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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 #462

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462. The fourth experience 1

In the spiritual world I looked towards the sea-coast and saw a splendid port. On approaching I looked inside and there lay boats both great and small, containing cargoes of every kind; and on their thwarts sat boys and girls who distributed the goods to any that wished. 'We are waiting,' they said, 'for our lovely turtles to appear. They will come out of the sea to us at any moment.'

Then I saw turtles, both small and great, on whose shells and scales sat baby turtles, all looking towards the surrounding islands. The father turtles had two heads, a large one covered with shell like that of their bodies, which gave them a ruddy look; the other a small one of the sort turtles have, which they could draw back into the forepart of their bodies, and could make invisible by inserting it into the larger head. But I kept my gaze on the large, ruddy head, and made out that it had a face like a human being, and was talking with the boys and girls on the thwarts and was licking their hands. The boys and girls fondled them and gave them tit-bits and delicacies, as well as valuable goods such as silk for clothes, citron-wood for tables, purple for ornament and scarlet for dyeing.

[2] On seeing these I wanted to know what they represented, because I know that all sights seen in the spiritual world are correspondences, representing the spiritual effects of affection and the thought it produces. Then I was spoken to from heaven and told: 'You know yourself what the port and the ships represent, as well as the boys and girls on the thwarts; but you do not know what the turtles are. They represent,' they said, 'those of the clergy there who totally separate faith from charity and its good deeds, insisting to themselves that there is obviously no possibility of linking them, but the Holy Spirit by means of faith in God the Father for the sake of the Son's merit enters into a person and purifies him inwardly even as far as his own will, which they imagine as a sort of oval plane. When the working of the Holy Spirit approaches this plane, it twists aside around its left edge without touching it at all, so that the interior or upper part of the person's character is for God, and the exterior or lower part is for man. Thus nothing the person does appears in God's sight, neither good nor bad; the good does not, because this would be to acquire merit, and the bad does not because it is bad. Either of these, if it were presented to God's sight, would destroy the person, Since this is so, a person may will, think, speak and do whatever he pleases, so long as he takes precautions from a worldly point of view,'

[3] I asked whether they also held that one might think of God as not being omnipresent and omniscient. I was told from heaven that this too is allowed them, because in the case of one who has acquired faith and been purified and justified by it, God pays no attention to any thought or will on his part, but he still retains in the inward recess or higher region of his mind or character the faith which he had received by its activity, and that this activity may from time to time recur without the person's knowledge. 'These facts are represented by the small head which they draw back into the forepart of their bodies and also insert into the larger head when talking to laymen. For in speaking to them they do not use the small head, but the large one, the front of which has a kind of human face. Their talk with them is based on the Word, about love, charity, good deeds, the Ten Commandments, repentance; and they quote from the Word almost everything which is said there on these subjects. But then they insert the small head into the large one, which allows them inwardly to understand that these things are not to be done for God's sake or for salvation, but only for the sake of public or private advantage.

[4] 'But because they base their remarks on these subjects on the Word, especially in speaking with great charm and elegance of the Gospel, the working of the Holy Spirit and salvation, they seem to their hearers like handsome men endowed with wisdom beyond all others on the globe. This was why you saw them being given delicacies and valuable goods by the boys and girls sitting on the thwarts in the boats. So these are the people you saw represented as turtles. In your world they are hard to tell apart from others, except for the fact that they think they excel all others in wisdom, laughing at others, including those who hold similar views on faith, but are not privy to their secrets. They carry a seal with them in their clothing, by which they can make themselves known to others of their sort.'

