Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/296

280 and gentle breeze. The greatest joy was to wish to share it with others. Swedenborg tried to say how all the inward being seemed to open and to be dissolved, spreading the blessedness to every single fiber. He had felt this sense of order in the joy himself, and how greatly it increased when he shared it with another.

Angelic love was to love one's neighbor more than oneself, something that could be seen, he said, in true marriage love, in maternal love, and in true friendship.

He was happiest in heaven who knew that he was nothing of himself or in himself, but, ever watchful against the crafty ego, Swedenborg warned that a man who sought to be "nothing" in order to be happy would seek in vain.

Perhaps it was because of the opportunities for hypocrisy offered by official Christianity that Swedenborg was so distrustful of it. He often said that heathens may live better lives than Christians. Certain Chinese spirits showed distrust when he mentioned Christ to them, because they knew that Christians were worse than they, but he said they liked to hear about the Lord. The Church of the Lord, according to Swedenborg, is with all who admit divinity and live in love of their neighbor, and it is wherever people live in charity, according to their religion.

Swedenborg said that those heathens or others who had worshiped human beings or images in the world were for some time let believe that they encounter those deities in heaven, and in this way were gradually weaned from their fancies.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead,18 a certainly not known to Swedenborg, contains observations similar to his, such as the different visions seen by men of different faiths; the belief of the "dead" that they are still in their physical bodies; the hallucinatory experiences; even the "clear light" seen at first is common to both the Tibetan after-world and that of Swedenborg.

From his diary he took a little incident, relating how once when he was reading the Old Testament about Micah, from whom the sons of Dan took away his graven image, there was a certain spirit present, so aware of what Swedenborg was reading that he identified himself with Micah and grieved innocently at his loss. He was from India and in his life had worshiped a graven image. But Swedenborg observed that his adoration was much more holy than