New Christian Bible Study

Commentary

 

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 #697

Study this Passage

  
/ 853  
  

697. The sixth experience. 1

I once saw not far from me an atmospheric phenomenon. I saw a cloud divided into smaller clouds, some of which were blue and others dark; and I saw these as it were colliding with one another. They were striped with glittering rays which crossed them; sometimes the stripes had sharp tips like sword-points, at other times they appeared square-ended like broken off swords. Sometimes the stripes ran out so as to meet, at other times they withdrew into themselves, rather like boxers. So it looked as if these little clouds of varied colours were fighting one another, but they were playing. Since this atmospheric display took place not far from me, I lifted up my eyes and looking hard I saw boys, young men and old men entering a building constructed of marble with also porphyry in its foundations. The phenomenon was over this building. Then I asked one of those who were going in what was happening there. 'It is a high school,' he replied, 'where young men are given an introduction to various forms of wisdom.'

[2] On hearing this I went in with them. I was in the spirit, that is, in much the same state as people in the spiritual world, those who are called spirits and angels. Inside the school there was in front a chair, in the middle were benches, around the sides seats, and a gallery over the entrance. The chair was for the young men who were to take turns to reply to the question set. The benches were for the audience, the seats at the sides for those who had previously given wise answers, and the gallery for the older men who were to be umpires and judges. In the middle of the gallery there was a platform, where a wise man, called the headmaster, was seated. He put the questions, and the young men answered these from the chair.

When all were assembled, the man on the platform got up and said: 'Please now reply to this question and answer it if you can: what is the soul and what is its nature?'

[3] On hearing this all were astonished and began to murmur; and some of the crowd on the benches cried out: 'What man is there from the age of Saturn 2 down to our times who has been able by any effort of rational thought to see and grasp what the soul is, much less what its nature is. Surely this is beyond the capacity of anyone's understanding?'

But people in the gallery replied to this: 'This is not beyond the understanding, but within its capacity and purview. just give a reply.'

So the young men got up who had been chosen that day to mount the chair and reply to the questions. There were five of them, who had been examined by the elders and found to be outstandingly clever. They were then sitting on padded seats at the sides of the chair. They then took it in turn, according to the order in which they sat, to climb up to the chair. As each went up, he put on a tunic of opalescent silk and over it a gown of soft wool with flowers woven in it, and a hat on his head with a chaplet of roses surrounded by small sapphires on the crown.

[4] Then I saw the first man so clothed go up and say: 'What the soul is and what its nature is has not been revealed to anyone since the first day of creation. It is a secret which God alone keeps in His treasure-houses. But this much has been discovered, that the soul dwells in man like a queen. However the location of its residence has been the subject of conjecture among learned experts. Some have placed it in the small tubercle between the cerebrum and the cerebellum known as the pineal gland. They have guessed that this was the seat of the soul because the whole person is controlled from those two brains, and that tubercle regulates them. So what governs the two brains at its whim, must also govern the whole person from head to heel. This view,' he said, 'has been regarded by many in the world as true or very probable, but a later age has rejected it as a mere invention.'

[5] On finishing this speech he took off the gown, tunic and hat, and the second of those chosen put them on and so took the chair. His pronouncement about the soul was that in the whole of heaven and in the whole of the world there is no one who knows what the soul is and what its nature is. 'This much,' he said, 'we know, that the soul exists and is in man; but where it is, is a matter of guesswork. This is certain, that it is in the head, since that is where the understanding thinks and the will forms its resolutions; and it is on the face in front of the head that man's five sense organs are to be found. What gives all of these life is the soul which resides inside the head; but I would not dare to express an opinion on where in it its residence is. I have agreed with those who have assigned to it a lodging in the three ventricles of the brain; at other times with those who placed it in the corpora striata there, at other times with those who placed it in the medullary substance of either brain, at other times with those who placed it in the cortical substance, at others with those who placed it in the dura mater. For there was no lack of points to be made in favour of each one of these seats.