[5] The person talking with me said: 'I shall not tell you their opinions on other matters to do with faith, such as the elect, free will, baptism and the Holy Supper. These are opinions that they do not divulge, though we in heaven know them. However, since this is the sort of people they are in the world, and after death no one is allowed to speak otherwise than he thinks, they are considered insane, because they are then unable to speak except for the mad ideas that fill their thoughts. So they are ejected from their communities, eventually being cast down into the pit of the abyss (mentioned in Revelation 9:2), becoming bodily spirits and looking like Egyptian mummies. A hard skin is drawn over the interiors of their minds, because in the world too they had set up a barrier there. The community they form in hell is adjacent to the one there composed of Machiavellians; they constantly visit one another and call themselves companions. But they leave them on account of their difference, in that they have some religious feeling about the act of justification by faith, while the Machiavellians have none.'

[6] After seeing them expelled from their communities and brought together ready to be cast down, I saw in the air a ship sailing under seven sails, and in it ships' officers and seamen dressed in purple with magnificent laurels on their hats. 'Here we are in heaven,' they shouted, 'we are purple-clad doctors, adorned with finer laurels than anyone else, because we are the leading wise men of all the clergy in Europe.' I wondered what this was, and I was told that they were pictures of pride and imaginary thoughts, known as fantasies, arising from those who previously appeared as turtles; now being cast out of their communities as insane, they were gathered into one group and were now standing in one place.

Then wishing to talk with them I approached the place where they were standing and greeted them. 'Are you,' I said, 'the people who separated people's internals from their externals, and the working of the Holy Spirit as in faith from the Spirit's co-operation with man outside of faith, thus separating God from man? Did you not by this take away not only charity itself and its deeds from faith, as many other doctors of the clergy do, but also faith itself in so far as it is displayed by man in the sight of God?

[7] But would you prefer me to talk to you on this subject by the light of reason, or by drawing upon Holy Scripture?' 'Speak first,' they said, 'by the light of reason.'

So I spoke and said: 'How can a person's internal and external be separated? Can anyone endowed with normal powers of perception fail to see, or fail to be capable of seeing, that all of a person's interiors extend into and are continued into his exteriors, reaching even to his outermost level so as to bring about their effects and perform what they want to do? Surely the internals exist for the sake of the externals, so that these may be where they end, and they may rest on them, so coming into being, very much as a column stands on its base. You can see that, if they were discontinuous and so not joined, the outermost layers would collapse and burst like a bubble in the air. Can anyone deny that the inward workings of God in a person number billions, all unknown to the person concerned; and what profit is it to know about them, so long as the outermost layers are known, the point at which he is in his thought and will together with God?

[8] 'Let us take an example to illustrate this. Surely no one is aware of the inward workings of his speech: how the lungs draw in air, which fills the vesicles, bronchi and lobes; how he expels the air into the trachea and there turns it into sound; how the sound is modified in the glottis by the help of the larynx, and how the tongue then articulates it, the lips completing the articulation, so that speech is produced. All those inward workings, of which the person is totally unaware, are for the sake of the end product, the person's ability to speak. Take away or separate one of those internal processes so that it is no longer continuous with the end product, and a person could no more talk than a block of wood.

[9] 'Let us take another example. The two hands form the extremities of the human body. But the internal parts which form a continuous link with them run from the head through the neck, then the chest, shoulder-blades, arms and elbows; and there are countless muscular tissues, countless rows of motor fibres, countless bundles of nerves and blood-vessels, and many joints of bones with their ligaments and membranes - is anyone aware of any of this? Yet it takes every single one of them to make the hands function. Suppose the internal parts twisted back to the left or the right around the wrist-joint and did not continue into the hands; would not the hand then fall away from the elbow and rot away like any lifeless part torn off? Or if you prefer the idea, it would be like what happens to the body when a person is beheaded. This is exactly what would happen to the human mind, together with its two kinds of life, the will and the understanding, if the Divine workings which have to do with faith and charity stopped mid-way, and did not extend without a break to man. To be sure, man then would be not merely an animal, but a rotten block of wood. Such conclusions are the product of reason.

[10] 'Now if you are willing to listen, the same things are in accordance with Holy Scripture. Does not the Lord say:

Remain in me and I in you. I am the vine and you are the branches. If someone remains in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, John 15:4-5.

