that I believe rightly?" "I will tell you. Doubt the regular denials
of your everyday intelligence. Go out of yourself if you can, and place
yourself at the believer's standpoint. Act as though you believed, and
then test the belief, and see whether it agrees with your experiences.
If it does, then you have gained in wisdom, and no one can shake
your belief. When I for the first time obtained Swedenborg's _Arcana
Cœlestia_, and looked through the ten thousand pages, it appeared to
me all nonsense. And yet I could not help wondering, since the man was
so extraordinarily learned in all the natural sciences, as well as
in mathematics, philosophy, and political economy. Amid the apparent
foolishness of the book were some details which remained riveted in my
memory.
"Some time later, in my ordinary life, there happened something
inexplicable. Subsequently light was thrown upon this by an experience
which Swedenborg refers to his so-called heaven and his so-called
angels. Then I began to search and to compare, to make experiments and
to find explanations. I come to the conclusion that Swedenborg has had
experiences which resemble those of earthly life, but are not the same.
This he brings out in his theory of correspondences and agreements. The
theosophists have expressed it thus: parallel with the earth-life we
live another life on the astral plane, but unconsciously to ourselves."
=The Enchanted Room.=--The pupil became curious and asked: "What
opened your eyes as regards Swedenborg?"
"It is difficult to say, but I will try to do so. In my lonely dwelling
there was a room which I considered the most beautiful in the world.
It had not been so beautiful at first, but great and important events
had taken place there. A child had been born in it, and in it a man had
died. Finally I fitted it up as a temple of memory, and never showed it
to anyone.
"One day, however, the demon of pride and ostentation took possession
of me, and I took a guest into it. He happened to be a 'black man,'
a hopeless despairer, who only believed in physical force and in
wickedness, and called himself 'a load of earth.' As I admitted him
I said, 'Now you will see the most beautiful room in the country.' I
turned on the electric light, which generally poured down from the
ceiling such a blaze that not a dark corner was left in the room. The
man stood in the middle of the room, looked round, grumbled to himself,
and said 'I can't see that.'
"As he spoke, the room darkened, the walls contracted, the floor
shrank in size. My splendid temple was metamorphosed before my eyes.
It seemed to me like a room in a hospital, with coarse wall-papers;
the beautiful flowered curtains looked dirty; the white surface of the
little writing-table showed spots; the gilding was blackened; the brass
fittings of the tiled oven were tarnished. The whole room was altered,
and I was ashamed. It had been enchanted.
=Concerning Correspondences.=--"Now comes Swedenborg, but his
explanation is somewhat difficult. I must make a prefatory remark, in
order that you may not think I regard myself as an angel. By 'angel'
Swedenborg means a deceased mortal, who by death has been released from
the prison of the body, and by suffering in faith has recovered the
highest faculties of his soul. It is necessary to bear this definition
of Swedenborg's in mind, and to remember that it does not apply to my
guest or myself.
"Swedenborg further remarks regarding these dematerialised beings: 'All
which appears and exists around them seems to be produced and created
by them. The fact that their surroundings are, as it were, produced
and created by them is evident, because when they are no longer
there the surroundings are altered. A change in the surroundings is
also apparent, when other beings come in their place. Elysian plains
change into their trees and fruits; gardens change into their roses and
plants, and fields into their herbs and grasses. The reason for the
appearance and alteration of such objects is that they are produced by
the wishes of these angel beings and the currents of thought set in
motion thereby.'
"Is not this a subtle observation of Swedenborg's, and have not the
facts he alleges something corresponding to them in our lower sphere?
Does it not resemble my adventure in the 'enchanted room?' Perhaps you
have had a similar experience?"
=The Green Island.=--The pupil answered: "I have certainly had
strange experiences, but did not understand them because I thought
with the flesh. As I just heard you say that our experiences can
receive a symbolical interpretation, I remembered an incident which
resembled that which you have just related and compared with an
observation of Swedenborg's. After a youth spent under intolerable
pressure and too much work, a friend gave me a sum of money that I
might spend the summer on the sea in literary recreation. When I saw
the 'Green Island' with its carpets of flowers, beds of reeds, banks
of willows, oak coppices, and hazel woods, I thought that I beheld
Paradise. Together with three other young poets I passed the summer
in a state of happiness which I have never experienced since. We were
fairly religious, although we did not literally believe in the gods
of the state, and we lived, as a rule, innocently enough, with simple
pleasures such as bathing, sailing, and fishing.
