Why is it that organized crime does not take over and run the
world? Smart criminals, after all, have plenty of access to money: They can steal, cheat people, sell drugs and deal in gambling, prostitution, loan-sharking etc. They can and generally do get weapons, and have no compunction in using them. They can infiltrate and undermine police forces and other civil authorities. They don’t tangle their decision-making in any democratic process, and have well-defined goals. It seems they could take over entire cities, enslave their populations and reign like medieval kings. But they don’t.
One reason is that for every Smart Criminal “A” with royal aspirations, there’s a Smart Criminal “B” who is ready to assassinate him and take the throne instead. They might cooperate as long as some third party has power, but as long as each wants power for himself, their interests are inevitably going to collide, and it will likely be a violent collision.
That is, of course, very much what we actually do see among organized criminal enterprises. The Mafia wars of the 20th century marginalized those groups as they focused on killing each other. Urban street gangs continue on the same path, warring with one another for pre-eminence. And within any one organization, the internal power structure is under perpetual stress, with each individual looking to move up the ladder.
Such is a world where love of self predominates. Each individual wants to be the greatest, wants to rule, and is willing to do anything necessary to achieve it. From that desire, each one ultimately despises all the others and wishes to rule over and even destroy them. And in the highest degree of all, each one wants to put himself even above the Lord himself, though it is impossible for someone in such a degree of self-love to even acknowledge the Lord.
Sound nice? No! In fact, it sounds like hell – which is exactly what it is. Hell is full of people who confirmed themselves in evil in this life, who now spend eternity trying to hurt and take advantage of each other. And because each loves only himself and cares nothing for others, the battles will never end.
Nothing, of course, could be further from the Lord’s intent.
The Lord is – according to Swedenborg – love itself, perfect and infinite. He created us so his love could have an object, and his intent is to have us freely accept his love and return it, so that he can be conjoined with us and us with him and he can bring us to the highest possible state of human happiness.
The key there, of course, is that little word “freely.” If we had no choice, then love would not be love, conjunction would not be conjunction and we would not be human. So while the Lord wants us to receive his love and return it, he created us with the capacity to receive his love and focus it on other things.
Some of those are good. We can use the Lord’s love to love each other; we can use the Lord’s love to love doing the right thing and being of service to others. Those are loves that we can take with us to heaven – not as exalted as loving the Lord directly, but definitely in accord with his desires.
Some of them are not so good. We can twist the Lord’s love into greed, overweening pride, the love of power, unbridled lust and so forth. These are loves we can take with us to hell; they are contrary to the Lord’s desires.
But the love of self is the most perverse twist of all, the one that is directly contrary to the Lord’s intent. In essense, the Lord is sharing life with us, giving it to us to use freely, and rather than sharing it or using it in any way we are keeping it all for ourselves. As such it is at the root of other evils, and is the reigning love of the deepest hells.
Passages from Swedenborg
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 257
'The head of the serpent' is used to mean the reign of evil in general and of self-love in particular. This becomes clear from its very nature, which seeks not merely to exercise dominion but also to exercise it over everything on earth. Yet it is not satisfied even with that, but seeks to rule over everything in heaven. Nor is it satisfied even then, but seeks to rule over the Lord. And even then it would not be content. This inclination lies concealed within every spark of self-love. If it were shown the slightest approval and the restraint on it were slackened, you would perceive it break out instantly and strive increasingly to achieve that end. From this it is clear how 'the serpent' or evil constituting self-love wishes to have dominion, and how it hates the person it is unable to dominate.
Arcana Coelestia 760
Still less can anyone love himself and at the same time the neighbour, and least of all himself and at the same time the Lord. Someone who loves himself hates all who are not subservient to him, and so he who loves himself is very far removed from heavenly love or charity, which consists in loving the neighbour more than self, and the Lord above all things. From these considerations it is clear how far away man's life is from heavenly life.
Arcana Coelestia 1307
Self-love is the love which agrees least of all with heavenly life. Indeed it is the source of every form of evil, not only of hatred but also of revenge, cruelty, and adultery. It agrees still less when it enters into worship and profanes it. The hells therefore consist of such persons who, the more they wish to rear their heads up into heaven, the more deeply they force themselves down into hell and the harsher the punishments they plunge themselves into.
Arcana Coelestia 1594
[3] [3] But this is not the major cause of the severance of the external man from the internal man, for the greater number of people possess such unbelief, the highly learned more than the simple. That which causes the severance is chiefly self-love, and also love of the world, though not so much as self-love does. The reason a person does not know this is that his life is devoid of charity, and when his life is devoid of charity, how can he see that the life of self-love and its desires is so contrary to heavenly love? Also there is within self-love and its desires a kind of flame, and from it a feeling of delight which so affect a person's life that he can scarcely conceive of eternal happiness consisting of anything else. For this reason also many people suppose that eternal happiness means becoming great following the life of the body and being served by others, even by angels, while they themselves are not willing to serve anybody except for the concealed motive of being served themselves. When at such times they assert that they wish to serve the Lord alone, it is a lie, for people who are ruled by self-love wish that even the Lord should serve them. And to the extent this does not happen they depart, so strong is the desire in their hearts to become lords and rule the entire universe. What kind of government it would be when the majority, or indeed all, are like this, anyone can think out for himself. Would it not be a government like that exercised in hell where everyone loves himself more than anybody else? This is what lies hidden within self-love. From this it may become clear what the nature of self-love is, and also from the fact that it conceals within itself hatred of all who do not submit themselves to it as its slaves. And because it conceals hatred, it also conceals forms of revenge, cruelty, deceit, and further unspeakable things.
