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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 #568

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568. The second experience.

Every religious and wise person wants to know what his life will be like after death, so I shall give a general description so that he may know.

Everyone after death, when he becomes aware that he is still alive, but in another world, and he is told that above him is heaven, where there are everlasting joys, and below him is hell, where there are everlasting sorrows, is first brought back into the external state he was in, while he was in his former world. Then he believes that he will certainly reach heaven, and he talks intelligently and behaves prudently. Some say: 'We have lived a moral life, we have had honourable ambitions, we have not deliberately done evil.' Others say: 'We have gone regularly to church, we have attended mass, we have kissed holy statues, we have prayed hard on our knees.' Some say: 'We have given to the poor, we have helped the needy, we have read devotional books, as well as the Word.' And there are many more similar claims.

[2] But when they have made these statements, the angels standing by them say: 'All the things you have mentioned you did externally; but you still do not know what you are like internally. You are now spirits with a substantial body, and the spirit is your internal man. It is this in you which thinks what it wishes, and wishes what it loves, and this is the pleasure of its life. Everyone from early childhood begins his life on the external level. He learns to behave with morality, to talk intelligently, and once he has formed some idea of heaven and its blessedness, he begins to pray, to go to church and attend regular services. Yet he still treasures up in the depths of his mind the evils which spring in profusion from their native source; he cleverly covers them up too with reasonings based upon fallacies, until he himself does not know that evil is evil. Then as for the evils which are wrapped up and covered, as if by dust, he does not give them another thought, only taking care that they are not exposed to the world's gaze. So his only concern is with the externals of a moral life, and so he becomes duplicitous, a sheep in externals, a wolf in internals. He becomes like a golden box containing poison; or like a person with bad breath who keeps a pastille in his mouth to prevent by-standers smelling it; or like a mouse's skin made to smell of balsam.

[3] 'You said that you lived a moral life and devoted yourselves to religious studies. But my question is, did you ever examine your internal man and become aware of any longings for revenge, even to the point of murder, any longings for indulging your lusts even to the point of adultery, any longings for fraud even to the point of stealing, any longings for lying even to the point of giving false witness? Four of the Ten Commandments contain the injunction, "You are not to," and the last two "You are not to covet." Do you really believe that in these matters your internal man resembled your external one? If you do, I think you may be wrong.'

[4] To this they replied, 'What is the internal man? Is it not one and the same as the external? Our ministers have told us that the internal man is nothing but faith, and reverence in utterance and morality in life is a sign of it, because it shows its working.'

The angels answered: 'Saving faith is in the internal man, and likewise charity, and this is the source of Christian faithfulness and morality in the external man. But if the longings we mentioned before remain in the internal man, that is, in the will and so in his thinking, and if, therefore, you love those longings inwardly, and yet act and talk differently in externals, then in your case evil is placed above good, and good below evil. However much, therefore, you seem to talk from the understanding, and to act from love, there is evil within and this is wrapped up, as we said. Then you are like cunning chimpanzees, which ape human actions, but their heart is not in them.

[5] 'You know nothing about your internal man, because you have not examined yourselves, and following that examination repented. You will discover shortly what your internal man is like, when you have the external stripped off and you enter into possession of the internal. When this happens, your companions will no longer recognise you, nor will you recognise yourselves. I have seen wicked people who pretended to be moral looking like wild beasts, glaring truculently at their neighbour, burning with murderous hatred, and cursing God, whom they worshipped in the external man.'

On hearing this they went away; and then the angels told them: 'You will see what your life will be like after this, for your external man will shortly be taken away and you will enter into possession of the internal, which is now your spirit.'

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #416

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416. Afterwards, seeing me close by, the two angels said with respect to me to the spirits standing around, "We know that this man has written about God and nature. Let us hear what he has to say."

So they came over and asked me to read to them what I had written about God and nature; and I read therefore the following: 1

People who believe that the Divine operates in every single thing of nature, can, from the many things which they see in nature, confirm themselves on the side of the Divine, just as well as and even more than those who confirm themselves on the side of nature. For people who confirm themselves on the side of the Divine pay heed to the marvels which they see in the propagations of both plants and animals.

In the propagations of plants, they note how a tiny seed cast into the ground produces a root, by means of the root a stem, and then in succession branches, leaves, flowers and fruits, culminating in new seeds - altogether as though the seed knew the order of progression or the process by which to renew itself. What rational person can suppose that the sun, which is nothing but fire, has this knowledge? Or that it can impart to its heat and its light the power to produce such effects, and in those effects can create marvels and intend a useful result?

Any person having an elevated rational faculty, on seeing and considering these wonders, cannot but think that they issue from one who possesses infinite wisdom, thus from God.

People who acknowledge the Divine also see and think this; but people who do not acknowledge the Divine do not see and think it, because they do not want to. Therefore they allow their rational faculty to descend into their sensual self, which draws all its ideas from the light in which the bodily senses are, and which defends the fallacies of these, saying, "Do you not see the sun accomplishing these effects by its heat and its light? What is something that you do not see? Is it anything?"

[2] People who confirm themselves on the side of the Divine pay heed to the marvels which they see in the propagations of animals - to mention here only those in eggs, as that in them lies the embryo in its seed or inception, with everything it requires to the time it hatches, and with everything that develops after it hatches until it becomes a bird or flying thing in the form of its parent. Also that if one gives attention to the form, it is such that, if one thinks deeply, one cannot help but come into a state of amazement - seeing, for example, that in the smallest of these creatures as in the largest, indeed in the invisible as in the visible (i.e., in tiny insects as in large birds or animals), there are sensory organs which serve for sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch; also motor organs, which are muscles, for they fly and walk; as well as viscera surrounding hearts and lungs, which are actuated by brains. That even lowly insects possess such component parts is known from their anatomy as described by certain investigators, most notably by Swammerdam 2 in his Biblia Naturae 3 .

[3] People who attribute all things to nature see these wonders, indeed, but they think only that they exist, and say that nature produces them. They say this because they have turned their mind away from thinking about the Divine; and when people who have turned away from thinking about the Divine see wonders in nature, they are unable to think rationally, still less spiritually, but think instead in sensual and material terms. They then think within the confines of nature from the standpoint of nature and not above it, in the way that those do who are in hell. They differ from animals only in their having the power of rationality, that is, in their being able to understand and so think otherwise if they will.

[4] People who have turned away from thinking about the Divine when they see wonders in nature, and as a result become sense-oriented, do not consider that the sight of the eye is so crude that it sees a number of tiny insects as a single, indistinct mass, and yet that each of them is organically formed to be capable of sensation and movement, thus that they have been endowed with fibers and vessels, including little hearts, air passages, viscera and brains; that these have been woven together out of the finest elements in nature; and that these structures correspond to some activity of life, by which even the least of these are individually actuated.

Since the sight of the eye is so crude that a number of such creatures, each with countless components in it, looks to it like a small, indistinct mass, and yet people who are sense-oriented think and judge in accordance with that sight, it is apparent how obtuse their minds have become, and thus in what darkness they are in respect to spiritual matters.

Footnotes:

1. From Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 351-357, 350.

2. Jan Swammerdam, 1637-1680, Dutch anatomist and entomologist.

3. Published posthumously under Dutch and Latin titles, Bybel der Natuure; of, Historie der insecten.../Biblia Naturae; sive Historia Insectorum... (A Book of Nature; or, History of Insects...), with text in Latin and Dutch in parallel columns, Leyden, 1737 (vol. 1), 1738 (vol. 2).

  
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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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