ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

"Emanuel Swedenborg" excerpted from the book JORGE

LUIS BORGES: Selected Poems 1923-1967 edited by
Norman Thomas Di Giovanni. English translation Copy-
right 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972 by Emece Editores, S.A.
and Norman Thomas DiGiovanni.
Reprinted by permission of DELACORTE PRESS/SEY-
MOUR LAWRENCE
THE PRESENCE OF OTHER WORLDS. Copyright
1974 by Wilson Van Dusen. All rights reserved. Printed in
the United States of America. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Printing 1974 Harper & Row, N.Y., NY
Second Printing 1981 Swedenborg Foundation, 139 E.
23rd St., New York, NY 10010
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 73-18684
ISBN 0-87785-166-2
Cover desi gn by John N. Tierney
Cover-Laser Photography by Mi chael E. Frankel
Contents
Introducti on
1 The Man
2 Going Wi t hi n
3 Opening the Inner Worl d
4 Worl ds Wi t hi n Worl ds: Heaven and Hell
5 The Gentle Root of Existence
6 The Presence of Spirits in Madness
7 Mi nor Miracles
8 Existence Itself as Symbol i c
9 Inner Meani ngs
10 The One Present
Key to Abbrevi ati ons of Works Cited
Guide to Swedenborg' s Wri t i ngs
References
Emanuel Swedenborg
Taller than the others, this man
Walked among them, at a distance,
Now and then calling the angels
By their secret names. He would see
That which earthly eyes do not see:
The fierce geometry, the crystal
Labyrinth of God and the sordid
Milling of infernal delights.
He knew that Glory and Hell too
Are in your soul, with all their myths;
He knew, like the Greek, that the days
Of time are Eternity's mirrors.
In dry Latin he went on listing
The unconditional Last Things.
Jorge Luis Borges
1
Introduction
Is it possible for a man to discover too much, so much that
others will be puzzled by his works, put them aside, and
suspect he is mad? Yes, it is possible, though perhaps very
i ure. This is an account of a man who journeyed too far and
lound too much.
Years ago a newspaper ad offered a free book that prom-
ised to clarify the whole of existence. I walked across town
to get the book at a picturesque church from a kindly minis-
I er, Othmar Tobisch. The Divine Providence of Emanuel
Swedenborg at first seemed rather abstract, dull, and a re-
hash of Christian ideas. It was slightly intriguing because the
uuthor was dealing with psychological and spiritual concepts
simultaneously. I put aside the book. A few years later I went
through a series of religious visions, which called me back to
the book. It seemed to me that Swedenborg was talking about
what I had experienced. This time I came to him with a more
loving attentiveness. What had seemed dull and abstract now
came alive as a man' s description of his personal experiences
in the worlds beyond this one. Swedenborg' s description was
much more detailed than my own experience, but it was
apparent to me that we had similar experiences. In his quiet
and somewhat ponderous way he was describing all the
worlds beyond this one and relating them to this world.
Gradually I became accustomed to his style and vocabulary,
for he was speaking to me across two centuries of time. What
impressed me most was that he was always speaking of actual
experience. I was meeting the man Ralph Waldo Emerson
included in his Representative Men. Emerson said, "A colos-
sal soul (who) lies vast abroad on his times, uncomprehended
by them, and requires a long focal distance to be seen.
. . . One of the . . . mastodons of literature, he is not to be
measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars."
2
As a clinical psychologist with religious leanings, it was a
great pleasure to see a man moving easily in both realms like
one life process. I started acquiring everything he ever wrote
and everything I could find written about him. It took me
two years to get a photocopy of his Journal of Dreams, but
it was impressive to see him struggling to understand his
dreams and the internal guidance system they reflect. His
five-volume Spiritual Diary was like a strange treasure trove
of experiences with demons and spirits. Biographies on him
clothed this man in human history. It was a relief to find a
giant six-volume concordance of his works. For recreation it
was possible to take an idea, such as insanity, and trace all
he said on it through his many volumes. A few scholars
helped clarify different areas with their distillations of his
works. Gradually the vast, complex landscape of his writings
became clear.
I had pursued all the principal writers in psychoanalysis
and psychotherapy. Only Carl Jung even approached the
stature of Swedenborg. Swedenborg knew personally, at first
hand, that Self which Jung knew only by speculation on its
symbolic manifestations. All other writers could be com-
prehended in short order. Swedenborg is so vast that I am
pleased his books are available in heaven, so the matter can
be pursued even there!
My purpose is simple, to bring Swedenborg within the
reach of many. There are a number of keys to aid this grasp.
It is necessary to understand the age and circumstances in
which he worked. He lived at the dawn of science in the
eightccnth century. He himself mastered all the sciences of
his day. Though the strange richness of his later psychologi-
cal and spiritual findings would later get him labeled as either a
great mystic or a madman, he never changed fundamentally
from the scientist who simply wanted to understand and
describe the whole of existence. When he finished all the
known outer world, he started to work on the mind. He took
an unusually direct and short route through the psyche.
Many of his later religious followers are puzzled at his
dreams, visions, trances, etc. Because the way he penetrated
the psyche is so little known today, it is necessary to explain
how he did it in some detail. This key, which makes a good
deal of sense out of what he found, has largely been missing
until now. If even the beginnings of his method are followed
by average persons, they will make the same surprising dis-
coveries that he made. Unfortunately, the whole inward jour-
ney he took is too dangerous and difficult for others to follow.
Swedenborg was later to say that madness is possible along
the path that he took. There is little doubt of that. He released
tremendous forces within his own mind. The inner guidance
led him to personal discoveries and changes that at first did
not seem entirely wise or safe. Only from the perspective of
later years could he see the wisdom in the changes that had
been wrought on him by this inner process. The changes in
his personality and the growth in his approach to the Divine
were to be essentially one process. Swedenborg was, in effect,
feeling his way along in the dark recesses of the psyche
toward the Divine. We have the advantage of two centuries of
discoveries and modern psychology to clarify our under-
ding of what was occurring within him.
Swedenborg was looking for God within and was begin-
ning to find This One. The price of his discovery was changes
that would make him a much more humble and complete
man. He had to meet and integrate much of his own uncon-
scious. As he became a more appropriate instrument through
these changes, the Hand of the Divine became more appar-
ent. Finally, after scourging himself for a final and relatively
persistent fault, he was introduced into heaven and hell.
Perhaps many down through time had had glimpses of the
worlds beyond this one, but Swedenborg was to have free and
relatively constant access for many years. This claim alone
becomes an obstacle to many to accept him. It sounds so
immodest. Actually, this proud and great scientist became
unusually modest before these other worlds were opened up
to him. But it requires neither acceptance of Swedenborg' s
reliability nor one' s own death to verify what he described.
Because all the worlds beyond this one are imaged in the
processes of mind, it is possible to check how accurately
Swedenborg' s description accords with our personal experi-
ence. It is no accident that the worlds beyond this are re-
fleeted in our mind. That is the way the mind was made. We
are made in the image. We are the microscosm that reflects
the macrocosm. Even if there were no heaven and hell, Swe-
denborg' s description would remain a fascinating picture of
all the mansions that make up mind and man' s experience.
Just as incidental details, there were a number of miracles
associated with Swedenborg that suggest he had really en-
tered other worlds. He didn' t consider these important
enough to even set down. Also, the strange visionary experi-
ences of contemporary persons echo Swedenborg so closely
as to suggest the current validity of his reports.
Visions and even heaven and hell are somewhat incidental
to what Swedenborg was getting at. He says it is perfectly
appropriate for mere man to ask and to seek to understan
the whole of existence. The whole of existence, all the worlds,
may be understood. But the root understanding, the funda-
ment of all the rest, is how we relate to each other, what good
we do or what use we serve. Here Swedenborg comes to the
fundamental understanding of all religions. Though Sweden-
borg was very Christian, it is also clear that he was talking
about the core of all religions. For after all, as he himself
himself noted, the religions are like different colored stones in the
crown of The One King. In both his complexly simple psy-
chology and his emphasis on how well we relate to each
other, Swcdenborg's whole journey to other worlds comes to
earth in what everyone can understand and appreciate.
Again, thc vast and seemingly remote and the very near at
hand turn out to be intimately related. The results of Swe-
denborg' ' s journey in and understanding of all the worlds,
when translated into the concrete realities of the present,
provoke in most people a feeling of "Well, of course t hat ' s
true." And truth is always of this character for him. It rests
in the potentialities of the human (it is written on the heart)
and can be recognized and experienced by everyone. Do you
want to reach heaven? Are you now acting by the good you
know? The far and the near, the psychological and the
spiritual, the other Worlds and this one can all be found in
the now, and seem so matter-of-fact, so familiar when found.
I would like to t hank the many followers of Swedenborg
who have preserved, translated into over twenty languages,
and published at cost his works for two centuries so that they
might remain available. I wish to t hank the Swedenborg
foundation of New York City for its generous support, with
special thanks to Tomas Spiers and Virginia Branston. For
a detailed review of the whole manuscript I t hank Professor
George Dole.
San Rafael, California
December 1973

The Man
Quite freely and boldly I stepped down a large stairway;
by and by there was a ladder, below it there was a hole
which went down to a great depth; it was difficult to get
to the other side without falling into the hole. On the other
side there were persons to whom I reached out my hand
to help them cross over, I awoke. It is the danger in which
I am of falling into the abyss, unless I receive help. JD 20*
So begins a most remarkable journey into inner space and the
worlds beyond. This is the privately recorded dream of
Emanuel Swedenborg, who may have been one of the most
gifted men to have ever lived. In itself the dream is remarka-
ble enough. Though written over two centuries ago, the
dreamer reflects a modern understanding of the nature of
dreams. The dream is a dramatic representation of the pre-
sent life of the dreamer. To get the most from it the dreamer
should identify with all parts of it. He could easily have
flattered himself as the helper of others. Yet he sees the
See the Key to Abbreviations of Works Cited, p. 000.
4a
danger as in him and he himself needs help.
But even more remarkable, this oldest and largest series of
dreams and associations, written in 1744, was aut hored by
a man who may have been among t he last to have mast ered
all known knowledge. His at t ai nment s before he started
work on his dreams were tremendous. He had exhausted all
t he known sciences aft er foundi ng several of t hem. His dis-
coveries about t he human brain or his suggestion of t he
nebul ar hypothesis would have been sufficient for fame, rec-
ognition, and public acceptance. He could have quit at t he
age of fifty-six. Instead he took on psychology and religion.
His dreams were recorded at t he time he was breaki ng into
t he inner realms; he discovered so much t hat his account
became incredible. It was as t hough he found too much on
this inner j ourney and described it t oo well in some thirty-six
volumes. Fut ur e generations would not have time to digest
all he found. In some respects he remained too far in advance
of t he findings of ot hers for centuries. Critics would seize on
one or more of his most unusual private j ournal s and call him
mad. But those who underst ood his discoveries would pray .
for a like madness. Most would come to think of him as an
obscure mystic and overlook t he fact t hat he had completed
over one hundred works in all the known sciences. His later
discoveries were so far-reaching and disturbing to our con-
ventional views t hat they overshadowed all his earlier work.
But before we follow t he j ourney i nward, it would be well to
grasp who he was and how he lived. Thi s firm base in his
reality will make all the rest seem mor e probable.
The Life of Emanuel Swedenborg
The name "Emanuel " is biblical and means " God is with
us. " Swedenborg' s fat her was a Lut heran bishop at t ached to
the Swedish court. It is said t hat in anot her age his fat her
would have been a saint. He believed in the presence of angels
and demons and occasionally dealt with them, which was
common for his time and place. He embarked on several
publishing ventures, trying to enlighten his countrymen and
improve public school education. For instance, he tried to
make the Bible available to common men. He must have been
too busy a church official to have been very close to his
children.
Emanuel was the third of nine children. His mother died
when he was only eight. For most of his formative years he
lived in the university town of Uppsala. Relatively little is
known of these years. He lived among conservative church
and university people. Early feminine influences were his
busy stepmother and his older sister Anna. He received a
classical university education with a heavy emphasis on
Latin, Greek, and literature to the level of a mast er s degree.
His earliest published works were Latin poetry. The young
Swedenborg was thought of as a poet.
From his early years Swedenborg had a tendency to specu-
late on ultimate questions. As a boy he long pondered reli-
gious issues and his father considered him a promising reli-
gious prodigy. The spirit of the father and son differed,
though. The father simply accepted the reality of religion.
The son examined, questioned, and speculated. At the time
his father was elevated to the position of the archbishop of
Skara, the young university student went to live with his
brother-in-law Eric Benzelius, his senior by thirteen years.
Benzelius was gifted with broad interests in science and Swe-
denborg found fertile ground for his need to search, question
and find. The youthful Latin poet soon became a burgeoning
scientist, somewhat to the dismay of his father.
Among his relatives and friends were some of Sweden
,
s
earliest scientists, including Christopher Polhem. Polhem
promised his oldest daughter to Emanuel, but she married
another man. Then he was promised the hand of a younger
sister, Emerentia. She rejected Swedenborg, who released her
from the formal contract. He swore then never to have any
serious affairs with ladies, a promise he kept. There are many
indications that he was highly attracted to women, and may
have had mistresses in his early years, but he never married.
Swedenborg' s family was moderately well off. His father
was a professor of theology and a bishop and his stepmother
had mining connections in her family. The young college
graduate became a very practical man, searching out the best
method of doing things or learning new sciences. It was as
though all the energies a young man might devote to his
family and job were devoted to learning. He lived on meager
support from his father. Later his scientific works came to
the attention of the king and he was appointed assessor of
mines for Sweden. He was one of a handful of men who
oversaw all aspects of Sweden' s mining interests. This was
the only actual job he ever held.
His penchant for knowledge was put to good use. He
would travel in Europe, gather notes on the latest methods
in mining, and introduce them in his own country. Thus
many of his early inventions had to do with mining machin-
ery. He toured Swedish mines on horseback, went down
many a mine shaft, and suggested ways to improve methods.
It appears he had considerable influence on Sweden' s mining
industry. In a way he was superior to the position, though
it provided a salary when he needed it. Eventually he pub-
lished a definitive, beautifully illustrated summary of all that
was known of minerals.
Something of his hunger for science can be illustrated by
the following excerpts from his letter to Eric Benzelius writ-
ten when he was twenty-two.
With respect to the twenty-four foot telescope, I ordered the glasses
for it at Marchal's who is said to be the only one patronized by the
Royal Society. These glasses are beyond expectation expensive for
they cost 40 shillings. . . .
I visit dai l y the best mathematicians here in town. I have been
with Flamnsteed, who is considered the best astonomer in England,
und who iiis constantly taking observations, which, together with
I'aris Obseervations, will give us some day a correct theory respect-
nig the mobtion of the moon. . . and with its help there may be found
11 true longgitude at sea [a problem he would later solve]. . . .
Newton 1 has laid a good foundation for correcting irregularities
of the mooDn in his Principia; he has however not yet published the
inbles, but ! simply the theory; he has also corrected in it the preces-
ion of the; equinoxes, and the periods of the tides.
You enccourage me to go on with my studies; but I think that I
ought rathaer to be discouraged, as I have such an "immoderate
desire" for them, especially for astronomy and mechanics. I also
turn my loddgings to some use, and change them often; at first I was
at a watchmiaker's, and afterwards at a cabinet maker's, and now
I am at a miathematical instrument maker's, from them I steal their
trades, whitch some day will be of use to me. I have recently
computed fcor my own pleasure several useful tables for the latitude
of Upsal, amd all the solar and lunar eclipses which will take place
between 17112 and 1721. Docs I, pp. 209 f.
When Swedenborg was thirty-one, the whole family was
ennobled. The name of Swedberg became Swedenborg,
thereby retferring to the family estate. As the oldest son,
Baron Emanuel Swedenborg later took his position in the
Swedish House of Nobles. It is said that he never missed a
meeting even though he traveled all over Europe for years at
a time. Swedenborg was never comfortable speaking to
groups. He: easily stammered when nervous, but he could
write. He wrote some of the more important bills, or
"memori al s, " on peace, the economy of the country, liquor
regulation, and other subjects.
Being a leader of his country' s mining and a nobleman
were only background, though. It was as though he had to
know everything. He became fluent in nine languages. Most
of his writing was in Latin, the scholarly language of his day.
As incidental hobbies he learned bookbinding, watchmaking,
cabinetmaking, instrument making, engraving, marble inlay,
lens grinding, mechanics, and probably other trades. He was
no amateur either. The telescope was just being developed,
so he ground his own lens and made his own. Anton von
Leeuwenhoek was beginning to discover microbes with a
primative microscope. Swedenborg couldn' t afford to buy
one so he made his own. Some friends wanted the printed
sheets to make a world globe. When the distributor wouldn' t
sell these complex forms, Swedenborg designed and en-
graved his own.
From time to time he developed inventions. Some were
crude and interesting ideas for a submarine, a flying machine,
and a rapid firing air gun. A working version of his airplane
was built and flown in the late nineteenth century. He also
worked on more practical things, such as the world' s largest
drydock, an experimental tank for ships, stoves, an ear t rum-
pet, methods of pumping, a fire extinguisher, a musical ma-
chine, house heating, and a steel rolling mill. At one point
he directed a project to get small ships fourteen miles over
mountains and valleys to help the king win a battle. This
doesn' t sound like the work of an impractical mystic. He
developed more tools than could readily be used or ap-
preciated. Repeatedly he found himself ahead of his time and
felt restricted by the conservatism of others.
In a way all this was just trivia. His real power was in his
scientific work. A partial list of his publications will give a
sample of his scope:
Date Title
1. 1714 Inclinations of the Mind
2. 1716 Society of Sciences
3. 1716 Soils and Muds
4. 1716 Fossils
5. 1716 Sailing Upstream
6. 1716 S ter eometry
7. 1716 Echo
. 1717 Causes of Things
9. 1717 Salt Boileries
10. 1717 Tin Work
11. 1717 Stoppage of the Earth
12. 1717 Instituting an Observatory
13. 1717Commerce and Manufacture
14. 1717 Fire and Colors
15. 1718 Algebra (In his day Swedenborg was the leading
mathematician of Sweden.)
16. 1718 To Find the Longitude (This was a major problem
then. His was one of the few successful approaches
before adequate clocks were developed.)
17. 1718 Welfare of a Country
18. 1718 Essence of Nature
19. 1719 Earth's Revolution
20. 1719 Height of Water
21. 1719 Motive and Vital Essence
22. 1719 Blast Furnaces
23. 1719 Money and Measures
24. 1719 Discovering Mines
25. 1719 Docks, Sluice and Salt Works
26. 1719 Geometry and Algebra
27. 1720 Fall and Rise of Lake Wenner
28. 1721 Indications of the Deluge
29. 1721 Principles of Natural Things, New Attempts to Ex-
plain the Phenomena of Chemistry and Physics by
Geometry
30. 1721 Iron and Fire
31. 1721 Miscellaneous Observations
32. 1722 Conserving Heat
33. 1722 Working Copper
34. 1722 The Magnet
35. 1722 Calculation Concerning Currency
36. 1722 Hydrostatics
37. 1722 The Genuine Treatment of Metals
38. 1723 Mining Copper and Iron
39. 1723 Establishing Iron Works
40. 1724 On Silver
41. 1724 On Sulphur and Pyrites
42. 1724 On Vitriol
43. 1725 On Salt
44. 1733 Various Philosophical and Anatomical Subjects
45. 1733 Motion of the Elements
46. 1733 Empirical Psychology
47. 1734 The Infinite
48. 1734 The Mechanism of the Soul and Body
49. 1734 Human Body
50. 1738 The Infinite and the Finite
51. 1739 Knowledge of the Soul
52. 1740 Muscles in General
53. 1740 Economy of the Soul's Kingdom
54. 1740 The Skin and Tongue
55. 1740 In Celebration of Printing
56. 1740 The Brain (Four volumes and a volume of accurate
drawings of the cerebrum.)
57. 1740 Corpuscular Philosophy (Speculations on atomic
physics.)
58. 1740 Declination of the Needle
59. 1740 Characteristics and Mathematical Philosophy of
Universale
60. 1741 The Fibre
61. 1741Red Blood
62. 1741 The Five Senses
63. 1741 Action
64. 1742 Rational Psychology
65. 1743 The Generative Organs
66. 1744 Dreams
These represent Swedenborg' s 150 early scientific works;
they do not include any of his later writings, which his
followers consider far more important. There is a pattern to
these minor accomplishments. Swedenborg' s scientific wand-
erings tended to lead from the outer material world to the
human body and into the psyche. In many instances he
,
.ummed up all that was known in a particular field and then
went to another area. There is a very practical base to his
curly work. He was interested in processes that enabled men
lo do things better. He actually worked in all of these areas,
l i e took observations at astronomical observatories, par-
licipated in anatomical dissections, etc. He felt he wasn' t as
good as others at direct observation, i.e., in anatomy. Much
of his anatomical work, in which he was one of the foremost
masters of his day, was based on the observations of others.
I lis skill was in taking their observations, putting them to-
gether into a coherent system, and extracting what the others
had not seen. In this way he made several major discoveries
in anatomy.
Swedenborg's contributions in the medical sciences, prepared in
Latin, lay unnoticed in the library of the Swedish Royal Academy
of Sciences until the 1880's, when Tafel translated into English the
4 volume treatise, The Brain. Included in this monograph were
observations on cortical localizations, the somatropic arrangement
of the motor cortex, reference to integrative action of the nervous
system, the significance of the pituitary gland, the formation of the
cerebrospinal fluid, and a pronouncement on what is now known
as the neuron theory. The cerebral cortex, the intermediary be-
tween the sensory receptors and the soul, conditions the faculties
unique to man such as imagination, judgement, will, and the source
of motor volition.
The pituitary gland, the "arch gland" of Swedenborg, was recog-
nized as possessing special function in the body economy, two
centuries before contemporary endocrinology. Also, he extended
the observations of Willis on the formation of cerebrospinal fluid
by the fourth ventricle.
3
We might add that Swedenborg was also the first to dis-
cover the function of the cerebellum. In his understanding of
the brain Swedenborg was way ahead of his time. The tireless
Emanuel was looking for the soul of man in his anatomical
studies. At first he was quite sure he could discover it, but
later this hope dimmed. Aft er his experiences in heaven he
recognized that the soul was really the life of an individual.
He was searching for what was beyond the visible, but he had
first to look at the physical basis of man
,
s experience very
closely.
In his journey through the sciences he went through the
following fields: chemistry, engineering, physics, mathemat-
ics, mineralogy, geology, paleontology, anatomy, physi-
ology, astronomy, optics, metallurgy, cosmogony, cos-
mology, and psychology. It would be difficult to find an area
of the science of his day that he hadn' t mastered. He can be
said to have founded several sciences, such as crystallogra-
phy.
In his scientific and philosophical works one gets the im-
pression of an immense intellect driven to understand every-
thing. Where microscopes couldn' t penetrate, he borrowed
analogies from mathematics to speculate on the submicro-
scopic as he described molecules, atoms and the subatomic.
He also struggled mightily to describe the basic, pervasive,
integrative principles of creation. Yet he was becoming wary
of his ability to reason his way into any realm. There is a
brilliant intellectual coldness to his later scientific works, and
a feeling that he was perhaps reaching too far. Yet, as in the
above anatomical works, his reach sometimes described
findings one and two centuries ahead of his time. For anyone
who has seen the clear, sure ease and beauty of his later
works, these early scientific works have the sad quality of a
lonely, brilliant man working tirelessly to reason out all of
nature' s secrets.
At fifty-six, Swedenborg had mastered all known natural
science and stood at the door of psychology. Consider his life
at this time. He was now moderately wealthy, especially for
a man of simple tastes. He had a half pension from the Board
of Mines and earnings from publications and mining invest-
ments.
I le built a small estate on the outskirts of Stockholm. On
II large lot there were several small structures, a barn, and a
Imge garden decoratively laid out. Later he had built a
wooden maze for the entertainment of visitors and especially
llidr children. He also built a clever triangular house on the
northern edge of his land. It had three double doors and
three corner windows. When all of the doors were opened
III id a mirror was placed in front of a fourth wall along a
lumrd fence, "Three gardens are seen reflected in it, in which
everything is represented as in the same order as in the
original garden.'
5 4
In addition there was a bower for birds.
Swedenborg lived here whenever he was in Sweden. He had
.1 gardener who planted vegetables and lime trees and whose
wife was the housekeeper. Carl Robsahm, a treasurer of the
Stockholm Bank, later described Swedenborg' s situation.
Swedenborg's property was about a stone's cast in length and in
hreadth. The rooms of his dwelling-house were small and plain; but
were sufficient for him, though scarcely for anyone else. Although
lie was a learned man, no books were ever seen in his room, except
Iiis Hebrew and Greek Bible, and his manuscript indexes to his
own works, by which, in making quotations, he was saved the
!rouble of examining all that he had previously written or printed.
Swedenborg worked without much regard to the distinction of
day and night, having no fixed time for labour or rest. "When I am
sleepy," he said, "I go to bed." All the attendance he required from
Iiis servant, his gardener's wife, consisted in her making his bed,
and placing a large jug of water in his anteroom, his house-keeping
being so arranged that he could make his own coffee in his study;
and this coffee he drank in great abundance day and night, and
with a great deal of sugar. When not invited out, his dinner con-
sisted of nothing but a roll soaked in boiled milk; and this was his
meal always when he dined at home. He never at that time used
wine or strong drink, nor did he eat anything in the evening; but
in company he would eat freely, and indulge moderately in a social
glass. . . .
I must also mention a blind door which he had made; and when
this was opened, another one appeared with a window in it; and
as both these doors were directly opposite a green hedge where a
beautiful bird cage was placed, and as the window in the inner door
was made of looking-glass, the effect was most charming and sur-
prising to those who opened it with a view of entering Sweden-
borg
,
s other garden, which, according to his statement was much
more beautiful than his first one. Swedenborg derived much sport
from this arrangement, especially when inquisitive and curious
young ladies came into his garden.
Before his house there was an ornamental flower bed upon which
he expended considerable sums of money; he had there even some
of those singular Dutch figures of animals, and other objects
shaped out of box-trees; but this bed he did not keep up in his later
years. The cultivation of the garden, however, and its produce he
left to the gardener.
The fire in the stove of his study was never allowed to go out,
from autumn, throughout the whole of winter, until spring; for as
he always needed coffee, and as he made it himself without milk
or cream, and as he had never any definite time for sleeping, he
always required to have a fire.
His sleeping room was always without fire; and when he lay
down, according to the severity of the winter, he covered himself
either with three or four woolen blankets; but I remember one
winter, which was so cold that he was obliged to move his bed into
the study.
As soon as he awoke, he went into his study,where he always
found glowing embersput wood upon the burning coals, and a
few pieces of birchrind, which for convenience he used to purchase
in bundles, so as to be able to make a fire speedily; and then he sat
down to write.
. . . His dress in winter consisted of a fur coat of reindeer skin,
and in summer of a dressing-gown; both well worn, as became a
philosopher's wardrobe. His wearing apparel was simple, but neat.
Still, it happened sometimes, that, when he prepared to go out, and
his people did not call his attention to it, something would be
forgotten or neglected in his dress; so that, for instance, he would
put one buckle of gems and another of silver in his shoes; an
instance of which absence of mind I myself saw at my father's
house, where he was invited to dine; and which occurence greatly
amused several young ladies. Docs I, p. 31
Then, he started out on what were to be his boldest and
greatest discoveries. It was as though all his prior work was
just a prelude, a preparation, and in later years he said as
much. His persistent search for the soul had taken ,him
through anatomy and physiology to the door of psychol-
ogy. With his usual thoroughness he surveyed and summa-
rized all that was then known of psychology.
5
In the mid-
eighteenth century psychology had not yet fully emerged as
a separate discipline. It was a mixture of philosophy, reli-
gion, and comments on moral matters. There was little di-
rect grasp of inner experience. Swedenborg dutifully
searched out the wisdom of Aristotle, Plato, and other wise
ones down to his time. For over a century after Sweden-
borg, psychology was destined to remain faculty psychol-
ogy. That is, the inner life was divided into faculties such as
memory, rationality, avarice, will, etc., and then men
would speculate on the interactions between these faculties.
The resultant psychology sounded like a dull philosophical
tome. For instance, before his enlightenment, Swedenborg
described sexual relations in this dull, overly intellectual
way:
The act of venereal love is the actual conjunction and union of
two bodies into one. Its most deeply laid up cause is drawn from
the soul and the pure intellectory, which regard effects not as
effects but as ends. Their ends are the existence of society and the
procreation of its members.... The rational mind is what perceives
and understands these ends, partly from itself and partly from
things revealed; the animus merely desires the effect; and the body
carries it out. How great is the desire of this end in the soul and
the pure intellectory is manifestly apparent from the delights of the
body and its incitements to this effect. RP 204
Here he described sexual relations from the viewpoint of
reason. It was as though reason was taken as the real nature
and substance of all mental experience and reason would
rationalize the odd doings within the mind and body. This
kind of thinking very much reflected his day.
Swedenborg was probably unaware that he took a great
step when he tried to describe mental experience directly.
From his standpoint the decision was natural enough. He
had collected facts from every other area. Why not try to
penetrate inward and observe the operations of the psyche
directly? Perhaps he could catch the soul at work. And he
did. This study is now called phenomenology. It gathers the
raw data of experience itself and attempts to observe, under-
stand, and describe human experience itself. As in many
other things Swedenborg was ahead of his time. In 1744 he
dutifully started recording and interpreting his dreams. He
had occasionally set down dreams as far back as 1736, but
these occupied just a couple of pages now lost. When his
relatives saw the nature of these early dreams they tore them
out of his notebook. They probably looked too revealing. The
general public hadn' t examined or faced up to the saucy
nature of average dreams. From this time on Swedenborg
very systematically set down dreams and inner experiences
in what became his Journal of Dreams and his five-volume
Spiritual Diary.
6
Neither of these were ever intended for
publication, for they were the personal notebooks of an in-
ward explorer. They are of tremendous value because they
detail the path he was going overthe path on which he
almost found too much. When the Journal of Dreams was
published after his death it caused some sensation. The inner
struggles of a man were laid bare. Even his sexual needs were
apparent. His followers were caught between scholarship
and the need to serve Swedenborg' s interests. While most
dreams were translated for all to read, the sexual ones were
discreetly hidden in Latin.
The dreams and the Spiritual Diary were written at a time
when his life was changing radically. The super intellect was
going inward to find the wellspring of the psyche. He was
greatly changed by this. There is hardly any comparison
between his writings before and after this period. Before this
he was a dry, proper, brilliant, and somewhat proud intellect.
After this he was a humble man of great human feeling. He
retained the need to order and explain all things, but he now
cut to the heart of the human situation with remarkable
incisiveness. The scientist became the mystic after he looked
within. There followed such a complex series of visions and
disturbed psychic experiences that many of Swedenborg' s
followers are not sure but that he really went mad. Many of
those who are very taken by the beauty and richness of his
later works are bothered by the mixture of strange experi-
ences that crowd his private journals as he went within.
But what of Swedenborg' s outer life as he began to bend
his talent for investigation to the sources of mind itself? As
numerous acquaintances and documents suggest, his outer
life remained quite normal. He was a brilliant nobleman who
enjoyed traveling, looking at things and places, and meeting
new people. A bit of his private travel notes dated 1739 and
1743 gives some impression:
On the 8th they had horse races; on the 9th racing m chariots; on
the 14th pugilistic matches, for which handsome prizes were ap-
pointed.
March 14. I left Leghorn [Italy] for Genoa in a felucca; on the
way we were in great fear of the Algerines.
March 17.1 arrive in Genoa; it has a beautiful harbor, splendid
palaces of Balbi, Negro, Doria, and others. I saw the government
building and also handsome paintings, where I found more living
persons represented than I had seen before; likewise the monument
of Columbus, who was a Genoese. I saw the doge, who is always
in red down to the very shoes . . . Docs II, p. 129
August 12. I arrived at Hamburg and took lodgings at the Kai-
serhof, where the Countess De la Gardie likewise stayed. I met
Baron Hamilton, Reuterholm, Trievald, Knig . . . and was pre-
sented to Prince Augustus, the brother of His Majesty, who spoke
Swedish; afterwards I was presented by Lesch, the marshal in chief,
to His Royal Highness Adolphus Frederic; I submitted to him the
contents of the book [The Animal Kingdom] which I am about to
have printed, and showed him the reviews of the former work.
August 17.1 left Hamburg, and after crossing the Elbe, came to
Buxtehude. I there saw, to the extent of a German mile, the most
charming country I have yet seen in Germany, having passed
through a continuous orchard of apple, pear, plum, walnut, chest-
nut trees, limes and elms. Docs II, p. 132
He enjoyed travel. Everywhere he examined interesting
settings, major buildings and libraries, and he met prominent
people. It is said he never turned down a dinner invitation,
turning up in one of his two dress suits. He personally knew
most of the prominent scientists of his time. His journeys
took him from Stockholm to Paris, Amsterdam, and Lon-
don, and back to Stockholm repeatedly. His voluminous
writings made it necessary to take lodgings near his printers.
Even when his handwriting was fast and careless the Dut ch
printers could read it. He had to prepare a clean copy of
every book for the printer written in his tiny handwriting
with a quill pen. Then there was the task of correcting galley
proofs and the numerous business details of his works, which
were appearing in several languages.
As the years wore on his habits seem to have become
simpler. The man who earlier recorded being introduced to
various noblemen and kings would take six shilling a week
lodgings in London. His study of inner experiences and writ-
ing took most of his time. When asked how he could write
so much, he casually said his angel dictated to him and he
could write fast enough (Docs III, p. 1017). A number of
eyewitnesses heard him calling out to God when alone or
speaking to invisible figures. His servant learned not to
her t he master when he was busy with these higher mat -
i ns. Yet he could be i nt errupt ed deep in the midst of a t rance
niiil with little hesitation deal with a startled visitor. He must
him enjoyed beautiful visions. When he completed one reli-
!mils work he saw "t he angelic heaven f r om t he east to t he
wunI, and from the south to t he nort h, appeared of a deep
;! let color with t he most beautiful flowers" (Docs III, p.
|(X)8).
I'hough he concealed his rich inner life for many years,
incidental demonst rat i ons of his now ext raordi nary powers,
hIIcm at social gatherings, gradually let the world know that
1 Iiis was the man who was anonymousl y publishing such
1 linllenging spiritual books. He was so frank concerning his
spiritual experiences aft erward that he easily became the
Incus of any social gathering. Even t hough many of his most
priceless works were sold literally for pennies at his own
*pense, recognition of this work came slowly. It wasn' t until
people started talking about and being impressed by t he
totally new underst andi ng and viewpoints reflected in these
works that denunciation also came to t he fore. A very un-
plcusant experience occurred when he was eighty-one. For a
1 ime some religious leaders in Sweden tried to ban t he impor-
1111 ion of his works into Sweden and tried to get hi m declared
insune. They saw hi m as a crazy heretic upsetting t he state
religion. One simply did not speak of God and heaven and
licll from direct experience, especially when this contradicted
rstablished doctrine. They failed. Swedenborg was too well
known by too many, including heads of states.
Even in his eighties he was described as a vigorous, conge-
niul, sociable gentleman. He had almost no health problems
except for toothaches, whi ch he attributed to the- acts of
clemons. Nat ur e compensat ed, for he grew a whole new set
nf leeth late in life. It was as though t he inner simplicity of
Ins essential teachings were well reflected in his out er life, for
lie spent his last days living with a shopkeeper who sold
chintz, muslin and handkerchiefs in London. The shop-
keeper' s numerous children favored the old man over their
own parents because he never failed to bring them sweets
from his walks. In fact, the only thing unusual about him was
that he spoke as casually and forthrightly of heaven and hell
and their peoples as he could talk of London streets.
His experiences were normal but uncommon. Many others
have gone through a similar series. But rarely has anyone so
painstakingly described an inward journey. Rarely has such
a powerful intellect ever set out to unearth the basis of its
own life and experience, and in so doing, stepped through
into heaven and hell.
Going Within
It is essential to understand how Swedenborg went within,
for this is the key to his later findings. His method involves
a number of interrelated psychological processes which even
today, two centuries later, are not well understood. What is
now known of the normal events to be expected from these
processes will lend credibility to all his later findings.
Since childhood Swedenborg had a personal practice that
happens to be one of the ancient Hindu Yoga and Buddhist
ways to enlightenment. He probably didn' t know he was
following an eastern religious practice because the literature
bearing on this had not yet been translated. His method is
not surprising in one who so much enjoyed intellectual anal-
ysis. He would relax, close his eyes, and focus in on a prob-
lern with total concentration. At the same time his breathing
would nearly stop. Awareness of the outer world and even
bodily sensation would diminish and perhaps disappear. His
whole existence would focus on the one issue he wanted to
understand.
Bear in mind that he probably had more than the usual
power of concentration. A lifetime of seeking answers to
great problems had given him much practice. The slowing!
and limiting of breathing is part of a concentration inward.[
Simply trying to stop breathing in this state produces anxious
reminders of the need for air. First there is the concentration,
then the lessened breathing follows. The building up of car-
bon dioxide in the blood may have something to do with
intensifying inner experiences. The problem he was concen-
trating on would blossom out in new, rich and surprising
ways. He first practiced this approach as a child during^
morning and evening prayers,
7
which probably lent an inner!
intensity to the meaning of prayer. Judging from his writings,IJ
I would guess he stumbled on this method as a child, usedl
it relatively little during his scientific period, and then came
back to it when he tried to understand the psyche itself.
In his early fifties (1740-1744) he was finishing several!
large volumes on anatomy and the brain. It was already!
becoming apparent to him that he wasn' t going to find thefl
soul through anatomical studies. He would have to look at |
the operations of mind itself. Notice his situation. Other thanl
his self-imposed task of writing there was no work requiredl
of him. There was no family to disturb him. He had morel
than enough income. His servants would help him in hisl!
basic needs. He could spend hours and even days in deepfl
thought and meditation. If he lapsed into some inner state hisl
housekeeper and gardener would not bother him. His situa-
tion was nearly ideal for one who would explore inward.
He used this intense meditation to penetrate the one mat-
ter at hand. At first this approach was hyperintellectual. He
adopted a method that would eliminate all matters extrane-
ous to the problem, even breathing. Unknown to him, the
method was to bring him to the door of inner processes anc
change his whole understanding of the mind.
In 1742, while writing on psychology, he described medi
tation from direct experience. "It follows from the above
that we are able to approach nearer and nearer to the pure
intellect [which was his main aim] doing this by means of
universal ideas and a kind of passive potency." Passive po-
lency is an attentive receptiveness as in meditation. He felt
it was possible to deal with universal ideas, understanding at
once all the implications of a thing. This alone suggests
considerable practice in this area.
|ll] we remove particular ideas, that is, withdraw the mind from
terms and ideas that are broken, limited, and material, and at the
same time, from desires and loves that are purely natural, then the
human intellect, being at rest from heterogeneous throngs, as it
were, and remaining only in its own ideas and those proper to the
pure intellect, causes our mind to undergo no other changes, or to
draw forth no other reasons save those that are concordant with
I lie ideas of the pure intellect. In this way our intellect enjoys
inmost repose and inmost delight; for this concurrence then ap-
pears as an influx of a certain light of intelligence which illuminates
I lie whole sphere of thought, and, by a certain consensus, I know
not whence, draws its whole mind together, and inmostly dictates
I hat a thing is true or good, or that it is false or evil. In this way
our intellect is perfected in judgment which grows mature. RP 154
This is the description of an intensely intellectual man who
is experienced in using meditation as a distilling and perfect-
ing of thought. Yet this is basically empirical. He is describ-
ing what he has repeatedly experienced. As he went further
along this path he becames thoroughly empirical. He de-
scribed what he found even when later dealing with the most
insane-sounding events. Though he started this intense medi-
tation as a way of perfecting the intellect of a philosopher,
he had stumbled on the value of awakening and describing
experience itself. He was a philosopher becoming a
phenomenological psychologist. He was bent on finding and
describing that he saw.
In meditation, everyone experiences difficulty in keeping
his mind on one thought. The following shows that Sweden-
borg also had difficulty:
In the rational mind are divers loves, and these occupy its whole
court and draw it to their sides. . . . In general there are superior
loves and inferior loves, the superior being spiritual, and the in-
ferior natural and corporeal. When concentrated in the rational
mind, these loves are wont to contend. . . . When our mind has been
occupied with profound and long-continued meditation and this is
burned out by some corporeal loves, if we then wish to recall to
mind things spiritual and more pure, we find this impossible unless
the former love with its thought has first been cast out. Such is the
case if we wish to call upon God in prayer; we find that the thought
can never be pure but is clouded, as it were, and occupied with
dense darkness. RP 367
During this period he begins to experience the rare and
little-known phenomena called photism. The person who
meditates intensely, seeking inner guidance, may find a signal
system to guide him. When what he is thinking meets inward
approval, the person may suddenly see a flash of light. The
light may vary from a pinpoint to a large area, and it is
characteristically bright. One normal individual of my ac-
quaintance sees a bright pale blue light signaling correct and
a black spot signaling wrong. Some saints report similar
experiences. Swedenborg saw an affirming flame. "Such a
flame appeared to me so often and, indeed, in different sizes
with a diversity of color and splendor, that during some
months when I was writing a certain work, hardly a day
passed in which a flame did not appear as vividly as the flame
of a household hearth. It was a sign of approval." WE 6905
Some might confuse this with explosions of light seen by
people with migraine or other minor cerebral conditions.
Swedenborg' s was a formed image, not random flashes. He
had tested out its validity, It was given to affirm that what
he was thinking was true. It was also given with a pleasant
feeling as though a friend had affirmed a truth.
Swedenborg didn' t put a great deal of store by this phe-
nomenon. He only mentions it a few times in his writings. It
1111s several implications though. Swedenborg' s inner pro-
!.esses were quite involved in what he was doing and wished
10 guide him. They could also break forth into consciousness.
(We will see later that much more was to come.) Last, there
IN a symbolism even in the fact that it was a flame he saw.
I he flame, both by its color and warmt h, symbolizes love and
Iccling. Though his was still a ponderous intellect, it was very
much love and feeling that were to come forth later. It was
!mother and a rare sign that he was opening up inner pro-
ccsses.
What Swedenborg began as an intense, intellectual form of
meditation opened out into an exploration of the hypnogogic
Nlate, dreams, and, later, trances. This is a usual series of
discoveries as one goes inward. Few can reach the trance
level he reached, where the breathing almost stops. I would
like to emphasize the normal findings in meditation and the
hypnogogic state, experiences available to anyone who trou-
hies to seek them and are relatively simple and harmless. The
trance is another matter. The phenomena anyone can find in
meditation and the hypnogogic state amply illustrate the
path Swedenborg was exploring and give normal individuals
samples of the kind of discoveries he was making. Sweden-
borg seems far less strange to those who bother to look at the
same area of human experience.
Very few people have practiced meditation or looked at
I he hypnogogic experience, so it would be useful to elaborate
on the usual things one can expect. I stress usual. Everyone
will have roughly the same findings, though the symbolism
that emerges may differ. In some ways the reader may have
to experience these states to appreciate what they have to
teach. They are described in moie detail in my book, The
Natural Depth in Man.'
In meditation, first the mind wanders off. It takes practice
to stay focused. Like a restless beast the mind jumps to an
itch, distracting noises, random thoughts, worries, etc. The
original problem vanishes many times. Just a little work of
this kind teaches the meditator that he isn' t in control of his
mind. The effort to call the mind back sets up an internal
split: the person trying to concentrate and a host of other
odds and ends appearing. The observant person may be be-
guiled into one of these mental perambulations only to find
later that he wandered off into a dream and sleep. Zen monks
doing this same sort of thing sit up with eyes fixed on a spot
to prevent sleep. It takes practice to tame the restless inner
beast and not be carried off by it.
Next the observer learns to watch inner processes. Much
that disturbed the meditator earlier was the first surfacing of
these inner processes. The observer watches feelings, ideas,
faint images, words, sentences, and later whole scenes come
and go. He is watching mental processes occur spontane-
ously. It is common that the observer, seeking inner events,
overreacts upon seeing or hearing something. This overalert-
ness tends to knock out the spontaneous processes emerging
from the psyche, which are delicate and faint at first. A
balance needs to be learned between the responding observer
and spontaneous phenomena that turn up. At this level the
original meditation has deepened into the hypnogogic state.
The hypnogogic state is one that is usually experienced by
everyone twice a day, going into and out of sleep. Few people
ever pause at this level to explore the spontaneous well-
springs of mind bubbling forth. This state is a delicate bal-
ance of self-awareness and the presence of inner processes. If
caught up in the inner processes one can be swept away into
a dream and sleep. The same symbolism that appears in
dreams appears in the hypnogogic state. But one can' t nor-
mally talk to or deal with dreams. There is enough self-
awareness in the hypnogogic state to remember, record, and
even talk to inner processes. This makes it a much more
fruitful area for one who wishes to explore inward and even
experiment with inner processes.
Swedenborg explored the hypnogogic state more than any-
one else has before or since. Yet most of the time he appeared
10 have gone beyond it into a trance. In the trance inner
experiences are no longer delicate and faint, but are clear,
intense, and real. Personal awareness still exists, but bodily
nwareness is less or lost altogether. Many people have been
frightened by falling into a trance while going to sleep. Sud-
denly there is a feeling of intensified consciousness but a
paralysis of the body. The frightened person fights to regain
control of his body and awaken again. He has to go through
a long inner training to reach and learn to be comfortable in
!his inner state. The hypnotic state is probably closely related
!0 the trance. In hypnosis one is talked into and controlled
by the hypnotist; in a trance the subject controls himself. To
be able to induce a trance and stay in it implies a great deal
of learning and inner experience.
Since many fear inner states, it may be necessary to dispose
of their relationship to madness or psychosis. Psychotic hal-
lucinations are probably the spontaneous eruption into con-
sciousness of trance and dreamlike material, implying that
consciousness is weakened. In contrast to the capable seeker
who deliberately enters a trance, the psychotic usually does
not seek and cannot control the eruption of this material into
awareness. There is probably a high correlation between the
content of psychotic hallucinations and trancelike material.