Surely the fruits are the good deeds which the Lord does by means of man, and man does of himself under the Lord's guidance. The Lord also says that He stands at the door and knocks, and He goes in to anyone who opens the door, and dines with him and he with the Lord (Revelation 3:20). Does not the Lord give minas and talents for man to trade with and make a profit, and does He not give everlasting life in accordance with his profit (Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:13-26)? Or again, does He not give each man his pay in proportion to the work he does in the Lord's vineyard (Matthew 20:1-17)? These are but a few examples; pages could be filled with quotations from the Word showing that man should produce fruit like a tree, should act according to the commandments, love God and the neighbour, and much more besides.

[11] 'But I know that your own intelligence cannot have anything in common, regarded as it is essentially, with these teachings from the Word. Although you talk about them, your ideas pervert them. Nor can you help yourselves, because you take away from man everything that is God's as regards communication and the linking it produces. What is then left, but merely everything that has to do with public worship?'

Later on these people appeared to me in the light of heaven, which uncovers and makes visible what sort of person each one is. Then they did not appear as before in a ship sailing through the air as if in heaven, nor did the people in it have purple clothing and laurels around their heads. But they were in a sandy place, clothed in rags, with nets like fishermen's round their lower parts, through which their nakedness was visible. Then they were sent down to join a community which was adjacent to that of the Machiavellians.

Footnotes:

1. Repeated from Apocalypse Revealed 463.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #233

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233. The third account:

After this, one of the angels said, "Follow me to the place where they are crying out, 'Oh, how wise!'" And he added, "You will see human monstrosities. The faces and bodies you see will be like those of a human being, and yet they are not human."

So I said, "Are they animals, then?"

The angel replied, "No, they are not animals, but animal-like. For they are people who cannot see at all whether truth is true or not, and yet whatever they wish they can make to be true. Among us, people like that are called confirmers."

We then followed the clamor and came to the place. And lo, we found a group of men surrounded by a crowd of people, and in the crowd some people of noble lineage. The men were confirming whatever the latter said and agreeing with them with such manifest accord that when they heard it, they turned to each other and said, "Oh, how wise!"

[2] However, the angel said to me, "Let us not go over to them but instead call one of them out of the group."

So we called one of them to us, and going aside with him, we talked about various matters. And he confirmed each point so thoroughly that they all appeared entirely as true.

We then asked him whether he could also confirm the converse of these. He said that he could, just as well as he did the previous ones. At which point he said openly and from the heart, "What is truth? Is there any truth in the nature of things other than what a person makes true? Say to me anything you please and I will make it to be true."

So I said, "Make this true, that faith is everything in the church." And he did so, so cleverly and skillfully that some learned bystanders looked on in admiration and applauded. I asked him next to make it true that charity is everything in the church, which he did, and afterwards that charity is nothing in the church. And he dressed up both propositions and arrayed them in such verisimilitudes that the bystanders looked at each other and said, "Isn't he wise!"

But I said, "Do you not know that to live rightly is charity, and to believe rightly is faith? If anyone lives rightly, does he not also believe rightly? Thus showing that faith is connected with charity, and charity with faith? Do you not see that this is true?"

He replied, "I will make it true and then I will see." And having done it he said, "Now I see." But shortly he made the converse of it to be true, and then he said, "I see as well that this is true."

We chuckled at this and said, "But are these not contradictory conclusions? How can you see two contrary conclusions as true?"

Nettled by our response, he replied, "You are wrong. Both conclusions are true, since truth is only what a person makes true."

[3] Standing nearby was someone who in the world had been an ambassador of the highest rank. He marveled at this and said, "I recognize that something of this sort goes on in the world, but still you are insane. Make it to be true, if you can, that light is darkness, and darkness light."

To which he replied, "I will do it easily. What are light and darkness but conditions of the eye? Does light not turn to darkness when the eye comes in out of bright sunshine? Or when it gazes intently at the sun? Who does not know that the state of the eye then changes and that light consequently appears as darkness? And conversely, that when the condition of the eye recovers, the darkness appears as light?

