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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 #78

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78. The third experience.

The next day an angel came to me from another community in heaven and said, 'We have heard in our community that because of your thoughts about the creation of the universe you were sent for to a community near ours; and there you gave a lecture on creation, which they applauded and have since taken great pleasure in. Now I am going to show you how animals and plants of every kind were produced by God.'

So he took me into a broad, green plain and said, 'Look around you.' I did so and saw birds of the most beautiful colours, some in flight, some sitting on trees and some on the level plucking petals from roses. Among the birds there were also doves and swans. When these had vanished from my sight, I saw not far away flocks of sheep with their lambs, of goats both male and female, and around these flocks I saw herds of cattle with their calves, as well as of camels and mules. In a wood I saw stags 1 with lofty antlers, as well as unicorns.

When I had seen these, the angel said, 'Turn to face east.' There I saw a garden full of fruit trees, oranges, citrons, olives, vines, figs, pomegranates and bushes that produce edible berries.

Then he said, 'Now look to the south.' There I saw crops of various kinds of grain, wheat, millet, barley and beans. Around them were flowerbeds full of roses of beautifully variegated colours. To the north there were woods full of chestnuts, palms, limes, planes and other leafy trees.

[2] When I had seen these, the angel said, 'All the things you have seen are correspondences of the affections of the love on the part of the angels in the neighbourhood;' and he 2 told me to which affections each corresponded. 'Moreover,' he went on, 'not only those but all the other sights that present themselves to our eyes are correspondences; for instance, houses, the furniture in them, tables and food, clothes, even gold and silver coins, the diamonds and other precious stones which wives and girls in the heavens wear for their adornment. From all these things we can tell what each person is like in respect of love and wisdom. The contents of our houses, which serve a purpose, remain there constantly; but in the case of those who wander from one community to another, such things change depending upon the company the people are in.

[3] 'These things have been shown to you so that you can see creation on the scale of the universe reflected in these particular models. For God is love itself and wisdom itself, and His love contains infinite affections, and His wisdom infinite perceptions; all the things to be seen upon earth are correspondences of these affections and perceptions. This is the origin of birds and animals, trees and shrubs, crops and grain, plants and grasses. For God has no extension, but is everywhere in space; so He fills the universe from first to last. Because He is omnipresent, there are such correspondences of the affections of His love and wisdom throughout the natural world. But in our world, which is called the spiritual world, similar correspondences present themselves to those who receive affections and perceptions from God. The difference is that in our world such things are created by God in an instant in accordance with the affections of the angels. But in your world, although their creation is in principle similar, provision has been made for them to be constantly renewed from generation to generation, so that creation is continuous.

[4] 'The reason why in our world creation is instantaneous, but in your world continued a generation at a time, is that the atmospheres and soils of our world are spiritual, while those of your world are natural. Natural objects have been created to serve as clothing for spiritual ones, just as layers of skin clothe the bodies of men and animals, bark and bast clothe the trunks and branches of trees, the pia mater and dura mater and other membranes clothe the brain, sheathes the nerves, the neurilemata their fibres, and so on. That is why everything in your world remains constant, and is regularly repeated year by year.'

'Report,' he added, 'what you have seen and heard to the inhabitants of your world, seeing that up to now they have been in total ignorance of the spiritual world, and without knowing about it no one can know, nor even guess, that in our world creation is continuous, and was similar in your world too when God created the universe.'

After this our talk turned to various subjects, and at length to hell, where none of the sort of things that exist in heaven are to be seen, but only their opposites, since the affections of the love of its inhabitants, which are longings for evil, are the opposite of the affections of love on the part of the angels in heaven. In company with those in hell, and in general in their deserts, there are to be seen birds of the night, such as bats, tawny and horned owls, as well as wolves, leopards, tigers, rats and mice; also poisonous snakes of every kind, dragons and crocodiles. Where there is a grassy stretch, there is an undergrowth of brambles, nettles, thorns and thistles, and some poisonous plants, which come up and disappear by turns. Then there are to be seen only heaps of stones and marshes full of croaking frogs. All of these things too are correspondences, but as was said before, correspondences of the affections of their love, which are longings for evil. Yet such things are not created there by God, nor were they in the natural world, where similar things come into existence. For all things that God created and creates were and are good. But such things arose on earth together with hell, which was composed of human beings who, by turning away from God, became after death devils and satans. But because these frightful subjects began to distress our ears, we turned our thoughts away from them and recalled instead what we had seen in the heavens.

Footnotes:

1. The Latin has 'hinds'.

2. The Latin has 'they'.

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

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