The difference is an impaired ego, not understanding or
wanting these processes, as against a healthy ego seeking to
evoke inner processes. Quite possibly exploration of these
states could prevent madness because they give the individ-
ual keys to understanding what bothers him.
For the present let us deal primarily with the hypnogogic
state since it is more widely known and experienced than the
deeper trances that Swedenborg explored even more exten-
sively. It is curious that t he hypnogogic state is still little
known. There are many psychologists who know little of its
existence, let alone its nature; Jean-Paul Sartre explored it.
On the way into sleep one goes through a stage in which
there is still some awareness of the self relaxing and the
spinning out of inner ideas, fantasies, words or scenes. Simi-
larly, on awakening in the morning, one can linger on the
edge of inner imagery-fantasy while being partially awake.
Those who really explore this state can linger for hours
watching scenes and hearing things said. For unknown rea-
sons some people are primarily auditory, or hear things in
this state, while others primarily see things. The deeper one
goes into this state the more likely the experience will be both
auditory and visual.
Herbert Silberer, writing two centuries after Swedenborg,
noticed that this state is autosymbolic.
10
That is, whatever is
true of the individual at that moment tends to be spontane-
ously represented or symbolized. For instance, I was medi-
tating on the richness of the hypnogogic state and heard
someone say "my liberal arts course." The liberal arts course
is a representation of my feeling that the inner is varied and
informative. I did not have the idea of liberal arts course in
mind at that moment. Hence the comment is not immedi-
ately understood. These symbolic representations come as a
surprise, precisely like listening to someone else who thinks
symbolically. This autosymbolic character is a real secret of
this process. After looking at the process for months Sartre
failed to notice this correlation. The inner can represent
fleeting feelings or ideas so fast that the observer is hard put
to recall what the feeling was a moment afterward.
Silberer gives a number of examples of this spontaneous
symbolism from the hypnogogic state. He is using it to medi-
tte on a problem much as Swedenborg did.
"I think of human understanding probing into the foggy
and difficult problem of the ' mothers' (Faust, Part II).
"Symbol: I stand alone on a stone jetty extending out far
into a dark sea. The waters of the ocean and the dark and
mysteriously heavy air unite at the horizon.
"Interpretation: The jetty in the dark sea corresponds to
I he probing into the difficult problem. The union of air and
water, the elimination of the distinction between above and
below, should symbolize that, with the mothers, as Mephis-
lopheles describes it, all times and places shade into each
other so that there are no boundaries between here and there,
above and below. It is in this sense that Mephistopheles says
to Faust: ' Now you may sink!I could just as well say:
rise.'
"I decide to dissuade someone from carrying out a danger-
ous resolution. I want to tell him, ' If you do that, grave
misfortune will befall you.'
"Symbol: I see three gruesome-looking riders on black
horses storming by over a dusky field under leaden skies."
A host of experiences is possible in this state. One can
watch feelings arise and gradually clarify themselves into
phrases or sentences or scenes. It immediately becomes ap-
parent that the mind can think without any apparent effort.
In fact, without the interference of the little self, it thinks
faster, clearer, and more richly. For instance, I was half
usleep in the morning and sleepily watched the inner process.
It was coming and going as I rose out of sleep and then fell
back again. I lapsed into a feeling of understanding. Sud-
denly I heard "between, I heard the understood. " "Between"
in a single word captures this coming and going process. "I
heard" reflects that the experience is primarily auditory. "I
heard the understood" reflects back that I am hearing words
that reflect the feeling of understanding. The order of the
phrase is correct too. I heard, then I understood. That is,
hearing this sentence comes before its understanding. In or-
dinary thinking one can feel and anticipate what is coming
next. In the hypnogogic something is said or seen before
there is any possibility of understanding what it means. One
can have many of these inner experiences that are difficult to
understand at all. For instance I heard "anzeema. " The best
I could guess was that this name accurately represented
feelings, but the feeling and how it matched the word was
lost. It is also characteristic of this state that a great deal is
artfully condensed into a sentence or a scene. Whatever the
source of this process, it seems to think with lightning speed
in a rich, symbolic way.
One morning while slowly waking I saw a striking paint-
ing. It was done in somber tones of gray, blue, and black and
depicted a rough landscape rising from plains on the left to
rough rocky mountains on the right. Dramatically superim-
posed on the center of the painting was a rounded black
number 5. The feeling was peaceful and yet powerfully mys-
tical. The whole painting seemed terribly impressive. I have
many associations, yet the meaning is far from clear. From
the depths came a painting representative of me and yet it
said more than I could immediately grasp. It was momentous
and portentous of I know not what. The whole hypnogogic
state has this characteristic, as though one is dealing with
what lies over the edge of consciousness and the understand-
ing.
Swedenborg described the hypnogogic state thus:
But different is the vision which comes when one is in full
wakefulness, with the eyes closed. This is such that things are seen
as though in clear day. Nay, there is still another kind of vision
which comes in a state midway between sleep and wakefulness. The
man then supposes that he is fully awake, as it were, inasmuch as
all his senses are active. Another vision is that between the time of
sleep and the time of wakefulness, when the man is waking up, and
has not yet shaken off sleep from his eyes. This is the sweetest of
all, for heaven then operates into his rational mind in the utmost
tranquility. WE 7387
My experience agrees with his. The hypnogogic experi-
ences while awakening seem to represent tranquility and a
deeper understanding than those found on the way into sleep.
My painting above is an example.
The following were hypnogogic experiences of Sweden-
borg' s. "I acknowledged that I was impure from head to foot;
I cried for the mercy of Jesus Christ. Then it seemed that the
words ' 1 poor sinful creature' occurred to me" (JD 85). This
looks clearly autosymbolic. "I heard mentioned the words
Nicolaiter, and Nicolaus Nicolai; I do not know if this sig-
nifies my new name" (JD 133). Later he comes closer to what
it may mean.
"Nicolaus Nicolai was a philosopher who every year sent
loaves of bread to August us" (SD 134).
The meaning of the comment is hidden in this association.
Again, the hypnogogic is speaking from beyond conscious-
ness and its message is not always clear. It sometimes adds
a humorous comment as in the following: "Thus as to plea-
sure, wealth, high position, which I had pursued, I perceived
that all was vanity, and that he is the more happy who is not
in possession thereof. . . . I seemed to hear a hen cackling,
as takes place at once after she has laid an egg" (JD 165). The
inner humorously comments on the insight he has just laid.
But the chicken is not a very bright animal and she is awfully
proud of her new creation. Dumb vanity and pride are being
reflected, along with the discovery of creation. Humor in this
state is common. It often has this wry character, as though
someone is looking down on one' s little acts. Like Sweden-
borg I often wrestle with ultimates. One morning while
awakening someone said, "Here is a mondo for you," and I
opened my eyes to see t he world. A "mondo" is a Japanese
Zen term for a problem given by a master to plague the
student in a productive way. My higher self was playing with
me, saying, "You want a problem from your master? Here
is a little one. Existence itself!" It is a joke and serious at the
same time, which makes it seriously funny.
One doesn' t explore these things for long without begin-
ni ( feel there is a greater wisdom in the inner processes
I!11 (here is in ordinary consciousness. Swedenborg was
beginning to trust this inner wisdom: "It seemed as if some-
nie said the words interiorescit (he is becoming more inter-
mil) and integratur (he is being made whole); which signifies
(hat by my infestations I am becoming more purified" (JD
170).
Swedenborg was still working all hours day and night on
the last of his anatomical works, while noting down these
inner experiences.
This was a Sunday. Before I fell asleep I was deep in thoughts
concerning the things on which I am engaged in writing. Then I
was told: "Hold your tongue, or I will beat you." I saw someone
sitting on a block of ice, and I was frightened. . . . It means that
I should not persist in my work so long, especially on a Sunday,
or perhaps in the evenings. JD 242
He has to get a message from the beyond to suggest that he
shouldn' t work on Sunday evenings! At the time he was
writing on "Organic Forms in General" in Volume II of The
Animal Kingdom. Looking at this book, the reader would be
inclined to agree with this inner process; he should hold his
tongue. He is in a cold, precarious place trying to analyze
everything under the sun. The inner threatens to punish him.
He is naturally afraid, for it has done so before.
The hypnogogic is just one of a series of inner states that
became guides to Swedenborg. Later we wilJ see his dreams,
visions, and other numinous experiences. I want to empha-
size his meditation and hypnogogic states because they are
normal experiences available to anyone, and there are several
critical discoveries that anyone who explores these states will
make. Swedenborg found them, and they profoundly affected
his later thinking. He was, after all, an empirical scientist. He
believed what he could concretely see and deal with. I would
assert that no one can explore these states in any depth
without making the following discoveries which are basic to
understanding Swedenborg' s later work.
1. The individual's sphere, in which he rules within his
mind, is relatively small Waking consciousness normally
blocks out the other inner psychic processes. Swedenborg
was later to say that it is a gift from God that man even feels
that he rules himself. A person cannot spend hours in medi-
tation merely trying to hold his thoughts still without begin-
ning to suspect he isn' t master of his own mind. The average
person would find it very difficult to steadily hold one
thought, image, or intention in mind for one minute. In the
hypnogogic state one can watch thoughts form and be
spoken without one' s behest. Further, the inner process
thinks far faster and more cleverly than the meditator and
the symbolic language spoken may not even be understood.
Those who have explored these states come to feel like a
vessel into which life is poured. Moreover, after much watch-
ing of thoughts coming forth on their own, one can detect the
same process in normal waking consciousness. One learns to
recognize auditory hallucinations and other dreamlike pro-
cesses in normal consciousness. The little fringe thought that
pops into one' s head in the daytime is no longer seen as one' s
own creation. It is the same process as occurs near sleep.
Only very logical, labored thought feels like one' s own, and
even here a careful examination will show bursts of intuition
and a guidance by background feelings whose source is un-
known. Some will be frightened by the idea that there is little
that we actually rule in our mind. But this is the normal,
common state. We are some kind of coming and going, flow-
ing life process. The main effect of watching this coming and
going is a greater humility about how much one is master of,
and a greater tolerance for others as their whims come and
go. Swedenborg becomes decidedly humble as he goes within
and watches these processes. The proud author of many
scientific works didn' t feel he had the right to put his name
on his psychological-theological works. Through most of his
later life these, his greatest works, were issued anonymously.
It was too terribly apparent to him that if he did anything
of worth, it had been given to him by a power beyond him.
This is not a piously assumed humility. It came because he
had seen too much formed beyond him and given to him. He
saw that even though we are given to feel master of ourselves,
any close examination of these inner processes belies this.
Life is given to us. What we call ourself is this point of giving.
2. The capacity to symbolize or represent is a natural one,
reflecting some higher understanding within the individual.
For many years Swedenborg explored this symbolic inner
capacity. From uncertain beginnings in working out his
dreams, he grew into a very rich and sure understanding of
this symbolism. A dream symbol could be construed to mean
this, that, or anything else depending on one' s predilections.
In meditation and the hypnogogic the individual can watch
symbols form. By looking at feelings, associations, and the
situation being autosymbolized, it is possible to penetrate the
symbol. These states instruct in the matter of symbolism.
One gradually feels that the symbol is the means by which
something higher and more inner speaks to the conscious
self. It is an intelligent guidance system. Since it is in a higher
language than we are accustomed to, t he searcher needs to
enter into this inner realm to understand its language.
Swedenborg later described this symbolism as correspon-
dences and representations. All orders of existence corre-
spond to each other, just as the expression on his face corre-
sponds to the person' s feeling. The lower-level correspondent
represents the higher level, j ust as the facial expression repre-
sents the inner mood and feeling. For Swedenborg this is the
key to understanding all levels of existence. One couldn' t see
the present relevance of heaven or hell without this key. It
is a difficult key, requiring a certain great intimacy to use it
well. One cannot explore these states without beginning to
Ncnse the wonder and power of the inner that speaks to one
In this higher language.
I was teaching the interpretation of dreams to a counselor.
We both sensed her main problem. She was too voluble,
.poke easily of anything, but felt little. While passing in the
hall she said she dreamed of a poor blind mole in the ground.
She could see that she was like the blind mole feeling her way
in the dark, but why did he speak Spanish? I said, "Fancy
lalker your dumb mole," and she saw this representation of
her own capacity for fancy talk while she was a lowly blind
creature. In this playful, creative way the inner reflects the
truth of us. It cannot do otherwise. Jung calls this inner,
objective. It can' t help but accurately represent. But this
t ruth it represents is greater than our ordinary understand-
ing, hence its language is richer than we are accustomed to.
3. These inner states raise the issue of the presence of other
spiritual beings interacting in our lives. It is at first disconcert-
ing to hear others speaking inside one' s head. But hyp-
nogogic and dream visions aren' t so bad. For after all, the
mind that visualizes might go on picturing things even when
t he eyes aren' t in use. But people talking, saying things not
wholly understood, gives one the feeling of the presence of
other beings. I stress that these auditory hallucinations are
quite normal and common in this state. They differ from
psychotic hallucinations not so much in content but in the
circumstances. The psychotic hallucination occurs in a dis-
turbed person in the waking state and is clear and distinct.
Hypnogogic hallucinations are delicate, faint, and require a
very inward state with little ego awareness to even awaken
them.
Times have changed since Swedenborg explored these
areas. His father, the bishop, had heard and seen angels. It
was part of his calling. Duri ng Swedenborg' s time there was
a rash of spirit possession in Sweden. When he heard and saw
things he naturally t hought of spirits. Now we experience the
same phenomena and think they must be pieces of the self,
bits of the unconscious coming up. For the present I would
simply like to leave the issue open. One may be experiencing
bits of the self or disincarnate entities, or these two may be
fundamentally the same thing. Eventually Swedenborg sees
them as the same thing. Other lives are unconscious parts of
our own life. It is enough for the present to say experiences
in these states suggest the presence of spirits interacting in
our innermost feelings.
It was said later that Swedenborg the scientist changed
into a mystic. This isn' t quite true. Swedenborg the empirical
scientist remained a scientist reporting his findings even
when he went within. It is just that he took an unusual and
direct path to the underpinnings of human experience itself,
stirring up findings that still need explaining. The essential
pattern of his findings is already implied at this level. The rest
of the journey inward was not so easy, for he entered into a
mighty struggle with inner forces.
It might be asked whether it was an advantage or disad-
vantage for Swedenborg to explore inward long before psy-
chology and psychoanalysis came along to "explain every-
thing. " It was a disadvantage in that he described what so
few understood. But an advantage was that he had no chaos
of theories or opinions to distort his vision. He could describe
things just as he found them. He even felt that divine guid-
ance suggested he shouldn' t read the theologies of others.
They would introduce too many errors for him to work
through. Being among the first to really explore the inner
landscape, without the guidance of theories, he was thrown
back on describing things just as he found them. He felt free
to look at what the later morass of theory would suggest he
should avoid. In a fundament al way he had chosen to exam-
ine inner processes in the most direct way possible.
Opening the InnerWorl d
In 1744 Swedenborg was still working on the last of his
scientific works. His four volumes on the brain were a bril-
liant breakthrough, throwing light on operations of the brain
that can only be appreciated centuries later. He was also
doing a very perceptive, though still rather intellectual, work
on psychology. His outer life was eminently successful and
productive. Yet he had failed in his quest to find the soul
through science. This quest was more serious and important
than anyone would have guessed. In a kind of middle-life
crisis he was called away from his outer success to attempt
the impossible t hrough the inner search. He had a taste of the
inward journey, and he took this up more and more seri-
ously. In his intense meditation, he began to find deeper
processes. Symbols arose. Instead of just occasionally jotting
down dreams, he began to record and interpret them daily.
Almost by accident his Journal of Dreams has come down
to us. He wrote many things he did not intended to publish,
and this was one of them. Being a personal journal, he was
quite honest with himself. The first dream notes are brief, but
they imply a struggle that will become more apparent.
In Leipzig, about the one who lay in seething water.
About the one who tumbled with the chain into the depth.
JD 4-5
I was standing by a machine which was moved by a wheel; its
spokes involved me more and more and carried me up so that I
could not escape: I awoke. It signifies either that I need to be kept
further in the dilemma, or else that it concerned the lungs in the
womb, on which subject I then wrote immediately afterwards;
both. JD 18
For the reader who has examined dreams, these are not
unusual. They reflect some inner stress but of normal extent.
As he went inward he was being carried up as though by a
machine. He was not sure of the direction and hence didn' t
feel safe. Since his thinking and writing occupied his whole
life, it is not surprising that he related dreams to this. The
wheel's shape may well have been associated with fetal lungs
for him. But he wisely saw a deeper meaning. He was being
carried along in a dilemma. We can only guess at its mean-
ing. Above all else he wanted to know what was true. But in
these dreams he sensed he was being carried off in some
unknown direction in a world of strange fancies, Later he
found that the lungs and respiration have to do with under-
standing. His fetal understanding became more and more
involved and carried up by this inner process; he could no
longer escape from it.
Other dreams comment on some sort of impurity in him-
self.
I was in a garden containing many fine beds, one of which I
desired to own, but I looked about to see if there was any road to
walk out; I also seemed to see, and thought of another; there was
one there who was picking away a heap of invisible vermin and
killed them; he said they were bedbugs which some person had
carried thither and thrown in, infesting those who were there. I did
not see them, but some other little insect, which I dropped on a
white linen cloth beside a woman; it was the impurity which ought
to be rooted out of me. JD 19
paraphrase of this dream (and any dream) helps reveal its
meaning. "I want something nice and beautiful. I see an
escape but I am ambivalent about which way to go. There
ure invisible vermin around. I am responsible for some of the
impurity which is associated with a woma n"
King Charles was sitting in a dark room and said something, but
somewhat indistinctly. He afterwards closed the windows, and I
helped him with the curtains. Afterwards I mounted a horse, but
did not take the road I had intended but went across hills and
mountains, riding swiftly. A wagon with a load followed after me,
und I could not get away from it; still the horse by the load became
li red, and the driver wanted to get into some place; he came in, and
the horse became like a slaughtered, bloody beast, fallen down.
JD 31
In paraphrase, "A higher being can' t get through to me. He
und I close off the light. I am not going the way I intended.
Though fast, I pull such a load as to kill me. " He was still
working hard on his scientific writing, and he pulled such a
load. The higher one hadn' t gotten through to him, and the
light was shut out. His own interpretation conformed closely
to this.
The dreams at this time were trying to pull him away from
his excessive intellectual and scientific work. Though mildly
complimentary, they said it really was a heap of rubbish. He
partly missed and partly saw this message. He also felt full
of vermin, filth, unworthiness. He knew he needed help, but
he only partly saw it coming. He was very religious; this
whole process was cast in a religious framework. There was
evil in him that should be rooted out. But how? He had very
much shut off his own feelings, and in dreams he didn' t get
along well with women, who represent feelings. He was wary
of women-feelings. Maybe they would lead him astray.
Most of us live so far from an age in which one fights evil
temptations that it is worth commenting on this as a psycho-
logical process. To fight evil temptations sounds precisely
like trying to repress and deny a part of the self. It seems like
the opposite of integrating these tendencies. Actually, it is
integrative in its own way. The one fighting temptations
becomes very much aware of his other side; one can' t fight
demons for long without feeling how alive they are in one' s
self.
When these dreams were first published after his death,
Swedenborg' s detractors leapt on his sexual dreams as
though they showed he was some sort of sex fiend. I would
like to deal with this sexual side, for it bears directly on the
central drama of his struggles. It also illuminates how
fighting temptations can help integrate the other side of one' s
self. Also, in the sexual aspects of his dreams his humanness
shows particularly well.
Swedenborg' s early detractors surely had not looked at
their own dreams, for they would have seen much more of
sex than Swedenborg shows in his Journal of Dreams. Out
of some 250 dreams, ninecomparatively fewshow a rec-
ognizable sexual theme. It is in accord with his statement
early in the Journal, "I wondered . .. how the inclination for
women, which had been my chief passion, so suddenly
ceased" (JD 14). This former passion for women comes as
something of a surprise to anyone who pursued his earlier
history and writings, for it wasn' t apparent. There were hints
that he had arranged his life so he didn' t see women alone.
Now in his fifties, passion was calming down. More than this,
it could well be that the need for women was in effect the
feeling side saying, "Relax, live, enjoy yourself as other men
do. " But his life-style was relatively Spartan, self-denying
and self-demanding. It could also be that his passion for
women finally diminished because he was clearly going
within. He was going to meet feeling in all her forms, and so
didn' t need the external attraction to call him back to feeling.
The earliest sexual dream represented the difficulty he was
having with his soft feeling side.
I stretched out alongside of one who, although she was not
beautiful, nevertheless appealed to me. In the spot where I touched
her she was like others in front but there was something like teeth.
To Archenholtz it seemed to be a female shape. What is meant I
do not knowwhether to keep one's tongue [be silent] in matters
of state, whether anything. JD 120
Swedenborg was puzzled, as well he might be. The idea of
I he vagina dentata, the vagina with teeth, was something
psychoanalysts were to run into much later. The same theme
turned up again in dream 261. A paraphrase will clarify what
is involved: "I am relaxing alongside something soft and
pleasant. It attracts me though it isn't beautiful. I want to
join with this softness, but I cannot be comfortable with it.
We (I am) are in doubt about what it is." We can' t be sure
of Swedenborg' s associations with his friend Johan Archen-
holtz. Like Swedenborg, this man had opposed Sweden going
to war with Russia and had been tortured for his beliefs.
Archenholtz, one who was ready to suffer for his beliefs,
seemed to think it was a female form. Swedenborg, another
ready to suffer for his beliefs, was attracted to soft, warm,
feeling, but he couldn' t get along with it. This theme turns
up repeatedly in the dreams. He was not against love-wom-
en-feeling, but he had not come to terms with it yet. He was
struggling mightily to put down sex-feeling-corporeal
thoughts. Right after the only clear sexual intercourse dream
this follows:
"Aft erwards I slept a little, and it appeared to me as if
there was flowing a quantity of oil with a little mustard
mixed with it. This may signify my life that is coming, and
it may mean pleasantness mixed with adversity, or it may
mean a medicine for me. " JD 173
Aft er sex, oil flows, which signifies something sensual,
smooth, and pleasant. But it is mixed with something sharp
in taste. Feeling has been released in the inner world, but
with it comes a little note of warning, the mustard seed. We
40 The Presence of Other Worlds
have t he advant age of seeing all t he subsequent events. He
was correct; he was to know pleasantness mixed with adver-
sity. This was his medicine, designed by this inner process.
The next night this dream appeared:
During the whole night, for about eleven hours, I was in a
strange trance, neither asleep nor awake. I knew all that I dreamt,
but my thoughts were kept bound, which at times caused me to
sweat. I cannot describe the nature of that sleep, during which my
double thoughts were as it were separated from each other or torn
asunder. JD 174
(One of t he quickest and surest ways to awaken t he inner life
is to deny bodily pleasure. This is probably why visions are
rare these days.) He fell into a trance. He could not control
his t hought s. Doubl i ng of t hought is relatively rare: each
t hought arises with its own opposite and there is opposition.
The ment al sphere is t orn apart with t he energy generated.
One is primarily experiencing feeling; t hought is a helpless
pawn. The world of feeling explodes internally and tears
apart t hought . There is no safe refuge for t he beset person.
He hangs on, hoping to weat her the st orm. Swedenborg was
indeed to experience pleasantness mixed with adversity. On
both scores, pleasantness and adversity, he was being edu-
cated in t he world of feeling. If he had j ust relaxed and lived
out his sexual needs, this would have been much less likely
to happen. Hi s heroic combat against passion and all cor-
poreal t empt at i ons meant t hat he was going to experience
more feeling t han most. The Spiritual Diary, which followed
t he Journal, is shot t hrough with awesome feeling and expe-
rience. The cold, clear intellect t hat would retreat to a block
of ice was being melted by its own heroic effort to find the
real t rut h.
A married woman wanted to have me, but I liked an unmarried
one; the former one became angry and persecuted me, but I never-
theless gained the unmarried one and was with her and loved her.
It was a woman who owned a very beautiful estate in which we
walked about, and I was to marry her. She signified piety, and also,
I believe, wisdom, which owned these possessions. Also when I was
II lone with her I loved her for high-minded character which it
seemed she possessed all by herself. JD 178-179
Paraphrase: "I reject the improper, so it torments me. I
uccept and love the greatness of what is beautiful and proper.
With this I can join.'
His struggle against corporeal feeling and temptation
awakened an assault of feeling. He was coming to terms with
feeling. He could accept what was proper and would reject
what seemed improper. He was involved in a personal analy-
sis, as at least one analyst noticed." This is the way analysis
should go. The individual chooses what is right and proper
for him. If he simply accepts everything that comes from
within, he dissolves in the depth and becomes its pawn. He
is no longer cutting off feeling, he is merely driving it to a
higher level of sublimation. For instance, in Kundalini Yoga,
the root of life is represented by a serpent that lives coiled
at the base of the spine. If this serpent is allowed to easily
escape as sexual impulse, which is handy to where he lives,
the yogi doesn
,
t discover his higher possibilities. The snake
simply appears as a sex drive. The adept becomes very aware
of the serpent Kundalini and forces him to rise up the spine.
If he must get out, it will be at the highest level, the mind.
As Kundalini escapes out of the mind, it shatters the in-
dividuaPs conventional ideas of reality and the serpent has
become the Divine itself. This possibility could not be discov-
ered unless all the lower escapes were blocked. By wrestling
with corporeal thoughts and evil temptations, Swedenborg
generated a tense struggle to instruct him on the power and
reality of feeling. By accepting only the highest aspect of
feeling, he was driving it to show him its highest possibilities.
Kundalini is to escape only through his mind.
It is characteristic of a dream series or a personal analysis
that the person doesn' t show a simple linear progress. The
line of progress is much more complex, like a spiral that
shows cyclic ups and downs during a gradual rise of the
overall trend. The 286 entries in the Journal of Dreams show
such a progress. Many times Swedenborg sensed himself as
unworthy or ignorant, yet the level of his understanding
gradually increased. From a first, halting use of symbols, he
became very accustomed to this language and could even
describe himself in symbolic terms. Over and over t he theme
of temptation reappears. It means he had awakened some
inner potentiality and had to struggle with its power, while
he became more powerful. At times he describes this process
as infestationa struggle with alien forces opposed to the
individual: "While I was in the first infestation I cried to
Jesus for help, and it went away, I also kept my hands folded
under my head, and then it did not return a second time. I
was nevertheless in tremors when I awoke, and now and then
I heard a dull sound, but I do not know whence it came" (JD
98).
The tremors imply that the inner forces are strong and the
controls are taxed. The struggle is very real. It even has a
physical side to it. He referred to swoons and fainting fits (JD
282). This is no minor intellectual struggle. Double thoughts
were reported several times. In these he would experience
thought and its opposite without control. This was part of
the enlivening of the whole inner sphere. It was also part of
the medicine he needed, to learn that he couldn' t control
everything.
Then he also had periods of ecstasy.
I had a preternaturally good and long sleep for twelve hours. On
awakening I had before my eyes Jesus crucified and His cross. The
spirit came with its heavenly and, as it were, ecstatic life so in-
tensely, and permitting me to enter into it higher and higher, so
that, if I had gone still higher, I would have been dissolved by this
veritable life of joy. JD 127
The ecstatic respites between storms assured him he was
011 the right track. The storms were like seas of feeling tossing
liim about, teaching him his smallness. His pride in his own
powers became less and less. There were several experiences
of God. He suspected from the beginning that the higher,
wiser, symbolic power within him might stem from God.
This poor, beset vessel of a man had several confirming
experiences that encouraged him to go on with his terrible
struggle. They came from all directionsthey were not just
dream experiences. The following clearly shows the respite
quality of these religious experiences; it is also a complex of
experiences.
At ten o'clock I went to bed and felt somewhat better. Half an
hour afterwards I heard a noise beneath my head and I then
thought that the tempter had departed. Immediately there came
over me a powerful tremor, from the head and over the whole body,
together with a resounding noise, and this occurred a number of
times. I found that something holy had encompassed me. I then fell
asleep, but about twelve, one or two o'clock in the night there came
over me a very powerful tremor from head to the feet, accompanied
with a booming sound as if many winds had clashed one against
another. It was indescribable, and it shook me and prostrated me
on my face. In the moment that I was prostrated I became wide
awake, and I saw that I had been thrown down. I wondered what
it meant, and I spoke as if I were awake, but still I found that the
words were put into my mouth, and I said, "Oh, thou almighty
Jesus Christ, who of thy great mercy deignest to come to so great
a sinner, make me worthy of this grace!" I kept my hands folded
and I prayed, and then there came forth a hand which strongly
pressed my hands. . . . In that same moment I was sitting at His
bosom and beheld Him face to face. It was a countenance of a holy
mien, and all was such that it cannot be expressed, and also smil-
ing, so that I believe that His countenance was such while he lived
in the world. He spoke to me and asked if I had a bill of health.
I answered, "Lord, thou knowest better than I." He said, "Well,
then do." This I found in my mind to signify "Love me truly," or
"Do what thou hast promised." JD 51-54
The struggling man finally had a clear confirmation that
he was on the right track. It is curious that the Lord spoke
to Swedenborg symbolically when He asked about a health
certificate. This may have referred in part to an earlier event
in Swedenborg' s life. He sailed to England at the time that
England was desperately fighting the plague, and it was a
stormy voyage. He landed without a health certificate, for
which the authorities nearly hanged him. So the Lord asks
him if he is now clean enough to come ashore from the
dangerous sea. Swedenborg no longer presumed to judge his
spiritual health. He left it up to the Lord, who answered
graciously. The promise was that Swedenborg would give up
all his scientific work and devote himself to this inner jour-
ney. That is the will of the innermost. He hadn' t fully come
into compliance with it yet, but he was being prepared for
this radical shift in direction. Though intrigued by this inner
process, he still set great store by his scientific work. He
didn' t fully sense that this inner journey would be of such
importance that his great scientific work would be like a heap
of rubbish in comparison.
This dream occurred not long after the above experience.
Bad dreams, about dogs that were said to be my own country-
men, and which licked my neck but did not bi t e. . . . In the morning
I fell into terrible thoughts, as also during the day, that the Evil
One had taken possession of me, yet with the consolation that he
was outside and soon would let me go. Just as I was in damnable
thoughts, the worst kind that could be, in that very moment Jesus
Christ was presented vividly before my internal eyes, and the oper-
ation of the Holy Spirit came upon me, so that hence I could know
the devil was gone. The next day I was now and then in a state of
infestation and in double thoughts and in strife. After dinner I was
mostly in a pleasant humor, though engaged in worldly things.
Then I traveled to Leyden. JD 167
It is very rare to see a clear mixing of dreams, psychologi-
cal analysis, and religious processes. The theme of dogs
comes up several times in his dreams. If the reader feels what
11 is like to have an animal licking the necka dog that might
bitethe meaning can be recovered. The dogs were said to
he his countrymen, that is, his associates. Everything in the
11 ream has to be part of himself. Paraphrased, "I have the
feeling of some sloppy beast getting near my head. " This fits
with thoughts of the Evil One possessing him. Yet the danger
from the Evil One is only partial. He is outside and will let
go. The dog did not bite. Swedenborg was still struggling
with his instincts (i.e., his countrymen) that were confound-
ing his thoughts. In the midst of this Christ appeared again,
and he was saved. The next day he went about his worldly
duties and even made a trip to Leyden, probably to see his
scientific works through the press.
Some readers will easily be able to accept that God can be
in the midst of the innermost processes of mind. Others will
see this as just wishful thinking or some other kind of folly.
Whether or not God is there, consider for a moment the
psychological value of thinking of the innermost processes in
these terms. Whatever is in man is decidedly powerful and
very clever. It is powerful enough to overwhelm the individ-
ual and destroy him, as in psychosis. Swedenborg later de-
scribed this process as quite dangerous. The analysts would
agree. After one holy tremor or vision, many psychiatrists
would be inclined to administer thorazine to dampen down
these inner processes. It was quite important that Sweden-
borg had a set of values and struggled against inner tenden-
cies that he did not consider acceptable. He did not rejoice
at every instinct that turned up. Yet his overall feeling to-
ward this outpouring of inner processes was positive. His
belief that the inner could contain God had several useful
functions. He would look to it as a sincere man searching
after God. This meant he would be patient in exploring these
processes when most religious people would not have both-
ered. But along with God there could be other spirits. He
would have to sort out the outpourings of this inner region,
for not all would be acceptable. Both his scientific attitude
and his clear strong personal values helped him in this diffi-
cult process. In the eastern religions it is often recommended
that one not attempt this exploration until one has reached
maturity and most of life's problems are solved. The values
of the adolescent are still too fluid to withstand the storm of
the inner journey. This is not to say that strong values are
not changed by the inward journey, but a set of values, a clear
stance in the world, provides a stronger vessel to weather the
storm. Whether or not God is within, this provides a suitable
approach to the inner. It implies that inside there is great
power, wisdom, and danger. God also represents the highest
conception of what one hopes to find. Thus Kundalini is
driven out of its basement hideout to reach consciousness at
the highest possible potentiality. God in the unconscious or
in these inner processes also implies change. Things should
be very much different and better on reaching this inner
potential.
Swedenborg had several precognitive dreams. Glimpses of
one' s own future in dreams are not terribly unusual, for most
people have such dreams.
12
The difficulty lies in penetrating
the symbolism of dreams and then in knowing which ones
predict and which merely speak of one' s present state. It is
curious to see what the dream process would care to tell of
Swedenborg' s future. "Furt her, something was told about
my book; it was said it would be a divine Book on the
worship and love of God; I believe there was also something
about spirits; I believe I had something on the subject in my
work on the infinite, but there was no reply to t hat . " JD 250
At the time he didn' t know it, but shortly after this he
started on a book whose title is given in the dream, The
Worship and Love of God. It was a strange work for him, a
flaming example of poetic imagination unlike anything he
had ever done before. It was an exercise in a totally new style
and conception, making a break with his intellectual work
and presaging the soaring quality of his later works. In the
dream he wonders if he had not written on this already in
I he Infinite and Final Cause of Creation. The dream didn' t
answer, but the answer is no. His conception of what the
dream was talking about was too limited. It was a totally new
work that would rise into consciousness and would have
some bearing on spirits.
The next precognitive dream is significant in that it de-
scribed the most important aspect of his fut ure life. He
missed its real meaning altogether, for he could not grasp its
predictive quality. Instead, he again thought it referred to a
past work.
I beheld the gable end of the most beautiful palace that anyone
could see, and the midst of it was shining like the sun. I was told
that it had been resolved in the society that I was to become a
member, as it were an immortal, which no one had ever been
before, unless he had died and lived again: others said that there
were several in that state. The thought occurred, whether it is not
the most important to be with God and thus to live. This, therefore,
had reference to that which I had just then brought to a finish
concerning organic forms in general and especially the conclusion.
JD 243
He had some special feeling for the gable end of a palace:
he had used the symbol before. It sounds as though the
symbol says, "I am in an ideal place." Much of what he
reported here as a dream was really a simple statement of
fact. It had been resolved in heaven that he could visit. He
would be permitted what had been given to no one else before
their death. While living, he was to be permitted to visit
heaven and hell. The sun in the midst of the palace he would
find again in the center of heaven. "[i]t was said there were
several in that state"; indeed the several were the multitudes
of all that had ever lived. The thought of the importance of
being with God was also part of it. In heaven and hell he
would know God. The ushering into heaven and hell would
take place in several months. His inner search and battles
were beginning to pay off. I have no idea why the dream
mechanism would bring a nugget like this without also giving
the individual the means to understand the precious informa-
tion. But it happens often. The inner provides ample mes-
sages and it is up to the individual to determine their mean-
ing.
There are many signs that Swedenborg was beginning to
experience the inner in more than just dreams. The process
had become extraordinarily enlivened. Most people who
have tried the same practices even on a casual level are
inclined to have visions and intense emotional experiences.
13
In Swedenborg this was probably a product of his intense
concentration, his yogic practice, his ability to devote himself
to these processes, and his great need to encounter the Di-
vine. Most people in personal analysis would prefer to keep
the lid on inner processes. But Swedenborg was engaged in
a heroic effort toward an encounter with higher inner pro-
cesses. He was moving about as fast as one could hope in this
inner sphere without breaking himself in the process. The
main part of the Journal of Dreams takes only seven months.
Seven years would not be slow for such gains. No wonder the
dreams referred to him as getting around fast.
In part, Swedenborg was bent upon bringing these discov-
eries into his life, though one might have expected a much
more detached, intellectual approach to inner processes. He
loved real, solid truths. He was rather pleased when a reli-
gious vision knocked him off his bed. A later vision that
didn' t accomplish as much he concluded must have come
from lower-order creatures! This was a man who enjoyed
grappling with truth. Aft er so many years of thinking and
speculating on what was true, it apparently comforted him
to be knocked about by lively truths that were greater than
he. For this is what he had been looking for, sizable truth,
t rut hs as big as life itself. The liveliness of this inner encoun-
Icr apparently did not scare him as much as it did others,
leading of it later, who speculated on his sanity. He was
overjoyed at finding truth so real. His main fear was that he
was unworthy to advance in this realm, and his battle with
feeling or corporeal thoughts was secondary to this.
In addition to several periods of religious ecstacy sprinkled
among his inward battles, Swedenborg also experienced sev-
cral visions. These were simply furt her signs that the forces
lie was dealing with were spilling over into his life. The
visions occurred relatively late in this dream series. The inner
battles were settling and the visions were furt her guides to
him that he was on the way. "On awakening I had a vision,
seeing much gold before me, and the air seemed to be full of
it. It signifies that our Lord, who disposes all things, provides
for me all that I need both as to spiritual and worldly things"
(JD 222).This probably occurred in the hypnogogic state.
The next dream touches again on the kernal of the problem.
"In a vision there appeared as it were a fire of hard coal,
burning briskly; it signified the fire of love" (JD 261). A
dream followed with the vagina dentata in it. The theme of
desirable but dangerous to touch was in both the vision of
"fire of hard coal, burning briskly,'
5
and in the associated
sexual image.
I saw also a vision that beautiful loaves of bread were presented
to me on a plate. This was a premonition that the Lord Himself
will instruct me, since I have now first come into such a state that
I know nothing, and that all preconceived opinions have been
taken away from me, which is the beginning of learning, viz., that
one must first become a child, and then be wet nursed into knowl-
edge, as is now taking place with me. JD 267
It was clear that Swedenborg took seriously the ceremo-
nial use of bread in church. He was honored by this vision
of beautiful loaves of bread. He felt he was being instructed
by the Lord, the highest bread he could hope for. Though he
50 The Presence of Other Worlds
was really beginning to grasp t he whole inner language and
trend, he clearly saw himself as ignorant in this sphere. "I
know nothing. . . ." Preconceived opinions had been taken
away from him. For instance, he no longer related these
inner messages to his scientific work. He was in new territory
where he was, as it were, an infant being wet -nurseda soft
and feelingful image. He is using t he inner symbolic language
to describe himself.
"I n a vision t here appeared a person who was carryi ng
wooden planks; he fell down under t he burden, and anot her
person came to help him, but in what manner he was helped
up I did not see" ( JD 269). It sounds like an image of t he
struggling Chri st a man carrying planks falls down and is
helped. Yet, since it is an image fashioned out of Sweden-
borg, it must reflect him. He was struggling under a burden
that was too much for him, except for unseen help.
The next vision is likely also from t he hypnogogic state.
It combines two maj or t hemes t hat he had been struggling
with in his dreams. "I n t he morni ng t here appeared to me
in a vision a market like the Disting fair; it was in my fat her' s
house at Uppsala, in t he parlor upstairs, in t he entrance, and
all over t he house" ( JD 281). The associations here are t oo
private to be readily underst ood. The Disting fair was an
annual festival held since pagan times in February in Upp-
sala, Sweden. The fair was dedicated to female deities. The
implication is t hat his difficulty with women-feelings-the
corporeal had been settled. Fr om ancient times t he mysteries
of t he feminine had been celebrated, and now it occurs again
in Swedenborg. He had been raised in Uppsala, where his
main and somewhat limited contact with his austere bishop
fat her took place. That the fair takes place in his "f at her ' s
house"and indeed in t he parlor and all over t he house
implies t hat it was acceptable to his father. The vision says
some kind of j oyous acceptance of the feminine had taken
place and this would be acceptable to his father. But not e
Opening the Inner Worl d 5 1
I hat t hough sex is implied here (female deities) it is on a high
plane. The sublimation he strove for in relating to sex-wom-
en-feeling had succeeded. He could accept t he feminine in
terms of its highest implications. Hence he projected in a
vision t he celebration of female dieties. In several prior
dreams he seemed to be worki ng on his differences with his
lather. His father wanted Emanuel to be a religious man and
appeared somewhat disappointed when he chased aft er t he
current fad, science. Thi s difference with his fat her became
resolved as Swedenborg gradually t urned into an actively
religious man.
Thi s same resolution of his struggle with t he feminine-
feeling aspects of his own i nner life shows rat her touchingly
in his last entry in t he Journal of Dreams. This time he was
just t hi nki ng and stating his position. But he was thinking in
terms of t he symbolism of t he inner world and was clearly
dealing with delicate feeling. He had come a long way from
the rational scientist who set out to find t he soul.
Verities or virgins of this kind regard it as shameful to offer
themselves for sale; they esteem themselves so precious and dear
to their admirers that they show indignation if anyone offers a
price, and still more if anyone attempts to purchase them; to oth-
ers, who hold them vile, they lift their eyebrows. And therefore, lest
by the former they should be held beneath valuation, and fall into
contempt with the latter, they would rather offer themselves freely
to their lovers. I, who am their servitor, would not dare but to obey
them, lest I be deprived of their service. JD 286
The idea of verities or t r ut hs coming as lovely virgins is a
very old one. It goes back to Greek mythology and furt her.
Swedenborg had had a classical education and knew this.
The image combines t rut h and feeling into one. These vestal
virgins were within. He was speculating on how one could
have one of these women; they coul dn' t be bought. More-
over, they are not to be seen as just low, sexual seducers
there is a real danger that these virgins will be misunder-
stood. The real secret is simple: they give themselves freely
to their lover. Swedenborg acknowledged that he was their
servant and lover. He could but obey them. The earlier strug-
gle with women-sex-feeling-corporeal thoughts was now re-
solved. He had found wonder in himself that combined truth
and deep feeling. He was a servant of this wonder. All the
rest of his writing combined intense feeling and truth, a
central theme running all through his discoveries of heaven
and hell. He could not have penetrated furt her unless he had
truly accepted his own feeling side.
Many will thinkand indeed a Jungian analyst expressed
itthat Swedenborg had not really accepted his feeling
side.
14
It was too constrained into vestal virgins, lovely re-
pressed images. This is not the usual way of accepting and
acting out feelings. I believe firmly that in dealing with the
private matters of another man' s inner life we should try to
understand and accept him on his own terms. For instance,
this analyst examined the Journal and asked if Swedenborg
had become integrated in Jungian terms. It did not matter
in the least to Swedenborg whether he had become inte-
grated. He was looking for and finding God. This was his
whole purpose and the whole measure of success. Also, some
would suspect that he merely dodged and displaced his sex-
ual needs by this talk of verities and virgins. Swedenborg
chose his own values. He decided to block the lowest bodily
expression of feeling that he might find feeling on the highest
possible level. This was his choice and where he succeeded.
All his subsequent writings were strongly colored by feeling.
It seems that it only gradually dawned on Swedenborg that
his quest for God demanded that he change internally. The
early Swedenborg could only see God as a rather remote,
cold intellectual theology. To truly see God the whole in-
wardness of Swedenborg had to be opened and intensified.
He had to be instructed in the inner, subtle, rich language of
feeling-image-symbolism. The whole feeling side of him had
to be awakened and take a position superior to intellect.
Hence, in the image above, he is the servant of the virgins,
who happily give themselves just to lovers. These were the
major changes in him as he went within. One minor conflict
was that the inner wanted to call him away from his scientific
preoccupation. At first he kept relating inner imagery to his
scientific work. But he began to see that the inner carried a
larger message. The inner described him as very swift (in-
deed, he produced scientific work at lightning speed), but at
great cost. He had so much invested in the scientific effort
that it took something like a year for the inner to pull him
from this preoccupation. Though, for a time, he tried to use
the inner processes to gain time for his scientific work, the
inner hammered him out of this preconception. The real
issue became his relationship to the inner and how well he
understood and accepted its trends.
The changes in Emanuel Swedenborg illustrate the usual
effects of the successful journey within. The former habitual
standpoint of consciousness (in his case hyperintellectual-
ism) encounters its opposite (feeling). The conscious orienta-
tion misunderstands its opposite. Swedenborg, for instance,
at first thought the inner was commenting on and assisting
his scientific work. As the encounter with the opposite in-
creases there is considerable storm, fear, and vascillation on
the part of the habitual consciousness. Gradually these oppo-
site values mix (i.e., intellect becomes more feelingful and
feeling becomes more rational). The encounter resolves into
a new standpoint for consciousness that combines these op-
posite values. In Swedenborg' s case this union is illustrated
by the productive union of feeling and thought through all
his later works. This new standpoint of consciousness is
symbolized by his comments on his being a servant of the
virgins. The result of the journey within is a fundamental
broadening of the individual' s values and perspective that
takes account of what used to be habitually overlooked and
discounted. Whereas he habitually saw everything in intel-
lectual terms, the inner represented his scientific work as a
load of rubbish the poor man was pulling. The new viewpoint
was contained in the very feelingful symbolism he came to
appreciate.
His prior religious training and experience actually served
him well. He sought God above all else and believed that
God could show from within, placing him in a respectful
supplicant position. Forces that would terrify a nonreligious
man he could meet with and accept easily. At the same time
his religion was not naive. There were other spirits within as
well, and he had to sort out their quality and usefulness. He
suspected his ignorance and unworthiness in relation to these
inner forces. He easily accepted rather disparaging criticism
from the unconscious. The sense of his unworthiness and
childlike understanding deepened as he went within, until he
described himself as being wet-nursed like an infant. This
attitude toward his own lowliness enabled him to move faster
in this realm. The Journal of Dreams pretty well covers his
personal analysis, yet it covers only a period of seven months.
Toward the end of the Journal his dreams have a soaring
quality. He is dealing with great forces. All bodes well.
