Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic/Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Stories from Beyond
BY 1765, seventy—seven years old, Swedenborg was well under way with the formulation of that body of spiritual laws which is also known as a religion—no more original with him than with other mystics, but stamped of course with his personality and the circumstances that had formed him. This was to be the religion of the New Church or the New Jerusalem, not at all another dissenting sect but a set of "doctrines" or teachings that were meant to be cleansing and revivifying to all "churches"—all condensations of man's spiritual endeavors, which Swedenborg sometimes simply called "the church."
As he saw it, whenever "the church" became corrupt, it was largely because of overwhelmingly bad influences from the spirit world, and men's giving in to them. Then there had to be a "judgment" in the spirit world, not necessarily the last, though it was so called. There had been several such, Swedenborg said. After the one he insists he observed in 1757, he believed that man was much freer to think spiritually (he had after all seen the eighteenth century burst many orthodox bonds), and Swedenborg used the new freedom to come out openly against what now seemed to him the wicked doctrine of the vicarious atonement and the bewildering, faith-choking doctrine of the Trinity. He also attacked the Lutheran doctrine, as he saw it, of "faith" as sufficient for salvation. (If he called the Roman Catholics "Babylon" for what be considered their lust of dominion over men's souls, he called the Protestants "Philistia" for their "faith without works" and general self-righteousness, as well as other striking names.)
The English reception of the five books which Swedenborg had published in London in 1758, those drawn from the Arcana Celestia, had been discouraging. When he had his new books nearly ready for the press he went with them to Amsterdam, in 1762, left them with the printer, returned to Stockholm the same year, and went again to Amsterdam with more copy in I763,1 having, in the meantime, sent a paper on the process of inlaying marble tables to the Swedish Academy of Sciences, of which he was a member.
In 1763 and 1764 his new theological works, the Four Doctrines, appeared in Amsterdam, but in the same years he published two books of "angelic wisdom" (meaning that "angels" had dictated them to him), one called The Divine Providence and another Divine Love and Wisdom.2 These two are perhaps the most beautiful of his works, not too tangled up with Bible exigesis. In them he showed himself to be a worthy descendant of Plato, through Plotinus and the Areopagite. And, indeed, with very few changes, the "Lord" of Swedenborg in these books could be the Brahman of the Upanishads or the Nirmanakaya of the Sutras or the Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita.
But, in The Apocalypse Revealed, published in Amsterdam in 1766, he returned to his special explanation of the Bible by means of "internal sense" and "correspondences." It was not his first boring into the Apocalypse; he had already treated of it in an unfinished manuscript of vast proportions, The Apocalypse Explained. One was enlivened with "memorable relations." In the same year he sent an old love of his to press again; it was his New Method of Finding the Longitude of Places on Land and at Sea.3
Swedenborg, in his late seventies and with the travel conditions of that time, spared himself no trouble. As censorship prevented his getting his works published in Sweden (or even importing them, except with difficulty) he went back and forth. After returning to Amsterdam in 1763, he went over to England, hopefully delivering the printed books to the Royal Society, then he returned to Sweden over Denmark in 1764. In 1765 he took the Apocalypse to Holland, visited England from there in 1766, and returned to Stockholm the same year.4
Great traveler as he was, even on this earth, it is mainly from his diary observations on what he felt he saw in the other world that we learn what he thought of various nations. For, according to him, especially just before the "Last Judgment," the spirits had clustered together in nations and in cities, following their inveterate habits.
The Dutch, whom he loved with a kind of exasperated affection, he saw as still concerned with business and wealth; very crafty and taciturn in their designs, most incredulous as to things of the spirit, but also most constant to them if the truth had once dawned on them. Yet, tenacious, stubborn, secretive people was his opinion of them.