Arcana Coelestia 1691
All evil and falsity arise from self-love and love of the world; they have no other origin. Indeed self-love and love of the world are the reverse of celestial and spiritual love. And being the reverse they are loves which endeavour all the time to destroy the celestial and spiritual things of God's kingdom. From self-love and love of the world all kinds of hatred arise, and from hatred all kinds of revenge and cruelty, and from both the former and the latter all kinds of deception, in short, all the hells.
Arcana Coelestia 2057
Those inside the Church who are subject to falsity and at the same time to self-love are the main ones to profane holy things, more so than those in whom some other love reigns, for self- love is the filthiest of all since it is destructive of society and so of the human race, as shown above in 2045. That it is also diametrically opposed to mutual love which constitutes heaven, and so is destructive of heavenly order itself, becomes clear from evil spirits and genii in the next life, and also from the hells where nothing but self-love reigns. And because self-love reigns there, so do all types of hatred, revenge, and cruelty, since these are the product of self-love.
[2] Mutual love in heaven consists in those there loving their neighbour more than themselves, and as a result the whole of heaven represents so to speak one human being; for by means of mutual love from the Lord all are associated together in that way. Consequently every manifestation of happiness possessed by all is communicated to each individual, and that possessed by each individual to all. The heavenly form produced by this is such that everyone is so to speak a kind of centre point, thus the centre point of communications and therefore of manifestations of happiness from all. And this takes place in accordance with all the variant forms of that love, which are countless. And because those in whom that love reigns experience supreme happiness in being able to communicate to others that which flows into them, and to do so from the heart, the communication consequently becomes perpetual and eternal. And as the Lord's kingdom increases from the communication so does the happiness of each individual. Because angels are distinguished into separate communities and habitations they give no thought to this matter; it is the Lord who so arranges in order every single thing. Such is the Lord's kingdom in the heavens.
[3] Nothing else apart from self-love endeavours to destroy this form and this order. For this reason all in the next life in whom self-love reigns are more thoroughly hellish than others; for self-love does not communicate anything to others, but stifles and smothers all their delight and happiness. Whatever delight flows into them from others, they take to themselves, focus on themselves, and transform into some filthy thing of their own, and prevent it spreading any further. In so doing they destroy all unanimity and concord, and so bring about disunity and consequently destruction. And since each one of them wishes to be served, respected, and adored by others, and loves none but himself, division is the outcome which is directed towards and manifests itself in wretched states. As a result they never feel happier than when, out of hatred, revenge, and cruelty, they are tormenting others by shocking methods and delusions. When such as these come to any community where mutual love reigns, then because every inflowing delight is terminated in themselves, they fall to the ground of their own accord, like unclean and dead, weighty objects in clean and fresh air. And because they exude the foul idea of self, the delight they have is converted there into the stench of a corpse from which they scent the hell of selfishness, in addition to being seized with severe pain.
[4] This makes clear the nature of self-love - not only is it destructive of the human race, as shown above in 2045, but it is also destructive of heavenly order. It accordingly contains nothing but impurity, filth, profanity, and hell itself, though this does not appear so to those who are under its influence. Those in whom self-love reigns are such as despise others in comparison with themselves; they hate whoever shows them no favour, fails to serve them, and does not in a way worship them; and they take a cruel delight in revenge and in depriving others of position, reputation, wealth, and life. Being governed by self-love their delights are such; so let those whose delights are such recognize that they are governed by self-love.
Arcana Coelestia 2219
[2] In addition to this, it has been shown in various places in Volume One what the nature of self-love is, namely a love completely contrary to the order into which man was created. Unlike beasts man was endowed with rationality, to the end that every individual person may will what is good and do what is good to any other, thus to everyone in particular as to all in general. Such is the order into which man was created, and therefore it is love to God and love towards the neighbour which were intended to constitute man's life, which life was to mark him off from animals. Such also is the order of heaven which, it was intended, would exist in man while he was living in the world. He would thus be in the Lord's kingdom, into which he would also pass when he had cast off the body that had served him on earth, and in that kingdom would rise up into a state constantly increasing in heavenly perfection.
[3] But self-love is the chief, indeed the one and only, thing that destroys these loves. Love of the world is not so destructive; for although this is indeed contrary to the spiritual things of faith, self-love is diametrically opposed to the celestial things of love. For someone who loves himself does not love any others but tries to destroy everyone who fails to pay respect to him. Nor does he will what is good and do what is good to anybody except to one who is an extension of himself or can be made to become such, like something into which his evil desires and false notions have been so to speak engrafted. From this it is evident that self-love is the source from which all forms of hatred, all forms of revenge and cruelty well up, and also all forms of disgraceful presence and of deceit - thus every abominable thing that is contrary to the order that belongs to human society and contrary to the order of heavenly society.