I saw a great king; it was the King of France, who went about
without a suite and in such lowly estate that he could not be
recognized as a king. There was one with me who did not seem
willing to acknowledge him as king, but I said that he is of such
a character as to care nothing for it. He was very courteous towards
all, without distinction, and spoke also with me. As he left he was
still without a suite and took upon himself the burdens of others,
and carried as it were a load of clothes; but later he came into a
very different company, where there was much more magnificent
estate. Afterwards I saw the queen; a chamberlain then came and
bowed before her, and she also made just as deep a reverence, and
there was nothing of pride in her. JD 274275
The king he related directly to Christ. It is possible in this
stage to become overinflated by identifying with the good
forces within. Characteristically Swedenborg identified most
with lowly parts of dreams. The king had to be the Christ
who moved inauspiciously among men and carried their bur-
den. An earlier dream had Swedenborg carrying rags, here
it is Christ. The great feminine verity is also present as the
queen, but she too acts without pride. Swedenborg himself
was rapidly becoming unprideful. That the king was not fully
known means that Swedenborg himself didn' t know or fully
recognize the Christ yet.
There followed a dream with a very intimate playfulness
between Christ and Swedenborg.
It seemed as if it were Christ Himself, with whom I associated
as with another person, without ceremony. He borrowed a little
money from another person, about five pounds. I was vexed be-
cause he did not borrow from me. I took up two pounds, but it
seemed to me that I dropped one of them, and likewise the other
one. He asked what it was. I said that I had found two, and that
one of them might have been dropped by Him. I handed them over,
and He accepted. In such an innocent manner we seemed to live
together, which was a state of innocence. JD 276
At this time Swedenborg started work on The Worship and
Love of God (in later years he didn' t seem to think much of
this unusual work). It was as though he wanted to celebrate
his new way of feeling and understanding. The book was very
unlike anything he had ever done before. It was an epic
poem, a youthful celebration. He allowed his inner feeling
and imagination to burst forth in a colorful description of the
creation of the universe and of man. It presaged much of
what he was to find later in the Bible. He was free of the
labored, tight, intellectual way in which he had always func-
tioned in the past. Early in the writing of this book he has
this short dream, which very much describes the book. "It
seemed as if a sky-rocket burst above me, shedding a mass
of sparks of beautiful fire. It means, perhaps, love for what
is high" (JD 285).
Notice in what follows how clear feeling is and how it
combines with understanding and what is elevated. The fol-
lowing from The Worship and Love of God (paragraphs 111-
112) described Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They
are about to begin their married life. Try to visualize the
scenes presented with their rich imagery.
When now she was left alone to her only one, in order that they
might pass pleasantly the intermediate time until evening, for the
sun was still equidistant from its rising and its setting, the bride led
about her bridegroom by the hand through her natal grove and its
magnificent palestra and scenes, for it was like the most pleasant
theatre of the orb. They met nothing which did not fill all the senses
with the pleasantness of beauty, and at the same time everything
gave opportunity for conversation and turned this first experience
of their lives into intimacy; from which the youth could not but
turn the conversation to the testification of his love. For all things
were in vernal flower and genial sport, and as it were enticed the
pledges of union with the love which burned to hasten the unition
of the associate mind. Everything was auspicious, heaven itself
favoring; wherefore no delay interposed until the bride also burned
with a like torch of mutual love and declared herself as favorable
and pleased at the coming of her bridegroom, for which favor he
humbly gave thanks and declared her to be his one only delight in
the world, the beauty and the crown of his life which, placed upon
his head by the heavenly ones, he accepted as a bond to his fidelity.
Thus there was consent by both, and a covenant, which they also
confirmed by mutual kisses. The love thence conceived and born
grew and slowly became a flame. For in that most perfect state of
their minds' life a pure innocence with delights most sweet and
affecting to this new born infancy nourished and incited this love.
From these auspicious beginnings a new condition of life, distinct
from the former and not hitherto perceived, entered into both;
namely, nothing presented to sense smiled upon and was pleasing
to one which did not also affect the mind of the other; and thus
from consent their gladness was united and exalted; so that the vein
of all delights inflowed into a heart as it were united, but divided
into two chambers. There it joined itself into a common stream
(each part of) which did not sweetly taste its own pleasure without
at the same time tasting also that of the other.
In the early morn, when Aurora sent forth on high into the
hemisphere of heaven the rays of the rising sun, like arrows tinged
with gold, they both awoke at the same time from a most sweet
sleep in the conjugial couch which they had shared; for a kind of
heavenly lightning glanced over their eyes, driving away rest and
drawing the attention of both away from each other and to itself.
There appeared something in a middle region of heaven which was
to display and signify the universe with its destinies and inmost
certainties; this presented itself to the sight of both as in clear
daylight.
First: There shone forth a Centre of Dazzling Light, of such
infinite brightness that the solar flames, radiated from Aurora,
retired into shade, and the glowing torches of the constellations
immediately disappeared. Thence also the eyes of both began to
blink so that they were altogether compelled to close them with
their lids; but nevertheless the splendor shone so clearly that it
flashed through to the purest points of the fibres. This Centre so
poured forth Its Light through the universe that its terminations
or ends vanished from the sight, and then, because of the incompre-
hensibility, a blackish stupor was poured forth into the spheres of
all the senses.
Secondly; Round about this Most Bright and Spacious Centre
there appeared to be produced a Border, purple from brilliancy,
but flamy, glittering with a transparent beauty, tinged with a
Tyrian hue, a circle of gems. This was flowing about into perpetual
orbits, in number like those of an endless Meander. The orbits
gyrated in perennial courses and revolved their ends from firsts to
lasts and when they had revolved insinuated them again in firsts.
The gyres were constant, but because they entered into and receded
from each other, the sight following them was lecf astray, although
the revolutions of all flowed and reflowed most uniformly. This
border and its meandering banks were crowned by most beautiful
faces and forms of bodies the foreheads of which were encircled by
gems like little stars, which were also surrounded by a yellow
border. All the forms resembled the first-born and his most beauti-
ful companion and represented loves like them in the beautiful
couch in which they reclined.
Swedenborg' s feeling and imagery burst forth, presenting
symbols and symbols within symbols growing, comprehend-
ing all. The inner process predicted this book would be writ-
ten and probably had a hand in it. My best guess is that the
inner felt that Swedenborg badly needed to practice the ex-
pression of this inner feeling symbolism. The book was prac-
tice. Yet hidden in its rich imaginative symbolism is almost
every idea he was to discover later. The book was practice
in a new way of living and experiencing, practice he needed.
Yet it was not based on any direct experience, so he counts
it a youthful exuberant work.
Essentially Swedenborg had finished the self-analysis and
inner changes he inadvertantly undertook when he went
within to find the psyche, or soul. His real aim was finding
God, the highest and most useful of all the verities. Inner
psychic/spiritual visionary experience was now possible in
almost any sphere or sense. Most of it still occurred near
sleep, but he was also having photisms, or the guiding flame,
in the daytime. He also seemed to have tremendously en-
riched imagery and presentiments of new t rut hs at any time
of day. Exploration of the hypnogogic state and the yogic
meditation he used tended to change even waking conscious-
ness.
At this point Swedenborg was a scientist who had really
opened a whole new sphere. The direction he should take
from now on was not clear to him. He prayed for guidance,
and within a few months, the guidance came. The same spirit
in which Swedenborg tried to master the world of science he
carried into his psychological/spiritual explorations. The in-
ner struck him down for this before more was shown him.
I was in London and dined rather late at the inn where I was
in the habit of dining, and where I had my own room. My thoughts
were engaged on the subject we have been discussing. I was hungry
and ate with a good appetite. Towards the close of the meal I
noticed a sort of dimness before my eyes; this became denser, and
I then saw the floor covered with horrid crawling reptiles, such as
snakes, frogs, and similar creatures. I was amazed; for I was per-
fectly conscious, and my thoughts were clear. At last the darkness
increased still more; but it disappeared all at once, and I then saw
a man sitting in the corner of the room; as I was then alone, I was
very much frightened at his words, for he said: "Eat not so much."
All became black again before my eyes, but immediately it cleared
away, and I found myself alone in the room. Docs I, p. 35
Finally the visionary tendency broke into his waking life. It
was frightening. He had overindulged in eating, and the
message seemed to scourge him for this. But I agree with
Acton that this too is probably symbolic.
15
The symbol is
appropriate, for he probably felt guilty for having eaten so
much. But the incident began with his thinking of the recent
conversation downstairs. He was thinking from self and in-
dulging himself too much. Darkness grew and there were
crawly things all over the floor. It was like a warning. Don' t
eatthinkindulge yourself so much or you will make
darkness and horror. He recalled this incident years later
when talking to a friend. He associated this with the idea of
people who thought so much that they led themselves astray.
"We must not, by our own power and by own intelligence,
begin to doubt the heavenly truths which are revealed to us.
. . . You are well aware how often it has happened, that
students and especially theologians, who unnecessarily in-
dulged too much in speculations, have lost their understand-
i ng" (Docs I, p. 35). Hence Swedenborg, the master of all the
sciences, was put down for presuming to figure out this inner
world. But the vision returned.
Such an unexpected terror hastened my return home; I did not
let the landlord notice anything; but I considered well what had
happened, I could not look upon it as a mere matter of chance, or
as if it had been produced by a physical cause.
I went home; and during the same night the same man revealed
himself to me again, but I was not frightened now. He then said
that he was the Lord God, the Creator of the world, and the
Redeemer, and that he had chosen me to explain to men the
spiritual sense of the Scripture, and that He Himself would explain
to me what I should write on this subject; that same night were
opened to me so that I became thoroughly convinced of their
reality, the worlds of spirits, heaven, and hell, and I recognized
there many acquaintances of every condition in life. From that day
I gave up the study of all worldly science, and laboured in spiritual
things, according as the Lord had commanded me to write. After-
wards the Lord opened, daily very often, my bodily eyes, so that,
in the middle of the day I could see into the other world, and in
a state of perfect wakefulness converse with angels and spirits.
Docs I, pp. 35-36
In another place the man he had seen was described as "in
imperial purple and in majestic light" (Docs II, p. 426).
The last obstacle to the personal changes needed in Swe-
denborg was removed. He could not presume by his own
intelligence to deduce anything of this new realm. He would
be shown; he was to be guided from within. The long effort
of the inner to call him away from science was complete. He
didn' t even finish The Worship and Love of God, which he
had been working on. The personal changes required in him
were now complete. He had broken through the personal
inner world. The rest of his work would describe what he felt
was beyond. The man who was slapped down for presuming
too much with his intellect turned out to be a very faithful
recorder of heaven and hell and all the universes beyond
man. His outer life was so sane and normal that it was many
years before anyone knew that he also walked in heaven and
hell.
Swedenborg took this direct commission quite seriously.
He turned to master the Bible in order to show its inner
meanings to the world. This meant years of quiet scholar-
ship. There would be no more publications for a while. He
perfected his biblical Hebrew and Greek, for he wanted to see
the original words themselves. His style was to develop his
own indexes and rely on these.
There began to come from his pen an eight-volume work,
The Word Explained, an exposition of the inner meanings in
the Bible. The scholar can find in it the beginnings of what
was later to be his full understanding. Though he intended
it for publication, his interest waned and it was only pub-
lished after his death by his followers. This work was part of
his exhaustive study of the Bible, where he found some of the
same symbolism he had found in inner states. Sprinkled here
and there are references to spiritual experiences. There are
curious references to automatic writing (WE 459, 1150).
Apparently he felt his hand seized and he wrote things of
biblical figures that he didn' t even approve of. He was
becoming acquainted with what will be described later as
lower-order spirits. The automatic writing seemed to have
appeared for just a while; it disappeared when he didn' t trust
it as a process. He was learning in both the spiritual and
biblical realms. The Word Explained is not really worth
reading, except by scholars who want to trace his develop-
ment. Its initial insights were later to be replaced by the
Arcana Coelestia, his mat ure masterwork.
A year after his commission by the Lord in 1745 he began
his five-volume Spiritual Diary. These are his running notes
on experiences in the spiritual world. It was not intended for
publication either and appeared posthumously, a much more
valuable work, than The Word Explained.
Early quotations will suggest the kind of experiences he
was having.
During the night between October 29 and 30, 17471 had a dream
from which I awoke repeatedly; for evil spirits kept on infesting me,
so much so that I could not continue to sleep. After awakening
several times . . . I was seized with a trembling throughout the
whole body, and I manifestly perceived that a certain column, as
it were, surrounded me; I could sensibly perceive it. I awaited what
would thence happen. . . . It was continually insinuated into my
thought . . . that this was the "brazen wall," as it is called (Jer. i
18; xv. 20), by which the faithful are defended from the infestation
of evil spirits.. . . afterwards, when I was in hell, and indeed in the
body as I am today, a certain one of those miserable beings was
permitted to speak to me, which he also did for some considerable
time. . . . They complained of those free spirits or "furies," who
as yet lodge in the third heaven, that they are the ones who torment
them; for their desire is to torment every man and spirit whatso-
ever. In a word, their torments are unspeakable; but I was allowed
to encourage them with some hope. SD 228
There was a certain soul with evil spirits around him, who, as
I can surmise, never supposed otherwise than that he thought and
did each and all things of himself. In order that it might appear
clearly before the souls and spirits standing around how such a soul
is led, and that he speaks and says nothing whatever except what
inflows through the spirits who are around him, and invisible to
him, there was dictated a merely trifling expression, andas usu-
ally happens in the spiritual heavenit appeared and was heard.
This word, having been sent down, rolled about among the spirits,
and thus came to all who were speaking; and the soul in the midst
thus supposed that he spoke from himself, nor could he know
otherwise. SD 315
Today, some of those who were in heaven were desirous of
knowing what heavenly joy is. It was therefore also granted them,
by the mercy of God Messiah, to feel the heavenly joy to their
inmost degree, even to such an extent that they could bear it no
more. SD 314
In this way he systematically kept track of spiritual experi-
ences for nineteen years. The Spiritual Diary is a jungle of
visionary experiences. It is almost too raw, too rich, too full
of odd discoveries, clues to the arcane, and the tangle of
Worlds Wi thi nWorlds:
Heaven and Hell
Swedenborg' s claim that he was permitted to walk in heaven
and hell was one of his most controversial claims.
I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly
speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and
many will say that it is all a phantasy, others that I relate such
things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objec-
tions. But by all this I am not deterred, for I have seen, I have
heard, I have felt. AC 68
Only his experience of t he highest heavens and of the
lowest hells seemed limited. Yet it may have been only that
these were more difficult to describe. His experiences of
heaven and hell first came in trance states. Later it became
easier for him to explore these areas even in the midst of
ordinary daily activities. Aft er his introduction into these
regions there followed four years of exploration with no
publications. The first work that came from the mature
spiritual explorer was the great Arcana Coelestia. Some thir-
teen years after the opening of the spiritual worlds to him,
Heaven and Hell appeared. Though references to the nature
of the worlds beyond this one are scattered through all his
works from the Arcana on, Heaven and Hell was a mature
pulling together and summarizing of the worlds beyond.
(Incidentally, all his great works from the Arcana on were
published anonymously, until close to the end of his life. His
great works came from the pen of an unknown servant of the
Lord.) The heavy intellectual style of his scientific works was
gone. He spoke in a seasoned, balanced, unassuming, and
very direct way of his amazing discoveries. There was no
speculation, no doubt, no ambiguity. As well as he could, in
relatively simple Latin prose, he set forth what he knew and
experienced. Yet it becomes apparent that he was speaking
of new dimensions of human experience. Not all sensed the
essential newness and vast scope of implications of what he
said.
At the beginning of Heaven and Hell he spoke of those
who doubted or denied the existence of heaven and hell.
The man of the church at this day knows scarely anything of
heaven and hell, or of his life after death, although these things are
described in the Word. Indeed, many who are born within the
church deny them, saying in their hearts, "Who has come from
that world and told us?" Lest, therefore, such a denial, which
prevails especially among those who have much worldly wisdom,
should also infect and corrupt the simple in heart, and the simple
in faith, it has been permitted me to associate with angels, and to
talk with them as with man; and also to see what is in the heavens,
and what is in the hells, and this for thirteen years; and to describe
them from things seen and heard in the hope that ignorance may
be enlightened, and unbelief dispelled. HH 1
To my knowledge there is nothing comparable to this
account in the whole of world literature. Dant e described
heaven and hell, but his was a work of fiction based on legend
and myth. Many religions imply something of heaven and
hell. If one gathered together all the references in the Bible,
the result would be a sketchy and ambiguous picture. This
is also true of the ot her world religions. Myt h and legend
would produce an unclear and ambiguous picture. Sweden-
borg' s description is fundamentally unlike all these. One
cannot accuse him of simply inventing it, based on myt h and
religious references. His is fundamentally different, and yet
in accord with the few fragmentary references in the Bible.
It is the essential nat ure of the heaven and hell he described
that is so different as to require some readjustment in our
thinking about these regions. Spiritualists claim to contact
the spiritual world. Even supposing that some do, it appears
they are contacting only the lowest level of the worlds Swe-
denborg describedand this lowest level can be quite decep-
tive, as Swedenborg was to make clear.
Since few others, if any, have visited heaven and hell while
living on earth, Swedenborg' s account appears beyond confir-
mation. Yet there are several kinds of confirmation that tend
to substantiate his claim though they fall short of a personal
visit. For one, he was able to bring back information from
these worlds that seems to lie beyond the bounds of what he
could ordinarily know. These somewhat miraculous confir-
mations will be described in Chapter 7. Second, people with
psychotic hallucinations describe experiences remarkably
similar to Swedenborg' s, to be covered in Chapt er 6. The
implication is that some part of madness consists of being
thrust into an experience of worlds beyond this one, experi-
ences that the disturbed individual neither wants nor can use.
A third confirmation is that nothing that Swedenborg found
was contrary to biblical revelation. In fact, he illuminated
passages of Scripture that otherwise seem merely quaint or
obscure. The final, most critical confirmation is internal. It
will be seen that Swedenborg' s heaven and hell echoed much
of the innermost aspects of normal human experience. It was
meant to. We are the image of all t hat is. This is really the
most substantial, existential, and immediate of t he confirma-
tions. Should t here be no heaven or hell what s oever , Sweden-
borg
,
s account woul d remai n a most val uabl e a n d sensitive
pi ct ure of t he internal state of man. These conf i r mat i ons will
become clearer as we progress.
In a way Emanuel Swedenborg' s br e a kt hr ough t o heaven
and hell was not a compl et e surprise. He had h a d t he experi -
ence of the presence of spirits for some year s. Earl i er we
demonst r at ed t hat any person can have t he exper i ence of
faint voices i n t he hypnogogic state, and whi l e ma ny have
had this; experience, few have made t he ef f or t t o r emember
or record it. Even t hough Swedenborg lived i n an age t hat
gave ma r e credence t o spirits t han t he pr esent , he was sl ow
t o come t o this explanation. Af t er numer ous dr eams , visions,
t empt at i ons, double t hought s, and ot her s t r ange experi ences,
he makes one reference late in t he Journal of Dreams (247)
t hat he tthinks a lot of these experiences can be account ed f or
by t he presence of spirits. Thi s woul d me a n t hat t he st r ange,
symbol i c words heard i n t he hypnogogi c st at e act ual l y reflect
t he presience of spirits. Thi s does not deny t hei r al so bei ng
aut osymbol i c represent at i ons of i nner st at es. Af t e r t hi r t een
years of j ourneyi ng i n t he worl ds beyond t hi s one, he fi nal l y
pulled t oget her his findings in Heaven and Hell, one of hi s
greatest and most popul ar works. Before expl or i ng t hi s wor k,
I would like to describe briefly Swedenbor g' s st yl e of wri t i ng.
The Moiod of Understandi ng
The rmain cont ent of Swedenborg' s t heol ogi cal wri t i ngs is
not i mmedi at el y apparent . He was al ways s peaki ng of i nner
states o!f man. If one is not pr epar ed to under s t and i nner
states, hiis writings can easily seem abst r act , dul l , and pedan-
tic.
Swedtenborg wrot e i n Lat i n t wo cent ur i es ago. He t ended
t o use Kong sentences, cr ammi ng as mu c h as he coul d i nt o
each one. They are too rich to be read hastily and need to
be broken down into pieces. If you are to grasp the reach of
his sentences, you may have to pause clause by clause, sen-
tence by sentence, to get the sweep of his meaning. Sweden-
borg' s translators have been his followers and tended to keep
close to his style, creating heavy sentences in translation,
only in a few instances taking the liberty to lighten up his
sentence structure. Swedenborg' s writings are weighted with
meaning, and need to be taken by pieces, slowly. An exam-
pie: "Love dwells in its affections like a lord in his domain
and a king in his realm; its domain or realm is over the things
of the mind, that is, of the will and understanding and thence
of the body" ( DP 106). This one sentence covers the whole
sequence of events from the inmost love, to its affections or
feelings, to the will and understanding, to control over the
body. The reach of ideas is rather great for one sentence. He
used the symbolism of his time (lord, king, domain). He was
saying that inmost love is the force that conditions all aspects
of mind and actionsan example of Swedenborg speaking of
inner states. The reader gradually becomes familiar with his
concepts. Elsewhere he said that what love leads into is
affection (AC 3938), or the whole affective and emotional
basis of mind. What an individual loves is then the root and
source of all other aspects of mind and action.
Not only was Swedenborg almost always dealing with
inner states, he was also always speaking existentially. The
"love that dwells in its affections" sounds like an abstract
idea, but it isn't. He was speaking of his own experience and
asked that the reader confirm it in his own experience. At no
point did Swedenborg ask that the reader take anything on
faith. Elsewhere he explored the question of how thoroughly
these things can be checked. He disparaged memory, or
intellectual knowledge. The real is what a man does.
If anyone's memory and understanding is such that he can learn
and comprehend all the truths of heaven and the church, yet has
no diesire to do any of them, do not people say of him, he is an
intellligent man, but he is so wicked? Indeed, do they not add, he
is alll the more deserving of punishment? This shows that anyone
who! separates the spiritual from what is moral and civil, is not a
spiriitual man, or a moral man, nor a civil man. From experience:
thene are such people in the world; I have talked with some after
theiir decease, and found that they knew everything in The Word,
and accordingly knew many truths, and believed that on this ac-
count they would shine in heaven as the stars; however, when their
life \was examined, it was found to be merely corporeal and worldly
. . . and each one became his own Will, and they were driven into
hell.. DLDW 149
The first truths with a man called faith, are not yet living, for they
are (things of memory only and, from the memory, of thinking and
speaiking, adjoined to his natural love which, from its desire to
know, imbibes them readily, and, from its desire to boast itself on
account of its knowledge or its erudition, summons them from the
mennory . . . to give utterance to them. These truths are first made
livinig . . . by a life in conformity with them. DLDW 152
Even though Swedenborg was always dealing with inner
states, these only became true or real when they reflect in
act i on. What at first seems abstract is very existential, real,
act ual . Because of this concreteness it can and should be
checked by the experience of others. Committing it to mem-
ory isn' t enough. If the reader thinks of Swedenborg as al-
ways dealing with real, confirmable human experience it will
swetep away the obscuring clouds of the abstract. It only
loolks abstract. He was always talking of existencehis and
youirssince all human existence is essentially the same.
16
Unl ess you are interested in inner states and ultimate
knowledge, Swedenborg' s writings will not attract you. We
can only perceive, understand, and empathize with what
echioes within ourselves. His writings are full of feeling; he
repeatedly speaks of good and love, essentially feelingful
conicepts.
Fi nal l y the reader will discover that Swedenborg was try-
ing to describe all that can be described. Only in speaking of
some aspects of God or of the highest angels would he break
off and say it is ineffable, more than can be said. Until then
he described all there was: the inner and outer of man, this
world, the worlds beyond this one, even other creatures on
other planets. He wanted to understand it all, and he came
close to that goal. Also, the reader should recognize Sweden-
borg' s tendency to deal with psychological and spiritual mat-
ters as a single realm. It is our past teachings that have
separated these. Man' s mind or experience is his participa-
tion in the spiritual. These two are always dealing with life,
human existence. The spiritual is the inner and ultimate
aspect of the psychological. To enter the spiritual world, or
be in the spirit, one needs to go inward into the roots of
human experience. Because the innermost is the spiritual
realm, it is possible to enter the spiritual realm through inner
exploration. We won' t laboriously label what is psychologi-
cal or spiritual in his works since these are one realmlife
itself.
With these preliminary understandings, we can summa-
rize Swedenborg' s findings on his great psychological/
spiritual journey.
The Nature of Heaven
Swedenborg' s description of the multiplicity of worlds or
levels of being represented by the concepts of heaven and hell
is so fundamentally different from legend and myth that it
takes some readjustment of thinking to understand his
findings. Fundamentally, a man's life in these other worlds is
based on what he really is. In the present world a person
explores, develops, and forms himself. We are quite capable
of deceiving ourselves and others. In the worlds beyond this
one people are sorted out according to what they really are.
They move toward the essential reality of their existence. Thus
the worlds beyond this one are even more essentially psycho-
logical and spiritual than this one.
Swedenborg' s pervasive emphasis on the most essential
nat ure of a person gives his whole description of other worlds
a surprising quality. In almost every aspect of his description
he moves away from petty externals and deals with essen-
tials. He is dealing with the quality of the innermost heaven
at the same time he is dealing with the innermost quality of
mind. The reader is jarred into thinking of the real quality
of his life. The account begins to seem credible from this
aspect alone, so that the reader has to stretch his concep-
tions, and deal with the essential nature of his life, even to
begin to understand the worlds beyond this one.
Swedenborg' s account begins with the issue of what a man
really is. The two essential functions of a man are under-
standing and willing. These psychological functions are the
operations of his soul, or spirit, or life, for the spirit is the
life. Man is a life or spirit acting within a body, a necessary
instrument so the spirit can come to earth and act in the
natural world.
Every one who weighs the subject aright may know that the
body does not think, because it is material, but the soul, because
it is spiritual. The soul of man . . . is his spirit, for this is altogether
immortal. It is the spirit which thinks in the body, for it is spiritual,
and the spiritual receives what is spiritual, and lives spiritually,
which is to think and to will. . . . [The body of man] is adjoined
to the spirit, in order that the spirit of man may live and perform
uses in the natural world. . . .
Since every thing which lives in the body, and from life acts and
feels, is solely of the spirit, and not of the body, it follows that the
spirit is the real man . . . for whatever lives and feels in man is of
his spirit, and everything in man, from the head to the sole of his
foot, lives and feels. Hence it is that when the body is separated
from its spirit, which is called dying, the man still remains, and
lives. HH 432-433
That man is a spirit as to his interiors, may be evident from this,
that after the body is separated, which takes place when he dies,
the man still lives as before. That I might be confirmed in this, I
have been permitted to speak with almost all whom I had ever
known in the life of the body; with some for hours, with others for
weeks and months, and with others for years, and this principally
in order that I might have proof, and that I might testify it.
HH 437
When we say that man is a spirit as to his interiors, we mean,
as to those things which are of his thought and will, for these are
the interiors themselves, which cause man to be man, and as his
interiors are, such is the man. HH 444
Swedenborg had finally found the soul. His anatomical
work was unnecessary. The soul is the life, the spirit, the
inner of man' s experience. The quality of this life is the
quality of the man. Swedenborg rejected airy, abstract ideas
of the soul that are not experienced.
[After death] it is believed that he will then be a soul, and the
common idea of a soul is that it consists of something like ether
or air; thus that it is a breath, such as a man breathes out when
he dies. It is believed, however, that this retains the essential ele-
ments of his life, but is devoid of sight like that of the eye, hearing
like that of the ear, and speech like that of the mouth. Yet the fact
is that after death a man is none the less a man; and so fully is he
a man that he does not know but that he is still living in the former
world. He sees, hears and speaks; he walks, runs and sits; he lies
down, sleeps and wakes; he eats and drinks; he enjoys the delights
of married life, as he did in the former world; in a word, he is in
all respects a man. Thus it is evident that death is not an extinction
but a continuation of life, and merely a transition from one state
to another. TCR 792
Angels guided Swedenborg through the experience of dy-
ing several times so he could know what it is like. The
separation from the body comes soon after t he breathing and
the heartbeat stop. The person gradually awakens in the
inner spiritual world. He has arrived at the threshold of the
other worlds. Because the person still feels and senses things
and awakens in a world much like what he is accustomed to,
he may at first feel he hasn' t died. The first state of man after
death is the state of exteriors. Everything is the same, people
are the same, and he lives as before.
The first state of man after death is like his state in the world,
because he is still in like manner in externals. He has therefore a
similar face, a similar speech, and a similar disposition . . . so that
he knows no other than that he is still in the world, unless he pays
attention to the things that he meets with, and to what was said
by the angels when he was raised upthat he is now a spirit.
HH 493
The closest analogy would be to the world of dreams. It
too seems like the plain, ordinary, real world until one looks
closer and pays attention to the differences. Like dreams, he
is now in a world of representations. That is, he is beginning
to meet his own nature in the things, people, setting that
surrounds him. This gradually becomes more apparent.
Very commonly a husband and wife come together and con-
gratulate each other, and also continue together for a time, longer
or shorter according to their delight in living together in the world.
If true marriage love . . . has not joined them together, they are
separated after a while. But if the minds of the partners were
discordant, and were inwardly averse to each other, they burst
forth into open enmity, and some times into actual fighting.
HH 494
Thi s beginning level certainly has a familiar ring to it.
They are instructed regarding the spiritual world, and, of
course, most conclude they will go to heaven! This is a
threshold world that Swedenborg called the world of spirits.
It is essentially a place where the spirit of a person is opened
to its real nature. It becomes no longer possible to act one
way and be another. The person pauses at this threshold
world long enough to become one with his real nature. This
is the judgment. The person begins to discover and drift
toward his real nature.
They are therefore instructed by friends concerning the state of
eternal life, and also conducted to various places, and into various
companies, and sometimes into cities, gardens and paradises, and
frequently to magnificent things, because such things delight the
externals, in which they are. They are also by turns led into
thoughts which they had in the life of the body, . . . about heaven
and hell. . . . Almost all of them desire to know whether they shall
come into heaven, and many believe that they shall, because they
led a moral and civil life in the world, not reflecting that both the
wicked and the good lead a similar life outwa! Jly, doing good to
others in the same manner, going to churches, hearing sermons,
and praying; and not knowing at all that outward deeds and out-
ward acts of worship are of no avail, but the internal states from
which the external acts proceed. HH 495
Swedenborg wasn' t trying to scare the reader, he was just
reporting, and that is what makes it more frightening and
convincing. The possibility of cheating one' s way into heaven
dims when the internals are opened up in the second state of
the world of spirits. This is the way the eternal judgment
comes.
Man, now a spirit, is let into the state of his interiors, or into the
state of the interior will and its thought, in which he had been in
the world when left to himself to think freely and without restraint.
He falls into this state without being aware of it, just as in the
world, when he withdraws the thought which is nearest to speech,
or from which he speaks, towards his interior thought, and abides
in that. When therefore, the man, now a spirit is in this state, he
is in himself, and in his very life; for to think freely from his own
affection is the very life of man, and is himself. HH 502
When a spirit is in the state of his interiors, it manifestly appears
of what quality the man was in himself when in the world. . . . He
who was interiorly good in the world, now acts rationally and
wisely, and indeed more wisely than in the world, because he is
released from connection with the body, and therefore from earthly
things, which caused obscurity and interposed, as it were, a cloud.
But he who was in evil in the world, now acts foolishly and in-
sanely, more insanely, indeed than in the world, because he is in
freedom, and unrestrained. When he lived in the world, he was
sane, in outward appearance, for he thereby feigned himself a
rational man; but when the outward appearance is taken away
from him, his insanities are revealed. A bad man, who outwardly
takes the semblance of good, may be compared to a covered vessel,
bright and polished on the outside, and covered with a lid, in which
is concealed filth of all kinds; according to the Lord's declaration,
"Ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear
beautiful, but within are full of dead man's bones, and of all un-
cleanness" (Matt, xxiii, 27). HH 505
A person can even go through the opening of the Book of
Lives in which every detail of the life is reviewed ( HH 463).
Occasionally, Swedenborg said something that sounded
strange until you look at its psychological validity. "When
a man' s acts are discovered to him after death, the angels,
whose duty it is to make the search, look into his face, and
extend their examination through the entire body, beginning
with the fingers of each hand, and thus proceeding through
the whole" ( HH 463).
Swedenborg was himself surprised at this procedure. It
had to be explained. Everything a person has done is written
in the nervous system. The fingertips represent actual deeds.
Hence the examination is begun there and works toward the
interiors. This is another aspect of a person discovering what
he actually is. The opening of the Book of Lives is a detailed
review of everything you have been and done.
The next state after death is one in which a man is in-
structed. He has discovered what he really is, what his real
tendencies are, a somewhat humbling experience. Those who
are self-selecting themselves for heaven wish to know more
of the worlds beyond this one. This need is met by angelic
instruction. Others, when opened, have fallen into their own
grossness. They appear less wise than they did in the world
much like the impressive fellow who shows that he is a fool
when drunk. These people close themselves to instruction.
They don' t sense the vast spiritual worlds beyond this one.
They fall into their inner tendencies and drift toward the hell
that matches them.
The distinction between the heavens and the hells is a
critical one that Swedenborg described in many ways. The
attitude that causes a drift t owr j d heaven is in the feeling
that there is a higher power and an effort to relate to it. This
same spirit of humility and respect for the greatness of crea-
tion goes with an effort to be with others and to be of some
use. By this a person faces toward heaven. The nat ure of
heaven reflects in Swedenborg' s statement that in heaven the
joy of one is the joy of all. The opposite attitude is to put
down creation and elevate the self. The one bound for hell
serves himself first, last, and foremost. By this he is cut off
from the opening-out possibilities of heaven and becomes
enclosed in concerns for himself over and above others. The
distinction between heaven and hell will become clearer, but
this is the fundamental difference. Heaven must be a very
shared place. Hell is a very cut-off place where each strug-
les against others. Of course, in this world we all experience
both tendencies. How much each individual has adopted a
heaven-like or hell-like approach becomes more manifest as
the essentials of his life are opened. Even in the instruction
of those who have selected themselves for heaven the empha-
sis is on the life, not on memory learning, as is most common
in this world. The following is one of Swedenborg' s many
beautiful passages in which he had a feeling for this essen-
tial quality of heaven. It is a little too rich to grasp all at
once.
Instructions in the heavens differ from instructions on earth in
this respect, that knowledges are not committed to memory, but
to life; for the memory of spirits is in their life, because they receive
and imbibe everything which agrees with their life, and do not
receive, much less imbibe, anything which does not agree with it;
for spirits are affections and therefore in a human form similar to
their affections. HH 517
The knowledge of spirits is in what they do. This is a more
existential or fundamental conception of knowledge than we
are accustomed to. Because it is of the life, they only learn
what they can act on. What their disposition does not permit
them to live out, they do not learn. Essentially, spirits are
affections or feelings, the inner or essential aspects of mind
that underly mere thought or memory. When stripped of the
body and the less essential aspects of mind, these affections
are even more in the form of a man. Oranother way of
saying itthe essential of a person is even more a person.
"This being the case with them, the affection for t rut h is
continually inspired for the sake of the uses of life; for the
Lord provides that everyone should love the uses suited to
his peculiar disposition
5
' ( HH 517).
Use was a fundamental idea with Swedenborg. He said
elsewhere that heaven is a kingdom of uses. Everyone there
does something to contribute to the general good. This is part
of its shared quality and its happiness. Each follows the uses
that reflect his basic disposition. He is then bent for heaven,
as all are who live out their uses. The shared quality of
heaven becomes more apparent in the next lines.
And since all the uses of heaven have reference to the common use,
which is for the Lord's kingdom, for that kingdom is their country,
and since all particular and individual uses are excellent in propor-
tion as they relate more nearly and more fully to the common use,
therefore all particular and individual uses, which are innumerable,
are good and heavenly. Therefore, with every one, the affection for
truth is conjoined so intimately with the affection for use, that they
make one; by this means, truth is implanted in use, so that the
truths which they learn are truths of use. In this manner angelic
spirits are instructed, and prepared for heaven. The affection for
truth which regards use is insinuated by various means, most of
which are unknown in the world; chiefly by representatives of uses
which in the spiritual world are presented in a thousand ways, and
with such delights and pleasures that they penetrate the spirit from
the interiors of his mind to the exteriors of his body, and thus effect
the whole. Hence the spirit becomes, as it were, his own use; and
therefore when he enters his own society, into which he is initiated
by instruction, he is in his own use. From these things it may be
evident, that knowledges, which are external truths, do not in-
troduce any one to heaven, but life itself, which is a life of use.
HH 517
And so the person, having beerene his most essential self
and use, joins a society in heaven. He joins the multitude of
others, friends, who are in essentially the same use.
There are three levels of heaven beyond this intermediate
world of spirits: the natural heaven, the spiritual heaven, and
the celestial heaven. All the spirits in these heavens or king-
doms were once persons in the world. In many respects the
life of heaven cannot be understood as a simple extension of
life in the world. Much of the character of the spiritual world
is more nearly an extension of our inner experience. For
instance, there is no time or space in heaven as we know it.
In fact, Swedenborg said that ideas of time and space could
impede our understanding of heaven. What corresponds to
time is change of state. This is very like psychological time,
which is more an inner state. It is much freer than the
inexorable clock time of our world. A pleasant state seems
short, an unpleasant one long. The endlessly frustrating
dream may have taken a few minutes. A peaceful night' s
sleep can seem like a minute or two. The time of heaven is
the always now time of the inner state.
I was thinking about eternity, and by the idea of time I could
perceive what eternity might be, namely existence without end, but
not what from eternity is, and so not what God had done from
eternity before creation. When anxiety on this account arose in my
mind, I was elevated into the sphere of heaven and thus into that
perception of eternity in which angels are, and then it was made
clear to me that we must not think of eternity from time, but from
state; and then we may perceive what from eternity is, as then
happened to me. HH 167
He then had an ecstatic experience of the whole of creation.
The natural man may suppose that he would have no thought, if
the ideas of time, space and material things, were taken away, for
upon these ideas is founded all men's thought. But let him know,
that the thoughts are limited and confined so far as they partake
of time, space, and matter; and that they are unlimited and ex-
tended, so far as they do not partake of them. . .. Hence the angels
have wisdom, and their wisdom is called incomprehensible, be-
cause it does not fall into such ideas. HH 169
Similarly there is no space in heaven. What corresponds
to distance is the feelings people have for each other. We also
know the experience of being close to some and distant from
others, regardless of the actual distances involved.
They are near to each other who are in similar states, and distant,
who are in dissimilar states; and that spaces in heaven are merely
external states corresponding to internal. From this cause alone the
heavens are distinct from one another, and also the societies of each
heaven, and the individuals in each society. This is also the reason
why the hells are entirely separated from the heavens, for they are
in a contrary state.
From the same cause also, in the spiritual world, one person
becomes present to another provided only he intensely desires his
presence, for thus he sees him in thought, and puts himself in his
state; and conversely, one person is removed from another so far
as he is averse to him. . . .
When also anyone goes from one place to another, whether it is
in his own city, or in the courts, or the gardens, or to others out
of his own society, he arrives sooner when he eagerly desires it, and
later when he does not, the way itself being lengthened or short-
ened according to the desire, although it is the same way. . . . This
may be illustrated by the thoughts of man . . . for what a man
views intently in thought, becomes as it were present to him.
HH 193-196
This inner quality of psychological space/time becomes
even more psychological when Swedenborg reports on how
the external settings of angels are arranged. What the spirit
experiences is a reflection of inner experiences. Things in the
spiritual world can only be seen by spiritual sight. What is
seen and experienced is representative of the inner states.
Spiritually rich inner states reflect in a surrounding that is
gorgeous and rich. Barren inner states reflect in barren sur-
roundings. The spirit experiences what it is. On earth this is
called projection. Our pen ^i ve tendency to see and experi-
ence essentially what reflects ourselves is used in psychologi-
cal projective tests. Asked to describe what is seen in an
amorphous inkblot, people describe things that accurately
reflect their inner nature.
17
Apparently this little appreciated
phenomena is even more accentuated in heaven. Yet it is
already our real tendency to notice and experience in the
world what reflects us inwardly. The thief experiences a
world in which everyone takes what he can get. In the same
setting the artist experiences the beauty of the things around
him. What we encounter in the world reflects our nature.
In all respects heaven resembles life on earth except that
it is more in its essentials. Corresponding to governments on
earth there is government in heaven. But those are given
power who are of use to others. There are buildings, cities,
hills, woods, etc., but these are psychological realities corre-
sponding to inner states. There are meals, but spiritual food
has inner implications for the life and development of in-
dividuals. The garments one finds in the closet reflect
chapges in one' s qualities. Everyone lives in societies of peo-
pie with similar uses and disposition much as we might see
in the Italian or Chinese section of a large city. But there is
a universal language of understanding in heaven.
The speech of spirits with one another is not a speech of words, but
of ideas, such as are those of human thought without words, on
which account it is the universal of all languages. But when they
speak with a man, their speech falls into the words of the man's
language. When I have spoken with spirits about this, it has been
granted me to say that when they are conversing with one another,
they cannot utter even one single word of human language, still less
any name. AC 1876
Some tried to utter our words but found the process of
expelling air too grossly material.
Everyone has work to do. Heaven is not a place of idleness.
Certain spirits from an opinion conceived in the world, believed
heavenly happiness to consist in an idle life in which they would
be served by others . . . since everyone would wish for it, none
would have it. Such a life would not be active but idle, in which
the faculties would become torpid; when yet it may be known to
them that without activity there can be no happiness. . . . It was
afterward shown by many evidences, that angelic life consists in
performing the goods of charity, which are uses.. . . They who had
the idea that heavenly joy consists in a life of indolence, and in
breathing eternal joy in idleness, were allowed some experience of
such a life . . . and they perceived it was most sad. HH 403
Swedenborg described only some of the work performed
in heaven. Each society has a particular function. Some are
involved in religious affairs, others in civil government; still
others instruct children and infants.
These employments of angels are their general employments, but
everyone has his own particular duty, for every general use is
composed of innumerable ones, which are called mediate, minister-
ing and subservient uses. All and each are coordinated and subor-
dinated according to Divine order, and taken together, make and
perfect the general use, which is the common good. HH 392
[A]ngels testified, that in the performance of such good works there
is the fullest freedom, because it proceeds from interior affection,
and is conjoined with ineffable delight. HH 404
How greatthe delight of heaven is, may appear from this
circumstance alone, that it is delightful to all in heaven to com-
municate their delights and blessings to others; and since all in
heaven are of this character, it is plain how immense is the delight
of heaven; for . . . in the heavens there is a communication of all
with each and of each with all. HH 399
It takes little imagination to see how such a social organi-
zation would be heavenly. Swedenborg described the delights
of heaven.
In order that I might know the nature and quality of heaven and
heavenly joy, it has been granted me by the Lord frequently, and for
a long time together, to perceive the delights of heavenly joys.
Therefore, I know them from living experience, but can never
describe them; a few observations, however, may convey some idea
of them. Heavenly joy is an affection of innumerable delights and
joys, which, taken together, present something general, and in these
general things or general affections there are harmonies of innumer-
able affections . . . things innumerable are in it in such order as can
never be described, those innumerable things being such as flow
from the order of heaven. . . . In a word, infinite things arranged in
most perfect order are in every general affection; and not one of
them but lives, and affects the rest from the inmosts, for from
inmosts heavenly joys proceed. HH 413
The immensity of heaven is beyond description for it in-
eludes not only all who have lived on earth but all those from
other planets in the universe as well. Swedenborg affirmed
that he had met others from other planets and that there
were innumerable inhabited planets in the universe. He un-
derlined the diversity of people that made up heaven. In
several places he indicated that endless diversity of people is
part of the beauty of heaven.
.. . when a one is composed of various parts, and the various parts
are in a perfect form, in which each part adjoins itself to the rest
in a series of harmonious agreement, then it is perfect. Now heaven
is a one composed of various parts arranged in the most per-
feet form; for the heavenly form is the most perfect of all forms.
HH 56
The highest or innermost of the three heavens is the
celestial kingdom. It is distinctly and qualitatively different
from the spiritual heaven. The language used is richer and
more ineffable. The light is more intense. It is more in-
terior, a world of affections or feelings. It is the will part of
the heavens, while the spiritual kingdom is the understand-
ing part. The people there are radiant. The highest of them
experience themselves as the will of God. The love that
binds them together is the love of God, whereas the com-
mon love in the spiritual heaven is love of the neighbor.
The angels there are in great innocence and wisdom. Life
and energy flow from the Lord into the celestial heaven,
then into the lower spiritual heaven, and from there into
the outermost heaven. Perfection increases inwardly in all
things.
The angels in the Lord's celestial kingdom far excel in wisdom
and glory the angels who are in His spiritual kingdom, because they
receive the Divine of the Lord more interiorly; for they are in love
to Him, and are therefore nearer and more closely conjoined to
Him. They . . . receive Divine truths immediately into the life, and
not, like the spiritual, first in memory and thought; thus they have
them written in their hearts . .. nor do they ever reason concerning
them whether the truth is so or not.. . . Such angels know at once,
by influx from the Lord, whether the truth which they hear is truth;
for the Lord flows in. HH 25-26
There are some who came from the world and soon find
their place in the celestial heaven. Others.gradually progress
there.
It is worthy of mention, being wholly unknown in the world, that
the states of good spirits and of angels are continually changing and
perfecting, and that they are thus conveyed into the interiors of the
province in which they are, and so into nobler functions. For in
heaven there is a continual purification, and, so to speak, a new
creation; but still the case is such that no angel can possibly attain
absolute perfection even to eternity. The Lord alone is perfect.
AC 4803
It is clear t hat t he progression from t he world of spirits to
t he lowest heaven, to t he spiritual heaven, to t he celestial
heaven forms a graduat ed series of spiritual perfections.
Beyond t hat there is t he Lord, who is t he inmost and highest.
All in heaven see and know t he Lord in t he light in which
they are. could not be otherwise. It is, of course, t rue here
too.
Hell
The tendencies of hell are t he opposite of those in heaven.
