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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

 

True Christian Religion #110

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110. At this point I shall introduce these accounts of experiences, of which this is the first.

In the spiritual world I once saw a shooting star, which fell to earth surrounded by a streak of light. It was a meteor of the sort popularly known as a dragon. I noted the place where it fell; but it disappeared in the twilight as the day began to break, as always happens with shooting stars.

After daybreak I approached the spot where I had seen it fall during the night; I found the ground there composed of a mixture of sulphur, iron filings and clay. Then there suddenly appeared two tents, one directly over the spot, the other a little to the south of it. Then when I looked up, I saw a spirit falling from heaven like a thunderbolt; he landed in the tent which stood directly over the spot where the meteor had fallen; and I was in the other tent which stood beside it to the south. I stood at the entrance to the tent and saw the spirit also standing in the entrance to his tent.

So I asked him why he had thus fallen from heaven. He replied that he had been thrown down as an angel of the dragon by the angels of Michael, 'because,' he said, 'I had expressed some of my convictions about faith, which I had formed in the world. One of these was the idea that God the Father and God the Son are two and not one; for everyone in the heavens now believes that They are one as soul and body are one. Any expression contrary to that belief is like a tickling in their nostrils, or an awl piercing their ears, which causes them mental disturbance and pain. For this reason, anyone who contradicts them is ordered to leave, and if he shilly-shallies, he is thrown out.'

[2] On hearing this I said to him, 'Why did you not believe as they did?' He replied that after leaving the world no one can believe anything but what he had proved to himself and so imprinted on his mind. This remains rooted in it so that it cannot be torn out, and this is especially the case with convictions about God, since it is his idea of God which determines everyone's place in the heavens.

I went on to ask what proofs he had found that the Father and the Son were two. 'The passages in the Word,' he said, 'which state that the Son prayed to the Father, not only before the crucifixion, but actually during it; and that He humbled Himself before the Father. How then could they be one, as the soul and the body are one in man? Who prays as if to another, or humbles himself as if before another, if he is himself that other? No man behaves like that, far less the Son of God. Moreover, the whole Christian church in my time divided the Divinity into Persons, and each Person is one by itself, and is defined as that which remains in existence by its own right.'

[3] On hearing him say this I replied: 'I have grasped from what you say that you are utterly ignorant how God the Father and God the Son are one; and since you do not know how this is, you have accepted the false notions about God still prevalent in the church. Do you not know that, when the Lord was in the world, He had a soul like any other person? Where could He have got it from, unless from God the Father? There are plenty of plain statements that this is so in the writings of the Evangelists. What then is it that is called the Son, but the Human which was conceived of the Father's Divine and born of the Virgin Mary? A mother cannot conceive a soul; that would be totally repugnant to the order which controls human reproduction. Nor can God the Father implant the soul from Himself, and then retire, as every father in the world does, since God is His own Divine Essence, and this is one and indivisible; and being indivisible, it must be God Himself. This is why the Lord says that the Father and He are one, that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father, and many more similar statements. This too was seen, at a distance, by those who framed the Athanasian Creed; so after splitting God into three Persons, they still declare that in Christ God and man, that is, the Divine and the Human, are not two, but one, as the soul and the body in man are one.

[4] 'The Lord in the world prayed to the Father as if to another, and humbled Himself before the Father as if before another, because this was to conform with the order established from creation; for this is the immutable order which controls everyone's progress towards being linked with God. This order lays down that as a person links himself to God, which he does by living according to the rules of order or God's commandments, so God links Himself to him, and makes him spiritual instead of natural. In the same way the Lord united Himself with His Father, and God the Father united Himself with the Lord. Was the Lord not a child like any other, a boy like any other boy? Do we not read that He advanced in wisdom and grace, and later, that He besought the Father to glorify His name, that is, His Human? To glorify is to make Divine by union with Himself. This shows plainly why the Lord in His state of exinanition, which was His state while advancing towards union, prayed to the Father.

[5] 'That same order was imprinted on every person from creation, namely the rule that as a person prepares his understanding by means of truths from the Word, so does he make it suitable for the reception of faith from God; and as he prepares his will by means of charitable actions, so he renders it capable of receiving love from God. For as a craftsman cuts a diamond, so he gives it the faculty of receiving and emitting a brilliant light; and so forth. To prepare oneself to receive and be linked to God is to live in accordance with Divine order, and the laws of order are all the commandments of God. The Lord fulfilled these down to the last comma, and so made Himself a receiver of the Divinity in all its fulness. Therefore Paul says that in Jesus Christ all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and the Lord says that all things of the Father's are His.

