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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 #569

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569. The third experience.

Every love a person has emits a pleasing sensation which allows it to be felt. It is transmitted immediately into the spirit, from where it passes into the body. The pleasure of a person's love together with the beauty of his thought makes up his life. These pleasures and beauties are only dimly felt by a person, so long as he lives in this natural body, for this body absorbs and blunts them. But after death, when the material body is taken away, thus removing the covering or clothing of the spirit, then the pleasures of his love and the beauties of his thought are fully felt and perceived. It is remarkable that they are sometimes perceived as smells. This is the reason why the company all in the spiritual world keep depends upon their loves, those in heaven depending on their loves, and those in hell depending on theirs.

[2] All the smells, into which the pleasures of loves are turned in heaven, are experienced as the kind of sweet and fragrant smells, the lovely breaths and delightful sensations, which are experienced in gardens, flower-beds, fields and woods in the morning in springtime. The smells, into which the pleasures of the loves of the inhabitants of hell are turned, are experienced as rank, fetid and rotten stenches, such as arise from latrines, corpses and ponds full of garbage and excrement. It is remarkable that to the devils and satans there these smell like balsam, perfumes and incense, which refresh their nostrils and hearts. In the natural world too animals, birds and insects use smells to select their company, but this is not then allowed to human beings, until they have sloughed off their bodies.

[3] This is why heaven is arranged in the most elaborate order in keeping with all the varieties of love for good, and hell by contraries in keeping with all the varieties of love for evil. It is because of this opposition that there is between heaven and hell a gap that cannot be crossed. For the inhabitants of heaven cannot tolerate any smell from hell, since it causes them nausea and vomiting, and threatens to render them unconscious, if they sniff it. Much the same happens to the inhabitants of hell, if they pass beyond the mid-point of that gap.

[4] I once saw a devil, who looked from a distance like a leopard - I had seen him a few days before among the angels of the lowest heaven, since he knew how to disguise himself as an angel of light. He was crossing the mid-point and standing between two olive-trees without noticing any smell upsetting to his way of life. The reason was that no angels were present. As soon, however, as they came on the scene, he went into convulsions and fell to the ground with all his limbs contracted. He then appeared like a great snake writhing into coils, and finally rolling down through the gap. He was picked up by his companions and carried off to a cave where the foul smell of his own pleasure revived him.

[5] Another time too I saw a Satan punished by his companions. I asked the reason, and was told that he had blocked his nostrils and approached those who smelt of heaven, and on coming back brought that smell with him on his clothes. On a number of occasions it has happened that a stench as of a corpse rising from an open cave of hell has assailed my nostrils and made me feel like vomiting.

These facts can serve to establish why it is that smelling in the Word means perceiving. It is often stated that Jehovah smelt a welcome odour from burnt-offerings; and that the oil for anointing and incense were made from fragrant substances. On the other hand the Children of Israel were ordered to carry what was unclean in their camp outside the camp, and to bury and cover up their excrement (Deuteronomy 23:12-13). The reason was that the camp of Israel represented heaven, and the desert outside the camp represented hell.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #261

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261. To this I will append three narrative accounts. Here is the first:

In the upper northern zone in the spiritual world, over to the east, there are places of instruction, some for boys, some for adolescents, some for men, and some also for older men. All who have died as little children and are being raised in heaven are sent to these places. So, too, are all those newly arrived from the world who wish to learn about heaven and hell.

This district is over to the east in order that they may all be instructed by means of influx from the Lord. For the Lord is the east, since He is there in the sun, which is pure love emanating from Him. The warmth from that sun consequently in its essence is love, and the light from it in its essence is wisdom. These two are infused by the Lord into the people there from that sun, and they are infused in accordance with their reception of them, which in turn depends on their love of becoming wise.

When their periods of instruction are over, those who have become intelligent are sent out from there and are called disciples of the Lord. They are sent first to the west, and if they do not remain there, to the south, and some through the south to the east. And so they are introduced into the societies where their dwellings are to be.

[2] Once, when I was thinking about heaven and hell, I began to wish to have a universal concept of the state of each, knowing that a person who is acquainted with the universals of a thing can afterwards comprehend the particulars, since the particulars are contained in the universals, like the parts in a whole.

With this wish I looked in the direction of that district in the northern zone over to the east, where the places of instruction were; and going there by a way then opened to me, I went into one of the colleges in which the students were young men. There I approached the senior teachers who were doing the instructing, and I asked them whether they knew any universal characteristics relating to heaven and hell.

[3] They replied that they knew a little something; "but," they said, "if we look eastward to the Lord, we will be enlightened and then we will know." They proceeded to do this, and then said:

"The universal characteristics of [both heaven and] hell are three, but the universal characteristics of hell are diametrically opposite to the universal characteristics of heaven. The universal characteristics of hell are the following three loves: a love of governing stemming from a love of self; a love of possessing the goods of others stemming from a love of the world; and licentious love.

"The universal characteristics of heaven opposite to these are the following three loves: a love of governing stemming from a love of being useful; a love of possessing the goods of the world stemming from a love of performing useful services by means of them; and truly conjugial love."

Their having said this, after wishing them peace, I departed and returned home.

When I got home, I was told from heaven, "Examine these three universal characteristics, above and below, and afterwards we will see them on your hand." They said, "on your hand," because everything a person examines mentally appears to angels as though written on his hands.

  
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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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