"But there was an evil man among us. He was overbearing, and regarded
mankind as his enemies; denied all goodness; spied after others'
faults; rejoiced in others' misfortunes. Every time he left us to go
to the town, the island seemed to me more beautiful; it seemed like
Sunday. I was always the object of his gibes, but did not understand
his malice. My friends wondered that I was not angry with him, as I
was generally so passionate. I do not myself understand it, but I was
as though protected, and noticed nothing, whatever the cause may have
been. Perhaps you ask whether the island really was so wonderful. I
answer: I found it so, but perhaps the beauty was in my way of looking
at it."
=Swedenborg's Hell.=--The pupil continued: "The next summer I came
again, but this time with other companions, and I was another man.
The bitterness of life, the spirit of the time, new teachings, evil
companionship made me doubt the beneficence of Providence, and finally
deny its existence. We led a dreadful life together. We slandered each
other, suspected each other even of theft. All wished to dominate,
nobody would follow another to the best bathing-place, but each went to
his own. We could not sail, for everyone wished to steer. We quarrelled
from morning till night. We drank also, and half of us were treating
themselves for incurable diseases. My 'Green Island,' the first
paradise of my youth, became ugly and repulsive to me. I could see no
more beauty in nature, although at that time I worshipped nature. But
wait a minute, and see how it agreed with what Swedenborg says! The
beautiful weed-fringed bay began to exhale such miasmas, that I got
malarial fever. The gnats plagued us the whole night and stung through
the thickest veil. If I wandered in the wood, and wished to pluck a
flower, I saw an adder rear its head. One day, when I took some moss
from a rock, I saw immediately a black snake zigzagging away. It was
inexplicable. The peaceable inhabitants must have been infected by our
wickedness, for they became malicious, ugly, quarrelsome, and enacted
domestic tragedies. It was hell! When I became ill, my companions
scoffed at me, and were angry, because I had to have a room to myself.
They borrowed money from me, which was not my own, and behaved
brutally. When I wanted a doctor, they would not fetch him."
The teacher broke in: "That is how Swedenborg describes hell."
=Preliminary Knowledge Necessary.=--The pupil asked: "Is there a
hell?"
"You ask that, when you have been in it?"
"I mean, another one."
"What do you mean by another one? Has your experience not sufficed to
convince you that there _is_ one?"
"But what does Swedenborg think?"
"I don't know. It is possible that he does not mean a place, but a
condition of mind. But as his descriptions of another side agree with
our experiences on this side in this point, that whenever a man breaks
the connection with the higher sphere, which is Love and Wisdom, a
hell ensues, it does not matter whether it is here or there. He uses
parables and allegories, as Christ did in order to be understood.
"Emerson in his _Representative Men_ regards Swedenborg's genius as the
greatest among modern thinkers, but he warns us against stereo-typing
his forms of thought. True as transitional forms, they are false if
one tries to fix them fast. He calls these descriptions a transitory
embodiment of the truth, not the truth itself."
"But I do not yet understand Swedenborg."
"No, because you have not the necessary preliminary knowledge. Just
like the peasant who came to a chemical lecture and only heard about
letters and numbers. He considered it the most stupid stuff he had ever
heard: 'They could only spell, but could not put the letters together.'
He lacked the necessary preliminary knowledge. Still, when you read
Swedenborg, read Emerson along with him."
=Perverse Science.=--The teacher continued: "Swedenborg never
found a contradiction between science and religion, because he beheld
the harmony in all, correspondences in the higher sphere to the lower,
and the unity underlying opposites. Like Pythagoras, he saw the
Law-giver in His laws, the Creator in His work, God in nature, history
and the life of men. Modern degenerate science sees nothing, although
it has obtained the telescope and microscope.
