Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic/Chapter 22

by Signe Toksvig

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Interworld "Correspondence"

IF Swedenborg had only been willing to be considered allegorical in his other-world reports, there would have been no great difficulty about understanding those likenesses between spirits and their environments, which he set forth so vividly. No more difficulty than in understanding that a gloomy-tempered man makes a gloomy house or garden for himself, or that a gay person prefers gay colors. In a sense a house expresses a man; indeed it "corresponds" to him. Swedenborg would have agreed, to be sure; he felt that his own symmetrical garden with the artfully trimmed box trees "corresponded" to one who loved science.

But Swedenborg went much farther; he made a system of it, being a born system-maker. He believed of course that everything which takes place in the mind, even if still in the body, really takes place in the spiritual world, which is not in our kind of space. All psychological processes were immaterial events which could have an effect in the material world. And these effects were often "correspondences"; they expressed either directly or in symbolic form their spiritual cause. Smiles and scowls might be direct material expressions of spiritual events.

If the soul had left the physical envelope, it entered, according to Swedenborg, into a world where its states of mind and mood had vastly greater scope than merely throwing a cup of coffee on the floor if it were angry. That world had a kind of malleable atmosphere, or immaterial substance, which the feelings of the spirit could affect in various startling ways. Not only could it "project" its own sane or mad fancies on it so that they actually became visible to other spirits, even seeming real to both the projector and witnesses, but a luridly wicked mind involuntarily gave off effects that looked like smoke and flame, because that "corresponded" to its nature.

They were not, however, "real," nor were the dark caves, the dirty brothels, or the sandy deserts real—they were self-created by those to whose willfully acquired natures they corresponded. But, if they had not so totally deprived themselves of all good that there was no redemption for them out of their private hells, then they were in "the lower earth," as Swedenborg called it, or nether world of spirits, where they might through their suffering be "vastated" of their evil, and perhaps develop latent goodness into better natures which in turn would create pleasanter environments for them, perhaps even advancing to "paradises."

In the paradises too everything "corresponded" to the natures of the denizens—the varied bright colors of the garments of the lower angels, the luminous white of the higher realms, and the utter nakedness, corresponding to innocence, of the innermost, celestial angels.

Swedenborg could still have kept respectably within the allegorical fold if he had limited his doctrine of correspondences to such things, but he went much farther, applying it to everything in the world.

He was not being original in this, as indeed he often said himself, pointing out that the "ancients" believed the same. So many of them did. Persian, Platonic, and Neoplatonic mystics and their many descendants thought that all here below was in some sense caused by events in the spiritual realms of heaven and hell.

But Swedenborg was not satisfied to dismiss nettles and gnats, for instance, as originating in diabolical hatreds; he did try in some respects to link up "correspondence" with his studies of physiology. From embryology he felt he had reason to believe that something apparently immaterial could have effects on the material level, and in his work on the nervous system (The Fibre) he said it was well known that a mind foiled of its desires could trouble the body, causing an overflow of bile.¹ Then in his later period he simply added on spirits who reinforced the noxious emotions, which in their turn caused physical diseases.

Yet beyond this now quite respectable psychosomatic theory, he came to accept wholly the old doctrine that the material world in every aspect is entirely created by the spiritual. Life, for him, was a force emanating from the Divine. Self-willed man, whether in or out of the body, was free to receive this force and turn it into good or into evil. The furniture and scenery of hell, its animals and plants, were "appearances," or "mere correspondences of lusts that swarm out of their evil loves and present themselves in such forms before others." ² Yet he believed, or came to believe, that these temporary, soul-stuff "phantasies" could become materialized—appear in solid earth—stuff—if they "which in themselves are spiritual meet with homogeneous or corresponding things in the earths for then are present both the spiritual that furnishes a soul and the material that furnishes a body." ³ Or, as he also put it, if those forms become filled with matters from the earth they become fixed or enduring. Luckily for man and for the growing of roses, the emotions of heaven could also be in this way materialized on earth.

Swedenborg worked this out in much dry detail, but to illustrate the doctrine he gave an incident "from experience," as he said, and undoubtedly meant. With the astounding casualness that often startles the reader into nearly believing that he really did loiter behind a heavenly huckleberry bush and overhear the inhabitants, he begins:

"I heard two presidents of the English Royal Society, Sir Hans Sloane and Martin Folkes, conversing together in the spiritual world about the existence of seeds and eggs, and about production from them in the earths."

