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

 

Conjugial Love #270

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270. The third account:

Awakening one morning, I fell to thinking about some questions having to do with conjugial love, coming finally to this one:

In what region of the human mind is truly conjugial love seated, and in what region, therefore, coldness in marriage?

I knew that the human mind is divided into three regions, one above the other, and that natural love resides in the lowest region, spiritual love in the next higher one, and celestial love in the highest. I knew also that in each region there is a marriage of good and truth, and because good has to do with love, and truth with wisdom, that in each region there is a marriage of love and wisdom; moreover, that this marriage is the same as a marriage of the will and understanding, since the will is the recipient vessel of love, and the understanding the recipient vessel of wisdom.

[2] While I was deep in thought on this question, I suddenly saw two swans flying towards the north, and presently two birds of paradise flying towards the south, and then two turtledoves flying in the east. Following their flight with my eyes, I next saw the two swans veer their course from the north to the east, likewise the two birds of paradise from the south, until they met up with the pair of turtledoves in the east. Then together they flew towards a certain lofty palace there, rising in the midst of olive trees, palms and beeches. The palace had three rows of windows, one above another; and as I watched, I saw the birds fly into the palace - the swans through windows standing open in the lowest row, the birds of paradise through windows open in the middle row, and the turtledoves through windows open in the highest row.

[3] After I witnessed this event, an angel stood beside me and said, "Do you understand the things you have seen?"

"A little," I replied.

"The palace," said the angel, "represents the abodes of conjugial love as these exist in human minds. Its highest level - into which the turtledoves disappeared - represents the highest region of the mind, where conjugial love resides in the goodness of love together with its wisdom. The middle level - into which the birds of paradise disappeared - represents the intermediate region, where conjugial love resides in a love of truth together with its intelligence. And the lowest level - into which the swans disappeared - represents the lowest region of the mind, where conjugial love resides in a love of what is just and right together with its knowledge.

[4] "These degrees are also symbolized by the three pairs of birds - the two turtledoves symbolizing conjugial love in the highest region, the two birds of paradise conjugial love in the intermediate region, and the two swans conjugial love in the lowest region. The three kinds of trees surrounding the palace - the olive trees, palms and beeches - symbolize the same.

"In heaven we call the highest region of the mind celestial, the intermediate one spiritual, and the lowest one natural. And we conceive of them as being like apartments in a house, one above another, with steps going up from one to the next, like stairs. Moreover, on each level there are as it were two sets of rooms, one for love, one for wisdom, with a bedroom, so to speak, in front, where they come together in bed - love with its wisdom, or good with its truth, or to say the same thing, the will with its intellect. In such a palace, all the mysteries of conjugial love become visible as though in effigy."

[5] Hearing this, being fired with a desire to see one, I asked whether a person might go in and look at the palace there, since it was a representational one.

The angel replied that only angels in the third heaven could, because for them every representation of love and wisdom becomes real.

"What I have related to you I have heard from them," he said, "including as well the following, that truly conjugial love resides in the highest region, in the midst of mutual love in the chamber or apartment of the will, and at the same time in the midst of perceptions of wisdom in the chamber or apartment of the intellect; and these come together in bed in a bedroom that is located in front on the east side."

"Why," I asked, "are there two chambers?"

"Because," he said, "a husband lives in the chamber of the intellect, and a wife lives in the chamber of the will."

[6] At that I inquired, "If that is where conjugial love resides, where then does coldness in marriage reside?"

"It, too, resides in the highest region," he replied, "but only in the chamber of the intellect, with the chamber of the will on that level being closed off. For as often as it pleases, the understanding with its truths can ascend by a spiral stairway to its chamber in the highest region; but if the will with the goodness of its love does not ascend at the same time to its companion chamber, the latter remains closed, and coldness develops in the other, which is the coldness one finds in marriage.

"As long as such coldness to one's wife continues, the intellect looks down from the highest region to the lowest; and if fear does not hold it back, it also descends in order to warm itself there with an illicit fire."

