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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

 

Conjugial Love #355

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355. The second account:

When I once looked out into the world of spirits, I saw some men in a particular meadow, dressed in the same sort of clothing that people wear in the world, from which I recognized that they had only recently come from the world.

I went over to them and stood to the side, in order to hear what they were saying to each other. They were talking about heaven; and one of them, who knew something about heaven, said there were wonders there which no one could ever possibly believe unless he saw them. He cited as examples the paradise-like gardens; the palaces, magnificently constructed architecturally owing to the quintessence of the art there, shining as though of gold, with columns of silver in front, and covered with precious stones in heavenly forms; the houses, too, of jasper and sapphire, fronted by majestic porticos through which the angels enter; and the adornments inside the houses, which neither art nor words can describe.

[2] "As for the angels themselves," he said, "they are of both sexes. There are young men and married men, maidens and wives - maidens so beautiful that the world has nothing to match such beauty. Yet the wives are even more beautiful, appearing as veritable pictures of heavenly love, and their husbands as pictures of heavenly wisdom. The latter are also all youthful young men; and what is more, they do not know what love for the opposite sex is other than conjugial love. Furthermore - something that will surprise you - the husbands have a continual ability to experience its delights."

When those newly arrived spirits heard that they did not have any love for the opposite sex there other than conjugial love, and that they had a continual ability to experience its delights, they laughed among themselves and said, "What you are saying is unbelievable. Such an ability is not possible. You are, perhaps, making up stories."

[3] But then an angel from heaven stood unexpectedly in their midst and said, "Listen to me, please. I am an angel from heaven, and I have lived with my wife now for a thousand years, in the same flower of youth in which you see me here. I have this youthfulness as a result of conjugial love with my wife; and I can declare that I have had and continue to have the continual ability you are talking about. However, because I perceive that you believe it is not possible, I will speak with you on this subject in terms of its reasons, in accordance with the light of your intellect.

"You know nothing of the original state of man, which you call the state of his integrity. In that state, all the interior faculties of the mind were opened all the way to the Lord, and consequently were pervaded by a marriage of love and wisdom or of goodness and truth. So, because the goodness of love and the truth of wisdom are continually drawn to each other by love, they continually aspire to be united; and when the interior faculties of the mind are opened, this conjunctive, spiritual love freely flows down with its continual impetus and imparts the ability.

[4] "Because man's very soul is pervaded by a marriage of goodness and truth, it is impelled not only by a perpetual striving for union but also by a perpetual striving to be fruitful and produce a likeness of itself. So, when a person's interior faculties are open all the way down from the soul from that marriage there - since the interior faculties continually look to producing an effect in outmost expressions as their goal, in order to manifest themselves - as a result that perpetual striving to be fruitful and produce a likeness of itself, which is one of the soul, becomes one of the body. Consequently, because the ultimate operation of the soul in the body in the case of a married couple is into the ultimate expressions of love there, and these depend on the state of the soul, it is apparent why they have this continual ability.

[5] "They experience as well a perpetual fruitfulness, because there is a universal atmosphere of begetting and propagating the celestial attributes that have to do with love, the spiritual attributes that have to do with wisdom, and so the natural attributes that have to do with offspring - an atmosphere which emanates from the Lord and fills the entire heaven and entire world. Thus that heavenly atmosphere fills the souls of all people, and descends through their minds into the body, even to the outmosts of it, imparting a generative power. However, this power can be imparted only to those in whom a passage stands open from the soul through the higher and lower regions of the mind into the body and its outermost elements, which is the case in those who allow themselves to be led back by the Lord into the original state of their creation.

"I can declare that for a thousand years now I have never lacked the ability, or the power, or the virility, and that I have not experienced at all any diminishing of its forces, since these are continually renewed by the continual flowing in of the aforesaid universal atmosphere. They also then gladden the spirit, and do not leave it depressed, as happens in the case of those who suffer a loss of them.

[6] "Furthermore, truly conjugial love is altogether like the warmth of spring, whose flowing in inspires all things to burgeon and be fruitful. That, too, is the kind of warmth we have in our heaven. Consequently married partners there have springtime in them with its constant stimulus; and that constant stimulus is the impetus from which our virility comes.

"The fruits produced among us in heaven, however, are of another kind than among people on earth. With us the fruits are spiritual, which are the fruits of love and wisdom or of goodness and truth. A wife acquires from her husband's wisdom a love of it in her, and from his wife's love of wisdom a husband acquires wisdom in him. Indeed, a wife is actually transformed into an embodiment of love for her husband's wisdom, which is accomplished by her receptions of the propagations of his soul with delight - a delight arising from her willing to be an embodiment of love for her husband's wisdom. From being a maiden she thus becomes his wife and a likeness of him. As a result, too, love with its inmost friendship constantly increases in the wife, and wisdom with its happiness in the husband, and this to eternity. This is the state of angels in heaven."

[7] After the angel said that, he looked at the men who had come recently from the world and said to them, "You know that when you have felt the virile urge of love, you have made love to your married partners, and that after experiencing the delight you have turned away. But you do not know that in heaven we do not make love to our partners because of that virile force, but we have that virile force because of our love; and because we love our partners continually, that virility is continual in us.