"Newton, Leibnitz, Kepler, Swedenborg, Linnæus, the greatest scientists
were religious God-fearing men. Newton wrote also an Exposition of the
Apocalypse. Kepler was a mystic in the truest sense of the word. It was
his mysticism which led to his discovery of the laws regulating the
courses of the planets. Humble and pure-hearted, those men could see
God while our decadents only see an ape infested by vermin.
"The fact that our science has fallen into disharmony with God, shows
that it is perverse, and derives its light from the Lord of Dung."
=Truth in Error.=--The teacher continued: "Let us return for a
moment to your green island. There you discovered that the world is a
reflection of your interior state, and of the interior state of others.
It is therefore probable that each carries his own heaven and hell
within him. Thus we come to the conclusion that religion is something
subjective, and therefore outside the reach of discussion.
"The believer is therefore right when he receives spiritual edification
from the consecrated Bread and Wine. And the unbeliever is also not
wrong when he maintains that _for him_ it is only bread and wine. But
if he asserts that it is the same with the believer, he is wrong.
One ought not to punish him for it; one must only lament his want
of intelligence. By calling religion subjective, I have not thereby
diminished its power. The subjective is the highest for personality,
which is an end in itself, inasmuch as the education of man to superman
is the meaning of existence.
"But when many individuals combine in one belief, there results an
objective force of tremendous intensity, which can remove mountains and
overthrow the walls of Jericho.
=Accumulators.=--"When a race of wild men begin to worship a
meteoric stone, and this stone is subsequently venerated by a nation
for centuries, it accumulates psychic force, _i.e._ becomes a sacred
object which can bestow strength on those who possess the receptive
apparatus of faith. It can accordingly work miracles which are quite
incomprehensible to unbelievers.
"Such a sacred object is called an amulet, and is not really more
remarkable than an electric pocket-lamp. But the lamp gives light only
on two conditions--that it is charged with electricity and that one
presses the knob. Amulets also only operate under certain conditions.
"The same holds good of sacred places, sacred pictures and objects,
and also of sacred rites which are called sacraments.
"But it may be dangerous for an unbeliever to approach too near to
an accumulator. The faith-batteries of others can produce an effect
on them, and they may be killed thereby, if they possess not the
earth-circuit to carry off the coarser earthly elements.
"The electric car proceeds securely and evenly as long as it is in
contact with the overhead wire and also connected with the earth.
If the former contact is interrupted, the car stands still. If the
earth-circuit is blocked, an electric storm is the result, as was the
case with St. Paul on the way to Damascus."
=Eternal Punishment.=--The pupil asked: "What is your belief
regarding eternal punishments?"
"Let me answer evasively, so to speak: since wickedness is its own
punishment, and a wicked man cannot be happy, and the will is free, an
evil man may be perpetually tormented with his own wickedness, and his
punishment accordingly have no end.
"But we will hope that the wicked will not adhere to his evil will for
ever. A wicked man often experiences a change of nature when he sees
something good. Therefore, it is our duty to show him what is good.
The consciousness of fatality and being damned comes to everyone,
even to the incredulous. That proves that there is an inborn sense
of justice, a need to punish oneself, and that quite independent of
dogmas. Moreover, it is a gross falsehood that the doctrine of hell was
invented by Christianity. Greeks and Romans knew Hades and Tartarus
with their refined tortures; the Jews had their Sheol and Gehenna;
the cheerful Japanese rival Dante with their Inferno. It is therefore
thoughtless nonsense to make Christian theology solely responsible
for the doctrine of hell. It would be just as fair to trace it to the
cheerful view of life of the Greeks and Romans, who first came upon the
idea."
="Desolation."=--The teacher continued: "When this feeling of
fatality strikes an unbeliever, it often appears as the so-called
persecution-mania. He believes himself, for example, persecuted by men
who wish to poison him. Since his intelligence is so low that he cannot
rise to the idea of God, his evil conscience makes him conjure up evil
men as his persecutors. Thus he does not understand that it is God who
is pursuing him, and therefore he dies or goes mad.
"But he who has strength enough to bow himself, or intelligence
enough to guess at a method in this madness, cries to God for help and
grace, and escapes the madhouse. After a season of self-chastisement,
life begins to grow lighter; peace returns; he succeeds in his
undertakings; his 'Green Island' again blooms with spring. This
feeling of woebegoneness often occurs about the fortieth or fiftieth
year. It is the balancing of books at the solstice. The whole past is
summed up, and the debit-side shows a plus which makes one despair.