[4] Indeed self-love is so abominable that when the restraints placed upon it are lifted, that is, when it is given the opportunity to do whatever it pleases, then even with those who belong to the lowest sort, it rushes with such urgency that it desires not only to exercise dominion over those nearest to it and over those close by, but also over the universe and even over the Supreme Divine Being Himself. Man is not indeed aware of this because he is held back by restraints he knows little about. But to the extent these restraints, as has been stated, are removed he very rapidly does the same. This I have been given to know from much experience in the next life. Because these things lie concealed within self-love, people governed by self-love and not endowed with the restraints of conscience, more than all others hate the Lord, and thus hate all the truths of faith, since these are the very laws of order in the Lord's kingdom. Such people dislike these laws so much as to loathe them, and this also shows itself openly in the next life. This love is also the head of the serpent which the seed of the woman, that is, the Lord, treads down, regarding which see Volume One, in 257.
[5] But self-love does not always present itself outwardly in arrogance and pride, for sometimes such people are able to regard the neighbour with charity. Some people are born with this outwardly charitable disposition, while others acquire it during childhood years, but after this it is subdued, though the outward disposition does still remain. But those governed by self-love are such as despise others and regard them as nothing in comparison with themselves. Nor do they have any concern whatever for the common good unless this exists for their benefit, they themselves being so to speak the common good. This applies especially to those who hate and persecute everyone who does not show them favour or serve them, and as far as possible they rob such persons of possessions, honour, reputation, and even life. Let those who behave intentionally in these ways realize that with them pre-eminently self-love is present.
Arcana Coelestia 2327
[2] By these actions they represented a state of true humility, which can in no way exist unless people acknowledge that of themselves they are profane and condemned, and so of themselves are incapable of looking towards the Lord where everything is Divine and Holy. To the extent therefore that a person acknowledges his own condition he can possess true humility, and when engaged in worship can have real devotion. For all worship must contain humility, and if separated from it no adoration and so no worship at all is present.
[3] The reason a state of humility is vital to worship itself is that insofar as the heart is humbled self-love and all resulting evil come to an end; and insofar as these come to an end good and truth, that is, charity and faith, flow in from the Lord. For what above all else stands in the way of their being received is self-love. Indeed within self-love there lies contempt for all others in comparison with oneself; there lies hatred and revenge if one is not venerated most highly; and there lies mercilessness and cruelty within it, and thus the worst evils of all into which good and truth cannot possibly be introduced, since they are completely opposite.
Arcana Coelestia 4750
Celestial love consists in love to the Lord and from this in love towards the neighbour. Those governed by this love are the ones who are the most closely joined to the Lord and therefore they live in the inmost heaven, and in a state of innocence there. This being so, they are seen by all others as small children, and entirely as visual forms of love. No one else can go near them, and therefore when they are sent to others they are surrounded by other angels, through whom the sphere of love emanating from them is moderated. If not moderated this sphere would cause those to whom they have been sent to faint, for the sphere of their love penetrates even to one's marrow.
[2] Since this love, that is, this form of the good of love, which is called celestial, is represented in the good sense by 'Judah', he therefore represents in the contrary sense the kind of thing that is the opposite of celestial good, and so is opposed to any good whatever. Most things in the Word have two meanings - a good one, and another contrary to this. The good meaning they have enables one to see the nature of their contrary one, for things in the contrary sense are the direct opposite of whatever are meant in the good sense.
[3] Each form of the good of love falls in general into one of two categories - the good of celestial love and the good of spiritual love. The opposite of the good of celestial love is in the contrary sense the evil of self-love, and the opposite of the good of spiritual love is in the contrary sense the evil of love of the world. Those governed by the evil of self-love are opposed to all good whatever, but those governed by the evil of love of the world less so. In the Word 'Judah' in the contrary sense represents those who are governed by self- love, while 'Israel' in the contrary sense represents those who are governed by love of the world, the reason being that 'Judah' represented the Lord's celestial kingdom, and 'Israel' his spiritual kingdom.
[4] The hells too are distinguished in accordance with those two loves. Spirits governed by self-love, being opposed to all good whatever, are in the deepest and consequently the most dreadful hells, whereas those governed by love of the world, being less opposed to all good whatever, are in hells not quite so deep and consequently less dreadful ones.
[5] The evil of self-love is not, as people commonly regard it, the display of superiority which is called arrogance; rather, it is hatred against the neighbour and a resulting burning desire for revenge and a delight in cruelty. These are the more internal features of self-love. Its more external features are contempt for others in comparison with oneself and an aversion to those in whom spiritual good is present. These more external features of it are sometimes accompanied by a manifest display of superiority or arrogance, sometimes they are not. For anyone who hates his neighbour in that fashion loves solely himself inwardly, and only any others whom he regards to be at unity with him, so that they are part of him and he is part of them, solely for the sake of his own selfish ends.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 7369
To the extent that a person is immersed in self-love he departs from love of the neighbour; consequently to the extent that a person is immersed in self-love he departs from heaven, for heaven is filled with love of the neighbour. From this it also follows that to the extent that a person is immersed in self-love he is in hell, for hell is filled with self-love.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 7376
From all this it may now be seen that those two kinds of love are the sources of all evils, for they are diametrically opposed to love towards the neighbour and love to the Lord. Accordingly they are diametrically opposed to heaven, where love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour reign. Consequently those kinds of love - self-love and love of the world - are what constitute hell with a person; for in hell these two kinds of love are what reign.
