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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

 

Apocalypse Revealed #224

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224. To this I will add the following account:

I saw a gathering of spirits, all upon their knees, praying to God to send them angels they could speak with face to face and to whom they could disclose the thoughts of their heart.

Then when they arose, three angels appeared in white linen standing before them, and the angels said, "The Lord Jesus Christ has heard your prayers, and has therefore sent us to you. Disclose to us the thoughts of your heart."

[2] The spirits then replied, "Priests have told us that in theological matters it is not the intellect but faith that accomplishes anything, and that in such matters an intellectual faith is of no help to anyone, because it takes its origin from man.

"We are English, and we have heard many things from our sacred ministry which we believed. However, when we spoke with some other people who call themselves Reformed, and with some who call themselves Roman Catholics, and moreover with some Nonconformists, they all seemed to us learned, and yet in many matters not one of them agreed with another. But nevertheless they all said, 'Believe us.' And some said, 'We are God's ministers and we know.'

"Still we knew that the Divine truths that are called truths of faith and are the church's truths are no one's heritage by birth alone, or by heredity, but that they descend out of heaven from God. And because these show the way to heaven, and enter into one's life together with the good of charity and so lead to eternal life, we became anxious and prayed on our knees to God."

[3] At that the angels replied, "Read the Word and believe in the Lord, and you will see the truths that must be those of your faith and life. All in the Christian world draw their doctrinal teachings from the Word as from a single font."

[4] But two of the gathering of spirits said, "We have read it, but have not understood."

The angels replied, "You have not turned to the Lord, and you have also confirmed yourselves in falsities."

The angels also said further, "What is faith without light? And what is thinking without understanding? It isn't human. Ravens too and magpies can learn to speak without understanding. We can assure you that everyone whose soul longs for it can see the truths of the Word in a state of light. There is no animal that does not know the right food for its life when it sees it, and the human being is a rational and spiritual animal. If he hungers for it and seeks it from the Lord, the human being sees for his life not food for his body but food for his soul, which is the truth of faith. Moreover, whatever he does not receive with his intellect, also does not stick in his memory as a concept, but only as words. Consequently when we have looked down from heaven into the world, we have not seen anything, but have only heard sounds, mostly lacking in any harmony.

[5] "But we will list some truths that the learned of the clergy have banished from the intellect, not knowing that there are two paths to the intellect, one from the world and the other from heaven, and not knowing that the Lord raises the intellect from the world when He enlightens it. However, if the intellect is closed by religion, the path to it from heaven is closed, and a person then sees no more in the Word than a blind man sees. We have seen many of this sort fall into pits, from which they have not risen.

"Let examples serve to illustrate. You can understand what charity and faith are, can you not? That charity is to comport oneself well with the neighbor, and that faith is to think rightly about God and the essential constituents of the church? And therefore that anyone who behaves well and thinks rightly, that is, who lives rightly and believes rightly, is saved?"

In response to this the spirits said that they understood.

[6] The angels went on, "You understand, do you not, that to be saved a person must repent of his sins, and that unless a person repents, he remains caught up in the sins into which he was born? Moreover, that to repent means not to will evils because they are sins against God, and once or twice a year to examine oneself, see one's evils, confess them before the Lord, implore His aid, desist from them, and embark upon a new life? And that to the extent a person does this and believes in the Lord, his sins are forgiven?"

Then some of the gathering of spirits said, "This we understand, and so also what the forgiveness of sins is."

[7] At that the spirits then asked the angels to tell them something more, and specifically this time about God, the immortality of the soul, regeneration, and baptism.

To this the angels replied, "We shall say nothing but what you can understand. Otherwise what we say will fall like rain on sand, and however much they may be watered from heaven, any seeds there will still dry up and die."

Regarding God then they said, "People who enter heaven are all allotted a place there and accordingly come into eternal joy in accord with their idea of God, because this idea reigns universally throughout all aspects of worship.

"An idea of God as invisible is not focused on anyone, and so has no focus in anyone. Consequently it passes away and dies.

"An idea of God as a spirit, when one believes a spirit to be like the ether or a puff of wind, is an idea empty of content.

"But an idea of God as a man is a proper idea. For God is Divine love and wisdom, with every property of these, and their containing vessel is man, not ether or a puff of wind.

"The idea of God found in heaven is an idea of the Lord. He is God of heaven and earth, as He Himself taught. Let your idea of God be like ours, and we will be comrades."

When the angels said this, their faces shone.

[8] Regarding the immortality of the soul the angels said, "A person lives to eternity because through love and faith he can be conjoined with God. This is possible for everyone. You can understand that the immortality of the soul results from this possibility if you think about it a little more deeply."

