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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 #500

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

I once heard in the world of spirits a great tumult. Thousands of spirits had gathered and were crying out, "Punish them! Punish them!"

I drew nearer and asked, "What is going on?"

Leaving that great throng, one of them said to me that they were in a white-hot rage at three priests who were going about and everywhere preaching against adulterers, saying that adulterers lack any acknowledgment of God, and that heaven was closed to them and hell opened. Also that in hell they are unclean devils, because they appear at a distance there like pigs rolling around in piles of excrement, and that the angels in heaven abhor them.

I inquired where those priests were and why there was such an outcry on that account.

He replied that the three priests were in their midst, surrounded by bodyguards, and that the gathering consisted of people who believe that adulteries are not sins and who maintain that adulterers have an acknowledgment of God just as much as those who are faithful to their wives. "They are all from the Christian world," he said, "and when they were once visited by angels to see how many among them believed that adulteries were sins, not a hundred in a thousand were found who did."

Moreover he told me that the remaining nine hundred speak in regard to adulteries as follows:

[2] "Who does not know that the delight in adultery far surpasses the delight of marriage? That adulterers experience a perpetual state of heat and so possess a more vigorous, energetic and active life than those who live with just one woman? And that, conversely, love with one's married partner grows cold, and this sometimes to such a degree that at last scarcely a word of conversation and companionship with her has any vitality? It is different with loose women. The gradual deadening of life with a wife owing to a failure of ability is refreshed and invigorated by licentious affairs. Is not something that refreshes and invigorates better than something that deadens?

"What is marriage but legalized licentiousness? Who knows any difference between them? Can love be compelled? Yet love with a wife is compelled by covenant and laws. Is love with a partner not a sexual love? Yet this is so universal that it exists also in birds and animals. What is conjugial love but a love for the opposite sex? Yet love for the opposite sex is set free when enjoyed with every woman.

"There are civil laws against adultery because legislators have believed that it accorded with the public good, and yet the legislators themselves and judges sometimes commit adultery, and then say to each other, 'Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.' 1 Only the simple and religious believe that adulteries are sins. Not so the intelligent, who, like us, view them in the light of nature.

[3] "Are children not born of adulteries in the same way as in marriages? Are illegitimate offspring not just as fit and serviceable for offices and ministries as legitimate ones? And besides, children are thus provided for families that would be otherwise childless. Is this not beneficial rather than harmful?

"What harm does it do a wife if she admits a number of rivals? And what harm does it do her husband? The idea that the husband is disgraced is a frivolous opinion springing from the imagination.

"The decree that adultery is contrary to the laws and statutes of the church comes from the ecclesiastical order in order to gain power. But what does theology and spirituality have to do with merely physical and fleshly delight? Are there not clergymen and monks who are adulterers? Are they unable on that account to acknowledge and worship God? Why then do these three priests preach that adulterers are without any acknowledgment of God? We will not tolerate such blasphemies. Therefore let them be judged and punished."

[4] After that I saw them summon judges, and they asked the judges to impose penalties on the priests.

But the judges said, "This does not fall within our province, for it has to do with acknowledgment of God and sin and thus with salvation and damnation. Judgment with respect to these has to come from heaven.

"However, we will advise you as to how you can ascertain whether these three priests have been preaching the truth. There are three places known to us judges where matters of this sort are explored and revealed in a singular manner. One is a place in which a path to heaven lies open to all, but where, when they arrive in heaven, they themselves perceive what their character is in respect to their acknowledgment of God. The second is a place where a path lies open to heaven also, but which no one can enter unless he has heaven in him. And the third is a place where there is a path leading to hell, which those who love hellish things enter of their own accord, because they are drawn by their delight.

"We judges send to those places all who demand judgment from us in cases dealing with heaven and hell."

[5] Upon hearing this, the people gathered said, "Let us go to those places."

So they went to the first, where a path to heaven lies open to all; and as they were going, suddenly they were enveloped in darkness, so that some of them lighted torches and held them before them.

