Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 3484

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3484. Wherefore, that I might not be held in things so extremely ultimated and finite by the Lord, there was given me a notion of forms entirely transcending all geometrical forms, for geometry is terminated in the circle, or in curves referring themselves to the circle, which are merely terrestrial, and do not embrace even the lowest of the atmospheric and aqueous forms. From these lowest or terrestrial forms, it was given, by the removal of imperfections, such as the causes of gravity, rest,* cold, and so on, to perceive forms which were free from the operation of such causes; and that then there remained forms still more free from them, and others freer still, till at length forms were given in which nothing could be conceived but centers in every point, so that they consisted of mere centers from whence were all circles and peripheries, each of the points of which represented centers, and from these centers still had respect to similars, till the lower form being removed, in which were those termini signifying the boundaries of space and of time, I saw myself carried forward to forms almost entirely void of limits and thus taken out of relative to spaces and time. But all these forms are yet finite, because an idea of them can be conceived by a certain abstraction of those things that are more finited, though they yet remain finite; wherefore all such forms are still within nature, and are without life. Consequently as long as the mind detains itself or is detained in such forms, it still falls short of the sphere of life; but the things that are within or above them, are living from the Lord, but still organic, because even they have no life of themselves, any more than the forms within nature. Wherefore no one by any kind of abstraction can conceive of the forms that are within the natural, as I now perceive while writing concerning forms on the paper before me, being forced thus to confess that there are spiritual forms within the most subtle forms of nature which are never perceptible. - 1748, October 5. * From this, and from what occurs elsewhere in the philosophy of Swedenborg, it appears that motion is to be regarded as a more native state of elementary matter than rest. -Tr.


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