Thi s alone causes a fundament al separation of these king-
doms. The general design of heaven dri ft s t oward joining
with, working with, and loving others, which drifts t oward
t he fundament al unity of t he Divine. The general design of
hell is an orientation t oward self over others. This splits
existence apart and causes dissension. We' ve all experienced
both of these tendencies in ourselves, so we have a foretaste
of all f ut ur e worlds.
If a person' s real orientation is t oward self over others, he
will most comfortably dri ft t oward t he company of like per-
sons in hell. In effect, we are j udged by what we have made
of ourselves. There are several aspects of this pri mary orien-
tation for oneself. It may imply an emphasis on personal
comfort , sensory experience, or wealth at t he expense of
others. It may imply a need to gain cont rol over others. It
is often reflected in an irritation over religious matters, or
worse yet, an opposition to the Divine. In all these aspects
this orientation tends to tear them apart from others and
apart from the wonder of creation. Swedenborg casually
mentioned even bishops he had met in hell.
It may not be apparent at first sight why hell exists or is
a necessary reflection of divine love. The Lord might have
designed creation so that everything was good. We would
still distinguish degrees of good and came back toward the
polar opposites of good and evil. Opposites, degrees of differ-
ence, are necessary for there to be understanding. Hell, as an
opposite of heaven, is part of this clarification of creation.
Furthermore, it is part of the range of differences that in-
crease the wonder of creation. Just as different languages,
cultures, styles, ages, circumstances, and faces enrich this
world, hell is part of the enrichment of ultimate possibilities.
But larger than this is the issue of man' s freedom. One
could really question the amount of freedom of choice in-
volved if everyone ended up in heaven. For Swedenborg,
God loved man enough to give him the real freedom to live
well or ill. Further, he said that only choices really made in
freedom count. For this reason he played down the real
miracles he was able to perform. Miracles coerce belief. He
would rather leave belief free to choose. Heaven and hell are
the cosmic polarity of differences that reflect the real gift of
choice. Man designs and eventually comes to the world of his
own choices. Those who go to hell feel better there. It suits
them better than heaven. The opposition and equilibrium of
heaven and hell is a cosmic, ultimate representation of diver-
sity and freedom.
. . . the relation of heaven to hell . . . is like that of two opposites,
which act contrary to each other, from whose action and re-action
results equilibrium in which all things subsist. . . . [I t] is a spiritual
equilibrium, namely of falsity against truth, and of evil against
good. From hell falsity from evil is continually breathed forth, and
from heaven that which is true from good. This spiritual equilib-
rium keeps man in freedom of thinking and willing, for whatever
a man thinks and wills has relation either to evil and its falsity, or
to good and its truth. Consequently when he is in that equilibrium
he is free. HH 537
This equilibrium of opposites has to do even with our
possibilities of perception. We must have darkness in order
to appreciate light. This is true both in a natural and in a
spiritual sense.
Hell is divided into societies in the same manner as heaven, and
also into as many societies as heaven; for every society in heaven
has a society opposite to it in hell, and this for the sake of equilib-
rium. But the societies in hell are distinct according to evils and
their falsities, because the societies in heaven are distinct according
to goods and their.!uth. That every good has an opposite evil, and
every truth an opposite falsity, may be known from this, that there
is not anything that has not reference to its opposite, and that its
quality and degree is known from its opposite and its degree; and
this is the origin of all perception and sensation. On this account
the Lord continually provides, that every society of heaven has its
opposite in a society of hell, and that there is equilibrium between
them. HH 541
As in many other instances, Swedenborg was also speaking
of the interior life of man as a reflection or image of the giant
cosmic opposites of heaven and hell. He was always in the
midst of palpable existence:
They who are in a state of enlightenment, see further, that good
and evil are opposites; that they are opposite in the same way as
heaven and hell are, that all good is from heaven, and all evil from
hell; that since the Divine of the Lord makes heavennothing
flows in with man from the Lord but good, nor anything but evil
from hell; and thus the Lord is continually withdrawing man from
evil, and leading him to good, while hell is continually leading man
into evil. Unless man were between both, he would not have any
Wor l ds Wi t hi n Worl ds: Heaven and Hell 87
thought, nor any will, and still less any freedom and any choice;
for man has aill these by virtue of the equilibrium between good and
evil. From thiese things it is plain, that the Lord flows into every
man with good, the evil and good alike, but that the difference is
in man hims>elf, because he is a recipient. HH 546
Man is a recipient of bot h good and evil; and has a choice.
The lifetimie of choices det ermi nes his fat e here and in t he
worl ds beyiond. The evil ma n receives good and converts it
into evil, imternally.
All man' s wrill and love remains with him after death. He who wills
and loves evil in the world, wills and loves the same evil in the other
life, and theen he no longer suffers to be withdrawn from it. This
is the reasojn that a man who is in evil is bound to hell, and is
actually the;re as to his spirit; and after death desires nothing more
than to be where his evil is; consequently man after death casts
himself int<0 hell, and not the Lord. HH 547
Evils and tlheir falsities are like black clouds interposed between the
sun and thie human eye, which take away the serenity of its light,
though the: sun still remains in continual endeavor to dissipate the
opposing cilouds, for it is shining behind them, and also meanwhile
transmits something of shady light into the eye of man by various
roundabouit ways. It is the same in the spiritual world. HH 549
Evil wiill strike some as a out worn idea t hat stirs up images
of t he de:vil and dull sermons. Swedenborg said elsewhere,
"Evil vi ewed in itself, and also sin, is not hi ng but disjunction
f r om goojd; evil itself al so consists in di suni on" ( AC 4997).
Hell is miade up of t hose who disunite f r om others. The spirit
of heavem is to do to ot her s as we would have t hem do to us.
Lat er wee will see a myst i cal implication of this in t hat we
all are ome life. To set one as bet t er t han anot her tears t he
fabri c off existence. Thi s tearing apart of t he fabric of exis-
tence, cal l ed evil, carri es with it its own puni shment . "Evil
is so joiined with its own puni shment t hat they cannot be
s epar at ed" ( HH 550). The one who splits himself apart f r om
ot hers enjoys t hem less. This is quite unlike heaven, where
t he joy of one is the joy of all. The more opposed a person
is to others, t he more he finds them opposed to him. Evil or
disunity fashions its own punishment. To persons living in
this disunity the good of heaven is like a sun behi nd t he
clouds. The falsity Swedenborg speaks of as associated with
evil essentially means experiencing a fragment ed world and
missing t he unity of existence. All this is permitted t hat man
may know real freedom, and t hat existence may know its full
range of possibilities.
Swedenborg' s description of hell isn' t very nice. He said
t hat all there see themselves as persons among persons,
grouped in societies enjoying similar ways. It is in t he light
or t r ut h of heaven that the grim t rut h of hell becomes appar-
ent.
All spirits in the hells, when seen in any degree of heavenly light,
appear in the form of their evil; for every one is an image of his
evil, since with everyone the interiors and exteriors make one, and
the interiors are visibly exhibited in the exteriors, which are the
face, the body, the speech and the gestures. Their quality is there-
fore known at sight. In general, they are forms of contempt of
others; of menaces against those who do not pay them respect; they
are forms of hatreds of various kinds, also of various kinds of
revenge. Ferocity and cruelty from their interiors show themselves
through these forms; but when others commend, venerate, and
worship them, their faces are composed and have an appearance
of gladness arising from delight. It is impossible to give a brief
description of all these forms, as they really appear, for one is not
like another: only between those who are in similar evil and there-
fore in a similar infernal society, there is a general likeness. . . . In
general their faces are dreadful and void of life; like those of
corpses; but in some instances they are black, and in others fiery
like little torches: in others they are disfigured with pimples, warts,
and large ulcers; with some no face appears, but in its stead some-
thing hairy or bony; and with some teeth only are seen. Their
bodies also are monstrous, and their speech is as the speech of
anger, or hatred, or of revenge; for everyone speaks from his falsity
and his tone is from his evil: in a word, they are all images of their
own hel l . . . . [In each society] the fierce passions of those who dwell
there, are also represented by dreadful and atrocious things, which
I forbear to describe. It is to be known, however, that such is the
appearance of infernal spirits in the light of heaven, but among
themselves they appear like men; and this is of the Lord's mercy
that they may not seem as loathesome to one another as they
appear before the angels. But that appearance is a fallacy, for as
soon as a ray of light from heaven is let in, their human forms are
turned into monstrous forms, such as they are in themselves
. . . because everything appears in the light of heaven as it really
is. This is why they shun the light of heaven, and cast themselves
down into their own light, which is like that of burning charcoal,
and in some cases like that of burning sulfur. This light is turned
into utter darkness, when a ray of light from heaven flows in upon
it. Hence it is that the hells are said to be in thick darkness and in
shade; and that thick darkness and shade signify falsities derived
from evil such as are in hell. HH 553
The introduction to hell seems friendly enough, at first!
When, therefore, a spirit of his own accord, or from his own
freedom, directs his course to hell, and enters it, he is received at
first in a friendly manner, so that he believes that he has come
among friends; but this only continues for a little while, during
which he is explored as to his astuteness and ability. [After this]
they begin to infest him by various means, and with increasing
severity and vehemence. This is done by introduction more interi-
orly and more deeply into hell; for the more interior and deeper the
hell, the more malignant are the spirits. After infestations they
aiflict him with cruel punishments, until he is reduced to a state
of slavery. But as rebellious commotions are of continual occur-
rence there, because everyone desires to be the greatest, and burns
with hatred against others, new insurrections are made, thus one
scene is changed into another, and they who were made slaves, are
delivered, that they may assist some new devil to subjugate others;
then they who do not submit themselves and obey at the word, are
again tormented in various ways; and so continually. Such tor-
ments are the torments of hell, which are called hell fire. HH 574
Some of the hells have a familiar ring to them:
In the milder hells are seen, as it were, rude huts, in some cases
contiguous like a city with lanes and streets. Within the houses
infernal spirits are engaged in continual quarrels, enmities, blows,
and fightings; in the streets and lanes, robberies and depredations
are committed. In some of the hells there are mere brothels, dis-
gusting to the sight and filled with all kinds of filth and excrement.
There are also thick forests in which infernal spirits wander like
wild beasts, and where too there are underground dens into which
those flee who are pursued by others: deserts, where all is sterile
and sandy, and in some places rugged rocks containing caverns.
. . . Spirits who have suffered the extremity of punishment, are cast
out from the hells into these desert places, especially those who
when in the world had been more cunning than others in planning
and contriving artifices and deceit; their last state is such a life. HH
586
The immense multitude of people that make up heaven
and hell does not exist in time and space, orthe same thing
in the material world. Theirs is a complex hierarchy of
spiritual worlds visible only to the inner or spiritual sight.
Even within these worlds not all can see or experience each
other.
The heavens are in the higher parts of the spiritual world; in the
lower parts is the world of spirits, and under all are the hells. The
heavens are not visible to the spirits who are in the world of spirits,
except when their interior sight is opened, although they are some-
times seen as mists or bright clouds. The reason is that the angels
of heaven are in an interior state of intelligence and wisdom, and
thus above the sight of those who are in the world of spirits. But
spirits in the plains and valleys see one another; and yet when they
are thus separated, by being let into their interiors, evil spirits do
not see the good. Good spirits can see the evil, but they turn
themselves away from them and spirits who turn themselves away
Worl ds Wi thi n Worlds: Heaven and Hell 91
become invisible... . All the gates to the hells open from the world
of spirits, and none from heaven. HH 583
Ther e is no one devil or satan. There is only t he evil of evil
persons.
The Principle That Unites All the Worl ds
When Swedenborg started his j ourney i nward he watched
inner processes spontaneously represent themselves in im-
ages, or in things said. This was a nat ural example of a
principle t hat he had suspected united all levels of existence.
The inner can represent itself by images, which are of a lower
order and a different nat ure from t he inner. Dreams corre-
spond to the person' s life situation at t he time they are
dreamt .
The levels of existence correspond to each other, and t he
idea of correspondence knits all levels of existence into a
related whole. The ramifications of Swedenborg' s t reat ment
of correspondence could fill several volumes in itself, but it
is enough for t he reader to get a general grasp of what is
involved.
A great deal of our own existence involves correspon-
dence, because t he scope of our individual world works
across several levels of existence. Feeling, or affection, is t he
most inward and fundament al aspect of mind. To this corre-
sponds t hought . In t he hypnogogic state it is possible to
watch feelings shape their corresponding thoughts.
18
Unless
a person is trying to deceive, his words will correspond to his
t hought . His face itself corresponds to his inner mood or
feeling. Because heaven involves an even t ruer correspon-
dence of t he inner and outer, Swedenborg said the speech and
t he faces of angels correspond to their life even more t han in
persons on earth. It is said angels can know t he essentials of
a person' s life f r om a few uttered words ( HH 236). What
angels and spirits experience around them corresponds to
their interiors. In a less clear and obvious way this is true
with us, too. The loving person experiences a loving world.
Thieves find a world in which everyone is trying to grab from
others. The holy man finds everything holy. Swedenborg
even found correspondence between the spiritual and natural
worlds.
The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world, not
only the natural world in general, but also in particular. Whatever,
therefore, in the natural world exists from the spiritual, is said to
be its correspondent. It is to be known that the natural world exists
and subsists from the spiritual world, just as an effect exists from
its efficient cause. . . .
Since man is a heaven, and also a world, in least form after the
image of the greatest, therefore in him there is a spiritual world and
a natural world. The interiors, which belong to his mind, and relate
to the understanding and will, make his spiritual world; but the
exteriors, which belong to his body, and relate to its senses and
actions, make his natural world. HH 90
[F]or the internal is called the spiritual man, and the external is
called the naturaJSnan; and the one is as distinct from the other
as heaven is from the world. All things which are done and exist
in the external or natural man, are done and exist from the internal
or spiritual man. HH 92
Correspondence brings all levels of reality into relation-
ship, yet it permits a multiplicity of existences. Existence
itself may be said to correspond to a thought in the mind of
God. All the levels of existence correspond to each other.
This is true from the Lord to the celestial heaven, to the
spiritual heaven, to the lowest heavens, to the world of spir-
its, to the interiors of man' s experience, to the exteriors of
experience, to the body, and to the world. Hell corresponds
as an opposite to heaven. Inwardly hell corresponds to the
possibility of our losing track of our real nature. The Lord
Worl ds Wi t hi n Worlds: Heaven and Hell 93
rules t he whole of creation by correspondences, t hrough the
heavens to the world of spirits, to t he i nnermost of man' s
mi nd, to will, understanding, outer memory and senses, to
the body itself and t he nat ural world beyond. The innermost
of mind participates in heaven and hell. Our experience is not
merely an image of t he whole. Inwardly, it participates in the
whole. It is an example of all there is.
It would be an obscuring and unnecessary limitation to
deal with Swedenborg as t hough his is only a religious or
only a psychological system. It is bot h at once because bot h
are life. But let' s look closer at the way t he grandeur of
heaven and hell come home in t he interiors of personal expe-
rience.
The Gentle Root of Existence
There is an idea so central in Swedenborg' s psychological-
spiritual findings that to grasp it is to grasp the real basis of
mind, or human experience and the nature of the worlds we
are destined to experience beyond this one. The idea revolves
around the concepts of love, affection, and feeling. Sweden-
b(irg had much to say of these, so we can determine quite well
wnat he meant. It is fortunate that these gentle experiences
unlock and account for the innermost of the human. Much
of what he has to say can be checked in our own experience,
even though what he is pointing to lies beneath thought and
experience. Many will find that Swedenborg' s explanation
puts in good order the otherwise puzzling variability and
richness of mind. It is also fortunate that these gentle ideas,
in a palpable and reasonable way, account for our living in
t he presence of the spiritual worlds. Morever, to grasp these
ideas is to grasp the essence of the design of the worlds
awaiting us beyond this one.
Swedenborg' s earlier life was an intellectual one, in which
the scientist-engineer pieced together all the things of nature.
Later he became a philosopher and pushed to the limits the
possibilities of intellectual analysis and speculation. When he
started examining dreams and inner processes it was appar-
ent t hat he had trouble with t he irrational and feeling side
of experience. Gradual l y he came to t erms with his own
sensual-feeling values. The last scourging he had from the
Lord before he was introduced into heaven and hell said in
effect that intellect was to be servant and not master. The
whole journey inward had turned his inner priorities around.
The dreams, symbols, and visions he came to underst and
were all in a language of feeling. Correspondence and repre-
sentation, or symbolization, is essentially t he language of
feeling, not of intellect. Intellect and reason have to be helped
to even understand and accept this more primitive language
of correspondence. Onl y feeling can find its meanings. Now
we see Swedenborg after years of wanderi ng in heaven and
hell. There is no question at this point but t hat feeling rules
and reason is her servant. Thus, one of t he world' s most
brilliant intellects had found what is higher t han intellect.
It will be recalled t hat heaven is essentially a state in which
t he most central and truest aspects of t he person are opened
up and lived out. Fr om t he perspective of this experience
Swedenborg comes back to describe man in terms of his
essentials. This provides a picture of man t hat is relatively
uni que in all t he psychologies. Instead of assigning affect or
feeling a secondary role, it is clearly central.
The Ruling Love of the Life
Swedenborg was qui t e aware t hat t here are aspects of mind
t hat are little known or understood.
Man knows nothing at all of the interior state of his mind or
internal man, yet infinite things are there, not one of which comes
to his knowledge. His internal of thought or internal man is his
very spirit, and in it are thitlgs as infinite and innumerable as there
are in his body, in fact, more numerous, for his spirit is man in its
form. DP 120
This idea of the spirit being man in its form is a key one. He
is pointing to the essence of humanness. In effect, humanness
becomes even more human as one goes within.
Among the aspects man has trouble understanding is love
itself, because while love can be felt, it does not have as
definite a form as thought.
Man knows that there is such a thing as love, but he does not know
what love is. He knows that there is such a thing as love from
common speech, as when it is said, he loves me, a king loves his
subject. . . a husband loves his wife, a mother her children .. . also,
this or that one loves his country, his fellow citizens, his neighbor;
and likewise of things abstracted from person, as when it is said,
one loves this or that thing. But although the word love is so
universally used, hardly anybody knows what love is. And because
one is unable, when he reflects upon it, to form to himself any idea
of thought about it, he says either that it is not anything, or that
it is something flowing in . . . from . . . intercourse with others.
. . 1 He is wholly unaware that love is his very life; not only the
general life of his body, and the general life of all his thoughts, but
also the life of all their particulars. . . . If you remove the affection
which is from love, can you think anything or do anything? Do not
thought, speech, and action grow cold in the measure in which the
affection which is from love grows cold? DLW 1
The most central aspect of persons Swedenborg called the
ruling or reigning love, or sometimes the love of the life. This
is the core of individuality and indeed is the source of life
itself. It is the same as the person' s life itself. It conditions
all other aspects of mind because it rules. One could hardly
think of a more fundamental conception of man.
A man's very life is his love; and such as the love is, such is the
life, yea, such is the whole man; but it is the ruling or reigning love
that constitutes the man. This love holds in subordination many
lovees, which are derivations; these loves appear under a different
forrm, but are still contained in the ruling love, and together with
it cconstitute one kingdom. The ruling love is like their king and
heaad; it directs them, and through them, as mediate ends, it has
resfpect to, and intends its own end, which is the chief and ultimate
endd of all the loves, and it does this both directly and indirectly.
It iss what belongs to the ruling love which is loved above all things.
\What a man loves above all things is constantly present in his
thought, and also in his will, and it constitutes his veriest life. For
exaimple, he who loves wealth above all things, whether it be money
or !possessions, constantly turns over in his mind how he may attain
it: when he does attain it, he rejoices inwardly; for his heart is in
it. ! He who loves himself above all things, remembers himself in
evesrything; he thinks of himself, speaks of himself, acts for the sake
of !himself: for his life is a life for self. HD 54-55
' The love of the life is the real love. It rules over and holds
in subordination many other derived loves, affections, or
feelings. This ruling love contains the person' s real end, or
puirpose in living. The influence or ruling of this essential love
of the life is quite subtle and pervasive, reaching all aspects
of mind.
JA man has for an end what he loves above all things, and has
resspect to it in each and all things; it is in his will, like the hidden
cuirrent of a stream which draws and bears him away even when
buisy with something else; for it is that which animates him. This
is what one man seeks for, and also sees, in another; and according
to which he either leads him or acts with him. HD 56
To underline the central role of the ruling love, Sweden-
bo>rg referred to it at various times as man' s life itself, his own
Se:lf, his character, the essence of the life, the soul, and the
ve:ry form of his spirit. It is clear that it affects perception and
interpersonal relationships.
A man is altogether of such a quality as is that which rules his
life; by this he is distinguished from others; and the nature of his
he:aven, if he is good, is formed according to it; and also the nature
of his hell, if he is bad. It constitutes his very will, his own Self
. . . and his character; for it is the very Esse of his life, which cannot
be changed after death; because it is the man himself. HD 57
Swedenborg had found the soul in the most obvious place,
as the very life itself of man. The Greek for soul is psy khe,
from which came the word psychology. It isn' t appropriate
to say a person has a soul, but rather a person is a soul or
a life.
As regards the soul . . . it is nothing but the man himself: who
lives within the body, that is, the interior man who in this world
acts through the body, and gives life to the body. This man when
freed from the body, is called a spirit. AC 6054
Man's soul is nothing else than the love of his will and the
resulting love of his understanding; such as this love is, the whole
man is. DP 199
Is this ruling love conscious in man? All the derivatives of
it are conscious because, as we shall see, they are all the other
aspects of mind. Also, the love of the life can be inferred from
what interests or excites persons. Yet it cannot be conscious
in itself as a specific thing, because it is the general source or
basis of all human experience. There is a tantalizing aspect
to Swedenborg in that he always describes what is innermost
as most general, perfect, and most peaceful. Yet it cannot be
grasped as a specific because it is the general base or origin
of our life.
The external affections of thought manifest themselves in bodily
sensation, and sometimes in the thought of the mind, but the
internal affections of the thought from which the external exist
never make themselves manifest to man. Of these he knows no
more than a rider asleep in a carriage does of the road or than one
feels the rotation of the earth. Were you to see just one idea laid
open, you would see astounding things, more than tongue can tell.
DP 199
The Gentle Root of Existence 99
Fr om the root love of the life extend all t he affections or
feelings enjoyed by man. Fr om t hem is derived the whole
feeling life of man. Swedenborg reminded us of his skill in
anatomy and symbolism in providing a beautiful image of
our emotional or affective life.
By "affections" are meant continuations and derivations from
love. Love may be compared to a fountain, and affections to
streams flowing from it; it may also be compared to the heart, and
affections to the blood vessels derived from it and continuous with
it. It is, moreover, recognized that blood vessels carrying the blood
from their heart re-enact the heart at every point, so that they are
as it were extensions of it. Hence the circulations of the blood from
the heart along the arteries, and from the arteries into the veins,
and back again into the heart. Affections also are similar, for
affections are derived from love and are continuous with it, they
bring uses forth in forms, and in these they advance from the first
things of uses to their ultimates, from which they return again to
the love from which they came. DLDW 22
Love comes fort h and manifests itself in the uses or t he
good it does. It advances in t he realization of itself t hrough
these uses, creating ever more its own end. In this manifest-
ing of itself it comes to recognize its ultimate nat ure.
Through uses it ret urns again to its source or nature.
Whatever is the enjoyment of one's affection is one's good, and
one's truth is what is pleasant to the thought from that affection.
For everyone calls that good which he feels in the love of his will
to be enjoyable, and calls that truth which he then perceives in the
wisdom of his understanding to be pleasant. The enjoyable and the
pleasant both flow out from the life's love as water does from a
spring or blood from the heart; together they are like an element
or the atmosphere in which man's whole mind is. DP 195
The at mosphere of t he whole mi ndt hat is love and its
derivative affection or feelings. Swedenborg also referred to
affections as bonds, because they rule and control ( AC 3835).
It is an existential paradox that the bonds of affections are
related to freedom. In effect we feel free when we can act
from our real feeling.
First, it should be known that all freedom is of love, so much so
that love and freedom are one. As love is man's life, freedom is of
his life, too. For man's every enjoyment is from some love of his
and has no other source, and to act from the enjoyment of one's
love is to act in freedom. Enjoyment leads a man as the current
bears an object along on a stream. DP 73
What it amounts to is that we know the greatest feeling of
freedom if we become what we are most essentially. We are
constrained in any other direction, but free to try it! This is
similar to evil. By breaking existence apart, evil creates its
own constraint. We are free to deviate, but there are natural
mechanisms to remind us, or call us back. This very human
paradox will arise again and has important mystical implica-
tions to be seen later.
Love and feeling as the life of man and the atmosphere of
his inner experience have, as their first main correspondent
or derivative, will. Will results in act. What one really loves,
one wills and does. By this simple sequence love comes to
earth in things done, what Swedenborg called uses, or goods.
As is characteristic of him, what at first seems abstract or
evanescent is brought to earth in the most concrete way.
Love in act is work and deed. HH 483
To love good is to will and to do good from love. HH 15
Now, as the soul of the will is love. DP 193
A man's Will is his love in form. . . . for whatever is delightful,
enjoyable, pleasant, grateful, or blissful, that . . . is what the man
wills; he says of them, in fact, that he would like them. . . . From
all this it can be seen that Will and love, or Will and affection, with
a man are one, and that his Will because it is of his love, is also
his life, and is the man himself. DLDW 54
To think and to will without action, when one is able, is like a flame
shut up in a vessel, which dies away; or like a seed cast upon sand,
which does not grow up, but perishes with its power of germina-
tion. But to think and to will and thence to act, is like a flame which
gives heat and light all around; or like a seed sown in the ground,
which springs up into a tree or flower, and lives. HH 475
The love that comes to earth through man' s will also
generates thought and understanding. Thought or under-
standing is, in effect, a correspondent, or image, of feeling.
It is the form that represents feeling. Feeling is the ruling
source of thought, too.
Man can have no thought except from some affection of his life's
love and . . . the thought is nothing other than the form of the
affection. . . . The thought glides along in its enjoyment like a ship
in a river current to which the skipper does not attend, attending
only to the sails he spreads. DP 198
Thought is nothing but internal sight. DLW 404
The sails are like the thoughts, the manifest part of the
ship' s movement, but feeling is the current. Many think they
rule themselves by their thoughts. I remarked earlier that in
the hypnogogic state it is easy to watch the background
feeling forming thoughts and words to fit it. Swedenborg was
pointing toward this underlying affective or feeling layer of
mind and beyond it to the ruling, most central affective
direction of the individual. It will be seen that he did not put
down thought as of little use; he said only that it reflects
deeper processes. The affective side of thought can be felt as
the tone or as the background of feeling from which thought
arises. Thought gives feeling form and is part of its actualiz-
ing. If a person' s thoughts are faithful to their feeling base,
others can sense something of these feelings from the
thoughts. It is as though feeling or good yearns to actualize
as truth or act.
In the following quotations Swedenborg put together the
whole sweep of the mind' s operation, or man' s inner experi-
ence.
The internal of thought comes out of the life's love, its affections
and the perceptions from them. The external of thought is from
what is in the memory, serving the life's love for confirmation and
as a means to its end. From childhood to early manhood a person
is in the external of thought from an affection for knowledge.
. . . Later, however, his life's love is as he lives, and its affections
and the perceptions from them make the internal of his thought.
From his life's love comes a love of means; the enjoyments of these
means and the information drawn thereby from the memory make
the external of his thought. DP 105
The life's love of man rules him completely, the internal of the
mind by the affections and perceptions from them, and the external
by the enjoyments of the affections and of the thoughts from them.
DP 106
In case there is any doubt, a little elaboration indicates that
he is speaking of all aspects of mind.
There are many things pertaining to love which have received
other names because they are derivatives, such as affections,
desires, appetites, and their pleasures and enjoyments; and there
are many things pertaining to wisdom, such as perception, reflec-
tion, recollection, thought, intention to an end; and there are many
pertaining to both love and wisdom, such as consent, conclusion,
and determination to action; besides others. All of these, in fact,
pertain to both, but they are designated from the more prominent
and nearer of the two. From these two are derived ultimately
sensations, those of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, with
their enjoyments and pleasures. It is according to appearance that
the eye sees: but it is the understanding that sees through the eye.
. . . The sources of all these are love and wisdom; from which it
can be seen that these two make the life of man.
DLW 363
He ties together the whole in a lovely image of a tree. "The
life's love is the tree; the branches with their leaves are the
affections of good and t rut h with their perceptions; and the
fruits are the enjoyments of the affections with their
thoughts" ( DP 107). Or he uses the imagery of love and
sexual relations.
Subordinate loves or affections adjoin consorts to themselves, each
its own, the interior affections consorts called perceptions, and the
exterior consorts called knowledges, and each cohabits with its
consorts and performs the functions of its l i fe. . . . The union is like
that of life's very being with life's coming forth, which is such that
the one is nothing without the other; for what is life's being unless
it is active and what is life's activity if it is not from life's very
being? DP 194
The inner worlds of experience are infinitely varied and mul-
tiply endlessly: "No person enjoys an affection and percep-
tion so like another' s as to be identical with it, nor ever will.
Affections, moreover, may be fructified and perceptions mul-
tiplied without end" ( DP 57). We can now clearly see that
though Swedenborg' s works look intellectual, they are col-
ored everywhere by feeling.
Swedenborg had experienced the total ordering of mind
a rare experience! The ordering within individual minds is
like the structure of societies in heaven. Since love is the key,
everything is arranged in relation to it.
Truths with man are disposed and ordered in series. Those most
in agreement with his loves are in the midst, those not so much in
agreement are at the sides, finally those not at all in agreement are
rejected to the outermost circumference. Outside this series are the
things contrary to the loves. AC 5530
Swedenborg was very clear that the mind is ruled or run
from the inside out. The levels of mind we usually call our-
selves reflect even more basic processes. In effect, we are
transcended by our own inner nature. Anot her way of saying
it is that our conscious experience is a transcendence coming
to earth in our lives; this coming to earth is our life. It would
take a long careful study of the phenomenology of inner
experience to prove how correct Swedenborg is in this. At
this point I can only refer the reader to The Natural Depth
in Man, which illustrates this very matter.
19
In brief, a careful study of thought, imagery, and any
discrete mental processes shows them to be embedded in
affect or feeling. A very close examination shows that
thought arises out of and reflects feeling. Any experimental
manipulation of feeling, as in hypnotic suggestion or auto-
suggestion, clearly affects subsequent thought and percep-
tion. Most of this root of experience, this sea of background
feeling, or atmosphere of our thought, is not really under our
command. I choose to call this area the region where we are
transcended. It is a region whose laws, causality, forms, and
sometimes even its existence are not well known to us. In-
wardly it is the aspect of ourselves that surprises and even
transcends our limited outer conscious selves. It was partly
this profound, phenomenological accuracy of Swedenborg
that attracted me to his writings.
Swedenborg has several ways of describing this relation-
ship of the inner to the outer aspects of mind. It has a critical
bearing on the scope and real nature of humanness. It also
bears on how presumptuous we can be in our conception of
ourselves. And this in turn bears on whether we are creating
a heaven or hell. The one who is creating a hell tends to
consider the discrete doings of mind his real region of self-
rule. The gentle, feeling background he overlooks or consid-
ers of little importance. The one who is creating a heaven
feels he participates in processes that really transcend the
limits of the little self. One can easily relate this to the shared
aspect of heaven and the cut-off aspect of hell. The heavenly
one feels embedded in, a participant in, a varied creation that
includes the self among others. The myriads of others are the
larger aspect of creation. The one designing a hell gives
precedence to self over others. In effect, the effort to domi-
nate the others, who are far greater than the self, brings the
individual under the punishment of others. These are not
mere happy images of spiritual processes borrowed from the
social realm. The social realm is a correct, true, palpable
representation of the eternal. But let us look at the emergent
aspect of mind, and then later see the real inner connection
with the worlds beyond this one.
Swedenborg commented on the different appearance in
heaven between those who worshiped in church voluntarily
and those who felt compelled to go. The inner aspect of the
former looked like bright clouds, those of the latter like dark
clouds. Then he says, "[I]t is plain that the internal refuses
to be forced by the external and turns away. The internal can
compel the external because it is like a master and the exter-
nal a servant'
1
( DP 136). It is clear that the rule is from
inward to outward.
By external and internal of thought the same is meant here as
by external and internal man, and by this nothing else is meant
than external and internal of will and understanding, for will and
understanding constitute man, and as they both manifest them-
selves in thoughts, we speak of external and internal of thought.
And as it is the man's spirit and not his body which wills and
understands and consequently thinks, external and internal are
external and internal of his spirit. The body's activity in speech or
deed is only an effect from the external and internal of man's spirit,
for the body is so much obedience. DP 103
The body does nothing of itself, but from its spirit which is in it.
HD 46
In the Internal there are thousands and thousands of things, which
in the External appear as one general thing. Therefore thought and
perception are the clearer as they are more interior. From this it
follows that a man ought to be in internal things. HD 47
All those who are in an External apart from an Internal, that is,
with whom the spiritual Internal has been closed, are in hell. HD
47
The Natural is a kind of face in which interior things behold
themselves; and it is thus that man thinks. HD 48
Internal things are those which are represented, and external
things those which represent. HD 262
The internal of thought comes out of the life's love, its affections
and the perceptions from them. The external of thought is from
what is in the memory, serving the life's love for confirmation and
as means to its end. DP 105
The memory here includes knowledge of language. Spoken
thought comes from the external of memory to serve the
inner affective or emotional aspect of mind.
Swedenborg occasionally made a direct appeal to the
reader to check out something in his own experience, such
as the following:
From an unclouded rationality anyone can see or grasp that
without the appearance that it is his own a man cannot be in any
affection to know or to understand. Every joy and pleasure, thus
everything of the will, is from an affection of some love. Who can
wish to know or to understand anything except that an affection
of his takes pleasure in it? Who can feel this pleasure unless what
he is affected by seems to be his? DP 76
Swedenborg' s "unclouded rationality" would correspond to
a careful phenomenological study that attempts to see and
describe what exists in mind. "That a man possesses external
and internal thought is also plain in that from his interior
thought he can behold the exterior thought, can reflect on it,
too, and judge whether or not it is evil" ( DP 104).
There is a correspondence between the internal thought or
spirit of man and the externals of thought. Swedenborg also
described this as part of a metaphysical principle that runs
through the whole of creation. The ultimate end of all things
generates a cause that results in effects. In mind the love of
the life is the end. It generates causes from which are the
affections and the perceptions serving the love of the life. The
resulting effects are the externals of thought and the body' s
actions. A person' s real end shows in what he does. In reli-
gious terms, love results in charity. End, cause, effect is the
principle that has also been described as correspondence
between levels of creation. The end is the inmost aspect, the
effect, the outermost.
The human mind dwells always in the Trine called end, cause,
and effect. If one of these is lacking, the mind is not possessed of
its life. An affection of the will is the initiating end; the thought of
the understanding is the efficient cause; and bodily action, utter-
ance or external sensation is the effect from the end by means of
the thought. Anyone sees that the human mind is not possessed of
its life when it is only in an affection of the will and in naught
besides, or when it is only in effect. The mind has no life from one
of these separately, but from the three together. DP 178
This manifesting t hrough levels of our own existence is what
we call living.
Although the internal contains a person' s highest potential
and the ultimate aim of the life, it also contains the possibility
of error, or getting lost. This possibility arises out of our
freedom to try things and to judge for ourselves. It is clear
that Swedenborg saw this ultimate shaping of the person as
requiring freedom. The external cannot constrain the inter-
nal, which is its source. The external is the coming to earth,
the manifesting of the internal. The internal is the ultimate
of personal freedom and, as we shall see later, the connection
with heaven. The experiences of life are the manifesting of
the internal. Man' s judging, based on experiences, is the
means by which he sets his values, what he stands for.
No one is reformed in a state of fear because fear takes away
freedom and reason or liberty and rationality. Love opens the
mind's interiors but fear closes them, and when they are closed
man thinks little and only what comes to the lower mind or to the
senses. All fears that assail the lower mind have this effect.... Fear
can never invade the internal of thought; this is always in freedom,
being in a man's life-love. . . . The fear that invades the external
of thought and closes the internal is chiefly fear of losing [social]
standing or profit. DP 139
There can be a real conflict between the external and
internal. The more the person acts presumptuously against
the internal, the more he sets up a conflict with his own inner
source. Liberty or freedom resides in the internal, thus to
stand against the internal is to block one' s own freedom.
Regarding the inner and the outer:
They act separately when a man speaks and acts from the external
of his thought otherwise than he thinks and wills inwardly; they
act conjointly when he speaks and acts as he thinks and wills. The
latter is common with the sincere, the former with the insincere.
Inasmuch as the internal and the external of the mind are so
distinct, the internal can even fight with the external and by combat
drive it to compliance.
Now as man is man by virtue of the internal of his thought, for
this is his very spirit, obviously he compels himself when he com-
pels the external of his thought to comply or to receive the enjoy-
ments of his affections. DP 145
Man is free to think as he pleases to the end that his life's love may
emerge from its hiding-place into the light of the understanding,
and since he would not otherwise know anything of his own evil.
DP 281
The conflict between the higher internal and the lower
external Swedenborg described as temptation, or combat.
The struggle itself is necessary so that a person may become
conscious and decide his own values, thereby shaping his
ultimate or eternal existence. We make what will always be.
As the inner and outer come to act as one, the individual
comes to experience the peace and freedom that is the life of
the inner. One might call this integration, mental health, or
well-being.
With those in a heavenly love . . . internal and external man
make one, when they speak, and they are aware of no difference.
Their life's love, with its affections of good and the perceptions of
truth from these, is like a soul in what they think and then say and
do. DP 110
All this has bearing on marital relationships. In spite of
not being married, Swedenborg pondered long on the rela-
tionship of male to female. One of his last published works,
Marital Love, issued when he was eighty years old, is consid-
ered by many of his followers one of his greatest works. He
was frank enough on the intimate aspects of marriage that
this work was banned in Boston for a time! Yet by modern
standards this book seems entirely elevated. He wanted to get
at the psychological and spiritual aspects of the union o
f
persons. He answered the question of whether sex has any
role in heaven.
Love for the sex continues after death with every person as it was
inwardly, that is, such as it was in the interior will and thought in
the world. All one's love follows one after death, for love is the
esse of man's life. The ruling love, which is the head of the rest,
and subordinate loves along with it, persist with man to eternity.
Loves persist because strictly they are of man's spirit, and of the
body from the spirit, and after death the human becomes a spirit,
and thus takes his love with him. . . . As for sexual love, it is the
universal love, having been put by creation in man's very soul,
which is his whole essence, and this for the sake of the propagation
of the race. This love in particular remains, because a man after
death is a man and a woman is a woman, and there is nothing in
soul, mind or body, which is not masculine in the male and femi-
nine in the female. The two have been so created, moreover, that
they seek after conjunction, yes, to be one; this striving is the love
of the sex, which precedes marital love. A conjunctive inclination
which has been inscribed on each and all things of man and woman
certainly cannot be blotted out and perish with the body. ML 46
Sexual love he saw as a desire to join with many; marital
love is a higher and purer love that needs only one. Maleness
and femaleness he saw as no small accident of fate: male and
female differ even in the subtlest aspects of the inner life. In
fact, he saw the differences in the male and female body as
representative of the inner. The male is harder, more linear,
and even sexually is a thrust outward. The female is softer,
more rounded, nurturant, and even sexually is softer and
more inward. Feminine males and masculine women would
be variants of them. In effect the male is trying to unite with
his own potential love aspect in women, and a woman is
attempting to unite with her wisdom aspect in a man. There
is a basic difference in the male and female approach to
reality. "To perceive from understanding is masculine, and
to do so from love is feminine" (ML 168).
Swedenborg may reflect a little of the masculine Chauvin-
ism of his time. Microscopes had only recently been devel-
oped; genetics had not been founded. And Swedenborg, like
most scientists of his day, probably felt that the whole seed
and heredity was from the father. The mother was simply a
vessel for the development of this seed. But if we can over-
look this, we can see Swedenborg reaching for the real in-
ward nature of love and marital relationships, puzzling out
the inward necessity that binds men and women together. I
recall one lovely description in which he came upon a truly
marri ed couple in heaven. They looked like one person till
he got close enough to see they were two. He remarked t hat
man and wife meet again in heaven and see if they were truly
joined inwardly. Oft en they are not, and go their separate
ways and find new and eternally compatible spouses! Swe-
denborg said t hat Chri st ' s statement t hat t here is no mar-
riage in heaven (Luke XX, 27-28) referred to union with
God, t hat can never t ake place unless a foundat i on is laid in
this life ( ML 41).
He saw in sex and love a deeper principle that operated
t hrough all creation. Swedenborg oft en described it as the
marriage of good and t rut h. Love is t he good seeking to be
made actual in t rut h or reality. The scholar Iungerich felt
Swedenborg was describing the divine as creator (male) and
sustainer of existence (female).
20
These are primal opposites
very much like t he yin-yang of the Chinese.
21
The creator
aspect shows in t he male impregnating t he female, while t he
sustaining aspect shows in the female bearing, nursing, and
caring for t he child.
The Connection wi th Heaven
So far we have not shown any real connecting link with
heaven. It is clear t hat by t he style and quality of his life the
individual sets his eternal condition. But duri ng this life on
earth is there a more immediate link with t he worlds beyond?
There is, but it is not explicit, so t hat many who have studied
Swedenborg would not know the link.
As we saw, in Swedenborg' s t erms t he innermost of the
individual is the love of t he life, or the ruling love. Out of this
emanate t he affections, feelings, or inner tendencies, which
are t he ruling background of t he explicit aspects of con-
sciousness. In Heaven and Hell Swedenborg said that spirits
of heaven and hell interact with man. Yet this interaction is
not usually apparent, nor was it meant to be. If spirits in-
teract inwardly in the mind of individuals, it takes place in
our inner feelings. At first sight this seems like a strange idea,
that spirits are present in our feelings. But as we examine its
implications it becomes much more reasonable. The first step
is to see that spirits and affections are the same thing. This
is a consequence of their coming into their real inner tenden-
cies. It is more accurate to see them as their inner ruling
tendencies than to view them in their individual identities as
Joe or Mary. This is part of their being beyond space and
time.
[EJvery angel is an affection and is also a use. DLDW 24
[F]or spirits are affections, and therefore in a human form similar
to their affections. HH 517
As all spirits and angels, then, are affections, the whole angelic
heaven is nothing but the love of all the affections of good and the
attendant wisdom of all the perceptions of truth. DP 61
Combine with this the fact that a person inwardly is essen-
tially his affection or life's love and really has contact with
heaven and hell:
[A] man's spirit is nothing else than affection, and that conse-
quently after death he becomes an affection, an angel of heaven if
he is an affection for a good use, a spirit of hell if an affection for
an evil use. This is why the entire heaven is distinguished into
societies according to the genera and species of affections; and hell
likewise, in an opposite order. Consequently when you speak of
affections, or of societies in the spiritual world, it is the same.
DLDW 21
The internal man is what is called the spiritual man, because it
is in the light of heaven, which light is spiritual; and the external.
man is what is called the natural man, because it is in the light of
the world, which light is natural. The man whose Internal is in the
light of heaven, and whose External is in the light of the world, is
a spiritual man as to both; but the man whose Internal is not in
the light-of heaven, but only the light of the world in which also
is his External, is a natural man as to both. It is the spiritual man,
who, in the Word, is called a living man, and the natural man who
is called a dead man.
The man whose Internal is in the light of heaven, and his Exter-
nal in the light of the world, thinks both spiritually and naturally,
but in the latter case his spiritual thought flows into his natural
thought, and is there perceived.
The internal spiritual man, regarded in himself, is an angel of
heaven; and even while living in the body, is in association with
angels, although he is not aware of it, and after his separation from
the body, he comes among angels. HD 38-40
When angels are with men, they dwell, as it were, in their affec-
tions. HH 391
Not only are we inwardly affections, which join us to soci-
eties in heaven and hell which are also affections, but Swe-
denborg also said specifically that spirits interact with us.
With every man there are good spirits and evil spirits: by good
spirits man has conjunction with heaven, and by evil spirits with
hell. These spirits are in the world of spirits, which is in the midst
between heaven and hell... . When these spirits come to man, they
enter into all his memory, and thence into all his thought; evil
spirits, into those things of the memory and thought which are evil,
but good spirits, into those things of the memory and thought
which are good. The spirits do not know at all that they are with
man, but when they are with him they believe that all things of his
memory and thought are their own; neither do they see man,
because things which are in our solar world are not objects of their
sight. HH 292
Later, when we examine psychotic hallucinations, we will see
a surprising contemporary confirmation of this assertion.
What Swedenborg described fits perfectly with careful
phenomenological studies of inner experience.
22
The most
primitive level of mental functioning we can observe is feel-
ings or affections. Thought and perception follow their pat-
tern. Swedenborg adds that spirits are affections and are
present inwardly in our feelings. Everyone has good and evil
spirits with him. Man is the free space poised between these
opposite possibilities. Moreover, we don' t have just any old
spirits with us, only those that reflect our inward feeling
potentials. A man of a given dark disposition or inner ten-
dency would have a spirit of like nature with him. There is
no real way of distinguishing our own potentialities and the
potentialities of spirits with us. As Albert Einstein once re-
marked, it is not appropriate to see as separate, things which
cannot be distinguished. The spirits with us and our affective
potentialities are the same thing. Or, to enlarge the state-
ment, some aspects of the spiritual worlds beyond this one
are already real in us now. Or, to put this yet another way,
there is a correspondence between the spiritual worlds and
the mind of man. The specific line of correspondence in the
individual is through the affective spirits with him, into his
affects and thence into all other levels of mind. But this is
really how the Lord rules, through the world of spirits to the
mind of man:
[Man] believes that all things in him in general and particular follow
in natural order, and that there is nothing higher which directs
them, although the fact is this, that all things in general and particu-
lar are arranged by means of spirits and angels with him, and that
hence come all states and changes of states, and thus they are
directed by the Lord towards ends to eternity, which ends the Lord
alone foresees. That this is the case has been made known to me most
clearly by the experience of several years; it has also been given to me
to know and observe what spirits and angels were with me, and what
states they induced; and this I can firmly assert, that all states, even
to their smallest particulars, came from this source, and that they
are thus directed by the Lord. AC 2796
11 may be difficult for some to see, but Swedenborg' s expla-
milion of mind as based on the presence of spirits is not
observably different from the modern dynamic theories of
llic nature of mind, formed two centuries after him. In the
older psychoanalysis, the mind is based in unconscious pro-
!.esses which are primarily affective.