The judges, who had accompanied them, said, "This happens to all who go to the first place, but as they draw near, the blaze of their torches becomes fainter, and on their reaching the place itself is extinguished, because of the light of heaven flowing in - a sign that they have arrived. The reason for this phenomenon is that heaven is first closed to them and then opened."

So they came to that place, and as the torches went out of themselves, they saw a sloping path leading upward to heaven. The people who were in a white-hot rage at the priests entered it. Among the first were those who were purposeful adulterers, behind them those who were deliberate adulterers. And as they ascended the first began to cry out, "Follow us," and those behind cried, "Hurry," so as to urge them on.

[6] A short time later, after they were all inside a heavenly society, a gulf appeared between them and the angels, and the light of heaven flowing over the gulf into their eyes opened the interior elements of their minds, so that they were compelled to speak as they inwardly thought. Whereupon the angels then inquired of them whether they acknowledged the existence of God.

The first group, those who were adulterers from a purpose of the will, replied, "What is God?" And looking at each other they said, "Have any of you seen Him?"

The second group, those who were adulterers from a persuasion of the intellect, said, "Is not everything attributable to nature? What exists above it but the sun?"

At that the angels then said to them, "Depart from us. You yourselves now see that you lack any acknowledgment of God. When you descend, the interior elements of your minds will be closed and the outer ones opened, and after that you can speak contrary to your inner thoughts and say that God exists. Be certain of this, that as soon as a person becomes an actual adulterer, heaven is closed to him, and when it is closed, he does not acknowledge God. Hear the reason: From adulteries springs all the uncleanness of hell, and this stinks in heaven like the putrid filth of the streets 2 ."

Hearing this, the people turned and descended by three paths. And when they were below, the first and second groups conferred with each other and said, "The priests won there; but we know that we can speak of God just as well as they, and when we say that He exists, do we not acknowledge Him? These inner and outer elements of our minds that the angels told us about are fictions.

"But let us go to the second place described by the judges, where a path lies open to heaven for those who have heaven in them, thus for those who are destined for heaven."

[7] So they went, and as they approached, from that heaven went out the cry, "Close the gates! There are adulterers in the vicinity!"

Suddenly then the gates were closed, and guards with staffs in their hands drove them away. And they took from them the three priests in their keeping, against whom they had raised such a tumult, and conducted them into their heaven. The moment the gate was opened for the priests, moreover, immediately there wafted over the insurgents the delight of marriage, which because of its chastity and purity almost suffocated them.

For fear of fainting from loss of breath, therefore, they hastened to the third place that the judges had told them of, where they had said there was a path leading to hell; and wafting out from there then was the delight of adultery, which so revived those who were purposeful and deliberate adulterers that they almost danced as they descended; and on descending they immersed themselves like pigs there in unclean dirt and filth.

Footnotes:

1. Quoting John 8:7.

2. Which in Swedenborg's day included garbage thrown out of windows and the droppings of horses.

  
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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 #231

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231. To this I will append three narrative accounts. Here is the first:

I once heard some clamorings from below, which sounded as though they were gurgling up through water. I heard one clamor to the left crying, "Oh, how just!" Another to the right crying, "Oh, how learned!" And a third one behind me crying, "Oh, how wise!" Then, because it struck me to wonder whether there are any just, learned or wise people in hell, I began to feel a wish to see if people of this sort might be found there; and it was told me from heaven, "You will both see and hear."

So I left home in the spirit, and I saw in the ground before me an opening. I went over to it and looked down, and behold, it had a stairway in it. I went down this stairway, and when I reached the bottom, I saw fields covered with bushes intermixed with thorns and nettles. When I asked whether I was in hell, the people said it was a lower earth just above hell.

I then proceeded in the direction of each of the clamors in turn. Going first to the place where they were crying, "Oh, how just!" I saw a gathering of people who in the world had been judges swayed by partiality and gifts. Going next to the place where they were crying, "Oh, how learned!" I saw a gathering of people who in the world had been reasoners. And going third to the place where they were crying, "Oh, how wise!" I saw a gathering of people who in the world had been confirmers.