(Note that Swedenborg was well acquainted with the Royal Society and had undoubtedly seen both of these gentlemen and may have known them personally.)

Sir Hans Sloane contended that nature by itself produced seeds and eggs by means of the sun's heat, but Mr. Folkes (his real name was Ffoulkes) said that the force for this came into nature unceasingly from God, the Creator.

"To settle the discussion, a beautiful bird appeared to Sir Hans Sloane, and he was asked to examine it to see whether it differed in the smallest particle from a similar bird on earth. He held it in his hand, examined it, and declared that there was no difference. He knew indeed that it was nothing but an affection of some angel represented outside the angel as a bird, and that it would vanish or cease with its affection. And this came to pass."

"By this experience," Swedenborg says, "Sir Hans Sloane was convinced that nature contributes nothing whatever to the production of plants and animals, that they are produced solely by what flows into the natural world out of the spiritual world. If that bird, he said, were to be infilled in its minutest parts, with corresponding matters from the earth, and thus fixed, it would be a lasting bird, like the birds on earth, and that it is the same with such things as are from hell." ⁴

Putting it a little differently one might say that Sir Hans acknowledged that the induced hallucination of a bird was perfect, lacking only "the matters from the earth" to be eaten with bread-sauce in London. As it vanished, that test could not be made, and perhaps the learned gentlemen were in a sphere where enjoyments were on a higher level.

Swedenborg explained that of course once these forms had been started on earth they continued in the natural way of propagation by egg or seed. But the origin of species apparently was in the spiritual world where "affections or lusts" could take on visible form.

Once he was fully started on this train of thought it quite naturally followed that he returned to the belief of many "occult" writers who thought that nature was one big picture-book symbolical of the spiritual world. Indeed, as early as in the Animal Kingdom he had written that "you would swear that the physical world is merely symbolic of the spiritual world, and so much so that if you express in physical terms . . . any natural truth whatever, and merely convert those terms into the corresponding spiritual terms then . . . will come forth a spiritual truth or a theological dogma . . ." ⁵

Still at that time he also warned that comparison illustrates but does not explain, a piece of common sense which he forgot later when much of what he called "correspondence" was not causal in character at all, but either analogy or simple association of ideas. In this way he could manage to interpret "the internal sense" of everything, especially of the Bible, to suit himself, and what came to suit him was to interpret the Bible so that everything in certain books of it had some relation to truth and good, those twin poles of the world for him, as well as to Jewish history and prophecy of the Messiah.

He made up a kind of dictionary. For instance, since "bread" can be taken to mean all food in general, it "corresponds to" or means "in the internal sense" all celestial food, which is spiritual good. Similarly gentle animals "correspond to gentle affections; fierce animals to fierce passions; light to truth; heat to love," etc.⁶

Of course he did not believe that this key to the Bible was entirely self-made, but that the theory had been confirmed by the angels who dictated to him or who even moved his hands to write the words. Here, as wherever in Swedenborg's later period he stubbornly maintained theories that seem completely at variance with the level-headed author of financial memorials, the explanation of the mystery can be found in that other mystery of automatic writing. It could not, at that time, seem an uprush from his needs and from the stores of reading in his unconscious mind; it joined forces with other inexplicable things that had happened to him, seeming to become a communication from higher powers and therefore to be believed.

Nowhere is this so apparent as when he extends the "doctrine of correspondence" to that great stumbling block to an understanding of Swedenborg—the "Grand Man" (Maximus Homo).