23
Swedenborg said these
inner affections are unconscious and rule. The added element
Swedenborg brought to it is a basing of these unconscious
nlfccts in spiritual worlds beyond this one. When we examine
l lie strange world of psychotic hallucinations we will see that
Swedenborg's description of the process is even more impres-
fiive than that of psychoanalysis.
Theories of mind shift with the trend of the times. Most
current theories see the most critical tendencies of the indi-
vidual as reflecting the interpersonal relations with signifi-
cant others.
24
In effect, we introject or take on the ways of
I lie significant others we are associated with. This social
introject is carried within as affective potentialities for cer-
lain kinds of behavior. Again, there is no really good way of
distinguishing this from what Swedenborg has to say. Swe-
denborg is also saying we reflect affective potentialities
within. On a clinical or phenomenological level there isn't
much to distinguish Swedenborg' s conception of mind from
modern theories. (I don' t regard this as proven here. Such a
proof would require an extensive study in itself, especially
since there are hundreds of modern theories.)
It is only when we search beyond what is easily observed
to root causes that Swedenborg' s conception of mind is radi-
cally different. He took into account whole orders of exis-
lence that have no place in most modern theories. His is
really a theological psychology. The worlds of God, heaven
and hell, and man are too intimately interrelated to Sweden-
borg for him to try to isolate them from each other profit-
ably.
ThePresenceofSpirits
in Madness
Hy an extraordinary series of circumstances I seem to have
found a confirmation for one of Emanuel Swedenborg' s more
unusual findings: that man' s life involves an interaction with
11 hierarchy of spirits. This interaction is normally not con-
scious, but perhaps in some cases of mental illness it has
become conscious.
For sixteen years I worked as a clinical psychologist in one
of the country' s better mental hospitals (Mendocino State
Hospital, Ukiah, California; now closed). Out of both my
professional role and human interest I examined thousands
of mentally ill persons. An accidental discovery in 1964 per-
mitted me to get a much more detailed and accurate picture
of psychotic hallucinations than had previously been possi-
*This chapt er is an adapt at i on of an article, " The Presence of Spirits in Mad-
ness, " in the New Philosophy 70 (1967)1461-477; in a Swedenborg foundat i on
pumphl et of t he same name, 1968; and as "Hal l uci nat i ons as t he Worl d of Spirits, "
Psychedelic Review 11 (1971): 59-70. My findings in hal l uci nat i ons are described in
greater detail in Chapt er 10 of The Natural Depth in Man, but wi t hout the compari -
son to Swedenborg.
ble. Though I gradually noticed similarities between pa-
tients' reports and Swedenborg' s description of the relation-
ships of man to spirits, it was only three years after all my
major findings on hallucinations had been made that the
striking similarity between the two became apparent to me.
I then collected as many details as possible of his description.
I found that Swedenborg' s system not only is an almost
perfect fit with patients' experiences, but even more impres-
sively, it accounts for otherwise quite puzzling aspects of
hallucinations.
Mentally ill persons are out of sorts with their environ-
ment and need supervision, care, or restraint for their protec-
tion or the welfare of others. If they are very disturbed or
apparently responding to invisible others, the staff may de-
cide they are hallucinating. Most hallucinating people con-
ceal this experience because they know it is unusual and may
indicate madness. At best our patients would tell us of a few
striking hallucinations from the past. An unusually coopera-
tive patient led me to ask if I could talk directly with her
hallucinations. I did, and she gave me their immediate re-
sponse. I had stumbled upon a way to get a much richer
picture of the inner world of hallucinations.
I began to look for patients who could distinguish between
their own thoughts and the things heard and seen. Some of
the more deteriorated psychotics couldn' t distinguish be-
tween themselves and hallucinations any longer. The ego had
been overrun with alien forces so that there were no clear
distinctions. My patients were in relatively good condition.
The patients were told that I simply wanted to get as accu-
rate a description of their experiences as possible. I held out
no hope for recovery or special reward. It soon became ap-
parent that many were embarrassed by what they saw and
heard. Also, they knew their experiences were not shared by
others, and some were even concerned that their reputations
would suffer if they revealed the obscene nat ure of their
voices. It took some care to make the patients comfortable
enough to reveal their experience honestly. A furt her com-
plication was that the voices were sometimes frightened of
me and themselves needed reassurance. They felt that a psy-
chologist might want to kill them, which was, in a sense, true!
I struck up a relationship with both the patient and the
persons he saw and heard. I would question these other
persons directly, and instructed the patient to give a word-
for-word account of what the voices answered or what was
seen. In this way I could hold long dialogues with a patient' s
hallucinations and record both my questions and their an-
swers. My method was that of phenomenology. My only
purpose was to describe the patient' s experiences as accu-
rately as possible. The reader may notice I treat the halluci-
nations as realitiesthat is what they are to the patient. My
acting this way was part of my attempt to get as close as
possible to the experience as these people felt it. I would work
with a patient for as little as one hour or as long as several
months of inquiry, where the hallucinated world was com-
plex enough.
Why should one believe what these patients report? The
patients cooperated with me only because I was honestly
trying to understand their experiences. Most of my subjects
seemed fairly sensible except for their hallucinations, which
invaded and interfered with their lives. On several occasions
I talked with hallucinations that the patient himself did not
really understand. This was especially true when I dealt with
what will be described as the higher-order hallucinations,
which can be symbolically rich beyond the patient' s own
understanding. There was great consistency in what was
reported independently by different patients. I have no rea-
son to doubt they were reporting real experiences. They
seemed to be honest people as puzzled as I was to explain
what was happening to them. The differences in the experi-
ences of schizophrenics, alcoholics, the brain-damaged, and
senile were not as striking as the similarities.
One consistent finding was that patients felt they had con-
tact with another world or order of beings. Most thought
these other persons were living. All objected to the term
"hallucination.' ' Each coined his own term, such as the
Other Order, the Eavesdroppers, air phone, etc.
For most individuals the hallucinations came on suddenly.
One woman was working in the garden when an unseen man
addressed her. Another man described sudden loud noises
and voices he heard while riding in a bus. Most were fright-
ened, and adjusted with difficulty to this new experience. All
the patients described voices as having the quality of a real
voice, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, than normal
voices. The experience they described was quite unlike
thoughts or fantasies: when things are seen they appear fully
real. For instance, a patient described being awakened one
night by air force officers calling him to the service of his
country. He got up and was dressing when he noticed their
insignia wasn' t quite right, then their faces altered. With this
he knew they were of the Other Order and struck one hard
in the face. He hit the wall and injured his hand. He could
not distinguish them from reality until he noticed the in-
signia. One woman saw Egypt' s President Gamal Abdel
Nasser sitting in a chair in my office. When I respectfully
passed my hand down the back of the chair, my hand was
blotted out for her by the body of President Nasser. Most
patients soon realize that they are having experiences that
others do not share, and for this reason learn to keep quiet
about them. Many suffer insults, threats, and attacks for
years from voices with no one around them aware of it.
In my dialogues with patients I learned of two orders of
experience, borrowing from the voices themselves, called the
higher and the lower order. Lower-order voices are similar
to drunken bums at a bar who like to tease and torment just
for the fun of it. They suggest lewd acts and then scold the
patient for considering them. They find a weak point of
conscience and work on it interminably. For instance, one
man heard voices teasing him for three years over a ten-cent
debt he had already paid. They call the patient every conceiv-
able name, suggest every lewd act, steal memories or ideas
right out of consciousness, threaten death, and work on the
patient' s credibility in every way. For instance, they brag
that they will produce some disaster on the morrow and then
claim honor for one in the daily paper. They suggest foolish
acts, such as to raise your right hand in the air and stay that
way, and tease if he does it and threaten him if he doesn' t.
The lower order can work for a long time to possess some
part of the patient' s body. Several worked on one patient' s
car and he seemed to grow deafer. One voice worked two
years to capture a patient' s eye, which went visibly out of
alignment. Many patients have heard loud and clear voices
plotting their death for weeks on end, an apparently nerve-
wracking experience. One patient saw a noose around his
neck that was tied to "I don' t know what , " while voices
plotted his death by hanging. They threaten pain and can
cause felt pain as a way of enforcing their power. The most
devastating experience of all is to be shouted at constantly by
dozens of voices. When this occurred the patient became
grossly disturbed and had to be sedated. The vocabulary and
range of ideas of the lower order is limited, but they have a
persistent will to destroy. They invade every nook and
cranny of privacy, work on every weakness and belief, claim
awesome powers, lie, make promises, and then undermine
the patient' s will. They never have a personal identity,
though they accept most names or identities given them.
I hey either conceal or have no awareness of personal memo-
ries. Though they claim to be separate identities they will
reveal no detail that might help to trace them as separate
individuals. Their voice quality can change or shift, leaving
the patient quite confused as to who might be speaking.
When identified as some friend known to the patient, they
can assume this voice quality perfectly. For convenience
many patients call them by nicknames, such as "Fred, " "The
Doctor,' or "The Old-Timer." I' ve heard it said by the
higher-order voices that the purpose of the lower order is to
illuminate all of the person' s weaknesses. They do that admi-
rably and with infinite patience. To make matters worse they
hold out promises to patients and even give helpful-sounding
advice, only to catch the patient in some weakness. Even
with the patient' s help I found the lower order difficult to
relate to because of their disdain for me as well as the patient.
The limited vocabulary and range of ideas of the lower
order is striking. A few ideas can be repeated endlessly. One
voice just said "hey" for months while the patient tried to
figure out whether "hey" or "hay" was meant. Even when
I was supposedly speaking to an engineer that a woman
heard, the engineer was unable to do any more arithmetic
than simple sums and multiplication the woman had memo-
rized. The lower-order voices seem incapable of sequential
reasoning. Though they often claim to be in some distant
city, they cannot report more than the patient sees, hears, or
remembers. They seem imprisoned in the lowest level of the
patient' s mind, giving no real evidence of a personal world
or of any higher-order thinking or experiencing.
All of the lower order are irreligious or antireligious. Some
actively interfered with the patients' religious practices. Most
patients considered them as ordinary living people, though
to one patient they appeared as conventional devils and re-
ferred to themselves as demons. In a few instances they
referred to themselves as from hell. Occasionally they would
speak through the patient so that the patient' s voice and
speech would be directly those of the voices. Sometimes they
acted through the patient. One of my female patients was
found going out the hospital gate arguing loudly with her
male voice that she didn' t want to leave, but he was insisting.
Like many others, this particular hallucination claimed to be
Jesus Christ, but his bragging and argumentativeness rather
gave him away as of the lower order. Sometimes the lower
order is embedded in physical concerns, as in the case of a
lady who was tormented by experimenters painfully treating
her joints to prevent arthritis. She held out hope that they
were helping her, though it was apparent to any onlooker
they had all but destroyed her life as a free and intelligent
person.
In direct contrast stand the rarer higher-order hallucina-
tions. In quantity they make up perhaps a fifth or less of the
patients' experiences. This contrast may be illustrated by the
experience of one man. He had heard the lower order arguing
for a long while about how they would murder him. He also
had a light come to him at night, like the sun. He knew it
was a different order because the light respected his freedom
and would withdraw if it frightened him. In contrast, the
lower order worked against his will and would attack if it
could sense fear in him. This rarer higher order seldom
speaks, whereas the lower order can talk endlessly. The
higher order is much more likely to be symbolic, religious,
supportive, genuinely instructive; it can communicate di-
rectly with the inner feelings of the patient. It is similar to
Jung' s archetypes, whereas the lower order is like Freud' s id.
I' ve learned to help the patient approach the higher order
because of its great power to broaden the individual' s values.
When the man was encouraged to approach his friendly sun
he entered a world of powerful numinous experiences, in
some ways more frightening than the murderers who plotted
his death. In one scene he found himself at the bottom of a
long corridor with doors at the end behind which raged the
powers of hell. He was about to let out these powers when
a very powerful and impressive Christlike figure appeared
.and by direct mind-to-mind communication counseled him
to leave the doors closed and follow him into other experi-
ences that were therapeutic for him. In another instance the
higher order appeared to a man as a lovely woman who
entertained him while showing him thousands of symbols.
Though the patient was a high school-educated gas pipe
fitter, his female vision showed a knowledge of religion and
myth far beyond the patient' s comprehension. At the end of
a very rich dialogue with her (the patient reporting her sym-
bols and responses), the patient asked for just a clue as to
what she and I were talking about. Anot her example is that
of a black man who gave up being useful and lived as a
drunken thief. In his weeks of hallucinations the higher order
carefully instructed him on the trials of all minority groups
and left him with the feeling he would like to do something
for minorities.
Some patients experience both the higher and lower orders
at various times and feel caught between a private heaven
and hell. Many only know the attacks of t he lower order. The
higher order claims power over the lower order and, indeed,
shows it at times, but not enough to give peace of mind to
most patients. The higher order itself has indicated that the
usefulness of the lower order is to illustrate and make con-
scious the patients' weaknesses and faults.
Though I could say much more on what t he patients
reported and quote extensively from dialogues with halluci-
nations, this is the substance of my findings. I was very early
impressed by the overall similarities of what patients re-
ported even though they had no contact with each other.
After twenty patients there wasn' t much more to be learned.
I was also impressed by the similarity to the relatively little
shown in the biblical accounts of possession. These patients
might well be going through experiences quite similar to
what others felt centuries ago.
Several things stood out as curious and puzzling. The
lower order seemed strangely prevalent and limited. In t he
face of their claim of separate identity, their concealing or
not knowing any fact (birthplace, schooling, name, personal
history) that would set them apart was unusual. Their
malevolence and persistence in undermining the patient was
striking. And why would they consistently be nonreligious
and antireligious? Just the mention of religion provoked an-
ger or derision from them. In contrast, the higher order
appeared strangely gifted, sensitive, wise, and religious. They
did not conceal identity but rather would have an identity
above the human. For instance, a lady of the higher order
was described as "an emanation of the feminine aspect of the
Divine.'
5
When I implied she was Divine she took offense.
She herself was not Divine but she was an emanation of the
Divine. I couldn' t help but begin to feel I was dealing with
some kind of contrasting polarity of good and evil. The
patients' accounts of voices trying to seize for their own some
part of the body, such as eye, ear, or tongue, had a strangely
ancient ring to it. Some people might suspect that my man-
ner of questioning fed back to the patients what I wanted to
hear, but I had occasion to address an audience of patients
and staff in the hospital on hallucinations. Afterward many
patients I had not met came up and pressed my hand and
said I had described their experiences too. As incredible as
it may seem, I' m inclined to believe the above is a roughly
accurate account of many patients' hallucinatory experi-
ences.
Though I had read Swedenborg, the similarity between his
account of heaven and hell and patients' experiences was not
immediately apparent to me. His doctrine regarding spirits
I could neither affirm or deny. It was the clear and persistent
reports from patients of attempts at possession that first
reminded me of biblical accounts and later of Swedenborg.
Not much was known of madness two centuries ago. Swe-
denborg did speculate on the matter. He sometimes de-
scribed it as being too involved in one' s own fantasies (SD
1752), and sometimes ascribed it to pride in one's own pow-
ers (i.e., spiritual madness [AC 10227]). He gave much de-
scription of possession by spirits and what they did. Halluci-
nations look most like what Swedenborg described under the
general headings of obsessions (to be caught in false ideas)
and possession (to have alien spirits acting into one' s own
thought, feelings, or even into one' s bodily acts [HH 257]).
He indicated that normally there is a barrier between these
spiritual entities and man' s own consciousness. He was de-
scribing a hallucination, and the dangers involved:
The speech of an angel or spirit with man is heard as sonorously
as the speech of man with man, yet not by others who stand near,
but by himself alone. The reason is that the speech of an angel or
spirit flows first into man's thought and by an internal way into his
organ of hearing thus affecting it from within. . . .
To speak with spirits at this day is rarely granted, because it is
dangerous; for then the spirits know that they are with man, other-
wise they do not know it, and evil spirits are such, that they regard
man with deadly hatred, and desire nothing more than to destroy
him, both soul and body. This in fact is done with those who have
indulged much in phantasies, so as to remove themselves from the
delights proper to the natural man. Some also who lead a solitary
life occasionally hear spirits speaking with them. HH 248-249
If evil spirits knew they were with man they would do all
sorts of things to torment him and destroy his life. What he
described looks remarkably like my own findings on the
lower-order hallucinations. Let us consider lower-order hal-
lucinations and possession by evil spirits together. You will
recall that I said lower-order hallucinations act against the
patient' s will, and are extremely verbal, persistent, attacking,
and malevolent. They use trickery to deceive the patient as
to their powers, and threaten, cajole, entreat, and undermine
in every conceivable way. These are all characteristics of
possession by evil spirits, which takes place when the spirits
are no longer unconscious, but have some awareness of them-
selves as separate entities and act into consciousness.
It is not clear how the awareness barrier between spirits
and man is broken. In Swedenborg's case he apparently did
it deliberately with his practice of inward concentration and
trances. Swedenborg described his experience as a special gift
from the Lord, in which he could be tormented like others
and yet be protected from harm (SD 3963). In the context
of his whole system of thought, one would surmise this inner
barrier of awareness is penetrated when the person habitually
withdraws from social usefulness into inner fantasy and
pride. This would conform to contemporary social with-
drawal, which is the earliest aspect of schizophrenia. I am
relatively certain that religious faith alone doesn' t prevent
hallucinations because many patients try to save themselves
by religious practices. Observation would suggest useful so-
cial acts, charity, would come closer to preventing schizo-
phrenia.
All of Swedenborg' s observations on the effect of evil spir-
its entering man' s consciousness conform to my findings.
The most fundamental one is that they attempt to destroy
him (AC 6192, 4227). They can cause anxiety or pain (AC
6202). They speak in man' s native tongue (ML 326, DP 135).
(The only instances I could find where hallucinations seemed
to know a language other than the patient' s were in the
higher order.) They seek to destroy conscience (AC 1983)
and seem to be against every higher value. For instance, they
interfere with reading or religious practices. They suggest
acts against the patient' s conscience and, if refused, threaten,
make them seem plausible, or do anything to overcome the
patient' s resistance. Swedenborg said these spirits can imper-
sonate and deceive (SD 2687). This accounts for one puz-
zling aspect. Patients say voices can shift voice quality and
identity as they speak, making it impossible to identify them.
Or, if a patient treats them as some known individual, they
will act like him. They lie (SD 1622). Most patients who have
experienced voices for any length of time come to recognize
this. They tell a patient he will die tomorrow and yet he lives.
They claim to be anyone, including the Holy Spirit ( HH
249). It took some while for a woman patient to come to
realize the male voice in her probably was not Jesus Christ,
as it claimed. She considered him sick and proceeded to
counsel this voice, which improved and left her! He claimed
he could read my mind, but I showed her by a simple experi-
ment that he couldn' t.
When spirits begin to speak with man, he must beware lest he
believe them in anything; for they say almost anything; things are
fabricated by them, and they lie; for if they were permitted to relate
what heaven is, and how things are in the heavens, they would tell
so many lies, and indeed with a solemn affirmation, that man would
be astonished. . . . They are extremely fond of fabricating: and
whenever any subject of discourse is proposed, they think that they
know it, and give their opinions one after another, one in one way,
and another in another, altogether as if they knew; and if a man
listens and believes, they press on, and deceive, and seduce in divers
ways. SD 1622
Though most patients tend to recognize this, many still
put faith in their voices and remain caught by them. For
instance, one lady felt a group of scientists, including a physi-
cian and engineer, was doing important but painful experi-
ments on the ends of her bones. Even though I couldn' t find
a trace of medical knowledge in the physician or any math-
ematical ability above simple sums in the engineer, she con-
tinued to believe in them.
Many voices have indicated they will take over the world,
or have already done so, which bit of bragging Swedenborg
noticed too (SD 4476). I asked one lower-order voice what
his real aims were. He candidly said, "Fight, screw, win the
world. " They can suggest and try to enforce strange acts in
the patient and then condemn him for compliance.
Man does not produce anything false and evil from himself, but it
is the evil spirits with him who produce it, and at the same time"
make the man believe that he does it of himself. Such is their
malignity. And what is more, at the moment when they are infus-
ing and compelling this belief, they accuse and condemn him, as
I can confirm from many experiences. AC 761
They draw attention to things sexual or simply filthy (SD
2852) and then proceed to condemn t he person for noticing
them. They often refer to the person as just an automation
or machine.
Thus men walk about as machines; they are nothing in the eyes of
spirits; and if they know one to be a man, and also a spirit, they
would look upon him as an inanimate machine, while the man all
the time supposes himself to be living and thinking, and the spirit
to be nothing. SD 3633
That a person is an automaton is a common psychotic delu-
sion, arising out of hallucinated experience. In the normal
condition these spirits cannot see and hear the world of man
(AC 1880), but in mental illness they can (SD 3963). For
instance I was able to give the Rorschach inkblot test to a
patient' s voices separately from the patient' s own responses.
Incidentally, the lower-order hallucinations appeared to be
much sicker than the patient. Since I could talk with them
through the patient' s hearing, they could hear what the pa-
tient heard. Though they seem to have the same sensory
experience as the patient, I could find no evidence they could
see or hear things remote from t he patient' s senses, as they
often claimed.
There are a number of peculiar traits of the lower-order
hallucinations on which Swedenborg threw light. If voices
are merely the patient' s unconscious coming forth, I would
have no reason to expect them to be particularly for or
against religion. Yet the lower order can be counted on to
give its most scurrilous comments to any suggestion of reli-
gion. They either totally deny any afterlife or oppose God
and all religious practices (AC 6197). Once I asked if they
were spirits, and they answered, "The only spirits around
here are in bottles" (followed by raucous laughter). To Swe-
denborg it is their opposition to God, religion, and all that
this implies that makes them what they are.
Anot her peculiar finding is that the lower-order hallucina-
tions were somehow bound to and limited within the pa-
tient' s own experiences (AC 796f). The lower order could not
reason sequentially or think abstractly as could the higher
order. Also, it seemed limited within the patient' s own mem-
ory. For instance, one group of voices could attack the pa-
tient only for things he had recalled since they invaded him;
and they were most anxious to get any dirt to use against
him. Swedenborg throws light on this when he indicates that
one class of evil spirits is limited to man' s memory ( HH 292,
298). This accounts for its memory limitation, its lack of
sequential and abstract reasoning, and its extreme repetitive-
ness. As I indicated earlier, it is not uncommon for voices to
attack a person for years over a single past guilt. It also
accounts for the very verbal quality of the lower order as
against the higher order' s frequent inability to speak at all
(ML 326).
Swedenborg indicated the possibility of spirits acting
through the subject (AC 5990), which was to possess him.
This I have occasionally seen. For instance the man who
thought he was Christ within a woman sometimes spoke
through her, at which times her voice was unnaturally rough
and deep. She also had trouble with him dressing at the same
time she was, because she would be caught in the incongrui-
ties of doing two different acts at once.
Another peculiar finding that Swedenborg unintentionally
explained is my consistent experience that lower-order hal-
lucinations act as though they are separate individuals and
yet can in no way reveal even a trace of personal identity.
Nor can they produce anything more than was in the pa-
tient' s memory. This strange but consistent finding is clar-
ified by Swedenborg' s account. These lower-order spirits
enter a man' s memory and lose all personal memory. Their
personal memory was taken off at their death, leaving their
more interior aspects. That they discover they are other than
I he man allows obsession and possession to take place and
accounts for their claiming separate identity and convincing
I he patient of this. But their actual lack of personal memory
comes from their taking on the patient' s own.
It may be that in the deeper degree of schizophrenia the
spirits have taken on more of their own memory. Sweden-
borg said that this would lead man to believe he had done
what he had not done (AC 2478, HH 256). For instance,
delusional ideas are a belief in what has not occurred. Some
patients spoke of themselves as dead and buried and their
present identity as of another person. "For were spirits to
retain their corporeal memory, they would so far obsess man,
I hat he would have no more self-control or be in the enjoy-
ment of his life, than one actually obsessed" (SD 3783). I am
just guessing at this point that the most serious mental dis-
orderswhere a person is totally out of contact and jabbers
I himself and gesticulates strangelyare instances where
Ihese spirits have more memory and act more thoroughly
through the person. It is then symbolically accurate that the
patient is dead and someone else lives.
I deliberately looked for some discrepancy between my
patients' experiences and Swedenborg' s descriptions. I ap-
pcared to have found it in the number of spirits who were
with one patient. Patients may have three or four most fre-
quent voices, but they can experience a number of different
people. Swedenborg said there are usually only two good and
two evil spirits with a person (AC 904, 5470, 5848, 6189). He
iilso gave instances where spirits come in clouds of people at
II lime (SD 4546). I later learned that where there is a split
between the internal and external experience of a person, as
in schizophrenia, there can be many spirits with a person (SD
160). Also, as patients' voices themselves have described the
situation, one spirit can be the subject or voice of many ( HH
601). This was the case with the lady who had the researchers
working on her bones. They themselves were in a kind of
hierarchy and represented many. Only the lowest few mem-
bers of the hierarchy became known to the patient and my-
self. Swedenborg referred to such spirits as the subjects of
many.
Both Swedenborg and medieval literature spoke of the aim
of spirits to possess and control some part of a patient' s body
(SD 1751, 2656, 4910, 5569). Parts involved in my observa-
tions have been the ear, eye, tongue, and genitals. Medieval
literature speaks of intercourse between a person and his or
her possessing spirit, giving these spirits the names "incubi"
and "succubi," depending on their sex. One female patient
described her sexual relations with her male spirit as both
more pleasurable and more inward than normal intercourse.
Swedenborg made it clear that those who enter the affections
or emotions enter thereby into all things of the body. These
more subtle possessions are more powerful than simply hav-
ing voices talking to one, and can easily account for affective
psychoses where there is a serious mood change (SD 5981).
One older German woman was depressed by tiny devils who
tormented her in her genital region and made her feel the
horror of hell.
Both possession and the experimental way in which Swe-
denborg entered these experiences is illustrated by the fol-
lowing:
It is known from The Word that there was an influx from the
world of spirits and from heaven into the prophets, partly by
dreams, partly by visions, and partly by speech; and also with some
into the very speech and into the very gestures, and thus into the
things that belong to the body; and that at the time they did not
speak from themselves, nor act from themselves, but from the
spirits who were then in possession of their bodies. At such times
some of them behaved like insane persons, as Saul did when he lay
nuked; others when they wounded themselves; others when they
put horns on themselves, and others in similar ways. And as I
desired to know in what manner these men were actuated by
pirits, I was shown by means of a living experience. To this end
I was for a whole night possessed by spirits, who took such posses-
Hion of my body that I had only a very obscure sensation that it
wus my own body. AC 6212
In Swedenborg's terms the higher-order spirits would be
angels who come to assist the person. As Swedenborg de-
scribed it, they reside in the interior mind, which does not
think in words but in universals that comprise many particu-
lurs (AC 5614).
The speech of the angels is also full of wisdom, because it pro-
ceeds from their interior thought; and their interior thought is
wisdom, as their interior affection is love, their love and wisdom
uniting in speech. Consequently it is so full of wisdom that they can
express by one word what man cannot express by a thousand
words. The ideas of their thought also comprehend things which
man cannot conceive, much less utter. This is why the things which
have been heard and seen in heaven are said to be ineffable, and
such as ear hath not heard nor eye seen. It has been granted me
to know by experience that it is so. I have sometimes been let into
the state in which angels are, and in that state I have spoken with
them; and then I understood all; but when I was brought back to
my former state, and thus into the natural thought proper to man,
und wished to recollect what I had heard, I could not; for there
were thousands of things not adapted to the ideas of natural
thought, thus not expressible at all by human words, but only by
variegations of heavenly light. HH 239
But this is true not only in heaven but in the interior of mind
too.
That man's interior mind . . . does not think from the words of any
language, nor consequently from natural forms, can be seen by
anyone who reflects on these things, for he can think in a moment
what he can scarcely utter in an hour, and he does so by universals
which comprise many particulars. These ideas are spiritual. AC
5614
The higher order in one patient showed him visually hun-
dreds of universal symbols in the space of one hour. Though
he found them entertaining he couldn' t understand their
meaning. One patient described a higher-order spirit who
appeared all in white, radiant, very powerful in his presence,
and who communicated directly with the spirit of the patient
to guide him out of his hell. Swedenborg described how the
influx of angels gently leads to good and leaves the person in
freedom (AC 6205). I' ve described the incident where the
patient recognized good forces first as a sun that withdrew
from him when he was frightened whereas all his experiences
of the lower order had been attacking ones. It was this simple
respect for his freedom that led the patient to believe this was
another order.
Swedenborg indicated that good spirits have some degree
of control over the evil ones (AC 5992, 6308; SD 3525).
Higher-order hallucinations have made the same comment
t hat they can control lower-order onesbut it is seldom
to the degree the patient would desire. In some respects they
overcome the evil insofar as the patient identifies with them.
In one case I encouraged the patient to become acquainted
with these helpful forces that tended to frighten him. When
he did so their values merged into him, and the evil plotters,
who had been saying for months they would kill him, disap-
peared. I seem to see some kind of control of the higher order
over the lower, though the nature and conditions of this
control are not yet clear. Again, and precisely in agreement
with Swedenborg, I found evil spirits cannot see the good
ones, but the good can the evil ( HH 583). The lower order
may know of the presence of the higher order but cannot see
it.
Why the higher-order hallucinations were rarer remained
11 considerable puzzle to me for over a year, since they were
far more interesting to t he patient and myself and potentially
more therapeutic. Again, Swedenborg has an explanation
I hat fits beautifully with my findings. I have noticed t he
higher order tends to be nonverbal and highly symbolic. He
indicated t hat angels possess t he very interior of man. Thei r
influx is tacit. It does not stir up material ideas or memories
but is directed to man' s ends or inner motives ( AC 5854,
6193, 6209). It is for this reason not so apparent and hence
rarer in the patients' reports.
Conclusion
What are we to make of this similarity? I am personally
convinced t hat Swedenborg and cont emporary hallucinating
persons are describing t he same general experiences. There
lire just too many similarities to believe otherwise. Yet it is
in itself remarkable t hat Swedenborg and persons separated
by different cultures, different assumptions of t he world, dif-
ferent experiences, and t wo centuries of time could so de-
scribe inner experiences alike. One implication is t hat this
inner world may be very stable and consistent over centuries
of time, certainly more consistent t han t he outer nat ural
world.
Could Swedenborg have been mad? Ther e is simply no
evidence for this. In cont rast to t he limited, impaired, unpro-
ductive lives of these patients, his life was one of t he richest
and most productive ever lived. He explored voluntarily
what patients are involuntarily t hrown into.
None of these psychotics sought these experiences. They
had all tried everything they could t hi nk of to stop t he hal-
lucinationsprayer, diet, obeying t he voices, disregarding
t he voices, etc. Not hi ng worked. Even when extrasensory
perception t urned up it simply convinced t hem of the power
of the "ot hers" and frightened them. For every pleasant
moment in this inner world, there was so much misery that
most did not want to have these experiences. In contrast,
Swedenborg sought to penetrate the inner world. He care-
fully recorded it and made great use of it.
It appears that psychotics, alienated from their own feel-
ings and inner processes, find these processes represented
around them in a different form. I'll illustrate by a humorous
example. The same man who had a very gifted female spirit
enlivening his life came in one day and complained of having
female breasts. They got in the way of his work. He wasn' t
so crazy that he didn' t know that others couldn' t see the
breasts. Yet he could, and it annoyed him. I asked him to
describe the breasts. One side was well shaped, the other
pendulous and not so attractive. I asked if he could associate
with them. Yes. The well-shaped side reminded him of a new
girl friend. The less attractive pendulous side reminded him
of an old girl friend toward whom he still felt obligated. I said
he should make up his mind between them. He did, and the
breasts disappeared. Hallucinations were rarely this easily
cured, but over and over I had the impression that they
represented unknown potentials in the patient. The hell side
illustrated personal faults, blindness and stupidity. The
heaven side represented higher, unused gifts. There were no
hallucinations at the patients' average level of functioning.
They were either far more limited or more gifted than the
patient. They appear to be unrealized, unlived-out potentials,
spilling out to confuse the environment. A saintly lady pa-
tient had dirty voices. The drunken black burglar was shown
a detailed and sensitive history of minority groups. In this
sense, these people seemed to have too much unused, un-
recognized, unconscious, which lived anyway and confused
their environment. So my impressions conform to the general
ideas of the unconscious.
Yet it is much more than that. There are demons that can
plague a person and try to possess him. There are also higher
spirits whose wisdom is very great. In the head oi the unedu-
caled gas pipe fitter was the most gifted woman I' ve ever
known. Quite to his surprise and faint amusement he found
universal symbols all over the room. My guess is that the
spiritual world is much as Swedenborg described it, and is
I he unconscious. We are mostly unconscious of the other
spiritual worlds. It is meant to be that way, for it is very
dangerous when these worlds are opened up to man, just as
Swedenborg said. He did not advocate that anyone try to
follow him.
My guess is that Swedenborg systematically explored the
same worlds that psychotic patients find themselves thrust
into, and these worlds are heaven and hell, the worlds
beyond this one, inside this one. It is not too surprising, when
you think of it, that persons who are disordered inwardly
experience some of the raw underpinnings of experience that
arc invisible to the smoothly functioning mind.
To help us understand this phenomenon fully, let me de-
scribe what it would be like to be possessed in the normal
sense. Swedenborg said that we all have spirits with us; they
arc part of the foundation and energy of mental processes.
What would their presence be like in the normal mind that
is not so alienated from its own nature, as in the patients'
cases? Even though outwardly occupied in some normal
train of thought and action, the lower order would appear as
an impulse to think of some sexual, hostile, or other emo-
tional scene. The impulse would feel like one' s own, but arise
contrary to what you thought you were choosing. In reli-
gious terms this is called temptation. At the point of choos-
ing one line of experience and stumbling on another within,
you feel that you can choose which one to dwell on. If you
choose to put down the sexual, it could arise again and again,
i.e., the temptation wouldn' t disappear easily. And what
would the interaction with angels be like? It could be finding
138 The Presence of Other Worlds
yourself drifting into considering t he quality of your con-
duct, or to underst and your life or life itself in a broader way.
This is t he normal aspect of what t he patients experienced in
a more intense form. Most mental experience is participated
in by spirits who don' t know themselves as anyt hi ng ot her
t han your own feelings. Honed down to this fine level, t he
only thing left t hat is really yours is t he struggle to choose.
Those who aren' t choosing are going t he way the spiritual
winds blow. So t he pitiful picture of t he hallucinated
psychotic is really an exaggerated picture of everyone' s situa-
tion.
Minor Miracles
It is natural to look with some incredulity on Emanuel Swe-
denborg' s claims. We would like some furt her confirmation
that he really had reached other worlds. A number of inci-
dents tend to provide such confirmation. In addition to ev-
erything else, Swedenborg had apparently stumbled upon a
way to knowledge not often given to mortals. Yet he consid-
cred his new powers of so little account that he didn' t even
bother to mention them in his writingseven though he
seemed to have recorded everything else. The confirmatory
incidents I shall report here were all recorded out of the
amazement of ot hers. " Rather than let these somewhat
miraculous incidents stand as evidence or proof that Sweden-
borg had indeed reached other worlds, I prefer to show them
for their implications on the nature of reality and the inner
nature of this man' s personal experience. Proof for Sweden-
borg appropriately rested on how well what he had to say fit
with human experience and biblical revelation. These are
internal or spiritual evidences. These little miracles, though
very curious, are not really proof of anything.
If Swedenborg had felt that a public display of his powers
would furt her the welfare of others, he probably would have
displayed them widely. In several places he said that miracles
have a coercive effect on belief and destroy the free will in
spiritual matters (TCR 501, 849). Only choices made in
freedom really affect the individual' s eternal nature and des-
tiny. Impressive, miraculous events tend to affect the exter-
nals of belief. In time the internal, freely chosen path comes
to rule and even miraculous events are washed away in the
current of time and forgotten. Indeed, one of the incidents
is an example of this. Swedenborg accidentally showed his
powers to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Wesley
was very impressed for a while, but later joined others in
rejecting Swedenborg. Miracles only impress when they
demonstrate what are already the essentials of a person' s
beliefs. So Swedenborg mostly concealed his unusual powers;
they were discovered by others almost by accident.
There were several clear indications that Swedenborg did
not want to be an impressive public figure. His most valuable
writings were issued anonymously until near the end of his
life. (Only his printers knew their author. ) Moreover, these
sublime works were sold at less than the cost of printing
(Docs II, p. 496). He lived a quiet, scholarly life, only going
to the court or parties occasionally. He had a speech impedi-
ment and would often stammer so that the listener had to be
patient and wait for the great man to get it out. Those who
stammer are sensitive to the impact of social intercourse. The
more tense and anxious the situation, the more they worry
if they will stammer and the more they do. Swedenborg
probably had a partial impediment that tended to disappear
in relaxed company with friends. He never sought any public
position other than his job as assessor of mines for Sweden.
He had turned down a professorship. His whole adult life
was to be spent in inner exploration and writing, which
suited his nature, where he was comfortable. Left to his own
devices, he was a quiet scholar in seedy clothes.
Further, when it became known that Swedenborg had
unusual powers, an unpleasant flap was raised. There was
much talk and rumor about what he had or hadn' t done.
Rumor serves the personal needs of those who carry it and
an incident becomes distorted in the direction of these needs.
So Swedenborg had plenty of reason to play down these
powers. Their use here is to show what is possible and to
illustrate the inner experience of the expert on inner experi-
ence.
On July 17, 1759, Swedenborg and fifteen others were
guests of the prominent merchant William Castel in Gothen-
berg at his fine home on Canal Street. At six in the evening
Swedenborg appeared quite pale and alarmed. When asked
what was wrong, he described a fire burning at that moment
in Stockholm, three hundred miles away. He paced in and
out of the house evidently agitated by the fire. His detailed
description and evident sincerity upset the guests, many of
whom were from Stockholm. Swedenborg described exactly
where the fire was burning, where it had started, and when,
and was dismayed to see a friend' s house already in ashes.
The next day, Sunday, the governor, having heard of the
incident, asked to see Swedenborg and received a detailed
report. The news spread through the city. Two days after the
fire, messengers arrived and confirmed every detail as Swe-
denborg had reported it, including when and how it started,
what it burned, and where and when it was contained (Docs
II, pp. 628 f.). There were several separate reports of this
incident that agreed on essentials. Even the German philoso-
pher Immanuel Kant was impressed and sent his own agent
to check the details.
This was the first incident. If it had not been for his evident
alarm Swedenborg, now seventy-one, might have continued
to conceal this extrasensory power. But the cat was out of the
bag. Rumor started. A few began to suspect that he might
even be the anonymous author of the extraordinary works on
heaven and hell. People started asking questions about the
spiritual world. He felt privileged to know so much and
obliged to share it with others. He would answer simply and
directly any questions, often referring to recent meetings
with departed figures. People reacted as one might expect.
Some were pleased to get such direct answers bearing on
important matters. Others were surprised that this old man
could look and act so sane and yet be so crazy. Evidently
Swedenborg refused to check on departed friends just to
satisfy curiosity. He said that this world and the spiritual
world were separated for good reason. Apparently he would
search in heaven or hell if the inquirer had a sufficiently
weighty reason, as in the next two incidents.
In April or May 1761, a countesse de Marteville came to
Swedenborg. Her husband, M. de Marteville, ambassador
extraordinary of the Netherlands, had died in Sweden. He
had given her a valuable silver service before he died. Now
the silversmith was demanding a payment she could not
afford even though she was sure her husband had paid for it.
The matter was urgent to the woman. She had heard Swe-
denborg could contact the souls of the departed. Would he
contact her husband and ask of the receipt? Swedenborg said
he would. Three days later he returned and said he had
spoken with her husband. The receipt was in a bureau up-
stairs. The woman said she had already searched the bureau.
The husband had told Swedenborg that a certain drawer was
to be pulled out and a false back removed. The woman and
her company went upstairs and found the receipt and other
lost papers as directed. This incident was related by eleven
different sources, most of whom agreed on the above account
(Docs II, pp. 633 f.). When questioned on the matter Swe-
denborg also affirmed its occurrence.
The next corroborated incident occurred several months
later. Queen Louisa Ulrica of Sweden had heard of Sweden-
borg. She asked Count Scheffer about this man who pre-
(ended to talk with the dead. Was he perhaps mad? Count
Scheffer knew Swedenborg and replied he was quite sane. He
promised to bring him to court. Swedenborg went to court
in his nobleman' s finery, powdered wig and dress sword.
After the queen chatted with foreign ambassadors and other
dignitaries, Court Scheffer introduced Swedenborg to her.
She asked whether he could really converse with the
deceased? He answered yes. She asked if this skill could be
learned by others. He said it couldn' t, that it was a gift of the
I ,ord. Aft er some furt her conversation, the queen asked him
10 take a commission to her brother. The queen, the king,
(' ount Scheffer, and Swedenborg adjourned to a quiet spot
where the queen gave Swedenborg her message. The queen
and her brother had been separated by tragedy because their
countries were at war with each other when he died. After-
ward they dined at the royal table, where Emanuel patiently
answered many questions of the spiritual world. Many ob-
servers felt the queen had not really asked anything very
serious of Swedenborg because she didn' t really believe in his
powers.
Some time afterward Count Scheffer again brought Swe-
denborg to court. He met the queen in her White Room
surrounded by ladies-in-waiting. She lightly asked if he had
a message from her brother. Swedenborg answered yes and
suggested that they speak alone, and he related what he had
learned from the queen' s brother. The queen was variously
described as in shock, disturbed, or so indisposed that she
had to retire. She said later that Swedenborg had reported
what no other living person knew. Swedenborg' s servants
reported that for days all the great people of the realm came
in carriages to learn the queen' s secret, but he did not reveal
11 (Docs II, pp. 647-666).
Later a reporter asked the queen of the incident and she
allirmed it. The royal person was described as no weak-
minded woman. "Nevertheless, she appeared to me so con-
vinced of Swedenborg' s supernatural intercourse with spirits,
that I scarcely durst venture to intimate any doubts . . . and
a royal air' Je ne suis pas facilement dupee (I am not easily
fooled), put an end to all my attempts at refut at i on" (Docs
II, p. 649).
This particular incident was talked about the most, so
there are more sources for it, including the queen herself.
When Swedenborg was asked of the incident, he said it was
true, "but he did not dwell upon [it] observing that there
were hundreds of similar stories; but he did not think it
worth while to waste many words upon them; saying that all
these things were trifles . . . in the shade of the great object
of his mission" (Docs II, p. 648). His mission was to bring
to people the real nature of the spiritual and open up the
meanings in the Bible. Alongside this, these were just curious j
stories.
The next story came from a Dr. Krohl who was reported
to be a trustworthy gentleman. It fits with what is already
known of Swedenborg. In the 1760s there was a very popular
game of cards called Tresett.
One day a certain prelate, Archbishop Troilus, whose greatest
pleasure consisted in playing the game of Tresett and who had
lately lost one of his gambling friends, Erland Broman, met Swe-
denborg a short time after Broman's death in a large company,
where he wished to amuse himself and the rest of the company at
Swedenborg's expense. He asked him therefore in a jocular tone,
"Bye the bye, assessor, tell us something about the spirit world.
How does my friend Broman spend his time there?" Swedenborg
answered instantly, "I saw him but a few hours ago shuffling his
cards in the company of the evil one, and he was only waiting for
your worship to make up a game of Tresett." The conversation
between the archbishop and Swedenborg was thus brought to a
close, and it is not difficult to see which of the two became the
subject of the company's mirth. Docs III, p. 725
It apparently didn' t pay to fool around with a man who had
contact with heaven and hell! The archbishop was ultraor-
lliodox and distinguished himself by the severe measures he
undertook to suppress superstition (Docs III, p. 1246).
In the early 1800s an effort was made to collect anecdotes
on Swedenborg. The next one was recounted by a Professor
Scherer, professor of French at the University of Tbingen.
Scherer was a French diplomat when he met Swedenborg,
'!'hough he witnessed the following incident, he did not be-
lieve in Swedenborg' s spiritual powers.
The professor who was greatly advanced in years, then told us,
that "in Stockholm, in all companies, very much was said con-
ccrning the spirit-seer Swedenborg, and wonderful things were
iccorded respecting his intercourse with spirits and angels. But
I lie judgment pronounced concerning him was various. Some
live full credit to his visions; others passed them by as incompre-
licnsible; and others rejected them as fanatical; but he himself
I Scherer] had never been able to believe them. Swedenborg, how-
ever, on account of his excellent character, was universally held
111 high estimation."
Amongst other things Professor Scherer related the following
remarkable occurrence: Swedenborg was one evening in company
in Stockholm, when, after his information about the world of spir-
IIN had been heard with the greatest attention, they put him to the
proof as to the credibility of his extraordinary spiritual communi-
1'iitions. The test was this: He should state, which of the company
would die first. Swedenborg did not refuse to answer, this question,
but after some time, in which he appeared to be in profound and
Ni l c nt meditation, he quite openly replied, 'Olof Olofsohn will die
tomorrow morning at forty-five minutes past four o'clock.' By this
predictive declaration, which was pronounced by Swedenborg with
nil confidence, the company were placed in anxious expectation,
mid a gentleman who was a friend of Olof Olofsohn, resolved to
U<> on the following morning at the time mentioned by Swedenborg,
to the house of Olofsohn, to see whether Swedenborg's prediction
was fulfilled. On the way thither he met the well-known servant of
(llofsohn, who told him that his master had just then died; a fit of
apoplexy had seized him, and had suddenly put an end to his life.
. The clock in Olofsohn's dwelling apartment stopped at the very
minute in which he had expired, and the hand pointed to the time.
Docs III, pp. 716-717
Emperor Peter III of Russia had fallen from power to be
replaced by Empress Catherine, his wife. Peter was strangled
ignominiously in a prison at Kopscha, Russia. At the same
time Swedenborg was attending a party in Amsterdam. In
the middle of a conversation he seemed to change radically.
