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Temptations A series of extracts compiled by Bazil Lazer from the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg on the nature, cause and purpose of spiritual temptations CONTENTS
Introduction
"Regeneration takes place in order for the previous life of the person to die away and for a new life that is heavenly to come in. You can assume from this that there certainly will be a struggle, for the former person resists and does not want to die out, while the life of the new person can enter only where the old life has expired. Clearly there is a struggle on both sides, and a fierce one because it is a struggle for life" Emanuel Swedenborg
"Temptations" compiled by Bazil Lazer from the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg New Translation of Latin quotations and revision of Basil Lazer's remarks by David F Gladish For Basil Lazer Trust The New Church Originally printed in Australia by Nadley Press • 68 Oak Road Kirrawee NSW 2232 ISBN 0 646 29546 2
Layout design and linocuts by Donna Heldon © 2009
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In the throes of temptation, evil spirits are allowed
to bring out everything bad and false in a person and use the person's
evil and falsity as a weapon. Once they are defeated, however, they are
no longer allowed to do this, for all at once they can tell that the
person is confirmed in good and truth. Spirits have this perception more
keenly than people in this life do. Just from the sphere of a person
confirmed in good and truth they know at once his condition, what
response they will get, and so on. This is clearly evident in a
regenerate spiritual person. Evil spirits are around him as much as
around an unregenerate person, but they are under control, and they
serve. They are deprived of the power to do evil and to think what is
false.
Anyone who
is in the struggles of temptations and wins gets more and more power
over evil spirits—the diabolical crew—until finally they do not dare to
tempt him any more. Every time a victory is won, the Lord sorts into
place those good qualities and truths used to fight that battle, and the
more these are purified in this way, the more the heavenly qualities of
love fill the outward person and complete the alignment. Anyone who says that the outer person can be brought into alignment without the struggles of temptations is wrong, because temptations are the means by which evil and false ______________________________________________________ anyone who is in the struggles of temptation and wins gets more and more power over evil spirits ______________________________________________________ qualities are removed, good and true ones are introduced, and the traits of the external person are reduced to obedience to serve the more inward, rational person, and through this the innermost—that is, the Lord acting on the innermost level of the person. Only someone who has been reborn through temptations is capable of knowing that temptations accomplish this. But how this happens can hardly be described in the vaguest way, since it is done without the person's knowing why and how, because it is a Divine activity of the Lord. [Arcana Coelestia 17172-3] The struggles of temptations
overcome bad inclinations and false ideas, so that one is clothed in
good inclinations and truths, because this is how bad inclinations and
false ideas are dispersed. When these are dispersed, good inclinations
and truths take their place. Then these assert themselves more and more
and are thus reinforced. It is evil spirits who stir up bad
inclinations and false ideas. If these are not stirred up, a person
scarcely knows that they are evil and false, but if they are stirred up,
it is obvious. And the longer the struggle of temptations goes on, the
more obvious this is, until, finally, evil inclinations and false ideas
are revolting.
As evil inclinations and false
ideas are dispersed, good inclinations and true ideas take their place,
and the more horrified one is by evil inclinations and false ideas, the
more the Lord supplies a love for good qualities and for truths. Also,
the more horrifying evil and
false
things are, the less the evil spirits dare approach. They cannot stand
aversion and horror for the evils and falsities which their life
consists in. Sometimes terror seizes them as soon as they get near. And
the more the love for good and truths, the more angels like to be around
a person, and with the angels, heaven, for they are in their kind of
life when they are among good loves and true beliefs. Temptations do not come about only
to confirm a person in true beliefs, but also to fit truth and goodness
more perfectly together, for in temptations the person fights for true
concepts, against false ones. He is in pain inwardly, and in torment, so
his vital pleasures of selfishness and sensuality fail. Then good
inclinations flow in from the Lord, and evil things seem revolting. This
gives rise to new thoughts, the opposite of earlier ones, which the
person can later be bent toward and in this way be bent from evil things
to good ones. And these can be united with true beliefs. In all temptations there is a
scepticism about the Lord's presence and mercy, about salvation, and
about such things, because people under temptation are in an inward
anxiety amounting to despair. ______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________ An appreciation of happiness and joy come only by contrast with the opposite, therefore loneliness and temptations are drawn out to despair
(linocut
by Donna Heldon © 2009)
They are kept in this anxiety, for the most part, in