On March 3, 1748, he noted in his diary, writing at least semi-automatically, that heaven had the form of a Grand Man. He had been having a little discussion with angels about various things in the human body "and they wonder that they do not fall into the understanding of everyone, as they now dictate, for they guide my thoughts to write these things. Moreover, the states of spirits and angels, together with all their varieties, can in no wise be understood without a knowledge of the human body; for the Lord's Kingdom is like a man; and without such a kingdom, which is like a true man (for the Lord is the only Man, and his Kingdom resembles him) no man could possibly live, since all things in heaven conspire to the conservation of the minutest things in the body, as may be manifestly demonstrated, and if thou art willing thou shalt hear still greater arcana." ⁷

Here it seems, we get the "angel's" very words, and we can even make a guess as to the "society" for which he was spokesman, for although Swedenborg seemed now to believe that the doctrine of the Grand Man was an "arcanum," a secret, it was one which had been freely passed around for many centuries among those pseudoscientific occultists whom Swedenborg used to denounce. It was a popular doctrine of the Kabbalists, vigorous during the Renaissance and even later. Swedenborg was acquainted with their writings, and even with the fountain itself, the Kabbalah, itself at least partly derivative from older occultisms.⁸

According to these doctrines, when God, the Unmanifest, manifested himself, he flowed or emanated into the form of a giant man, this becoming the shape of the universe, and when man was created each member of his body "corresponded" to a part of the universe. The world was the macrocosm and man the microcosm, and the two interacted.⁹

Swedenborg, through what he was "told," took what he liked of these interweaving symbolisms, and what he especially liked—what took root most speedily and deeply in his background of experience and preference—was the physiological symbolism. As it solved many problems for him, especially those of "location," very soon he saw it as real.

As he tells it in Arcana Celestia, it is heaven that has the form of the Grand Man, and "man is so formed as to correspond to heaven in regard to each and all things in him."

Now, if there was anything which Emanuel Swedenborg felt certain he knew about it was nearly each and everything in the human body—where it was, and what was its function, its "character." So when he was "told" that a certain society of angelic spirits was located in "the province of the kidneys" ¹⁰ of the Grand Man, he was not surprised to learn that the function of these spirits was to separate the false from the true; in a manner of speaking that is what he knew the kidneys did in the physical body of man.

Another instance: certain "interior angels" (the best kind) belonged "in the province of the eye." This, he said, was because the eye "is in the face and proceeds from the brain," evidently the noblest part of the Grand Man. Whereas those who are in "the province of the mouth" were less esteemed, because the mouth was indeed in the face but it was an entrance to the stomach.¹¹

This Grand Man whose body was heaven was no small affair. No angel of Swedenborg's acquaintance had ever seen Him, though some claimed to have seen one society in Him, which though itself made up of innumerable individuals also had the general shape of a man. Not only our little earth contributed. "Unless there were innumerable worlds or earths, which together constitute such a Man, the souls coming from one world or earth would by no means suffice, because there must be infinite varieties, and in every part innumerable spirits to confirm or establish it," so the angels dictated to Swedenborg on March 3, 1748.¹²

Who was in the Grand Man? The angelic societies. Who was outside it? The hells or infernal societies. The qualities of the angelic societies could be known from their position in His body, "in the plane of the head, breast, shoulders, feet," etc., and the qualities of the infernal societies could also be known from their situation "under the soles" or "under the buttocks" of the Grand Man, "in planes in every direction."

Living men too, Swedenborg said, "have a situation either in the Grand Man [that is in heaven] or outside of it in hell. During his life in this world man is not aware of this, but still he is there and is thereby directed." ¹³

Through variations in the quality of their feelings spirits might seem to change place, but their ruling love determined the location in or out of the Grand Man to which they inevitably returned. Swedenborg admitted, however, that novitiate spirits wandered about for some time before their characters were sufficiently clear-cut to give them their final abode, or home in the appropriate "province." ¹⁴

This physiological symbolism was carried very far by Swedenborg. He determined the "genera and species" of any spirit by the place in which it seemed to appear or manifest itself in relation to his own body, either inside or outside it. (So and so appeared near the left temple, etc.) "When it is known where spirits are, relatively to the body, it may be known who they are and of what quality." He explained that the spirit was not really "there," of course; it was only an "appearance," to express the situation of that spirit in the Grand Man.¹⁵

Bad spirits also had their situation which they usually seemed to announce by giving Swedenborg a pain in that part of his body which "corresponded" to their province; and if he had had all the pains in real earnest which he said the spirits gave him he would never have lived to be a hale eighty-four!

(Modern mediums, it may be noted here, often complain of specific pains in their own bodies, which, they say, are really the pains suffered by the communicating spirit just before its passing from this world. Incidentally, Swedenborg says elsewhere that the dead at first relive those things which happened at "the extremity" of their life.)

