The Hidden Influence and Relevance of Swedenborg 1: Why We Are Alive

This week we introduce the first of three sections of an essay by Curtis Childs on the significance of Emanuel Swedenborg's work. Curtis begins here by looking, from a broad context, at the remarkable contribution Swedenborg made to teachings about the life after death. The following two sections are: Section 2: Egypt, Assyria, and Quantum Mechanics and Section 3: Swedenborg's Influence. - Editor.

Emanuel Swedenborg

Richard Smoley, in his essay, “The Inner Journey of Emanuel Swedenborg,” introduces us to the Swedish visionary: “like most great figures in history, Emanuel Swedenborg both epitomizes his time and transcends it” (4). In 1688, when on January 29th, Swedenborg was born to Jesper Swedberg and Sara Behm, institutional Christianity ruled Sweden, as well as the rest of Europe. However, secular philosophy and scientific naturalism were also coming into their own, creating a dichotomy that few, other than Swedenborg, could satisfactorily bridge. Swedenborg was educated at the University of Uppsala. After several initial endeavors that met with little success, he began to publish many books in different scientific and philosophical fields. He served on Sweden’s Board of Mines, was given a seat in the House of Nobles, and lived the life of a “nobleman, bureaucrat, and author” (Kirven 31).

Sometime around the year 1736, Swedenborg began to undergo a change that “was to mark the turning point in his life, and it would lead him to the vocation for which he would be most remembered—that of spiritual visionary and sage” (Smoley 19). Swedenborg first began to receive contact from something beyond this world through his dreams, which he recorded as they began to grow more intense. He had several powerful experiences, but what may have been the trigger for the redirection of his studies for the rest of his life occurred at an inn in London in 1745.  “It is curious that Swedenborg,” remarks Smoley, “who wrote so voluminously about his spiritual encounters, left no direct description of this one” (24). Accounts from two of his friends tell us that Swedenborg saw God that night—the first of many visions.

Beyond the Mortal Coil

The correlation between what [Swedenborg] writes and what those who have come back from close calls with death report is amazing. - Raymond Moody, Life After Life (114)

While across history, taxes come and go, death is most certainly certain. We are all going to die. Subsequently, we will all learn what waits for us. Yet we sit, like fetuses, arguing as they develop, “Is there life after birth? What will it be like?” Great debates, anger, violence, much energy are spent around this issue, but unlike “the unification of physics” (Hawking 155), or even the meaning of life, it is an absolute certainty that the answer to this mystery will find us all soon—a cosmic handout, rather than a holy grail. Add to this how frustratingly close to this knowledge we all are. People who have crossed, who just a few years ago walked, talked, and wondered with the rest of us, have so quickly abandoned both their bodies and the question: what happens when we die? Instead of studying ancient texts, guessing based on internal hunches, calculating, preaching, or ignoring, efficiency would seem to beg that we simply ask. Hello to the vast majority of the species that has already died…what do you see? Unfortunately, although our satellites can transmit data back no matter how far from this planet they travel, apparently, our souls cannot. Or have we just not listened?

