and I saw rising through the opening a devil with a dark face with fiery gleams and a white ring around his head. 'Who are you?' I asked. 'I am Lucifer,' he said, 'the son of the dawn. I was cast down for making myself like the Most High, as described in Isaiah, chapter 14.' He was not actually Lucifer, but he thought he was. 'Since you have been cast down,' I said, 'how can you rise again from hell?' 'There,' he said, 'I am a devil, but here an angel of light; don't you see I have a white ring round my head? And you will see, if you wish, that among moral people I am moral, among rational people rational, among spiritual people even spiritual. I was even able to preach.'

'What did you preach about?' I asked. 'Against cheats,' he said, 'against adulterers and all the hellish loves. In fact it was then I called myself the devil Lucifer and invoked curses against myself as such, so that I was praised to the skies. That was how I got the name of the son of the dawn. To my own surprise, when I was in the pulpit I could think of nothing but speaking correctly and properly. But the reason was revealed to me, that I was in externals and these were then separated from my internals. Yet despite having this revealed to me, I was still unable to change, because I regarded myself as superior to the Most High, and was proud enough to oppose Him.'

[5] 'How,' I asked then, 'could you have spoken like that when you are yourself a cheat and an adulterer?' 'I am different,' he replied, 'when I am in externals or the body, from what I am when in internals or the spirit. In the body I am an angel, but in the spirit a devil. For while I am in the body I am in the power of the understanding, but in the spirit I am in the power of the will, and the understanding carries me upwards, while the will carries me down. When I am in the power of the understanding there is a white ring surrounding my head; but when the understanding becomes completely subservient to the will and is its creature, which is our ultimate fate, the ring turns black and fades away. When this happens I can no longer climb up into this light,,

Suddenly, however, catching sight of the angels with me, his face became inflamed and his voice became harsh, and he turned black, including the ring around his head. Then he fell back into hell through the opening by which he had risen. The by-standers drew the conclusion from what they had seen and heard that it is the will and not the understanding which determines a person's character, since the will has no difficulty in bringing the understanding over to its side and making it subservient.

[6] Then I asked the angels where the devils got their rationality from. 'It is,' they said, 'from the glory of self-love, for self-love is surrounded by glory, since this is the brilliance of its fire, and glory raises the understanding almost into the light of heaven. Everyone's understanding is capable of being raised in proportion to his knowledge; but the will can only be raised by living in accordance with the truths taught by the church and by reason. That is why even atheists, who out of self-love boast of their reputation, and so pride themselves on their intelligence, enjoy a higher degree of rationality than many others. But this happens when they are deep in intellectual thought, not when they are letting their wills express their love. It is love in the will which takes possession of the internal man, but thought in the understanding which takes possession of the external man.' The angel went on to tell us the reason why man is a compound of three loves, that of service, that of the world, and self-love. It is so that he may be guided in his thoughts by God, yet think entirely as if of himself. He told us that the highest levels of the human mind are turned upwards to God, the middle levels outwards to the world, the lowest downwards to the body. It is because these are turned downwards that a person thinks as if entirely of his own accord, when in fact his thoughts are controlled by God.

Footnotes:

1. This section is repeated with modifications from Conjugial Love 269.

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

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