But Swedenborg's physiological symbolism was also useful to him in providing a mass of similes for the kind of people he had met, whether in or out of the body. Certain ones, he said, were like the "external ligaments" that connect the organs of the body; "they are such as in the life of the body loved to perceive what others thought, or to appear to themselves to perceive it, and when they hear anything they cannot rest, but are carried away by a certain cupidity or passion of the mind for making it known to others with whom they associate, and who, on that account, retain them in their society . . . they [these gossips] think themselves loved, but they are only loved as means for the attainment of ends." ¹⁶

There were also spirits, and men, Swedenborg said, who "correspond" to the nasal mucus. They are those "who make it a rule to cause dissensions . . . divide in order to rule . . . like many politicians . . ." He explained it was because the nasal mucus may obstruct natural breathing and thus could correspond to the breaking of communication between inner and outer things.¹⁷

"Cuticular spirits" were unduly particular about the care of the skin, and they hated all useful work; they were "adjoined" to similar human beings.¹⁸

But those who belonged to the province of the colon, "were such as are devoid of mercy, and who without conscience desire to destroy, slay and plunder . . . whether they be men who resist, or boys or women or infants . . . of so ferocious a disposition are they—even as for the most part soldiers and their commanders are." Swedenborg said he had talked about these with other spirits and said they were worse than wild beasts, "which do not in this manner rush on the destruction of their own species."

He said that a "representation" (mental image) of what he was saying reached the celestial angels, and they "were struck with horror that the human race on this earth should be of such a nature, for without seeing the like spectacle it would have appeared incredible to them." "And I also conversed with them [the angels] asking could such souls ever be admitted into heaven where love, mercy and peace prevail?" He also informed the angels that "when such spirits see masses of the slain scattered about, to the number of several thousands, and when they hear the miserable lamentations of the wounded and behold streams of blood covering their bodies, and also themselves and their own swords dipped in human blood, then they are rejoiced at heart and are proud in spirit, boasting and imagining themselves to be heroes; yea, at such a time they sing their Te Deums and nevertheless call themselves Christians."

He excepted from censure men "who defend themselves from their enemies, and wild animals who kill others for necessary food," but for those spirits, in or out of the body, whom he saw as belonging to the province of the colon, he had a few final lines of scorn in this diary entry:

"Men abhor executioners, whose office it is to punish criminals and those sentenced to death; but such as are described above, who are far worse than executioners—since they slay, burn and plunder the innocent without mercy and conscience—are praised, esteemed and raised to honor and dignities." ¹⁹

By this strange way of symbolism did Swedenborg return to his most dearly loved science, physiology, often in the greatest anatomical detail. He applied it also, as had other Kabbalah-influenced men before him, to his Bible exegesis, via this doctrine of the Grand Man, to whose cosmic body he tried to show that numerous references in Genesis and Exodus "corresponded."

It was part of the "occult" lore of the Grand Man that in his all-containing body the spirits from other planets also had their place. As early as in 1748, Swedenborg, the one-time student of astronomy, sought "permission" from the Lord to know "what kind of men they are who live in other planets." ²⁰ He first made the acquaintance of the spirits from "Jupiter." Many entries in his diary, in his abnormal handwriting, are taken up by his descriptions of the appearance, customs, habits, etc. of the spirits from the different planets, as he claimed he observed them on his different visits. He makes it clear he did not believe he flitted bodily around the universe; his body stayed in his bed, he said, while his spirit went through several "changes of state" which enabled him to "travel" into the kind of state in which he could communicate with spirits not of earth, who nevertheless "corresponded" to various universal ideas and feelings.

Swedenborg said that the spirits of Jupiter "represent rational ideas," those of Venus and the earth "corporeal appetites," etc.²¹—the lore had little to do with astronomy, and a good deal to do with astrology, though Swedenborg never admitted that the "stars" could influence human lives. But, if one peers around to see where he could have found the patterns for interpreting these experiences of his, one finds that he had read²² and greatly admired the so-called Theology of Aristoteles, a late Neoplatonic work, filtered through the Arabic into Latin. In that, for instance, "Jupiter souls" were spoken of and a book referred to, which he may also have read, in which it was alleged that "to every people and clime pertain a group of spirits," and in which the regions of the differrent spirits were mapped out according to planets and zodiac.