Arcana Coelestia 10533
people whose interest lies in external things and not in what is internal, and so who are ruled by self-love and love of the world, are utterly incapable of receiving anything Divine. For that reason their internal is kept closed. If their internal were opened and what is Divine were to flow in they would be completely destroyed, since their life consists of self-love and love of the world, and unceasing opposition and repugnance exists between these loves and heavenly loves, heavenly loves consisting in what is Divine. Consequently their life would be snuffed out by anything Divine flowing in.
Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 272
There is still another reason, beyond the ones already given, why angels can accept so much wisdom, a reason that in heaven is actually the primary one. It is that they are free of any selfishness; for to the extent that people are free of selfishness they can be wise in divine matters. Selfishness is what closes off our deeper natures from the Lord and heaven and opens our outer natures and turns them toward ourselves. So all people in whom that selfish love predominates are in the depths of darkness as far as heavenly realities are concerned, no matter how much light they may enjoy in regard to worldly matters. In contrast, since angels are free of that love, they enjoy the light of wisdom. The heavenly loves in which they are centered-love for the Lord and love for their neighbor-open the deeper levels because these loves come from the Lord and the Lord himself is within them.
Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 401
As long as people who are caught up in the love for themselves and the world are living in the body, they feel the pleasure that stems from those loves and the pleasure of the gratifications that result from those loves. As long as people who are focused on love for God and love for their neighbor are living in the body, though, they have no obvious sense of the pleasure that stems from those loves and from the good affections that arise from them. All they feel is a sense of well-being that is barely perceptible because it is hidden away in their deeper natures, veiled by the outer sensations of their bodies and dulled by the cares of this world. Our state changes completely after death, however. Then the pleasures of love for ourselves and the world turn into painful and fearful sensations because within them is what we call hellfire, and also into foul and unclean things that answer to their filthy gratifications-all of which, remarkably enough, are now quite delightful to them.
In contrast, the faint sense of pleasure, the almost imperceptible sense of well-being that was found in people who were focused on love for God and love for their neighbor in the world, turns into the pleasure of heaven, perceptible and palpable in countless ways. That sense of well-being that had been lying hidden in their deeper natures while they lived in the world is now unveiled and released into open sensation, because now they are in the spirit, and this was the delight of their spirit.
Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 556
Love for oneself is intending well to oneself alone, not to others except for the sake of oneself-not the church, the country, or any human community. It is helping them solely for the sake of one's own reputation and rank and glory. Unless these can be seen in the services we offer, we are saying at heart, "What difference does it make? Why should I? What's in it for me?" So we forget it. We can see from this that people who are absorbed in a love for themselves do not love their church or country or community or any constructive activity. They love only themselves. Their only pleasure lies in self-gratification; and since the pleasure that stems from love constitutes human life, their life is a life of self. A life of self is a life that depends on what we claim as our own, and in its own right what we claim as our own is nothing but evil.
People who love themselves do love their own as well, their own being specifically their children and grandchildren and more broadly all who ally with them, whom they call "their own people." Loving both the former and the latter is actually loving themselves, because they regard the others as though they were in themselves, and focus on themselves in others. These "others" who are claimed as their own include everyone who praises and reveres and worships them.
Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 557
We can gather what love for oneself is like by comparing it to heavenly love. Heavenly love is loving constructive activity for its own sake, or loving for their own sake the worthwhile things we do for our church, our country, the human community, and our fellow citizens. This is really loving God and loving our neighbor, since all constructive activities and all worthwhile actions come from God and are the neighbor whom we are to love. In contrast, people who love these activities for the sake of self love them only as slaves who wait on them. It follows that people devoted to a love for themselves want their church, their country, the human community, and their fellow citizens to be their servants rather than wanting to serve them. They station themselves above these neighbors and put them down. So to the extent that people are devoted to a love for themselves, they move themselves away from heaven because they move themselves away from heavenly love.
Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 558
558a. Further, to the extent that we are engaged in heavenly love-which is loving constructive and worthwhile activities and being moved by heartfelt pleasure when we provide them to our church, our country, the human community, and our fellow citizens-we are being led by the Lord because this is the love he is in and the love that comes from him. However, to the extent that we focus on love for ourselves-doing constructive and worthwhile things for our own sakes-we are leading ourselves; and to the extent that we lead ourselves, we are not being led by the Lord. Again, then, it follows that the more we love ourselves, the more we move away from the Divine and also from heaven.
Being led by self is being led by what we claim as our own, and what we claim as our own is nothing but evil. It is actually our evil heredity, which involves loving ourselves more than God and the world more than heaven.
We are completely absorbed in our self-image and therefore in our hereditary evil whenever we focus on ourselves in anything worthwhile we are doing, for we are focusing on ourselves and away from what is good and not on what is good and away from ourselves. So in the worthwhile activities we set up an image of ourselves and not an image of the Divine. I have been assured of this by experience as well. There are evil spirits who live halfway between the north and the west, underneath the heavens, who are particularly skilled at getting upright spirits involved in their self-image and therefore focused on various kinds of evil. They do this by getting them absorbed in thinking about themselves, either openly by words of praise and esteem or covertly by focusing their feelings exclusively on themselves. To the extent that they succeed, they turn the faces of the upright people away from heaven and also becloud their understanding, calling up evils from their self-concern.