In spite of the fact that the English had been anything but welcoming of his freely distributed books, he seems to have liked them best of any. Why, he asked, have they such a capacity for seeing and for following truth? He thought it was free speech. There was liberty in England, he said, to speak both about civil and church matters, but no liberty at all to cheat, murder, or rob. In Italy, on the other hand, there was almost entire liberty to cheat and kill "on account of there being so many sanctuaries," but no freedom at all to speak and write about the matters so openly discussed by Englishmen. Hence the fire of evil smoldered inwardly in the Italians, whereas with the English it flared up and burnt out "because it is conceded to them to speak and write freely." 5
Swedenborg regarded the English as the best and the most sincere of the Christians. Alas, in his opinion, the same could not be said about the Swedes. He blamed them for being only externally sincere, for being envious and revengeful, and he attributed this to the fact that, not being a wealthy nation, they sought eminence by way of public office, seeking to govern others, either for honor or for profit.6 And "in the love of governing there dwells contempt, enmity, envy, hatred, revenge, ferocity, cruelty."
He visited cities too in the other world. Incidentally there was one "on the edge of Gehenna," which with its cloud-capped buildings with many windows, square blocks, and dark streets sounded not too unlike New York7 (after all, time is not a factor in the other worldl). In London, this time the best people were in the East End.
But he also came into Stockholm. Being escorted by an angel through Stora Nygatan, he was told that if the inhabitants of the houses were spiritually dead no lighted windows would appear there, but only dark holes. So it was. The angels shuddered and said they could go no farther, all in that street were dead. At the market place scarcely anyone was living, except in one house at the corner, nor in many other streets. Yet all the houses were full of people, he was told, and if evil spirits had been there they would have seen lighted windows and people at them.8
Swedenborg was also told about the citizens of Stockholm that "they care for nothing except to hear what happens in the city, and outside the city, as for instance, who was with me . . ."
"Who was with me . . ." This was written about the time when Stockholm had recently discovered that Assessor Swedenborg had, as Baron Tilas put it, conversations with the dead whenever he chooses, and the word went around that now the dead Senator Ehrenpreuss had been with him, now Count Gyllenborg, now Baron Horlemann, and now, forsooth, he claimed he had talked with Luther! 9
It is understandable that Stockholm wanted to know who was with him. By 1764 Gjörwell, the librarian of the Royal Library, was so curious that, although he did not know Swedenborg, he called on him, putting down the impressions he received the same day.
Gjörwell found Swedenborg in his garden, simply dressed and tending to his plants. He offered to show the librarian the garden before he knew who he was or what was his purpose. Gjörwell's ostensible purpose was to procure Swedenborg's books for the Royal Library, which the latter readily agreed to. "My purpose," be said, "in publishing them has been to make them known and to place them in the hands of intelligent people."
Then he showed his visitor the garden and as they walked among the lindens and roses, box and carnations, Gjörwell drew from Swedenborg by "polite questions" and by not being too challenging, some statements in regard to his system of theology. As Gjörwell reported them, Swedenborg said "that faith alone is a pernicious doctrine, and that good works are the proper means for becoming better in time and for leading a blessed life in eternity. That in order to acquire the ability or power to do good works prayer to the only God is required and that man also must labor with himself, because God does not use compulsion with us; nor does he work any miracles for our conversion." Man must live temperately and piously. "He also said that Doctor Luther was at the present time in a state of suffering in the other world; simply on account of having introduced the doctrine of faith alone; although he is not among the damned."
Gjörwell noted other things, among them that Swedenborg did not mention the doctrine of the atonement, which shows that Swedenborg was not telling everything he believed to a stranger, hesitating to express his horror at what he considered an immoral slander on God.
He said that "when a man dies his soul does not divest itself of its peculiarities," on which, Gjörwell reports, he could not refrain from asking with what Professor D. Nils Wallerius now busied himself. "He still goes about," Swedenborg said, "and holds disputations."
He also told Gjörwell that he enjoyed supernatural sight and hearing and could speak with the departed and with angels. Also that God had revealed Himself to him in May, 1744, in London (this might be what is called a memory displacement for the Delft vision of April that year), and that since this time God had been preparing him for the reception of a new revelation. This "light" which it was his mission to reveal consisted in this, that "a New Jerusalem is to be established on earth; the meaning of which is, that a New Church is at hand, about the nature of which and the way to enter it his writings really treat."
