Novo kršćansko proučavanje Biblije

Komentar

 

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.

Iz Swedenborgovih djela

 

Conjugial Love #444

Proučite ovaj odlomak

  
/ 535  
  

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.

Bilješke:

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

2. Matthew 19:17.

  
/ 535  
  

Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

Iz Swedenborgovih djela

 

Conjugial Love #461

Proučite ovaj odlomak

  
/ 535  
  

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

I once spoke with a newly arrived spirit who, when he lived in the world, thought much about heaven and hell. (By newly arrived spirits I mean people recently deceased, who, being then spiritual beings, are called spirits.) As soon as this spirit came into the spiritual world, he began to think as before about heaven and hell; and when thinking about heaven he seemed to himself to be in a state of joy, and when thinking about hell, in a state of despondency.

When he noticed that he was in the spiritual world, he at once asked where heaven was and where hell was, and also what the one and the other were and what they were like.

To which the people he asked replied, "Heaven is above your head and hell beneath your feet, for you are now in the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell. However, as to what heaven and hell are and what they are like, this we cannot describe in a few words."

So, then, because he burned with a desire to know, he threw himself on his knees and prayed earnestly to God to be instructed. And suddenly an angel appeared at his right side, who raised him up and said, "You have begged to be instructed regarding heaven and hell. Inquire and learn what delight is, and you will know." After which statement the angel rose and vanished.

[2] Then the newly arrived spirit said to himself, "What does this mean, 'Inquire and learn what delight is, and you will know what heaven and hell are and what they are like'?"

However, departing from that place he wandered about, speaking to the people he met and saying, "Pray tell me, please, what delight is."

And some said, "What sort of question is this? Who does not know what delight is? Is it not joy and gladness? Therefore delight is delight, one being like another. We do not know of any distinction between them."

Others said that delight was a laughter of the mind; "for when the mind laughs," they said, "the face is merry, the speech jocular, the conduct playful, and the whole person in a state of delight."

Still others said, "Delight is nothing else than to dine and eat fine foods, and to drink and become drunk on excellent wine, and then to converse on various subjects, especially regarding the sports of Venus and Cupid."

[3] On hearing their replies, the newly arrived spirit said in annoyance to himself, "These responses are oafish and uninformed. Such delights are not heaven or hell. If only I could meet people who are wise!"

So he departed from the people he was with and inquired, "Where can I find people who are wise?"

He was observed, then, by a certain angelic spirit, who said to him, "I perceive that you are fired by a desire to know what the universal characteristic of heaven is and the universal characteristic of hell; and because it is delight, I will take you to the top of a hill where daily assemblies convene of people who examine effects, of people who investigate causes, and of people who explore ends. There are three companies. Those who examine effects are called spirits of empirical knowledge, and, abstractly, forms of such knowledge; those who investigate causes are called spirits of intelligence - abstractly, forms of intelligence; and those who explore ends are called spirits of wisdom - abstractly, forms of wisdom. In the heaven directly above them are angels who from ends see causes, and from causes, effects. It is from these angels that the three companies have their enlightenment."

[4] Taking the newly arrived spirit by the hand, the angelic spirit then led him to the hilltop, to the company composed of those who explore ends and are called forms of wisdom.

To them the newly arrived spirit said, "Pardon me for coming up here to you. I have ascended because from childhood I have thought about heaven and hell, and have recently come into this world; and some of the people with whom I was then associated told me that in this world heaven is above my head and hell beneath my feet. But they did not say what the one and the other are and what they are like. Consequently, being made anxious from constant thought about them, I prayed to God; and an angel then appeared beside me, who said, 'Inquire and learn what delight is, and you will know.' I have inquired, but so far in vain. I entreat you therefore to please explain to me what delight is."

[5] To this the forms of wisdom replied, "Delight is the whole of life for all in heaven and the whole of life for all in hell. In the case of those who are in heaven it is a delight in goodness and truth, while in the case of those who are in hell it is a delight in evil and falsity. For all delight is a matter of love, and love is the very essence of a person's life. So, then, as a person is the kind of person he is according to the character of his love, so also is he the kind of person he is according to the character of his delight. The activity of love causes the sensation of delight. Its activity in heaven is accompanied by wisdom, while its activity in hell is accompanied by irrationality. Each produces in its subjects a feeling of delight; but the heavens and the hells experience opposite delights, because they have opposite loves. The heavens are directed by a love of, and thus a delight in, doing good, whereas the hells are directed by a love of, and thus a delight in, doing evil. Consequently, if you know what delight is, you will know what heaven and hell are and what they are like.