He was no longer aware of those around him. When he
recovered, he was asked what had happened. At first he
refused to tell it. Aft er much coaxing he described in a som-
ber and convincing manner the death of Peter III, asking that
the partygoers note the date and his description so they
might later compare it with the newspaper account. In a few
days, the newspapers carried the story (Docs II, p. 490).
Christopher Springer was a noted Swedish politician and
a old friend of Swedenborg' s. Springer had been a major
figure in some secret negotiations between Sweden and
Prussia. Some years after Swedenborg' s death he testified
that the seer showed he knew precisely how the negotiations
had taken place, who was present, what money was offered,
etc., though they had been a closely guarded secret. Springer
noted that he knew a great deal more besides. Springer was
surprised that Swedenborg held him in such favor. It ap-
peared to arise from the fact that Swedenborg knew not only
what he did, but the good intentions behind Springer' s diplo-
matic acts (Docs II, p. 533).
Swedenborg made many voyages by sailing ships. Voyag-
ing in his time was a much more uncertain affair than it is
now. Weather couldn' t be predicted very well, a ship might
or might not have a fast passage, and marine disaster was
common enough. Swedenborg indicated that he did not fear
a voyage, for he had angels with him. Somehow, moreover,
when the enlightened Swedenborg was aboard, the vessel was
likely to have an unusually swift passage. We cannot really
determine whether or not this was mere chance. But at least
lie acquired a reputation that made sea captains happy to see
him come aboard. Once a passenger expressed doubts about
I lie odd Swedenborg who went into trances in his cabin. The
captain was a more practical man. What Swedenborg did in
Iiis cabin was no matter to him; he paid his fare, was conge-
nial, and brought a fair wind with him. This was sufficient
lor a practical-minded man.
There is a clear indication that at least on one occasion
Swedenborg knew precisely when the vessel would conclude
II long voyage under the uncertain influence of winds. The
following incident was found in a letter from Christopher
Springer, Swedenborg' s friend, to Abbe Perrnety.
1 will now relate to you some things which I have seen and heard,
i 'iflcen years ago Swedenborg set out for Sweden and asked me to
procure a good captain for him, which I did. I contracted with one
whose name was Dixon. Swedenborg's luggage was taken on board
I lie vessel; and as his apartments were at some distance from the
docks, we engaged lodgings for the night in an inn near the har-
hour, as the captain above-named was to call for him in the morn-
Ing. He went to bed, and I sat in another room with the landlord,
with whom I conversed. We heard a noise; and not being able to
I II the cause, we approached a door, which had a little window
looking into the room where Swedenborg was sleeping. We saw
Iiiin with his hands raised towards heaven, and his body apparently
very much agitated. He spoke much for half-an-hour, but we could
not understand what he was saying, except when he dropped his
liiinds, when we heard him say with a loud voice, "My God!" but
-ould not hear more. He remained very quietly in bed. I stepped
Into his room with the landlord, and asked whether he was ill.
"No," said he, "but I have had a long discourse with the angels and
I lie heavenly friends, and am at this time in a great perspiration."
As his things had been taken on board, he asked the landlord for
.1 fresh shirt and a fresh sheet. Afterwards he went to bed again,
mid slept till morning.
When the captain of the vessel called for Swedenborg, I took
leave of him, and wished him a happy journey: having asked the
captain, if he had a good supply of provisions on board, he an-
swered me that he had as much as would be required. Swedenborg
then observed, "My friend, we have not need of a great quantity;
for this day week we shall, by the aid of God, enter into the port
of Stockholm at two o'clock." On Captain Dixon's return, he
related to me that this happened exactly as Swedenborg had fore-
told. Docs II, pp. 531 f.
Again Swedenborg showed he knew the future. The voy-
age from London to Stockholm had been made in a square-
rigged ship. If you look at the map, it is not a straight simple
journey but one with many changes of course over quite a
distance. In a letter to a Dr. Beyer, Swedenborg described the
voyage, "The trip from England was made in eight days; a
favourable wind increasing to a perfect storm carried the ship
along in style" (Docs II, p. 250). Of more interest is the
description of Swedenborg in a trance. He talked unclearly
and gestured visibly. It is also to be noted that when he came
out of the trance he was perfectly oriented to this world. I
cannot account for the heavy perspiration, but it has been
observed by others in trance states. There is a legend that
Buddha became very hot during his great vision under the
Bodhi Tree. Nat ure came to help him: snails crawled over his
head to cool him. In some representations of Buddha, many
knobs on the head represent these snails.
An example of clairvoyance was given by Madame A. A.
De Frese, wife of a Captain Carl George De Frese and grand-
daughter of the manufacturer Bolander of Gottenburg.
In a large company assembled in Gottenburg about 1770 in
honour of Swedenborg, there was present the manufacturer Bo-
lander, who was the owner of very extensive cloth-mills. During
dinner Swedenborg suddenly turned to Mr. Bolander, and said to
him sharply: "Sir, you had better go to your mills!" Mr. Bolander
was very much surprised at the tone of voice in which Swedenborg
spoke to him, and thought it anything but polite; but he rose
nevertheless from the table, and went to his mills. On arriving there
lie found that a large piece of cloth had fallen down near the
l urnace, and had commenced burning. If he had delayed but a little
lunger, he would have found his property in ashes. After removing
I lie danger, Mr. Bolander returned to the company and expressed
Iiis thanks to Swedenborg, telling him what had happened. Swe-
ilcnborg smiled, and said that he had seen the danger, and also that
I here was no time to be lost, whereby he had addressed him thus
nbruptly. Docs III, p. 724
Two more examples cover the known little miracles that
Swedenborg was involved in. There was a John Henry Jung,
culled Stilling, born in 1740. He was a self-made man, having
lisen from a tailor' s apprentice to professor of political
economy and later a privy councillor (Docs III, pp. 1163 f.).
lung-Stilling felt Swedenborg was possessed by spirits and
that he ought to have resisted them. Swedenborg was well
ucquainted with the possibility of possession. He described
himself as not possessed, but simply given the chance to
explore the spiritual world. Jung-Stilling gave an account of
unother incident that would otherwise have been forgotten,
vouching for it with the greatest certainty.
About the year 1770, there was a merchant in Elberfeld, with
whom, during my seven years of my residence there, I lived in close
intimacy. He was a strict mystic in the purest sense. He spoke little;
hut what he said, was like golden fruit on a salver of silver. He
would not have dared, for all the world, knowingly to have told a
liilsehood. This friend of mine, who has long ago left this world for
II better, related to me the following anecdote:
His business required him to take a journey to Amsterdam,
where Swedenborg at that time resided; and having heard and read
much of this singular man, he formed the intention of visiting him,
und becoming better acquainted with him. He therefore called
upon him, and found a very venerable-looking friendly old man,
who received him politely, and requested him to be seated; on
which the following conversation began:
Merchant. Having been called hither by business, I could not
deny myself the honour, Sir, of paying my respects to you: Your
writings have caused me to regard you as a very remarkable man.
Swedenborg. May I ask where you are from?
Merchant. I am from Elberfeld, in the duchy of Berg. Your
writings contain so much that is beautiful and edifying, that they
have made a deep impression upon me: but the source from whence
you derive them is so extraordinary, so strange and uncommon,
that you will perhaps not take it amiss of a sincere friend of truth,
if he desires incontestable proofs that you really have intercourse
with the spiritual world.
Swedenborg. It would be very unreasonable if I took it amiss; but
I think I have given sufficient proofs, which cannot be con-
tradicted.
Merchant. Are these the well-known ones, respecting the Queen,
the fire in Stockholm, and the receipt?
Swedenborg. Yes, those are they, and they are true.
Merchant. And yet many objections are brought against them.
Might I venture to propose, that you give me a similar proof?
Swedenborg. Why not? Most willingly!
Merchant. I had formerly a friend, who studied divinity at Duis-
berg, where he fell into consumption, of which he died. I visited
this friend, a short time before his decease; we conversed together
on an important topic: could you learn from him what was the
subject of our discourse?
Swedenborg. We will see. What was the name of your friend?
The merchant told him his name.
Swedenborg. How long do you remain here?
Merchant. About eight or ten days.
Swedenborg. Call upon me again in a few days. I will see if I can
find your friend.
The merchant took his leave and dispatched his business. Some
days afterwards, he went again to Swedenborg, full of expectation.
The old gentleman met him with a smile, and said, "I have spoken
with your friend; the subject of your discourse was the restitution
of all things." He then related to the merchant, with the greatest
precision, what he, and what his deceased friend had maintained.
My friend turned pale; for this proof was powerful and invincible,
lie inquired further, "How fares it with my friend: Is he in a state
of blessedness?" Swedenborg answers, "No, he is not yet in heaven;
he is still in Hades, and torments himself continually with the idea
of the restitution of all things." This answer caused my friend the
greatest astonishment. He exclaimed, "My God! What, in the other
world?" Swedenborg replied, "Certainly; a man takes with him his
favourite inclinations and opinions; and it is very difficult to be
divested of them. We ought, therefore, to lay them aside here." My
friend took his leave of this remarkable man, perfectly convinced,
and returned back to Elberfeld. Docs II, pp. 487 f.
There is one more incident that almost lends a master
touch to all the rest, but because it repeats t he import already
seen in these, I would like to pause to examine their implica-
tions. Though several incidents were viewed at the time to
illustrate his spiritual powers, these seem to illustrate what
is now called extrasensory perception (ESP). In three exam-
pies Swedenborg is with company and suddenly sees what is
going on at a distance. These are the Stockholm fire, the
death of Peter III, and the start of the factory fire. These were
all matters that touched on his life. The Stockholm fire was
burning toward his property; the fire in the factory was about
to wipe out a friend. It is not as clear that he was emotionally
involved in the death of Peter. My guess is that he was. He
was a nobleman who voted in the House of Lords. He was
concerned with European wars and treaties as illustrated by
his intimate knowledge of the negotiations between Sweden
and Prussia. It appears that important information concern-
ing present events could break in on his awareness. This is
clairvoyance. Since these events are two centuries old there
could have been many more examples of the same
phenomena that were not recorded.
Two incidents suggest that Swedenborg had precognition:
his predictions of the death of Olof Olofsohn and when his
sea voyage would end. In the Olofsohn case he apparently
sought the information and got it at will. The last incident
to be reported also involves precognition.
Three events appear to involve searching out and com-
municating with someone who has died. These are the inci-
dent with the queen, finding the lost receipt, and contacting
a friend for the merchant. Though the queen said that Swe-
denborg had reported what no living person knew, actually
she knew, or she couldn
,
t have affirmed it. Contacting the
friend for the merchant was similar. Conceivably Sweden-
borg could have read the queen' s and the merchant' s minds.
The incident of the lost receipt is another matter, for there
was no one around whose mind could be read. It had to have
been a matter of postcognition (reading the past husband' s
mind, that no longer existed on earth) or directly contacting
the husband who still existed in some other realm.
Apparently this information was available at will; Sweden-
borg just needed a little time to seek it out. Also, not all
information was spontaneously given to him. For instance,
his sister had died and he did not know of it (Docs II, p. 559).
When chided about this he said, in effect, that he hadn' t
asked about her. Also, he was emotionally distant from her
at the time. He could find out what he wanted of the past,
present, or future, and present information would break in
on his awareness if it concerned him. Here was a gift many
want to have and many would try to use to their profit. What
one could do with a few days foreknowledge of the stock
market, for instance! Yet Swedenborg considered his gift of
remarkably little importance.
Underlying this lies the more fundamental question of the
relationship of ESP powers and this realm? There was little
in Swedenborg' s writings to suggest a connection between
them. We have thought of ESP and being a spirit seer as
separate phenomena, but I believe they arise from the same
source, and if they are not identical, they are close enough
that it should be no surprise that they arise together.
First let us look at the matter from Swedenborg' s view-
point. He had angels from heaven and spirits from hell with
him all the time. He said clearly that everyone does. His
advantage was that he could see and talk with them. Also,
he was so familiar with the spiritual worlds that he could
distinguish between those from hell and those from heaven.
Spirits from hell often claimed they could predict the future,
but they really couldn' t. This is true, too, when dealing with
contemporary lower-order hallucinations. They like to pre-
tend that they predict and even control the future, but this
doesn't hold up under even a simple test.
The matter is quite the opposite in heaven. The Lord
knows the whole of existencepast, present, or future. The
Lord, heaven, and angels essentially transcend time. From
this, it is possible for anyone in contact with angels to do all
that Swedenborg didread the past, present, or future or
contact those who had died. What we see as foresight here
is actually a part of divine providence.
From this we can see how greatly the man errs who believes that
the Lord has not foreseen, and does not see, the minutest things
appertaining to man, and that in these he does not foresee and lead;
when the truth is that the Lord's foresight and providence are in
the very least of these minutest things connected with man, in
things so very minute that it is impossible by any thought to
comprehend as much as one out of a hundred millions of them; for
every smallest moment of man's life involves a series of conse-
quences extending to eternity, each moment being as a new begin-
ning to those which follow; and so with all and each of the mo-
ments of his life; both of his understanding and of his will. And as
the Lord foresaw from eternity what would be man's quality, and
what it would be to eternity, it is evident His providence is in the
minutest things, and . . . governs and bends man to such a quality;
and this by a continual moderating of his freedom. AC 3854
An analogy can be used to illustrate this time situation. A
road winds a long way up a mountain. The driver on the road
sees just the little stretch that involves him. Someone at the
top of the mountain can look down on all the drivers and
predict when and where one coming down would meet a
driver coming up. Heaven, at the top of the mountain, looks
down on our limited conception of time. Anyone in contact
with heaven can get this kind of information. The real issue
is not whether it happens, but under what circumstances and
to what purpose. The circumstances refer back to the whole
matter of the way Swedenborg entered this inner state and
what he was inwardly. He even indicated that his actual way
of breathing had to change before he could perceive heaven.
I think that the boundary between our wanting to know the
future and the higher knowledge of the spiritual world is just
about where Swedenborg placed it. These worlds were meant
to be separate. Only for good purposes and only rarely could
the knowledge of one show in the other.
Look again at the incidents. At the time of the Stockholm
fire, Swedenborg was still resolved to conceal that he had this
added knowledge. The whole experience of seeing and re-
porting the fire happened against his will. Its good effect was
to thrust him out of hiding. Today, this is the incident most
often associated with the mystic from Sweden. Once his gift
had been revealed, Swedenborg used it mostly for the good
of othersthough he considered it very unimportant. The
incidents with the queen, Olof Olofsohn, Peter III, the voy-
age, and contacting the merchant' s friend stimulated some to
consider his works and a few to believe him. The incident of
the receipt saved a good woman from financial distress. The
incident of the factory fire saved a friend from loss. Appar-
ently many people asked Swedenborg to check up on
deceased friends and he refused, because the good served was
not sufficient. In many places Swedenborg describes the Lord
or heaven as good itself. It is curious that heaven answers
insofar as good is served.
Though most of the incidents involve ESP, some involve
the apparent contact with a person' s spirit. I think these are
part of the same phenomena, contact with a realm whose
time system transcends ours. Swedenborg casually mentions
that angels lose the sense of what men on earth mean by time,
for their time is inward, as change of state. What does day-
break mean to an angel? Why, the dawning of understand-
ing, of course! What else could it mean?
This last incident always seems somewhat humorous to
me. Unlike many contemporary mystics, gurus, and occul-
tists, Swedenborg didn' t mean to show his powers. Yet, he
again stumbled into doing so by accident. This incident is
well attested to, since it involved John Wesley, the founder
of Methodism.
The scene was a drawing room in England, February 1772.
John Wesley was preparing for a religious speaking tour and
the Reverend Samuel Smith and others were assisting him.
The gathering was interrupted by the arrival of a letter that
Wesley opened and read with evident astonishment.
Great Bath Street
Coldbath Fields
February 1772
Sir,
I have been informed in the world of spirits that you have a
strong desire to converse with me; I shall be happy to see you if
you will favour me with a visit.
I am, sir, your humble servant,
Emanuel Swedenborg
(Docs II, p. 565)
Wesley told these gentlemen that he did want to see Swe-
denborg but he had told no one of it. He answered Sweden-
borg, saying that their meeting would have to take place in
six months, after his tour. Swedenborg wrote back that he
could not meet him at that time, for he was to die on the
twenty-ninth of the next month, which, of course, he did
(Docs II, pp. 564 f.). Wesley was at first quite impressed, but
when his follower Reverend Smith studied and took up Swe-
denborg' s teachings, Wesley joined with those who held him
mad.
At his death, Swedenborg was living with the barber
Shearsmith and his family on Bath Street, London. At first the
family was a little frightened of this great man who appeared
to go into trances and held conversations in strange tongues
with invisible strangers, but he came to be known and liked.
They said he often went out in an old-fashioned suit of black
velvet with long ruffles, a curious hiked sword, and a gold-
headed cane. He ate little meat, concentrating on cakes, tea,
sweetened coffee, and water. He used a great deal of snuff and
fortunately spilled enough on his manuscripts to help pre-
serve them from insects.
Toward the end he lay for some weeks in a trance without
sustenance. Shortly before his death he suffered a stroke and
partial paralysis on one side of his body. Friends brought him
a Swedish minister named Ferelius, to give him the last rites.
The minister spoke:
I observed to him, that, as quite a number of people thought his
sole purpose in promulgating his new theological system had been
to make himself a name, or to acquire celebrity, which object,
indeed he had thereby attained, if such had been the case, he ought
now to do the world the justice to retract it either in whole or part,
especially as he could not expect to derive any additional advantage
from this world, which he would soon leave. He thereupon half
rose in his bed, and laying his sound hand upon his breast said with
some manifestation of zeal: "As true as you see me before your
eyes, so true is everything that I have written; and I could have said
more, had it been permitted. When you enter eternity, you will see
everything, and then you and I shall have much to talk about."
Docs II, pp. 557-558
The minister didn' t seem to really know Swedenborg. The
old man gave the minister one of the few unsold copies of the
Mi nor Miracles 157
Arcana Coelestia. Since these twelve volumes are his most
profound writings, it is unlikely the minister read much of
them. Aft erward t he Shearsmiths' maid innocently com-
mented t hat he had told them all of his deat h a few days
before. She said he seemed pleased, "as if he was going to
have a holiday, to go to some merry-maki ng" (Docs I I , p.
546), which may well have been the case. The man who knew
what it was all about had no fear of dying.
Existence Itselfas Symbolic
There is another fundamental indication that Swedenborg
had indeed known higher worlds. His view of this world had
completely turned around. Before 1745 he was very much
embedded in the material world. In 1745, while exploring
inward, he had difficulty understanding the strange symbol-
ism and vagaries of inner processes. Yet within a few years
he stood solidly in the feelingful world of heaven, ruled by
the One God. From this world all the lesser material worlds
of man, of things, of the earth, had become symbolic. All
existence had become an indication of the work of the Lord.
He found meanings everywhere that only a few had sus-
pected. And with this new understanding came the most
difficult to understand and incredible aspect of Swedenborg.
The description of heaven and hell might be accepted, but
how was man to understand and accept that he himself, and
all existence, are really just representations of the One?
What had happened was that Swedenborg then saw every-
thing in relation to the Divine. What was creating existence,
making things every moment to be as it was, had come into
the first place. What was first in creation was first in his
understanding. Everything else fell into secondary places as
correspondents. All levels of existence were symbolic repre-
scntations of the nature of the Divine. He must have ex-
perienced something fundamentally different to have shifted
to such an awesome view of creation. The implications of this
shift will be treated in a number of different ways so its
sweeping implications will gradually become clearer.
All the orders of existence are steps down from the One
which is the All. The One (called by a multitude of names
in all times and cultures) is the Only and Self-subsistent. All
other orders of existence are dependent both for their very
nature and their continued existence. This stepping down
into more and more limited orders of existence permits the
One to be manifest on all possible levels, revealing its nature
through all possible limitations.
Now, since all things in general and particular subsist from the
Divine, that is, continually exist, and all things in general and
particular which are therefrom cannot be otherwise than repre-
sentative of those things whereby they came into existence, it fol-
lows, that the visible universe is nothing else than a theatre repre-
sentative of the Lord's kingdom, and [this kingdom] is a theatre
representative of the Lord Himself. AC 3483
The first step down is the celestial heaven, which in its celes-
tial love corresponds most closely to the One Itself. The
spiritual heaven is the next step down, a lesser representa-
tion, corresponding to celestial love, the love of one person
for another (where "t he joy of one is the joy of all"). The
natural heaven is the lowest level of heaven. The world of
spirits is the next level. Here men are opened to and discover
their inner nature. And the world of spirits interacts with the
inner processes of mind. Man' s mind itself is a series of levels
corresponding to all levels of the spiritual world, ranging
from almost pure feelings to thoughts and ideas, to speech
and gestures, to the body itself. Beyond man, animals, plants,
and the physical world are further lower-order correspond-
ents to the One. This whole series of existences corresponds
to the One God who is thereby everywhere manifest. Not
only man is made in the image, but creation itself is a series
of images.
We can break into this series at any point and try to
understand the nature of what is being represented. We can
look at events in the world of spirits and see echoed there the
general nature of heaven. Or we can look at a man' s face and
gestures and try to see what is being represented of his na-
ture. Or we can look at animals and nature and try to see
what is being represented of man' s nature. This seems like an
odd thing to do, but many of the occult sciences delve into
precisely this kind of relationship. Any aspect of nature can
be looked at as representing man, or the inner of man looked
at as a representation of the spiritual world, or levels of
heaven can be looked at to better understand God. God is
not simply boss of the whole of existence. Of much more
importance, the One is the most fundamental tendency, drift,
or nature of existence. By seeing everything as symbolic or
as correspondent, Swedenborg was looking at this drift of the
real nature of things. Whether one believes it or not, cares
or not, the drift is there anyway. He is seeing the source out
of which things come and how they reflect that source. The
end they serve reflects that source. It is very much as though
Swedenborg came to see the real ends of existence. When
asked why there is man at all, Swedenborg answered, that
there may be a heaven. Man' s life on earth is a seminary (seed
bed, related to semen) for heaven.
This stepping down, imaging of existence, Swedenborg
treated under the ideas of correspondence and representa-
tion. A priest, minister, or rabbi represents the holy of the
Divine by his vestments and the services he conducts. This
is true even if the man is quite evil. Swedenborg even says
that because he represents this, the office and ceremony are
to be respected even in the hands of an evil man. Where the
representation is a good fit to what it represents, then it may
be said to correspond. All existence represents God, but
unless a thing has goodness in it, it doesn' t correspond to
God. A correspondent is then inwardly suitable. Correspon-
dence is an organic relationship, just as an effect corresponds
to its cause. Symbols are a more limited idea than what
Swedenborg is dealing with. A symbol is often an image of
something greater than itself. Swedenborg is dealing with
existence itself, which is a larger idea than an image. All but
God himself are representations or images.
Representations are nothing but images of spiritual things in
natural ones, and when the former are rightly represented in the
latter, then the two correspond. Yet the man who knows not what
the Spiritual is, but only the Natural, is capable of thinking that
such representations... are impossible, for he might say to himself.
How can what is spiritual act upon what is material? But if he will
reflect upon the things taking place in himself every moment, he
may be able to gain some idea of these matters; for instance, how
the will can act upon the muscles of the body, and effect real
actions; also how thought can act upon the organs of speech
. . . and also how the affections can act on the face, and there
present images of themselves, so that another often thereby knows
what is being thought and felt. These examples may give some idea
of what representations and correspondences are. As such things
are now presented in man, and as there is nothing that can subsist
from itself, but only from some other, and this again from some
other, and finally from the First, and this by a connection of
correspondences, those who enjoy any extension of judgement may
draw the conclusion that there is a correspondence between man
and heaven; and further, between heaven and the Lord who is the
First. AC 4044
Man' s own functioning is one of the most concrete and
immediate examples of correspondence. Our lives are a
bridge between the spiritual within and the material without.
Our movements, gestures, speech, etc., correspond to t he
inner life. Inwardly we participate in a spiritual world. Out -
wardly, in our bodies, we are in the world of things.
The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world, not
only the natural world in general, but also in particular. Whatever,
therefore, in the natural world exists from the spiritual, is said to
be its correspondent. By the natural world is meant whatever is
under the s un. . . . But the spiritual world is heaven, and the things
belonging to that world. . . . Since man is a heaven, and also a
world, in least form after the image of the greatest, therefore in him
there is a spiritual world and a natural world. The interiors, which
belong to his mind, and relate to the understanding and will, make
his spiritual world; but the exteriors, which belong to his body, and
relate to its senses and actions, make his natural world. Whatso-
ever, therefore, in this natural world, that is, in his body, its senses
and actions, exists from its spiritual world, that is, from his
mind and its understanding and will, is called a correspondent.
HH 89, 90
Parallels to Correspondence
At first Swedenborg' s idea of correspondence may seem to
be j ust an odd notion t hat creates a lot of symbolic under-
standings. It so pervades his writings t hat unless its sweep
and i mport ance is underst ood his writings seem odd. What
does it mean t hat a part i cul ar group of people are located in
heaven under t he foot of t he Gr and Man? Why, it means
they are particularly materialistic in their orientation. And
the Gr and Man? It' s t he full nat ure of humanness in heaven,
of which we are images.
Swedenborg' s idea of correspondences is t he most general
statement of an idea t hat has repeatedly t urned up in t he
world' s literature. It is both an ancient and modern idea,
with so many parallels t hat it is not possible even to catalog
t hem all.
Swedenborg often referred to correspondence as an an-
cient science that was later mostly lost.
That all things in nature, both in general and in particular, and
nlso all things in the human body, correspond to spiritual things
is shown in the work Heaven and Hell. What correspondence is,
however, has hitherto been unknown; yet in most a.icient times it
wus very well known, for to those who lived then the science of
correspondence was the science of sciences, and was so universal
that all their treatises and books were written by correspondences.
The Book of Job, a book of the Ancient Church, is full of corre-
spondences. The hieroglyphics of the Egyptians and the myths of
untiquity were of a like nature. All the ancient churches were
representative of spiritual things; the ceremonies and also the stat-
lies on which their worship was founded, consisted of pure corre-
spondences. Of a like nature were all things of the church estab-
lished among the children of Israel; their burnt offerings, their
sacrifices, their meat-offerings, and their drink-offerings, with all
things connected with them, were correspondences. So also was the
tubernacle . . . their feasts . . . and their holy garments. TCR 201
I have been informed that the men of the most ancient church,
which existed before the flood, were men of so heavenly a genius
t hat they conversed with the angels of heaven; and that they had
the power to do so by correspondences. Consequently their wisdom
became such that, whatever they saw on earth, they thought of not
only naturally, but also spiritually, thus also in conjunction with
the angels of heaven. I was further informed that Enoch, who is
mentioned in Genesis v. 21-24, and his associates, collected corre-
spondences . . . and transmitted their knowledge to posterity. As
a result of this the science of correspondences was . . . cultivated
in many kingdoms in Asia, particularly in the Land of Canaan,
Egypt, Assyria, Chaldaea, Syria, Arabia, and in Tyre, Sidan, and
Nineveh. It was thence communicated to Greece; but it was there
changed into fable. TCR 202
The ancients who had a knowledge of correspondences made for
themselves images corresponding to heavenly things, and they took
delight in them because they signified things of heaven and the
church. These images therefore they set up, not only in their tern-
pies but also in their homes, not to worship them, but that they
might remind them of the heavenly things which they signified.
Thus in Egypt and elsewhere they set up in effigy calves, oxen,
serpents, also children, old men and virgins; because calves and
oxen signified the affections and powers of the natural man; ser-
pents, the prudence and also the cunning of the sensual man;
children, innocense and charity; old men, wisdom; and virgins, the
affections . . . and so on. When, however, the knowledge of corre-
spondences was lost, their posterity began to worship as holy, and
at length as deities, the images and likenesses set up by the ancients,
because they were in and about their temples. For the same reason
the ancients worshipped in gardens and groves, according to the
different kinds of trees growing in them, and also on mountains and
hills. TCR 205
It would be possible to cull from Swedenborg' s works a great
deal of ancient, lost knowledge that he learned by conversing
with these people in heaven. The result would give richness
to ancient images and ceremonies that we are inclined to see
as simple and primitive.
We have mostly lost the sense of this ancient language.
Primitives who sat before a fire at night could read in the
flames guidance as to how they should live. The flames corre-
sponded to their will and understanding. With our present
sophistication, we would say they were merely projecting
their ideas into the forms of the flames. Swedenborg would
not entirely disagree with this. Insofar as they projected from
the deepest levels of themselves, they would be letting the
spiritual world within show in the forms of the flames. This
primitive animism still exists. In various parts of the world
primitives consult trees, streams, rocks, and the sky, and
they learn from and are guided by them. Swedenborg clearly
compliments these primitives, for they were in easy com-
munication with the spiritual world. Swedenborg' s Arcana
Coelestia and Apocalypse Explained say much about how
subsequent generations lost this primitive language of corre-
spondence. The living, delicate experience of Jesus, about to
die, breaking bread with friends, becomes frozen into neat
little wafers. Worse yet, much of the inner life and meaning
goes out of ceremonies. Swedenborg dealt at length with the
meanings in the Jewish tabernacle, meanings that very few
practicing Jews even suspect (AC 9455 f.). Ceremony is a
partly alive, mostly dead, leftover of the primitive experience
of a correspondence between spiritual meaning and things in
the world.
There are many other former uses of correspondence. An-
cient man gradually worked out a relationship of the configu-
ration of planets at birth and thereafter to an individual's
personality and contemporary problems. Astrology is an ex-
ample of correspondence between the inner man and plan-
etary configurations. Though to many it seems a specious
science (as is true of all claimed correspondences), at least
Jung felt it had real merit.
26
The ancients had a whole host
of ways of trying to divine the future and find guidance by
the arrangement of material things, the fall of cards (Tarot),
tea leaves, yarrow sticks (I Ching), cracked bones (scalpula-
mancy), etc. Usually these systems required a considerable
amount of interpretation that allowed some projection of
inner processes. They didn' t give simple yes or no answers.
Though at first this seems like a weakness, it is probably
critical to the effective functioning of these systems. If you
consult the I Ching or the Tarot asking a simple "shall I or
shan' t I?" you are likely to get so rich an answer that it
requires your thinking deeper on the question and your pur-
poses. Like the tremulous rapid movement of the flame, there
is room for the inner depths to be projected. Jung felt there
was actual synchronicity. The person who sincerely asked a
question of the fall of yarrow sticks (cards, coins, tea leaves,
etc.) found they fell into a pattern that was an image or
correspondent of deep inner processes. It may well be a
matter that believers find is true and nonbelievers find false
because each one finds what reflects him!
Magic, in its deeper, older sense, is another example of
correspondence. We think of magic mostly as the tricky
sleight of hand of a showman. In its ancient sense the corre-
spondence between the inner and outer was used to control
the inner. For instance, if one believed that to stand in a
ritualistically laid rope circle protected one from spiritual
harm, it probably did. The outer rope circle, ceremoniously
laid, corresponded symbolically to spiritual protection. This
kind of magic including brewing every possible concoction
(such as lizards' tails, gathered in the full of the moon!) and
every kind of ceremony put to both good and evil uses. In
voodoo practices we see contemporary examples of this. Be-
lievers make a statue of an enemy and put a pin in it to wound
him. The statue and the pin wound correspond to the enemy
and what one wants to happen to him. Although I don' t
believe Swedenborg commented directly on this use of corre-
spondence, it appears his writing would not support its effec-
tiveness. He always saw the real ruling force as inner. The
outer only reflected it. Hence, if you believed the rope circle
really worked, if it reflected your inner, it would be effective.
But the voodoo doll could not hurt me, unless / really be-
lieved in its effectiveness. We have to say that this whole
realm of correspondential magic is foolish or real, depending
on your felt beliefs.
Swedenborg did comment that there were whole lan-
guages, such as the ancient Egyptian, that were based on
spiritual correspondences. I believe all these languages began
with pictures of animals and objects that were broadly sym-
bolic and quite meaningful when coined. Or languages began
by the correspondence between feeling and sound. Later gen-
erations only penetrated the outer shell of these languages,
having lost the spirit of awe that went into their creation.
Ancient myth and religion were often heady brews of
correspondences to man' s innermost experiences. Greek
mythology is a good example (AC 2762). In later generations
we again have lost the tremulous spirit that coined these
myths, and what is left is just a collection of quaint stories.
Another example of correspondences is in ancient al-
chemy. When man knew little of chemicals and the magic of
their chemistry, he could get very involved in the processes.
Again, Jung penetrated the strange business of alchemistry
to find medieval man attempting to reach spiritual integra-
tion (the philosopher' s gold) in the midst of his strange
brews. Jung did a most careful and well-illustrated descrip-
tion of this process. The chemical and inner processes corre-
sponded. These deeply involved chemists were working at
themselves in their retorts. It wasn' t just a simple matter of
putting things together in the right order. A woman, sex,
religious symbols, meditation, great soul-searching and
doubt were all involved. We now know too much to get so
involved in chemistry. Or, one could say that we are too
distant to get so involved.
Most of the examples of the use of correspondence come
from ancient times. In many ways we are less capable of
participating in this strange bridging of the inner and outer.
Yet we can give modern examples of essentially the same
process. The projective tests used by psychologists are a good
example. Give a client some vague material and encourage
him to shape the situation to suit him. He may be asked to
tell what he sees in inkblots (Rorschach test), to draw a
person (Machover test) or a tree, or to select a dramatic
backdrop and cardboard figures and make a drama (MAPS
test), or simply to copy geometric figures (Bender-Gestalt
test).
27
Through long observation and study psychologists
can read the personality traits of their clients from these
creations. The client projects both what is conscious and
unconscious. What he sees, how he reacts, or how he draws
a simple line reflects his real personality. The way a person
sees an inkblot corresponds to what he is. There isn't any
particular magic in the test materials. To create a really
simple test I once had people just make a dot on a page, but
I abandoned it after distinguishing the brain-damaged, com-
pulsive, neurotic, hostile, etc.
Anot her example of correspondence is in psychosomatic
medicine. Some very real physical disorders are also repre-
sentations of psychic conflict. The duodenal ulcer, for in-
stance, often occurs in a person who denies dependency, and
fights for self-sufficiency. But the poor stomach tells an oppo-
site story. It says, feed me, take care of me. The stomach
represents the unconscious need for dependency. Although
migraine is partly hereditary and partly metabolic, it also
represents a psychic situation. Very often the migraine per-
son is unusually conscientious, self-driven, compulsive. The
headache explodes and says, forget it all, you' ve forgotten
yourself. Stop, rest, take care of yourself. Psychosomatic
medicine is still a young branch of medicine, and it is not yet
known if all disorders have this psychic component.
28
This spontaneous natural language of the body was out-
lined by Swedenborg two centuries ago. It is not fair to say
simply that Swedenborg founded psychosomatic medicine.
What he was doing with the correspondences of the body and
contemporary psychosomatic medicine are quite different.
This medicine unwraps what diseased and distressed organs
say psychologically; Swedenborg was dealing with normal
organs. Yet there is a similarity. Swedenborg stressed that
the heart and vascular system correspond to love. Psychoso-
matic disorders of the heart often have to do with strong
feelings. He was not far off.
29
Everyone' s mind has a natural capacity to speak in the
language of correspondences. This is probably why an under-
standing of this language has appeared in many different
cultures at different times. Dreams are natural spontaneous
phenomena showing the language of correspondence. Every-
one dreams several times a night. There is good experimental
evidence, now, that dreaming is a necessary process.
30
In
dreams the inner potential of the individual images forth the
situation of the dreamer. The dream uses imagery to
dramatically represent the dreamer' s situation. The corre-
spondential language of dreams transcends our ordinary un-
derstanding, so we must learn to read this spontaneous inter-
nal language.
Closer to consciousness, there are many ways of meditat-
ing or allowing fantasy expression that again are natural
examples of the language of symbolic representations. For
instance, I have often taught groups to relaxedly gaze at
anything in the room that catches their eyepatterns in the
rug, cracks in the floor, a bit of rumpled paper, anything.
With relaxed observation, what is looked at soon begins to
suggest meanings. I recall one alcoholic woman who studied
a crack in the floor. She tearfully saw in it the varied ups and
downs of her life. We can at any time discover this inner
representation of ourselves. We tend to represent ourselves
even when we don' t want to, when we form opinions of
situations. The meanings we project into or find in situations
very much reflect ourselves. The primitive studying the
Hames of a campfire and our projecting meaning into situa-
lions are really the same process except the primitive is a
little more advanced. His is a more delicate and sensitive
searching for meaning. Our opinions are a more abrupt
categorizing of things.
In The Natural Depth in Man,
n
I describe a graduated
series of inner states. The general tenor of these states, as we
wander down the corridor of mind, is toward symbolization
or representation. Whatever we are has a profound inner
drift toward representing its real nature. Self-reflection, fan-
tasy, visions, hallucinations, dreamsall are various levels of
this single central tendency. I personally am convinced that
this capacity to represent our real selves is the most primal
and fundamental tendency in man. Even lowering the person
slowly toward physical death via anesthesia, as my own expe-
rience has shown, greatly intensifies this process. This pro-
cess exists in everyone, whether the individual believes it or
not, cares or not, is educated or religious or not. It is a primal
root tendency in humanness, and could well exist in the rest
of the animal kingdom, since animals also seem to dream.
Rat her than try to prove this tendency here (as I did in
The Natural Depth in Man), it is more important to inquire
why. What is the implication of this universal inborn disposi-
tion toward representing our inner selves? In my earlier work
I systematically tried to nail down what we could infer of the
source of this tendency. One main implication is that our
minds or lives are designed with a kind of self-corrective,
more-brilliant-than-us, internal guidance system. The main
difficulty with this innate drift of wisdom is that its mode of
thinking and understanding is higher than ours. Hence it
reveals itself in a language of symbols that transcends our
understanding. We have to learn to come up to it, to under-
stand its wisdom. The main purpose of this internal system
is that it sees, reflects, and comments on the quality of our
life. It is apparently concerned with the inner nature and
quality of each one' s existence. It appears to operate from a
plane in which all things are seen as related, from omni-
science. This omniscient aspect is what causes it to be natu-
rally and profoundly symbolic. The symbol arises in a sphere
in which the nature of a thing is profoundly understood and
seen in its relationship to everything else. Hence, in going
within, Swedenborg worked through a forest of symbolism
to arrive at the source of this process, the Divine itself.
Swedenborg says that the science of correspondences is the
primary science of the ancients. With this brief sketch of just
a few of the areas it involves, we can still agree it is a primary
field of knowledge. Under the general heading of correspon-
dences Swedenborg is dealing with the basic understanding
involved in animism, divination, t he format i on of language,
religious ceremony, astrology, magic, myt h, alchemistry,
projective tests, psychosomatic medicine, dream interpreta-
lion, interpreting fantasy, visions and hallucinations, and t he
like. Yet, to Swedenborg, these were relatively mi nor uses of
correspondence. As we shall see later, he felt t he greatest use
was in unlocking t he secrets of heaven hidden within t he
Hible.
The Language of Correspondence
There are several ways of learning t he language of corre-
spondence. Swedenborg began with t he simplest onet he
one that anyone can usewhen he started working out t he
symbols t hat appeared in his dreams and hypnogogic experi-
ences. The real advant age of the hypnogogic process is t hat
one can experience a particular state and discover immedi-
ately how it is symbolized by the hypnogogic.
Anot her way to learn of it is direct revelation f r om heaven.
Aft er he was elevated to heaven Swedenborg read t he Bible
and found inner meanings opened to him.
There is a kind of sense to the language of correspondences
or symbols. The inner uses real events of t he world, showing
great regard for t he way man experiences things. The eart h
has the implications for most people of solid, safe, real,
material in contrast to what is high, airy, less certain. Each
symbol can be taken negatively or positively. Eart h can mean
safe, or solid. In t he opposite sense it can mean eart hbound,
or limited. Each of these meanings is in relation to man' s
experience, and as such they correspond to aspects of man.
We speak of a man as earthy. Again it can be taken two ways:
as down to earth, in cont rast to airy or flighty; or as limited,
as t hough a clod (of earth).
Take t he concept of hand. How do we experience our
hands? As we reach out and do something our power comes
into use. Hand signifies power. A handmaid is one who
assists my powers. A handyman has a general ability to do
things. Swedenborg says the hand signifies power, the hand
and arm greater power, and the shoulder, all power (AC
1085). A man who lent us his hands, arms, and shoulders
would be pretty much doing his utmost for us.
My point is that the language of correspondence or sym-
bols is intimately linked to the way people experience things.
There are furt her clues in the slang use of words, such as lend
a hand, bear a hand, hands down (they can' t carry anything
in that position), handy, and so forth. Where we have consid-
erable experience of a thing, it is easier to recover these
ancient meanings. Sight has to do with understanding, like
"oh, I see." Hearing has to do with being receptive, i.e.,
"listen to me, " or make yourself receptive to me.
There are also many symbols whose inner quality of mean-
ing has been lost. For instance, bones have to do with the
central nature of a man. The bone structure or innermost
nature allows a man to stand up or reveal himself. Hence the
old expression "he is bone of my bone," i.e., fundamentally
like me. The kidney separates the unwanted waste material
from the blood. The inner meaning is just that: what sepa-
rates the unwanted from the wanted. The heart and blood
vessel system is the warm red life within the person. There
are many literary references to spilling of blood, meaning
that life is escaping and being lost. The heart has a long
association with life and love. The blood system is the inner,
affective, feeling life of the individual. The lungs relate to
both the inside and outside. They take in air from t he outside
and nourish the blood. What bridges the world outside and
the life within is the understanding. The lungs and the whole
respiratory system represent the understanding. Swedenborg
says that in the spiritual world a man' s faith or reception of
truth may be perceived by the respiration of his lungs and the
quality of his charity by the pulsation of his heart ( DF 19).
Here the symbolism is a little beyond what we can recognize
easily. With a littie loosening up of feeling and associations
we can begin to read this language of correspondences. It is
very like poetry. It is like moving into a new sphere of
thought, because it opens up the interior of human experi-
ence and puts one at the threshold of spiritual thought.
We can begin to see how aspects of our own body represent
aspects of our inner spiritual life. Sight is like seeing, i.e.,
understanding. Hearing is like making one' s self receptive.
But how can the outer world also be images of man, and
ultimately of the spiritual world and God' s nature? The Chi-
nese see bamboo as like a gentleman. Look at the way it
grows. It stands straight; it does not intrude on its neighbor.
Here is an analogy. Swedenborg was speaking even more
basically. In heaven the animals, plants, landscape literally
represent the nature of the people there. Those in hell feel
they are in pretty places, but seen in the light of heaven or
truth their places look like small, dark, mean holes. Those
who are spiritually rich find themselves in magnificent pal-
aces with great gardens. In a subtle way this is true of us, too.
The world we perceive reflects us. The holy man sees holy,
sacred things; the businessman sees goods of such and such
value.
An example using animals shows how Swedenborg saw
existence as corresponding to man. We take animals to be
real creatures occupying this world in ways similar to us.
Animals really exist. Yet they also represent the possibilities
of human feeling. For instance, the domestic cat has a clear
affective disposition. It is soft, quiet, very oriented to its own
comfort. It is like a particular kind of sensual pleasure. It is
loyal as long as it is satisfied. Unsatisfied, it is likely to show
its discontent and make demands to be fed or attended to. It
represents this set of affective possibilities. Each individual
cat differs to a degree, but these are its norms. It is like a
theme and variation in music: the basic disposition of the
domestic cat is the theme and individual cats are the varia-
tion. Cats exist in heaven. There they represent the affective
orientation described above. Almost any observer of domes-
tic cats will recognize this sensuous orientation. We sense it
because we feel it in ourselves and empathize with it. This
does not deny that there are real cats in the real world out
there. This view goes beyond that, asking almost why cats at
all. Beyond the real cat are the affective tendencies we can
recognize, because it is like an aspect of ourselves; it goes
beyond man to the possibilities in existence. In heaven there
are no material things. There cats even more clearly repre-
sent an aspect of the inner life of angels that in turn reflect
an aspect of the inner life of God. When Swedenborg spoke
of representations or correspondents he was not in the least
denying or overlooking the real, material world. He was
looking through it to the whole of creation. That is how
fundamental a shift the whole business of correspondence, or
symbolic language, is.
Even if we aren' t interested in how things are represented
in the spiritual world, it still helps to see animals as corre-
sponding to affections. The one who can feel in himself the
disposition represented by a cat can deal with cats in an
empathetic way, can please them. The gentle touch around
the head makes the cat feel more comfortable and at home.
The one who can understand the interactive parallels of cats
and owners can appreciate the owner better through the cat.
But if one wants to understand more than this, then seeing
animals as particular kinds of affections leads to a sympa-
thetic understanding of the possibilities in existence, all exist-
ences.
In a way, Swedenborg' s way of looking through the
material world to the worlds beyond seems almost selfishly
man-centered, as though we are the biggest, best, and only
thing around. In effect, if we ranked the orders of existence
in Swedenborg' s terms, t he world (including our own body)
is one order, our inner experience is t he next greatest world,
the spiritual worlds beyond this one t he next greatest, and
God' s nat ure supreme. Our existence, our experience, is the
door to all else. That is simply t he way it is. This doesn' t give
us cosmic status so much as it gives us cosmic responsibility.
But in t he hierarchical order of things our existence here is
near t he bot t om. How we are t he door to all else (made in
the image of God) has been miserably, poorly understood. In
a real sense, Swedenborg threw too much light on this. The
light was dazzling, blinding, and not well understood. Our
experience is the bridge between t he material world, in which
our body really lives, and t he worlds between this and t he
Divine. Swedenborg was man-centered, but this partly meant
responsibility to ourselves and creation, responsibility inso-
far as we underst and it.
This awakening feeling of responsibility for creation is
reflected in t he concern with conservation of animal species.
Progress was about to drai n and cement over a pond t hat
housed a rare species of salamander t hat existed nowhere else
on earth. Concerned people saved this pond. The demise of
I his salamander could have cut the possibilities in creation
by one. We are awakeni ng f r om t he feeling t hat we can take
and use whatever part of existence we want, to a more re-
sponsible position as custodian.