The point in favour of the three ventricles in the brain was that they are the receptacles of the animal spirits and all the brain's lymphs. The points in favour of the corpora striata were that these compose the marrow through which the nerves emerge, and by means of which either part of the brain has continuous extensions to the spine; and from one or other of these the fibres emerge which compose the whole structure of the body. The points in favour of the medullary substance of either brain were that it is a gathering and massing together of all the fibres which form the starting point for the development of the whole person. The point in favour of the cortical substance was that here are the first and last ends, and so the beginnings of all fibres, and so of sensation and movement. The point in favour of the dura mater was that it is the shared covering of either brain, from where it stretches in a kind of continuity over the heart and the viscera of the body. For my part, I do not rate one of these theories as superior to another. Will you please, decide and choose which is the best theory.'

[6] After saying this he came down from the chair and passed on the tunic, gown and hat to the third, who went up to the chair and spoke as follows. 'How can I at my age deal with such a lofty subject? I appeal to the learned people seated at the sides here, I appeal to you wise people in the gallery, in fact I appeal to the angels of the highest heaven: can anyone by the light of his reason form for himself any idea of the soul? As regards its seat in man, I can offer as good a guess as anyone else. My guess is that it is in the heart and consequently in the blood. My reason for this is that the heart by means of the blood from it controls both the body and the head. There is a large blood-vessel called the aorta emerging from it and reaching the whole of the body; and there are blood-vessels called carotid arteries emerging from it and reaching the whole of the head. As a result it is universally agreed that the soul by means of blood from the heart sustains, nourishes and gives life to the whole organic system of both the body and the head. An additional reason for believing this assertion is the fact that Holy Scripture says so many times 'soul and heart'. For instance, you are to love God 'with all your soul and with all your heart'; and God creates in man 'a new soul and a new heart' (Deuteronomy 6:5; 10:12; 11:13; 26:16; Jeremiah 32:41; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30, 33; Luke 10:27, and elsewhere). It also says explicitly that the blood is the soul of the flesh (Leviticus 17:11, 14).' On hearing this some people raised their voices to cry 'Very learned!'; they were members of the clergy.

[7] After this the fourth put on the garments worn by the previous speaker, and on taking the chair said: 'I too suspect that there is no one of such a sharp and subtle mind as to be able to discern what the soul is and what its nature is. I think therefore that anyone who wishes to scrutinise it has his subtlety exhausted by useless exertions. But from childhood up I have persisted in believing the opinion of the ancients, that man's soul is in the whole of him and in every part of him, and so is as much in his head and each of its parts as in the body and each of its parts. It is a useless invention of modern scholars to locate its seat in some part rather than everywhere. Also the soul is a spiritual substance, to which neither extension nor position can be attributed, but only residing and filling. Again, is there anyone who does not understand life when he mentions the soul, and is not life in the whole and in any part you like to name?' There were many in the audience who supported this statement.

[8] He was followed by the fifth, who, adorned with the same emblems, pronounced from the chair as follows: 'I don't much care to say where the soul is, whether it is in some part or in the whole person. But I will draw on my own resources to disclose my opinion on this question, what the soul is and what its nature is. No one thinks of the soul as anything but something pure, which can be likened to ether or air or wind, the vital principle in which derives from the faculty of reason, which man has to a higher degree than animals. I have based this opinion on the fact that, when a person expires, he is said to breathe out or give up his soul or spirit. As a result too a soul which goes on living after death is believed to be a breath of this kind, containing the life of thought which is called the soul. What else could the soul be? But because I have heard people from the gallery asserting that the question what the soul is and what its nature is, is not beyond the understanding, but within its scope and purview, I beg and beseech you to disclose yourselves this everlasting secret.'