Scenes of earlier life pass by like a panorama, seen in a new light;
long-forgotten incidents reappear even in their smallest details. The
opening of the sealed Book of Life, spoken of in the Revelation, is
a veritable reality. It is the day of judgment. The children of the
Lord of Dung who have lost their intelligence understand nothing,
but buy bromkali at the chemist's and take sick-leave because of
'neurasthenia.' That is a Greek word, which serves them as an amulet.
"Swedenborg calls this natural process 'the desolation' of the wicked.
The pietists call it the 'awakening' before conversion."
=A World of Delusion.=--"Swedenborg writes: 'The angels are
troubled concerning the darkness on earth. They say that they can see
hardly any light anywhere, that men live and strengthen themselves in
lying and deceit, and so heap up falsity upon falsity. In order to
ratify these, they manage to extract, by way of inference, such true
propositions from false premises, as, on account of the darknesses
which conceal the true sources, and because the real state of the case
is unknown, cannot be refuted.'
"This agrees with what every thinking man observes, that lying and
deceit are universal. The whole of life--politics, society, marriage,
the family--is counterfeit. Views which universally prevail are based
upon false history; scientific theories are founded on error; the truth
of to-day is discovered to be a lie to-morrow; the hero turns out to
be a coward, the martyr a hypocrite. Te Deums are sung over a silver
wedding, and the wedded pair, still secretly leading immoral lives,
thank God that they have lived together happily for five-and-twenty
years. The whole populace assembles once in a year to celebrate the
memory of the 'Destroyer of the Country.' He who says the most foolish
thing possible, receives a prize in money and a gold medal. At the
annual asses' festival, the worst is crowned the asses' king.
"A mad world, my masters! If Hamlet plays the madman, he sees how
mad the world is. But the spectator believes himself to be the only
reasonable person, therefore He gives Hamlet his sympathy."
=The Conversion of the Cheerful Pagan, Horace.=--"Among the
conventional falsehoods of the apes,[1] one of the best known is that
conversion from irreligion is a purely Christian doctrine. By looking
into Kumlin's Swedish translation of Horace, even a schoolboy can find
this heading to the thirty-fourth ode of the first book, 'The Religious
Conversion of the Poet.'
"Horace belonged to the Epicurean sect who only believed in phantom
gods, because they held that the divinities did not trouble themselves
with the course of the world or of events, but enjoyed a careless life
of continual ease. Horace accordingly had not been remarkably zealous
in his religious duties. But a sudden flash of lightning and a heavy
peal of thunder from a clear sky taught him at last that it was no
blind unconscious force of nature, but the hand of a God, which hurled
the lightning. Thereby he was awoken to reflection, and tried to warn
and sober his frivolous countrymen by dwelling on the power of Jupiter.
'God can change the lowest with the highest; He puts down the exalted
and uplifts the obscure.'
"After this Horace preached like a Jeremiah against the corruption of
religion and morals. A modern 'ape' might feel justified in calling him
a pietist since he was converted!
=Cheerful Paganism and its Doctrine of Hell.=--"_Origen against
Celsus_ is the title of the first refutation of the lying accusations
which the pagans have brought against Christianity. Who will write a
second? Who will show that the hell of the pagans was seven times worse
than that of the Christians? In some Christian countries the Christian
religion may not be taught in the schools, but boys are obliged to read
Virgil's Sixth Æneid, which describes the terrors of the underworld.
"There is the Lernæan Hydra, the Chimæra, Gorgons, and Harpies. On the
banks of Cocytus roam crowds of the unburied; there they must roam for
centuries because they have never found a grave. Is that humane? Then
there are the poor suicides everlastingly immersed in the Styx. And the
field of mourning where unhappy lovers hide themselves. 'Even after
death their pangs are not ended.'
"But these were comparatively innocent. Criminals, however, are
punished first by the fury Tisiphone. She seizes the damned, mocks
them with hellish laughter, and threatens them with snakes. A Hydra
opens fifty black jaws.... And so on till we come to the sieve of the
Danaids, the wheel of Ixion, the thirst of Tantalus.
