Course XXV - Teaching 14: Visions of Emmanuel Swedenborg

Emmanuel Swedenborg was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 29, 1688, and died in London on March 29, 1772.
Son of a Lutheran Bishop, he completed his studies in Upsala, and in 1709 he moved to England where he devoted himself entirely to scientific researches, revealing a marked predilection for Newton and his theories.
Seemingly his whole life indicates that from his early childhood he was divinely inspired, guided for the mission he carried out in the world, and even physically he came prepared since his birth, because his respiratory system, in moments of ecstasy, almost completely would stop externally to continue to breathe internally and in silence, with full use of his mental and physical faculties.
In “Arcana Coelestia”, Swedenborg says early men had an inner breath, and their outer breath was hardly perceptible; for this reason they did not speak with words like his descendants and as at present we speak, but they would speak as the angels do, with thought ideas, expressed through innumerable and combined facial modifications, especially with their lips in which there are innumerable combinations of muscular fibers, which in a man of our days are not developed.
At the age of 4, his predilection was to speak with his parents about religion, and at the age of 7, his delight was to converse with ministers of the Church, holding that the soul of faith is charity, and that nobody has faith if he does not realize his own life upon the basis of divine precepts of the Decalogue, which a man is given by God for his guide on the path of regeneration.
He was carefully educated, revealing predilection for sciences and traveling through England, Holland, France and German devoted to experiments in the field of physics.
Until the age of 56, his production was mainly scientific and, according to certain biographers, he was 100 years ahead in relation to his time.
So he projected a warship to navigate with its crew under the waters and fit to inflict serious damages to a hostile fleet; an air rifle to shoot 60 to 70 times not reloading it; and also a mechanic flying device.
But in his scientific researches his desire of enquiring and solving spiritual problems always would prevail; all his efforts aimed at the same sublime end: to demonstrate the existence of God and discover the true relationship between soul and body, between spirit and matter.
Scientifically he failed in his pursuit until the second day of Easter of 1774 when the spiritual perception took place in him, according to the relation in his diary of notes, which he would record in detail for his private use, but that was published one century later.
Swedenborg says: “Since the Lord cannot manifest personally, having announced however that he will come and will establish a new Church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that he will do it through a man that can receive through his understanding not only the doctrine of this Church but also to publish it through print. That the Lord has manifested in me, his servant, sending me with this mission, and that later he opened the sight of my spirit, introducing me in the spiritual word and letting me see heavens and hells, and converse with angels and spirits continuously for many years, truly I attest it, so as from the first day of my call I did not receive anything belonging to the doctrine of this Church from any angel, but from the Lord alone, while I read the Word”.
This continuous vision let him be instructed through angels and spirits about everything that is necessary to know in order to re-establish the lost truths of the Church, and to observe the universal relationship that through creation exists between spiritual and natural, which relationship he called: Law of Correspondences, whose bases are that in the existence of the creation there are two domains: spiritual and physical.
The spiritual domain is real, and the physical domain is just its symbol and reflection. Between one and the other, everywhere, there is a perfect correspondence, and the real and true sense of Nature and natural life cannot be conceived until this law is recognized, and its use becomes familiar.
The knowledge of this law, applied to his deep knowledge of the physical world and especially of the human body, lets him interpret the Holy Scriptures because the latter are written by means of pure correspondences; so he finds the exact spiritual sense revealed, in which its true reach, virtue and sanctity is, and through which the Lord verifies his second coming to the world.
The King appoints officially Emannuel Swedenborg in the Royal Negotiate of Mines; and he will quit in 1747 in order to devote himself to the theological work. But he continued in contact with the world through his post in the Parliament and excelling in the study of problems that affected the proper development of his fatherland, being mentioned a memory about financial subjects as the most documented and better written on the matter, and also his project about National Defense.
As a scientist, it is enough to say his famous work “Opera Philosophica and Mineralia”, offers a detailed theory about the origin of the visible Universe, and poses his hypothesis about nebulae, a theory that later was attributed to Kant and Laplace.
A noticeable experience has remained in regard to his clairvoyance. On occasion of going to Stockholm, he had to stop in Gothenburg, a city sited 250 kilometers from the Capital and, during a lunch with the main personalities this location, he asked license to retire, and soon afterwards he came back deeply affected and said a great fire has occurred in Stockholm, and that the fire had reached a house sited three gates before his own house.
A short time later, he retired again and when he returned to his friends, he could calm and tell them that the propagation of the fire had been stopped before it reached his own house. Just three days later this news was officially known in Gothenburg, and the details coincided with those given by Swedenborg.
Investigations made some years later by Kant, the famous philosopher, enable him to prove detail by detail the accurateness of this vision by ascertaining it with qualified witnesses that still would live and were irrefutable by their position and culture.
He did not care much about these proofs as much of his clairvoyance in the physical plane as his perceptions in the spiritual world, for he said their object was to clarify him the spiritual sense of the Word (Logos). In regard to these perceptions in the worlds spiritual and celestial, he emphasized that there was no similarity with ecstasies and visions of Prophets and Apostles, to such extent that his mission “was limited to deduce the spiritual sense of the texts that appeared before him, being unable to put a page of doctrine on his part”.
Even he did not find any similarity with visions of saints and added that there are two extraordinary kinds of visions “and I have been taken with the physical body and only twice this experience occurred. The second experience is that of being taken by the spirit to other place. This was demonstrated to me only two or three times.
His perceptions, which lasted 27 years, enabled him to remain at the same time in the spiritual world and in the natural world, to speak with angels as he did with men, to know the state of the most eminent souls among the dead of all times, and to visit the inhabitants of Mercury, Saturn et cetera. Swedenborg adds, “Such perception gift cannot be transmitted from one person to another, if the Lord by himself does not open the door of the spirit of this person”.
“Sometimes it is granted to a spirit to enter a man and communicate him certain truth, but to speak directly with the spirit is not granted to this man”.
When his perceptions took place, he was in clear and pure possession of his reason, and as much in watchful state as in sleep state, in reveries, or in vigil state or dream state.
Some few months before his death, in a letter addressed to the Head of English Methodists, John Wesley, he foretold with total accurateness his own death, which occurred on March 29, 1772, in London, at the age of 84.
In 1908, the government of Sweden moved his mortal remains to his home city, being deposited in the Cathedral of Upsala, by the tomb of Linnaeus, the naturalist.