[9] The elders in the gallery here looked at the headmaster, who had set the question. He understood from their nods that they wanted him to go down and tell them the answer. So he at once got down from the platform, and passing through the auditorium took the chair, and holding up his hand said: 'Please listen to me. Is there anyone who does not believe the soul to be the most intimate and subtle essence of a person? But what is essence without form but a figment of the imagination? The soul then is a form, but what sort of form I will tell you. It is the form of all the parts of love and all the parts of wisdom. All the parts of love are called affections, and all the parts of wisdom are called perceptions. The perceptions as a result of and so together with the affections make up a single form containing countless parts but arranged in such order and so cohering that they can be called a unity; and they can be called a unity, because nothing can be taken away from it or added to it, if it is to be a unity. What is the human soul but such a form? All the parts of love and all the parts of wisdom are the essentials of such a form, and in the case of a person these essentials are in his soul, and from his soul in his head and body.

[10] 'You are called spirits and angels; and you believed in the world that spirits and angels were like puffs of wind or particles of ether, and so minds of higher or lower degree 3 . Now you see clearly that you are truly, really and actually people, who in the world lived and thought in a material body; and you knew that it is not the material body that lives and thinks, but the spiritual substance in that body. This you called the soul, whose form you did not know; yet now you have seen it and go on seeing it. You are all souls, about whose immortality you have heard, thought, talked and written so much; and since you are forms of love and wisdom coming from God, you cannot ever die. The soul then is a human form, from which nothing can be taken away, and to which nothing can be added, and it is the inmost form of all the forms throughout the body. Since the forms which are outside receive from the inmost both essence and form, you are therefore souls, just as you appear to be to your sight and to ours. In short, the soul is the real person because it is the inmost person; its form therefore is the human form in full perfection. But it is not life, but is the nearest receiver of life from God, and so God's dwelling.'

[11] This speech was greeted by many with applause, but there were some who said, 'We must think about this.' I then went home, and suddenly there appeared above that high school, in place of the previous atmospheric display, a shining cloud without any stripes or rays fighting one another. This cloud penetrated the roof and coming inside lit up the walls. I was told that they saw things written on them, among which was this:

Jehovah God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul, Genesis 2:7.

Footnotes:

1. This section is repeated from Conjugial Love 315.

2. The 'golden age' of antiquity.

3. Latin: mentes et animi.

  
/ 853  
  

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #463

Study this Passage

  
/ 962  
  

463. To this I will append the following account:

I looked out in the direction of the seashore in the spiritual world, and I saw there a magnificent harbor. I went over and inspected it; and lo, I saw there seagoing vessels, great and small, and in them all kinds of merchandise, with boys and girls sitting on the rowers' benches and handing it out to any who wanted it. Moreover they said, "We are waiting to see our beautiful turtles which will soon rise up for us out of the sea." And suddenly I saw turtles, great and small, on whose shells and carapaces sat baby turtles, which were looking about at the surrounding islands.

The parent turtles had two heads, a large one covered with a shell like the carapace of their bodies, which gave them a reddish glow; and a small one, like the usual one for turtles, which they would withdraw into the foreparts of their bodies and also insert invisibly into the larger head. I kept my eyes, however, on the large, reddish head, and I saw that it had a face like that of a human being, and that it would speak with the boys and girls on the rowers' benches and lick their hands. The boys and girls for their part would pet them then and give them food and treats to eat, and also valuable gifts, such as silk usable for garments, sandarac wood 1 for tablets, purple for their ornamentation, and scarlet pigment as rouge.

[2] Seeing these things, I wished to know what they represented, as I knew that everything appearing in the world of spirits is a correspondent form and represents something spiritual descending from heaven.

Angels then spoke to me from heaven and said, "You yourself know what the harbor represents, and its vessels, and the boys and girls on the benches; but you do not know what the turtles represent."

