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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 #42

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42. To this I will append two narrative accounts from the spiritual world. Here is the first:

One morning I looked up into the sky, and I saw above me expanse upon expanse. And as I looked, the first or nearest expanse was opened, and shortly the second, which was above it, and finally the third, which was the highest of all. By the light coming from them I perceived that on the first expanse were angels of the first or lowest heaven, on the second expanse were angels of the second or middle heaven, and on the third expanse were angels of the third or highest heaven.

I wondered at first what was happening and why. But shortly I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of a trumpet, saying, "We have perceived, and now see, that you are meditating on conjugial love. Moreover, we know that so far no one on earth knows what true conjugial love is in its origin or in its essence, and yet it is important for them to know. Therefore it has pleased the Lord to open the heavens to you, that the inner faculties of your mind may receive an influx of illuminating light and thus perception.

"Among us in heaven, especially in the third heaven, our heavenly delights come principally from conjugial love. Consequently, by permission granted us, we will send a married couple down to you, in order that you may see."

[2] And suddenly, then, a carriage appeared, coming down from the highest or third heaven, in which I saw a single angel. But as it drew near, I saw that it held two.

The carriage shone before my eyes in the distance like a diamond, and harnessed to it were young horses as white as snow. And the couple sitting in the carriage held in their hands a pair of turtledoves.

And the couple called out to me, "You want us to come closer. But beware, then, of the flashing light coming from our heaven, the heaven we descended from. It is a blazing light, and you must take care that it does not penetrate interiorly. By its influx, indeed, the higher ideas of your understanding are enlightened, ideas that, in themselves, are heavenly. But these same ideas are inexpressible in the world in which you live. Receive the things you are about to hear, therefore, in rational terms and so explain them to the understanding."

I replied, "I will take care. Come closer."

So they came, and behold, it was a husband and his wife. And they said, "We are married. We have lived a blessed life in heaven from the earliest time, which you call the golden age, remaining forever in the same flower of youth that you see us in today."

[3] I looked at the two of them closely, because I perceived that they represented conjugial love in their life and in their adornment - in their life as shown in their faces, and in their adornment as shown in the garments they wore. For all angels are affections of love in human form. The essential, dominant affection shines out from their faces, and they are given clothing on the basis of their affection and in accordance with it. Consequently, in heaven they say that everyone is clothed in his own affection.

The husband appeared to be between adolescence and early manhood in age. From his eyes flashed a light sparkling with the wisdom of love. His face seemed to be inmostly radiant with this light, and because of the radiance from within, outwardly his skin virtually shone. As a result, his whole facial appearance was singularly one of dazzling good looks.

He was dressed in a full-length robe, and under the robe he wore a blue-colored garment, which was tied about the waist with a golden girdle bearing three precious stones, two of them sapphires, one on each side, and a garnet in the middle. His stockings were of shining linen, into which had been woven threads of silver; and his shoes were made entirely of silk.

This was the representational form that conjugial love took in the case of the husband.

[4] In the case of the wife, however, it took the following form. I saw her face, and did not see it. I saw it as the very essence of beauty, and did not see it because the beauty was beyond expression. For there was in her face the bright glow of a blazing light, like the light possessed by angels in the third heaven, and this light dimmed my vision, so that I was simply stupefied by it.

Noticing this, the wife spoke to me, saying, "What do you see?"

I answered, "I see only conjugial love and a picture of it. But I see and do not see."

At this she turned at an angle away from her husband, and then I could look more intently. Her eyes flashed with the light of her heaven, which is blazing, as I said, and so takes its quality from the love of wisdom. For wives in the third heaven love their husbands on account of their husbands' wisdom and in response to it, and the husbands love their wives on account of and in response to that love directed towards them, and so they are united.

The wife had her beauty as a result of this, such beauty that no artist could reproduce it or portray it in its true form, for a flashing of light like that is not possible in the painter's colors, nor is such loveliness expressible in his art.

Her hair was attractively arranged in a style to match her beauty, with jewels in the form of flowers inserted into it. She had a necklace of garnets, from which hung a rosette of peridots. And she had bracelets of pearls. She was dressed in a scarlet gown, and under it a purple bodice fastened in front with rubies. But what surprised me, the colors kept changing depending on which way she was facing in relation to her husband, and their sparkle also kept changing accordingly, being now more, now less - more when they faced each other, and less when she faced away at an angle.

[5] When I had seen these things, they spoke with me again. And when the husband spoke, he spoke as though he spoke at the same time on behalf of his wife, and when the wife spoke, she spoke as though she spoke at the same time on behalf of her husband. For such was the union of their minds, from which comes their speech. It was then that I heard as well the way conjugial love sounds, how it was inwardly together with, and also the result of, the delights of a state of peace and innocence.

Finally they said, "They are calling us back. We have to go."

They then appeared to be again riding in a carriage, as before, and they were borne off along a road stretching out between flower gardens, from whose beds rose olive trees and trees full of oranges. And as they drew near their heaven, young women came to meet them and welcome them and take them in.

  
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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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