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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 #570

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570. The fourth experience.

I once talked with a newly arrived spirit, who while in the world had spent much time meditating about heaven and hell. (By newly arrived spirits are meant people who have recently died, who are called spirits because they are then spiritual people.) As soon as he entered the spiritual world, he began in the same way to meditate about heaven and hell; and he felt happy when he thought about heaven, and sad when he thought about hell. On realising that he was in the spiritual world, he immediately asked where heaven and hell were, and what each were, and what they were like.

'Heaven,' they replied, 'is above your head, and hell is below your feet, for you are now in the world of spirits, which is mid-way between heaven and hell. But we cannot describe in a few words what heaven is and what it is like, or what hell is and is like.'

Then, being intensely eager to know he fell on his knees and prayed earnestly to God for instruction. An angel appeared at once on his right, who made him get up and said: 'You have begged to be instructed about heaven and hell. Ask and learn what pleasure is, and you will know.' And with these words the angel disappeared.

[2] Then the new spirit said to himself: 'What is the meaning of this, "Ask and learn what pleasure is, and you will know what heaven and hell are and what they are like"?' So he left the place where he was and wandered about, addressing those he met and saying: 'Please be so good as to tell me what pleasure is.' 'What sort of a question is this?' said some. 'Everyone knows what pleasure is. Isn't it joy and happiness? Pleasure then is pleasure, and one is like another; we don't know how to distinguish them.'

Others said that pleasure is mental amusement. 'When the mind is amused, the face is cheerful, speech is full of jokes, gestures are lighthearted, and the whole person is pleased.' But some said: 'Pleasure is simply feasting and eating delicacies, drinking and getting drunk on fine wine, and then having conversations on various topics, especially about the sports of Venus and Cupid.'

[3] On hearing this the new spirit was cross and said to himself: 'These are the replies of peasants, not educated people. These pleasures are neither heaven nor hell. I wish I could meet some wise men.' So he left these people and started asking, 'Where are the wise?'

Then he was seen by an angelic spirit, who said: 'I perceive that you are fired with the longing to know what is the universal characteristic of heaven and of hell. This is pleasure, so I will take you to a hill, where every day there is an assembly of those who seek out effects, of those who enquire into causes, and of those who examine ends. Those who seek out effects are called scientific spirits, or Sciences personified. Those who enquire into causes are called intelligent spirits, or Intelligences personified. Those who examine ends are called wise spirits or Wisdoms personified. Directly above them in heaven are the angels who see causes from the point of view of ends, and effects from the point of view of causes; these angels are the source of enlightenment for these three gatherings.'

[4] Then he took the new spirit by the hand and brought him onto a hill, where those who examine ends and are called Wisdoms were meeting. 'Forgive me,' he said to them, 'for coming up here to meet you. The reason is that from the time I was a boy I have been meditating about heaven and hell. I have recently arrived in this world, and some of the people I met told me that here heaven is overhead and hell is underfoot; but they did not tell me what each were or what they were like. So thinking constantly about them made me worried, and I prayed to God. Then an angel approached me and said: "Ask and learn what pleasure is, and you will know." I have been asking, but so far to no purpose. So, please, if you would be so kind, teach me what pleasure is.'

[5] 'Pleasure,' replied the Wisdoms, 'is the whole of life for all in heaven, and the whole of life for all in hell. Those who are in heaven experience the pleasure of good and truth, those in hell the pleasure of evil and falsity. For all pleasure has to do with love, and love is the very being of a person's life. So just as a person's humanity depends upon the nature of his love, so it does on the nature of his pleasure. The activity of the love creates the feeling of pleasure. In heaven its activity is accompanied by wisdom, in hell by madness. But each activity induces pleasure in the subjects it operates upon. The heavens and the hells experience opposite pleasures; the heavens experience the love for good and thus the pleasure of doing good, the hells the love for evil and thus the pleasure of doing harm. If therefore you know what pleasure is, you will know what heaven and hell are and what they are like.

[6] 'But ask and learn about pleasure from those who enquire into causes and are called Intelligences. They are on the right as you leave here.'

So he went away, approached the next gathering and explained why he had come, asking them to instruct him about pleasure. They were delighted to be asked, and said: 'It is true that, if anyone knows about pleasure, he knows what heaven and hell are and what they are like. The will, which is what makes a person human, does not move an inch, except as the result of pleasure. For the will regarded in itself is nothing but an affection of some love and thus of some pleasure. For there is some delight and thus some choice which inspires the act of willing; and because it is the will that makes the understanding think, not the slightest thinking is possible without pleasure flowing in from the will. The reason for this is that the Lord by the radiation from Himself activates everything in the soul and mind of angels, spirits and men. This activity takes place through the inflow of love and wisdom, and this inflow is the actual activity which is the source of all pleasure. This in its originating phase is called blessedness, bliss and happiness, and in its derived phase, pleasure, loveliness and delight, to use a universal term, good. But the spirits of hell turn everything they have upside down, so changing good into evil, and truth into falsity, though the pleasure remains constant. For without constant pleasure they would have no will, no feeling and so no life. From this it is plain what the pleasure of hell is, what it is like and where it comes from and likewise the pleasure of heaven.'

[7] Having heard this, he was taken to the third gathering where were those who seek out effects and are called Sciences. These said: 'Go down to the lower earth, and go up to the upper earth; on these you will perceive and feel the pleasures of both heaven and hell.'

Then some way off the ground gaped open and three devils came up through the opening; they had a fiery appearance resulting from the pleasure of their love. The angels who were accompanying the new spirit realised that the three devils had been deliberately brought up from hell and called out to them: 'Don't come any closer, but from where you are tell us something about your pleasures.'