"Let us remember, however, that the men of the Renaissance, Dante and
Michael Angelo, have depicted the most extreme torments, as though they
believed in them. Anyone who wants to see how the cheerful Japanese
describe hell, can look at the pictures which Riotor and Leofanti
published in Paris, 1895, in the _Enfers Bouddhiques_."
[Footnote 1: Materialistic evolutionists.]
=Faith the Chief Thing.=--The teacher continued: "Pietism is
a condition of repentance, which men pass through like a purifying
bath and gain a consciousness of inward cleanliness. It is therefore
no hypocrisy, as the children of the Lord of Dung suppose. He
who is severe towards himself may easily appear malicious to the
unintelligent; and he who has suffered for his wickednesses feels
himself freed from the past. This feeling the unbelievers call
'self-satisfaction.'
"A penitent never attains perfection, but ceaselessly relapses into
the desires of the flesh. This may easily cause him to appear a
hypocrite. Luther quickly saw that it is impossible to make one's acts
correspond to one's belief. Therefore he laid stress on faith, let acts
go, and adduced as his authority St. Paul's solution of the paradox:
'So I obey the law of God with the spirit, but with the flesh the law
of sin.'
"Faith, Hope, and Love: that is the essence and kernel of religion.
One's acts never come up to one's faith, and often lag far behind
it. But there are some pious souls who persist in remaining in the
condition of penance, and it may easily seem as though they wished to
gain heaven in advance of the rest. But we should not blame them for
it. There may be secret reasons which we do not know, and have never
experienced.
"Socrates regarded the sense of shame and conscience as what
distinguished man from the beasts. To these two Christ added pity."
=Penitents.=--The teacher continued: "Muhammed early traversed
the stage of desolation and became a pietist, when he believed himself
persecuted by devils. Set free finally by suffering and prayer, he
exclaims in the 93rd Sura: 'By the forenoon, and the night when it
darkens, thy Lord has not forsaken thee or hated thee, and surely the
future for thee will be better than the past. And thy Lord will give
thee sufficient, and thou shalt be satisfied. Did He not find thee an
orphan and give thee shelter? and find thee erring and guide thee? and
find thee poor with a family and nourish thee? But as for the orphan,
oppress him not; and as for the beggar, drive him not away; and as
for the favour of thy Lord, discourse thereof!' When Buddha left his
father's palace and saw the sufferings of men and the instability
of life, he became a penitent, left wife and child, went into the
wilderness, and chastened himself by fasting and renunciation. But
after he had undergone the severest penances, he cautiously returned to
ordinary life, and allowed himself moderate enjoyments in order not to
devastate his soul. Some of his disciples deserted him and called him a
recreant, but that did not trouble him.
"Goethe himself passed through religious crises, and was at one period
intimate with the Hermhuters, the pietists of that time. In his old
age, when he grew wise, he became a mystic, _i.e._ he discovered that
there are things between heaven and earth of which the 'Beans' have
never let themselves dream."
=Paying for Others.=--The pupil said: "I must confess that I do
not understand the Atonement." "You mean, understand it with everyday
intelligence. No one can. The highest questions cannot be solved by us,
just as little as problems of the fourth dimension. But the solution is
given to us, if we ask for it in a proper way.
"As regards the redemptive work of Christ, you can comprehend it by an
analogy. You remember, when you owed so many debts, that there were
knocks at your door all day long, that you had to go out early in the
morning in order to borrow, or to escape your creditors. Finally you
feared your room so, that you dared not go home to sleep. You sat on a
seat in the park, and said to yourself, 'It is hell!' Then there came a
man who knew you; he paid your debts; you called him your saviour. Do
you not see that one can pay for another, and deliver him?"
"Yes, but one cannot make an evil deed undone."
"No, but the Almighty can obliterate it from our memory, and from the
memory of others. But mark this well: every time that you rummage in
the past of another, although it has been atoned for, the memory of
your own evil deeds starts up. Just like a badly washed stain which
goes through the stuff and appears on the other side. All miracles are
conditional, just as vows are."