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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

 

Interaction of the Soul and Body #19

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19. To these observations I will add this MEMORABLE RELATION. After these pages were written, I prayed to the Lord that I might be permitted to converse with some disciples of ARISTOTLE, and at the same time with some disciples of DESCARTES, and with some disciples of LEIBNITZ, in order that I might learn the opinions of their minds concerning the interaction of the soul and the body. After my prayer was ended there came nine men - three Aristotelians, three Cartesians, and three LEIBNITZians and stood around me; the admirers of ARISTOTLE being on the left side, the followers of DESCARTES on the right, and the favourers of LEIBNITZ behind. At a considerable distance, and also at a distance from one another, I saw three persons crowned, as it were, with laurel, whom I knew, by an inflowing perception, to be those three great leaders or masters themselves. Behind LEIBNITZ stood a person holding the skirt of his garment, who, I was told, was Wolff. Those nine men, when they beheld one another, at first saluted one another with courteous speech, and talked together.

[2] But presently there arose from below a spirit with a torch in his right hand, which he shook before their faces, whereupon they became enemies, three against three, and looked fiercely at one another, for they were seized with the lust of altercation and dispute. Then the Aristotelians, who were also Schoolmen, began to speak, saying, "Who does not see that objects flow through the senses into the soul, as a man enters through the doors into a chamber, and that the soul thinks according to such influx? When a lover sees a beautiful virgin, or his bride, does not his eye sparkle, and transmit the love of her into the soul? When a miser sees bags of money, does he not burn towards them with every sense, and thence cause this ardour to enter the soul, and excite the desire of possessing them? When a proud man hears himself praised by another, does he not prick up his ears, and do not these transmit those praises to the soul? Are not the senses of the body like outer courts, through which alone entrance is obtained to the soul? From these considerations and innumerable others of similar nature, who can conclude otherwise than that influx proceeds from nature, or is physical?"

[3] While they were speaking thus, the followers of DESCARTES held their fingers on their foreheads; and now withdrawing them they replied, saying, "Ah, you speak from appearances. Do you not know that the eye does not love a virgin or bride from itself, but from the soul; and likewise that the senses of the body do not covet the bags of money from themselves, but from the soul; and also that the ears do not devour the praises of flatterers in any other manner? Is it not perception that causes sensation? And perception is of the soul, and not of the bodily organ. Say, if you can, what causes the tongue and lips to speak, but the thought; and what causes the hands to work, but the will? And thought and will are of the soul, and not of the body. Thus, what causes the eye to see, and the ears to hear, and the other organs to feel, but the soul? From these considerations, and innumerable others of a similar kind, everyone, whose wisdom rises above the things of the bodily senses, concludes that there is no influx of the body into the soul, but of the soul into the body; which influx we call Occasional, and also Spiritual Influx."

[4] When these had been heard, the three men who stood behind the former groups of three, and who were the favourers of LEIBNITZ, began to speak, saying, "We have heard the arguments on both sides, and have compared them; and we have perceived that in many particulars the latter are stronger than the former, and that in many others the former are stronger than the latter; wherefore, if you please, we will adjust the dispute." On being asked, "How?" they replied, "There is not any influx of the soul into the body, nor of the body into the soul; but there is a unanimous and instantaneous operation of both together, to which a celebrated author has assigned an elegant name, by calling it Pre-established Harmony."

[5] After this the spirit with a torch appeared again. Now, however, the torch was in his left hand, and he shook it behind their heads; whence the ideas of them all became confused, and they cried out at once, "Neither our soul nor our body knows which side we should take: wherefore let us settle this dispute by lot, and we will abide by the lot which comes out first." So they took three pieces of paper, and wrote on one of them, PHYSICAL INFLUX, on another, SPIRITUAL INFLUX, and on the third, PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONY; and they put them all into the crown of a hat. They then chose one of their number to draw, who, on putting in his hand, took out that on which was written SPIRITUAL INFLUX. Having seen and read it, they all said - some with a clear and flowing, some with a faint and indrawn voice - "Let us abide by this, because it came out first."

