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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

 

True Christian Religion #79

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79. The fourth experience.

Once when I was thinking about the creation of the universe, some people from the Christian part of the world approached me, who in their time had been among the most famous philosophers and had a reputation for surpassing wisdom. 'We notice,' they said, 'that you are thinking about creation; tell us what is your opinion on that subject.'

'Tell me first,' I replied, 'what is yours.' 'My opinion,' said one of them, 'is that creation is the work of nature, and that nature therefore created itself, having existed from eternity. A vacuum does not and cannot exist. Yet what is it that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, smell with our noses and breathe with our lungs, if not nature? Because nature is outside us, it is also within us.'

[2] Another person who heard this said: 'You speak of nature and regard it as the creator of the universe, but you do not know how nature made the universe; so I will tell you. It twisted itself into vortices which clashed together as clouds do, or like houses collapsing in an earthquake.' He explained that this collision caused the denser material to come together to form the earth; the more fluid parts separated out and came together to form the seas; and the lighter parts also separated out to form the ether and the air, the lightest of all formed the sun. 'Have you not seen how when oil, water and dust are mixed together, they spontaneously separate out and arrange themselves in order one above the other?'

[3] Then another listener said: 'What you say is mere imagination. Everyone knows that the first source of all things was chaos, which in size filled a quarter of the universe. In its midst was fire, with ether around that, and matter around the ether. This chaos split open and the fire burst forth through the cracks, as it does from Etna or Vesuvius, to form the sun. Next the ether expanded and spread around, to form an atmosphere. Finally the remaining matter condensed into a ball, to form the earth. As for the stars, they are merely lights in the expanse of the universe, which arose from the sun and its fire and light. For the sun was at first like an ocean of fire, which to avoid setting fire to the earth threw off from itself shining sparks; these took up their positions in the surroundings and so completed the universe by forming the sky.'

[4] But there was one of the by-standers who said: 'You are wrong. You think yourselves wise, and I seem to you simple. Yet in my simplicity I have believed, and still do, that the universe was created by God; and because nature is part of the universe, He created it at the same time as the whole of nature. If nature had created itself, would it not have existed from eternity? That is a fine piece of nonsense.'

Then one of the so-called wise men rushed up nearer and nearer to the speaker, and put his left ear to the other's mouth - his right ear was blocked with what looked like cotton-wool - and asked what he had said. He repeated the same statement, whereupon the man who had come up looked around him to see if any priest was present; he caught sight of one beside the speaker, and then twisted around saying: 'I too admit that the whole of nature comes from God, but -.' And he went off, whispering to his companions and saying: 'I said that because there was a priest present. You and I know that nature comes from nature, and because nature is therefore God, I said that the whole of nature comes from God, but - .'

[5] But the priest, hearing what they were whispering, said: 'Your wisdom is nothing but philosophy, which has led you astray and shut off the interiors of your minds so completely that no light from God and His heaven can penetrate and bring you enlightenment. You have put the light out. Consider therefore,' he went on, 'and decide among yourselves what is the origin of your souls, which are immortal. Do they come from nature, or were they at the same time in that mighty chaos?'

On hearing this the first man went off to his colleagues, to ask their help in solving this knotty problem. They came to the conclusion that the human soul is nothing but ether, and thought is merely a modification of the ether caused by sunlight; and ether is a part of nature. 'Surely everyone knows,' they said, 'that we talk by means of the air? And what is thought but speech in a purer sort of air, which is called ether? That is why thought and speech act as one. Anyone can observe this in children; a child first learns to talk, and then afterwards to talk to himself, and that is thinking. What then can thought be but a modification of the ether? Or what is the sound of speech but a modulation of it? From these considerations we deduce that the thinking soul is part of nature.'

[6] But some of them, while not disagreeing, cast light on the state of the question by saying that souls arose when the ether formed itself into a ball out of that mighty chaos, and then in the highest region divided itself into innumerable individual forms. These are infused into people, when they begin to think by that purer sort of air, and they are then called souls.

Another on hearing this said: 'I admit that the individual forms made from the ether in its highest region may have been innumerable, but still the number of human beings born from the creation of the world has exceeded the number of forms, so how could those ethereal forms be enough? This has led me to think that the souls which issue from people's mouths when they die return to the same people again after some thousands of years, so that they embark on and complete a life, similar to their previous one. It is well known that many wise men believe in the transmigration of souls and similar ideas.' In addition to these there were other guesses flung around, which I pass over as being crazy.

[7] After a short while the priest returned, and the one who had previously spoken about the creation of the universe by God told him their decisions concerning the soul. On hearing these the priest told them: 'You have spoken exactly as you thought in the world, unaware that you are not any longer in that world but another, which is called the spiritual world. All those who, by convincing themselves of the nature theory, have become immersed in the bodily senses, are not aware that they are no longer in the same world as that in which they were born and brought up. The reason is that there they had a material body, but here a substantial body; and a substantial person sees himself and his companions around him exactly as a material person sees himself and his companions around him, for the substantial is the starting-point of the material. Because you think, see, smell, taste, and speak just as you did in the natural world, you believe that nature here is the same. Yet the nature of this world is as different and remote from that of the former world as the substantial is from the material, or the spiritual from the natural, or what is prior from what is posterior. Because the nature of the world in which you previously lived is comparatively speaking lifeless, so by convincing yourselves of your belief in nature you too have become virtually dead as regards matters which relate to God, heaven and the church, as well as what concerns your souls. Still every person, bad as well as good, can have his understanding raised into the light enjoyed by the angels in heaven; and then he can see that God exists, that there is a life after death, that the human soul is not ethereal and thus of the nature of the material world, but spiritual, and so destined to live for ever. The understanding can enjoy that angelic light, so long as the natural loves are banished which came from the world, favouring it and its nature, and from the body, favouring it and the self 1 .

[8] At once those loves were banished by the Lord, and they were permitted to talk with angels. From their conversation in that state they perceived the existence of God and that after dying they were living in another world. This made them blush with shame and cry: 'We were mad, we were mad!' But since this state was not their own and after a few minutes became tiresome and unwelcome, they turned their backs on the priest and were unwilling to go on listening to him. Thus they reverted to their former loves, which were entirely natural, worldly and bodily. They went off to the left, from one community to another, and eventually reached a road where they caught a whiff of the delights of their own loves, and said: 'Let us take this road.' So they went along it, going down until they came to people who delighted in similar loves, and further still. Since their delight consisted in doing evil, and they harmed many on the way, they were thrown into prison and became demons. Then their delight was turned into misery, because they were restrained and prevented from enjoying what had previously delighted them, the behaviour which had formed their nature, by punishment and the fear of punishment.

They asked their companions in that prison whether they were to live like that for ever. Some of those there replied: 'We have been here for several centuries, and we are to remain for ever and ever, because the nature we acquired in the world cannot be changed or driven out by punishment. When it is driven out by this, it still comes back after a short interval.'

Footnotes:

1. Latin proprium, the term often used for the unregenerate self.

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

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