Swedenborg said nothing to Gjörwell about a reinterpretation of the Bible as his mission; clearly this had sunk into being a secondary task, the chief task as he saw it being the introduction of a more ethical system of religion, for which the vision had now become the supreme authority.
He also told Gjörwell that since the vision he had been in constant communication with God "whom he sees before his eyes like a sun" (a reference no doubt to Swedenborg's belief that the "sun" which he saw in heaven was in reality the "sphere" that emanated from the Lord).
"About all this," Gjörwell recorded, "he spoke with a perfect conviction, laying particular stress on these words: 'All this I see and know without becoming the subject of any visions and without being a fanatic; but when I am alone my soul is as it were out of the body and in the other world; in all respects I am in a visible manner there as I am here. But when I think of what I am about to write, and while I am in the act of writing, I enjoy a perfect inspiration; for otherwise it would be my own; but now I know for certain that what I write is the living truth of God." 10
Into such certainty Swedenborg's experience that tremulous night in Delft had now crystallized. He was unshakable on two points: that God had entrusted him with a mission, and that he had his "memorable relations" from first-hand observations in the other world.
After Swedenborg's death, his friend Count A. J. von Höpken said about these memorable relations: "I could wish the happy deceased had left them out as they may prevent infidelity from approaching his doctrines. I represented to him these inconveniences, but he said he was commanded to declare what he had seen in the other world; and he related it as a proof that he did not reveal his own thoughts, but that they came from above." 11 In other words, understandably though illogically, Swedenborg continued to feel, as he had in 1745, that the "reality" of his otherworld experiences—seeing people he knew—guaranteed the reality of his religious visions.
At any rate, when a new book came from Swedenborg, Conjugial Love, published in Amsterdam, 1768, he yielded not a fraction of his claims, let his friends deplore it or not.
The very first lines were: "I am aware that many who read the following pages and the memorable relations annexed to the chapters will believe that they are fictions of the imagination; but I solemnly declare that they are not fictions but were truly done or seen; and that I saw them not in any state of the mind asleep, but in a state of perfect wakefulness . . ."
After which he again claimed that he had a mission from the Lord to teach about a New Church, and he reaffirmed that he had been able to be in the spiritual world with angels and at the same time in the natural world with men, "and this now for twenty-five years."
Then he plunged into a memorable relation, so long as to be almost a short novel. It was so brilliantly suited to jolting the complacence of his fellow-Christians that only his truthfulness prevents one from thinking it a conscious "fiction of the imagination."
Höpken was right, these "memorabilia" do present a stumbling block. They are too well suited to their expressed purpose to have just happened as Swedenborg perambulated the heavens. In fact he expressly says of one of them that it was "written against Dr. Ernesti," a German theologian who had attacked him.12 But he also describes just how it took place in the spirit world, Dr. Ernesti being represented by one of the spirits "adjoined" to him. In this particular case the easier way out is to suppose that Swedenborg did what he so often said the spirits did; he saw and heard what he wanted to see and hear, by means of "phantasy." Likewise when he described how he heard discussions in the spirit world between disciples of Aristotle, Descartes and Leibnitz,13 and so forth. Vivid and circumstantial though these accounts are, they prove too obviously what Swedenborg wants them to prove.
Of course this could be said of all his other-world experiences. But there is a vast difference between the hesitating, fragmentary, feeling-his-way notations of the diary, mixed as they are with stuff evidently from his unconscious, and the posed recitals of the later books. Yet many of these recitals contain elements that one recognizes from his diary notes, so that Swedenborg might feel he was in his right to say the stories were true, since he had made them up out of actual observations. (Many a good reporter has made up a nice, connected story out of events that happened, but not at the same time and place as represented.)
Swedenborg was in the spirit world one day, so the story at the beginning of Conjugial Love starts, when he saw an angel who told him the other members of his society could not believe that among the Christians in the spirit world such crass ignorance prevailed as to the real nature of the joys of heaven. They said to the angel messenger that he must go to the spirit world and collect newly arrived spirits, find out what were their ideas of heavenly happiness and then give it to them, for "You know that everyone that has desired heaven . . . is introduced after death into those particular joys which he had imagined . . ."