The Grand Man
Swedenborg revealed t hat all t he mul t i t udes of heaven are
organized into societies t hat are parts of t he Gr and Man. The
whole of heaven is in t he form of a man ( AC 3624 f.). At first
I his sounds like a st range and overly ant hropomorphi c, or
man-centered, idea. It has to be examined a little to see how
beautiful a conception it is. We are images of the Grand Man;
17C The Presence of Other Worlds
t he Gr and Man is not an image of us. The Gr and Man is all
aspects of t he humanness of God combined. The hierarchical
order is then God, t he Divine Human appeari ng as the
Gr and Man, our inner humanness, our bodily form. Each
person is an edition or image of t he Gr and Man. Occasion-
ally Swedenborg would get very mystical and say something
like "The Lord i s Very Ma n" ( DP 65). Ther e are many
meanings here. What ever man is, at t he core is God. Or, t he
ot her way around, God is man like us, but Very Mant hat
is, even more essentially what we tend to be.
It is now allowed to relate and describe wonderful things, which,
so far as I know, have never as yet been known to anyone, nor even
entered into his mind, namely, that the universal heaven is so
formed that it corresponds to the Lord, as to His Divine Human;
and that man is so formed that, as to all things in general and in
particular in him, he corresponds to heaven, and by means of
heaven to the Lord. This is a great mystery, which is now to be
revealed. AC 3624
Heaven corresponds to t he Divine Human. Man, in his mind
and body, corresponds in t he tiniest particulars to this form.
We are an image of the Gr and Man. The details of t he
societies t hat relate to t he eyes, hands, feet, etc., of t he
Gr and Man are t he full inner implications of these part s of
ourselves. Apparent l y this is common knowledge in heav-
en.
It is from this ground that it has been occasionally stated in the
preceding pages, where speaking of heaven and angelic societies,
that they belonged to some province of the body, as to that of the
head, or of the breast, or of the abdomen, or of some particular
member or organ; and this by reason of the said correspondence.
That such a correspondence exists, is perfectly well known in in
the other life, not only to the angels, but also to spirits, and even
to the wicked. The angels are hence acquainted with the most
secret things which are in man . . . this I have been enabled to know
from this circumstance, that when I spoke of any part of man, they
not only know all the structure of that part, its manner of acting
mid use, but also more innumerable things than man is capable of
exploring, yea, of understanding. AC 3625-3626
| T]he whole man in general, and in particular whatever is in man,
has such a correspondence, inasmuch that there is not the smallest
purt, nor even the smallest constituent of a part, which does not
correspond . . . and further, that unless there was such a correspon-
(knee of man with heaven, and by means of heaven with the Lord,
llius with what is prior to himself, and by means of what is prior
with the First, he would not subsist a single moment, but would
lull into annihilation. AC 3628
Our existence both in general and in particular is a corre-
spondent with heaven, and through the Grand Man of
heaven, to the Lord. The Grand Man is the Lord' s human-
ness. And it is made up of the countless multitudes of heaven
organized into their innumerable societies of like people.
Each society is also in the form of a man because man' s form
represents a basic combination of functions. The idea stag-
gers the imagination. It turns around all priorities. We are
because It is. We are a corresponding image to It. It is the
model of our existence, the ultimate of all our possibilities.
In hell there is no Gr and Man. The individuals there are
cut off from each other and their potentials. They cannot
unify into societies "where the joy of one is the joy of all."
I lell is dark and fragmented. Heaven is the One.
The kernel of the whole idea of correspondences is that
Something is manifesting and showing itself in many ways.
This is true whether we speak of the Lord, the Grand Man
us the basis of all humanity, or the way in which individuals
endlessly cast forth images of themselves.
Swedenborg brought it all together in a few lines. Here he
was speaking of all levels of existence simultaneously. At its
lowest level he was referring to the experience we each have
of ourselves as the center of things.
And furthermore, the universal heaven is such, that every one is
as it were the centre of all, for he is the centre of influxes through
the heavenly form from all, and hence an image of heaven results
to every one, and makes him like to itself, that is, a man; for such
as the general is, such is a part of the general; since the parts must
needs be like their general, in order to belong thereto. AC 3633
A man who is in correspondence, that is, who is in love to the
Lord, and in charity towards the neighbor, and thence in faith, as
to his spirit is in heaven, and as to his body, in the world. And as
he thus acts in unity with the angels, he is also an image of heaven
. . . therefore he is also a little heaven, under a human form. AC
3634
The visible universal is nothing else than a theatre representative
of the Lord's kingdom, and that this latter is a theatre representa-
tive of the Lord Himself. AC 3483
Inner Meanings
It is as though Emanuel Swedenborg had climbed a long way
up from the valley floor of our ordinary experience and
understanding. He began with rocks and minerals and
climbed through all the sciences to the heights of the inner
life and from there wandered through all the spiritual
worlds. His psychological understanding of the spontaneous
inner language of dreams and the hypnogogic state was al-
ready notable. Yet his work on the inner meanings contained
in the Bible left almost everyone behind as he climbed
through the clouds to the top of the mountain. This was his
greatest, richest, and most difficult work to follow. I cannot
summarize what he found here because it is too extensive.
Instead, I would simply like to provide a general understand-
ing of what was involved.
It is clear that this Swedish master felt that his unfolding
of the spiritual and celestial meanings hidden in the language
of the Bible was his greatest work. But as the theologian
Horton points out, great men are not always remembered for
what they considered great . " Sir Isaac Newton spent much
lime in alchemy, which is now forgotten alongside his work
on celestial mechanics. In this case, however, those who
know Swedenborg best would be inclined to agree that his
work on the inner meanings of the Bible is his richest and
most significant work.
Swedenborg came to theology by an unusual avenue, and
this made all the difference. He took up theology while grap-
pling with the spontaneous inner language of correspon-
dences in dreams, in the hypnogogic state, and in trances.
How many theologians enter theology in this manner? Hindu
and Buddhist theologians may often enter this way, but not
western religious figures. Swedenborg' s unusual understand-
ing set him apart. To appreciate the greatness of his biblical
work, one needs some appreciation and acceptance of the
spontaneous inner language of symbolism. Knowledge of the
language of the unconscious and an interest in biblical mean-
ing seldom exist in one person; those interested in depth
psychology are usually not interested in the Bible and biblical
scholars find the language of the unconscious merely a curi-
osity.
Swedenborg' s former real ignorance of biblical meaning
was striking in comparison to what he later found. In 1745,
Swedenborg was working on The Word Explained, an eight-
volume work that he wisely chose not to publish. There he
tried to penetrate the meaning of the Bible with his own
intellect. The work is a relatively dull rehash of conventional
ideas. But here and there it has curious references to dreams,
spirits, and correspondences. Aft er his enlightenment by the
Lord, his first publication was the Arcana Coelestia (Heav-
enly Secrets). The Arcana is so rich, deep, and powerful that
it hardly looks like the work of the same man who had
written The Word Explained. Something had happened. His
whole understanding had richly flowered in several different
directions simultaneously.
Swedenborg could not have been terribly concerned about
his public relations image or the Arcana would not have been
Inner Meanings 181
t he first published work of this newly enlightened man. The
English edition of t he first t ome of his new underst andi ng
runs to twelve volumes and 5,800 pages. These heavenly
secrets are staggeringly rich. Even Swedenborg experts often
put off reading it and treat it as a literary Mount Everest. On
t he surface it is mainly an exposition of t he inner meanings
in Genesis and Exodus. But he also developed parallel mean-
ings f r om almost every ot her part of t he Bible, so he is
coincidentally unlocking t he whole of Scripture. It also goes
into the dynamics of t he inner life of individuals, churches,
and Jesus Christsimultaneously, since these are ultimately
one. In addition he intersperses cogent summari es of his
findings in heaven and hell. Every ot her maj or idea he was
to deal with for t he next thirty years is contained in t he
Arcana. Swedenborg published it anonymousl y, as Servant
of the Lord Jesus Chri st . He sent copies to t he learned bish-
ops of t he western world. No wonder they di dn' t take notice!
It was simply too rich and too different to be readily under-
stood. Interestingly enough, it was ordi nary people who were
first impressed by t he Arcana. This is understandable, for it
relates to t he kind of meani ng Swedenborg was dealing with.
In Swedenborg' s time t he Holy Bible was t he Wor d of
God. Ot her bibles, such as t he Kor an, Bhagavad Gita, Tao
Te Ching, Dhammapada, were little known and unavailable.
Of all t he world' s bibles, t he western Hol y Bible is probably
by far t he most obscure and varied work. There are many
indications t hat it is at least partly a symbolic work. The
Lord spoke in a symbolic language of parables, and, indeed,
it was predicted t he messiah would do this. The massive
symbolism of t he Book of Revelation had puzzled genera-
lions. There is clear symbolism everywhere in it. Isaiah refers
10 a man as a clay pot t hat complains of having handles
(Isaiah 45:9-13). But how much is symbolic, and of what?
Some early biblical scholars treated much of it as an allegory.
Allegorical interpretation allowed anyone to find whatever
meaning pleased them. Because of these excesses, these al-
legorical interpretations fell into disfavor. The opposite pole
also emerged. The fundamentalists stuck by the literal word
as fact. The world was "literally" created in six days.
Swedenborg' s approach to the Bible left room for these
differences while transcending them. He was very sure that
there was a full and useful meaning in the literal words as
read by the fundamentalists. In fact, this was the real basis
of all the meanings. He said the internal meaning without the
external would be like a house without a foundation ( HD
262). For those who could not see any furt her beyond the
literal, this meaning was meant to be a sufficient guide.
The key to the deeper meaning lay not so much in the
psychological language of correspondences; this only gave
one confidence in symbolic language. The key lay in the spirit
with which the person came to the Bible. Those who wanted
just laws to guide their lives would find laws. Those who
wanted to feel the presence of the Lord would find this
presence. Those who struggled with understanding the com-
plexities of human experience would find this echoed. Many
ordinary people always read the Bible this way. When in
trouble and searching for guidance they look in the Bible,
confident that it will speak to them as a personal friend and
guide. And it does. On the other hand, scholars who are
stuffed with facts that a particular book was proven by com-
puter analysis to be made of two separate documents would
often find their personal experience of the Bible to founder
in this scholarship. Swedenborg approached the Bible
through that psychological experience by which it became
alive to ordinary persons. Hence, where learned bishops
couldn' t see any gift in his work, ordinary people could. But
whereas ordinary people were sometimes projecting into it
and finding meanings appropriate to them, Swedenborg was
finding two universal levels of meanings locked within the
odd language of the Bible. This does not contravene what
ordinary people feel in the Bible, for I believe what they feel
mid what he is talking about are aspects of the same process.
Ilut where they are searching, Swedenborg was moving with
great certainty and scholarship, under the guidance of
heaven.
Swedenborg said that only the Lord inwardly instructs on
I he meaning of the Word. He clearly said that he was not
instructed by any spirit or angel on what the Word meant;
lie was only instructed by the Lord. But this is true of every-
one. The secret of unlocking the Bible lays in the spirit with
which it is approached. Those who love t rut h for its own sake
(not to show off their knowledge) and apply it in their lives
will be shown. Being ready to apply it and use it was for
Swedenborg a critical sign that the individual really wanted
10 know. Belief became real as act, not just an airy intellec-
lual process.
Swedenborg used the term "Wor d" in more senses than
just the printed Bible. He also used it in the deeper Hebrew
sense of what causes all things to be ( WH 17). This is the
Word that existed before anything was (John 1:1). One might
say that the Word is the power of the Lord to form and guide.
Those who approach the Bible with this deeper longing or
searching will meet in it the power of God to guide them.
Knock and it will be opened. The proof of understanding is
in what the person does. What is real must exist. The Word
of God becomes act or uses. So Swedenborg was really deal-
ing with this heartbeat of understanding. As a result, those
who engaged in a heartfelt search in the Bible were instructed
by the Lord Himself, who was their life. Whet her this under-
standing was cloudy and fumbling in personal meaning or
striking the real gold of the Lord' s inner meaning, they were
moving in the same direction. These heartfelt personal fum-
blings could feel the power of the inner levels of meaning
Swedenborg was referring to.
Swedenborg read the Bible in its original languages. The
indexes of the day didn' t satisfy him, so he made his own. He
spent years on it. In fact, through most of his late years, the
Bible was reported to be the only book visible in his study.
He combined tremendous singleminded scholarship with ex-
perience of the Lord in heaven to produce one of the most
profound understandings of the Bible ever offered. Indeed,
its very richness, breadth, and depth is an impediment to
anything but a wholehearted attempt to follow his lead.
Many who gave his work a cursory glance dismissed it as
allegorical (which it is not) or as denying the sense of the
letter (which he held sacred).
Swedenborg found that most of the Bible contained,
within the outer sense of the letter, two furt her levels of
meaning. The significant books in the Old Testament are the
five books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, the two books of Sam-
uel, the two Kings, the Psalms of David and the prophets
Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea,
Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk,
Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. In the New
Testament books with such an inner meaning are Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John and Revelation ( HD 266). Job has an
inner meaning but it is disconnected. This list includes most
of the Old Testament and all but the works of Paul in the
New Testament.
In effect, the Bible is the revealed Word, structured so as
to be understood simultaneously by man and angels in the
spiritual and celestial heavens. When man reads it in its
literal sense, spiritual and celestial angels simultaneously un-
derstand it in the higher meanings appropriate to their
realms. The Bible is the revealed Word through all the
worlds. Swedenborg mostly elaborates upon the spiritual
sense because men can partly see and understand it. But the
celestial sense "can be explained only with difficulty, for it
does not fall so much into the thought of the understanding
as into the affection of the will" (DS 19). In other words, the
celestial sense is in feeling and doing. It rises above words.
From the Lord proceeds the celestial heaven, and out of
I hat the spiritual and out of that the natural world. These are
all levels of meaning contained in the Bible.
This is the nature of the Word. In its ultimate sense it is natural,
in its interior sense it is spiritual, and in its inmost sense it is
celestial; and in each it is Divine. That the Word is of this nature
is not apparent in the sense of the Letter, as this is natural; because
man when in the world has hitherto not known anything concern-
ing the heavens; and consequently has not known what the
spiritual is, and what the celestial. DS 6
The difference between these degrees cannot be known unless by
II knowledge of correspondence. For these three degrees are quite
distinct from each other, like end, cause and effect. DS 7
I'his inner meaning is the same as the mystical meaning.
Swedenborg senses the difficulty in getting it across to peo-
pie.
I lie Jews and also some Christians believe, indeed, that in these,
mid also in the rest of the passages of the Word, there is some
meaning stored up, which they call mystical, the reason of this
belief being an idea of holiness in regard to the Word has been
Impressed upon them from early childhood; but when they are
nsked what this mystical meaning is, they do not know. If they are
I old that because the Word is Divine, this meaning must neces-
Niirily be such as is in the heaven among the angels: and that no
other mystical meaning can exist in the Wor d. . . and, furthermore,
that this mystical meaning which is in heaven among the angels is
nothing else than what is called spiritual and celestial, and treats
solely of the Lord, of His kingdom, and of the church, conse-
!!liently, of good and truth; and that if they knew what good and
truth, or what faith and love, are, they would be able to know this
meaningwhen they are told this scarcely anyone believes it. In
I net, so ignorant, at the present day, are those who belong to the
i liurch, that what is related concerning the celestial and spiritual
is scarcely comprehensible to them. Be it so; nevertheless as it has
been granted me, of the Lord's Divine mercy, to be at the same time
in heaven as a spirit and on earth as a man, and therefore to speak
with angels, and this now continually for many years, I cannot but
open up those things of the Word that are called mystical, that is,
its interior things, which are the spiritual and celestial things of the
Lord's kingdom. AC 4923
It took a man who had direct and long association with
angels to come to see and learn the wide acceptance in
heaven of this inner meaning. Because the Word is written
in correspondences, it permits a conjunction of man with the
heavens and with the Lord through the Word.
The preceding chapter dealt with the breadth of the idea
of correspondences, or symbolic language. It is an ancient
and very common idea, having appeared at various times as
the source of pictographic writing, myth, occult sciences,
ceremony, and even modern plays and poetry, psychoso-
matic medicine, and projective tests.
What seems mysterious is that the symbol reaches beyond
the simple things. It represents a host of circumstances that
may occur anywhere, anytime. The symbolic ceremonial oc-
casion represents all occasions. The dynamism of the symbol
lives insofar as it echoes in a person. Witness ancient symbols
whose sense we have now lost. They became just museum
artifacts of a past age. An example would be a Cretan figure
of the Magna Mater. The little clay figure represented all the
possibilities of motherliness. Volumes could be written of its
implications. The symbol only lives within the one who feels
its implications. True idolatry was rarely practiced. Just as
the Roman Catholic genuflects before a plaster Virgin Mary,
because of what is being represented, primitives also genu-
fleeted before their symbols, keys to larger worlds. Thus, in
a complex, this is what Swedenborg' s language of biblical
correspondences is involved with. It relates to the most an-
cient, honorable, and varied traditions. The daring aspect is
that he was unlocking t he western worl d' s key of keys.
In t he first paragraph of Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg
unfolded the spiritual meani ng of a familiar biblical passage.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be
darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall
fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken;
and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and
then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn; and they shall see the
Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and
great glory. And he shall send his angels and a trumpet and a great
voice, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds,
from one end of the heavens to the other. Matthew 24:29-31
Those who underst and the sense of the letter underst and t hat
someday, in a cosmic falling apart of things, Jesus will come
and gather his elect together. It is a someday, cataclysmic,
final j udgment . This is the literal sense of t he letter. It is true
and sacred. Yet there is an inner spiritual sense. Swedenborg
described it as it applies to churches. I would like to translate
it downward to the individual. This is possible because t he
spiritual sense applies equally to t he Lord, the heavens,
churches, and individuals; "for the Word of The Lord is such
that wherever it treats of one person, it treats of all men, and
of each individual, with a difference accordi ng to the disposi-
tion of each: this being t he universal sense of t he Wor d" ( AC
838). Man is a church in t he least form. Churches are the
ultimates of heaven and represent heaven. Heaven is a repre-
sentative of t he Lord. The spiritual sense carries within it all
these levels of meaning. The celestial sense is more difficult
to describe, since it is more like feeling and doing than it is
ideas. In terms of a person-church the passage reads as fol-
lows:
BI BLE SPI RI TUAL SENSE
Immediately after the tribulation When the man-church has come to
of those days its end, its extreme state
God-love-feeling will no longer be
known.
Faith, or all our ideas of how things
are, will fall into darkness
all the little guides we had will fail
us
it is a total, awesome and terrible
change
In this extreme state each shall
know the root of humanness.
The man will be in total mourning
reduced to his most extreme state,
in the clouds of his understanding,
shall appear the Only Man, the
only power left.
Out of this Only One, will come
powers to rescue the man
what remains of good in the man
(the elect) will be united into a One.
shall the sun be darkened,
the moon shall not give her light,
and the stars shall fall from heaven,
And the powers of the heavens
shall be shaken;
and then shall appear the sign of
the Son of man in heaven;
and then shall all the tribes of the
earth mourn;
and they shall see the Son of man
coming in the clouds of heaven
with great power and great glory.
And he shall send his angels with a
trumpet and a great voice,
and they shall gather together his
elect from the four winds, from one
end of the heavens to the other.
(Matthew 24:29-31)
A few comments will deepen an appreciation of the corre-
spondences involved. "Those days" here refers to any day of
great tribulation. The passage is speaking spiritually of any
man, any church, any time. The spiritual meaning tran-
scends time and is speaking of a general truth. "The sun"
that is darkened refers to the Lord. The main light will no
longer shine. Angels know the Lord as the sun of heaven.
"The moon" shines by light reflected from the sun. This is
like faith, whose source of light is the Lord-Sun. Or this
relates to thought or faith (reflected, light of moon) being
secondary to feeling (sun), to the One Life. God is primal,
we are secondary. Love-feeling is primal; without it the light-
heat goes out of faith, all the dim light we have of ideas that
guide us. The meaning is similar to the stars' fall. There is
nothing left to guide the person-church. He is reduced to a
most extreme state. The Son of man is a primitive idea whose
meaning we've almost lost. Most everyone takes it to mean
Jesus Christ, which is one level of meaning. God is the Only
Man. The Son of man is the representative of this one. It
might be called the core of the individual personal identity.
Swedenborg says that the phrase "Son of man" is consis-
tently used where redemption, salvation, reformation, and
regeneration are spoken of ( DL 23). This is the core of mean-
ing of this passage. The church' s-man' s salvation is being
spoken of. "Clouds of heaven" easily represents our foggy,
clouded understanding of what is really happening in this
extreme state. "Trumpet and a great voice" easily represents
the overwhelming powers the man-church is caught in.
"Four winds" is an ancient idea: four represents all places
the totaland is related to the four points of the compass.
Jung and many oriental religions represent the fundamental
Self as a fourfold mandala.
This passage, then, is speaking symbolically or representa-
tively of everyone's situation when they' ve really had it. It
is the picture of the extreme limit of personal loss, and some-
thing coming from beyond the self to rescue the person. It
happens to everyone. It happens to churches when they go
through the agony of dying. It is an everyone, all places, all
times description of what happens in the extremes of dying
and coming to life again. Bear in mind that Swedenborg is
not undoing or violating the literal meaning. That stands as
true. But whereas the sense of the letter seems to be speaking
of a once-someday cataclysmic event, in a spiritual sense it
is describing what almost everyone has known and will
know. The awesome sweep and power of Swedenborg's in-
sights into t he spiritual meaning come f r om this. It is alive
and true for everyone. It will always be true. It is the nature
of things. Hence it is sacred, or terribly valuable. It is per-
fectly appropri at e for each to think back on t he most extreme
situation in his life and see t he parallels with this passage.
Then it no longer seems simply like picturesque speech but
more like an awesome picture of reality.
Anot her example illustrates what Swedenborg found. The
scene is f r om Genesis. The prophet Noah, (warned of a flood,
has built an ark t hat contains all life in it. The image of a man
gathering up all his life and trying to weat her a great st orm
should not be too difficult to recognize. The person is trying
to weather great difficulty. " Noa h" literally means "rest . " It
is unfort unat e t hat these meanings, which are apparent to
those who read Hebrew, are lost in t he t ransl at i on. " Noah
is appropri at e in several senses. He is, in effect, t he remaining
one, the rest, t he one left over, what survives. In t he story he
is also concerned to find a place to rest. In its inner meani ng
this relates to the man in adversity trying to find what is right
and good, where he may rest. Noah has suffered t hrough a
long period of storm. His vessel comes to rest on Mount
Ar ar at (light). His troubles aren' t over, for ot her t han t he
light t hat holds up his vessel (his life) t here is no place to rest.
The rest of t he earth is flooded. The psychological issue is
how t he man who has locked up himself against adversity
can finally find rest and freedom.
SPI RI TUAL SENSE
At the end of a complete period of
trial
he made an effort to understand his
situation (open the window)
he acted out of doubt and falsity
(raven, black, ignorance, falsity).
BI BLE
And it came to pass at the end of
forty days
that Noah opened the window of
the ark which he had made
and he sent forth a raven,
Inner Meanings 191
he was uncertain and ambivalent.
His situation remained as before
till the Lord made it better.
iiiid it went forth going and return-
ing
until the waters were dried up from
off the earth
and he sent forth a dove from him And he expressed a gentle hope
to see if he would be permitted to
begin life again.
His hope found no place to be.
so he withdraws into himself again.
Adversity still reigns.
He still acts by his own powers to
protect himself.
He awaits God's time and will, and
tries again
And hope shows just the beginning
She shows (mouth) a little (leaf) of
love's (olive) faith (plucked off).
The ground of being is less covered
now by falsity and doubt.
He awaits God's will and this time
finds freedom.
to see if the waters were abated
from off the faces of the ground.
And the dove found no rest for the
sole of her foot.
And she returned unto him to the
ark, for the waters were on the
faces of the whole earth;
and he put forth his hand and took
her, and brought her unto him in
the ark.
And he stayed yet other seven
days; and again he sent forth the
dove out of the ark;
And the dove came back to him at
eventide
and 10, in her mouth an olive leaf
plucked off
So Noah knew that the waters were
abated from off the earth.
And he stayed yet other seven days
and sent forth the dove and she re-
turned not again unto him any-
more. Genesis 8:6-13
He is shortly to find rest on t he ground t hat permits his
life (the animals in t he ark) to be free. Resting on a mount ai n
of light, or on the beginning of underst andi ng, in t he midst
of adversity he first sends out a black bird, the raven. The
raven has often been seen as symbolic of death or at least
great difficulty. After so much adversity, what he sends out
is black. This black mood (doubt, ignorance) didn' t find
ground. Then he sends out a dove, which is more representa-
tive of gentle hope or even of the Holy Spirit. The bird goes
out and back (hope, ambivalence, withdrawal again into the
ark). Just to show Swedenborg' s scholarship, he examined in
detail just the matter of Noah taking the dove in hand and
returning it to the ark. For pages he shows dozens of biblical
quotes using the word "hand, " which, as we saw earlier,
means personal power: "Noah shall spread forth his hands
in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth
his hand to swim, and he shall lay low his pride together with
the devices of his hands (Isaiah 25:11). Here hands denotes
man' s own power, from regarding himself as above others,
thus from his pride" AC 878. Swedenborg goes into seven-
teen other biblical passages showing the use of hands to
denote personal power. The reader begins to get a sense of
the consistency of biblical symbolism. The hand representing
personal power doesn' t seem so strange; so in putting forth
his hand and taking the dove, he was still acting by his
personal powers. The man of the church doesn' t find ground
until he acts from what transcends him. Under this analysis
the tiniest details come to life. Why a raven at first and a dove
later? Now we know. The faces of the ground is an unusual
experience. Swedenborg says face corresponds to mind (AC
4791, 4805); face (surface, what appears) equals mind; faces
of the ground, the superficial appearance of what supports
our existence. Noah, the survivor of great trials and tempta-
tions, is still thinking superficially. But he is looking for the
faces of the ground, where his life can begin again. It would
be nice to release the pent-up life in the ark and find some
ground to rely upon instead of being perched so long in stress
and uncertainty. Again, this is an image of every man. Every-
one has been locked up in his own life concerns, trying to sur-
vive adversity. Each seeks some outside ground, somewhere
to rest. Noah waited another seven days (a whole, complete
period, i.e., until God wills) and this time the dove came back
with a freshly plucked olive leaf. The olive was symbolic of
love to the ancients because of the pleasant sensual quality
of its oil. Rest is given in God' s time (40 days, plus 7, plus
7). This only touches upon the meanings in this passage.
There is much more. Christ was tempted for forty days. The
earth was made in seven. But the basic meaning can be seen
of man in adversity, waiting, sending out hope after hope,
only finding rest in God' s time. The whole passage refers to
the regeneration or remaking of man in the spiritual sense.
Everyone has been locked up in his own life and concerns
and seeks some outside ground, somewhere to rest.
I hope the reader is getting a sense of how often this
spiritual language is speaking of man' s intimate experiences.
These excerpts leave out Swedenborg' s tremendous scholar-
ship and gradual unfolding of ideas that make the spiritual
interpretation more convincing. Swedenborg isn't drawing
on chance connections. If you doubt that taking the dove into
his hand and putting it in the ark means withdrawing into
his own powers, then he amply reviews the use of "hand" in
the Bible to show its inner meaning. But most of all, these
quaint ancient stories come alive in the tiniest details of
everyone's life. If Swedenborg is correct, it is appalling that
so much meaning should be locked up and forgotten in an
ancient book.
Let us examine the inner implications of the well-known
opening passage of Genesis. On the surface it describes the
six days of creation of the earth, all life and man. In its
symbolic sense it is speaking of the inner nature of man,
churches, and the essential livingness of existence. The earth
created is man, any person. It is speaking of the always true,
the nature of things, what can be confirmed by any life. I
Inner Meanings 195
(waters equal all the potential
within mind, faces of waters
equal tendencies, waves, cur-
rents).
And God created awareness
(God saidGod's will takes
the form of let there beand
there was. We are seeing an ac-
tive creation of the Lord).
And the Divine is aware of the
goodness (or use) of this crea-
tion,
which begins to make funda-
mental distinctions between
what is full awareness and of
God (daylight) and limited
awareness and of man (night).
From the darkness to the morn-
ing of awareness is called the
first day of creation.
It begins to be apparent t hat some kind of unfolding has
started t hat begins by t he distinction of some great polar
opposites, heaven-earth, day-night, light-darkness. The dis-
tinction is between a higher and lower, or a fullness of under-
standing as against a limitation.
And God said, let there be
light, and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it
was good,
and God distinguished between
the light and the darkness. And
God called the light day, and
the darkness He called night.
And the evening and the morn-
ing were the first day.
The internal of man is opened
up (expanse in the midst of the
waters) and from it the distinc-
tion of the internal and the ex-
ternal man (between waters and
waters).
Lat er we will see t hat one of t he waters gives birth to land,
which is t he firmer, ego consciousness.
And God said, let there be an
expanse in the midst of the wa-
ters, and let it distinguish be-
tween the waters and the wa-
ters.
rids
ce with t he symbolic lan-
rpret at i on given here will
ar, to be a bit farfetched,
few passages interpreted
1irty-two pages of careful
nerous biblical parallels,
lis kind of language may
denborg may have found
these new levels do not
meanings. The literal is
t mat t er of t rut hs within
it t here are also celestial
i derst andi ng of celestial
rie, and beyond a simple
I have taken t he liberty
id also to clarify t hem in
ting in modern terms.
SPI RI TUAL SENSE
tegins when God creates the
al man (heaven, the higher
) and the external man
, body, lower aspect).
xternal man begins in great
nee and instinctuality (dark-
pon the faces of the deep).
ing of man' s ignorance
tes Jeremiah: "My peo-
s; they are foolish sons,
10 evil, but to do good
:arth, and lo a void and
le life of God animates
unconscious tendencies
And this growth of awareness is
the second day of creation.
This distinguishes what is of
God (waters under heaven) and
man's consciousness (dry land
appears).
And man's consciousness is his
place (earth) and the rest is his
potential (seas). This process is
good. (It is good that man has
a place in the midst of the seas
to work from.)
Out of God's will, as tho from
the man himself
appears the beginnings of ideas
(outgrowths of consciousness)
which have more and more life
in themselves in man's con-
sciousness (upon the earth).
This follows God's will.
(It reemphasizes that this
growth appears to arise from
man himself even though it fol-
lows God's will.)
The Divine sees the good in this
process.
This is the third day or stage in
the creation of man.
And the evening and the morn-
ing were the second day.
And God said, let the waters
under the heaven be gathered
together to one place, and let
the dry land appear; and it was
so.
And God called the dry land
earth, and the gathering to-
gether of the waters called He
seas; the God saw that it was
good.
And God said, let the earth
bring forth the tender herb,
the herb yielding seed and the
fruit-tree bearing fruit after its
kind whose seed is in itself,
upon the earth.
And it was so.
And the earth brought forth the
tender herb, the herb yielding
seed after its kind, and the tree
bearing fruit, whose seed is in
itself, after its kind;
and God saw it was good.
And the evening and morning
were the third day.
At this point the higher and lower aspects of man are distin-
guished and his thinking begins to bear fruit as though
through his own powers.
God willed that there be aware-
nesses (light) in the internal
man (expanse of heaven).
Which makes basic distinc-
tions,
which will always serve as a
guide
in the internal of understanding
to guide the limited ego con-
sciousness,
and God's will is realized.
And God made two great
guides,
love/will (sun, warmth, heat)
to guide in the most direct way
(by day)
and faith/understanding
(moon, reflected light of sun) to
guide in less clear circum-
stances
and the myriad of tiny guides in
the less clear circumstances.
And God made these an inte-
gral part of the inner man
to guide the limited conscious-
ness ego.
And God said, let there be
lights in the expanse of the
heavens,
to distinguish between the day
and the night;
and let them be for signs and for
seasons, and for days, and for
years;
and let them be for lights in the
expanse of the heavens,
to give light upon the earth;
and it was so.
And God made two great
lights,
the great light to rule by day,
and the lesser light to rule by
night;
and the stars.
And God set them in the ex-
panse of the heavens,
to give light upon the earth.
To rule the full understanding
(day) or the limited (night) and
to distinguish truth (light) and
falsity (darkness).
And the Divine sees the good in
this (through all lives, in all
creation).
And this is the fourth stage or
day of man's development.
And to rule in the day, and in
the night, and to distinguish be-
tween the light and the dark-
ness
and God saw it was good.
And the evening and the morn-
ing were the fourth day.
At this point man functions with useful ideas of his own
(tender herbs) and has the massive internal guidance system
of love-will-Divine good, and when this isn' t functioning (at
night), the lesser guides of faith-understanding-intellect.
Now the man begins to live.
(Prior to this his life was inani-
mate, i.e., dry land, plants.
Now he begins to live, i.e., acts
within the love/will of God.)
And begins to have perspective
on the lesser aspects of his life
which is the surface of the inner
man.
Out of the unconscious (the
sea) is created great forces with
much life in them (great
whales).
And every living tendency
that comes out of the uncon-
scious
is interrelated after its kinds
And God said, let the waters
cause to creep forth the creep-
ing things, the living soul;
and let fowl fly above the earth
upon the faces of the expanse of
the heavens.
And God created great whales.
And every living soul that
creepeth,
which the waters made to creep
forth,
after their kinds, and every
winged fowl after its kind;
and the Divine sees the use in
this.
This life from God seems to
have love (fruitful) and under-
standing (multiply) in itself
and fills the mind (waters in the
seas) and experience of man
(the earth).
And this is the fifth stage in the
creation of man.
There emerged from man
(earth) living tendencies,
instincts and feelings,
and pleasures of the senses.
And these became real and j
seem to arise from 'their own
kind, gentle affections from the '
gentle, and sense pleasure from
the sensual,
and the Divine saw the use in
this.
This man is to be like God.
and God saw it was good.
And God blessed them, saying,
be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the waters in the seas,
and the fowl shall be multiplied
in the earth.
And the evening and the morn-
ing were the fifth day.
And God said, let the earth
bring forth the living soul after
its kind,
the beast, and the moving thing
and the wild animal of the earth
after its kind; and it was so.
And God made the wild animal
after its kind, and the beast
after its kind, and everything
that creepeth on the ground
after its kind;
and God saw it was good.
And God said, let us make man
in our image, after our likeness;
In the most ancient church, with the members of which the Lord
conversed face to face, the Lord appeared as a man; concerning
which much might be related, but the time has not yet arrived. On
this account they called no one "man" but the Lord Himself, and
the things which pertained to Him; neither did they call themselves
"men. . . ." Hence in the Prophets, by "man" and the "Son of
man," in the highest sense, is meant the Lord; and, in the internal
sense, wisdom and intelligence. AC 49
and have dominion over all as-
pects of his life.
and is given the power of under-
standing
and will.
Understanding and will, the
two that can be one.
and let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the heavens, and
over the beast, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the
earth.
And God created man in his
own image
in the image of God created He
him;
male and female created He
them.
What was meant by "male and female," in the internal sense, was
well known to the most Ancient Church, but when the interior
sense of the Word was lost among their posterity, this arcanum also
perished. Their marriages were their chief sources of happiness and
delight, and whatever admitted of the comparison they likened to
marriage The understanding in the spiritual man they therefore
called male and the will female, and when these acted as one they
called it a marriage. AC 54
Such a man is to do what is
good (fruitful) and true (multi-
ply).
which is to benefit to the whole
person,
by bringing him into control
and dominion over all his ten-
dencies.
And God blessed them, and
God said unto them, Be fruit-
ful, and multiply,
and replenish the earth
and subdue it;
and have dominion over the fish
of the sea, and over the fowl of
the heavens, and over every liv-
ing thing that creepth upon the
earth.
He is given every truth which
regards use (herb bearing seed),
the good of faith (tree which is
in fruit) and spiritual guidance
(tree yielding seed).
To every aspect of the man in
which there is spiritual life (a
living soul) the Lord gives
spiritual food (green herb).
God saw all the implications in
what He had done, and it was
very good.
And this is the progression to
the sixth day of creation.
And God said, Behold I give
you every herb bearing seed
which is upon the faces of all
the earth, and every tree in
which is fruit; the tree yielding
seed, to you it shall be for food.
And to every wild animal of the
earth, and to every fowl of the
heavens, and to everything that
creepeth upon the earth,
wherein there is a living soul, I
give every green herb for food;
and it was so.
And God saw everything that
He had made, and behold it was
very good.
And the evening and the morn-
ing were the sixth day.
There are many other meanings in this section of Genesis,
some of which Swedenborg touched on, some of which he
only implied. Basically t he section is dealing, in the internal
sense, with the development of a person from complete
spiritual ignorance (void and empty) to the beginning dif-
ferentiation of what is from God (the heavens) and man
(earth), to greater and greater understanding, livingness
(plants, fish, animals), to the man who becomes the image of
God. This man still has much to do to subdue and come into
control over his tendencies. These six days of creation have
not yet reached the seventh day in which the man can rest.
It would be sufficient, for my purposes, if the reader sees
only the possibility that familiar passages may have another
inner, more psychological and spiritual level of meaning. To
really appreciate this level requires some spiritual search, a
need to know. Missing here is Swedenborg' s comparison
with parallel passages and his careful scholarship. He also
referred to ancient practices that throw light on the inner
meaning. Without this, for instance, it isn' t immediately ap-
parent how male and female are related to understanding
and will, nor the happy marriage of these, in which what one
understands and believes is made real by will or action, hence
bringing fruitfulness and multiplication into one' s life. Faith
is made real by charity, and this is called a happy marriage.
Whereas we have to struggle somewhat to grasp this spiritual
language, angels find it easier, as illustrated by an incident
in heaven Swedenborg reported.
Certain ones were taken up to the first entrance-court of heaven,
when I was reading the Word, and from there conversed with me.
They said they could not there understand one whit of any word
or letter therein, but only what was signified in the nearest interior
sense, which they declared to be so beautiful, in such order of
sequence, and so affecting them, that they called it Glory. AC 65
Swedenborg' s exegetical works are too rich and varied to
be simply summarized. Since spirit and life are much the
same, the inner sense is always closer to the nooks and cran-
nies of human experience and human travail. This inner
sense is speaking of life, everyone' s life, of churches, of
Christ' s life, of the Lord. In a fundamental way each is the
Lord trying to find his way back home.
Swedenborg' s thesis of inner meaning is decidedly too
rich, too extensive, and too important to be dismissed out of
hand. He almost requires the reader to be in a real spiritual
search, to learn the symbolic language of the inner life, and
then to study the Bible and its inner meanings at great length
before a judgment can be made. But this much can be said.
Those who have found this inner thread of meaning find that
the Bible is incredibly rich, accurate, and relevant to our
everyday life.
0
The One Present
Essentially Swedenborg was attempting to understand and
describe all of life. His personal journey went through the
sciences and psychology to the most general understanding
possible in the wisdom of theology. By examining separate
aspects of Swedenborg' s works at a time, I have perhaps
presented too static a picture of the whole. Now I want to
show something of the whole canvas that Swedenborg has
painted.
The first issue is what kind of knowledge is involved in his
theological works and on what authority was it presented?
Swedenborg remained the same empiricist who had earlier
described the mining and smelting of copper and all the other
sciences even when he was dealing with the subtleties of the
inner world. At no point in his later critical psychological-
theological works was he theorizing or speculating. He could
illustrate any point by personal experiences, often too numer-
ous to detail. As a psychologist he was closest to the
phenomenologist, who is really content to discover and de-
scribe the shape of human experience. Although this is Swe-
denborg
,
s experience, he was potentially describing all of
204
human experience. Nothing need be taken on his authority.
Each person can check it for himself because he is referring
to the generally real.
If we look at these works as essentially theological the
issues remain the same. It is possible, though not common,
for everyone to experience the higher worlds and the exis-
tence of God. As our understanding of the psychological
inner nature of these worlds deepens, the experience comes
closer to each of us. In some way Swedenborg saw farther
and clearer than most, but what he brought back helped
others to see almost as well.
Though Swedenborg had much social intercourse with
angels, spirits, and demons, he clearly indicated that he was
ultimately only instructed by the Lord. The Lord is the
ultimate authority, the Bible is the revealed authority for
what he has to say, but ultimately this refers back to the form
of human experience. The spiritual world, the Bible, and
human experience are interrelated aspects of one reality, life
itself. In a real sense Swedenborg is a latter-day prophet and
revelator, and like his ancient predecessors, his task is not to
break with ancient traditions in a new breed of understand-
ing, but simply to deepen our understanding of ancient tradi-
lions. To attack him is not to attack a peculiar breed of
thinking, but to attack the real meaning of depth of the
ancient tradition. Swedenborg regarded himself as simply a
messenger, or a servant, of the Lord. It was clear that he was
not to be venerated in any respect for this august role. The
celestial angels abhor any attempt to give them credit for
I heir wisdom, and Swedenborg was the same. If there is any
good in his work it is God' s, not his. His gift from God
extends back into the ancient understandings of men (and
Swedenborg greatly complemented the primitives) and for-
ward into our understanding based on our own experience.
I'he real basis of authority for his work is, then, in this rich
understanding and experience of the Lord, the Bible, ancient
traditions, and our present experience. Those who under-
stand Swedenborg partially tend to take apart these realms.
Swedenborg dealt with them as essentially one, which for
lack of a better term might be called "life."
These two aspectsthe personal nature of human experi-
ence, which can be checked by everyone, and the nature of
the spiritual worlds beyond this onecome together, for one
is the inside of the other. The spiritual worlds beyond this one
are the essential nature and potentiality of human experience.
That is simply why Swedenborg could study dreams, the
hypnogogic, and trance states and stumble upon spirits in-
teracting with man. That is why psychotics who have par-
tially lost their orientation in relation to this world can find
themselves pulled hither and thither by the same spirits who
are the unconscious potentials of every person. We are al-
ready in the presence of heaven and hell. Heaven and hell in
their innermost nature illustrate our present and fut ure po-
tentials. Rightly understood, the whole of our existence is
spiritual. We are, or everything is, because God is, which is
understanding spiritually. Spiritual understanding is the in-
ner or more general aspect of psychological or personal un-
derstanding. Swedenborg has discovered the one real, the
unitary, or only system. Though we can separate out differ-
ent aspects, it is really one life we are dealing with. To those
who are accustomed to and comfortable with interacting
parts, this very oneness can be a stumbling block. If one must
take it apart, levels of correspondence is one way of doing it.
We can look at a plant and try to see how it corresponds with
and is an ultimate sign of the spiritual world. As we examine
its form, color, fruitfulness, etc., we are beginning to sense
those aspects of ourselves that empathize with the plant.
Through this livingness, which is ourselves, we can begin to
sense the nature of the spiritual worlds. Correspondence
emphasizes the hierarchical ordering of existence, yet our
experience of correspondence drifts toward the unitary expe-
rience of life. The taking apart into aspects is to aid under-
standing, but the experiential aspect tends to be unitary,
which Swedenborg called life and humanness.
Table 1 shows t he hierarchy of existence, with the parallels
between the worlds beyond this one and inner experiences.
The hierarchy of other worlds is also a hierarchy of reality.
The Lord is the Only Real that creates out of Himself the
whole of existence. God' s is not a contingent existence like
all ot her existences. In a sense each higher level is more real
than t he level below it. Each level is real in itself, but each
reflects by correspondence higher levels that are progres-
sively more generally true, comprehensive, and free. The
Lord is the free itself, t he ultimate t rut h, the deepest aspect
of humanness. Humanness is the experiential aspect of the
Hierarchy of the Real As Humanness
The Lord The innermost nature
and highest potential of
humanness
The ultimate of peace,
love, and unity with all.
The ultimate of loving
others.
Beginning of realization
Unconscious tendencies,
affects, subconscious
Celestial heaven
Spiritual heaven
Spiritual/natural
heaven of human
potentials
The three hells:
ihe opposite
possibilities
World of spirits
Ego awareness
Man's acts, the ultimate
limitations of human
existence
Man on earth
The natural world
Table 1. The parallels between the hierarchy of real worlds and human-
ness.
hierarchy of worlds. The material world is not put down in
this conception, for it is the ultimate sign and final proof of
God' s will.
There is a beautiful mystical element running through
Swedenborg. By mystical I mean simply what is very great
coming into the limited here-now. For me, this mystical
element entered when Swedenborg spoke of the humanness
of the Lord. He gently put his finger on where in all of varied
existence the Lord is to be most intimately known: in the
very inner connection of humanness to the Divine. There is
the pulse of the relationship.
[UJnless God were a man the universe could not have been created.
Bring your thought into the angelic idea of God as being a Man,
putting away, as much as you can, the idea of space, and you will
come near in thought to the truth. In fact, some of the learned have
a perception of spirits and angels as not in space, because they have
a perception of the spiritual apart from space. For the spiritual is
like thought, which although it is in man, man is nevertheless able
by means of it to be present as it were elsewhere, in any place
however remote. . . . The Human is the inmost in every created
thing. DLW 285
God is very Man, from whom every man is a man according to his
reception of love and wisdom. DLW 289
Man, thought, spirit are in the image of God. God is the Very
Man. The way to God is through humanness, because it is
our closest approach to the Divine. The Lord is the very core
of ourselves.
[N]othing lives except God-Man, that is, the Lord. DLW 301
God is a man, and consequently He is God existing; not existing
from Himself but in Himself. He who has existence in Himself is
God from whom all things are. DLW 16
From this fact that God is a man, all angels and all spirits, in their
complete form, are men. This results from the form of heaven,
which is like itself in its greatest and in its least parts. DLW 11
I go over and over these little gems, seeing new facets each
time. Heaven, man, God-Man are images of Itself in its
greatest and least parts. It is like a truth that cannot help but
echo itself, however varied its manifestations.
Much religious doctrine puts God beyond any possible
grasp. A central meaning of these passages is that God as a
man or humanness cannot be missed. Are we not thoroughly
human? Though humanness may be like a bottomless well,
containing more than can be described, yet it can be known
because we are it. I believe this same tendency to know God
through humanness is reflected in all the religions in which
God comes as a man (Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism,
and others).
