Angelic Description of Conscience

Selection from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

We have heard in heaven that you have presented in succession your opinions about conscience, and that you have all regarded it as some mental pain which infests the head with heaviness, and from that the body, or infests the body and from that the head.

But conscience viewed in itself is not a pain, but a spiritual desire to act in accordance with whatever pertains to religion and faith.

Hence it is that those who feel delight in conscience are in the tranquillity of peace and interior blessedness when they are acting in accordance with their conscience, and in a kind of perturbation when they are acting contrary to it.

But the mental pain which you have believed to be conscience, is not conscience but temptation, which is a conflict of the spirit with the flesh

this conflict, when it is spiritual, has its origin in conscience; but if it is natural merely, it has its origin in those diseases which the physicians have just recounted. [TCR 665]

"But what conscience is may be illustrated by examples:
• A priest who has a spiritual desire to teach truths in order that his flock may be saved, has conscience; but he who has any other end in view, does not have conscience.
• A judge who regards justice exclusively, and executes it with judgment, has conscience; but a judge who looks primarily to reward, friendship, or favor, has not conscience.

Again,
• a man who has in his possession the property of another, the other not knowing it, and who is thus able without fear of the law or loss of honor and reputation, to keep it as his own, and yet, because it is not his, restores it to the other, has conscience, since he does what is just for the sake of what is just.

So again,
• one who can obtain an office but who knows that another who is also seeking it would be more useful to society, and yields the place to him for the sake of the good of society, has a good conscience. So in other things.

All who have conscience say whatever they say from the heart, and do whatever they do from the heart; for not having a divided mind they speak and act according to what they understand and believe to be true and good.

From all this it follows that a more perfect conscience may exist with those who have more of the truths of faith than others, and who have a clearer perception than others, than is possible with those who are less enlightened and whose perception is obscure.

A true conscience is the seat of man's spiritual life itself, for there his faith is conjoined with charity

therefore when such act from conscience they act from their spiritual life, but when they act contrary to conscience they act contrary to that life.

Moreover, does not everyone know from common speech what conscience is? When it is said of anyone: 'He has conscience,' does not that also mean that he is a just man? But on the other hand, when it is said of anyone, 'He has no conscience' does it not mean that he is also unjust?"

(True Christian Religion 666)

Man's Book of Life

Selection from Arcana Cœlestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

And Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah. (Exodus 24:4) That this signifies an impressing thereafter on the life, is evident from the signification of "writing," as being to impress on the life....From this it is evident that by Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah, are signified truths Divine impressed on the life by the Lord.

Truths are said to be impressed on the life, when they become of the will and from this of the act. So long as they stay merely in the memory, and so long as they are looked at only intellectually, they have not been impressed on the life; but as soon as they are received in the will, they become of the life, because the very being of man's life is to will, and from this to act; and before this they have not been appropriated to the man.

That "to write" denotes to impress on the life, is because the purpose of writings is remembrance to all posterity. So is it with the things impressed on a man's life.

Man has as it were two books, in which have been written all his thoughts and acts. These books are his two memories, the exterior and the interior. The things written on his interior memory remain to all eternity, and are never blotted out, and are chiefly those which have become of the will, that is, of the love; for the things of the love are of the will. It is this memory which is meant by every man's book of life.

(from Arcana Cœlestia 9386)

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All things whatever that a man hears and sees, and by which he is affected, are, unknown to the man, insinuated as to ideas and ends into his interior memory; and they remain in it, so that not anything perishes; although the same things are obliterated in the exterior memory. Such therefore is the interior memory that there are inscribed on it all the single, nay, the most singular things that the man has ever thought, spoken, and done; nay, even those which have appeared to him as but a shade, with the minutest particulars, from his earliest infancy to the last of old age. The memory of all these things the man has with him when he comes into the other life, and he is successively brought into full recollection of them. This is his Book of Life, which is opened in the other life, and according to which he is judged. He then can scarcely believe this, but yet it is most true. All the ends, which to him have been in obscurity, and all the things he has thought; together with everything that from these he has spoken and done, down to the smallest point, are in that Book, that is, in the interior memory, and whenever the Lord grants, are made manifest before the angels as in clear day. This has several times been shown me, and has been attested by so much experience that not the least doubt remains.

(from Arcana Cœlestia 2474)

Freedom to Speak and Publish

Selections from True Christian Religion ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Thought is like the inflowing stream, and speech therefrom is like the basin. In a word, influx adapts itself to efflux, and in like manner the understanding from above adapts itself to its measure of freedom to speak and publish its thoughts.

[Free nations], as regards the spiritual things of the church called theological, are like eagles which rise to whatever height they please; while nations that are not free are like swans in a river.

Again, free nations are like the larger deer with lofty horns, that roam the fields, groves, and forests at perfect liberty; while nations that are not free are like the deer kept in parks to please a prince.

And still again, free peoples are like the winged horse which the ancients called Pegasus, that flew not only over the seas, but over the so called Parnassian hills, and also over the hills of the Muses beneath them; while a people not freed are like noble horses handsomely caparisoned in kings' stables. There are like differences in their judgments regarding the mysterious matters of theology.

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such as the state of man's mind is in the natural world, such it is in the spiritual world; for man's mind is his spirit, or the posthumous man that lives after his departure from the material body.

(from True Christian Religion 814-816)