Six companies of spirits were selected "among the wisest," and they were brought to their "heavens," where were "those who in the former world had had the same conception of the joys of heaven."
The first company thought that heavenly joy consisted solely of "most delightful companionship and most agreeable conversation." They were brought to a spacious house with more than fifty rooms. "In some of the rooms they were talking about such things as they had seen and heard in public places and in the streets; in some they talked of the various loveliness of the fair sex; intermingled with pleasantries, which increased until the countenances of all in the company expanded with smiles of merriment; in other rooms they talked of news of the court, about the ministries, state polity, various matters which had become known from privy councils; together with reasonings and conjectures respecting the events; in others they talked of business; in others on literary subjects; in others of such things as pertain to civil prudence and to moral life; in others about ecclesiastical affairs and the sects, and so on."
Swedenborg says that it was given him to look into that house, and he noted that among those running from room to room there were three kinds: some panting to speak; some longing to make inquiries, and others eager to learn. But then he said he noticed that many left the rooms and made for the exits. There he found them sitting in sadness and he asked why. "They answered, 'the doors of this house are kept closed to those who wish to go out, and it is now the third day since we entered and we have lived the life of our desire for company and conversation, and are utterly wearied with continual talking, insomuch that we can scarcely bear to hear the murmur of their sound.'" But they had been told that they must stay and enjoy the delights of heaven. "'From which answer we infer that we must continue here to eternity. This is the cause of the sadness that has entered our minds; and now our hearts begin to be oppressed and anxiety rises!'"
Then the relieving angel came and told them that heavenly joy "is the delight of doing something that is useful to ourselves and to others; . . . there are most joyous companionships in the heavens which gladden the minds of angels, amuse their spirits, fill their bosoms with delight and revive their bodies; but they enjoy these delights when they have performed the uses of their employments and occupations. From these are the soul and life in all their joys and pleasures; but if you take away this soul or life the accessory joys successively become no joys, but become at first indifferent, then as if frivolous, and finally bring sadness and anxiety."
After these words of the angel, Swedenborg says, "the door was opened and those sitting near sprang out and fled to their homes, every one to his employment and to his occupation, and revived."
The second company of spirits had the idea that heaven consisted in feasting with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and with the Apostles. On being introduced into their heaven, they thought they met these venerable personages, with their wives, and were delighted that they were going to feast with each one in turn, and that after the feasting, as they had also expected and wanted, there would be "sports and public shows" and then feasting again, and so on.
Hardly necessary to say that after a few days the aspirants said "Food has become inspid to us, we have lost relish for it; our stomachs loathe it; we cannot bear to taste it." "We have dragged on some days and nights in this luxury and beg earnestly that we may be permitted to go away." And then "they with rapid pace and panting breath fled to their homes."
Not, however, without first receiving a little homily by the angel, who told them that in heaven there were feastings, and music and song, and sport but that there was only happiness in those joys because of work well done.
The desires of the third company of spirits was to have the promise of the Bible literally carried out that they should reign with Christ forever. They expected to be kings and princes.
So they were introduced to their thrones and scepters and had crowns for their heads, and young men who seemed to be angels from heaven flew to them to wait on them. And they sat and they sat, until a voice from heaven cried out to them some timely warnings about their folly in preferring to be idols rather than men.
Emanuel Swedenborg may not have been thinking of his father's autobiography, but certainly Bishop Swedberg had stated in it that he knew when he got to heaven his guardian angel would have his throne and his crown ready for him, there to sit forever.
And the fourth company were very sure that heaven ought to be a wonderful garden, a paradise. They found it, a place in which as they expected "there is entire rest from labor, and that this rest is nothing else than . . . walking upon roses, gladdened with the most delicious juice of grapes and celebrating festive banquets . . . [they saw] a vast multitude . . . sitting three by three and ten by ten upon beds of roses, weaving garlands," adorning each other, "or plucking fruit or smelling flowers, or singing or playing with fountains, or dancing . . ."
Of course the result was the same. The angel found the weary ones weeping among "an abundance of olives, grapes, oranges and lemons" which made them sick.