558b. If you look at their origins and essences, you can see that love for oneself and love of one's neighbor are opposites. In people who are wrapped up in love for themselves, love of their neighbor begins from self. They claim that everyone is her or his own neighbor; and from this as a center they reach out to all who ally with them, with progressively less intensity depending on the love that unites the others with them. They regard people outside this group as worthless, and people who offer opposition to them and their evildoing they regard as enemies. It does not matter what they are actually like, whether they are wise or upright or honest or fair.
A spiritual love of their neighbor, though, begins with the Lord, and spreads out from him as its center to all who are united to him by love and faith. Its spread depends on the quality of their love and faith.
We can see from this that a love of our neighbor that begins with ourselves is the opposite of a love of our neighbor that begins with the Lord. The former comes from evil because it comes from what we claim as our own; while the latter comes from what is good because it comes from the Lord, who is good itself. We can also see that a love of our neighbor that comes from us and from our self-image is a physical love, while a love of our neighbor that comes from the Lord is heavenly.
In a word, when we are absorbed in love for ourselves it constitutes our head, and heavenly love constitutes the feet we stand on. If heavenly love does not serve us, we trample it underfoot. This is why people who are being thrown into hell look as though they are diving in headfirst, with their heads down and their feet toward heaven (see above, 548).
Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 559
By nature, self-love runs wild to the extent that its reins are loosened, that is, to the extent that the outward restraints constituted by fears of the law and its penalties, fears of losing reputation, esteem, profit, position, and life are taken away. It runs wild even to the extent of wanting to rule not only over the whole globe but even over all heaven and the Lord himself. It knows no bound or limit. This is latent in everyone who is focused on self-love even though it may not show in the world, where the restraints we have mentioned hold it back.
We cannot fail to see this in people in power and kings who are not held back by any such restraints. They run wild and conquer as many territories and kingdoms as they can and aspire to boundless power and glory. This is even clearer in the modern Babylon, which extends its control into heaven and transfers all the Lord's divine power to itself and even craves more.
The reader may see in the booklet Last Judgment that people like this are diametrically opposed to the Divine and to heaven and that they favor hell when they arrive in the other life after death.
Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 560
Picture a community made up of people like this, all totally in love with themselves, not caring about others unless they are allies, and you will see that their love is no different from that of thieves for each other. To the extent that they are acting in concert, they embrace each other and call each other friends; but once they stop cooperating, once anyone resists their control, they attack and butcher each other. If their deeper natures-their minds-are probed, it will be clear that they are full of virulent hatred for each other, that at heart they ridicule anything fair and honest and even ridicule the Deity, tossing it aside as worthless. This comes out even more clearly from their communities in the hells, which will be described below.
Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 561
The deeper levels of the thoughts and affections of people who love themselves above all are turned toward themselves and the world-and are turned away, therefore, from the Lord and heaven. This is why such people fall prey to all kinds of evil and why the divine nature cannot flow in. It is because the moment it does flow in, it is submerged in thoughts about self and polluted, and is saturated with evils that arise from their self-centeredness. This is why they all look away from the Lord in the other life, toward the gloom that occupies the site of our world's sun there and is directly across from heaven's sun, which is the Lord (see 123 above). Darkness means evil, and our world's sun means self-love.
Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 562
In broad terms, the evils characteristic of people focused on love for themselves are contempt for others; envy; enmity toward anyone who is not on their side, and a consequent hostility; various kinds of hatred; vengefulness; craft; deceit; callousness; and cruelty. In religious matters, this extends not only to a contempt for the Divine and for the divine gifts that are the true and good elements of the church; it extends also to anger at such things, an anger that turns into hatred when we become spirits. Then not only can we not stand hearing about these matters, we blaze with hatred against everyone who acknowledges and worships the Divine.
I talked with one man who had been in power in the world and loved himself far too much. When he simply heard the Divine mentioned-especially when he heard the Lord named-he was so struck by angry hatred that he was consumed with thoughts of murder. When the reins of his love were loosened, he even wanted to be the devil himself in order to satisfy his love by ceaseless attacks on heaven. Many individuals of the papal religion feel this desire in the other life when they realize that the Lord has all power and that they have none.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Rogers) n. 396
As for the love of self and love of the world being hellish loves, and why people could come into them and so destroy in themselves the will and intellect, the reason is that the love of self and love of the world are from creation heavenly loves, being loves of the natural self serving spiritual loves, as foundations serve for the building of houses. For it is owing to his love of self and the world that a person is concerned for his physical well-being and that he endeavors to be properly nourished, clothed and housed, to take care of his household, to seek employments in order to be useful, indeed to be held in honor in accordance with the status of the business that he administers for the sake of being obeyed, and also to be entertained and recreated by delights of the world-yet all of these for the sake of an end, which ought to be useful service. For through these endeavors he is in a state to serve the Lord and to serve the neighbor. However, when he has no love of serving the Lord and serving the neighbor, and only a love of serving himself for the sake of the world, then that love from being heavenly becomes hellish; for it causes the person to immerse his mind and his heart in his own native self, which in itself is completely evil.