Raymond Moody, a medical doctor, published a book in 1975 entitled Life After Life. “During the past few years I have encountered a large number of persons who were involved in what I shall call ‘near-death experiences,’” he wrote (6). People who had nearly died shared with him the now familiar images of a tunnel, a being of light, greetings from deceased relatives, and seeing their life in review. “What has amazed me since the beginning of my interest are the great similarities in the reports, despite the fact that they come from people of highly varied religious, social, and educational backgrounds” (7). Moody’s book touched off an explosion of near-death literature, from other medical professionals accounts of what their patients reported to personal testimonies from those who had gone through the tunnel. Those who had had near-death experiences hosted gatherings, online communities and foundations formed, and even a scholarly journal, the Journal of Near-Death Studies, ran from 1987-2003. The American Psychological Association, in Varieties of Anomalous Experience, published in 2000, recognized the existence of near-death experiences as “profound psychological events with transcendental and mystical elements, typically occurring to individuals close to death or in situations of intense physical or emotional danger” (315). And scientific interest in near-death experiences continues to be strong. Jane Dreaper, a health correspondent for the BBC News, reported that in 2008 an international group of scientists and medical professionals coordinated by the University of Southampton began a study of 1,500 cardiac arrest patients at 25 US and UK hospitals, to investigate the near-death phenomenon. Moody recorded the effects of these experiences on those who had them. Their responses included that “since then, it has been on my mind constantly what I have done with my life, and what I will do with my life,” (83) and “it made life much more precious to me” (84). These brief glimpses of the beyond change entire lives. Their stories, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, change lives. People who have had communication with something beyond this world through a near death experience are usually caught totally off guard, and despite their longing to reconnect with what they saw on the other side, they remain stuck on this planet. Yet still, the message, insights, and wisdom they bring back from their short experience uplift, inspire, and enlighten millions of people. One has to wonder, hypothetically, what could be accomplished if a brilliant, highly educated scientific mind had continuous access to this spiritual world, not for an hour, but for decades?

Moody quickly recognized the consistency between the reports he received and Swedenborg’s visions. Life After Life contains a section on Swedenborg, citing passages in Swedenborg’s works that describe the same phenomena that those who experienced near-death reported. Comparatively, however, the scope of Swedenborg’s experience was simply massive. “Whereas the typical NDEr is blessed with a fleeting glimpse of the afterdeath…Swedenborg—because he could journey there at will and did so repeatedly during the last twenty seven years (!) of his life—could and did provide a comprehensive picture of the world the NDE only foreshadows,” wrote Kenneth Ring, co-founder and first president of the International Association for Near Death Studies (x). Swedenborg’s 367-page Heaven and Hell consists entirely of his experience of the afterlife, and other accounts of his journeys appear frequently in his other works. After Swedenborg’s vision in London, when the act of piercing the veil became a part of his daily life, he began a voyage. Rather than enhancing geography or biology, as did Columbus or Darwin, Swedenborg brought back a scientist’s account of the great beyond.

In simple, vivid sensory detail, Swedenborg cataloged what he experienced. He found a world surprisingly like ours: “you can see lands there, mountains, hills, valleys, plains, fields, lakes, rivers, and springs” (Divine Love and Wisdom 321). Contrary to what Achilles and Odysseus dreaded, death does not snuff out our vitality, leaving us as vapors or insubstantial shades. People who awake in the next life are surprised “to find that they are alive and that they are just as human as ever, that they are seeing and hearing and talking, that their bodies are still endowed with the sense of touch, and that nothing at all has changed” (Heaven and Hell 456). Swedenborg, in the midst of this enormous and vibrant world, did, in fact, find the heaven and hell so many here on earth suspected, but perhaps not in the way they imagined it. Dante’s Catholic illustration of divine justice stresses angry retribution, and that “in [hell] piety lives when pity is dead,” (252) is consistent with so many religious doctrines around the world that separate the human race into two groups: one that God loves, and the other, which he yearns to punish. Swedenborg, however, even though he writes of people in hell who “are wretched slaves there, living in disgrace and misery,” (Divine Providence 217) forcefully asserts throughout his works that “God is absolute love, absolute mercy, and absolute goodness, and someone who is all these things cannot be angry, wrathful, or vengeful,” (True Christianity 256) that “[God] never punishes anyone, never inflicts trouble on anyone, never destroys anyone,” (Secrets of Heaven 588) and that “in reality, God cannot turn away from us or even look at us with a frown” (True Christianity 56).  Still, as in this world, Swedenborg saw that suffering and hatred do exist in the next life, as do bizarre and terrifying scenes beyond even the depths of those that appear in Dante’s Inferno. To put these two concepts together seems confusing, but Swedenborg’s answer is simple. “Since the Lord’s face is mercy, peace, and everything good, it is clear that he never looks at anyone except with mercy and never turns his face from anyone. It is we, when we are wrapped up in evil, who turn our faces away” (Secrets of Heaven 223). As the Marley brothers explained their chains to Ebeneezer Scrooge, we, through our choices in life, create our own heaven or our own hell.

