Zones of the Spirit: A Book of Thoughts. August Strindberg
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uses parables and allegories, as Christ did in order to be understood.
"Emerson in his Representative Men regards Swedenborg's genius as the greatest among modern thinkers, but he warns us against stereo-typing his forms of thought. True as transitional forms, they are false if one tries to fix them fast. He calls these descriptions a transitory embodiment of the truth, not the truth itself."
"But I do not yet understand Swedenborg."
"No, because you have not the necessary preliminary knowledge. Just like the peasant who came to a chemical lecture and only heard about letters and numbers. He considered it the most stupid stuff he had ever heard: 'They could only spell, but could not put the letters together.' He lacked the necessary preliminary knowledge. Still, when you read Swedenborg, read Emerson along with him."
Perverse Science.—The teacher continued: "Swedenborg never found a contradiction between science and religion, because he beheld the harmony in all, correspondences in the higher sphere to the lower, and the unity underlying opposites. Like Pythagoras, he saw the Law-giver in His laws, the Creator in His work, God in nature, history and the life of men. Modern degenerate science sees nothing, although it has obtained the telescope and microscope.
"Newton, Leibnitz, Kepler, Swedenborg, Linnæus, the greatest scientists were religious God-fearing men. Newton wrote also an Exposition of the Apocalypse. Kepler was a mystic in the truest sense of the word. It was his mysticism which led to his discovery of the laws regulating the courses of the planets. Humble and pure-hearted, those men could see God while our decadents only see an ape infested by vermin.
"The fact that our science has fallen into disharmony with God, shows that it is perverse, and derives its light from the Lord of Dung."
Truth in Error.—The teacher continued: "Let us return for a moment to your green island. There you discovered that the world is a reflection of your interior state, and of the interior state of others. It is therefore probable that each carries his own heaven and hell within him. Thus we come to the conclusion that religion is something subjective, and therefore outside the reach of discussion.
"The believer is therefore right when he receives spiritual edification from the consecrated Bread and Wine. And the unbeliever is also not wrong when he maintains that for him it is only bread and wine. But if he asserts that it is the same with the believer, he is wrong. One ought not to punish him for it; one must only lament his want of intelligence. By calling religion subjective, I have not thereby diminished its power. The subjective is the highest for personality, which is an end in itself, inasmuch as the education of man to superman is the meaning of existence.
"But when many individuals combine in one belief, there results an objective force of tremendous intensity, which can remove mountains and overthrow the walls of Jericho.
Accumulators.—"When a race of wild men begin to worship a meteoric stone, and this stone is subsequently venerated by a nation for centuries, it accumulates psychic force, i.e. becomes a sacred object which can bestow strength on those who possess the receptive apparatus of faith. It can accordingly work miracles which are quite incomprehensible to unbelievers.
"Such a sacred object is called an amulet, and is not really more remarkable than an electric pocket-lamp. But the lamp gives light only on two conditions—that it is charged with electricity and that one presses the knob. Amulets also only operate under certain conditions.
"The same holds good of sacred places, sacred pictures and objects, and also of sacred rites which are called sacraments.
"But it may be dangerous for an unbeliever to approach too near to an accumulator. The faith-batteries of others can produce an effect on them, and they may be killed thereby, if they possess not the earth-circuit to carry off the coarser earthly elements.
"The electric car proceeds securely and evenly as long as it is in contact with the overhead wire and also connected with the earth. If the former contact is interrupted, the car stands still. If the earth-circuit is blocked, an electric storm is the result, as was the case with St. Paul on the way to Damascus."
Eternal Punishment.—The pupil asked: "What is your belief regarding eternal punishments?"
"Let me answer evasively, so to speak: since wickedness is its own punishment, and a wicked man cannot be happy, and the will is free, an evil man may be perpetually tormented with his own wickedness, and his punishment accordingly have no end.
"But we will hope that the wicked will not adhere to his evil will for ever. A wicked man often experiences a change of nature when he sees something good. Therefore, it is our duty to show him what is good. The consciousness of fatality and being damned comes to everyone, even to the incredulous. That proves that there is an inborn sense of justice, a need to punish oneself, and that quite independent of dogmas. Moreover, it is a gross falsehood that the doctrine of hell was invented by Christianity. Greeks and Romans knew Hades and Tartarus with their refined tortures; the Jews had their Sheol and Gehenna; the cheerful Japanese rival Dante with their Inferno. It is therefore thoughtless nonsense to make Christian theology solely responsible for the doctrine of hell. It would be just as fair to trace it to the cheerful view of life of the Greeks and Romans, who first came upon the idea."
"Desolation."—The teacher continued: "When this feeling of fatality strikes an unbeliever, it often appears as the so-called persecution-mania. He believes himself, for example, persecuted by men who wish to poison him. Since his intelligence is so low that he cannot rise to the idea of God, his evil conscience makes him conjure up evil men as his persecutors. Thus he does not understand that it is God who is pursuing him, and therefore he dies or goes mad.
"But he who has strength enough to bow himself, or intelligence enough to guess at a method in this madness, cries to God for help and grace, and escapes the madhouse. After a season of self-chastisement, life begins to grow lighter; peace returns; he succeeds in his undertakings; his 'Green Island' again blooms with spring. This feeling of woebegoneness often occurs about the fortieth or fiftieth year. It is the balancing of books at the solstice. The whole past is summed up, and the debit-side shows a plus which makes one despair. Scenes of earlier life pass by like a panorama, seen in a new light; long-forgotten incidents reappear even in their smallest details. The opening of the sealed Book of Life, spoken of in the Revelation, is a veritable reality. It is the day of judgment. The children of the Lord of Dung who have lost their intelligence understand nothing, but buy bromkali at the chemist's and take sick-leave because of 'neurasthenia.' That is a Greek word, which serves them as an amulet.
"Swedenborg calls this natural process 'the desolation' of the wicked. The pietists call it the 'awakening' before conversion."
A World of Delusion.—"Swedenborg writes: 'The angels are troubled concerning the darkness on earth. They say that they can see hardly any light anywhere, that men live and strengthen themselves in lying and deceit, and so heap up falsity upon falsity. In order to ratify these, they manage to extract, by way of inference, such true propositions from false premises, as, on account of the darknesses which conceal the true sources, and because the real state of the case is unknown, cannot be refuted.'
"This agrees with what every thinking man observes, that lying and deceit are universal. The whole of life—politics, society, marriage, the family—is counterfeit. Views which universally prevail are based upon false history; scientific theories are founded on error; the truth of to-day is discovered to be a lie to-morrow; the hero turns out to be a coward, the martyr a hypocrite. Te Deums are sung over a silver wedding, and the wedded pair, still secretly leading immoral lives, thank God that they have lived together happily for five-and-twenty years. The whole populace assembles once in a year to celebrate the memory of the 'Destroyer of the Country.' He who says the most foolish thing possible, receives a prize in money and a gold medal. At the annual asses' festival, the worst is crowned the asses' king.
"A mad world, my masters! If Hamlet plays the madman, he sees how mad the world is. But the spectator believes himself to be the only reasonable person, therefore He gives Hamlet his sympathy."
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