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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 #623

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623. The third experience.

I once was allowed to see three hundred clergy together with laymen, all well-educated and learned, because they knew how to prove that faith alone was sufficient for justification, and even 1 beyond. Since their belief was that heaven was merely a matter of being admitted by grace, they were given permission to go up to one community in heaven, but not one of the higher ones. When they went up, they looked from a distance like calves. On entering heaven they were received politely by the angels; but when they began to talk with them, they were seized with trembling, then terror and finally agony like that of death. Then they cast themselves down headlong, and as they fell they looked like dead horses. The reason why they looked like calves, when they were going up, was that the natural affection for seeing and knowing in joyous play is by correspondence like a calf. When they were falling down they looked like dead horses, because by correspondence the understanding of truth looks like a horse, and the lack of understanding of truth as the church possesses it, like a dead horse.

[2] There were some boys down below, who saw them coming down, and looking like dead horses as they fell. Then they turned their faces away, and said to the master who was with them: 'What is the meaning of this monstrous thing? We saw people and now they have turned into dead horses. So being unable to look at them we turned our faces away. Let us not stay in this place, sir, but go away.' So they went away.

Then as they went the master taught them what a dead horse meant. 'A horse,' he said, 'means the understanding of truth drawn from the Word. All the horses you have seen meant that. When someone goes along meditating on something from the Word, his meditation seen from a distance looks like a horse, of good breeding and alive if he meditates spiritually, and by contraries a poor or dead one if he meditates materially.'

[3] Then the boys asked: 'What is meant by meditating spiritually or materially on something from the Word?' 'I will illustrate this,' replied the master, 'by examples. Everyone who reverently reads the Word thinks inwardly about God, the neighbour and heaven, doesn't he? Anyone who thinks about God only as a Person and not as Essence thinks materially; and so does anyone who thinks about the neighbour merely as an external form, without regard to the sort of person he is. If anyone thinks of heaven merely as a place, instead of as love and wisdom, which are what make it heaven, he too is thinking materially.'

[4] But the boys said: 'We have thought about God as a Person, and about the neighbour as a human form, and about heaven as a place which is up above us. So when we read the Word, did we then look to anyone like dead horses?'

'No,' said the master, 'you are still children, and could not do otherwise. But I have noticed that you have an affection for knowing and understanding; and since this is spiritual, you were also thinking spiritually. For there is some spiritual thought hidden within your material thought, a fact so far unknown to you. But I want to go back to what I said before, that anyone who thinks materially when he reads the Word or meditates on anything from it, looks from a distance like a dead horse; but if he thinks spiritually, like a live one. I said too that anyone who thinks of God only as a Person and not as Essence is thinking materially about God. The Divine Essence has many attributes, such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternity, love, wisdom, mercy, grace and others too. There are also attributes which proceed from the Divine Essence; creation and preservation, redemption and salvation, enlightenment and instruction. Everyone who thinks of God in terms of Person makes three Gods; there is one God, he says, who is the Creator and Preserver, another who is the Redeemer and Saviour, and a third who is the Enlightener and Instructor. But everyone who thinks of God in terms of Essence makes God one; God created us, he says, and He too redeems and saves us, and also enlightens and instructs us. That is the reason why those who think of the Divine Trinity in terms of Person, and so materially, cannot help being led by the ideas in their thought, which is material, to make three Gods out of one. But they are still obliged to say, contrary to their thinking, that the three are united by Essence, because their thought has also led them to perceive God, as it were through a lattice, in terms of Essence.

[5] 'You, my pupils, should therefore think about God in terms of essence, and from this think about person. Thinking in terms of person about essence means thinking materially about essence too. But thinking about person in terms of essence means thinking spiritually also about person. The pagans of antiquity, since they thought materially about God and so also about His attributes, made not three but as many as a hundred Gods; for they made each separate attribute into a God. You should know that the material cannot enter into the spiritual; but the spiritual can into the material. It is much the same with thinking about the neighbour in terms of external form rather than the sort of person he is. Or again, thinking about heaven in terms of place rather than love and wisdom, which are what heaven is made of. It is much the same with every single thing in the Word. Anyone therefore who cherishes a material idea of God, and also of the neighbour and of heaven, cannot understand anything in the Word, since for him it is a dead letter; and he himself, when he is reading the Word or meditating on anything from it, looks from a distance like a dead horse.

[6] 'Those whom you saw coming down from heaven and turning before your eyes into dead horses were people who had shut off their rational vision as regards theological matters, or the spiritual concerns of the church, not only for themselves but also for others, by their special dogma that the understanding must be kept subservient to their faith. They never thought that if the understanding is kept shut off by religion, it is as blind as a mole, and full of thick darkness. Darkness of this sort, which reflects all spiritual light, prevents it flowing in from the Lord and out of heaven, and sets in its place a barrier at the level of the bodily senses, far below the rational level, in matters of faith. That is to say, it sets this barrier near the nose, securing it in the cartilage there, so that afterwards it is not even possible to smell what is spiritual. As a result, some people have become so sensitive that on catching a whiff of what is spiritual they fall down in a faint. By smell I mean perception. These are the people who make God into three. They do speak in terms of essence, saying that God is one, but still they are led by their faith to pray that God the Father may have mercy for the sake of the Son and send the Holy Spirit, so that it is clear they are making three Gods. They cannot help themselves, if they pray to one to have mercy for the sake of another, and to send a third.' Then the master taught them about the Lord being the one God in whom is the Divine Trinity.

Footnotes:

1. Reading et quidem for et quidam 'and some of them'.

  
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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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