Divine Providence (Dole) n. 83
The reason no one can enter heaven without being born again is that we are involved in all kinds of evil through what we inherit from our parents; we also inherit an ability to become spiritual by the removal of those evils. Unless we do become spiritual, we cannot enter heaven; and changing from being earthly to being spiritual is being reborn or regenerated.
If we are to understand how we are regenerated, though, we need to keep three things in mind, namely, the nature of our first state, a state of damnation; the nature of our second state, a state of reformation; and the nature of our third state, a state of regeneration.
[2] Our first state, the state of damnation, is the one we get from our parents by heredity. Each of us is born with a predilection to love ourselves and the world, and subject to all kinds of evil that have these forms of love as their wellspring. It is the pleasures of these loves that guide us; and they render us unaware of our involvement in evils. This is because every pleasure that stems from love simply feels good to us. Unless we are regenerated, then, all we know is that loving ourselves and the world more than anything else is goodness itself, and dominating others and possessing all their wealth is the greatest good there is.
This, too, is where all evil comes from, since we do not focus on anyone but ourselves out of love. If we do focus on someone else out of love, it is the way one demon focuses on another or one thief on another when they are cooperating.
[3] If we justify these loves within ourselves and the evils that spring from them because of the pleasure they give us, then we remain bound by the material world and become imprisoned in our physical senses. In our own thinking, the thinking of our spirits, we are insane. As long as we are in this world, though, we can talk and act rationally and wisely, because we are human and therefore have rationality and freedom. However, we are doing all this out of our love for ourselves and the world.
After death, when we become spirits, we are capable of no pleasure except that which we felt in our spirits in this world. This is the pleasure of hellish love, which turns into the profound and agonizing pain that the Word refers to as the torment and fire of hell. We can see from this that our first state is one of damnation, and that we are in this state if we do not let ourselves be regenerated.
[4] Our second state, the state of reformation, starts when we begin to think about heaven in terms of its joy and therefore to think about God as the one who gives us heavenly joy. At first our thinking is prompted by the pleasure we find in self-love, and heavenly joy is that kind of pleasure for us. As long as the pleasure from that love and the pleasure we find in the evils that arise from it are in control, though, we can only think that we get to heaven by pouring out prayers, listening to sermons, taking communion, giving to the poor and helping the needy, contributing to churches, supporting hospices, and the like. In this state, all we know is that salvation comes by thinking about what our religion teaches us, whether that is what we call faith or whether it is what we call faith and charity.
The reason we are totally convinced that thinking about these things saves us is that we are not thinking about the evils that give us pleasure, and as long as these pleasures are with us, so are the evils themselves. Their pleasures come from our impulses toward them, impulses that constantly crave them and make them happen whenever some fear does not prevent it.
[5] As long as these evils stay in the compulsions of our love and their pleasures, the only faith or charity or devotion or worship we have is on the surface. They seem to the world to be real, but they are not. We might compare them to waters from a polluted spring, waters that are undrinkable.
As long as our nature leads us to think about heaven and God as matters of religion and not to think at all about evils as sins, we are still in the first state. We reach the second state, the state of reformation, when we begin to think that there is such a thing as a sin, and especially when we identify some particular thing as a sin, and when we look into it in ourselves, even briefly, and do not want to do it.
[6] Our third state, the state of regeneration, picks up on this prior state and carries the process further. It begins when we stop doing wrong things because they are sins, advances as we abstain from them, and becomes complete as we fight against them. Then, as we overcome in the Lord's strength, we are regenerated.
When we are regenerated, the whole pattern of our life is inverted. We become spiritual instead of earthly, since what is earthly is contrary to the divine design when it is separated from what is spiritual, and what is spiritual is in keeping with the divine design. The result is that when we have been regenerated, we act out of thoughtfulness and make the elements of that thoughtfulness part of our faith.
Still, we are spiritual only to the extent that we are attentive to what is true, since everyone is regenerated by means of truths and through living by them. It is truths that enable us to know what life is, and life that enables us to practice truths. This is how goodness and truth are united in the spiritual marriage where we find heaven.
Divine Providence (Dole) n. 215
1. Temporal matters involve eminence and wealth, and therefore rank and money, in this world. There are a great many temporal matters, but they all boil down to eminence and wealth. By "temporal matters" I mean things that either die off in time or simply cease when our life on earth is over. By "eternal matters" I mean things that do not die off and stop either in time or at the end of our life on earth.
Since all these temporal matters boil down to eminence and wealth, as just noted, it is important to know the following things: what eminence and wealth are and where they come from; the nature of a love of them for their own sake and the nature of a love of them for the sake of service; and that the difference between them is like the difference between heaven and hell, a distinction of loves that most people find difficult to recognize. But let me discuss these one at a time.
[2] (a) What eminence and wealth are and where they come from. Eminence and wealth were very different in the earliest times from what they gradually became later. In the earliest times, eminence involved simply the relationships between parents and children. It was an eminence of love, full of profound respect, not for parents as the source of birth but for parents as the source of teaching and wisdom, which constitute a second birth, essentially a spiritual one, because it is a birth of their spirit. This was the only kind of eminence in the earliest times, because people were living separately in tribes, families, and households then and not under governments the way we are today. The head of the clan was the one with the eminence. The ancients called this period the Golden Age.