Having said this, the angel wished to tell me still more about conjugial love from the depictions of it in that palace; but he said, "Enough for now. First investigate whether these concepts are beyond people's general comprehension. If they are, what is the use of saying more? On the other hand, if they are not, more will be disclosed another time." 1

Footnotes:

1. We find, however, no report of any further disclosures.

  
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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

 

Conjugial Love #444

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444. To this I will append the following narrative account:

After I finished my considerations of conjugial love and began reflecting on licentious love, suddenly two angels stood beside me and said, "We perceived and understood what you were thinking about before, but the things you are now pondering escape us, and we do not comprehend them. Omit them, because they are of no consequence."

But I replied, "This love that I am considering now is not of no consequence, because it exists."

To that they responded, "How can there be any love that does not exist from creation? Is it not conjugial love that exists from creation? Is this not a love between two people who have the capability of becoming one? How can there be a love which divides and separates them? What young man can love any other woman than the one who loves him in return? Must not the love in one recognize and acknowledge the love in the other - loves which, when they meet, of their own accord unite? Who can love someone in whom that love is missing? Is it not conjugial love alone that is mutual and reciprocal? If love is not reciprocal, does it not pull back and die?"

[2] On hearing this I asked the two angels what society of heaven they were from, and they said, "We are from the heaven of innocence. 1 We came into this world of heaven as little children and were raised under the Lord's guidance. Moreover, after I became an adolescent youth, and my wife here with me a marriageable girl, we were betrothed and pledged, and at the earliest opportunity married. So, because we have known nothing regarding any other love than a truly wedded and conjugial love, therefore when your ideas were communicated to us concerning an alien love altogether opposed to our love, we did not comprehend any of them. Consequently we have come down to ask you why you are pondering notions so inconceivable. Tell us, then, how a love is possible which not only does not exist from creation, but is even contrary to creation. We regard things contrary to creation as matters having no reality."

[3] When he said this, my heart rejoiced that I was given an opportunity to speak with angels of such innocence, who did not know at all what licentiousness was. I opened my mouth therefore and explained, saying, "Do you not know that there is such a thing as good and evil, and that good exists from creation, but not evil? And yet evil regarded in itself is not nothing, even though it is nothing good?

"Good exists from creation, and good moreover in the highest degree and in the least degree; and when this least good reduces to nothing, evil arises on the other side. Therefore there is no proportional relationship or progression of good to evil, but a proportional relationship and progression of good to a greater or lesser good, and of evil to a greater or lesser evil; for good and evil are opposites in every single respect.

"Now because good and evil are opposites, there is a middle ground, and in it an area of equilibrium, in which evil acts against good. But because evil does not prevail, it remains in the endeavor. Every person grows up in this equilibrium; and being an equilibrium between good and evil, or to say the same thing, between heaven and hell, it is a spiritual equilibrium, which produces a state of freedom in those who live in it. The Lord draws all people out of this equilibrium to Him, and the person who follows in freedom is led by Him out of evil into good, and thus into heaven.

"It is the same with love, especially in the case of conjugial love and licentious love. Conjugial love is good, while licentious love is evil. Every person who hears the voice of the Lord and follows Him in freedom is introduced by the Lord into conjugial love with all its delights and joys. But the person who does not hear and does not follow introduces himself into licentious love, entering at first into its delights, but afterwards into its distresses, and finally into its miseries."

[4] My having said that, the two angels asked, "How could evil come into existence when nothing but good existed from creation? For anything to exist it must have an origin. Good could not be the origin of evil, because evil is nothing good, being rather the negation and destruction of good. But still, because evil exists and is experienced, it is not nothing, but something. Tell us, therefore, from what this something, after having no existence, came into existence."

To that I replied, "This secret cannot be explained unless it is known that no one is good but God alone, 2 and that nothing is good that is good in itself unless it is from God. Consequently it is the person who looks to God and wills to be led by God who is motivated by good. But the person who turns away from God and wills to be led by himself is not motivated by good; for the good that he does is either for the sake of himself or for the sake of the world; thus it is either merit-seeking, or feigned, or hypocritical. From this it is apparent that man himself is the origin of evil - not that that origin was infused into man from creation, but that by turning from God to self he infused it into himself.