"If you can reverse your state, therefore, you can understand this. When a man loves his partner continually, does he not love her with his whole mind and his whole body? For love directs all things of the mind and all things of the body to that which it loves; and because it is reciprocated, it so joins the two that they become as one."

[8] He said further, "I will not speak to you of conjugial love's having been implanted from creation in males and females, and of their inclination to a legitimate union; nor of the procreative faculty in males, which is tied together with a faculty for proliferating wisdom from a love of truth; nor of the fact that so far as a person loves wisdom from a love of wisdom, or truth from goodness, so far he experiences truly conjugial love and its accompanying power."

  
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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

 

True Christian Religion #78

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78. The third experience.

The next day an angel came to me from another community in heaven and said, 'We have heard in our community that because of your thoughts about the creation of the universe you were sent for to a community near ours; and there you gave a lecture on creation, which they applauded and have since taken great pleasure in. Now I am going to show you how animals and plants of every kind were produced by God.'

So he took me into a broad, green plain and said, 'Look around you.' I did so and saw birds of the most beautiful colours, some in flight, some sitting on trees and some on the level plucking petals from roses. Among the birds there were also doves and swans. When these had vanished from my sight, I saw not far away flocks of sheep with their lambs, of goats both male and female, and around these flocks I saw herds of cattle with their calves, as well as of camels and mules. In a wood I saw stags 1 with lofty antlers, as well as unicorns.

When I had seen these, the angel said, 'Turn to face east.' There I saw a garden full of fruit trees, oranges, citrons, olives, vines, figs, pomegranates and bushes that produce edible berries.

Then he said, 'Now look to the south.' There I saw crops of various kinds of grain, wheat, millet, barley and beans. Around them were flowerbeds full of roses of beautifully variegated colours. To the north there were woods full of chestnuts, palms, limes, planes and other leafy trees.

[2] When I had seen these, the angel said, 'All the things you have seen are correspondences of the affections of the love on the part of the angels in the neighbourhood;' and he 2 told me to which affections each corresponded. 'Moreover,' he went on, 'not only those but all the other sights that present themselves to our eyes are correspondences; for instance, houses, the furniture in them, tables and food, clothes, even gold and silver coins, the diamonds and other precious stones which wives and girls in the heavens wear for their adornment. From all these things we can tell what each person is like in respect of love and wisdom. The contents of our houses, which serve a purpose, remain there constantly; but in the case of those who wander from one community to another, such things change depending upon the company the people are in.

[3] 'These things have been shown to you so that you can see creation on the scale of the universe reflected in these particular models. For God is love itself and wisdom itself, and His love contains infinite affections, and His wisdom infinite perceptions; all the things to be seen upon earth are correspondences of these affections and perceptions. This is the origin of birds and animals, trees and shrubs, crops and grain, plants and grasses. For God has no extension, but is everywhere in space; so He fills the universe from first to last. Because He is omnipresent, there are such correspondences of the affections of His love and wisdom throughout the natural world. But in our world, which is called the spiritual world, similar correspondences present themselves to those who receive affections and perceptions from God. The difference is that in our world such things are created by God in an instant in accordance with the affections of the angels. But in your world, although their creation is in principle similar, provision has been made for them to be constantly renewed from generation to generation, so that creation is continuous.

[4] 'The reason why in our world creation is instantaneous, but in your world continued a generation at a time, is that the atmospheres and soils of our world are spiritual, while those of your world are natural. Natural objects have been created to serve as clothing for spiritual ones, just as layers of skin clothe the bodies of men and animals, bark and bast clothe the trunks and branches of trees, the pia mater and dura mater and other membranes clothe the brain, sheathes the nerves, the neurilemata their fibres, and so on. That is why everything in your world remains constant, and is regularly repeated year by year.'

'Report,' he added, 'what you have seen and heard to the inhabitants of your world, seeing that up to now they have been in total ignorance of the spiritual world, and without knowing about it no one can know, nor even guess, that in our world creation is continuous, and was similar in your world too when God created the universe.'

After this our talk turned to various subjects, and at length to hell, where none of the sort of things that exist in heaven are to be seen, but only their opposites, since the affections of the love of its inhabitants, which are longings for evil, are the opposite of the affections of love on the part of the angels in heaven. In company with those in hell, and in general in their deserts, there are to be seen birds of the night, such as bats, tawny and horned owls, as well as wolves, leopards, tigers, rats and mice; also poisonous snakes of every kind, dragons and crocodiles. Where there is a grassy stretch, there is an undergrowth of brambles, nettles, thorns and thistles, and some poisonous plants, which come up and disappear by turns. Then there are to be seen only heaps of stones and marshes full of croaking frogs. All of these things too are correspondences, but as was said before, correspondences of the affections of their love, which are longings for evil. Yet such things are not created there by God, nor were they in the natural world, where similar things come into existence. For all things that God created and creates were and are good. But such things arose on earth together with hell, which was composed of human beings who, by turning away from God, became after death devils and satans. But because these frightful subjects began to distress our ears, we turned our thoughts away from them and recalled instead what we had seen in the heavens.

Footnotes:

1. The Latin has 'hinds'.

2. The Latin has 'they'.

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

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