[3] Later, though, a love of being in power simply for the pleasures of power gradually took over; and since it brought with it belligerence and enmity against anyone who was not willing to submit, people necessarily gathered their tribes, families, and households into alliances and appointed someone who was at first called a judge, then a prince, and eventually a king and an emperor. They also began fortifications--towers, earthworks, and walls. From these judges, princes, kings, and emperors, as from a head into the body, the craving for power spread like a contagious disease to the many. This was the beginning of grades of eminence and of corresponding grades of respect. Love for themselves accompanied all this, and pride in human prudence.
[4] Much the same happened with the love for wealth. In the earliest times, when tribes and families lived separately from each other, a love for wealth meant nothing more than having the necessities of life. People acquired these in the form of flocks and herds and in the form of the fields, pastures, and gardens that provided them with food. Their necessities of life also included attractive homes furnished with all kinds of utensils and clothing. The parents, children, servants, and maids in a home were busily engaged with all this.
[5] After a love for being in power took over and destroyed this commonwealth, though, a love for possessing wealth beyond the limits of need took over, culminating in a desire to possess the wealth of everyone else.
These two loves are close relatives. People who want to control others also want to own everything, because this makes others their servants and makes themselves the sole masters. We can see this clearly in those individuals in Catholicism who have exalted their lordship all the way into heaven, to the very throne of the Lord, and have placed themselves upon it. We can see it also in their acquisition of all the wealth in the world and filling their treasuries without limit.
[6] (b) The nature of a love of eminence and wealth for their own sake and the nature of a love of them for the sake of service. A love of eminence and wealth for their own sake is a love for ourselves--strictly speaking, a love of being in control that arises from self-love; and a love of wealth and money for their own sake is a love for this world--strictly speaking, a love of gaining ownership of what belongs to others by fair means or foul. However, a love of eminence and wealth for the sake of service is a love of service. This is the same as a love for our neighbor, since the purpose of our actions is the goal that prompts them. It is the first and primary element, and everything else is intermediate and secondary.
[7] As for a love of eminence and wealth for their own sake (which is identical to love for ourselves, or strictly speaking, to a love of being in control that arises from self-love), it is a love for our own self-importance, and our sense of self-importance is wholly evil. That is why we say that we are born into utter evil and that what we inherit is nothing but evil. What we inherit is the sense of self that encompasses us and that we participate in by virtue of our self-love--especially by our love of being in control because of our self-love. This is because when we are wrapped up in this love we are totally focused on ourselves and therefore immerse our thoughts and feelings in our own sense of self-importance. As a result, within our self-love there is a love of doing harm because we have no love for our neighbor, only for ourselves. When we love only ourselves, we see others only as outside ourselves, either as completely worthless or as simply nothing. We regard them as inferior to ourselves and think nothing of doing them harm. [8] This is why people who are possessed by a love of being in control because of their self-love think nothing of cheating their neighbors, committing adultery with their neighbors' spouses, slandering their neighbors, plotting vengeance and even murder, torturing their neighbors, and the like. We get these attitudes from the fact that the devil itself is nothing but a love of being in control because of self-love, and we are united to and being led by the devil. When we are being led by the devil, by hell, that is, we are being led into all these evils. We are constantly being led by the pleasures of these evils, which is why all the people who are in hell want to harm everyone, while the people who are in heaven want to help everyone.
From this opposition there arises an intermediate space where we are. We are in a kind of balance in this space so that we can turn either toward hell or toward heaven. As we approve of the evils of self-love we turn toward hell; as we banish them from ourselves we turn toward heaven.
[9] I have been allowed to feel the nature and strength of the pleasure of a love of being in control because of self-love. I was plunged into it in order to know it from experience, and it was so intense that it transcended all the pleasures in the world. It took over my whole mind from center to surface, while in my body it felt congenial and gratifying, a free expansion of my chest. I was also allowed to feel that the pleasures of all kinds of evil deeds bubbled up from it like water from a spring, pleasures in adultery, vengeance, fraud, and slander--in general, pleasures in doing harm.
There is a similar pleasure in the love of possessing what belongs to others by fair means or foul, and this pleasure gives rise to various compulsions that branch off from it. However, it is not so intense unless it is united to self-love.
As for eminence and wealth not for their own sake but for the sake of service, though, this is not a love of eminence and wealth but a love of service, with the eminence and wealth functioning as means. This is a heavenly love, which will be more fully discussed later [217].
[10] (c) The difference between these two loves is like the difference between heaven and hell. This should be clear from what has already been said, to which I may add the following. In spirit, all the people who are caught up in a love of being in control because of their self-love are in hell. It does not matter who they are, whether they are prominent people or ordinary folk. All the people who are caught up in this love are caught up also in a love for all kinds of evil deeds. If they do not actually commit them, they still believe in their spirits that there is nothing wrong with them and therefore do them physically whenever their own eminence and respect, or a fear of the law, does not get in the way.
