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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.

സ്വീഡൻബർഗിന്റെ കൃതികളിൽ നിന്ന്

 

True Christian Religion #79

ഈ ഭാഗം പഠിക്കുക

  
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79. The fourth experience.

Once when I was thinking about the creation of the universe, some people from the Christian part of the world approached me, who in their time had been among the most famous philosophers and had a reputation for surpassing wisdom. 'We notice,' they said, 'that you are thinking about creation; tell us what is your opinion on that subject.'

'Tell me first,' I replied, 'what is yours.' 'My opinion,' said one of them, 'is that creation is the work of nature, and that nature therefore created itself, having existed from eternity. A vacuum does not and cannot exist. Yet what is it that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, smell with our noses and breathe with our lungs, if not nature? Because nature is outside us, it is also within us.'

[2] Another person who heard this said: 'You speak of nature and regard it as the creator of the universe, but you do not know how nature made the universe; so I will tell you. It twisted itself into vortices which clashed together as clouds do, or like houses collapsing in an earthquake.' He explained that this collision caused the denser material to come together to form the earth; the more fluid parts separated out and came together to form the seas; and the lighter parts also separated out to form the ether and the air, the lightest of all formed the sun. 'Have you not seen how when oil, water and dust are mixed together, they spontaneously separate out and arrange themselves in order one above the other?'

[3] Then another listener said: 'What you say is mere imagination. Everyone knows that the first source of all things was chaos, which in size filled a quarter of the universe. In its midst was fire, with ether around that, and matter around the ether. This chaos split open and the fire burst forth through the cracks, as it does from Etna or Vesuvius, to form the sun. Next the ether expanded and spread around, to form an atmosphere. Finally the remaining matter condensed into a ball, to form the earth. As for the stars, they are merely lights in the expanse of the universe, which arose from the sun and its fire and light. For the sun was at first like an ocean of fire, which to avoid setting fire to the earth threw off from itself shining sparks; these took up their positions in the surroundings and so completed the universe by forming the sky.'

[4] But there was one of the by-standers who said: 'You are wrong. You think yourselves wise, and I seem to you simple. Yet in my simplicity I have believed, and still do, that the universe was created by God; and because nature is part of the universe, He created it at the same time as the whole of nature. If nature had created itself, would it not have existed from eternity? That is a fine piece of nonsense.'

Then one of the so-called wise men rushed up nearer and nearer to the speaker, and put his left ear to the other's mouth — his right ear was blocked with what looked like cotton-wool — and asked what he had said. He repeated the same statement, whereupon the man who had come up looked around him to see if any priest was present; he caught sight of one beside the speaker, and then twisted around saying: 'I too admit that the whole of nature comes from God, but -.' And he went off, whispering to his companions and saying: 'I said that because there was a priest present. You and I know that nature comes from nature, and because nature is therefore God, I said that the whole of nature comes from God, but - .'

[5] But the priest, hearing what they were whispering, said: 'Your wisdom is nothing but philosophy, which has led you astray and shut off the interiors of your minds so completely that no light from God and His heaven can penetrate and bring you enlightenment. You have put the light out. Consider therefore,' he went on, 'and decide among yourselves what is the origin of your souls, which are immortal. Do they come from nature, or were they at the same time in that mighty chaos?'

On hearing this the first man went off to his colleagues, to ask their help in solving this knotty problem. They came to the conclusion that the human soul is nothing but ether, and thought is merely a modification of the ether caused by sunlight; and ether is a part of nature. 'Surely everyone knows,' they said, 'that we talk by means of the air? And what is thought but speech in a purer sort of air, which is called ether? That is why thought and speech act as one. Anyone can observe this in children; a child first learns to talk, and then afterwards to talk to himself, and that is thinking. What then can thought be but a modification of the ether? Or what is the sound of speech but a modulation of it? From these considerations we deduce that the thinking soul is part of nature.'

[6] But some of them, while not disagreeing, cast light on the state of the question by saying that souls arose when the ether formed itself into a ball out of that mighty chaos, and then in the highest region divided itself into innumerable individual forms. These are infused into people, when they begin to think by that purer sort of air, and they are then called souls.

Another on hearing this said: 'I admit that the individual forms made from the ether in its highest region may have been innumerable, but still the number of human beings born from the creation of the world has exceeded the number of forms, so how could those ethereal forms be enough? This has led me to think that the souls which issue from people's mouths when they die return to the same people again after some thousands of years, so that they embark on and complete a life, similar to their previous one. It is well known that many wise men believe in the transmigration of souls and similar ideas.' In addition to these there were other guesses flung around, which I pass over as being crazy.

