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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

 

True Christian Religion #76

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76. The first experience.

One day I had been meditating on the creation of the universe. This was noticed by the angels above me to the right, where there were some who had several times meditated and reasoned about the same matter; so one of them came down and invited me to join them. I passed into the spirit and accompanied him; on my arrival I was brought to the prince, in whose hall I saw as many as a hundred assembled with the prince in their midst.

Then one of them said: 'We noticed here that you have meditated about the creation of the universe, a subject which has several times occupied our thoughts. But we were unable to reach a conclusion because our thinking clung to the idea of chaos being like a great egg, from which everything in the universe in its due order was hatched. Yet now we perceive that such a vast universe could not have been hatched like this. Another idea which stuck in our minds was that everything was created by God from nothing; yet now we perceive that nothing comes from nothing. Our minds have not yet been able to disentangle themselves from these two ideas and shed a little light on how creation happened. For this reason we have summoned you from the place where you were, to expound your thinking on the subject.'

[2] 'I will indeed,' I replied on hearing this. 'I meditated on this,' I said, 'for a long time but to no purpose. But later, when I was admitted by the Lord into your world, I perceived that it was futile to form any conclusions about the creation of the universe, unless it were first known that there were two worlds, one occupied by angels and the other by men; and that men after death pass from their world into the other. Then I also saw that there are two suns, one from which pour forth all spiritual things, and one from which pour forth all natural things; and that the sun from which all spiritual things pour forth is pure love from Jehovah God, who is in its midst, while the sun from which all natural things pour forth is pure fire. When I had grasped these facts, once when I was in a state of enlightenment, I was granted the perception that the universe was created by Jehovah God by means of the sun in the midst of which He is; and because love cannot exist except together with wisdom, that the universe was created by Jehovah God from His love by means of His wisdom. I have been convinced of the truth of this by everything I have seen in the world where you are, and in the world where I am at present in the body.

[3] 'It would be too tedious to explain how creation progressed from its first beginning. But while I was in a state of enlightenment I perceived that by means of the light and heat from the sun of your world, one after another spiritual atmospheres were created, which are in themselves substantial. Because there are three of them, and they therefore have three degrees, three heavens were made, one for angels in the highest degree of love and wisdom, one for angels in the second degree, and a third for angels in the lowest degree. But because this spiritual universe could not come into being without a natural universe, in which the spiritual one might produce its effects and perform its services, at the same time the sun which is the source of all natural things was created; and through this in the same way, by means of light and heat, three atmospheres were created to surround the first three, like a shell round a kernel or bark round wood; and it was finally through these that the globe with its lands and seas was created from the earth consisting of soil, stones and minerals, to be the home of men, animals, fish, trees, shrubs and plants.

[4] 'This is an extremely general outline of how creation took place and progressed. It would take a series of books to explain all the particular details; but all lead to this conclusion, that God did not create the universe from nothing, since, as you said, nothing comes of nothing, but through the sun of the heaven of angels, which is from His Being (Esse) and so is pure love together with wisdom. Every single detail of the universe, by which I mean both the spiritual and natural worlds, bears witness and proclaims that the universe was created from the Divine love by the Divine wisdom. This you can clearly see, if you consider these facts in due order and in their connexions, by the light which illuminates the perceptions of your understanding. But it should be kept in mind that the love and wisdom, which in God make one, are not love and wisdom in the abstract, but are in Him as substance. For God is the very, sole and consequently prime substance and essence, which is and continues in existence in itself.

[5] All things being created from the Divine love and the Divine wisdom is what is meant by this passage in John:

The Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things were made through Him; and the world was made through Him, John 1:1, 3, 10.

God there means the Divine love, and the Word the Divine truth, or the Divine wisdom. That is why the Word is there called the light; light, when referring to God, means the Divine wisdom.'

At the end of this speech when I was saying good-bye, gleams of light from the sun there came gliding down through the heavens of the angels and entered their eyes, and through them the dwellings of their minds. Under this enlightenment they applauded my speech, and then escorted me into the courtyard; and my earlier companion took me to the house where I was living, and from there went back up to his own community.

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

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