In the ultimates of heaven all the things seen and heard are
representative of such things as the angels in the higher heavens
speak or think. . . . Such things are representative in the ultimates
of heaven, because those who are in these ultimates do not com-
prehend the interior things of angelic wisdom, but they com-
prehend only such things as represent them. It is also according to
Divine Order, that when higher things flow into lower, they are
turned into similar things, and in that way presented before the
external senses and thus accommodated to the apprehension of
everyone. AC 10126
As a person, I am one of these representations. Through my
mind I see representations emerging from the inner to show
up in images. Or the things of the world are representations
of me. I too seem to represent. It is all a representation. How
vast!
[A]nd furthermore, the universal heaven is such, that everyone is
as it were the centre of all, for he is the centre of influxes through
the heavenly form from all, and hence an image of heaven results
to everyone, and makes him like to itself, that is, a man; for such
as the general is, such is a part of the general. AC 3633
The only One and very Self is omnipresent, omniscient and
omnipotent. This only One and very Self is the Lord-from-eternity
or Jehovah. DP 157
This mystical here-nowness of Swedenborg shows through-
out his works. To recognize it one need only sense how
concretely Swedenborg was referring to the reality of the
Divine.
What shall we call the One? Names are culturally bound
to time, place, history. Swedenborg refers to hundreds of
names of the Divine, especially in the manifold language of
correspondences. It is a convention to refer to the Lord as
a male: as He or Father, because our language tends to be
sexually either/or. In Taoism the Hi m aspect of the Divine
refers to the power to create, make, do. It would be equally
possible to speak of the Her aspect. The Divine Her refers to
the steady, quiet sustainer of creation, much like a mother
that cares for household and children. It would be easy to
argue that the Her God is the more critical, for She gently
sustains creation, lungerich points out that Swedenborg
found both aspects of the Divine.
34
I am not particularly wedded to any one name, partly
because of the battles over the names Christ, Allah, Brahma,
Buddha. Surely each of these, referring to the All, must be
the same? In a way I like the ancient Jewish tradition of
having a name for God that was not pronounceable, except
by the rare one who could shout the name as an eruption of
his whole being. Once, in a vision, I heard it pronounced in
a way that could awaken the very rocks. Swedenborg shows
that the ancient use of names really meant nature, or the
essential quality of the person named. A person was called
by whatever fit his nature. In this inner, more living sense of
The One Present 211
name-nature, t he One could be called by whatever t he person
experienced as t he nat ure. Or t he One mi ght be called t he
Only, Here-Now, Very Real, and, even as Swedenborg does,
Very Human. The name-nat ure can even be concretely
defined simply by t he doing of any good act, for good is t he
name-nat ure of t he One. The higher t he good done t he better
this name-nat ure is pronounced.
Swedenborg reported t hat in heaven t he Lord appears as
a sun. Good angels always have it in their sight, however
they t urn. This sun is a high image or representation of t he
Lord, which radiates as its heat and light divine love and
wisdom. This divine love is t he life of heaven, and t hrough
heaven each person' s actual life. Our feeling of livingness is,
then, this love itself. It is impossible to not know it, since it
is ourselves. At most we can limit ourselves by denying it is
anyt hi ng more t han j ust meas t hough I make and hold up
my own life, and all t he good I do is wholly my own creation.
Our own sun, whi ch is a representation of heaven, has heat
and light as interrelated aspects. The more heat, t he more
light. The divine love and wisdom or heat and light are
interrelated aspects. It is as t hough t he uni t ary divine mani-
fests in this primal duality. This mysterious and primal dual-
ity is everywhere present in Swedenborg. It is variously de-
scribed as good-t rut h, charity-faith, wisdom-intelligence,
will-understanding, essence-existence. The affective love or
war mt h is its heart, or innermost nat ure. The outer t r ut h
faith, intelligence, underst andi ng, existenceis t he way it
manifests itself. Man as a thing, a number, a mere existence
is t he shell, or out er manifestation, of this divine love. His
inner life is divine love acting. When this inner love comes
into act or charity t he divine has manifested in existence and
become real.
Swedenborg always gives this love a more fundament al
role t han t rut h, or t he outer thingness of existence. This is
so whet her he is saying t hat feeling is more fundament al t han
thought or that charity is more important than faith. He was
very firm that religions emphasizing faith were going toward
the estranged, intellectual shell of existence. This love-feel-
ing-charity is the will-like mustness of existence. Like the
forces of nature, it must do, create, give birth to itself. Our
needs with each other are just an aspect of this. The laws of
nature are not textbook statements, they are the forces mov-
ing the thunderclouds. These are manifestations of the must-
ness of love. Swedenborg' s concept is quite the opposite of an
abstract idea. As the lightning flashes, thunder rolls, and the
rain pours down on youthat is this mustness, must be, the
willful heart of existence. If the idea doesn' t seem concrete
enough yet, stand there till the sky clears to sunshine! Go a
step further. There is just one heart in all of existence. This
Swedenborg called divine love. It is intimately joined in-
wardly with your own willfulness. I am very much in accord
with Zen Buddhism' s tendency not to be abstract about the
concrete. In a Zen story a sincere student asks his master to
show him the Buddha nature. The master says casually,
"You just had breakfast. Did you wash your dishes?" This
is a very precise answer to the student' s question. The Bud-
dha nat ure is to do the minor good that comes to your hand,
i.e., wash the dishes. It would belie the Buddha nature to talk
of goodness and leave someone else to wash the dishes. For
me, Swedenborg has this same concreteness that is so well
exemplified in Zen Buddhism, which is perhaps why the Zen
master Daisetz Suzuki translated Swedenborg into Japanese.
Let us look at this primal duality in an opposite way.
Insofar as I indentify with my outward aspectsmyself as
body, as so-and-so, as t hought I am denying or overlooking
the root of my existence. I become a thing among things, in
competition with other things for existence. We could also
choose to enlarge our concept of identity to include the
whole background of affectsfeeling, love, life emerging.
The t rut h is that both are real, inner and outer, love and
truth, yin and yang,
35
and all the related dualities. This gen-
eral duality is the source of the acts by which what wants to
be becomes really something. In a human sense, it is the
source of our need to understand what is and to be. The
person who identifies both with the inner becoming and the
outer body self is accepting their full scope and also the
dependence of their existence. We do not make the back-
ground sea of feeling from which our inner lives emerge. We
are the onlooking participants in the lives that emerge
through us. The man whose identity is placed at the interface
of feeling-love becomes real as this now experience, senses he
is participating in a process larger than himself. He says to
himself that there is more than himself. This is to acknowl-
edge God (by whatever name). God here means that which
is bigger than all of us. The one who searches within, into his
own nature, searches for this Bigger One. The exploration of
self, psychology, and the religions are fundamentally the
same thing. The religious quest gives a comprehensive name
to the larger One sought after. Psychology gives it more
limited names (being, my nature, the integrated self, etc.) and
waits to see its nature to know what it is.
If we turn this duality outward it is equally illuminating.
Inward love, the life of the individual, flows into the body
and act. Swedenborg was saying in a very real sense that the
Lord suffers a stillbirth until man acts by the good that he
knows. This primeval good is a kind of general impulse
toward existence. It must become real, exist. What is the
manifestation of the primal good? It is many and all exist-
ences. It is the whole physical universe. An existence for the
primal good that is nearer to its real nature occurs when man
feels, understands the good. Swedenborg speaks of this as the
Second Coming of the Lord. The Lord comes here and there,
willy-nilly, on the clouds of man' s understanding. The Sec-
ond Coming occurs when man understands the Word. Swe-
denborg used the Word to mean both the Bible and, in-
wardly, as God Himself. "Most persons believe that the
Word or Divine Trut h is nothing more than speech uttered
by Jehovah, and a command that such a thing be done, but
it is that very essential, from which, and through which, all
things are" (AC 7678). The person whose understanding is
opened and meets God knows the real Second Coming, the
incarnation.
There is a more concrete form for this primal good to come
into existence. In the concept of uses Swedenborg
,
s whole
tour of heaven and hell comes to earth in the commonplace.
The good that is in us is nothing until it comes into existence
as uses. The floor needs sweeping, something needs fixing,
you are a shoemaker with shoes to repair, a friend needs you
to hear himuses. "Love is the end, wisdom the instrumen-
tal cause, and use is the effect; and use is the complex, contain-
ant, and base of wisdom and love; and use is such a complex
and such a containant, that all things of love and all things
of wisdom are actually in it; it is where they are all simultane-
ously present" (DLW 213). Use is where Divine Love comes
to earth in actuality, in something done for the environment.
Love-good yearns to be real. Just as wisdom is the form of
good, our good acts are its becoming real. We are not the first
cause of good, just as we are recipients of life, not its cause.
The good man sees how much he is a participant, almost an
onlooker, in the sequence of life processes. The evil man
overly credits himself, evil meaning cutting off.
The heart of the difficulties in our life can be described in
several ways. The Lord is the ultimately free. We are the
image or representation of that freedom in our capacity to
choose. The love that animates existence wills that we be free
to choose. Because of the limitations of our existence we are
partially bound and partially free. What we do with our
corner of freedom sets our eternal existence. Heaven and hell
are the polar opposites that illustrate the full scope of pos-
sibilities of this freedom. The general drift of the hierarchy
of heaven is toward joining with others, loving, toward the
unitary oneness of the Lord. The general drift of hell is
toward separation, division, cutting off, and struggle against
others. We clearly have the foretaste of both possibilities in
this world.
In a sense our freedom is dreadful. Though we have suffi-
cient road signs or guides, especially in the religious tradi-
tions, it is easy enough to doubt them and get lost with or
without them. This freedom implies that it was meant that
we should struggle, and each find his way on his own. Swe-
denborg was very clear that only what we accomplish with
our own freedom lasts to eternity. We are not bound any
other way. Also, the inner aspect of things belies outer ap-
pearance. He cites the case of madmen who, when their
interiors were opened in the world of spirits, became quite
sane. There are also men who look good in the light of this
world but who become quite insane and bind themselves to
hell when their interiors are opened. This is another sense in
which our existences are contingent. Though we hope to be
doing things right, we can' t really judge until the outer shells
of our existence are removed. And this is the judgment that
the ancient tradition speaks of. In our corner of freedom we
struggle in the dim light of our understanding and our habits.
But it should be cheering to discover that we are judged by
the inner quality or interior in our acts, not so much by the
outer consequence.
Where do trials and tribulations fit into this? It was not
meant that existence would be all smooth and simple, like
being bottle-fed on divine pablum. Our existence mast have
the full range of possibilities. Darkness illuminates light. Can
the infant who dies in innocence ascend to the highest
heaven? Not immediately. The infant has much to learn.
Trials and tribulation are echoed inwardly in the imagery of
the inner life, which is one side of the guidance system;
difficulties in t he material world are the other side of it.
Swedenborg once remarked that if the Lord wished to con-
demn a man, he would give him all he wished. This would
be the profoundest of all condemnations.
One of the difficulties between us and God is that we have
our immediate needs in mind. The Lord rules existence in
terms of our ultimate good. Our perspective is too small.
It has not been known that divine providence in all its procedure
with man looks to his eternal state. It can look to nothing else
because the Divine is infinite and eternal, and the infinite and
eternal or the Divine is not in time; therefore all future things are
present to it. It follows that there is eternity in all that the Divine
does. But those who think from time and space perceive this with
difficulty, not only because they love temporal things, but also
because they think from what is on hand in the world and not from
what is at hand in heaven; this is as remote to them as the ends of
the earth. Those, however, who are in the Divine, inasmuch as they
think from the Lord, think from what is eternal as well as from
what is at present, asking themselves, "What is that which is not
eternal?"
What a line: "What is that which is not eternal?"! It should
be carved deeply over the door to one' s study. But he contin-
ues:
"Is not the temporal relatively nothing and does it not become
nothing when it is past?" The eternal is not so; it alone is; its esse
has no end. To think thus is to think both from the present and
the eternal, and when a man not only thinks so but lives so, the
. . . divine providence looks in all its procedure to the state of his
eternal life in heaven and guides to it. DP 59
The Lord, acting in relation to our ultimate good, can lead
where we would not choose to go. A practical consequence
of this is that the person having great troubles can look in
them for usefulness. Swedenborg spoke of vastation, a kind
of being brought down by the Lord. It happens here and even
to angels in heaven. A depressed mood is a good example.
We go along feeling that all is going well only to be stopped
and brought down by the depression. Depression destroys
false values. It occurs when we presume too much, assume
too much power or greatness for ourselves. God speaks,
I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe,
I am the Lord, who do all these things.
* * *
"Woe to him who strives with his Maker,
an earthen vessel with the potter!
Does the clay say to him who fashions it,
'What are you making?'
or 'Your work has no handles?'
Woe to him who says to a father,
'What are you begetting?'
or to a woman, 'With what are you in travail?' "
Thus says the Lord,
The Holy One of Israel, and his Maker:
"Will you question me about my children,
or command me concerning the work of my hands?
I make the earth,
and created man upon it;
it was my hands that stretched out the heavens,
and I command all their host" (Isaiah 45:7-13).
We are the pot that should realize it was fashioned. The
missing handles, the inconvenience of our existence, reflect
in the trials and tribulations we question the most. These
experiences would be rough and unfair except from the view-
point of our eternal destiny. Our lives were not designed to
be exactly as we wish.
The bringing down saves us in an eternal sense. This natu-
ral process can be cooperated with by looking for the useful-
ness in the bringing down of old values so that new ones may
grow instead. Inwardly and outwardly we are educated in
this schoolhouse world. The good person feels a respectful
part of the more. The evil one cuts himself off by assuming
he is the whole thing. Amplifying into other worlds, the
cutting off is hell. Working with all the rest is heaven. This
scope of existence illustrates our freedom and God' s. Our
limited freedom is the little image of God' s. It is sinful to
divide up the one life; love sees its unity.
There is a lovely undercurrent in Swedenborg, as in most
religions that say there is only one life: "as you did it to one
of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Matthew
25:40). Out of this arises the Golden Rule, which is the heart
of several religions besides Christianity. I participate in a life
and so do you. Perhaps we are all the one life. . . . So the
Eskimo who must kill a polar bear to live pauses to wish the
bear' s departing spirit well. The one who loves can see
similarities, points of agreement, and possible union. The one
who is cut off from himself cuts off others, and finds reasons
for differences. In effect, the journey of this primal good from
the Lord, through the heavens, through man into act is
heading back to itself, the unity of all things that love inti-
mates. The good I do for another unites us. All our goods
or uses unite man into a heaven where we can sense the
oneness of things, the Lord.
The following are section headings from The Divine Pro-
vidence:
i Heaven is conjunction with the Lord.
ii By creation the human being is such that he can be con-
joined more and more closely to the Lord.
iii The more one is conjoined to the Lord the wiser one
becomes.
iv The more closely one is conjoined to the Lord the happier
one becomes.
The more closely one is conjoined to the Lord the more
distinctly does he seem to himself to be his own, and the
more plainly does he recognize that he is the Lord's.
DP 27
Only theory suggests that to be the Lord' s is to suffer a loss
of freedom. The experience is one of being more in control,
being able to exercise more power, and yet to know that the
real power comes from beyond the little ego self. Freedom
is to be able to do what one loves most. The Lord' s man
carries into act what he loves most. None of this is limited
to high, noble-sounding acts. The man who loves laying
bricks, and lays them well, for a fair price, is doing enough
to realize heaven. A simple kindness to another person is the
t rue precursor of heaven and has its immediate reward in the
unity with the other person. Swedenborg always combined
the highest and the lowest. In a real sense his exploration of
heaven and hell leads to the opposite of otherworldliness.
Heaven and hell are here all the time. Grasp the experience
of making heaven and hell here to shape your eternal destiny
as you choose. You already know heaven and hell, you al-
ready participate in a society of people like yourself in some
spiritual realm; eventually you will see more fully how true
this is.
Throughout, Swedenborg remained in touch with this
world, with the simple and even with the material. He felt
later that his long tour through science was really just prepa-
ration, where he learned how far his own projections and
theorizing could carry him. He went too far with theory
when he did his own anatomical dissections. Later he kept
just to the anatomical observations of others. Swedenborg' s
capacity to remain grounded in the limited, simple, and obvi-
ous while also dealing with the highest t rut hs of the spiritual
worlds heightens his existential and mystical quality. Here,
there; this, that; all others, myself; all one. The oneness of
things is the always present, underlying reality. By referring
to it as life, or even more personally as humanness, Sweden-
borg again remains in the here-now, real. Thank heavens
God is human, and hence understandable. This is an under-
lying meaning of God appearing as Jesus Christ. Some like
their God remote, others near at hand. What Swedenborg
found and described was simultaneously both. The most
ultimate of all is very near at hand. They are the same.
A critical question is: Who did Swedenborg say would be
saved? Translating the ancient idea of being saved into the
present context, those saved are experiencing the enlarging
reality of existence. The damned suffer a constricted exis-
tence. They miss out. Swedenborg' s answer to this question
is more generous than that in most of the world' s religious
literature. All will be saved who act by the good that they
know. I believe that this implies a struggle and search. Most
people' s highest good is not a simple cookbook set of rules.
It is more of a struggle, like trying to understand and be
helpful to a friend. What is really good for the friend is not
always simple; it involves searching and trying to under-
stand. The dictum that all will be saved who act by the good
they know takes Swedenborg into the universal of religion.
This church of all those who act by the good they know
Swedenborg saw being established in heaven. It is the church
of the New Jerusalem. One should always suspect that any
term used in heaven has very broad, unitive meanings. The
New Jerusalem is the New Church being established by the
Lord, treated of in the Apocalypse (Chapters 21 and 22). It
is to be the bride and wife of the Lamb. This is a lovely image
of love, tenderness, and union between the initiating male-
ness of the Lord and the female receptivity of churches. It
is human and yet sacred. The image carries with it all the
associations of two lovers who want to be joined and even of
the troubles and misunderstandings that arise between lov-
ers. In his Brief Exposition of the Doctrine of the New Church
(99-104), Swedenborg showed the many biblical passages in
which Jerusalem was obviously not simply a city, or even a
church in the limited sense. "Behold I create a new heaven
and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered;
behold I will create Jerusalem, an exhultation, and her peo-
pie a gladness, that I may exult over Jerusalem, and be glad
over my people" Isaiah 65:17-19. He went on to cite many
passages with a similar import (Isaiah 62:1-4, 11, 12; Isaiah
52: 1, 2, 6, 9; Zephaniah 3: 14-17, 20; Zechariah 8:3, 20-23;
Joel 4:17-21, and others).
The mystery becomes clear when we consider who is to be
saved? Who is to find salvation?
[I]t is plain that the church of the Lord is not here, nor there, but
that it is everywhere, both within those kingdoms where the church
is, and outside them, where men live according to the precepts of
charity. Hence it is that the church of the Lord is scattered through
the whole world, and yet it is one; for when life makes the church,
and not doctrine separate from life, then the church is one, but
when doctrine makes the church, then there are many. AC 8152
He is very clear: the church is within and without the Chris-
tian church. It is everywhere that men act in charity to each
other. It is the differences in doctrine that seem to separate
churches. When you look at their life, then it is one. He refers
to the great variety of societies in heaven and yet they act as
a one, the Grand Man. "Varieties in matters of doctrine and
of worship are like the varieties of the senses and of the
viscera in man" (AC 1285). And like man, they form one
being.
The church of the Lord consists of all those, whosoever they are,
who are in truths derived from good. AE 20 The church of the
Lord is spread over the whole globe, and thus is universal; and all
those are in it who have lived in the good of charity according to
their religious belief. HH 328
Many other passages could also be cited ( DP 325, HH 318
f.). In a beautiful passage Swedenborg interpreted the line
from Exodus 20:24, "I n every place I shall put the memorial
of My name. " The memorial of My name is placed when a
man acts charitably toward others. This is the name-nature
of the One being commemorated. In another passage Swe-
denborg again affirmed the necessity and beauty of great
differences and variety.
It is similar with the spiritual things of the Church, the opposites
of which are related to evil and falsity. These opposites, however,
are not from the Lord but from man, who is endowed with free will,
and this he can turn to a good or to an evil use. So also is it the
case with darkness and cold; these do not come from the sun, but
from the earth, which by its revolutions successively withdraws
and turns away. Yet without this turning and withdrawal there
would be neither day nor year, and consequently neither inanimate
nor animate created things upon it. TCR 736
Then, to emphasize this acceptance of variety in religious
matters, Swedenborg casually referred to something he heard
angels say in heaven! "I have heard that churches which are
in a variety of goods and t rut hs are like so many jewels in
a king' s crown" (TCR 763).
It is so clear that Swedenborg was speaking of the heart
of religion that transcends the boundaries of creeds, nations,
cultures, times, people. All who act in the good that they
know will be saved. I believe this acting is not a simple matter
of following a set of rules. The good we know is larger than
ourselves. It involves a searching, trying. Good is of the life,
life trying to find and act on its highest capacities, life discov-
ering itself.
Swedenborg had more followers in the 1800s than he has
now. Some of these followers felt they should act to give this
Church of the New Jerusalem a home, an institution in
which it could be ultimated and realized here on earth. (In
part this resulted from the rejection of Swedenborg by the
established churches.) This became a small Protestant sect
that, in time, proceeded to split into liberal and conservative
factions. Now the several branches of the churches of the
New Jerusalem range from those who see Swedenborg as
simply a gifted man to those who see his word almost as
sacred as the word of God. Often these groups refer to them-
selves as Swedenborgian. Swedenborg clearly would have
been opposed to attaching his name to any church. In rela-
tion to churches he was just another servant of the Lord. His
name didn' t matter.
I respectfully differ with the followers of Swedenborg who
established churches of the New Jerusalem. Though it is
perfectly appropriate for people of like mind to join together
under any name, I believe that in this instance many of them
tended to miss the great universality of what Swedenborg
was pointing to. Often Swedenborgians wonder why their
most favored, greatest of all dispensations resulted in several
poor tiny churches. Perhaps they are being tested? Perhaps
its day to sweep over the whole earth is yet to come?
I belong to the group of scholars that feels that the Church
of the New Jerusalem is well established, the largest church
of all, the community of all those of different cultures, lan-
guages, creeds, and styles of living who act by the good they
know. I am in accord with the noted theologian Walter
Marshall Horton that Swedenborg' s followers' claim to an
exclusive esoteric revelation unnecessarily cut him off from
the fellowship of other churches.
36
His is not an exclusive
revelation. Though it is unique in some ways, he is talking
about the heart of all religions. Others also have illuminated
the heart of religions. The Church of the New Jerusalem is
founded. It is the communion and fellowship of all those who
act from the good that they know. In fact, Horton calls
Swedenborg one of the greatest and earliest ecumenicists in
an age that had not yet heard the term. The real Church of
the New Jerusalem could find Swedenborg illuminating any
religious tradition, including primitive ones. It is important
to understand this. By focusing on man, the essentials of the
human, Swedenborg was transcending any particular culture
or time. Though he was very much a western man who
thought in terms of the Christian tradition, he broke through
to the universal. Hence people like Daisetz Suzuki (a Zen
Buddhist) and Gopaul Chet t y" (a Hi ndu) could become fol-
lowers of Swedenborg and yet remain in their own faiths.
It is difficult for some to understand truly the universality
of what Swedenborg points to. They feel safest and most
comfortable in a set of specific doctrines and ceremonies.
This is right for them. But they easily lapse from this to the
implication that "their way is the one right way. " Look at
the great diversity of faces, ages, skin colors, clothes, styles
of living. Thus, while we like to latch onto the "one right
way, " nature herself is diverse. If nothing else we need many
churches, many doctrines, many traditions to accommodate
the diversity of man. In dealing with the essentials of good,
of the life of man, Swedenborg looked beyond the masks of
diversity to the One Life. There is no problem in the distinct
and great diversities of societies in heaven coordinating as
the one life of the Grand Man, the image of the Very Human
Lord. Diversity-Oneness. As the Zen koan goes, "What is it,
that, forever changing, remains exactly the same?" Forever
changing, the many churches, doctrines; remain the same,
the One Life they speak of.
Others have asked whether Swedenborg would support
the idea of reincarnation, which is prominent in some eastern
religions. The idea itself is often misunderstood. In the
Hindu tradition it isn' t the personal, little me that is reincar-
nated. It is the general tendencies or the primal monad, of
which I am the current edition, that reincarnates. Or another
way of saying it is that it is something closer to the Divine
than to me that reincarnates. Well, of course, the Lord rein-
carnates through the whole of existence, since He is the One
Life that is the source of all lives. I believe the personal
experience of reincarnation is a step on the way to the larger
identity. The social usefulness of the idea lies in the implica-
tion that I could be this or that kind of life, which again is
a step on the way to seeing the One Life. It is in the direction
of love, empathy, understanding, respect for others. Yet,
regarding the personal identity, Swedenborg clearly stressed
the uniqueness of each one. I am these basic tendencies and
qualities, and I will be through the whole of creation. So I' d
be inclined to say that outwardly Swedenborg did not sup-
port reincarnation, but as inwardly understood, he did. Both
are true. Outwardly I am this unique person, but my real
nature drifts toward the One Life that reincarnates through 11'
the whole of time. The advantage of the stress on the unique-
ness of the person is that it says, here, in the very qualities j
that I am, is the Divine. It stresses the obligation to find the
way through the immediate consciousness of being. But, as
indicated above, there is also truth and usefulness in the idea
of reincarnation. I would not wish to denigrate another doc-
trine that contains real truth and usefulness.
Aft er so much praise and support of Swedenborg I would
like to ask if he was ever clearly wrong in his spiritual works.
The answer is probably an unclear yes. His most misleading
work is Earths in the Universe, in which he presented the
reports of spirits who claimed to be humans from planets in
our solar system, including our own moon. These are proba-
bly what Swedenborg calls "enthusiastic" spirits. They re-
port in a convincing manner whatever one wants to hear.
Swedenborg must have heard that there was at least little
atmosphere on the moon, so these moon spirits have an odd
way of speaking that conserves air. He could not have known
what is now known of our moon. For there to be humanlike
life on our moon is at least extremely unlikely, if not impossi-
ble. Swedenborg appeared to believe the reports of spirits
from our moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and the other plan-
ets. Because he could not have known better, he appeared to
have been taken in by some enthusiastic spirits. As one Swe-
denborgian exclaimed, thank heavens he was at least wrong
in one thing. His whole system is not to be taken on his
authority. He derived it from experience. We are to check it
by our own lives. This flaw in his reporting reminds us that
we are each on our own, to find our own way.
But when we look closer at the odd matter of moon spirits
there is a strange note of the real in the midst of it. When
Swedenborg relates the moon spirits to the zyphoid cartilage
in the Grand Man, we suddenly realize our guide is referring
to something subjective that we don' t really understand
{Earths in the Universe, 111). The rib signifies the proprium,
or ego (AC 138, 147). The real spirit of these moon spirits
is the coming together or forefront of egotism. If these spirits
are really some kind of spiritual tomfoolery, it is curious that
they relate to the area of the Grand Man that reflects ego-
tism, from which we might expect pretentious reporting.
Even when misled, he was reporting from some subjective
realm that has its own strange truths.
In a similar way I would reserve judgment when Sweden-
borg reported a low status for certain groups in the spiritual
world (i.e., Mohammedans, certain Roman Catholics, pa-
pists, the Dut ch people, etc.). It would be very difficult, for
instance, to be a Mohammedan and appreciate Swedenborg.
Repeatedly the Mohammedans appear in low status until
they drift in an essentially Christian direction in the spiritual
worlds. This same kind of negative note appears in relation
to several other groups. In any event I think this a diplomatic
error because it makes it difficult for whole groups to ap-
preciate Swedenborg. If one assembled all his references to
Mohammedans, for instance, a more subtle picture would
emerge in which he was talking about a type of spiritual
error, but the error does not apply to all members of the
group. There is always the saving grace of those who act
charitably out of the good they know, regardless of the group
they are from. For those who are members of a group that
Swedenborg found in low spiritual status, I would say that
even in looking at his work it would be well if we could be
charitable, reserve judgment, and be guided by the good we
see reflected.
It is often asked whether others can go the same route and
follow Swedenborg. The answer is not simple.
Upon being asked several times why no one besides himself enjoyed
such revelations and intercourse with spirits, he answered that
every person might enjoy it now as in the times of the Old Testa-
ment, but the real hindrance is that men at the present time are so
carnally minded. Docs II, p. 559
Looking back, Swedenborg saw that his whole life was de-
signed for this work. The hard facts of rocks, engineering,
astronomy, and anatomy were his training ground. He was
trained to observe and report factually. This he did through
all the worlds. His style was relatively dry and academic
except in certain of his religious works where his words burn
with life. And of course no one opens up the life of God
except as God permits. The personal quality of Swedenborg' s
whole life was a real key to what was given to him to see and
experience. Also, in reviewing the path he came over, Swe-
denborg reported it as quite dangerous. Unleashing the inner
springs of mind is no minor matter. The main purport of
Swedenborg' s work is that others could do as much and some
would do more, but it was a journey he didn' t recommend
to anyone. Madness could lie that way, depending upon the
quality of the life.
It is very clear that Swedenborg would recommend to
other seekers that they live by the good they know and seek
in the revealed Word for anything they want. He found so
much in the Word that this is no minor recommendation. He
would also hope some would find use in his writings. Most
of his later life was spent in just making his findings available
cheaply to others. For this reason I do not belong to any
church called Swedenborgian, but I do support th work of
the Swedenborgian publishing societies. Those who put Swe-
denborg' s own works on a pedestal should know that it
wasn' t his own tendency. He was a servant helping the un-
derstanding of the great work, the Word of God. If I could
now ask Swedenborg one question it would be this: Are there
other authoritative Words of God than the Christian Bible?
Just as the New Jerusalem is everywhere, I believe the Word
of God is also, for after all, it is our very lives, which are here,
handy, to be read. This is the Word of God written on the
heart.
Clearly Swedenborg would encourage the search. Act by
the good that you know. Ask and more will be given. And
insofar as the search is full-bodied, strong, and persistent it
is a good given by the Lord. For it is the Lord who searches
through the clouds of our misunderstandings. The Second
Coming is eminently possible. And having come the feeling
is, oh yes, of course, how could it be forgotten?
All the other worlds are present in the root nature of
humanness. In this full sense we participate in and issue forth
from all there is. We are the presence of all the worlds. And
all the worlds, and worlds of worlds, are aspects of the One.
And this One is always present as life itself, the Very Human.
Key to Abbreviations
of Works Cited
Quotations from Swedenborg are referenced to indicate the title
and numbers (paragraph). For instance, AC 2101 is the Arcana
Coelestia, paragraph 2101. Almost all of his works have conven-
iently numbered paragraphs. Where this is not so, a page number
is indicated. There will be some little difference in wording if the
reader finds a different translation than the one used here. I used
a variety of translations from the U.S. Swedenborg Foundation and
the London Swedenborg Society.
AC Arcana Coelestia, 3 vols.
AE Apocalypse Explained, 6 vols.
DF Doctrine of Faith (in Four Doctrines of the New Jerusa-
lem)
DL Doctrine of Life (in Four Doctrines of the New Jerusa-
lem)
DLDW Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom; also called The
Doctrine of Uses, excerpted from the Apocalypse Ex-
plained
DLW Divine Love and Wisdom
Docs R. L. Tafel, Documents Concerning: Swedenborg, 3 vols.
2 3 0 The Presence of Other Worlds
DP Divine Providence
DS Doctrine of Sacred Scripture (in Four Doctrines of the
New Jerusalem)
HD Heavenly Doctrine
HH Heaven and Hell
JD Journal of Dreams
ML Marital Love, also called Conjugial Love
RP Rational Psychology
SD Spiritual Diary, 5 vols.
TCR True Christian Religion
WE Word Explained
WH White Horse, excerpted from the Arcana Coelestia
Guide to SwedenborgsWritings
In case the reader wishes to explore Swedenborg furt her,
t he following is provided as an guide. Ther e are various
translations of these writings. In general, t he more recent t he
translation, t he easier it is to read.
Most Wi del y Read
A few of Swedenborg' s works have a lyrical quality t hat
has made t hem universally popular. They also carry t he
essence of his discoveries in the clearest and most beautiful
form. Heaven and Hell gives a relatively complete descrip-
tion of those worlds, yet the reader will see much of t he
st ruct ure of mind and existence implied in it. Divine Love and
Wisdom goes from t he heart of existence to man' s situation.
The feeling-love side of Swedenborg is clearest here. Divine
Providence gives t he design of existence with special refer-
ence to man' s life.
The Spiritual Worl ds
Heaven and Hell is t he his basic description. There are
i mport ant clues scattered t hroughout t he Arcana Coelestia
and especially in sections between chapters. The Spiritual
Diary contains an unorganized array of experiences in
spiritual worlds. Odhner ' s The Spiritual World
38
and Spirits
and Men
39
are very compet ent scholarly works bringing to-
gether everything relevant f r om Swedenborg.
The Human Mi nd
Swedenborg doesn' t distinguish between t he spiritual and
t he psychological so all his theological works bear on this
area. His t hree most popul ar works cited above are relevant
here. Add to t hem The Divine Love and The Divine Wisdom,
especially on t he doct ri ne of uses. See also Heavenly Doctrine,
especially on t he internal and external of man. The little
work Intercourse of Soul and Body is also useful. Odhner has
a scholarly survey, The Human Mind.
40
The Arcana Coel-
estia is very rich on t he nuances of inner states, too rich for
all but t he specialist. Oft en people refer to Swedenborg' s
early psychology, such as Rational Psychology, as his princi-
pal work in this area. It was so limited in conception com-
pared to t he works following his enlightenment t hat it is of
little use. See also his Journal of Dreams to find this spiritual
psychoanalyst at work on his dreams.
Biography and Introducti on to His Works
Oft en a tracing of his history is linked with a survey of his
basic teachings. G. Trobridge, Swedenborg Life and Teach-
ing, is a popul ar and compet ent work in this area.
41
For a fine
survey see John Spalding, Introduction to Swedenborg's Reli-
gious Thought.*
2
Anot her work t hat combines bot h history
and teachings is Sigstedt, The Swedenborg Epic.*
3
These
t hree volumes really grasp Swedenborg. A strangely unsym-
pathetic work t hat especially tries to see him as a spiritualist
is Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg.
44
Though Swedenborg had
much to do with spirits, he di dn' t recommend t hat anyone
else follow him in this. The issue for him was the nat ure of
existence, not communi on with t he dead. Jonsson, Emanuel
Swedenborg, is only compet ent on him as a scientist.
45
Act on,
Introduction to the Word Explained, is one of t he best books
available on Swedenborg' s spiritual development.
46
There are
a number of works which handily gat her together critical
quot at i ons t hat illuminate his position on a number of points.
See Synnestvedt, The Essential Swedenborg'

Warren, A
Compendium of the Theological Writings of E. Swedenborg,
t he longest of these;
48
Smyt h and Wunsch, The Gist of Swe-
denborg;*
9
Spalding, Golden Thoughts;
50
Ager, The Path of
Life, now out of print.
31
Correspondences
The idea of correspondences is fairly well scattered
t hrough all his theological works. See especially Divine Pro-
vidence, The Divine Love and The Divine Wisdom, and sec-
tions in Volumes I V- VI of The Arcana Coelestia. For specific
correspondences see The Dictionary of Bible Imagery,
52
The
Dictionary of Correspondencesand The Swedenborg Con-
cordance.
54
Worcester, The Language of Parable, makes the
whole mat t er clear and creditable.
55
A similar but older work
is Brayley, Natural Phenomena and Their Spiritual Lessons.
5 6
Odhner , The Divine Allegory, shows correspondences with
t he geography of t he Hol y Land, a mat t er t hat plays a large
role in t he Bible. " See also Worcester, Physiological Corre-
spondences, now out of print.
58
Biblical Interpretation
Swedenborg' s mast erwork in this area is clearly t he
twelve-volume Arcana Coelestia, which treats principally of
Genesis and Exodus but shows parallels f r om almost every
ot her part of t he Bible. See also his six-volume Apocalypse
Explained and t he short er two-volume Apocalyse Revealed,
which is available in a commendabl e moder n one-volume
translation by Alice Sechrist. His Prophets and Psalms is
almost t oo brief an interpretation. To t race Swedenborg' s
comment s on any passage of t he Bible, see Searle, General
Index to Swedenborg's Scripture Quotations
59
A beautiful
analysis of t he complexities of t he Arcana is Wunsch, The
World Within the Bible.
6
Followers of Swedenborg have
developed mast erful studies of different books of t he Bible.
I' ll ment i on j ust a few: Maclagan, The Book of Deuteronomy;
61
Odhner, Saul, David and SolomonMitchell, Parables of
the Old Testament
63
Bruce, Commentary on Matthew;
64
Fischer, Commentary on The Book of Ezekial " and others.
Reference Works
By far t he largest and most monument al guide to Sweden-
borg is Pot t s' s six-volume Swedenborg Concordance.
66
When
one reads how Pot t s pulled together and translated these
passages it seems he deserves a special commendat i on in
heaven. Wi t h t he Concordance one can t race Swedenborg' s
most i mport ant comment s on any subject. Thi s work is not
complete, but it is quite impressive and useful anyway. To
trace what Swedenborg says on any biblical passage, see
Searle, General Index to Swedenborg's Scripture Quota-
tions." For correspondences, see the Dictionary of Bible Im-
agery.
68
For definitions of all Swedenborg' s key ideas, see
Bogg, A Glossary of the Meaning of Specific Terms and
Phrases Used by Swedenborg.
6
A glossary sounds like a dull
academi c work, this is not. For a mi nd-shat t eri ng experience
I recommend reading it to see the sweep of Swedenborg' s
ideas. In t he back of volume 2 of Posthumous Theological
Works is a complete bibliography of Swedenborg' s 237
works. The hundreds of comment ari es on Swedenborg range
f r om t he almost childish to t he very gifted. The New Church
Reader's Guide helps a good deal with their classification.'
0
Publishers
All of his psychological/theological works and many of
his scientific works and comment ari es on him are available
f r om these publishers. They may also be consulted on any
mat t er pertaining to Swedenborg' s works.
The Swedenborg Foundat i on, 139 East 23rd St., New
York, N. Y. 10010
The Swedenborg Society, 20 Bl oomsbury Way, London,
W. C. 1A, England.
Swedenborg Verlag, Appollostrasse 2, 8032 Zurich, Swit-
zerland.
Swedenborg Publisher, 136 Onuma-cho, Kodaira-shi,
Tokyo, Japan.
REFERENCES
1. Borge, Jorge Luis, Selected Poems 1923-1927, trans. Richard How-
ard and Cesar Rennert (New York: Delacorte, 1972). Permission
granted.
2. Emerson, Ralph W., Representative Men (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1930), pp. 102-103.
3. Mirt, J. ., "Medical Pathfinders on Postage Stamps," Journal of the
American Medical Association 206 (1908):No. 4.
4. Tafel, R. L., Documents Concerning Swedenborg (London: Sweden-
borg Society, 1875), 1:392.
5. Swedenborg, Emanuel, A Philosopher's Note Book (Ann Arbor,
Mich.: University Microfilms, 1970).
, Psychologica (Philadelphia: Swedenborg Scientific Associa-
tion, 1923).
, Psychological Transactions (Philadelphia: Swedenborg
Scientific Association, 1955).
, Rational Psychology (Philadelphia: Swedenborg Scientific
Association, 1950).
6. Swedenborg, Journal of Dreams (Bryn Athyn, Pa.: Academy Book
Room, 1918).
, The Spiritual Diary, 5 vols. Vol. 1 (London: The Sweden-
borg Society, 1962); Vols. 2-5, (Bryn Athyn, Pa.: Academy Book
Room, 1962).
7. Swedenborg, Spiritual Diary (London: James Speirs, 1883), no. 3464.
8. Van Dusen, Wilson, The Natural Depth in Man (New York: Harper
& Row, 1972).
Sartre, Jean-Paul, The Psychology of Imagination. (New York: Cita-
del Press, 1961).
Silberer, Herbert. Report on a Method of Eliciting and Observing
Certain Symbolic Hallucination Phenomena in David Rapaport: Or-
ganization and Pathology of Thought (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1951).
Mann, Kristine, "The Self-Analysis of Emanuel Swedenborg," The
Review of Religion (1946): 266-293. This is a study by a Jungian
analyst. Mann assumed that Jung's Self could not be the God within,
hence Swedenborg didn't reach the Self. I see Swedenborg's Christ
and the Self as the same, hence he did integrate.
Ehrenwald, Jan, New Dimensions of Deep Analysis (New York: Allen
and Unwin, 1954).
Behanan, . T., Yoga (New York: Macmillan, 1937); Bernard,
Thomas, Hatha Yoga (New York: Columbia University Press,
1945).
Mann, "Self-Analysis of Swedenborg."
Acton, Alfred, An Introduction to the Word Explained. (Bryn
Athyn, Pa.: Academy of the New Church, 1927), p. 115.
Barnitz, Harry W., Existentialism and the New Christianity (New
York: Philosophical Library, 1969).
Anderson, . H. and Anderson, Gladys, eds., An Introduction to
Projective Techniques. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1951).
Van Dusen, Natural Depth in Man.
Ibid.
Iungerich, Eldred E., The Soul and Its Representations (Edinburgh:
Turnbull and Spears, 1936).
Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching (London: John Murry, 1950). There are
many translations of this little, quite profound, Chinese work.
Van Dusen, Natural Depth in Man.
Healy, William; Bronner, Augusta; and Bowers, Anna, The Struc-
ture and Meaning of Psychoanalysis (New York: Knopf, 1931).
Marx, Melvin, and Hillix, William. Systems and Theories in Psychol-
ogy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963).
All the incidents cited in this chapter are described in greater detail
in R. L. Tafel, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of
Emanuel Swedenborg, 3 vols. (London: Swedenborg Society, 1890).
These volumes are now scarce. They cite every known source for the
incidents and even make detailed comparisons where several ac-
counts variously describe one incident. I've omitted the tedious
scholarship and taken the most likely account where observers dif-
fered. References to the documents are given in the form Docs II, p.
621.
26. Jung, Carl, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1953), vol. 12.
27. Harrower, Molly, Appraising Personality: An Introduction to the Pro-
jective Techniques (New York: F. Watts, 1964).
28. Dunbar, Flanders, Emotions and Bodily Changes (New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 1947).
29. Worcester, John, Physiological Correspondences (Boston: New
Church Union, 1889).
30. Fisher, C., and Dement, W. C., "Studies on the Psychopathology of
Sleep and Dreams," American Journal of Psychiatry, 119 (1963):
1160-1168.
31. Van Dusen, Natural Depth in Man.
32. Horton, Walter Marshall, Emanuel Swedenborg, His Significance for
Contemporary Theology (New York: Swedenborg Foundation,
1965).
33. Alexander, George M., The Handbook of Biblical Personalities
(Greenwich, Conn.: Seabury Press, 1962).
34. Iungerich, The Soul and Its Representations.
35. Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching.
36. Horton, Emanuel Swedenborg: His Vision of a United Christianity
(New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1965).
37. Chetty, D. Gopaul, New Light upon Indian Philosophy or Swedenborg
and Saiva Siddhanta (London: J. M. Dent, 1923).
Guide to Swedenborg's Writings
38. Odhner, Hugo, The Spiritual World (Bryn Athyn, Pa.: Academy
Publishing Committee, 1968).
39. Odhner, Spirits and Man (Bryn Athyn, Pa.: Academy Book Room,
, 1960).
40. Odhner, The Human Mind, Its Faculties and Degrees (Bryn Athyn,
Pa.: Swedenborg Scientific Association, 1969).
41. Trobridge, George, Swedenborg, Life and Teaching (London: Swe-
denborg Society, 1945).
42. Spalding, John, Introduction to Swedenborg's Religious Thought
(New York: Swedenborg Publishing Association, 1956).
43. Sigstedt, Cyriel, The Swedenborg Epic (New York: Bookman Associ-
ates, 1952).
44. Toksvig, Signe, Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic, (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1948).
45. Jonsson, Inge, Emanuel Swedenborg (New York: Twayne, 1971).
46. Acton, Alfred, An Introduction to The Word Explained (Bryn
Athyn, Pa.: Academy of the New Church, 1927).
47. Synnestvedt, Sig, The Essential Swedenborg (New York: The Swe-
denborg Foundation, 1970).
48. Warren, Samuel, A Compendium of the Theological Writings of
Emanuel Swedenborg (London: Swedenborg Society, 1954).
49. Smyth, Julian, and Wunsch, William, The Gist of Swedenborg (New
York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1920).
50. Spalding, Golden Thoughts (London: Swedenborg Society, 1953).
51. Ager, John, The Path of Life (New York: New Church Press, 1913).
52. Sechrist, Alice, The Dictionary of Bible Imagery (New York: Swe-
denborg Foundation, 1973).
53. Bolles, Charles, Dictionary of Correspondences or Representatives
(New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1955).
54. Potts, John, The Swedenborg Concordance (London: Swedenborg
Society, 1957 6 vols.).
55. Worcester, William, The Language of Parable (New York: New
Church Press, date unknown).
56. Brayley, Ann, Natural Phenomena and Their Spiritual Lessons (Lon-
don: Speirs, 1870).
57. Odhner, The Divine Allegory (New York: Swedenborg Foundation,
1954).
58. Worcester, John, Physiological Correspondences (Boston: New
Church Union, 1889).
59. Searle, Arthur, General Index to Swedenborg's Scripture Quotations
(London: Swedenborg Society, 1954).
60. Wunsch, William, The World Within the Bible (New York: New
Church Press, 1929).
61. Maclagan, Henry, The Book of Deuteronomy (London: New Church
Press, 1914).
62. Odhner, Saul, David and Solomon (Bryn Athyn, Pa.: General
Church Publication Committee, 1967).
63. Mitchell, Edward, The Parables of the Old Testament Explained
(Philadelphia: Win. Alden, 1903).
64. Bruce, William, Commentary on St. Matthew (London: Pitman,
1867).
65. Fischer, Robert, Commentary on Ezekiel (Boston: Mass. H'e
Church Union, 1925).
240 The Presence of Other Worlds
66. See n. 54 above.
67. See n. 59 above.
68. See n. 52 above.
69. Bogg, John, A Glossary of Specific Terms and Phrases Used by Swe-
denborg (London: Swedenborg Society, 1915).
70. General Church Publication Committee, New Church Reader's
Guide (Bryn Athyn, Pa.: General Church Publication Committee,
date unknown).