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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 #625

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625. 1 The fifth experience.

Once when I was meditating on the Lord's second coming, there suddenly appeared a beam of light, so powerful as to dazzle my eyes. So I looked up, and saw the whole heaven above me full of light; and from east to west I heard a long series of voices glorifying God. An angel came close and said: 'This is the glorifying of the Lord on account of His coming, uttered by the angels of the eastern and western heavens.' Nothing was heard from the southern or northern heavens but a polite murmur.

Since the angel could hear everything, he told me first that this glorifying and praising of the Lord was taken from the Word. Then he said: 'Now in particular they are glorifying and praising the Lord with the words spoken by the prophet Daniel.

You have seen iron mixed with common clay, but they will not hold together. But in those days the God of the heavens will cause a kingdom to rise which shall not perish for ever. It will shatter and consume all these kingdoms, but will stand itself for ever.' Daniel 2:43-44.

[2] After this I heard what sounded like singing, and yet further away to the east I saw a gleam of light more brilliant than before. I asked the angel what was the glorifying taking place there. He said it was what Daniel described:

I was watching in the visions of the night and I saw the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. To him were given dominion and the kingdom and all peoples and nations will worship him. His dominion will be a dominion for ever, which will not pass away, and his kingdom one that will not perish, Daniel 7:13-14.

Besides this they praise the Lord with these words from Revelation:

To Jesus Christ be glory and strength. Behold, He comes with clouds. He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. I, John, heard this from the Son of Man from the midst of the seven lampstands, Revelation 1:5-13; 22:8, 13, Also with the words of Matthew 24:30-31.

[3] I looked again to the east of heaven, and the light was growing from the right; the brightness spread into the expanse of sky to the south, and I heard a sweet sound. I asked the angel what glorifying of the Lord was taking place there. He said it was with these words from Revelation:

I saw a new heaven and a new earth; and I saw the holy city New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, prepared like a bride for her husband. And I heard a mighty voice out of heaven saying: Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them. And the angel spoke with me and said: Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away in the spirit onto a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, Revelation 21:1-3, 9-10.

Also with these words:

I, Jesus, am the bright star of the morning; and the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And He said, I am coming soon. Amen; even so, come, Lord Jesus, Revelation 22:16-17, 20.

[4] After this and more I heard a general glorifying from the east of heaven to the west, and also from the south to the north. I asked the angel what this was. He said it was these words from the Prophets:

Let all flesh know that I am Jehovah your Saviour and your Redeemer, Isaiah 49:26.

Thus spoke Jehovah, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, Jehovah Zebaoth, I am the first and the last, and there is no God beside me, Isaiah 44:6.

On that day it will be said, Behold, this is our God, whom we have awaited to free us. He is Jehovah, whom we have awaited, Isaiah 25:9.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way for Jehovah. Behold, the Lord Jehovih comes in strength. He will feed his flock like a shepherd, Isaiah 40:3, 5, 10-11.

A child is born for us, a son is given to us, whose name is Wonderful, Counsellor, God, Hero, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of peace, Isaiah 9:6.

Behold, the days will come when I shall raise up for David a righteous shoot, who will reign as king. And this is his name, Jehovah our righteousness, Jeremiah 23:5-6; 33:15-16.

Jehovah Zebaoth is his name and the Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. He will be called the God of the whole earth, Isaiah 54:5.

On that day Jehovah will be king over the whole earth; on that day Jehovah will be one, and His name one, Zechariah 14:9.

On hearing and understanding this my heart leaped for joy and I went home rejoicing; and there I came back from the state of the spirit into that of the body, in which state I wrote down these things I had seen and heard.

Footnotes:

1. This section is repeated with slight modification from Conjugial Love 81.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #326

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326. To this I will append two narrative accounts. Here is the first:

After the question concerning the soul had been discussed in the school and answered, 1 I saw the people going out in order, the headmaster in front, after him the older men, with the five young men who had responded to the question in the midst of them, and after them the rest. As they left the building, they went around to the sides, where there were walkways surrounded by bushes. And gathering there, they broke up into small groups, all of them circles of young men conversing on matters of wisdom, with one of the wiser men from the balcony in each.

Seeing them from my place of lodging, I entered a state of the spirit and in the spirit went out to them. And there I went over to the headmaster, who a little before had posed the question concerning the soul.

When he saw me he said, "Who are you? As I watched you approaching on the way here, I was astonished to see that one minute you would pop into view, the next minute drop out of sight, so that one moment I would see you and suddenly then not. Surely you are not in the same life-state as our people."

Gently laughing at this I replied, "I am not a marionette, nor a chameleon, but I am one who alternates, being sometimes in your light and sometimes not, so that I am an alien and at the same time a native."

[2] At this the headmaster looked at me and said, "These are strange and extraordinary things you are saying. Tell me who you are."