'You may know,' they replied, 'that everyone, whether he is said to be good or wicked, experiences his own pleasure, the so-called good man his, and the so-called wicked man his.'

'What,' they were asked, 'is your pleasure?' They said it was the pleasure of fornicating, taking revenge, cheating and blaspheming. Then they were asked what their pleasures were like. They said that other people felt them as like the rank smell of dung, the stench of corpses and the rottenness of pools of urine. 'Do you find those things pleasant?' they were asked. 'Extremely so,' they replied. 'Then,' they were told, 'you are like unclean animals that live in such conditions.' 'If we are, we are,' they replied; 'but these are the kind of things that delight our nostrils.'

'What more can you tell us?' they were asked. They said that everyone is allowed to experience his own pleasure, even the filthiest, as others call it, so long as he does not annoy good spirits and angels. 'But because our pleasure will not let us stop annoying them, we have been thrown into labour-camps where we are harshly treated. It is the prevention and withdrawal of our pleasures there which is called the torments of hell; it is too a kind of inward pain.'

'Why did you annoy good people?' they were asked. They said they could not help themselves. 'There is a kind of frenzy,' they said, 'which takes hold of us, when we see an angel and feel the Lord's Divine sphere surrounding him.' 'Then you are really like wild beasts,' we said on hearing this.

A little later, when they saw the new spirit in the company of angels, a frenzy came over the devils, which seemed like the fire of hatred. So to prevent them doing harm, they were hurled back into hell. After this there appeared the angels who see causes from the point of view of ends and effects from the point of view of causes, and occupy the heaven above those three gatherings. They were seen surrounded by brilliant light, which as it rolled down in spiralling curves brought with it a garland of flowers, and placed it on the new spirit's head. Then a voice came forth saying: 'This laurel-wreath is given to you because from the time you were a boy you meditated about heaven and hell.'

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #267

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267. The second account:

Some period of time later I entered a wooded area, where I walked engaged in thought concerning people who are caught up in a craving to possess those things which have to do with the world, and who fantasize on that account that they do. And I saw, then, two angels at some distance from me, talking together and now and then looking over at me. Consequently I drew nearer; and as I approached, they spoke to me, saying:

"We perceive in ourselves that you are thinking about the same thing we are discussing, or that we are discussing the same thing you are thinking about, which comes from a reciprocal communication of our affections."

I asked them, therefore, what they were discussing.

"Fantasy, lust, and intelligence," they said, "and at the moment, people who find delight in picturing and imagining that they possess everything in the world."

[2] At that I then asked them to express their thought with respect to the first three points - lust, fantasy and intelligence.

So, taking up the subject, they said that everyone is in a state of lust inwardly from birth, and in a state of intelligence outwardly from training; but that no one is in a state of intelligence inwardly, thus in spirit - still less in a state of wisdom - except from the Lord.

"For everyone," they said, "is withheld from the lust of evil and kept in a state of intelligence according as he looks to the Lord and is at the same time conjoined with Him. Apart from this a person is nothing but lust. Yet he is still in a state of intelligence in outward aspects, or as regards the body, from training. For though a person craves honors and riches, or prominence and wealth, these two are not attained unless he appears to be moral and spiritual in character, thus intelligent and wise; and he learns to appear such from the time he is a little child. That is why, as soon as he comes into the company of others or into gatherings of them, he turns his spirit about, withdraws it from lust, and speaks and acts in accordance with the becoming and honorable virtues he has learned from early childhood and still retains in his physical memory - doing his utmost to take care that nothing emerges of the insanity of lust which grips his spirit.

[3] "Consequently everyone not inwardly led by the Lord is a faker, a phony and a hypocrite, and so is human in appearance but not in reality. Of such a person it may be said that his outer shell or body is wise, while his kernel or spirit is insane; or that his outward aspect is human and his inward one animal. People like that direct the back of their heads upward and the front downward, thus going about as though afflicted with heaviness, their heads hanging down and their faces turned to the ground. When they put off the body and become spirits, and are then set free, they become reflections of the insanities of their lust. For people who are caught up in love of self have a longing to rule over the universe, even to extend its limits in order to widen their dominion, never seeing an end; while people who are caught up in a love of the world have a longing to possess all its riches, and they grieve and are envious if any of its treasures are kept hidden from them in the possession of others.

"To keep people like this from becoming nothing but reflections of their lusts, therefore, and so no longer human, it is given them in the natural 1 world to think in accord with fear for the loss of their reputation, and so the loss of honor and gain, together with fear of the law and its penalties; and also to apply their minds to some pursuit or work, by which they are held in external concerns and thus in a state of intelligence, however irrational and insane they are inwardly."

[4] Following this description I asked whether all people who are caught up in the lust are at the same time caught up in the fantasy of it.

They replied that those are caught up in the fantasy of their lust who think withdrawn into themselves and indulge their imagination excessively, talking to themselves; for they almost separate their spirit from its connection with the body, overwhelming their understanding with delusion and stupidly entertaining themselves with nonsense as though everything in the universe were theirs.

This madness is what a person comes into after death if he has withdrawn his spirit from the body and has been unwilling to relinquish the pleasure of his madness, thinking little from religion about evils and falsities, and least of all about unbridled love of self as being destructive of love toward the Lord, or about unbridled love of the world as being destructive of love for the neighbor.

Footnotes:

1. The original text reads, "in the spiritual world," but preceding and subsequent statements in the discussion, and the general doctrine delivered elsewhere concerning the nature of the two worlds, suggest that it is probably a slip of the pen for "the natural world." (The same statement is repeated in True Christian Religion, no. 662[3], without correction, but so are several other, more obvious errors, indicating that the latter was simply set in type again from the text here, without careful review.)

  
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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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