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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 #477

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

I heard a certain spirit, a young man newly come from the world, boasting of his licentious activities and acting as though he wished to have the acclaim of being a man more manly than others. Then amid the effronteries of his boasting, he blurted out also the following:

"What is more dismal than to imprison one's love and to live alone with only one woman? And what is more delightful than to set one's love free? Who is not wearied by the companionship of one, and enlivened by the attentions of many? Is anything sweeter than unrestricted freedom, variety, the deflowering of virgins, the deceiving of husbands, and licentious charades? Do not those things delight the inmost elements of the mind which are obtained by wiles, subterfuges and theft?"

[2] On hearing this, the people standing by said, "Do not speak so! You do not know where you are and in whose company you are. You have only recently arrived here. Under your feet is hell, and above your head is heaven. You are now in the world which is midway between those two and is called the world of spirits. All people come here and are gathered here who pass away out of the world, and they are explored with respect to their character and prepared, evil people for hell and good people for heaven. Perhaps you recall still from priests in the world that licentious and wanton men and women are cast into hell, and that the chastely married are taken up into heaven."

The newcomer laughed at that, saying, "What is heaven, and what is hell? Is it not heaven wherever a person is free, and is he not free who is at liberty to make love to as many of the opposite sex as he pleases? And is it not hell wherever a person is enslaved, and is he not enslaved who must restrict himself to one?"

[3] But a certain angel looking down from heaven heard what he was saying and stopped him from speaking, to keep him from going any further and speaking profanely of marriage. And the angel said to him, "Come up here, and I will show you by actual experience what heaven is and what hell is, and what the latter is like for the deliberately licentious."

The angel then pointed out a path, by which the newcomer ascended. And after receiving the newcomer, he took him first to a garden paradise, containing fruit trees and flowers whose beauty, charm and fragrance filled their spirits with invigorating delights.

On seeing these sights, the newcomer marveled with great admiration; but he was then seeing with his external sight, of the kind he had had in the world when viewing like things there, and in that state of sight he was rational. However, when seeing with his internal sight, in which licentiousness predominated and occupied every particle of his thought, he was not rational. His external sight was closed up, therefore, and his internal sight opened. And when it was opened he said, "What is this I am seeing now? Are they not wisps of straw and dry sticks of wood? And what am I smelling now? Is it not a foul stench? Where now have the things of paradise gone?"

Whereupon the angel said, "They are close by and around you, but they are not visible to your internal sight, which is licentious; for licentiousness turns heavenly things into hellish ones and sees only their opposites. Every person has an inner mind and an outer mind, thus an internal sight and an external sight. In evil people the inner mind is insane and the outer one wise, while in good people the inner mind is wise and in consequence of it the outer one too; and the character of the mind determines how a person in the spiritual world sees objects."

[4] After that, by a power given him, the angel closed up the newcomer's internal sight and opened his external one; and he took him through some gates towards the central area of their residences, where the young man saw magnificent palaces of alabaster, marble, and various precious stones, with arcades adjoining them, and columns round about, covered and beset with stunning emblems and ornamentations.

When the young man saw these, he was overwhelmed with astonishment, and he said, "What am I seeing? I am seeing magnificent sights in the essence of their magnificence, and architecture in the essence of its art!"

But then the angel closed up his external sight again, and opened his internal one, which was evil because of its foully licentious character; and at that the young man cried out, saying, "What am I seeing now? Where am I? Where now have the palaces and magnificent sights gone? I am seeing ruins, rubble, and cavernous hollows!"

[5] He was, however, shortly restored to his external state and taken into one of the palaces; and he beheld the ornamentations of the doors, windows, walls and ceilings - especially of the implements, which were covered and beset with heavenly forms of gold and precious stones such as words cannot describe or any art portray; for they transcended the imagery of words and the conceptions of art.

Seeing these things, the young man cried out again, saying, "These are truly marvels, never seen by any eye before!"

But then as previously his external sight was closed up and his internal one opened; and on being asked what he saw now, he replied, "Nothing but walls of rushes here, of straw there, and of firebrands over there."