[6] 'It is further to be held that the Lord alone is active in a person, and the person by himself is only passive, but he is moved to activity by the inflow of life from the Lord. This perpetual inflow from the Lord makes it appear to a person that he acts of himself. Because this is so, he also has free will, and this is given to him in order to prepare himself to receive and be linked to the Lord, a state which would be impossible if the linking were not reciprocal. This is accomplished when a person acts of his own free will, yet is led by faith to attribute all activity to the Lord.'

[7] After this I asked whether, like the rest of his companions, he admitted that God is one. He replied that he did. Then I said: 'I am afraid that in your heart you may believe that there is no God. Surely everything one says with the lips arises from thought in the mind? Therefore a verbal admission that there is one God must inevitably eliminate the idea of three Gods from the mind; and contrariwise, such a thought in the mind must inevitably eliminate the verbal admission that there is one God. So what can be the result, except a belief that there is no God? Surely this will turn into a vacuum all the intervening stages between the thought and the lips, and in the reverse direction between the lips and the thought? So what other conclusion about God can the mind reach, but that nature is God? Or about the Lord, but that His soul was from His mother or from Joseph? All the angels of heaven recoil from these two ideas as horrible and abominable.'

After this the spirit was banished into the abyss described in Revelation (Revelation 9:2ff) where the angels of the dragon discuss the secrets of their faith.

[8] The next day, when I looked towards the same spot, I saw in place of the tents two statues in human shape, made of dust from the soil, which was a mixture of sulphur, iron and clay. One statue appeared to hold a sceptre in its left hand, it had a crown on its head, and a book in its right hand; its bodice was girded diagonally with a sash decorated with precious stones, and its robe streamed out behind towards the other statue. But these were appearances given to that statue by imagination. Then a voice was heard from one of the followers of the dragon: 'This statue represents our faith as a queen, and the other one behind it is charity represented as her handmaid.' This statue was made out of a similar mixture of powders; it was placed right at the end of the robe streaming out behind the queen, and it held in its hand a placard on which was written: 'Beware of coming too close and touching the robe.' Then a sudden shower fell from heaven, which drenched both the statues, and since they were made of a mixture of sulphur, iron and clay, they began to bubble, as a mixture of those substances will when water is poured on 1 . So they caught fire from internal combustion, fell apart and were reduced to heaps, which afterwards stuck up above ground like mounds in a graveyard.

Footnotes:

1. Sulphur here means a combustible material of a sulphurous nature.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #316

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316. The second account:

Walking once with tranquil heart in a pleasantly peaceful state of mind, I saw in the distance a wood, which had in the midst of it an enclosed path leading to a little palace; and I saw young women and men and husbands and wives going in. I, too, in the spirit went over there, and I asked one of the keepers standing at the entrance of the path whether I might go in as well. He stared at me; and so I asked, "Why are you staring at me?"

"I am examining you," he replied, "to see whether the pleasant state of peace reflected in your face draws any of its character from a pleasant delight in conjugial love. After this path there is a little garden, and in the middle of it a house with a newly married couple in it. Their friends are coming here today to wish them happiness and joy. I do not know the people I am allowing to enter, but I was told I would recognize them from their faces. If I saw in them a delight in conjugial love, I was to let them in, and no one else."

Every angel can see from others' faces what the delights of their heart are; and because I was thinking about conjugial love, it was a delight in that love that he saw in my face. This contemplation of mine shone from my eyes and lent an inner glow to my face, so that he told me I might go in.

[2] The enclosed path through which I went was lined with fruit trees joined together by interlocking branches, thus forming an unbroken wall of trees on either side. Through this pathway I entered the little garden, which exhaled a pleasant fragrance from its bushes and flowers. The bushes and flowers grew in pairs; and I learned that gardens of this sort appear around houses where weddings are being or have been celebrated, on which account they are called wedding gardens.

After that I went into the house, and there I saw the married couple holding each other by the hand and speaking to each other out of truly conjugial love. Moreover, from their faces I was given to see then an image of conjugial love, and from their conversation, its vibrancy.

Later, when I among many others had expressed my prayers for them and wished them happiness and joy, I went out into the wedding garden; and I saw on the right side of it a group of young men, to which all who left the house went hurrying over. They all hurried over there because they were having a conversation about conjugial love, and this conversation drew the hearts of all with a kind of hidden force to it. I listened then to a wise person in the group speaking about that love, and what I heard was in summary the following:

[3] "The Lord's Divine providence is most specific and therefore most universal in connection with marriages and in its operation in marriages in heaven, because all blessings of heaven flow from the delights of conjugial love, like sweet waters from a sweetly gushing spring. It is therefore provided by the Lord that conjugial pairs be born, and they are raised and continually prepared for their marriages, neither the boy nor the girl being aware of the fact. Then, after a period of time, the girl - now a marriageable young woman - and the boy - now a young man able to marry - meet somewhere, as though by fate, and notice each other. And they immediately recognize, as if by a kind of instinct, that they are a match, thinking to themselves from a kind of inner dictate, the young man, 'she is mine,' and the young woman, 'he is mine.' Later, after this thought has for some time become settled in the minds of each, they deliberately talk about it together and pledge themselves to each other in marriage.