Beyond this, though, at the center of a love of being in control because of self-love lies a hidden hatred of God and therefore a hatred of the divine values of the church, especially a hatred of the Lord. If they do acknowledge God, it is nothing but words; and if they acknowledge the divine values of the church, it is simply from a fear of losing respect. The reason this hatred of God lies hidden deeply within is that at the center of this love there is a desire to be God, a worship and reverence of no one but themselves. This is why there is a heartfelt love for anyone who respects them to the point of saying that they have divine wisdom and are worldly demigods.
[11] It is different with a love of eminence and wealth for the sake of service. This is a heavenly love because it is the same as a love for our neighbor, as just noted.
"Service" means good actions, so performing services means doing good things; and performing services or doing good things means helping others and serving them. Even though the people who are doing this are eminent and wealthy, they still do not regard their eminence and wealth as anything but means to being helpful and therefore means to service and ministry. These are the people meant by the Lord's statement, "Whoever of you wants to be great, must be your servant; whoever of you wants to be first must be your slave" (Matthew 20:26, 27). These are also the people whom the Lord entrusts with authority in heaven. For them, authority is a means of helping or doing good, that is, of serving; and when services or good actions are the goals or the loves, then it is not they who are in authority but the Lord, because everything good comes from him.
[12] (d) This is a distinction of loves that most people find difficult to recognize. This is because most people of eminence and wealth also do helpful things, but without realizing whether they are doing them for the sake of themselves or for the sake of service. It is particularly hard to tell because there is more fire and passion for service in people who love themselves and the world than there is in people who are not caught up in love for themselves and the world. Yet the first are doing helpful things for the sake of their reputation or for profit and therefore for selfish reasons. In contrast, people who are being of service for the sake of service, or doing good for the sake of the goodness itself, are not acting on their own but from the Lord.
[13] It is hard for us to tell the difference because we do not know whether we are being led by the devil or by the Lord. When we are being led by the devil, we are helpful for the sake of ourselves and the world, but when we are being led by the Lord, we are being helpful for the sake of the Lord and heaven. All the people whose helpfulness comes from the Lord are people who are abstaining from evils as sins, while all the people whose helpfulness comes from the devil are people who are not abstaining from evils as sins. Evil comes from the devil, but service, or doing good, comes from the Lord. This is the only way to tell the difference. They look alike outwardly, but their inward form is completely different. One is like a golden object that has slag inside, while the other is like a golden object that is pure gold all the way through. One is like a piece of artificial fruit that looks outwardly like fruit from a tree but actually is colored wax with powder or tar inside, while the other is like fine fruit, appealingly delicious and fragrant, with its seeds within.
Divine Providence 233
[5] Further, the essential pleasure of our life is to love ourselves and the world more than anything else. This pleasure cannot be taken away instantly, only gradually; and to the extent that any of this pleasure stays with us, evil is stronger. The only way this evil can be taken away is for our love for ourselves to become a love of service, or for our love of power for our own sake to become a love of power for the sake of service. This makes service the head and for the first time makes love for ourselves, or for power, the body beneath the head, and eventually the feet we walk on. Can anyone fail to see that goodness should be the head, and that when it is, the Lord is present? Goodness and service are the same thing. Can anyone fail to see that if evil is the head, the devil is present, and that since we still need to accept some civic and moral good and even some outward form of spiritual good, these are our feet and their soles, and are trodden down?
[6] Our state of life has to be inverted, then, so that what is on top is on the bottom, and this inversion cannot be accomplished instantly. What gives us the most pleasure of all is what comes from our love for ourselves and therefore for power; and this fades and turns into a love of service only gradually. So the Lord cannot introduce goodness before this evil is removed, or to a greater extent than it is removed. If he did, then we would backslide from the goodness and return to our evil.
[7] (d) When we are absorbed in evil, much that is true can be introduced into our minds and stored in our memory without being profaned. This is because our discernment does not flow into our volition but our volition does flow into our discernment; and since our discernment does not flow into our volition, all kinds of truths can be accepted into our minds and stored in our memories without becoming mixed in with the evils in our volition; so sacred things are not profaned. It is up to us to learn truths from the Word or from sermons, to store them in memory, and to think about them. Our discernment then draws on these truths in our memory, truths we have thought about, to teach our volition, that is, to tell us what we should do. This is our primary means of reformation. As long as these truths are only in our discernment and therefore in our memory, they are not really in us but are outside of us.
Who (or What) is Swedenborg?
The ideas on this site are based on the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th-century Swedish scientist and theologian. Swedenborg claimed that his religious writings, the sole focus of the last three decades of his life, were done at the behest of the Lord himself, and constituted a revelation for a successor to the Christian Church.
In keeping with Swedenborg’s own statements, modern believers downplay his role as author, attributing the ideas to the Lord instead. For this reason they generally refer to Swedenborg’s theological works as “the Writings,” and some resist the label “Swedenborgian” as placing emphasis on the man rather than the message.
Since “the Writings” would be an unfamiliar term to new readers, we have elected to use the name “Swedenborg” as a label for those theological works, much as we might use “Isaiah” or “Matthew” to refer to books of the Bible. The intent, however, is not to attribute the ideas to Swedenborg, any more than we would attribute the divinity of the Bible to Isaiah the man or Matthew the man.
So when you read “according to Swedenborg” on this site, it’s really shorthand for “according to the theological works from the Lord through Swedenborg.” When you read “Swedenborg says,” it’s really shorthand for “the theological works of Swedenborg say.”