Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic/Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Gardener, Statesman, Author
IN following Swedenborg into the next world, it is easy to forget that he had by no means retired from this one. From 1747 to about 1751 he was abroad in various countries, busy putting down his new interpretation of the Bible or trying to fathom the psychology of spirits, but he also took pains to see his friends and he was concerned about his garden in Stockholm. He ordered seeds and bulbs for it, in 1750, from his good friend, the Swedish merchant Wretman in Amsterdam, and received useful advice from the latter about putting the tulip, hyacinth, and other bulbs into the ground in the autumn before the frost began.1
He was back in Sweden in 1751 and deep in gardening, on the rocky islet of Södermalm where his house stood. He owned a piece of land 336 by 156 feet, enclosed by a wooden fence. About two thirds of it were used for orchard and garden, the rest for his house and outhouses. The house was about 57 by 48 feet, and the upper story had an "orangery," or greenhouse, lit by six windows in the roof.2
There Swedenborg had his seedlings in spring. In his almanac for 1752 he notes not only what copy for the Arcana Celestia he had sent to John Lewis the printer in London, but also what he had planted and when. In February he had "in the first box crown artichokes; second box, lemons, in the centre mallium, after that cypresses; third box gilliflowers of three kinds, with white ones in the middle."
The garden was divided by linden avenues into four parts, and in the 1752 almanac he also noted where he had planted lemon seeds, cypress seeds, and carnations, next to them sweet peas, and next to them parsley-roots and beets. But he had a proper flower section with "Adonis roses, scarlet beans, larkspur, violet-roses and plants with white and yellow bordered leaves," and elsewhere violets, bleeding hearts, sweet william, a bed of spinach and another of parsley, and then large sweet white roses, flax, scabiosa and wild roses. (He wrote somewhere that in working with flowers, trees, and vegetables he was often aware of what their heavenly origin was; for to him a rose was not just a rose, it was the earthly expression of some celestial emotion.)
As he had inherited the garden from another owner, he of course did not always know what was going to come up in it, and he noted that "by the currant bush there were old roses, marsh mallows and gilliflowers of a curious kind," and elsewhere there were other flowers and vegetables, not on his program, such as African roses and velvet roses and beside them lilies, rose-mallows and sunflowers.3
It may have been during the discovery of and communion with these frail messengers from other people and times that he became aware, so he said, of spirits in the garden who greatly resisted the idea of a new owner who introduced changes; but he pacified them,4 and introduced "singular Dutch figures of animals cut in box-tree" and little garden pavilions like some he had seen in his travels. In the middle there was one copied from an English model; another had curious mirror effects, another was a volière for birds with wide netting, and at the end of the garden he finally built himself a summerhouse, containing his library, where he liked to work, being apparently like every other man who gets a house of his own, anxious to have a little house still more his own.
Near this there was a "labyrinth," or, as his friend Robsahm5 wrote, "a maze of boards, entirely for the amusement of the good people that would come and visit him in his garden, and especially for their children; and there he would receive them with a cheerful countenance and enjoy their delight at his contrivances."
The little house with the mirrors, Robsahm said, was arranged so that when the visitor opened a door, he faced another door with a window that seemed to look into another garden, but it was a mirror which reflected "a green hedge where a beautiful bird-cage was placed . . . the effect was most charming and surprising. Swedenborg derived much sport from this arrangement, especially when inquisitive and curious young ladies came into his garden."
Swedenborg was no recluse—but neither was he merely an amiable and sociable man of independent means, secretly devoted to "occult" studies, and publicly devoted to pottering in his garden. He kept the same keen eye on the doings of the Swedish legislature that he had done before he seemed to himself to have crossed the boundaries of the physical world. In his code, attention to civic duties ranked high, and, as Robsahm says, "in acting with a party he was never a party-man, but loved truth and honesty in all he did."