So they said, "The turtles represent those members of the clergy there who divorce faith from charity and its good works totally, asserting to themselves that there is no conjunction whatever, but that the Holy Spirit enters into a person through faith in God the Father because of the merit of the Son, and purifies the person interiorly as far as to his native will. They make this will, then, into a kind of oval plane, and when the operation of the Holy Spirit approaches it, they say it goes around that plane on the left side and does not at all touch it. Thus the inner or higher part of a person's nature belongs to God, they say, while the outer or lower part belongs to the person, and thus nothing that a person does, whether good or evil, appears before God - not good because it is merit-seeking, and not evil because it is evil - since if these were to appear before God, they would both cause the person to perish.

"Moreover," they said, "because this is the case, a person is permitted to will, think, say and do whatever he pleases, provided he guards himself against the world."

[3] I asked whether they also declare that a person is permitted to think about God as being not omnipresent and not omniscient.

They said from heaven that this, too, is permitted them, because in the case of a person who has once been purified and thus justified, God does not look at anything pertaining to his thought or will, and yet in the inner recess or higher region of his mind or nature, he still retains the faith that he had previously received in its action upon him, and that the action can sometimes return without the person's knowing.

"This," the angels said, "is what the small head represents, which the turtles draw into the foreparts of their bodies and hide, and which they also insert in the large head when they speak with laymen. For they do not speak with them out of the small head, but out of the large one, which out front appears as though endowed with a human face. They speak with them from the Word about love, charity, good works, the Ten Commandments, and repentance, and they take from the Word almost everything that is found there on these subjects. But then they insert the small head into the large one, and this causes them to interpret within themselves that none of these things are to be done for God's sake, or for the sake of heaven and salvation, but only for the sake of the public good and personal good. Yet because they speak about these things from the Word, especially about the gospel, the operation of the Holy Spirit, and salvation, doing so agreeably and elegantly, therefore they appear to their listeners as beautiful human beings and wiser than any others in the entire world. That is why you saw the boys and girls sitting on the rowers' benches give them treats to eat and valuable gifts.

[4] "These, then, are the people you saw represented as turtles. In your world one can tell them apart from others to some small extent only by the fact that they believe themselves to be wiser than any others, and ridicule them, especially their colleagues, who they say are not as wise as themselves, and whom they scorn. They carry about with them a particular little seal on their clothing, to distinguish themselves from others."

[5] One of those speaking with me said, "I will not tell you their opinion regarding all the other tenets of faith, as for example, regarding election, free will, baptism, and Holy Supper, which are the kind of things they do not make public. But we in heaven know.

"However, because they are of such a character in the world, and because after death no one is permitted to speak otherwise than as he thinks, therefore - because they can speak then only in accord with the insanities of their thoughts - they are regarded as insane and expelled from one society after another, and at last are conveyed down into the bottomless pit and become carnal spirits having the appearance of mummies. For a callus was produced on the interiors of their minds, because in the world they had also interposed a wall.

"There is a hellish society of them bordering on a hellish society of Machiavellians, and they sometimes pass from the one into the other and call themselves comrades; but then they leave because of the difference between them, as they have among them some religion relating to faith in action, whereas among Machiavellians there is none."

[6] After I saw them expelled from one society after another and gathered together to be cast down, I saw a ship with seven sails flying in the air, and in it officers and sailors dressed in purple clothing, with magnificent laurel wreaths on their heads, and crying, "Look, we are now in heaven! We are professors robed in purple, and laureates greater than all others, because we are the foremost of the wise out of all the clergy in Europe."

I wondered what this was, and I was told that the figures were depictions of the conceit and the mental concepts termed fantasies emanating from the people who had appeared before as turtles, and who now, having been expelled from one society after another, appeared as insane and were gathered into a single group, standing together in one place.

At that I desired to speak with them, and I went over to the place where they were standing, and greeting them, said, "You are people who have divorced people's internals from their externals, and divorced the operation of the Holy Spirit as though in faith from its concomitant operation with a person as though apart from faith, thus divorcing God from man. Have you not by the same token removed not only charity and its works from faith, as many other learned of the clergy do, but also faith itself as regards its manifestation by a person in the sight of God?

