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Doc. 208.] HIS SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE IN 1743. 145
my understanding was elevated, so that I was gradually enabled
to perceive things which at first I did not perceive, and finally
such things as it had been impossible for me to comprehend"
("Heaven and Hell," no. 130).
The nature of Swedenborg’s spiritual states, before the light
of the spiritual world had perceptibly dawned upon him, he
describes most clearly in the following passage written on the
27th of August 1748 : "Before my mind was opened, so that
I could converse with spirits, and thus be persuaded by living
experience, there existed with me for several years such evidences,
that I now wonder I could remain all the while unconvinced of
the Lord’s government by means of spirits. During several
years, not only had I dreams by which I was informed concern
ing the things on which I was writing [see Note 161] ; but
I experienced also, while writing, changes of state, there being
a certain extraordinary light in the things which were written.
Afterwards I had many visions with closed eyes, and light
was given me in a miraculous manner. There was also an in
flux from spirits, as manifest to the sense as if it had been
into the senses of the body; there were infestations in various
ways by evil spirits, when I was in temptations ; and afterwards
when writing anything to which the spirits had an aversion I
was almost possessed by them, so as to feel something like a
tremor. Fiery lights were seen,* and conversations heard in
the early morning, besides many other things; until at last a
* This appearance of fiery lights Swedenborg describes more particularly
in his "Adversaria," Vol. III, no. 7012, in these words : "Flames signify
confirmation ; such a flame has, by the Divine mercy of God-Messiah,
appeared to me many times, and indeed of various sizes, and of different
colours and lustre ; so that while I was writing a certain little work,
scarcely a day passed, for several months, without a flame appearing to me
as bright as a chimney-fire ; this was at the time a sign of approbation,
and it was before the time when spirits began to speak with me in an
audible voice."
An allusion to this sign of approbation will be found in the photo
lithographic edition of Swedenborg’s Manuscripts, Vol. VI, page 318, where
he treats in a compendious form of the "Corpuscular Philosophy" (Philosophia
corpuscularis in Compendio), and where, at the bottom of the page, he
asserts the truth of his article in this form : "These things are true, be
cause I have [received] the sign" (Hæc vera sunt, quia signum habeo).
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