[9] Regarding regeneration they said, "Who does not see that everyone has the freedom to think about God or not to think about Him, provided he has been taught that God exists. Thus everyone has just as much freedom in spiritual matters as he does in civil and moral matters. The Lord gives this freedom to all people continually. Consequently it is his fault if he does not think about God. A person is human because of this ability [to think about God], while an animal is an animal because it lacks the ability. Therefore a person can reform and regenerate himself as though of himself, provided he acknowledges at heart that the ability comes from the Lord. Everyone who repents and believes in the Lord is reformed and regenerated. A person must do both as though of himself, but the "as though of himself" comes from the Lord.

"It is true that a person can contribute nothing to this end - nothing at all - but still you were not created sculpted forms, but were created human beings, in order that you might accomplish this from the Lord as though of yourselves. This reciprocation of love and faith is the one thing that the Lord above all wishes a person to do for Him.

"In a word, do it of yourselves, but believe that you do it from the Lord, thus doing it as though of yourselves."

[10] The spirits, however, then asked the angels whether doing things as though of oneself was not something with which a person was endowed from creation.

One of the angels replied, "It is not something with which a person is endowed, because to do something of oneself is God's alone, but He grants the ability to a person continually, that is to say, He attaches it to a person continually; and then to the extent that a person does good and believes truth as though of himself, he is an angel of heaven. But to the extent that he does evil and so believes falsity, which he does also as though of himself, he is to that extent an angel of hell. You are surprised to be told that he does this also as though of himself, but yet you see it when you pray to be protected from the devil, that he not lead you astray, lest he enter into you as he entered into Judas, fill you with all iniquity, and destroy both soul and body. 1

"Still, everyone makes himself responsible for an action if he believes that he does it of himself, be it good or evil, but does not make himself responsible for it if he believes that he does it as though of himself."

[11] Regarding baptism the angels said that it was a spiritual washing, which is reformation and regeneration, and that a little child is reformed and regenerated when he becomes an adult and does the things that his sponsors promised for him, of which there are two, namely, repentance and faith in God. For his sponsors promise first that he will renounce the devil and all his works, and second that he will believe in God. All little children in heaven are initiated into these two, though for them the devil is hell and God is the Lord.

"Moreover, baptism is a sign to angels that a person belongs to the church."

[12] Having heard this, some of the gathering of spirits said, "We understand it." But a voice from the side was heard crying, "We don't understand it." And another voice, "We don't want to understand it."

The spirits then inquired into whose voices they were, and they found that they belonged to people who had confirmed themselves in the falsities of their faith, and who wished to be credited as oracles so as to be revered.

The angels said, "Do not be astonished. Such is the character of very many people today. From heaven they look to us like sculpted forms, so skillfully made that they can move their lips and make organism-like sounds, but they do not know whether the breath they use to make sounds comes from hell or from heaven, because they do not know whether anything is false or true. They reason and reason, and defend and defend, but they do not see whether anything is so.

"You should know, however, that human ingenuity can defend whatever it wishes, even to the point that it appears to be the case. Heretics, therefore, can do this. So can the impious. Atheists indeed can make it appear that there is no God, but only nature."

[13] After this the gathering of English spirits, burning with a desire to become wise, said to the angels, "People say such different things about the Holy Supper. Tell us what the truth is."

The angels said, "The truth is that anyone who turns to the Lord and repents is, by that most holy act, conjoined with the Lord and introduced into heaven."

But some of that gathering said, "This is a mystery."

To which the angels replied, "It is a mystery, but yet of the sort that one can understand.

"The bread and wine do not create the conjunction. There is no holiness in them. But material bread and heavenly bread correspond to each other, and so do material wine and heavenly wine. Heavenly bread is the holiness in love, and heavenly wine is the holiness in faith, both originating from the Lord, and both being the Lord. This occasions a conjunction of the Lord with man and of man with the Lord - a conjunction not with the bread and wine but with the love and faith of a person who has repented - and conjunction with the Lord is also an introduction into heaven."

Then, after the angels taught them something about correspondence and its effect, some of the gathering said, "Now for the first time we understand."

And when they said, "We understand," suddenly something flame-like descending with its light from heaven affiliated the spirits with the angels, and they loved each other.

Footnotes:

1. A reference to the prayer recited before Anglican celebrations of Holy Communion, the English text of which is quoted in The Doctrine of Life 5, which concludes, "Therefore if any of you be a blasphemer of God, or hinderer or slanderer of His word, or adulterer, or be in malice or envy, or in any other grievous crime, repent you of your sins, or else come not to the Holy Table; lest after the taking of that Holy Sacrament the Devil enter into you, as he entered into Judas, and fill you with all iniquities, and bring you to destruction both of body and soul."

  
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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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #463

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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

  
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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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