[6] Again, however, he was brought into his external state of mind, and maidens were presented to him who were pictures of beauty, because they were images of heavenly affection; and these spoke to him in the sweet voice of their affection. At that, then, on seeing and hearing them, the young man's expression changed, and he spontaneously slipped back into his internal qualities, which were licentious. And because these qualities cannot endure any element of heavenly love, and conversely cannot be endured by any heavenly love, they vanished on both sides - the maidens from the sight of the man, and the man from the sight of the maidens.

[7] After that the angel informed him of the reason for these changes in the state of his sight. "I perceive," he said, "that in the world from which you come, you had a dual character, being one person in your inner qualities and another in your outer ones; and that in your outer qualities you were a law-abiding, moral and rational person, but in your inner qualities not law-abiding, not moral, and not rational, because you were licentious and an adulterer. When people of this character are permitted to ascend into heaven and are kept there in their outer qualities, they can see the heavenly objects around them; but when their inner qualities are laid open, instead of heavenly objects they see hellish ones.

[8] "However, you should know that the outer qualities in everyone here are gradually closed up and the inner ones laid open, and thus they are prepared for heaven or for hell. Furthermore, because the evil of licentiousness defiles the inner qualities of the mind more than any other evil, it is inevitable that you be carried down to the foul depravities of your love, depravities which exists in the hells, in caverns which stink of excrement.

"Who cannot know from reason that unchasteness and lasciviousness in the spiritual world is impure and unclean, and thus that nothing pollutes and defiles a person more and induces on him a hellish character?

"Take care, therefore, not to boast any further of your licentiousness, thinking that in this you are a man more manly than others. I predict to you that you will become impotent, even so that you scarcely know where your masculinity lies. Such is the fate that awaits those who boast of the prowess of their licentiousness."

After hearing this the young man descended and went back to the world of spirits, and returning to his former companions, he spoke with them modestly and chastely - but yet not for long.

  
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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 #663

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663. 1 The third experience.

I was once in company with angels and listened to their conversation. They were talking about intelligence and wisdom, saying that a person has no other feeling and perception but that intelligence and wisdom are both in him, and so whatever he wills and thinks comes from him. Yet in fact not a scrap of either comes from the person, apart from the ability to receive them. Among the many things they said was this, that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden stood for a belief that intelligence and wisdom were from man, and the tree of life stood for a belief that intelligence and wisdom were from God. It was because Adam was persuaded by the serpent to eat from the former tree, believing that he would be or become God, that he was ejected from the garden and damned.

[2] While the angels were discussing this, two priests arrived accompanied by a man who in the world had been a country's ambassador. I repeated to them what I had heard from the angels about intelligence and wisdom, and on hearing this the three of them began to argue about these two subjects and also about prudence, whether they were from God or from man. It was a fierce argument. All three believed alike that these came from man, because their actual feeling and so their perception supported this view; but the priests, being then under the influence of theological zeal, insisted that no part of intelligence and wisdom, and so of prudence, came from man. They found confirmation of that in these passages of the Word:

A man cannot take anything, unless it is given him from heaven, John 3:27.

Jesus said to the disciples, Without me you can do nothing, John 15:5.

[3] But the angels allowed me to perceive that, however much the priests talked like this, they still at heart held similar beliefs to the ambassador's. So the angels said to them: 'Take off your clothes and put on those of ministers of state, and believe that is what you are.' They did so, and then they thought from their interiors, and in talking used the arguments they inwardly supported; these were that all intelligence and wisdom reside in man and are his. 'Who,' they said, 'has ever felt that these flow in from God?' They looked at each other and backed each other up.

It is a special feature of the spiritual world that a spirit thinks himself to be what the clothes he wears indicate. The reason is that it is the understanding which clothes each person there.

[4] At that instant a tree was seen near them, and they were told: 'It is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; beware of eating from it.' Yet they were so infatuated with their own intelligence that they had a burning desire to eat from it, and they said to each other: 'Why shouldn't we? Isn't the fruit good?' So they went up to it and ate the fruit.

When the ambassador noticed this, they got together and became bosom friends. Then together, holding hands, they took the way of their own intelligence, which leads to hell. However I saw them brought back from there, because they were not yet prepared.

Footnotes:

1. This section is repeated from Conjugial Love 353-354.

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

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