How Trustworthy is Swedenborg?

This post is rooted in the mundane—my waking up this morning, unusually refreshed. Then came the thought: I wonder if we sleep in the next world? I certainly hope so. We so need those periods of non-existence. In turn came the thought: Do angels sleep? Swedenborg said that they do, sort of. They have cycles. Indeed they also have houses. The venerable Swede says, in Chapter XXI of Heaven and Hell, “Their dwellings are just like dwellings on earth which we call homes, except that they are more beautiful. They have rooms, suites, and bedrooms, all in abundance. They have courtyards, and are surrounded by gardens, flowerbeds, and lawns.” [§ 184]. Then came to mind the title to this post: Yes. But how trustworthy is Swedenborg?

Even to talk about that—except dismissively—one has to credit the possibility that another world exists and one that is, furthermore, in some ways analogous to ours. The mundane testimony for that comes from near-death experience reports. In these we are occasionally told of beautiful places, buildings, landscapes, gardens, walls, and the like. Beings appear—including people whom the experiencer recognizes: relatives who have passed on. Most of these reports are emotionally charged, brief, and the testimony is neither long nor detailed. Beautiful flowers, waterfalls, meadows, etc.

The core of my question, therefore, has everything to do with the testimony itself—and the qualifications of the witness. Swedenborg’s experiences began in his maturity, at 53. At that time he was already a well-known and accomplished scientific writer and public administrator. His access to other realms was more or less continuous, thus more extensive than brief NDEs. That that realm was as difficult for him to understand as it is for the near-death experiencers, who often remark about the oddity of their experience, is clear from Swedenborg’s diaries, never intended for the public. That world is different, yet in some meaningful sense similar to this one. Not only in Heaven and Hell but in his other writings, Swedenborg is constantly emphasizing the differences. He formulated the concept of “correspondences.” That notion is that what is below has corresponding realities above; but what is above is not literally what is below. Therefore angels have recurring cycles of consciousness; they experience heaven intensely at the apex of the cycle, as almost an absence at its nadir. In Swedenborg’s attempt to convey this, he speaks of feelings of heat and light and of cold and darkness. And angels cycle because they are still developing, and these changes are of help in that process. When he speaks of bedrooms, he means that they have places of rest that correspond best to what we mean when we retire to our bedrooms, but both “places” and “rest” must be understood as inner soul-states (§ 155).

One more note. Swedenborg’s angels do not correspond to the beings described in Scholastic philosophy. They are advanced spirits. No angel is a species unto itself; all spirits are of the same kind but differ in degree of perfection. Furthermore people can and do eventually advance and themselves become angels. But this note merely to mark out the ground, not to commit theology. This post is about a kind of modified empiricism: knowledge gained by experience, and not necessarily merely of the sensory variety.

If the beyond is different but yet in some ways corresponds to this realm, that would explain why different people report different but very similar things. To link the two the experiencer must interpret those more ethereal phenomena. And in such a context, the skill, intelligence, and experience of the witness are important. Swedenborg, therefore, skilled in observation and in relationships by a life of scientific study, and long exposure to the phenomenon, is probably a very trustworthy witness. And I can go to sleep tonight reassured to think that angels are also in their bedrooms and getting some necessary down-time.