There was the fifth company—they had supposed heaven to be perpetual glorious worship of God, and they were led to a "sacred city," where they were to listen to sermons and worship God in the temple, and then, after three days of this, to continue the same in each of the buildings and in communion "pray, shout and recite sermons."
The finish of that experiment was "Our ears are stunned. End your preaching, we no longer hear a word and are beginning to loathe the sound." They had stood it for two days. And angels from heaven spoke to the ministers who had preached for so long, telling them that they fed their sheep "even to insanity. You do not know what is meant by the glorification of God. It means to bring forth the fruits of love; that is faithfully, sincerely and diligently to do the work of one's employment—for this is of love to God and of love to the neighbor. And this is the bond of society and its good. By this God is glorified and then by worship at stated times."
The sixth company had believed that they would by divine grace be admitted into heaven where they would be surrounded by "an aura of felicities." They told how they tried to ascend to heaven. Each had a different experience. One got as far as inside a heaven when he heard the angels say, "What is this monster? How came this bird of night here?" and he was quickly ushered out, saying that he felt he had been changed in appearance although to himself he still looked a man.
Others who had tried to force an entry found that instead of joy they were tortured by heavenly light and heat, or were like animals in a vacuum or fish on land. Now they only wanted "common life with their like, wherever they are."
Upon which the angel delivered a lecture on heaven not being a fixed environment or program of events, but a state that "corresponded" or was really created by the spiritual state of the inhabitants. Naturally those who did not correspond were unhappy, even suffered torture, by "the violence of activity of opposite against opposite."
Nevertheless the angel received orders from his society that by the Lord's permission ten persons out of the whole assembly were to be chosen, and they would be enabled to visit a real community of a real heaven for three days.
Swedenborg enjoyed describing that visit. The gardens and the gorgeousness and the stately processions and the superb palaces and entertainment—it was all there, but as the Prince of the Society said to his guests—they were reclining at his table at a banquet—"You have seen now that all your joys are joys of heaven also, and are more exquisite than ever you could have thought; and yet these do not affect our minds interiorly." For they were governed, he said, by a strand of three that flowed in from the Lord: Love, Wisdom and Use. The two first did not really appear except as they were together "in bodily act and work," and this, as had indeed by this time been sufficiently emphasized, was what kept the angels from becoming bored with joy.
Sight-seeing later in the heavenly community, the visitors noticed that "at the sides in the outlying parts of the city are various games for boys and youths; there are games of running; games of ball; games with balls driven back and forth called tennis," and debates, and "many other games for calling forth the latent abilities of boys." And there were theaters too, that gave moral performances. The public orchestras had male and female singers as well as instruments, indeed the main diversion of the girls seemed to be song. But they also got married. Only once, however, for in heaven first their spirits were united with their bridegrooms and then their bodies. The visitors attended a wedding, but the six virgins present would not speak with them. Being questioned by the angel guide as to why they so suddenly withdrew, they said, "We do not know. But we perceived something that repelled us and drove us back. They must excuse us."
The angel returned to the visitors and said, "I surmise that you have not a chaste love of the sex. In heaven we love virgins for their beauty and loveliness of manner, and we love them exceedingly but chastely."
The visitors smiled at this, and said, "You have guessed rightly. Who is able to behold such beauty near and feel no desire?"
The three days were up, and the visitors were escorted back to their society in the spirit world, where they presumably told their wives about the members of this "Society of the Eagle," whose very clothes they could have described. For, Swedenborg says, "The prince was clad in a long purple robe, embroidered with stars the color of silver; under the robe he wore a tunic of shining silk of a violet color. This was open at the breast, where the front part of a kind of belt was seen, bearing the badge of his society. The badge was an eagle on the top of a tree, brooding over her young. This was of shining gold in a circle of diamonds. The chief counselors were not very differently attired, but without the badge in place of which were graven sapphires pendent from the neck by a chain of gold. The courtiers were in togas of chestnut brown into which were woven flowers encircling young eagles. The tunics under them were of opaline silk, as were also their breeches and stockings. Such was their apparel."
But if the account of the visit to heaven finished with a marriage it was because the new book was at least ostensibly about marriage.