As head of the Swedenborg family he was a member of the House of Nobles, and he had already presented useful memorials to the Diet while he was in the Board of Mines. In 1734 he was very much against declaring war on Russia. "The greatest honor seems to consist in our acquiring a position of respect by wise economy . . ." 6
His next memorial to the Diet was in 1755, while he was in the midst of writing the Arcana Celestial. There was nothing occult about his advice to the legislators. He viewed with alarm that the excess of imports over exports amounted to three to four million of silver daler. He scored the evils of inflation. People were allowed to raise money on their property but it was paper currency with no backing. He wanted such banknotes to be called in and payment in coin to be resumed.7
The Swedish immoderate use of hard liquor he saw as a great drawback to industry. He wanted the right of private distilling taken away from people and given to the highest bidder in each district so as to raise revenue for the state, "that is, if the consumption of brandy cannot be done away with altogether, which would be more desirable for the country's welfare and morality than all the income which could be realized from so pernicious a drink."
Granted however that it had to be sold, he recommended, much as the present Swedish liquor control has it, "that all public houses in town should be like bakers' shops, with an opening in the window, through which those who desired might purchase whisky and brandy without being allowed to enter the house and lounge about in the tap-room." 8
But Swedenborg was no total abstainer; he liked an occasional glass of wine which he probably also offered to his friends either in the garden or in his living room, "neat and genteel but plain," where stood the inlaid marble table he had brought from Italy. Robsahm says that "Swedenborg was not only a learned man but also a polished gentleman; for a man of such extensive learning, who by his books, his travels, and his knowledge of languages had acquired distinction both at home and abroad could not fail to possess the manners and everything else which, in these so-called serious and sober times, caused a man to be honored and made him agreeable in society."
The times were serious. No doubt the disastrous state of Swedish finances continued to be discussed by him, for late in 1760 he presented two memorials to the Diet, in which he dealt again with the cause of the bad rate of foreign exchange, the consequent debasement of the currency, and the terrible results for everybody. His language was simple and clear; even those ignorant of financial problems could understand his explanation and the remedies he suggested. Swedenborg knew about metals; he knew them, so to speak, from their cradle in the mine to their obituary in paper currency.9
These memorials were the ones characterized by Count von Höpken as the most solid and best penned of that Diet. Höpken said, "In one of these he refuted a large work in quarto on the same subject, quoted all the corresponding passages of it, and all this in less than one sheet."
This was a reference to a book by one Nordencrantz, in which the form of government of Sweden, at least partly representative, was attacked through the assertion that government by many led to the formation of cliques and to corrupt practices. It was really a plea for the restoration of absolute monarchy, and it did not deceive Emanuel Swedenborg. "One absolute monarch," he wrote, "is able to do more mischief in one year than a clique or combination of many at a session of the Diet could accomplish in a hundred years. . . . Corrupt practices in free governments are like small ripples, compared with large waves in absolute monarchies;" in the latter, he said, "favorites and the favorites of favorites, yea the unlimited monarch himself, are corrupted by men who study and appeal to their passions . . ." He threw in a timely reminder about Baron Görtz and Charles XII.
He admitted faults in representative governments; still there was freedom. "Should I undertake to make known all the mistakes of which I have heard and which I know from my own experience have happened in England and Holland to the detriment of justice and the public good, I believe I might fill a whole book with lamentations, when nevertheless those governments together with our own in Sweden are the very best in Europe, as every inhabitant, notwithstanding all the shortcomings which take place there, is safe in his life and property, and no one is a slave but they are all free men.