[7] After a short while the priest returned, and the one who had previously spoken about the creation of the universe by God told him their decisions concerning the soul. On hearing these the priest told them: 'You have spoken exactly as you thought in the world, unaware that you are not any longer in that world but another, which is called the spiritual world. All those who, by convincing themselves of the nature theory, have become immersed in the bodily senses, are not aware that they are no longer in the same world as that in which they were born and brought up. The reason is that there they had a material body, but here a substantial body; and a substantial person sees himself and his companions around him exactly as a material person sees himself and his companions around him, for the substantial is the starting-point of the material. Because you think, see, smell, taste, and speak just as you did in the natural world, you believe that nature here is the same. Yet the nature of this world is as different and remote from that of the former world as the substantial is from the material, or the spiritual from the natural, or what is prior from what is posterior. Because the nature of the world in which you previously lived is comparatively speaking lifeless, so by convincing yourselves of your belief in nature you too have become virtually dead as regards matters which relate to God, heaven and the church, as well as what concerns your souls. Still every person, bad as well as good, can have his understanding raised into the light enjoyed by the angels in heaven; and then he can see that God exists, that there is a life after death, that the human soul is not ethereal and thus of the nature of the material world, but spiritual, and so destined to live for ever. The understanding can enjoy that angelic light, so long as the natural loves are banished which came from the world, favouring it and its nature, and from the body, favouring it and the self 1 .

[8] At once those loves were banished by the Lord, and they were permitted to talk with angels. From their conversation in that state they perceived the existence of God and that after dying they were living in another world. This made them blush with shame and cry: 'We were mad, we were mad!' But since this state was not their own and after a few minutes became tiresome and unwelcome, they turned their backs on the priest and were unwilling to go on listening to him. Thus they reverted to their former loves, which were entirely natural, worldly and bodily. They went off to the left, from one community to another, and eventually reached a road where they caught a whiff of the delights of their own loves, and said: 'Let us take this road.' So they went along it, going down until they came to people who delighted in similar loves, and further still. Since their delight consisted in doing evil, and they harmed many on the way, they were thrown into prison and became demons. Then their delight was turned into misery, because they were restrained and prevented from enjoying what had previously delighted them, the behaviour which had formed their nature, by punishment and the fear of punishment.

They asked their companions in that prison whether they were to live like that for ever. Some of those there replied: 'We have been here for several centuries, and we are to remain for ever and ever, because the nature we acquired in the world cannot be changed or driven out by punishment. When it is driven out by this, it still comes back after a short interval.'

അടിക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ:

1. Latin proprium, the term often used for the unregenerate self.

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

സ്വീഡൻബർഗിന്റെ കൃതികളിൽ നിന്ന്

 

Survey of Teachings of the New Church #119

ഈ ഭാഗം പഠിക്കുക

  
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119. The second memorable occurrence taken from Revelation Unveiled. One time just after I woke up from sleeping I fell into a deep meditation on God. Looking up I saw above me in heaven an oval of intensely shining light. As I fixed my gaze on the light, it gradually receded toward the sides and merged into the periphery [of my vision].

Then, behold, heaven opened up to me! I saw some magnificent things, and angels standing in a circle on the south side of the opening, talking to each other. Because a burning desire came over me to hear what they were saying, I was allowed to hear it — first the sound of it, which was full of heavenly love; then the conversation itself, which was full of the wisdom that goes with that love.

They were having a conversation about the only God, about being in partnership with God, and about the salvation that results. What they were saying was ineffable — most of it could not be expressed in the words of any earthly language. Several times before, however, I had been in gatherings of angels in heaven itself, and had been able to join in their conversation because I was then in a state similar to theirs. This enabled me to understand them now, and to select from their discussion a few points that could be expressed in a rational way using the words of earthly language.

[2] They were saying that the underlying divine reality is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. They said that the same is true of the divine essence, because the underlying divine reality is the divine essence, and that the same is also true of God, because the divine essence that is the underlying divine reality is God. They used spiritual images as illustration.

They said, “The underlying divine reality cannot be divided into many entities, each of which possesses an underlying divine reality, and still remain united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. Otherwise each separate entity would think on its own from its own separate underlying divine reality. If it also happened to be concurrently of the same mind as the others, there would be a number of deities in agreement; there would not be one God. Agreement, or the consensus of many, each one acting on its own or by itself, is not an attribute of one God but of many.”

They did not say “gods” because they were unable to. It was suppressed by the light of heaven that shaped their thought and was the context in which their conversation took place. They also said that when they tried to utter the word “gods” and to describe each one as a person by himself, the effort to say that immediately veered off toward “one,” and in fact toward “the one only God.”