"We say as though by fate and as if by instinct, when we mean by Divine providence, because when one is unaware that it is Divine providence, that is how it appears."

With respect to his statement that conjugial pairs are born, raised and prepared for their marriages without their knowing, the speaker supported it by the conjugial similarity visible in the faces of a couple, also by the innermost and eternal union of their hearts and minds, neither of which would be possible the way they are in heaven unless foreseen and provided by the Lord.

[4] Having said this - to which the group responded with applause - the wise person speaking went on to say that there is a conjugial element in the smallest particulars in every person, both male and female; only that the conjugial element in the male and the conjugial element in the female are not the same, but the conjugial element of the male possesses a capacity for conjunction with the conjugial element of the female, and vice versa, even in the least particulars.

This he showed by the marriage of will and understanding in every individual, the two of which operate together in the least constituents of the mind and in the least constituents of the body; from which it can be seen that there is a conjugial element in each component, even the least. "This is also made evident," he said, "from the composite organs of the body which are formed from its elemental constituents. We find, for example, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two cheeks, two lips, two arms and hands, two legs, two feet; and inside the body, two hemispheres of the brain, two ventricles of the heart, two lungs, two kidneys, two testicles. Even when an organ is not paired, still it exhibits a division into two parts. The reason there are these sets of two is that one is connected with the will and the other with the intellect, which operate in conjunction with each other so marvelously that they give the appearance of being one. Thus the two eyes produce one power of sight, the two ears one power of hearing, the two nostrils one sense of smell, the two lips one speech, the two hands one labor, the two feet one gait, the two hemispheres of the brain one habitation of the mind, the two chambers of the heart one life of the body through the blood, the two lungs one respiration, and so on. Only that in the case of a married couple, the masculine element and feminine element united by truly conjugial love produce one life that is fully human."

[5] As he was saying this, a shaft of lightning appeared in the sky to our right having a red color, and another shaft of lightning to our left that was white, neither of them very intense. These entered through our eyes into our minds and illumined them as well. Then, following these, we heard the sound of thunder - in actuality a low murmur coming from the angelic heaven and growing louder in its descent.

Hearing it, and having seen the lightning, the wise person speaking said, "These are meant for me as a signal and admonition to add to my discussion something further, that in the twinned pairs of organs I have mentioned, the one on the right symbolizes the good connected with the two, and the one on the left the truth connected with them; and that this is owing to the marriage of good and truth engraved on each person in his whole being and in his every least part, good having relation to the will and truth to the understanding, and the two together to a union of these. For this reason, in heaven 'the right eye' means the good connected with sight, and 'the left eye' the truth connected with it. So, too, 'the right ear' means the good connected with hearing, and 'the left ear' the truth connected with it. Similarly, 'the right hand' means the good connected with a person's strength, and 'the left hand' the truth connected with it. And so on with the rest of these twinned pairs.

"Moreover, because 'right' and 'left' have these symbolic associations, the Lord said:

If your right eye causes you to slip, pluck it out.... And if your right hand causes you to slip, cut it off.... 1

"He meant by this that if something good is turned to evil, it should be cast away.

"For the same reason He also told His disciples to cast their net on the right side of the boat, and when they did so, they caught a great number of fish. 2 And by this He meant they should teach the good of charity, and by doing so would gather in people."

[6] Following these remarks, the two shafts of lightning appeared again, still less intense than before. And we saw then that the lightning on the left drew the whiteness of its light from the reddish fire of the lightning on the right.

Seeing this, the speaker said, "It is a sign from heaven confirming what I have said, because something fiery in heaven means something good, and something white there means something true. As for our having seen that the lightning on the left drew the whiteness of its light from the reddish fire of the lightning on the right, this is visible evidence that the whiteness of light or light itself is nothing other than the luminance of fire."

At the end of this discourse, all in the group were fired with a joyful state of goodness and truth inspired by the shafts of lightning and what they had been told concerning them, and in this state they departed for home.

Footnotes:

1. Matthew 5:29-30.

2. John 21:6.

  
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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.

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