[6] But then an angel suddenly stood by and said, "Do not imagine that the paper in favour of Spiritual Influx came out first by chance, for it was of Providence. Because you are in confused ideas, you do not see its truth; but the very truth presented itself to the hand of him that drew the lots, that you might yield it your assent."

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #114

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114. To these points I will add two memorable occurrences taken from Revelation Unveiled.

The first memorable occurrence. I was suddenly overcome with a deathly illness. My whole head felt worse and worse. A poisonous smoke was blowing in from the great city that spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8). I was half dead and in severe pain. I thought I was about to die. I lay in bed in that condition for three and a half days. My spirit developed this sickness, and then my body came down with it as well.

Then I heard voices around me saying, “Look, he is lying dead in the street of our city—the one who was preaching that we should repent so that our sins would be forgiven and [that we should worship] only Christ the human being.”

They asked some of the clergy, “Is he worthy of burial?” (We read that the same thing happened to the two witnesses who were killed in that city; see Revelation 11:8, 9, 10.)

The clergy replied, “No. Let him lie there as a spectacle.”

They kept going away and coming back to mock me.

And I am telling the truth when I say that this happened to me at the very time that I was explaining the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation.

Then I heard more serious words from the people who had been mocking me—especially these: “How can repentance be practiced apart from faith? How can Christ the human being be adored as God? Given that we are saved for free without our deserving it at all, what then do we need except faith alone—the faith that God the Father sent the Son to take away the damnation of the law, to credit us with his own merit, to justify us before the Father, to absolve us from our sins, and then to give us the Holy Spirit, who activates every good thing within us? Aren’t these points in accordance with Scripture and also with reason?”

The crowd of bystanders applauded these statements.

[2] I heard all this but was unable to respond because I was lying there almost dead.

After three and a half days, however, my spirit regained its health. In the spirit I went from that street into the city, and I said again, “Practice repentance and believe in Christ, and your sins will be forgiven and you will be saved. If you do not, you will perish. The Lord himself preached that we must repent in order for our sins to be forgiven, and that we must believe in him. He commanded the disciples to preach the same message. Surely the dogma of your faith leads to utter complacency about the way you live!”

“What are you babbling about?” they replied. “The Son has made satisfaction. The Father has assigned us the Son’s merit and has justified us for the reason that these are our beliefs. We are now led by the spirit of grace. What sin could there be within us? What death could there be among us? Do you grasp this Good News, you preacher of sin and repentance?”

Then a voice from heaven said, “Surely the faith of someone who has not practiced repentance is nothing but a dead faith. The end has come, the end has come upon you who are complacent, guiltless in your own eyes, justified by your own faith—devils!”

At that moment a chasm suddenly opened up in the middle of the city and spread outward. The houses were falling in on each other and the people were swallowed up. Soon water bubbled up from the great hole and flooded what was already devastated.

[3] After they sank to a lower level and were seemingly covered in water, I wanted to know what their situation was like in the depths. A voice from heaven told me, “You will see and hear.”

Then the water that had seemingly flooded them disappeared from before my eyes. (Water in the spiritual world is a correspondence that appears around people who have false beliefs.) I saw the people in a sandy place at a great depth, where there were piles of stones. They were running between the piles of stones and loudly bemoaning their having been cast out of their great city.

They were shouting and wailing, “Why has this happened to us? We are clean, pure, just, and holy because of our faith.”

Others were saying, “Surely through our faith we have been cleansed, purified, justified, and sanctified.”

Still others were asking, “Hasn’t our faith made it possible for us to be seen and esteemed by God the Father and the whole Trinity, and to be declared before angels, as clean, pure, righteous, and holy? Haven’t we been reconciled, atoned for, ritually purged, and therefore absolved, washed, and wiped free of our sins? Didn’t Christ take away the damnation of the law? Why then have we been thrown down here like the damned? We did hear from a bold proclaimer of sin in our great city, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance.’ But didn’t we believe in Christ when we believed in his merit? Didn’t we practice repentance when we confessed that we were sinners? Why then has this happened to us?”