Considering that by this time, 1761, it had become known that he claimed to communicate with the other world, he was rather bold to continue as follows: "The honorable Houses of the Diet will allow me to go still higher: If there in this world should exist a heavenly government, consisting of men who had an angelic disposition, there would nevertheless be in it faults caused by weakness, together with other shortcomings; and if these were ferreted out, reported and exaggerated, this government too might be undermined by calumny and thereby gradually a desire might be raised among the well-disposed to change and destroy it." 10
The terse and cogent arguments for better government which the vigorous man of seventy-two expressed in his memorials grew out of a social philosophy which he had acquired in his long service of the state, and in which he had been confirmed by what he considered his observations in the other world. He had seen during his tenure of office men with petty souls and big voices who even while they claimed to be working for the common good were in reality working for their own profit, power, or renown. So to every action he applied one test: What is the end the man has in view? Did he desire the welfare of others for the sake of the common good, or was it for the sake of himself? 11
In Swedenborg's life there had been an overwhelming example of a man, perhaps self-deceived, whose loud trumpetings about his own piety, humility, and unselfishness were in reality blasts from as theatrical an ego as ever posed in a pulpit—his father, Bishop Swedberg. In his writings, Swedenborg often came back to the subject of how detested hypocrites were in the other world, not only the crude sort, but those who performed pious and useful actions. "If anyone should convert the whole world to Christianity, and the end be self-glory, self-reward and the like, he then obtains no reward therefor in the other life . . ." 12 He remarked that spirits did not like to hear this, because they commonly held the belief that, "If anyone had bestowed anything for the doctrine of faith in the life of the body he wishes to be rewarded therefor no matter what the end is." 13
To attribute merit to yourself, even real merit, Swedenborg saw as the beginning of danger, the beginning of the black knot of the ego. "The more anyone thinks he merits heaven through such things . . . the more he puts himself away from heaven . . ."
The cardinal point in his ethics was that the Lord was Goodness and Truth, and Goodness and Truth were the Lord. All that man could do "as of himself" was by an effort of will to open his mind and heart to this Goodness and Truth and let that divine union flow in and act through him. "Suffer yourself to be an instrument!" 14 to be employed by this Goodness, he often exclaimed. Shut your mind and heart to the evil promptings of evil spirits, who also want to use you.
Could feelings be compelled into "good" channels? No, Swedenborg emphatically said, but thoughts can yield to reason. That kind of self-compulsion is freedom. He assumed that ethical truths were known; the Bible was there. Hence man could think even if he could not feel that something was wrong or unjust and against divine will. "Man can enter this state freely, for who is not free so to think?" Then, if that became a mental habit, the "inner man" would open and really be able to see what was unjust and wrong, and "to the degree in which he sees this it is dispersed, for nothing can be canceled out until it is seen."
Incidentally, Swedenborg saw evil spirits as serving the above useful purpose: by their smelling a man's evil inclinations, reinforcing them and dragging them to the surface, the man would know that he had such inclinations and could do something about them. And, if he had once really seen himself as he was he would not be left to himself. "The Lord will cause the man not only to see the evil but not to will it and finally to detest it."
The motive of an action was the true test of it. A thousand men could do what seemed like the same deed, yet they would all be as different as the different motives for it, "for the deed is as the will."
But the will was not the same as the deed. "To think and to will without doing, if there is opportunity, is like a flame in a vessel which dies, or a seed thrown on sand, which is lost without its germinating power." 15
Like a Buddhist he proclaimed that man is the sum of his willed deeds. "Man's spiritual body is none other than his deeds done out of his will." But "the road to heaven is not away from but in the world." 16
Swedenborg saw those who gave up the world as often burning with a desire for "merit" which defeated itself, for, he said, in heaven it was impossible for the self-torturers to be with the angels, who do what they do out of joy. Lest, therefore, the ascetic "sphere" should disturb the heavenly harmony, such grim candidates for sainthood were put off in a department by themselves.17
In human society Swedenborg did not want either the individual or society to dominate; he sought interdependence, not slavery. The "general good" he saw as having its origin in the useful work of individuals, and this work he saw as being nourished and continued from the established fund of general food—a beneficent circle. He had no use for drones. But "he who performs uses for himself alone is also useless though not called so." 18
Instead of setting up as prophet, saint, or "revelator" demanding a following, Swedenborg most definitely continued to act as a good Swedish citizen, although he was of course convinced that he was performing the most useful of all functions in passing on the information he had received about the true interpretation of the Bible and the real conditions in the other world where he felt he had actually seen the working out of spiritual laws. The books were anonymous, until 1768, and not published in Sweden, but still, as we know, about the end of 1760, Baron Tilas was writing to a friend the startling news about Swedenborg's alleged commerce with the other world.
