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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 #159

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159. At this point I shall describe some more experiences, of which this is the first.

Once when I was in company with angels in heaven, I saw far below a huge cloud of smoke with fire bursting out of it from time to time. I remarked to the angels who were talking with me, that few people here know that the sight of smoke in the hells arises from arguments in favour of falsities, and that fire is an outburst of anger against those who contradict them. I added that this is as little known in that world, as it is in the world where I live in the body, that flame is nothing but ignited smoke. I have often observed this, when, seeing smoke rising from wood on a hearth on earth, I have applied a lighted taper to it and seen the smoke turn into flame; and the flames copied the shape of the smoke, for each particle of smoke becomes a spark, and they join to make a blaze, just as also happens with gunpowder. 'It is the same with the smoke we can see down here below. It is composed of so many falsities, and the fire bursting out as flames is the outburst of zeal in their favour.'

[2] Then the angels said to me: 'Let us beg the Lord to allow us to go down and come near, so as to find out what falsities they have that produce so much smoke and fire.'

Permission was granted, and at once a beam of light surrounded us and brought us down without a break to that place. There we saw four groups of spirits who were arguing vigorously that God the Father, because He is invisible, should be approached and worshipped, and not His Son who was born in this world, because He was a man and visible. On looking to either side I saw on the left the learned clergy, and behind them the unlearned clergy; and on the right the educated laymen, and behind them the uneducated. But between us and them yawned an unbridgeable gap.

[3] We turned our eyes and ears towards the left, where the clergy were with the learned ones in front and the unlearned behind, and heard them arguing about God in these terms. 'We know from the teaching of our church, which on the subject of God is one and the same throughout Europe, that one should approach God the Father, being invisible, and at the same time God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, who are also invisible, being co-eternal with the Father. Since God the Father is the creator of the universe, and consequently in the universe, He is present wherever we turn our gaze. When we pray to Him, He is graciously pleased to accept our prayers, and when the Son has mediated for us, He sends the Holy Spirit to put in our hearts the glory of His Son's righteousness and to make us blessed. We, who have been made doctors of the church, felt, when we preached, the holy working of the Spirit's mission in our breasts, and we breathed the devotion aroused by His presence in our minds. We feel these emotions because we direct all our senses towards the invisible God who works not in a single way on the sight of our understanding, but universally throughout our mental and bodily systems by means of His emissary, the Spirit. Such effects could not be produced by the worship of a visible God, or one apprehensible mentally as a man.'

[4] This speech was greeted with applause from the unlearned clergy, who stood behind them. 'What is the source,' they added, 'of holiness, if it is not from an invisible and imperceptible Divine? As soon as this idea crosses the threshold of our hearing, our faces break into smiles and we are cheered as by the soothing breath of an incense-laden breeze, and we also beat our breasts. It is quite different if we think of a visible and perceptible Divine; if this idea penetrates our ears, it is reduced to something purely natural and no longer Divine. It is for a similar reason that the Roman Catholics conduct their masses in the Latin language, and take the Host, the alleged subject of Divine mysteries, from repositories on the altar and display it. At this moment the people fall on their knees as if before the profoundest mystery and reverently hold their breath.'

[5] After this we turned to the right, where the educated, and behind them the uneducated, laymen stood. I heard the educated speak as follows: 'We know that the wisest of the ancients worshipped an invisible God whom they called Jehovah, but in the period which followed this they made themselves gods out of dead rulers, including Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo as well as Minerva, Diana, Venus, and Themis, building temples to them and giving them Divine worship. This worship in the course of time led to idolatry, a madness which finally pervaded the whole world. We are therefore unanimous in assenting to the opinion of our priests and elders, that there were and are three Divine Persons from eternity, each of whom is God. It is enough for us that they are invisible.'

The uneducated behind them added: 'We agree. Surely God is God and man is man? But we know that if anyone proposed God-man, the common people, whose idea of God is only derived from the senses, will accept it.'

[6] At the end of this speech their eyes were opened and they saw us standing near them. Then they became angry that we had heard them and refused to say another word. But the angels used the power they had been given to shut off the exterior or lower levels of their thought, and open the interior or higher levels; so they compelled them to speak about God in this state. Then they said: 'What is God? We have not seen His appearance, nor have we heard His voice. God then must be merely nature in its first and last manifestations. Nature we have seen, because it is clear before our eyes, and nature we have heard, for its sounds are ever in our ears.'

On hearing this we said to them: 'Have you ever seen Socinus, who would acknowledge only God the Father? Or Arius, who denied the divinity of our Lord and Saviour? Or any of their followers?' 'No,' they replied. 'They are,' we said, 'in the depths below you.' Then some people were sent for from that place and questioned about God. They spoke in much the same way as the others had done, adding: 'What is God? We can make as many gods as we wish.'

