As human beings, we get stuck all the time in conflicts between
what we want and what we know. We want to eat that extra piece of pie, but we know over-eating is bad for us. We want to just keep the extra groceries the cashier missed when he was scanning items, but we know it wouldn’t be honest. We’re flattered when the cute new co-worker acts flirtatious, but we know we shouldn’t even play around with anything that could cause us to think outside of marriage.
So the idea that there’s part of us that wants and feels and another part that thinks and knows is not exactly new. But according to Swedenborg, those two parts of us are extremely important, both reflecting the essential duality of the Lord and also making it possible for us to accept the Lord’s love and go to heaven.
That all starts – as everything in Swedenborg does – with the idea that the Lord is love itself, perfect, all-powerful and infinite. That love takes form as wisdom itself, and through his wisdom the Lord can pour his love out on all of us constantly, expressed as ideas that we can grasp and use. So love is the Lord’s “wanting, feeling” part and wisdom is his “thinking, knowing” part.
The Lord’s deepest desire is for us to open our wanting, feeling part – which Swedenborg calls “the will” -- to his love, and to opening our thinking, knowing part – which Swedenborg calls “the understanding” – to his wisdom. That way he can fill us with life and be conjoined to us, bringing us all joy and delight in heaven.
But the Lord also created us to be free, and the only way to do that was to open our wills to evil loves as well as good ones. That’s why we are, from our beginnings, so beset by the desire to be selfish, to be greedy, to look out for ourselves and please ourselves above all else.
But the Lord also gave us a mechanism to overcome that selfishness. Our understanding – our ability to think – operates separately from our will. That means we can use our understanding to gather ideas about what is right and good and loving, and can force ourselves to act on them even though they run contrary to our desires. This is, in fact, the great task we face in life.
What the Lord promises, though, is this: If we do that work from a desire to be good people, he will step in and slowly start removing our evil loves so that his perfect love can flow in. It’s a long process – lifelong, actually – but the results are priceless. When our will is cleared of evil and becomes a receptacle for the Lord, then our understanding becomes wisdom and our will becomes love. Then, instead of acting from what we know and over-riding what we want, we can act from love, with the love given form through wisdom. That is the life of angels, and the life of heaven.
Passages from Swedenborg
Divine Love (Whitehead) n. 18
XVIII.
THE WILLOF MAN IS HIS AFFECTION.
The will of man is his affection for the reason that the will of man isthe receptacle of his love and the understanding the receptacle of his wisdom; and that which is the receptacle of love is also thereceptacle of all affections, because affections are merely continuations and derivations of love, as has been said above. It is called the receptacle of love because love cannot be given with man except in a recipient form which is substantial; without such a form love would have no ability to effect, to reciprocate, and thereby to be permanent. This recipient form might be described, but this is not the place for it. It is from this that the will is called the receptacle of love.
[2] That the will is man's all, and is in all things of man, and thus is the man himself, as love in its whole complex is the man, is evident from this:-As to anything pertaining to his love or affection, and in fact to his life, man speaks of willing, as that be wills to act, wills to speak, wills to think, wills to perceive. The will is in all of these things; and if it were not in them man could not act, could not speak, could not think, could not perceive; and if the will were not present in the particular and most particular things of these operations, they would instantly cease; for the will is in them as thesoul or life is in the body and in every least particular of it. In place of will, one can say love, as that one loves to do, to speak, to think, to perceive. In like manner of the external senses of the body it is said that one wills to see, wills to hear, wills to eat, drink, and taste, wills to smell, also wills to walk, to associate with others, to seek amusement, and so on. In each one of these the will is the active force; for if it should be withdrawn there would instantly be a stop; and in fact these operations are suspended by the will.
[3] That the will is man's love in form is clearly evident from this, that every enjoyment, pleasure, pleasantness, satisfaction and bliss which belong to man's love are so felt and perceived; and that these belong to the will is plain, since whatever is enjoyable, pleasurable, pleasant, satisfactory and blissful, this also man wills; and he says of them that he wills them. Man speaks in like manner of good and truth; for that which he loves he calls good, thereby making it to be of his will; and what confirms the good of his love or of his will he calls truth, and this he loves, and wills to think and speak of. Again, in respect to everything that a man wishes, solicits, longs for, strives for, seeks, and intends, he says that he wills all these since they pertain to his love; for he wills what he wishes because he loves it; he wills what he solicits or longs for because he loves it; he wills what he strives for and seeks because he loves it; and he wills what he purposes, and he purposes it because he loves. From all this it can be seen that the will and the love or the will and the affection are one with man; and that the will, because it is the love, is also the life, and is the man himself. That the will is also the life of man's understanding and of his thought therefrom will be shown in what follows.