[2] I turned back from these, however, to the first place, where the judges were who were swayed by partiality and gifts and who were proclaimed as just. There, over to one side, I saw a kind of amphitheater, built out of bricks and having a roof of black tiles; and I was told that they called it the Tribunal. It had three entrances opening into it on the north side, and three more on the west side, but none on the south or east sides - an indication that their judgments were not judgments having to do with justice but arbitrary rulings.

Inside I saw in the middle of the amphitheater a fireplace, into which the keepers of the hearth were throwing torches covered with sulfur and pitch. Shafts of light flickered out from these on to the plastered walls and formed silhouetted images of birds of the evening and night. At the same time, this fireplace, and the shafts of light flickering out into silhouettes of these images, were representations of their judgments, reflecting their ability to illumine the issues in any case with colored hues and to shape them as they pleased.

[3] After a half-hour had passed, I saw some older and younger men entering in gowns and robes; and laying aside their caps, they seated themselves at tables, ready to sit in judgment. I then heard and observed how skillfully and cleverly they avoided any appearance of favoritism, turning their judgments into semblances of justice, and this to the point that they themselves viewed injustice as nothing other than just, and justice, conversely, as unjust. Their persuasions in regard to these matters were apparent to the eye from their faces and discernible to the ear from their comments.

I was given at that point enlightenment from heaven, which enabled me to perceive in each case whether the rulings were in accordance with the law or not; and I saw to what lengths they went to camouflage injustice and give it the guise of justice, picking out from the laws some one that might support them and drawing the rest to their side through clever reasonings.

After rendering their judgments, the judges would have their verdicts conveyed out to their clients, friends and supporters; and to repay them for their favor, these would cry out for some distance along the road, "Oh, how just! Oh, how just!"

[4] I afterwards spoke with angels of heaven about these events and told them some of the things I had seen and heard. The angels said to me that judges like that appear to others as though endowed with an exceptional keenness of understanding, when in fact they do not have the least inkling of what is just and fair.

"If you take away their partiality for one side or the other," they said, "they sit on their benches as mute as statues, saying only, I agree, I go along with this person or I go along with that person. That is because all their judgments are prejudgments, and their prejudgment pursues each case from beginning to end with a biased one-sidedness. Consequently they see only the side which involves a friend. Every point that is against him they move to the periphery; and if they take it up again, they entangle it in reasonings, as a spider does its prey in the threads of its web - and so destroy it.

"That is why, if they do not follow the web of some prejudgment of theirs, they do not have any inkling of the law. They have been examined to see whether they might have some inkling of it, and it was found that they did not. The inhabitants of your world will be surprised that such is the case, but tell them it is a truth investigated by angels of heaven.

"Since these judges lack any sight of justice," they continued, "in heaven we view them as being not human but monsters, whose heads are shaped by elements of partisanship, their breasts by elements of injustice, and their feet by matters of confirmation - with only the soles of their feet being formed by matters of justice, which they step on and trample into the ground if these do not favor some friend of theirs.

"However, you will see for yourself how they look to us from heaven, for their end is near."

[5] And lo, suddenly then the ground opened, so that tables after tables went tumbling down, and they and their whole amphitheater were swallowed up. And they were cast into caverns and made prisoners there.

Then the angels said to me, "Would you like to see them now?"

And behold, in respect to their faces they appeared as though made of burnished steel. In respect to their bodies from the neck to the loins they looked like figures carved out of stone, dressed in leopard skins. And in respect to their feet they looked like serpents. I also saw the lawbooks, which they had had lying on their tables, turned into playing cards. And now, instead of judging, they were given the task of processing pigments into cosmetics with which to paint the faces of harlots and so turn them into beauties.

[6] After seeing this, I was ready to go on to the other two gatherings, to the one where the people were merely reasoners, and to the other where they were merely confirmers. But at that point the angels said to me, "Rest a while. You will be given angels from the society just above those places to accompany you. Through them you will receive light from the Lord, and you will see some astonishing sights."

  
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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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