It is not possible to trace all the different strands that manifested themselves to Swedenborg as these planetary visits. Some of the "spirits" recall descriptions of primitive tribes. It is at least worth remembering that his cousin Andreas Hesselius had brought back descriptions of American Indians, for a drawing that Swedenborg made of one of the spirit dwellings resembles just the kind of "Quonset" hut which other early travelers had drawn of Indian wigwams.²³ But at any rate, his experiences, whatever they were, he set down in his diary in the "dissociated" handwriting just as they came, at different times, less neatly put together than when he published them separately in 1758.

Another little book that Swedenborg published in 1758 in London had likewise been drawn from the diaries, after having been, like the visits to the planets, filtered through the Arcana Celestia. This was the one which had upset Baron Tilas, Swedenborg's account of what he called The Last Judgment.

Going back to the diaries, one finds that very early in his other-world experiences Swedenborg had mentioned that spirits told him the world was in such a bad way, both here and yonder, that some sort of housecleaning, so to speak, was due. It was hinted that this would take place in the world of spirits, the in-between place, because too many evil spirits had banded together and were upsetting not only their own but our world, and it seemed as if the time had come when there was no more "charity." Therefore Swedenborg, putting this together with his interpretations of the Apocalypse, believed that the time had come not when the visible world would be destroyed but when the "constructs," so to speak, of evil spirits in the other world would be thrown down.

Furthermore, he needed the Last Judgment. Too many people believed that the dead would not "rise again" until after the Judgment; how was he to convince them unless he could report that it had taken place? Not that Swedenborg for a moment would have consciously deceived anybody even for the most pious of motives, but he was a man who in the most literal sense seems to have been able to see what he wanted to. That is what makes it so extremely difficult to evaluate his experiences.

If the spirit of man can survive the death of the body—and modern psychical research offers some evidence which tends in that direction—then many of Swedenborg's reported experiences may have a basis in objective fact, but even so there may be others of his reports which have a basis only in his "phantasy" for various psychological reasons. The strange thing is that he was so fully aware of this trickery of the unconscious—in others, and those others he said were "spirits."

Again and again he cited cases where he had noticed spirits projecting their thoughts and fancies and seeing them, even suffering from them, as if they were real. A fine example is in a diary entry where he mentions seeing a man he had known, now a companion of Charles XII in the spirit world. This man, Swedenborg said, saw many things which he insisted were magnificent "when, nevertheless, there was not anything; for whatever occurs to his thought, this he sees as if it were real."

That this kind of fantasy could take place on a continued and large scale Swedenborg also admitted, for he said, in the same entry: "Afterwards Charles XII became like this; and he said that he sees all thoughts in forms, at one time armies and battles, at another other marvellous things, exactly according to the thought of his spirit; and that he took delight in them, just as he delighted in his thoughts, even filthy ones. It was also stated that others near him did not see anything." ²⁴

It is to be doubted—unless Swedenborg had "helpers" in the other world—whether his visions of the downfall of "Babylon," etc., were seen by anyone else. He explained very reasonably that by Babylon he meant all those who desire to dominate by means of religion, and some of his descriptions of priest-ridden communities on high mountains being toppled over into chaos have a curious atom-bomb reality, but one is grateful that he seems to have ceased having those visions. At any rate they also served the purpose of being sufficiently startling to draw attention to his seemingly more objective reports of the other world, which he sandwiched in the little book of The Last Judgment.

Swedenborg repeated his accounts of the other world in all the theological and semi-theological books he wrote, under whatever name they appeared, with, on the whole, enough consistency and not too much. But it is in the day-by-day entries in his diaries of other-world experiences that his "reports" have the most factual air, blended though many of them are with obvious projections from his unconscious and with sheer dream-stuff, which he did not bother always to label dream-stuff. But he did not publish it.

In the later diaries names of actual personages appear. The one who appears most frequently was the King whom he had met in his youth, the man who had had his fate in his hands, King Charles XII. In the 1730's, Swedenborg had written a public appreciation²⁵ of the King's keen mind, his encouragement of and love for science—from which no one would guess how Swedenborg saw the King in the other world!