"Does an owl not see the darkness of night as the light of day, and the light of day as the darkness of night? Does it not see the sun itself as a dark and shadowy orb? If a person had eyes like an owl's, what would he call light and what would he call darkness?

"What then is light but a condition of the eye? And if it is a condition of the eye, is not light darkness and darkness light? Consequently the one proposition is true and the other is true."

[4] After that the ambassador asked him to make it to be true that a raven is white and not black.

To which he replied, "I will do this easily, too. Take a needle or razor," he said, "and open up the feathers or quills of a raven. Are they not white inside? Then remove the feathers and quills and look at the raven's skin. Is it not white? What is the blackness surrounding it but an opaqueness to light, which is hardly a basis on which to judge the raven's color? If you do not know that blackness is only an absence of light, ask experts in the science of optics and they will tell you. Or grind a piece of black stone or black glass into a fine powder, and you will see that the powder is white."

"But," said the ambassador, "does a raven look black to the eye?"

"Perhaps," replied this confirmer of ours, "but as a human being, are you willing to base what you think on an appearance? You may indeed speak in accordance with the appearance and say that a raven is black, but you cannot think it. As for example, you may speak in accordance with the appearance and say that the sun rises, travels and sets, but as a human being you cannot think it, because the sun stands still and it is the earth that moves. It is the same with the raven. An appearance is only an appearance. Say what you will, a raven is totally and utterly white. It even turns white when it grows old, as I have observed."

[5] We then asked him to tell us honestly whether he was joking or whether he really believed that there is no truth but what a person makes true. And he answered, "I swear that I believe it."

After that the ambassador asked him whether he could make it true that he was insane. To which he said, "I could, but I do not want to. Who is not insane?"

This total confirmer was afterwards sent to some angels for them to examine and determine what sort of person he was. And having examined him, they said he possessed not even a grain of understanding, because everything that exists above the level of reason in him was closed up, and only that which is below the level of reason was open.

"Above the level of reason," they said, "is the light of heaven, and below the level of reason is the light of nature. And the light of nature is such that it can confirm whatever it pleases. However, if the light of heaven does not flow into the light of nature, a person does not see whether any truth is true, and so neither whether any falsity is false. An ability to see both what is true and what is false results from the presence of light from heaven in the light of nature, and the light of heaven comes from the God of heaven, who is the Lord.

"This total confirmer is therefore neither human nor animal, but animal-like."

[6] I asked the angel with me about the fate of people like that and whether it was possible for them to be among the living, since a person has life from the light of heaven, and from it comes his intellect. And the angel said that when people of this sort are by themselves, they are incapable of thought and so have nothing to say, but stand as mute as machines, as though in a deep sleep; but as soon as something catches their ears, they awaken. He added also that people become like that who are inmostly evil. "The light of heaven cannot flow into them from above," he said, "but only some spiritual element through the world, from which they have an ability to confirm."

[7] After he said this, I heard the voice of one of the angels who had examined the man, calling to me and saying, "From what you have heard draw an overall conclusion."

So I drew the following conclusion: An ability to confirm whatever one pleases is not the mark of an intelligent person; rather, the mark of an intelligent person is to be able to see that truth is true and falsity false, and to confirm that.

I afterwards looked over at the gathering where the confirmers stood and where the crowd surrounding them was beginning to cry out, "Oh, how wise!" And suddenly a dusky cloud enveloped them, with screech owls and bats flitting about in the cloud.

It was then explained to me, "The owls and bats flitting about in the dusky cloud are correspondent forms and thus manifestations of their thoughts. For in this world, confirmations of falsities to the point that they appear as truths are represented under the forms of birds of the night, whose eyes are lit up with an illusory light from within by which they see objects in darkness as though in light. This is the kind of illusory spiritual light had by those who confirm falsities to the point that they appear as truths, and who afterwards say and believe they are truths. They all possess a kind of after-sight and not any prior sight."

  
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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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