[3] They added, “The underlying divine reality is a reality in itself, not from itself, because if it were from itself, that would imply an underlying reality that existed in itself from some prior underlying reality. It would mean there was a god from a god, which is not possible. What comes from God is called ‘divine,’ but it is not called ‘God.’ What is ‘a god from God,’ what is ‘an eternally begotten god from God,’ and what is ‘a god emanating from an eternally begotten god from God’ except words utterly devoid of heavenly light?”

Later on they said, “The underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, is uniform — and uniform not just in a simple way but in an infinite number of ways. It is uniform from eternity to eternity. It is uniform everywhere, and it is uniform with everyone and in everyone. (It is the condition of the recipient that causes all the variety and variability in reception.)”

[4] The angels demonstrated the absoluteness of the underlying divine reality, which in itself is God, as follows: “God is the Absolute, because he is absolute love and absolute wisdom, or to put it another way, he is absolute goodness and absolute truth. As a result, he is life itself. If these qualities were not absolute in God they would never exist in heaven or in the world, because they would be relatively nonexistent compared to the Absolute. Every quality is what it is because it comes from the Absolute, both as its source and as its point of reference.

“The Absolute (meaning the underlying divine reality) has no specific location. It is with those and in those who are in specific locations, depending on how receptive they are. Love and wisdom, goodness and truth, and the life these qualities give are absolute in God; in fact, they are God himself. A specific location cannot be attributed to them, and neither can a progression from place to place as the source of their omnipresence — they are not in a particular place. For this reason the Lord says he is in the midst of people [Matthew 18:20]; and he is in them and they are in him [John 6:56; 14:20; 15:4, 5].

[5] “Nevertheless, no one can comprehend God as he is in himself. Therefore he appears as he is in himself to be a sun above the angelic heavens. He himself as wisdom emanates from that sun in the form of light, and he himself as love emanates from that sun in the form of heat. That sun is not God himself. The divine love and wisdom surrounding him as they first go forth from him come to angels’ view as a sun.

“The Absolute in that sun is the Human Being. It is our Lord Jesus Christ, including both the divine source and the divine-human manifestation. Since the Absolute, which is absolute love and absolute wisdom, was in him as his soul from the Father, therefore divine life or life in itself was in him. None of us is like this. The soul in us is not life; it is merely a vessel for receiving life.

“In fact, the Lord teaches this when he says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6); and in another passage, ‘Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has also granted the Son to have life in himself’ (John 5:26). ‘Life in himself’ is God.”

They added that people who have any spiritual light at all can see from all this that the underlying divine reality, which is also the divine essence, cannot be shared among many, because it is united, uniform, absolute, and undivided. If anyone were to claim that the divine reality could be shared, further points that person made on the subject would contain obvious contradictions.

[6] Then the angels became aware that my thoughts included common Christian ideas of God: ideas of a trinity of persons in unity, and a unity of persons in the Trinity, and also of the Son of God’s birth from eternity. At that point they said, “What are you thinking? Surely you are thinking those thoughts from an earthly light that is incompatible with our spiritual light. We are closing heaven to you and leaving unless you get rid of the ideas that go with that point of view.”

So I said, “Please go deeper into my thinking. Perhaps you will see a compatibility.”

They went deeper and saw that three persons to me meant three emanating divine activities: creating, redeeming, and regenerating, which are activities of the one only God. The birth of a Son of God from eternity to me meant his birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time.

Then I explained that my earthly thoughts about the trinity and the unity of persons and about the eternally begotten Son of God were based on the church’s statement of faith that was named after Athanasius. I added that the Athanasian Creed is accurate, provided that instead of the trinity of persons mentioned there one substitutes a trinity in one person — a trinity that exists uniquely within the Lord Jesus Christ; and provided that instead of the birth of a Son of God from eternity one substitutes the birth foreseen from eternity and carried out in time, because his human manifestation is openly referred to as the Son of God.

[7] The angels then said, “Good, good.”

They asked me to pass on a statement from them: “Anyone who does not seek help from the absolute God of heaven and earth cannot come into heaven, because heaven is heaven as a result of the one only God. The absolute God is Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah the Lord, Creator from eternity, Redeemer in time, and Regenerator to eternity. He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit combined. This is the gospel that needs to be preached.”

Afterward the heavenly light I had seen above the opening came back. It came down bit by bit and filled the inner reaches of my mind, enlightening my ideas of the unity and the trinity of God. Then I saw my former merely earthly ideas being separated out, just as husks are shaken off wheat tossed in a winnowing basket. I saw my old notions carried off as if by a wind to the north of heaven and scattered.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.

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