Pithily commenting on the King's nature, as it seemed revealed, Swedenborg said that Charles "made royalty consist in obstinacy even to death," and that the spirits who aided him in such an attitude were from another universe, "for such obstinacy does not exist within the limits of this planet." Charles, he said, had been "pitiless and cruel, caring nothing for human life." And though he had lost his country believing this to be for its glory, "he ought to be considered insane." ²⁶

Swedenborg acknowledged Charles's ability to take in a hundred things at a single glance, and to draw correct deductions, "in relation to his end which was dominion"; he acknowledged that Charles thought himself a good man, but, after about a year in the other world, he was stripped of his self-deceit and appeared as he really was—a devil.

Twelve hours after the execution of the Swedish noble Eric Brahe for conspiracy, Swedenborg says he spoke with this acquaintance of his. Eric Brahe had made a most edifying end, professing saving faith, but, "after two days he began to return to his former state of life, which was to love worldly things, and after three days he became just as he previously was in the world." ²⁷

Polhem, Swedenborg's old teacher, died on a Monday. "He spoke with me on Thursday," Swedenborg notes, when he was at Polhem's funeral. Polhem saw "his coffin and those who were there and the whole procession, and also when his body was laid in the grave; and in the meanwhile he spoke with me, asking me why they buried him when he was still alive . . . besides many other things." It is to be hoped for the sake of the other attendants that Swedenborg did not answer out loud, for he said himself in his diary that sometimes when he was in conversation with spirits he forgot that he was in the body because his attention was not centered on the body.²⁸

Newton he said he had a very pleasant chat with, very happy that Newton was "among his own and is beloved." ²⁹

And in 1759, on the thirteenth day of September, near the eighth hour, Swedenborg had a rare experience in the spirit world, an experience which undoubtedly would also there be labeled "dabbling in the occult." Swedenborg saw a spirit, he said, go into a sleep, or trance, in order to visit a man in this world. The spirit, by means of showing Swedenborg a "representation" of Versailles and other things, conveyed that he was King Louis XIV of France, then he fell into this kind of sleep. When he awakened he told Swedenborg that he had shown himself in a vision to King Louis XV, who was in bed, and exhorted him to desist from applying the papal bull "Unigenitus" against the Jansenists, telling him he must entirely abandon it, or misfortune would befall him.³⁰

Louis XV had, so it seems, been eagerly supporting the Jesuits against the Jansenists and therefore the Bull "Unigenitus," making it the law of the land since 1756, and enforcing it through the year 1759. After that he stopped enforcing it, and expelled the Jesuits, his former favorites from France.³¹

In the diary notes as in the books, Swedenborg maintained that out of the knowledge and experience man obtained here on earth he could literally build his own heaven and hell. Thoughts were substantial things, in a sense. All the books a man had read, all the sights he had seen, all his sense impressions indeed, were still his, and under certain circumstances could again, at least for a while, become his consciously in the forms, or even better, under which he had enjoyed them. If people had enough memories in common, cities appeared. He noted libraries, public and private, which, naturally, Swedenborg visited. "There was a vast number who studied the books, and some of them become learned, many intelligent, and others wise." ³²

Every kind of activity of human beings could be found in the other world, only they were subject to the law of "correspondence." Not man's mere wish decided what he was to experience in that world, but his character. Houses, garments, gardens, all might change or disappear, if the spirit yielded to evil thoughts, and these again created their own dire punishments.

Both charming and fantastic vignettes can be culled from Swedenborg's diaries—subjects for artists of imagination. Once he said he saw a little girl of five or six, beautifully clothed, walking on a path in a garden full of leafy arches, and when she entered, "the most exquisite garlands of flowers sprung forth over the entrance and shone with splendor as she approached." New garments according to her perfection were given her, and although these things were not of course "real," Swedenborg said, "for spirits cannot either possess or walk on gravelled paths," yet "it is sufficient that they perceive them as vividly, yea more vividly than men perceive similar things in gardens in this world, as I have also perceived them when I was in the spirit . . ." ³³