[7] 'It is useless,' we said then, 'to talk to you about the Son of God born in the world, but this at least we shall say. To prevent faith about God, in Him and from Him, from becoming, merely because no one has seen Him, like a water-bubble floating in the air, full of beautiful colours in the first and second moments of its existence, but in the third and thereafter collapsing into nothing, it has pleased Jehovah God to come down and take upon Himself human form, thus putting Himself on view, and proving that God is no entity conceived by the faculty of reason, but That which was, is and shall be, from eternity to eternity. God is no three-letter 1 word, but the whole of reality from alpha to omega. Consequently He is life and salvation to all who believe in Him as a visible God, not to those who say that they believe in an invisible God. For believing, seeing and recognising make up a single act, which is why the Lord said to Philip:

He who sees and knows me sees and knows the Father.

and elsewhere that it is the Father's will that they should believe in the Son, and he who believes in the Son has everlasting life, but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God will rest upon him. (Both this and the previous passage are in John 3:15-16, 36; 14:6-15.)' On hearing this many of the four groups became so furious that smoke and fire came out of their nostrils. So we went away, and after escorting me home the angels went up to their own heaven.

Footnotes:

1. This is a puzzling expression, since God in Latin is Deus; but as the conversation took place in the spiritual world, it may refer to a word in the spiritual language.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #208

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208. The second account:

When I was once thinking about the secrets of conjugial love that wives hide and keep to themselves, I again saw the golden rain that I mentioned before; 1 and I remembered that it fell like mist upon a hall in the east, where three pictures of conjugial love lived, that is, three married couples who loved each other tenderly. On seeing it, I hastened in that direction, as though bidden by the sweetness of my reflection on that love; and as I approached, the rain turned from gold to purple, then scarlet, and when I was almost there, it became opalescent like dew.

I knocked and the door was opened. So I said to the attendant, "Convey to the husbands that one who was here before with an angel is present again, seeking permission to come in and speak with them."

When the attendant returned, he indicated the husbands' assent and I entered. The three husbands and their wives were together in a courtyard, and they returned my greeting warmly.

I then asked the wives whether the white dove had ever appeared at the window again. They said it had appeared that very day, and also had spread its wings. "We therefore anticipated your coming," they said, "to entreat us to reveal one more secret of conjugial love."

"But why do you say one," I asked, "when I have come here to learn many more?"

[2] "They are secrets," they replied, "and some of them so transcend the wisdom of you men that the comprehension of your intellect cannot grasp them. You men vaunt yourselves over us on account of your wisdom, but we do not vaunt ourselves over you on account of ours - even though our wisdom is superior to yours because it enters into your inclinations and affections and sees, perceives and feels them.

"You know nothing at all about the inclinations and affections of your love, and this despite the fact that it is because of them and in accordance with them that your intellect thinks, consequently that it is because of them and in accordance with them that you have your wisdom. Yet wives know these things in their husbands so well that they see them in their husbands's faces and hear them in the intonations of the speech of their mouth - indeed so well that they feel them with the touch of their hands on their husbands' breasts, arms and cheeks. But from a zealous love for your happiness and at the same time our own, we pretend as if we do not know these things, while at the same time moderating them so discreetly that whatever our husbands' wish, pleasure or will, we accede to it by allowing and enduring it, and only redirecting it when possible, but never compelling."

[3] "How is it that you have this wisdom?" I asked.

They replied, "It is implanted in us from creation and so from birth. Our husbands liken it to an instinct, but we say it comes of Divine providence, in order that men may be made happy through their wives. Our husbands have told us that it is the Lord's will that the masculine sex act in freedom in accord with reason; and since a man's freedom involves his inclinations and affections, therefore the Lord Himself moderates his freedom from within, and through his wife from without, and so forms the man and his wife together into an angel of heaven. Besides, if love is compelled, its fundamental nature changes and it becomes no longer the same love.

"But we will explain it more frankly. We are moved to this - that is, to a discreet moderation of the inclinations and affections of our husbands, so discreet that it seems to them that they act in freedom in accord with their own reason - because we feel delight from their love, and we love nothing more than for them to feel delight from our feelings of delight. But if these feelings become matters of indifference in them, they also begin to fade in us."

[4] When they had said this, one of the wives went into her bedroom, and returning said, "My dove is still fluttering its wings - a sign that we may divulge more."

So they said, "We have observed changes in the inclinations and affections of men in a variety of cases. For instance, husbands are cold to their wives whenever they entertain vain thoughts against the Lord and the church. They are cold whenever they pride themselves because of their own intelligence. They are cold whenever they look upon other women with lust. They are cold whenever they are admonished by their wives on the subject of love. We could mention a number of other instances as well, including the fact that the coldness they feel varies in each case. We notice this from the withdrawal of feeling from their eyes, ears and body when their senses meet ours.

"From these few illustrations you can see that we know better than men whether all is well with them or not. If they are cold to their wives, all is not well with them, but if they are warm to their wives it is. Wives are therefore continually turning over in their minds ways of inducing their men to be warm to them and not cold, and they do this with a keenness of perception incomprehensible to men."

[5] As they said this, we heard what seemed to be the sound of a dove moaning; and at that point the wives said, "That is a signal to us that although we are eager to divulge still deeper secrets, we may not. Perhaps you will expose to men the secrets you have heard."

"That is my intention," I replied. "What harm will it do?"

After conferring with each other about this, the wives then said, "Disclose them if you wish. We are not unacquainted with the power of persuasion possessed by wives. Indeed, they will say to their husbands, 'The man is fooling. They are fictions. He is trying to amuse with appearances and the usual nonsense typical of men. Do not believe him; believe us. We know that you are the lovers and we your humble servants.'

"So," they said, "disclose them if you wish; but the husbands' attention will not hang on your lips, but on the lips of their wives which they kiss."

Footnotes:

1. See no. 155[r]

  
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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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