Carl Robsahm testifies that, after the secret was out, Swedenborg "at first used to talk freely about his visions and his explanations of scripture," although "he never tried to make proselytes or to force his explanations on anyone." But when the Swedish clergy began to be ruffled by his heresies, "he resolved to be more sparing of his communications in company." Robsahm found him "even in his old age cheerful, sprightly and agreeable in company, yet at the same time his countenance presented those uncommon features which are only seen in men of great genius."
"It was difficult for him to talk quickly, for he then stuttered, especially when he was obliged to talk in a foreign tongue . . . He spoke slowly, and it was always a pleasure to be with him at table, for whenever Swedenborg spoke, all other talk was hushed, and the slowness with which he spoke had the effect of restraining the frivolous remarks of the curious in the assembly."
Those who could not read his writings (as they were in Latin) were likely to be among the frivolous, according to Robsahm, but those who could read them judged him quite differently. "And what is remarkable, most of those who do read his books become in a greater or less degree his adherents . . .," he said, though noting that they were shy about admitting it. Their judgment, as evidently that of Robsahm himself, cautious banker that he was, seems to have been that there was much that was good in Swedenborg's writings, except for the other-world visions and conversations.
Even those might have been accepted in a sense, if only Swedenborg had not insisted that they were really "from things heard and seen." Cultivated people in the eighteenth century were well used to having opinions presented in various disguises. Montesquieu had written Lettres Persanes, for one instance; still further back there was Sir Thomas More's Utopia; and of religious allegories there were Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Milton's Paradise Lost.
And now here was Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell. It had been published in London in 1758, being extracts from the eight volumes of the Arcana Celestia, which again were mainly from the spiritual diaries, as far as conditions in the Beyond were described. Heaven and Hell began to trickle into Sweden about 1760, and if it had only been presented by its author as symbolic of spiritual truths it would have charmed the readers by its imaginative insight, poetic fables, shrewd psychology, and lofty ethics, as indeed it did charm a man like Höpken, who thought that Swedenborg's works "sparkled with genius."
What delightful ideas, one can imagine his friends saying, in this book with the inclusive title, supposing of course that they are not put forward seriously. Innumerable "societies" of angels in heaven, and yet no man's heaven and no man's hell like another's. The angels shiver at the thought of monotonous conformity; their unity is a harmony of units, not a similarity. If the reader smiled at the similarity of some of the angelic environments to those of earth, he could not of course realize that these were what Swedenborg termed "appearances," though they seemed actual to those whose states of mind they expressed. These angels and angelic spirits lived in houses and Swedenborg said he had been in them. They were much finer than earthly ones, with every kind of room and court. There were gardens, flower beds, fields. Palaces shone with gleams of gold and precious stones and architecture was in its flower, because, Swedenborg said, that art was itself from heaven. There were towns with streets, roads, and marketplaces. There were temples, because angels, having reason and affection, were capable of having them infinitely perfected; and there was government and administration because though all were equally good not all were equally wise; and each member of the community had many duties which, however, were joys, as a mother who loves her children "does not think about merit like a hired nurse, but grieves if she is deprived of that useful function and is willing to give all she has only to be allowed to possess her joy."
The functions of the angels were innumerable, both such as they were conscious of and such as they were not. Some instructed new arrivals, some were with men and reinforced any good impulse, some protected others, some gently awoke the dead.
They talked with each other about every kind of question pertaining to much the same things that men discuss. Swedenborg said he had often heard them. Some lived in communities, some lived in separate abodes, and they were "the best of angels." One thing they never argued about was faith." "They say, 'What is faith? I feel and see that this is so.' As if someone showed another a garden and said, 'You ought to believe that this is there,' when he sees it before his eyes."