Idle rich women, he said, those who suffer themselves to be served like queens by a retinue of servants, "having no concern about any use . . . but living in luxury and idleness, lolling on sofas, adorning themselves, presiding at entertainments and thus spending their lives—the punishment of such women in the other life is dreadful." According to the law that like attracts like, they are put with women of the same kind. This works well for a while, they keep up appearances, but "they soon begin to strike, to bruise and to tear each other in the most miserable manner, plucking each other by the hair of the head in a manner so dreadful that one cannot endure the sight." ³⁴

Swedenborg said he had conversed with comedians in the other world—he was fond of the theatre—and he had found that because they "could simulate everything or seize upon and represent it in such a dextrous manner that it could scarcely be distinguished from the original," they were used by their respective "societies" as "mediums of lively representation"—meaning that they were experts at making thoughts and images visible. As to their character he remarked, "They were not evil nor were they easily excited to anger. When anyone inveighed against them, they seemed to take no notice of it at the time though they spoke about it afterwards. They can be led both by the evil and the good . . . Although they speak tolerably well, yet they have but little life of their own." ³⁵

Courtesy in others was noticed by Swedenborg (his own was often mentioned by people who knew him) and he spoke with delight of certain societies in the spirit world which he called civil, or polite, societies.

"Living in their own agreeable and pleasant sphere, they fear no one, and when any spirit not good approaches, they speak civilly to him as one who is too good to say or do aught that is amiss; such a spirit is then himself also reduced into a civil state"; apparently he then either behaves himself or else departs.

Swedenborg admits that the charming spirits perform civil offices to everyone, not perhaps so truly from the heart as from the mouth; they may say to a guest that his coming is grateful and acceptable, when they really have other business in hand and wish for his departure. But still, he says, they do not falsify from any desire to deceive or do evil; they were brought up so in the life of the body, and "they are a good kind of spirits." ³⁶

Music, Swedenborg often noted, had great power; even the restless and angry spirits of the lower societies could be soothed into a mild doze by it, during which they might even catch a glimpse of one of the heavens, because their egos would be temporarily lulled into abeyance.³⁷

Of the higher heavens Swedenborg said little except to hint that he had had glimpses of their inexpressible felicities, their unimaginable light. There even the necessity for hallucinating oneself a body seems to have vanished, though blissful consciousness remained; but in the lowest realms of the spirit world the inhabitants attempt to carry out "the lowest functions of the body."

In the societies of the lower heavens, he often said, the spirits, although they may reproduce seeming earth conditions, experience a flow and a change in themselves and their environments according to their ethical state. Their houses, gardens, clothes, even faces, vary. If evil or insincerity had crept into their minds "when they go out, the garden products seem to have either vanished or changed as regards varieties, or beauty or brightness." Then they begin to think about what they may have thought or done, and if they repent, "the former loveliness returns. Spots on their clothes call for another examination of conscience, before the garments are again lustrous, white or roseate," and "maidens are also admonished through changes of beauty in the face." ³⁸

Swedenborg said he "wondered exceedingly" that spirits and angels noticed these curious aspects of their life so little, but he concluded it was because they did not "reflect" on them, or, as we might say, no externally acquired knowledge from material things reminded them that once life was not in such a flux.

Modern psychical researchers sometimes stop measuring "quantitative phenomena" and speculate on what life apart from the body might be like. Whately Carington thinks that

It seems reasonable to suppose that after death the mind, no longer held up against the physical world by the incoming stimuli, will be much more free to indulge its own sequence of thought and fantasy, as in reverie, only more so; but that interaction with other minds will later take the place of the previously body-mediated relation to the physical world. In other words, what I might term mental or psychical objects, conforming to psychical laws, will take the place of the material objects conforming to physical laws which make up the mundane environment.

Mr. Carington had not read Swedenborg.³⁹ Indeed, Swedenborg's convictions as to the illusory reality of the other world he only wrote about explicitly in his private notebooks, no doubt because, as he said, "to write about more than men can receive is to sow in water."

The last date on the last page of his so-called Spiritual Diary is April 29, 1765. After that he put his other-world experiences into his published books under the name of "memorable relations." He did not bother much to explain them in such terms that people would clearly understand they were not supposed to deal with material heavens and hells. These little stories are more like mosaics of what he considered facts than they are like "factual" reports. They evidently are written to support his pleas for men to live not only according to civic and moral laws but according to the spiritual laws which Swedenborg considered he had seen in irresistible action in both worlds.