Emanuel Swedenborg · Visionary Savant in the Age of Reason

The great German scholar Ernst Benz documents the rich and fascinating life of Emanuel Swe­denborg, who claims an exceptional place in history as both scientist and visionary. An active statesman, Swedenborg accomplished major engineering feats, contributed numerous ground­breaking studies in a variety of scientific fields, and played a prominent role in Swedish public institutions concerned with mining, finance, and politics. Traveling widely throughout the con­tinent and living in London during certain periods of his life, he consorted and corresponded with many of the leading intellectual figures of the day such as Newton, Leibnitz, and Flamsteed. In 1744 he underwent a spiritual experience that changed the direction of his life toward reli­gious issues and theology, biblical exegesis, and the fulfillment of what he understood to be his divine commission to document and communicate what he was being shown in his visions and travels in the nonmaterials realms of the afterlife and to prepare the way for the advent of a spir­itual community, which was to supersede the all too worldly and erroneous human churches of Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation. Through the grandeur of his intelligence and the integrity of his commitment to this mission, he left an enduring legacy of written works that have appealed to artistic, literary and spiritual giants such as Dostoevsky, Strindberg, Blake, Yeats, Emerson, D.T. Suzuki and Helen Keller.