Swedish philosopher, theologian, chemist, anatomist, and mystic, fluent in eleven languages. Swedenborg devoted the first half of his life to scientific investigations. Thereafter he turned his full attention to theology, metaphysics and started to explore mystical experience. Among Swedenborg's most popular books are Heaven and Hell and Earths in Universe. His spiritual writing influenced Emerson, Goethe, Henry James Sr., Dostoevsky, and William Blake. During his life, Swedenborg published over 50 works. His books have been translated into some thirty languages.

"There are two worlds, a spiritual world where angels and spirits are, and a natural world where men are." (from True Christian Religion)

Emanuel Swedenborg was born in Stockholm, the second son of Jesper Svedberg (1653-1735), a Lutheran bishop and hymn writer, and Sara Behm. Both families had acquired wealth in the mining business. Swedenborg's mother died in 1696 and his father married again. He was feared by the royal court because of his sermons against abuse of power, and loved by people who believed he had powers as an exorciser. From the age of eleven to twenty-one Swedenborg studied mechanics, geography, astronomy, and mathematics at the University of Uppsala.

Upon graduation he travelled to Holland, Germany and England. Because the English authorities believed that plague had broken in Sweden, his ship was obliged to wait offshore for six weeks. Swedenborg went ashore anyway, was caught and very nearly hanged. He lived in England from 1710 to 1713, and formed a lasting love for its culture. In 1716 King Charles XII of Sweden named him special assessor to the Royal College of Mines. He worked in several scientific fields from mathematics and physics to geology, and twice attempted to marry, but without success. Swedenborg's career also included extensive service in the upper house of the Swedish national legislature. In 1716-1718 he edited the scientific magazine Daedalus Hyperboreus, which published texts in Swedish. Most of his own books Swedenborg published in Latin. OPERA PHILOSOPHICA ET MINERALIA (1734) was about metals; in REGNUM ANIMALE (1744-45) Swedenborg examined the mysteries of soul; DE CULTU ET AMORE DEI (1745, Worship and the Love of God) dealt with the birth of the world; and ARCANA CAELESTIA (1749-1756) was a commentary on Genesis.

As an inventor Swedenborg produced a dry dock of new design, a machine for working salt springs, and a system for moving large boats overland. In biology he supplied the first accurate understanding of the importance of the cerebral cortex. But the conflict between Swedenborg's scientific and mediumistic sides deepened and he started to record his dreams, anticipating Jungian psychoanalysis in his self-analysis.

In 1743-45 Swedenborg had a visionary experience and devoted himself to prophesy and spiritual investigations. He noted in Amsterdam on the morning of October 1743 that "such dizziness or deliquium (a swooning away) overcame me that I felt close to death." In a dream a roaring wind picked him up and threw him on his face. A hand clutched his own clasped hand and he saw Christ. Vicious dogs turned up frequently, and his dead father appeared to him, praising his son's theological work. In 1744 on Easter Monday Christ asked the astonished visionary, whether he had a health certificate. Swedenborg described in DE TELLURIBUS his trip around the Solar System, which is seen as having a spiritual significance. The book also contains some scientific speculation about the planets. Swedenborg became convinced that he had been designated by God as a spiritual emissary to explore higher planes and to report his findings to humankind. He entered ecstatic trances, visiting heaven and hell. However, contemporaries found him sane and sensible.

In modern analysis Swedenborg's trances have been explained by his repressed or transcended sexuality. Dr Wilson Van Dusen has claimed that Swedenborg's descriptions of angelic and hellish spirits match the hallucinatory experiences of schizophrenics. He spent sixteen years treating the hallucinations of his patients as realities, and published his findings in The Presence of Other Worlds (1974). According to Van Dusen, "All Swedenborg's observations on the effect of evil spirits entering man's consciousness conform to my finding."

In 1747 Swedenborg was nominated for president of the Royal College of Mines. Communication with spirits led to his resignation from his government job. Later he wrote to the landgrave of Hessen-Darmstadt: "Because the Lord had prepared me for this from childhood, he revealed himself in person to me, his servant, and ordered me to perform this work. This happened in the year 1743, and afterward he showed me the face of my spirit and thus led me into the world of the spirits and allowed me to see heaven and its wonders, and at the same time to see hell as well, and also to speak with angels and spirits, and this has gone on continually for twenty-seven years." On a half-pension he became ascetic and added theological writings to his already lengthy list of scientific and philosophical works. His talents also included clairvoyance and prophecy. On the evening of July 19, 1759, he was visiting Göteborg. In the evening, at a party, he suddenly 'knew' that a fire raged in Stockholm, almost three hundred miles away, and threatened his own house. Next day his account of the disaster was fully confirmed.

"When, for instance, the vision arose in Swedenborg's mind of a fire in Stockholm, there was a real fire raging there at the same time, without there being any demonstrable or even thinkable connection between the two. I certainly would not like to undertake to prove the archetypal connection in this case. I would only point to the fact that in Swedenborg's biography there are certain things which throw a remarkable light on his psychic state. We must assume that there was a lowering of the threshold of consciousness which gave him access to "absolute knowledge." The fire in Stockholm was, in a sense, burning in him too." (Carl Jung in Synchronicity, 1960)

In 1762 Swedenborg went into a trance and described the assassination of the Russian Tsar Peter III. His publications from this visionary period include Worship and the Love of God, Arcana Caelestia, an exposition of the spirit teachings he received, and Heaven and Hell (1758), description of the afterlife. In Earths in the Universe Swedenborg claimed that the moon is peopled by a race which speaks through its stomachs- the sound is like belching. Contemporaries took Swedenborg's psychic powers of clairvoyance seriously: he impressed Queen Louisa Ulrica, sister of Frederick the Great, by delivering a private message from her dead brother, Augustus William. He believed he had the ability to slow down his breathing. "I became so completely accustomed to this type of respiration," he once said, "that I sometimes passed an entire hour without taking a breath. I had breathed in only enough air so that I could think." Occasionally he conversed with such prominent figures as Abraham, Solomon, and the apostles.

His later years Swedenborg spent mostly in England, remaining a bachelor. In his later writing, which influenced William Blake (1757-1827) Swedenborg paved the way for the Romantic movement. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) criticized him in his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766), and wanted to place him in a madhouse. His last work, VERA CHRISTIANA RELIGIO (1771) was a summary of his religious views. He died in London on March 29, 1772, and was buried there. Swedenborg's skull was later stolen and in 1908 his remains were moved to Uppsala. His followers founded the New Jerusalem Church in England in 1778 and in the United States in 1792. James Glen formed in 1784 a Swedenborgian reading circle in Philadelphia. The Swedenborg Society was established in 1810. During the 19th century Swedenborgians enjoyed a considerable vogue, but in the 20th century the interest has decreased..

Swedenborg believed that God created humankind to exist simultaneously in the physical world and in the spiritual world, which belongs to the inner domain. It has its own memory, which is what survives after death. Swedenborg's hell has no Satan; heaven is populated by the spirits of the dead that carry on lives and habits much the same as they did on earth. Jesus' crucifixion did not atone for the sins of humankind; we make our own heaven and hell. Swedenborg rejected traditional doctrines of the Trinity and taught man's spiritual freedom and responsibility. Eternal life was an inner condition beginning with earthly life; gradual redemption occurs through personal regulation of spiritual states, and practical love is a necessity in every relationship.