[4] A voice was then heard from the side: “Are you aware of any sin in yourselves? Have you ever examined yourselves, and then abstained from any evil because it is sinful against God? If you do not abstain from sin, then you are still devoted to it; and sin is the Devil. You, then, are the people of whom the Lord spoke when he said, ‘You will then begin to say, “We ate and drank with you. You taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I tell you, I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of wickedness”’ (Luke 13:26, 27). Matthew 7:22, 23 is also about you. Therefore go away, each to your own place. Do you see the holes leading to those caves? Go in there, and each of you will be given your own work to do, and food in accordance with your work. If you don’t go in, your hunger will drive you in.”

[5] After that a voice from heaven came to some people who were up at the level of the ground but were outside the city (see Revelation 11:13). The voice said loudly, “Beware! Beware of associating with people like that. Don’t you understand that evils that are called sins and acts of wickedness make us unclean and impure? How can you be cleansed and purified from them except by active repentance and by faith in the Lord God the Savior? Active repentance is examining yourselves, recognizing and admitting to your sins, accepting that you are at fault, confessing them before the Lord, begging for his help and power in resisting them, stopping doing them, and living a new life. All this is to be done as if you were doing it on your own. Do this once or twice a year when you are about to take Holy Communion. Afterward, when the sins for which you are at fault recur, say to yourselves, ‘We do not want these, because they are sins against God.’ This is actual repentance.

[6] “Surely you can all recognize that if you do not examine yourselves and see your sins, you remain in them. From birth you find all evils delightful. It feels good to take revenge, to be promiscuous, to steal, and to slander. Because they feel good you overlook them. If someone happens to point out to you that they are sins, you make excuses for them because they feel good. You use false arguments to defend them and convince yourselves that they are not sins, and you stay in them. And afterward you do those evil things more than you did before, to the point where you no longer know what sin is or even whether there is such a thing.

“It is different, however, for people who actively go through a process of repentance. The evils that they recognize and admit to [in themselves] they call sins. They therefore begin to abstain and turn away from them. Eventually they begin to feel the pleasure of those evils as unpleasant. The more this happens, the more they see and love what is good, and eventually even feel delight in it, which is the delight that the angels in heaven feel. Briefly put, the more we put the Devil behind us, the more we are adopted by the Lord and are taught, led, held back from what is evil, and kept in what is good by him. This is the pathway from hell to heaven; there is no other way.”

[7] It is amazing that Protestants have such a deep-seated resistance, antipathy, and aversion to active repentance. Their reaction to it is so strong that they cannot force themselves to do self-examination, to see their sins, and to confess them before God. It is as if they are overcome by horror as soon as they form the intention to do it. I have asked many Protestants in the spiritual world about this, and they all said that it is completely beyond their strength. When they heard that Catholics practice this, that is, that they examine themselves and openly confess their sins to a monk, the Protestants were profoundly amazed, especially since the Protestants themselves could not do this even in secret before God, although they had been commanded, just as the Catholics had been, to do this when they were about to take the Holy Supper. Some people in the spiritual world investigated why this was, and discovered that faith alone was what had led to such an impenitent state and such an attitude of heart. Then those Protestants were allowed to see that Catholics are saved if they turn to Christ and worship him, and no longer worship but only honor the leaders of their churches.

[8] After that we heard a kind of thunder, and a voice speaking from heaven and saying, “We are amazed. Say to the gathering of Protestants, ‘Believe in Christ and practice repentance, and you will be saved.’”

So I said it.

I added, “Clearly, baptism is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into the church. What else do godparents promise for the child being baptized but that she or he will renounce the Devil and all his works? Clearly, the Holy Supper is a sacrament of repentance and therefore introduction into heaven. Doesn’t the priest say to those about to take it that they absolutely have to practice repentance first? Clearly, the Ten Commandments are the universal teaching of the Christian church; they urge repentance. Isn’t it true that the six commandments on the second tablet say, ‘You are not to do this and that thing that is evil,’ not, ‘You are to do this and that thing that is good’? Therefore you are capable of knowing that the more we abstain from what is evil, the more we love what is good; and that before that, we do not know what good is, or even what evil is.”

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.

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