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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 #663

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663. 1 The third experience.

I was once in company with angels and listened to their conversation. They were talking about intelligence and wisdom, saying that a person has no other feeling and perception but that intelligence and wisdom are both in him, and so whatever he wills and thinks comes from him. Yet in fact not a scrap of either comes from the person, apart from the ability to receive them. Among the many things they said was this, that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden stood for a belief that intelligence and wisdom were from man, and the tree of life stood for a belief that intelligence and wisdom were from God. It was because Adam was persuaded by the serpent to eat from the former tree, believing that he would be or become God, that he was ejected from the garden and damned.

[2] While the angels were discussing this, two priests arrived accompanied by a man who in the world had been a country's ambassador. I repeated to them what I had heard from the angels about intelligence and wisdom, and on hearing this the three of them began to argue about these two subjects and also about prudence, whether they were from God or from man. It was a fierce argument. All three believed alike that these came from man, because their actual feeling and so their perception supported this view; but the priests, being then under the influence of theological zeal, insisted that no part of intelligence and wisdom, and so of prudence, came from man. They found confirmation of that in these passages of the Word:

A man cannot take anything, unless it is given him from heaven, John 3:27.

Jesus said to the disciples, Without me you can do nothing, John 15:5.

[3] But the angels allowed me to perceive that, however much the priests talked like this, they still at heart held similar beliefs to the ambassador's. So the angels said to them: 'Take off your clothes and put on those of ministers of state, and believe that is what you are.' They did so, and then they thought from their interiors, and in talking used the arguments they inwardly supported; these were that all intelligence and wisdom reside in man and are his. 'Who,' they said, 'has ever felt that these flow in from God?' They looked at each other and backed each other up.

It is a special feature of the spiritual world that a spirit thinks himself to be what the clothes he wears indicate. The reason is that it is the understanding which clothes each person there.

[4] At that instant a tree was seen near them, and they were told: 'It is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; beware of eating from it.' Yet they were so infatuated with their own intelligence that they had a burning desire to eat from it, and they said to each other: 'Why shouldn't we? Isn't the fruit good?' So they went up to it and ate the fruit.

When the ambassador noticed this, they got together and became bosom friends. Then together, holding hands, they took the way of their own intelligence, which leads to hell. However I saw them brought back from there, because they were not yet prepared.

Footnotes:

1. This section is repeated from Conjugial Love 353-354.

  
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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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