So I said, "I live in the world in which you once lived and from which you have departed, which is called the natural world; and I live as well in the world into which you have come and in which you are now living, which is called the spiritual world. I am as a result in a natural state and at the same time a spiritual one - in a natural state when I am with people on earth, and in a spiritual state when I am with you. Moreover, when I am in a natural state, I am not visible to you; but when I am in a spiritual state, I am. To be as I am is something I have been given by the Lord.

"Being an enlightened man, you know that an inhabitant of the natural world does not see an inhabitant of the spiritual world, or vice versa. Therefore when I conveyed my spirit into my body, you did not see me; but when I conveyed it out of my body, you did.

"You also taught in your school exercise that you are souls, and that souls see souls because they are human forms. But you know that you did not see yourselves or your souls within your bodies when you were in the natural world. This fact is due to the difference that exists between something spiritual and something natural."

[3] When he heard me mention a difference between something spiritual and something natural, he said, "What is the difference? It is not like the difference between something more pure and something less so? So what is something spiritual but a purer form of something natural."

But I replied, "That is not what the difference is, but it is as the difference between something prior and something subsequent, between which there is no finite relationship. For the prior is in the subsequent, as a cause in its effect, and the subsequent exists from the prior, as an effect from its cause. That is why the one is not visible to the other."

To this the headmaster said, "I have reflected and ruminated on the difference, but so far in vain. I would like to have some concept of it."

[4] So I said, "You shall not only have a concept of the difference between something spiritual and something natural, but you will even witness the difference." Whereupon I spoke to him as follows:

"You are in a spiritual state when you are with your own people, but in a natural state with me; for you speak with your associates in spiritual language, the common language of every spirit and angel, whereas with me you speak in my native tongue. Indeed, every spirit or angel in speaking with a mortal person uses the person's customary language, thus speaking French with a Frenchman, English with an Englishman, Greek with a Greek, Arabic with an Arab, and so on.

"So then, to learn the difference between something spiritual and something natural in terms of languages, do the following: Go over to your associates, say something there and remember the words. Then with these memorized, come back and repeat them to me."

So he did as I said, and returned to me with the words in his mouth, but when he uttered them he did not know what any of them meant. The words were altogether strange and unfamiliar, being words not found in any language of the natural world.

After he repeated this experiment several times, it became clearly apparent to him that people in the spiritual world all speak a spiritual language which has nothing in common with any language of the natural world, and that every person comes automatically into use of that language after death. At the same time he also then discovered that the very intonation of spiritual language is so different from the intonation of natural language that the intonation of spiritual language, even when loud, is not at all audible to a natural person, nor the intonation of natural language to a spiritual person.

[5] After that I asked the headmaster and some others standing by to go over to their associates and write down some thought on a piece of paper, and with that piece of paper come back to me and read it. They did as I said, and they returned with the piece of paper in hand; but when they went to read it, they were unable to make out what any of it meant, since the writing consisted only of some alphabetic letters with curly lines over them, each of which carried some meaning connected with the subject. (Because every letter of the alphabet carries some meaning there, it is apparent from what origin the Lord is called the Alpha and the Omega.) 2 As they again and again withdrew, wrote and returned, they discovered that their writing included and contained a countless number of elements which no natural writing could ever express. But they were told that this is because a spiritual person thinks thoughts incomprehensible and inexpressible to a natural person, and these cannot descend or be put into any other form of writing or language.

[6] Then, because the others standing by were unwilling to believe that spiritual thought so far surpasses natural thought as to be inexpressible in comparison, I said to them, "Try an experiment. Go over into your spiritual association, think on some subject, and holding the thought come back and express it to me."

So they went, thought, held the thought, and came back; but when they went to express what they had thought, they could not. For they did not find any natural mental concept equivalent to any spiritual concept. So neither did they find any word to express their thoughts, since ideas of the mind take form as words in speech. At that they then began to withdraw and return, to prove to themselves that spiritual ideas were higher than natural ones, being inexpressible, ineffable and incomprehensible to the natural man. And because spiritual ideas are so transcendent, they began to say that spiritual ideas or thoughts compared to natural ones were the essences of ideas and the essences of thoughts, and that they therefore expressed the essences of qualities and the essences of affections; consequently that spiritual thoughts were the germs and origins of natural thoughts. It also became evident from this that spiritual wisdom was the essence of wisdom, thus unintelligible to any person of wisdom in the natural world.

They were then told from the third heaven that there is a still more interior or higher wisdom, called celestial, which has a similar relationship to spiritual wisdom as spiritual wisdom does to natural wisdom; and that these levels of wisdom flow in succession in accordance with the heavens from the Lord's Divine wisdom, which is infinite.

Footnotes:

1. This account follows on the one related in no. 315 above.

2. In Revelation 1:8,11, 21:6, 22:13. Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, in the language in which Revelation was written.

  
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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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