"But inquire and learn further what delight is from those who investigate causes and are called forms of intelligence. They are over there to the right of us."

[6] So the newly arrived spirit left and went over to that company, and explaining the reason for his coming, entreated them to tell him what delight was.

They, then, glad at the inquiry, said, "It is true that anyone who knows what delight is also knows what heaven and hell are and what they are like. The will, which makes a person the person he is, is not moved even the least bit except by delight; for the will, regarded in itself, is nothing but the action and effect of some love, thus of delight, inasmuch as it is some element of fancy, liking and pleasure which causes one to will. Moreover, because it is the will that impels the intellect to think, there is not the least idea existing in the thought which does not flow in from a delight of the will.

"This is as it is because the Lord activates all the elements of the soul and all the elements of the mind in angels, spirits and men through an influx from Him, and this through an influx of love and wisdom; and this influx is the underlying activity from which springs every delight, which in its origin is called bliss, happiness and felicity, and in its descent delight, gratification and pleasure, and in its universal sensation, good.

"But spirits in hell turn everything into its opposite in them, thus turning also good into evil and truth into falsity, with a constantly enduring delight. For without the continuance of delight they would have no will, neither any sensation, thus no life.

"It is apparent from this what the delight of hell is and its character and origin, likewise what the delight of heaven is and its character and origin."

[7] After hearing this, the newly arrived spirit was taken to the third company, where the people were those who examine effects and are called forms of empirical knowledge.

These said to him, "Go down into the land below, then go up into the land above. In the first you will perceive and feel the delights of spirits in hell, and in the other the delights of angels in heaven."

However, suddenly then, at some distance from them, the ground opened, and through the opening ascended three devils, seemingly on fire owing to the delight of their love. At that, because they perceived that it had been provided that the three come up from hell, the people who were with the newly arrived spirit said to them, "Do not come any closer, but from where you are tell us something about your delights."

So the devils said, "Be assured that everyone, whether good or evil, is in the enjoyment of his delight - a good person in the enjoyment of the delight of his good, and an evil person in the enjoyment of the delight of his evil."

The people then asked, "What delight do you have?"

The devils said that it was the delight of whoring, stealing, deceiving others, and blaspheming.

Again, then, the people asked, "What kind of delights are these?"

The devils replied that they were perceived by others as being like the foul odors of piles of excrement, like the putrid smells of corpses, and like the fetid stenches of stagnant pools of urine.

Whereupon the people asked, "Do you find these things delightful?"

"Most delightful," the devils said.

At that the people said, "Then you are like unclean animals that dwell in such filth."

But the devils replied, "If we are, we are; but to our nostrils these things are delightful."

[8] The people then asked if the devils had anything further to say.

They said that it is permitted everyone to be in the enjoyment of his delight, even one most unclean (as others term it), provided he does not molest good spirits and angels. "But because our delight is such that we cannot help but molest them," they said, "we have been thrown into workhouses where we suffer terrible hardships. It is the restricting and rescinding of our delights there is that is called the torment of hell. It is also an interior suffering."

Thereupon the people asked, "Why did you molest good spirits?"

The devils said they could not help it. It is as though a kind of madness invades them whenever they see some angel and feel the Divine atmosphere surrounding him.

At that the people said, "Then you are also like wild animals."

And a few moments later, when the devils saw the newly arrived spirit in association with angels, a madness came over them, which appeared as the fire of hatred. Therefore, to prevent them from doing any harm, they were cast back into hell.

After that the angels appeared who from ends see causes, and through causes, effects, who dwelt in the heaven above the three companies. They were seen in the midst of a bright white light, which, winding downward in spiral revolutions, bore with it a wreath of flowers, which it placed on the head of the newly arrived spirit. At the same time, then, the declaration was made to him from there, "This laurel is given to you because from childhood you have thought about heaven and hell."

  
/ 535  
  

Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

©2024 New Christian Bible Study Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed from newchristianbiblestudy.org