"This origin of evil did not exist in Adam and his wife until the serpent said, '...in the day you eat of (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil)...you will be like God' (Genesis 3:5). And then, because they turned away from God, and turned to themselves as though to a god, they created in themselves the origin of evil. Eating of that tree symbolized their believing that a person knows good and evil and is wise on his own, and not from God."

[5] But then the two angels asked, "How could man turn away from God and turn to himself, when a person can will nothing, think nothing, and so do nothing except from God. Why did God permit it?"

However, I replied, "Man was so created that everything he wills, thinks and does appears to him as being in him and thus from him. Without this appearance a person would not be a human being, for he would be unable to receive anything of good and truth or of love and wisdom, retain it, and seemingly adopt it as his own. Consequently it follows that without this, as it were, living appearance, man would not have any conjunction with God, and so neither any eternal life. But if as a result of this appearance he persuades himself to the belief that he wills, thinks, and thus does good of himself, and not from the Lord (even though to all appearance as though of himself), he turns good into evil in him, and so creates in him the origin of evil. This was Adam's sin.

[6] "But let me explain this matter a little more clearly. The Lord views every person by looking at his forehead, and this sight passes to the back of his head. Behind the forehead is the cerebrum, and in the back of the head the cerebellum. The cerebrum is devoted to wisdom and its truths, while the cerebellum is devoted to love and its goods. Therefore a person who looks with his face to the Lord receives wisdom from him, and through that wisdom, love. But a person who looks away from the Lord receives love and not wisdom; and love without wisdom is love that originates with man and not from the Lord. Moreover, because this love allies itself with falsities, it does not acknowledge God, but embraces itself as a god; and this it tacitly defends by the person's faculty of understanding and of becoming wise as though of himself, implanted in him from creation. Thus this love is the origin of evil.

"The fact of this can be visibly demonstrated. I will call here some evil spirit who has turned away from God, and I will speak to him from behind or at the back of his head. And you will see that the things I say are turned into their opposites."

[7] So I summoned such a spirit. He came, and I spoke to him from behind, saying, "Do you know anything about hell, damnation, and the torment there?" Then, when he turned around to face me, I asked, "What did you hear?"

He replied: "I heard the following. 'Do you know anything about heaven, salvation, and the happiness there?'"

Afterwards then, when I repeated his answer to him from behind, he said that he heard what I had said at first.

After that I said to him from behind, "Do you know that people in hell are insane because of their falsities?" And on my asking him about this, as to what he had heard, he said, "I heard, 'Do you know that people in heaven are wise because of their truths?'

Again, when I repeated this answer to him from behind, he said that he heard, "Do you know that people in hell are insane because of their falsities?"

And so it went. From which it became plainly apparent that when the mind is turned away from the Lord, it turns to itself, so that it then perceives things in a contrary way.

"That is the reason," I said, "that, as you know, in this spiritual world, no one is permitted to stand behind another and speak to him; for he thus infuses into the other his love, which the other's intelligence then yields to and obeys because of the delight attached to it, but which, being from man and not from God, is a love of evil or a love of falsity.

[8] "In addition to this, I will relate to you another, similar occurrence, namely, that I have several times heard goods and truths descend from heaven into hell, and they were gradually turned there into their opposites - good into evil, and truth into falsity. The reason for this phenomenon is the same, namely, that all who are in hell turn away from the Lord."

After listening to this, the two angels thanked me and said, "Because you are now thinking and writing about a love that is contrary to our conjugial love, and because anything contrary to that love saddens our minds, we will leave you."

And as they bade me farewell, I asked them not to report anything concerning this love to their brothers and sisters in heaven, because it would injure their innocence.

I can declare for a certainty that people who die as little children grow up in heaven, and when they attain a stature like that of youths eighteen years old and of girls fifteen years old in the world, they stop there, and marriages are then provided for them by the Lord. Moreover, that both before marriage and after it, they do not know at all what licentiousness is, or that it is possible.

Footnotes:

1. I.e., the third heaven. See no. 410.

2Matthew 19:17.

  
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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.