order to be without doubt, eventually, that everything is at the Lord's
mercy, that salvation is only through Him, and that everything from
themselves is bad. They are convinced of these facts by struggles in
which they overcome. This leaves a residue of various states of goodness
and truth to which the Lord can later turn their thoughts—thoughts which
would otherwise drift into foolish ideas and carry their minds away from
truth and goodness. A person is simply an instrument or vessel that receives life from the Lord, for a person does not have independent life. The life that flows in from the Lord comes from His Divine love. This love, or the life from it, flows in and affects receptors on ______________________________________________________ people under temptation are in an inward anxiety amounting to despair ______________________________________________________ the rational and natural level in people. These receptors in people are in an unreceptive attitude to the Lord's life, due to the bad heredity people are born into and the evil they build up by what they do. Still, the life that flows in adapts the receptors insofar as it can. These receptors on people's rational plane and
natural plane are the concepts that we call true, and, in their own
right, truths are nothing other than awareness of changes in the forms
of those receptors, and awareness of changes in their status according
to which variations emerge in different ways. These occur in the most
subtle substances in ways that defy description. Good itself, which has life from the Lord—or which is
life—is what flows in and does the modifying. When these receptors, which can be modified, are in a position and attitude inhospitable to life, as mentioned, it can be assumed that they need to be rearranged into a position hospitable to life, or accepting of life. There is no way this can happen so long as a person is in the state he was born in and in which he has placed himself, since the receptors will not cooperate, because they are stubbornly resistant and are obstinately against the heavenly order according to which life acts. The "good" that they respond to and obey relates to self-interest and materialism, which makes the receptors behave as they do, owing to the gross heat in it. So before they become compliant and can be capable of receiving anything of the life of the Lord's love, they need to be softened. The softening takes place by no other means than temptations, for temptations remove characteristics of self-love, contempt for others compared to oneself, and, therefore, self-glorification, and the characteristics of hate and the revenge it inspires. When temptations have somewhat moderated and subdued these qualities, the receptors begin to become yielding and compliant with the life of the Lord's love ______________________________________________________ temptations remove characteristics of self-love, contempt for others, and therefore, self-glorification ______________________________________________________ which is always flowing into people. So this is the way good begins to be united with
truths, first on people's rational level, then on their worldly level.
For truths, as was observed, are nothing other than awareness of
modifications in form according to conditions which keep changing, and
this awareness is from the life that flows in. This
is why temptations, or in other words, spiritual struggles, regenerate
people—that is, make them anew.
And it is why people then get another
disposition and indeed become manageable, humble, uncomplicated, and
tender-hearted. These observations show what profit temptations
yield: that goodness from the Lord can not just flow in but also make
the receptors receptive and in this way relate to them. Through despair people come to accept, actively and consciously, that nothing of truth and goodness comes from themselves and that by themselves they are lost, but that the Lord frees them from damnation and that salvation flows in on truth and goodness. Despair also has the purpose of making the happiness of life from the Lord felt, for when people emerge from despair; they are like people who were condemned to die and are freed from prison. Besides, loneliness and temptations bring on states opposite to heavenly life, states which bring on a sense and an appreciation of the happiness and joy of heavenly life. A sense and an appreciation of the happiness and joy come only by contrast with the opposite. To provide adequate contrast, therefore, loneliness and temptations are drawn out to their ultimate—i.e., to despair. [Arcana Coelestia 6144] Temptations are struggles with bad inclinations and false concepts.
When someone overcomes them, he is strengthened, for he fights by means
of truths and for truths against what is false and what is wrong. The
person does not notice at the time that he is fighting by means of
truths and for truths, because truths are in his most inward levels, so
they do not come to his notice, which is on an outer plane. But that it
is by means of and for truths is clear from the fact that there is a
struggle and afterwards victory, which can only come from confrontations
of opposites. The opposites are bad and good, false and true. But note
that it is not the person who fights, but that the Lord fights for the
person—against the hells, in fact, which are trying to infiltrate and
dominate the person. For Comments please E-mail: information@swedenborg.ca Read the next [9th] chapter "Transformation" Or go to the previous [7th] chapter "The mechanics of temptation"
[1] Where temptations come from
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