"But if you please, do you wish me to speak to you on this subject in accord with reason, or in accord with the Holy Scripture?"

[7] They told me to speak first from reason, and so I spoke saying, "How can the internal and the external in a person be divorced? Who does not see, or cannot see, as a matter of common sense that a person's interiors all extend and are continued into the exteriors, and even into his outmosts, in order to produce their effects and accomplish their operations? Do the internals not exist for the sake of the externals, so as to terminate in them and subsist in them, and thus abide, much like a column upon its pedestal? Can you not see that if the continuity and thus conjunction did not exist, the outmost elements would disintegrate and drift away like bubbles in the air? Who can deny that there are millions of interior operations of God in people, of which a person knows nothing? And what help would it be for him to be aware of them, provided he is cognizant of the outmost ones, in which he, with his thought and will, act together with God?

[8] "But I will illustrate this with an example. Is a person aware of the inner operations of his speech, such as how the lungs draw in air and fill their alveoli, bronchia, and lobes with it? Or how they expel air into the trachea and there turn it into sound? Or how the sound is modified in the glottis with the aid of the larynx, and how the tongue then articulates it and the lips complete the articulation so that it becomes speech? All of these interior operations, of which the person knows nothing - do they not take place for the sake of the outmost effect, that the person be able to speak? Take away or divorce one of those internal processes from its continuity with the outmost effects - would a person be able to speak any more than a wooden post?

[9] "Take another example. A person's two hands are his terminal members. Do not the interior elements that extend into it come from the head through the neck, and then through the breast, shoulders, arms and forearms? And do these not involve countless muscular tissues, countless arrays of motor fibers, countless bundles of nerves and blood vessels, and a number of articulations of bones with their membranes and ligaments? Is a person at all aware of these? And yet his hands operate as a result of them. Suppose these inner processes took a wrong turn at the wrist and did not continue into the hands? Would the hands not fall off the forearms and decay like some inanimate object plucked away? In fact, if you are willing to believe it, it would be the same as with the body if the person were beheaded.

"It would be the altogether the same with a person's thought and will if the Divine operation should cease before reaching them and not flow into them.

"So much in accord with reason.

[10] "Now if you are willing to hear it, these arguments accord with the Holy Scripture as well. Does the Lord not say,

Abide in Me, and I in you... I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5)

"Are not the fruits good works, which the Lord does through a person, and which a person does as though of himself?

"Does the Lord not also say that He stands at the door and knocks, and that if anyone opens the door, He will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Him (Revelation 3:20)?

"Does the Lord not give minas and talents, that a person may do business with them and make a profit, and that in the measure of the person's profit He gives eternal life (Matthew 25:14-30, Luke 19:13-26)? Moreover, that He rewards everyone in accordance with the person's labor in His vineyard (Matthew 20:1-17)?

"But these are just a few proofs. We could fill pages with citations from the Word to the effect that a person should be like a tree and produce fruits, that he should keep the commandments, love God and the neighbor, and more. But I know that it is not possible for your intellectual acumen to have any real common ground with passages from the Word. Even though you quote them, still your ideas pervert them. Nor can you do otherwise, because you take away from a person everything having to do with God as regards any communication and so conjunction. What remains then but only all the rituals of worship?"

[11] After that I saw these people in the light of heaven, which disclosed and exposed the character of each one, and they did not appear then as before, in a ship in the air, as though in heaven. Nor were there any purple-robed figures in it, or heads wreathed with laurel. I saw them instead in a sandy area, in ragged clothing, and girded about their loins with nets, like those used by fishermen, through which their nakedness was visible. And they were then conveyed down into the previously mentioned society bordering on the hellish society of Machiavellians.

Footnotes:

1. Literally, "thyine wood." See Revelation 18:12

  
/ 962  
  

Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

©2024 New Christian Bible Study Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed from newchristianbiblestudy.org