Heavenly pleasure could not be understood, Swedenborg said, by those who did not know what spiritual joy was. Nor could those who put their joy in honor and profit and carnal pleasure believe that there can be inexpressible joys having nothing to do with these, any more than thick and pungent dust was comparable to a pure and gentle breeze. The greatest joy was to wish to share it with others. Swedenborg tried to say how all the inward being seemed to open and to be dissolved, spreading the blessedness to every single fiber. He had felt this sense of order in the joy himself, and how greatly it increased when he shared it with another.
Angelic love was to love one's neighbor more than oneself, something that could be seen, he said, in true marriage love, in maternal love, and in true friendship.
He was happiest in heaven who knew that he was nothing of himself or in himself, but, ever watchful against the crafty ego, Swedenborg warned that a man who sought to be "nothing" in order to be happy would seek in vain.
Perhaps it was because of the opportunities for hypocrisy offered by official Christianity that Swedenborg was so distrustful of it. He often said that heathens may live better lives than Christians. Certain Chinese spirits showed distrust when he mentioned Christ to them, because they knew that Christians were worse than they, but he said they liked to hear about the Lord. The Church of the Lord, according to Swedenborg, is with all who admit divinity and live in love of their neighbor, and it is wherever people live in charity, according to their religion.
Swedenborg said that those heathens or others who had worshiped human beings or images in the world were for some time let believe that they encounter those deities in heaven, and in this way were gradually weaned from their fancies.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead,18a certainly not known to Swedenborg, contains observations similar to his, such as the different visions seen by men of different faiths; the belief of the "dead" that they are still in their physical bodies; the hallucinatory experiences; even the "clear light" seen at first is common to both the Tibetan after-world and that of Swedenborg.
From his diary he took a little incident, relating how once when he was reading the Old Testament about Micah, from whom the sons of Dan took away his graven image, there was a certain spirit present, so aware of what Swedenborg was reading that he identified himself with Micah and grieved innocently at his loss. He was from India and in his life had worshiped a graven image. But Swedenborg observed that his adoration was much more holy than that of any Christian. There was pity in him, and because this spirit could feel such pity he could be with the angels, and, when he had forgotten his graven image, he could worship the true Lord, "differently from very many Christians." 19
Yet, though Swedenborg believed in one true Lord, he could imagine Him as manifesting in different ways. Not unlike the Saiva saying, "O Thou Who dost take the shapes imagined by Thy worshippers," is Swedenborg's saying that the Lord reveals himself differently in each community of heaven, according to the kind of goodness in each.
Of children in heaven Swedenborg said that no matter what the creeds may say, all children go to heaven when they die, and are brought up there. If caught early enough they can become angels, not having any positive evil in them as yet. They are given to motherly angels who had greatly loved children when on earth, and taught to speak, first by "sounds of affection." Later they are taught (in the best Montessori manner), without having their wills broken, through "representations" scaled to their understanding, and when educated enough they become angels and look grown-up.
As to whether the rich could get into heaven, Swedenborg said that man can obtain heaven even if he has lived well and merrily on earth, if he had not made rich living the object of his life. Those who do not use their riches for others are like moist soil without the light of day, he said, they rot. But the poor have plenty of vices too. As for traders, it is on the whole easier for them to reach heaven than for officials; the latter are apt to take to themselves the merit belonging to their office and they become arrogant.
Beauty in heaven corresponds to inner development; there is something, he said, dim and unillumined about the less developed. Love illumines and shapes faces and forms until those who see such a form are astounded, and that is why persons who have inherited an ugly body may be transformed into the greatest beauty in heaven. Hence Swedenborg's report that he saw a former teacher of his, Moræus, so transformed.