[4] Man does not know that the will is the man himself, forthe same reason that he does not know that the love or affection isthe man himself. Moreover, every one gives attention to those things that he sees or feels, but not to the life, the soul, or the essence from which be sees or feels; this lies concealed within the things pertaining to sensation, and the thought of the natural man does not go so far as that; but it is otherwise with the spiritual man, for theobject of his wisdom is not the sense-plane, but the essential that is in it, which in itself is spiritual. It is in consequence of this that many say that thought is the all of man, and is the very man, that is, that man is man because he thinks; and yet the all of his thought is affection. Take away affection from thought, and you will be but a stock. A man who is rational from what is spiritual, who knows what is good and what is true, and thus what is evil and what is false, may know from what has been said what his affections are and what his reigning affection is; for there are as many indications of them as there are delights of thought, speech, action, sight, hearing, and as many as there are ambitions, desires, and intentions. He needs only to attend and reflect.
Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 7179
There are two faculties in man, one is called the understanding, and the other the will; the will has been given man for the sake of the good which is of love, and the understanding for the sake of the truth which is of faith; for the good which is of love has relation to the will, and the truth which is of faith has relation to the understanding; theone faculty communicates in a wonderful way with the other. They join themselves together in those who are in good and thence in truth; and they also join themselves together in those who are in evil and thence in falsity; with both classes these two faculties make one mind. But it is otherwise with those who are in truth as to faith, and in evil as to life; and also with those who are in falsity as to faith, and in apparent good as to life.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Rogers) n. 399
(1) Love or the will is a person's very life. This follows from the correspondence of the heart with the will, as discussed in nos. 378-381 above; for as the heart functions in the body, so the willdoes in the mind. Moreover, as all the constituents of the body depend for their existence and motion on the heart, so all the constituents of the mind depend for their existence and life on the will. We say on the will, but we mean on love, because the will is therecipient vessel of love, and love is life itself (see nos. 1-3 above), and love which is life itself comes from the Lord alone.
It can be known from the heart and its extension throughout the body by means of the arteries and veins that love or the will is a person's life, because things that correspond to each other function similarly, with the difference that one is natural and the other spiritual.
[2] How the heart functions in the body is apparent from the study of anatomy, as for example, that everything is alive or is responsive to life where the heart operates through vessels issuing from it, and that everything is lifeless where the heart does not operate through its vessels. Moreover, the heart is also the first and last organ to function in the body. Its being the first is clear from fetuses, and its being the last is clear from people dying; and that it functions without the concomitant operation of the lungs is clear from cases of suffocation and fainting.
It can be seen from this that as the subsidiary life of the body depends on the heart alone, so likewise does the life of the mind depend on the will alone, and that the will likewise continues to live if thought ceases, as the heart does if respiration ceases-as is also apparent from fetuses, from people dying, and from cases of suffocation and fainting.
It follows from this that love or the will is a person's very life.
True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 397
397
1. The will and the intellect.
(a) There are two faculties that constitute our life. One is called the will, the other the intellect. They are distinct from each other, yet they were created to be one. When they are one, they are called "the mind." Therefore they are the human mind, where all of our life has its first beginnings, from which life then comes into our body.
(b) Just as everything in the universe - everything that is in the divine design - relates to goodness and truth, so everything in us relates to our will and our intellect. Goodness in us belongs to our will and truth in us belongs to our intellect. In fact, these two faculties or "lives" within us are vessels and abodes for goodness and truth. Our will is the vessel and abode for all things related to goodness, and our intellect is the vessel and abode for all things related to truth. Forms of good and truth exist nowhere else inside us. And since forms of good and truth exist nowhere else, love and faith do not exist anywhere else either, since love relates to goodness and goodness relates to love, and faith relates to truth and truth relates to faith.
(c) The will and the intellect also constitute our spirit. That is where our wisdom and intelligence, our love and goodwill, and our life in general reside. The body is merely an obedient servant.
(d) Nothing is more important to know than how the will and the intellect become a single mind. They become a single mind the way goodness and truth become one. The marriage between the will and the intellect is in fact similar to the marriage between goodness and truth. As will be shown in the next passage, which concerns goodness and truth, the nature of this marriage is that goodness is the underlying reality of a thing and truth is the resulting manifestation of the thing. Therefore in us our will is the underlying reality of our life and our intellect is the resulting manifestation of our life, because the goodness in our will takes shape and presents itself to be seen in our intellect.
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.”