“Love is our life,” Swedenborg writes (Divine Love and Wisdom 1). What we love above all else, whether that is God, other people, ourselves, power, or money, forms our essence or character. He states that he observed that even while we are in this world, we connect to the next world. Selfishness, deceit, violence, and arrogance connect us to communities in hell, who love the same kinds of things, while kindness, empathy, compassion, humility, and love connect us to heaven. After we die, “evil people are connected with the hellish community their ruling love had affiliated them with in the world, and good people are immediately connected with the heavenly community their love and thoughtfulness and faith had affiliated them with in the world” (Heaven and Hell 427). Just as passions for music, politics, and sports draw people together in this world, in the next world either mutual love or contempt for others draw people toward each other, separating the human race into what are called heaven and hell.

To say merely that Swedenborg’s visions of the next life were fantastic does them no justice. Throughout his multitude of journeys, he describes sprawling landscapes, mountains, valleys, caverns, and seas. He reports the amazing, such as “four horsemen seemingly flying out of a cloud that shone with the blaze of dawn,” (Conjugial Love 103) yet also goes into surprising detail about more earth-like environments:

I went and entered the house, and examining it inside, I saw that it was square, with sides facing toward the four points of the compass. Each of the sides had three high windows containing panes of crystal, whose frames were made of olive wood. From either side of the frames projected walls in the form of rooms, with vaulted ceilings and containing tables…against the east wall…a table stood, overlaid with precious stones. This would go as an award or prize to the one who found the secret of the question to be presently put before [the spirits being called to that house]” (Conjugial Love 103).

In hell he reports all kinds of scenes, including “a large, oblong lake…along the front bank, the residents see grotesque snakes…farther away are seen cannibals eating one another, sinking their teeth into each other’s shoulders. Even farther away on the left appear huge fish, monstrous whales that swallow people down and then spit them out” (Secrets of Heaven 819). His many accounts of those who become devils are particularly bizarre and frightening:

Some of their faces are black, some like little torches, some pimply, with huge ulcerated sores. In many cases there is no visible face, only something hairy or bony in its place, while with others only the teeth show. Their bodies are equally misshapen, and their speech seems to embody wrath or hatred or vengeance, since all their articulation comes from their false perception and all the tone comes from their evil intent. In a word, they are all images of their hell. (Heaven and Hell 553)

Swedenborg’s description of the afterlife is remarkable both for its extraordinary colorfulness, but also for its similarity to this world. Houses, clothing, roads, and animals all exist there. In fact, he writes that everything in this world also appears in the next world. There are, however, some major differences in the spiritual world dealing with space, time, and appearances. The concept of God is a major theme running through Swedenborg’s description of the afterlife, and is seen through all his theological works. Swedenborg states that everyone in the spiritual world is located where they are based on their idea or perception of God. He begins the work Heaven and Hell by stating that “first and foremost, we need to know who the God of heaven is, since everything else depends on this” (2). God is omnipresent, and omnipotent, but also distinctly human. This means that God is a person, or someone we can interact with. If we turn toward God and let him in, a connection is formed where God’s love for us flows into us, nurtures and sustains us, and causes us to love others. This is what creates Swedenborg’s heaven.

The next section is  Egypt, Assyria, and Quantum Mechanics. 

Curtis Childs

Curtis Childs is a semi-attractive twenty-five year old living in Huntingdon Valley, PA. He recently graduated from Oakland University with a Bachelor's in Communication. He jams all kinds of stuff, including guitar and video games, and can spit rhymes with the best of them (this is not a joke). He is currently employed full-time creating and performing in a program that is designed to connect kids to a friendly God, and encourage them to be pumped about being decent to each other. He one time got an article published in a book by Penguin Classics. So there. He would also like to say that Emanuel Swedenborg is just about as hip as it gets.

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