In hell love also rules, but it is love of self. At first the new arrivals are received quite well, while the demons investigate how crafty they may be, but as in hell everyone wants to command (while in heaven all want to serve) trouble soon arises. Incidentally Swedenborg remarks that the pangs of conscience are not the pangs of hell, for those who are capable of pangs of conscience are not spiritually dead, therefore not in hell.
With a lightning phrase Swedenborg says that the forms of those in hell are "those of contempt for others." Some are reduced to a bundle of ugly teeth. "In general, evil spirits are forms of contempt for others, or forms of hatreds and revenge. They are full of menaces for those who do not pay them respect . . . but if worshiped they can look pleased for a while. Each looks as his ruling passion is."
Swedenborg wondered at the monstrous forms of the love of self, for, he said, in the world the haughty love of self is regarded as a kind of noble and necessary spur to action, the fire of life itself, honor and glory.
In Swedenborg's view love of self was to do good only for one's own sake, or for one's children and grandchildren who really, he said, are part of the man himself and called his own.
Imagine a community, Swedenborg said, of such as love only themselves and others only as they seem part of them, and you will see that their love is only as that among robbers, who kiss and call each other friends as long as they act in common, but who wish to slay and destroy the others if they protest their dominion. They laugh at everything which is divine.
Of such is hell. The worst are the deceitful egoists, he said, since deceit presses deeply into thought and purpose and poisons them and disturbs all spiritual life. But with many the evil in their souls has been so wrapped up in outer honesty and decency that they hardly know themselves what devils they are. It takes death to reveal them to themselves.
Eternal slander, quarreling, hate, and unfriendliness fill the horrid little towns in hell, or rather in the hells, since each inhabitant in a sense creates his own, but enough are like-minded to have similar districts. In the milder departments are huts that sometimes are arranged as if in streets; from those huts come the noise of brawls and fights. Some are like ruined cities after fire. Others are full of dirty brothels where lust feeds itself forever joylessly. There are also dark forests, sandy deserts, scraggy cliffs, black mines and caves. There seems to be fire, both smoky and flaming, but it is not such as can be felt by the inhabitants, Swedenborg says. It is correspondence with their self-love.
His eighteenth-century reader would probably have been as much troubled by "correspondence," one of Swedenborg's favorite words, as is his twentieth-century reader. It was correspondence that evil, false, haughty, tricky spirits lived in caves and darkness and filthy places. It was correspondence that those who had lived "in heavenly love out of affection for truth" spent their spirit-life in bright light on beautiful mountains in spring; that they saw "represented" before them meadows and fields of corn and vineyards and olive groves; that their rooms gleamed as if with precious stones; that they looked through windows as if through purest crystal.
It was likewise correspondence that those who had loved science and used it to develop their reason with, and to acknowledge the divine, now lived in symmetric gardens with artfully trimmed trees, where trees and flowers daily went through beautiful changes. It was for the same reason that those who had given the divine all credit and who had regarded nature by itself as comparatively dead now lived in the light of a heaven where, all things being as if transparent for them, they saw infinite changes and gradations of heavenly radiance. In their houses shone a diamond light, their walls seemed of transparent crystal in which they saw an everchanging flow of beautiful things.
Swedenborg's friends must have shaken their heads over this mysterious "correspondence" that turned up everywhere in what he now wrote, both about the other world and about the Bible. Nor puzzled only by that. There were many strange allusions to the "Grand Man," and to visits to other planets, or casual mention of the Last Judgment having taken place in Swedenborg's observant presence. But especially "correspondence" gleamed and darkened everywhere. It seemed to be a world-principle, so ubiquitous and bewildering that it had to be confronted if one would understand Swedenborg.
And that was difficult, not to say impossible, on the basis of the published books, in which he neither bothered to explain its many meanings, nor said how the idea had developed for him. Nor could he tell, possibly, why some of his strange ideas seemed to him factual; he was not aware that some of them, at least, had risen from his unconscious mind via automatic writing. The ideas had a history, however.